“But you never know until you try,” he said, giving her a wolfish look. “Wouldn’t it be nice if you actually found some dirt on your ex?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “You might want to consider it could make him more dangerous.”
“You might want to consider that yourself,” he said, fixing his glare on her. “Those may be what he’s looking for.”
She stared at him. “You mean, when he searched my house?”
He nodded slowly.
“Oh no,” she said, “it just might be.”
“Does he know you have them?”
“No, but if he went looking for them, at any point in time since I left, he might assume I’ve got them.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Now I really don’t want you to go out to dinner with him.”
Chapter 15
Doreen went up to her bedroom, taking the stairs two at a time, as Mugs raced ahead of her; so did Goliath, but then he stopped and lay full-length across the top stair, almost tripping her up. “Goliath, why must you do that?”
Of course he didn’t answer. He just looked at her; she moved quickly through to the master bedroom. There she stopped and wondered because things had definitely been disturbed in her closet. She dug for her old suitcase, pulled it out, and, in the side pocket, pulled out the small purse that she’d kept as a spare when she had moved. It had a firm triangular bottom instead of one that collapsed. She pulled it out, popped open the metal clasp, and dumped out the contents on her bed. Out came four USB keys. She shrugged, picked them up, put them back in the purse, and walked down to Mack. She showed him the purse. “This was inside my suitcase,” she said. “I was wondering if it was something I could sell.”
He looked at it doubtfully.
She said, with a smile, “It’s a Prada, worth about seven grand.” He just stared at her in shock. She shrugged. “It’s my old life. What I wouldn’t do to have that seven-thousand dollars now,” she muttered. “If I could sell it,” she said, “I might get a couple hundred for it.”
Mack looked at her again and said, “You know that a couple high-end consignment stores are downtown. Some people here are megarich, so they do take quite a few things there that you might not expect.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You mean, not just Wendy?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but there are several similar stores.”
“Well, Wendy was quite happy to get a lot of the stuff I had.”
“And she might sell that for you too,” he said, nodding at her Prada purse. “The stuff that she doesn’t sell, what happens to it?”
Doreen looked at him in surprise. “You know what? I never even thought of that.”
“Well, maybe contact her, and, if she hasn’t sold certain things, you could always try these other places.”
“I never thought of that,” she muttered.
“May I?” he asked. As she nodded, he opened the purse, and he whistled. “Three of them.”
“Should be four.”
Peering through the purse, he dumped them on the table and said, “Yes, four.” He looked at her laptop and asked again, “May I?”
She shrugged, pushed the laptop toward him. “Sure. Why not? I don’t know what, if anything, is on them.”
“Well, let’s take a look.” He opened up the first one. “Look at this,” he said. “All kinds of information on living alone and surviving a divorce.”
She flushed. “Like I said, I was saving information for myself.”
He nodded, and his gaze warmed. “Nobody would blame you,” he said. “It’s not like you had very many tools to survive this, and yet you’ve done better than most. Plus, many people would have had a support system behind them. While you’ve had Nan, otherwise you’ve been on your own, and you’ve done really well for yourself. Don’t knock it.”
Feeling a little glow around her heart, she settled in, as he searched through that USB key and then pulled it out and handed it to her. She put that one in her office alcove by the printer. And she left it conspicuous, in case somebody came back looking for a USB, so that particular one would be the one that they found.
Mack inserted the second one and whistled. “I don’t think you realize what you have here.”
“Well, even looking at it, I don’t realize what I have,” she muttered, peering over his shoulder.
“They are all accounts,” he said, opening up folder after folder. “The trouble is, I don’t have enough time or knowledge to figure it out right now.”
“Even if it is accounts, so what?” she muttered. “It doesn’t mean anything illegal is there.”
“And you’re right,” he said, “but, if something is illegal, I can see that he would really want it back. Maybe even if that isn’t what he’s seeking.”
“Well, he didn’t ask for it.”
“That’s because he didn’t know you had it.” Mack gave her a curious look.
“And honestly neither did I,” she said. “It’s not like I had much chance to pack up and purposely steal something.”
“Nobody is accusing you of having taken anything.”
“Good thing.” She had a terrible feeling, like she’d done something wrong.
“I need to take these to the office and have a good look. We have specialists there.”
“Some of it should be fairly explanatory,” she said, as she leaned forward to study the screen. “I mean, look at that landscaping billing.” She shrugged. “How complicated could that be?”
“Yeah,” he said, “and that’s four years ago. Did you have anything major done on the house?”
She shook her head. “No, we haven’t done anything major to the house in a long time.”
“Well, here it says that he spent $175,000 in landscaping.”
She looked at him in shock. “That much?”
He nodded. “For just one year. If nothing else, this looks like tax stuff.”
“I don’t know how many properties he has, so, if it is the combined total of his landscaping bills, that might make more sense.”
“Right, another good point,” he said. “I think I need to get somebody who knows what they’re talking about to look at these.”
“Okay, well, let’s take a look at the other thumb drives.” The next one had similar accounts, although an awful lot more of them was here. And it went back for a few years. One of the files he opened up because it was labeled BM.
“Why would you open anything that says BM,” she said, shaking her head at him. “To me, that would be like the last thing I’d want to open up.”
“Because, instead of what you were thinking,” he said, “my mind immediately went to blackmail.”
She gasped. “You don’t think he was blackmailing people, do you?”
“Blackmailing or being blackmailed. People in power are often involved.”
“That’s just wrong,” she said in shock. “If they got the money honestly, they should be allowed to keep it.”