No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (7 page)

Those words stung. I was too
angry and hurt to respond. We drove the last two miles in tense
silence. I knew that Bosco was going to be Bosco, whether I liked
it or not. He was looking to assign blame, because that’s his
nature, because he’s used to hunting down bad guys. And as much as
I hated to admit it, there was some truth to the fact that I leaped
into my relationship with George without looking. There was also a
part of me that suddenly distrusted Ralph, even before Bosco said a
word. But as I sat there, going over things in my mind, I realized
something that was stunning.

“You’re mad because your
theory fell through. You thought this was about you, about Feed the
World. Instead, I got ripped off because I screwed up,” I told him,
knowing full well he was going to explode. I waited for the missile
to leave the silo, but Bosco remained silent. He pulled into the
parking lot, steering the car into a spot well away from the
Dynamic Productions entry. His hands gripped the wheel long after
he turned off the engine. I started to get nervous. This was not
the reaction I was expecting. When he did speak, they were not the
words I expected to hear.

“No, that’s not why I’m
mad.”

I waited for him to go on.
It took him a minute to continue.

“I’m mad because I let you
get away the first time,” he told me. “I promised myself that if I
ever got another chance, I wasn’t going to blow it. I wanted it to
be because of me, not because I’m a self-important jerk, but
because I would have a legitimate reason for helping
you.”

“What are you saying? You
can’t help me unless it’s your fault?”

“No, I’m saying I would have
a built-in excuse for hanging around if my investigation of Feed
the World caused you to lose your savings, and I’d have a chance to
redeem myself by fixing the mess.” Bosco’s brown eyes were on me,
and there was no doubt of how deeply his pain went. “All I’ve
wanted for the last three years has been the opportunity to
convince you that I’m still worthy of your love.”

Chapter Seven
--

“You still love
me?”

“Of course I do,
Dori.”

“Even though I screwed up
with George?”

“Babe, that’s water under
the bridge. If I hadn’t let you down, you wouldn’t have been
looking for George or any other guy.”

“So,” I sighed, “it wasn’t
my screw-up?” I was confused. What did Bosco really think? “It was
all your fault?”

“Hell, no!” he shook his
head. “You’re no saint. You’re far too naive and you always trust
people, even when you shouldn’t. I’m saying that I should have
spoken up a long time ago. I should have told you how I really
felt. But most of all, I should never have signed those divorce
papers. I should have begged you to work it out with me. Instead, I
let you walk away, straight into the arms of the first guy who made
a big play for you, who just happened to be a con man. I know your
heart was hurting and you weren’t thinking clearly. I blame myself
for shoving you in George’s direction. Maybe if I had been more
forthcoming about my objections to staying in the house, we could
have worked something out. I never stopped loving you, Dori. I just
stopped loving the house after Kevin died. I needed a fresh
start.”

I sat there a moment,
remembering the numbness I embraced through the empty hours. I had
wanted to feel good things again, to be free of all that ache.
George set my head spinning with all his attention. It was, for me,
a fresh start. Maybe it wasn’t George that was so attractive, but
the promise of a new life, any life, far enough away from the
sadness I still held inside, the tears that remained in the middle
of the night, when I was so alone and so vulnerable.

“Maybe I needed a fresh
start, too,” I admitted, “in a different way. I didn’t want to give
up my memories of Kevin to get it.”

“Kevin is always going to be
a part of us, Dori. That’s never going to change.”

“I know.” I stopped myself
from saying more, knowing I was on the brink of tears. Bosco seemed
to notice that.

“Come on. Let’s go look at
that envelope. And maybe the books, as well.” He took a small
flashlight from the glove compartment. I used my key and unlocked
the door, pushing open the door. My hand went to the light switch
on the wall, but Boscon stopped me.

“We don’t want to turn on
the lights while we’re snooping.”

Once inside Ralph’s office,
I followed the bright gleam of light to his desk. The pile of mail
was no longer where Gloria had left it. Apparently, Ralph had
returned from his photo shoot and gone through it. The envelope was
gone.

“Damn!” I
muttered.

“Maybe he tucked it in a
drawer,” Bosco suggested. He began pulling out drawers.

“We shouldn’t be snooping
through his private papers,” I warned him.

“His private papers are our
business, Dori. We own forty two percent of this company. You
forget I saw his prospectus before we gave him the last round of
funding. I want to know if he’s been cooking the books. He has some
reason for wanting our shares, and it’s not because he’s a swell
guy!” he hissed through the darkness. “Do you know his
password?”

“For what? Now you’re going
to check his computer?” I was aghast.

“Our money helped to pay for
that computer, babe,” Bosco pointed out. “Without our money, there
would not be a Dynamic Productions. Every time you took stock
instead of salary, you were solidifying your ownership of this
company. Ralph still acts like you’re the young ingenue he took
under his wing. I want to know what he’s hiding.”

Bosco sat at Ralph’s desk,
trying possible passwords to no avail. We went through his family,
even trying his dog’s name as a possible password. Nothing worked.
“It has to be something easy for him to remember, a favorite
expression or saying. Think, Dori.”

I did as he asked, going
through the many phrases I had heard from Ralph throughout the
years. As I did, an image stayed with me. It was the way Ralph
looked at his assistant.

“Try ‘Gloria’s too much’,” I
suggested. Bosco typed it into the password slot. “He’s always
talking about how wonderful she is.”

“That’s too long,” he
decided. “And I can’t use the apostrophe. But I could substitute
the number two for the word too. And what do you know? We’re
in.”

Ralph’s computer screen
sprang to life as the password unlocked its secrets. Bosco got to
work.

“Where do you start?” I
wondered aloud.

“Wink-Wink Productions,” he
responded. His fingers flew across the keyboard and suddenly we
were looking at the website for Wink-Wink. ”Ralph has it on his
favorites bar.”

“Let’s check out ‘About
Us”,” he suggested. The web page downloaded and I
gasped.

“George.” Bosco rubbed the
back of his head in wonder, looking at the man identified as
Gregory Wink. “That son of a bitch!”

“No,” I cried.
“Her!”

He followed my finger to the
photo of Tatiana S. Wink, co-founder of Wink-Wink Productions.
There she was, in all her glory, grinning up as the social media
and Internet marketing maven.

“George has a wife,” scoffed
Bosco. “What a low-down, dirty, rat-faced bastard!”

“She’s the woman who pushed
me into his arms at the resort! She claimed she and George had only
been dating a short while!”

“Made for each other,” Bosco
decided. “They’ve been partners for ten years, according to their
website. Interesting. We can look at this crap when we get home,
though. Let’s focus on Ralph’s communications with George and
Tatiana.”

He opened Ralph’s emails,
searching for something, anything suspicious. There was nothing
from Wink-Wink.

“Try Tatiana Stevanovich,” I
suggested.

“Why?” Bosco wanted to
know.

“If George...Gregory seduced
me, maybe Tatiana seduced Ralph.”

“There’s a thought.” Sure
enough, there were several emails back and forth around the time
that I met the fake George. “They met at Foxwoods.”

“The casino? What was Ralph
doing down there?”

“More importantly, what was
Tatiana doing down there?” he responded.

“Romance?” I leaned over
Bosco’s shoulder, reading.

“It doesn’t look like it. It
looks more like a money thing.”

“She roped him
in?”

“It looks like Gregory and
Tatiana Wink are frequent visitors at the casino, too. Ralph seems
to have talked to them about some kind of deal. Tatiana tells him
in the email they can work something out.”

“What does that mean? He’s
been embezzling from Dynamic Productions?”

“I don’t think
so.”

“What’s in it for them?” I
wondered. “Why wouldn’t they want to be involved with Ralph, with
the business?”

Bosco sat back in Ralph’s
desk chair. I could see him in the narrow beam of the flashlight.
He was thinking hard.

“Maybe this is a
money-laundering scheme,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” I sighed.
“Why are you so determined to prove some criminal connection? Why
can’t George and Tati just be mean people who like to rip off
idiots like me and Ralph?”

“Because that’s not how the
world of finance works, babe. Any couple going to this much trouble
to gain the upper hand of Dynamic Productions has bigger goals in
sight. If this was just about money, they’d take it and scram.
Instead, they want to hold onto the company. They need the company
for some kind of business.”

As much as I wanted to
dismiss his theory, I had to admit there might be some basis for
it.

“But, Bosco, why steal my
money at the same time they were going after Ralph?”

“They need you gone, Dori.
You’re the problem. Ralph must have told them you and I own stock.
And they had to have known you work for Ralph. With you out of the
picture, Ralph owns the company free and clear. He can turn it over
to them without losing face. They’ll probably hook up with a
criminal organization and launder profits through
Dynamic.”

“Why steal my money? Why
blow up the house? Why ruin me?”

“To make you vulnerable to
the offer. Ralph probably knows they took it all. He probably also
knows it’s part of the plan. If you’re broke, you’re more likely to
sell those shares at a loss.”

“Bosco,” I said softly,”
that means that they’ve been plotting a long, long time. If I met
George half a year ago, they set it up earlier than
that.”

“Certainly they did. Here it
is,” he said, pointing to the screen. “Ralph met Tatiana in
Atlantic City early last summer, at a poker table.”

“Oh,” I said, leaning
against the back of Bosco’s chair, my hands on his shoulders. “How
would they use Dynamic Productions to launder their
money?”

“Simple. Ralph would get
paid for commercials he never makes. Then he’d pay for services and
products he doesn’t get from other companies involved in the
scheme. Basically, he’d be a transfer station for the money, giving
it an air of respectability.”

“What else do we need?” I
sat on the corner of Ralph’s desk. “And how do we stop
them?”

“We need to go home, cook up
those steaks, and have some dinner. Come on,” he directed me,
taking my hand.

“Does this mean you have a
game plan?”

“This means I need some time
to think. Don’t worry. It will come to me. It always
does.”

Half an hour later, the
grill was almost ready for the steak. I microwaved a couple of
baked potatoes and put them in the oven to finish baking. Then I
set about to make a salad and a vinaigrette. I heard music coming
from the living room. Bosco joined me in the tiny
kitchen.

“What’s your pleasure?” He
pulled down a couple of glasses from his cabinet. “Whiskey
sour?”

“Mmm....” I popped a tiny
tomato in my mouth. I felt Bosco’s hot lips nibbling my neck,
making me warm and tingly all over.

“You hungry?” he asked
huskily, his deep voice caught in the grip of desire.

“Sure. Aren’t you?” Bosco
turned me around, his arms around my waist and moving down my
hips.

“Let me try again,” he said,
an impish smile on his face. “Is there any reason why we can’t
postpone dinner for twenty minutes?”

“Oh,” I exclaimed with a
laugh. “I guess I won’t starve to death in the next half
hour.”

“Good,” Bosco decided. He
took my hand and led me into the living room. I heard the subtle
rhythm of “The Girl from Ipanema” rise up as Astrud Gilberto
whispered the lyrics breathlessly. We moved across the living room
floor, our arms around each other. I got lost in his eyes, feeling
like I was back where I belonged. We were one once again. The song
ended and sadly, reluctantly, I started to step back,

“Oh, no. Not yet,” Bosco
told me. I heard the sultry sounds of “Desafinado”, the Stan Getz
hit floating in the air. We started to samba, moving with the beat.
Bosco moved us towards the bedroom. As we hit the bed, I heard
Eydie Gormé crooning “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” and it made me
giggle.