Synergy: New Adult Romantic Suspense (U-District, #1) (39 page)

Gran had been murdered.

NEAL’S IRRITATION GREW
after he’d driven all the way to Stan Templeman’s house in Redmond only to find that Templeman wasn’t there. Neal plugged in the GPS coordinates to the Carnation location only twenty minutes away. He’d stop by to ask Donald Haley a few questions and then come back to Templeman’s house. If he didn’t find Templeman by mid-afternoon, he was putting out an APB.

BRYCE SHOOK STAN’S HAND
when he joined him at the coffee shop in Bellevue. Stan sat at a table with two cups.

“Still take it extra hot?” Stan asked.

“Thanks.” Bryce sat across from him.

“You said you needed to see me. It sounded urgent.” Stan couldn’t mask his concern. “Is Jade all right?”

“She is for now. Her place was robbed two nights ago. It’s getting serious.”

“Who would do such a thing? I can’t imagine anyone at Synergy wanting to hurt Jade.”

“I don’t know. I need your help figuring this out. What can you tell me about Johansson Tek?”

“Johansson? What would they have to do with Jade?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me? She went there two days ago and hasn’t been the same since. Her place was robbed the same night. Looks like someone is trying to make sure Jade doesn’t know too much.”

“Greg Johansson and Synergy go way back. We’ve purchased our flat-panel displays from him since the company’s inception. Gloria made a lot of long-standing relationships, and Johansson was one of them.”

“Why aren’t we getting competitive bids from other companies? I was told you required them to be a sole source provider.”

“We used to bid out every year. It didn’t matter. Johansson always had the best prices. Donald suggested we reduce the quoting to every five years. We were wasting money on bids when we knew Johansson and others like him always came in low. I agreed with his recommendation.”

“So Donald made the recommendation?”

“Yes, but I don’t see how Donald can possibly be responsible for attacking Jade.”

“Neither can I,” Bryce agreed, “but somebody used his recommendation to start stealing from the company.”

“Stealing?”

“Yes, Jade made it very clear that someone has been stealing from the company for years.”

“How can that be? I would have seen it. What did she say?”

“She won’t talk to me. I’m one of the suspects.”

“Suspects? I don’t understand.”

“Somehow she and the detective have a short list of suspects, and I’m at the top of the list.”

“I see.” Stan’s brows rose. “I guess you bumped me down a notch.”

“Yeah. You were at the top of my list too, until you called.” Bryce leaned back and drank from his cup.

“So now what?”

“I don’t know. I need to look into Johansson Tek more to see where it leads me. It all starts there.”

“I wish I could be more help to you, Bryce. When Gloria grew ill, all my focus was on her. I didn’t give a damn about Synergy. I know she’d hate it if she heard me say this, but she was more important to me than the company ever was. I’m sorry I let this problem fall onto Jade’s shoulders. Gloria would be absolutely furious with me.”

“I’m sure Gloria would be furious with us both. If you think of anything that might help, call my cell, anytime. I’m desperate.”

NEAL BARRELED ALONG SR-202
from Redmond to Carnation. Vast evergreen cedars and deciduous alders lined the drive. Peppered here and there along the highway were farmhouses deep within the lush valley. As he approached Carnation, the Cascade Mountain range spired out of the earth, dwarfing the one-hundred foot evergreens.
Gorgeous.
Now he understood why someone would want to live out here.

He drove over a metal bridge spanning the Tolt River. The small town of Carnation boasted a grocery store and coffee shop, along with a gas station and several antique shops and art galleries. He supposed one might call it quaint. He turned right where the GPS told him to turn, just past the gas station. It was nice driving along the narrow streets, where each house looked different, old custom homes instead of miles of cookie-cutter houses. He stopped at a blue and white two-story house with a porch out front.

Neal stepped carefully onto the rickety porch. He guessed the house to be somewhere around a hundred years old. He knocked on the door.

A girl around eight years old with big bright blue eyes greeted him.

“Hi, can I speak to Mr. Haley?”

“Mom,” the girl shrieked and ran off, leaving the door wide open.

Guess they don’t have much robbery in these parts.

“Can I help you?” A young woman about Jade’s age asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for Donald Haley.”

“Mr. Haley doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Oh, sorry. I have this address for him.”

“I can give you his new one if you want. I rent this place from him. I send him a check every month.”

“Yeah, that would be great, thanks.”

Again, she left him standing on the porch with the door wide open. A few minutes later, she handed him a piece of paper with the address. Not once did he have to identify himself as a detective.

Interesting place
. He shook his head and plugged the new address into the GPS.
Carillon Point… what the hell?

Neal zoomed out of the driveway, the wheels spinning against the gravel. He cursed at the GPS when it told him it would take fifty minutes to get there.

LOOKING FOR ANSWERS,
Jade queried the financial database. She sorted the results by date, showing the oldest first. As the CFO at Johansson Tek confirmed, the embezzling had been going on for five years.

Bryce had been with the company for six. She couldn’t even imagine him doing anything to hurt her grandmother. He loved her.

Didn’t he? Or had he come into the company, gained everyone’s trust, then started stealing?

He’d once said he didn’t know enough about finance to look into the problems. Was that a lie? He had the administrative access, but did he know enough about the database to manipulate it on the backend? Everything about Bryce told her that he didn’t know how. Not that he was incapable, but that he’d never been trained, or interested for that matter. Still, she needed proof.

She created a grand total at the bottom of her spreadsheet. Her eyes fixed on the large amount at the bottom of the screen. She scanned the report, making sure she hadn’t pulled in anything that didn’t meet her criteria. She found no discrepancies.

Four point three million?

The amount should have been inconceivable, but it made complete sense to her. This was why she’d pushed the managers so hard, why the numbers never added up. She had to get the report to Detective Hawkins right away. She was about to fax it through her desktop printer when something caught her eye.

Jade stared at the screen in front of her. Just above the grand total was the latest entry. A new company by the name of Sentra Systems, LLC, created two days
after
Stan was fired. Stan couldn’t have had anything to do with it. That shortened the list to four people, and Bryce was still on it.

Jade couldn’t see the details behind the new company; she’d have to dive further into the database for that information. She faxed Neal the report of what she’d found so far. Then she pulled up the vendor files for Sentra Systems, LLC, on the database’s backend and ran a query against the audit history.

When the answer popped up, she gasped.
No, it can’t be.

NEAL DROVE WITH HIS SIREN BLARING
until he reached the outer limits of Carillon Point in Kirkland. High along the hill overlooking Lake Washington stood homes and condominiums worth millions. Pristine sidewalks, maples lining the road, and symmetrical landscaping added to the atmosphere of pure luxury. He parked on the street across from the condominium complex.

Its modern glass exterior was designed to bring the scenery of Lake Washington and the Olympic Mountains into the interior of the home. As he crossed the street, a champagne-colored Cadillac SUV caught his attention. The driver’s side quarter-panel was streaked with red paint and needed some serious work. He called the license plate in. If his suspicions were accurate, the SUV’s paint would match that of the car that had run Professor Murti off the road.

Neal took the stairs two at a time and rang the doorbell, his hand on his weapon. He’d already called for backup, now that he’d finally zeroed in on his target.

A beautiful woman in her early forties opened the door to welcome Neal. Her unnatural flaming red hair spoke volumes.

“Ma’am, I’m Detective Neal Hawkins.” He flashed his badge, gauging her reaction. “I’m here to see Donald Haley.”

Her hand flew to her neck and stroked a double-strand pearl and diamond necklace. “I’m sorry, but my husband isn’t home right now.”

“May I come in? I have a few questions.”

“Is my husband in some kind of trouble?”

“Not at all, Mrs. Haley. I’m just looking into the attack on Jade Buchanan, and she said your husband might be of help to me.” He eyed the necklace she continued caressing.

She motioned him in. “Have a seat, Detective, and please call me Tanya. I’ll bring us some tea.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“It will boil over if I don’t see to it.”

“Sure. I’ll be waiting.”

Neal didn’t sit. He walked around the living room, staring at two Teresa Saia paintings.
Are they originals?
They looked like the real deal. His mother had prints in her house of the well-known local Seattle artist.

A white leather couch and chairs should have seemed strange in this house, but somehow they looked modern, classy, and very expensive. The floor-to-ceiling drapes appeared to be silk, and the mahogany furniture had to have cost a small fortune. He was surrounded by lots of money, far more than Donald made on his salary. He’d bet a full paycheck this house was listed under the holding company.

Tanya brought in two cups of tea and biscotti on a platter. “Please help yourself.”

“Thank you.” Neal chose a piece of chocolate biscotti. “You have a beautiful home.”

“I do my best to bargain shop to make it look high end, you know.”

“Uh-huh. So what line of work are you in?”

“Oh, I don’t work. I take care of the household.”

Single income, Donald’s salary only—it doesn’t add up.
“That’s a beautiful necklace you’re wearing. I don’t think I’ve seen one like that before.”

Tanya’s hand flew back to her neck. “Donald gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Happy birthday.”
Does she know it’s stolen?
“It’s funny. I was just investigating a break-in this week, and one of the missing pieces of jewelry was a double-strand pearl and diamond necklace.”

“What?” Tanya stood. “Are you accusing me of stealing?”

“I’m more inclined to think your husband unknowingly purchased a stolen necklace.”