Chapter 6: Breakfast With the Enemy
I gave Garnet fifteen minutes to get back to the table before I went downstairs.
The hotel restaurant was bright and unhurried.
Families, couples, a few solo travelers with newspapers.
Clifton and Amber were at a corner table near the window.
Garnet was beside her, his orange juice untouched, his face carefully neutral.
He was doing better than I expected.
I walked to the table and pulled out the empty chair across from Amber.
"Mind if I join you?" I said, and sat down before anyone answered.
Amber's smile arrived a half-second late.
"Of course.
Good morning."
"Good morning." I picked up the menu.
"The eggs are good here.
I stayed here for a conference two years ago."
Clifton watched me from across the table.
His expression was pleasant and entirely unreadable.
"Big night," he said.
"You holding up all right?"
"Perfectly well," I said.
"You?"
"Can't complain." He reached for his coffee.
"Weddings always wear me out.
All that emotion."
"Mm." I set the menu down.
"Clifton, what is it you said you do?
Finance?"
"That's right.
Asset management, mostly.
Private clients."
"Interesting work?"
"It has its moments."
Amber put her hand on Garnet's arm.
"We were just talking about the honeymoon.
We fly out Tuesday."
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Tuscany," she said.
"Two weeks."
"Lovely.
Expensive time of year for Tuscany."
Something moved behind her eyes.
Just briefly.
"We've been saving," she said.
"Of course." I folded my hands on the table.
"Amber, I want to ask you something directly, and I'd appreciate a direct answer."
The table went quiet.
"Did you initiate a transfer from Hazel's savings account on Friday?"
The smile stayed on her face.
Her hand on Garnet's arm didn't move.
But Clifton set his coffee cup down very carefully, and that small sound was the loudest thing at the table.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"Eighty-four thousand dollars.
Pending transfer to an account registered to Meridian Crest Holdings.
Incorporated eight months ago." I looked at Clifton.
"Your company, I believe."
Clifton leaned back in his chair.
"I think you've made some kind of mistake."
"I also have a power of attorney document with Hazel's forged signature authorizing the transfer.
Would you like to tell me who prepared that, or would you prefer to let the bank's fraud investigators ask you?"
Amber's hand lifted from Garnet's arm.
"Garnet," she said, her voice dropping.
"Tell him he's wrong."
Garnet looked at her.
"I found the folder, Amber."
The color left her face.
"That folder was private—"
"You asked me to get your passport."
"You had no right—"
"It was in my hand," he said.
"I read it."
She turned back to me.
The pleasant expression was gone now.
What replaced it was harder and colder and considerably more honest.
"You have no idea what you're doing," she said.
"That money was going to come back.
It was an investment — a short-term bridge.
Clifton has clients who—"
"Stop," I said.
She stopped.
"The bank has frozen the account.
Warren — my attorney — has the forged document.
The hotel has preserved all security footage from yesterday, including the corridor at 11:14 AM and the lobby at 9:52, when a woman carrying flowers she had no reason to carry went up to your suite." I paused.
"I also have a recording of a phone call made from the garden terrace last night.
Forty-one seconds.
The word transfer appears.
So does Monday."
Clifton's jaw was tight.
He was looking at the table.
"I'd like you to tell me who the woman with the flowers was," I said.
"Because right now she's the only piece I don't have a name for."
Amber said nothing.
Clifton said nothing.
Garnet was very still.
I stood up from the table.
"Warren will be in touch," I said.
"I'd recommend you both speak to attorneys of your own before Monday.
The transfer won't be clearing."
I walked back toward the elevator.
I didn't look back.
But I heard Amber's voice, low and sharp, cutting through the quiet restaurant behind me.
"You should have let it go, old man.
You have no idea what else we have."
I pressed the elevator button.
*What else we have.*
I rode up to the fourth floor thinking about that sentence.
About what it meant.
About the fact that she had said it in the tone of someone who still believed they held something I didn't know about.
May you like
She might be right.
I just didn't know what it was yet.
