Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
THE AUDITOR
Memorial services fascinated me. The dead rarely revealed anything new. The living almost always did.
Guy Reardon's funeral had taken place three days earlier. It had been private, allowing only family and old friends to attend. No cameras, no executives, and no speeches written by the communications department. That particular ceremony hadn’t truly interested me.
Today’s event, however, had my full attention. The invitation described it as A Celebration of Leadership. The peculiar talent corporate language possessed for laundering uncomfortable truths never failed to entertain.
No one wanted to admit they were attending a networking event built around a corpse. People mourned differently. Families grieved. Executives repositioned themselves.
Journalists, FBI agents, and investigators showed up to see who else was there.
The distinction mattered.
I adjusted the knot of my muted blue tie in the mirrored wall outside the ballroom.
Dark charcoal suit. Brown shoes polished but not recently. Reading glasses. A simple gold wedding band.
Hair parted farther to the left than usual and brushed flatter across the temples where discreet coloring had added enough gray to suggest a decade of additional experience.
My posture mattered more than any of it. Rounding my shoulders, I moved with a shortened stride and the slightest hesitation for my right foot. Not enough to be an actual limp, but more than enough that others unconsciously stepped out of the way.
The leather portfolio tucked beneath my arm completed the illusion. My role as corporate consultant was more than sufficient to give me access. Ordinary, but competent. Neat and tidy, but not splashy or expensive. I blended in with all the other corporate executives in attendance.
Just another suit.
I joined the line of arrivals passing through the open doors. Each guest had been issued a badge in lieu of invitation. The FBI agents were easy to spot. They were all wearing the same style of suit and sporting similar white ear buds to stay in contact.
The young woman at the door on my side took the badge and swiped it. I had no doubt, they were comparing images to badges.
“Thank you for coming,” she said with a kind of perfunctory smile but her attention had already moved on to the person behind me.
“As requested.” I kept the response pithy and detail-less. The two words implied I was expected by someone and at the same time suggested that I didn’t really want to be here.
She might not have processed my response or what it meant, but the FBI agent giving me the steady look heard it. But he’d already catalogued and dismissed me as he continued to survey the arrivals.
The smell of lilies greeted me as I stepped inside. There were standing sprays on either side of the door and every other entrance as well as more near the podium.
The tables around the room each sported centerpieces of more of the same white lilies. The perfumed air made my nose itch but the allergy meds I took before coming did their job.
Round tables circled a low stage where two oversized projection screens alternated between photographs of Guy Reardon smiling beside politicians, celebrities, advertisers, and network personalities.
Corporate Guy.
Award Guy.
Fundraising Guy.
Not one photograph predated his promotion to Vice President.
Nothing from college.
Nothing from childhood.
Nothing with family.
Interesting.
String music drifted through concealed speakers.
The safe selection probably made by a committee. There were servers moving through the crowd delivering drinks. I avoided the tables and moved to the small bar that had been set up not far the from the entrance.
“Drink, sir?” The man behind the bar was FBI. His smile was a little too neat and his shirt a little too pressed. He was young for a full-fledged agent, but he might just have one of those peculiar baby faces that made him ideal for the work.
“Do you have coffee?” I let the tiredness in my pores ease into the words as I glanced at my watch. “Long day.”
“Absolutely. How do you take it?”
“Black is fine.”
I accepted coffee I didn't intend to drink. People carrying refreshments looked occupied and were thus easily forgotten. I found a place beside a decorative column and watched.
The stream of attendees—I hesitated to call them mourners because I doubted that many of these people had even known Reardon personally. They were here because attendance was expected. More than one would probably sneak out once the words began.
All they had to do was be seen by the right boss or manager, then poof. The rest of the event would be the stage for deals, assignations, and answers.
I just needed them to answer my questions. Eventually, she arrived. Not a latecomer, at all, but with five minutes to spare before the published start time.
Mallory was here.
She arrived dressed simply, black dress and heels, with her hair pinned neatly away from her face. I couldn’t really see a lot of cosmetics, but she’d gone for subtle and softened the darker shadows under her mismatched eyes.
Television might transform people into larger than life versions of themselves, but the real Mallory was every bit as captivating.
Her jewelry was equally restrained, a stainless steel watch and a pair of small silver hoops in her ears only. Practical and elegant, but also—a message. For the FBI? For Flint Carter? For me?
To be determined.
She looked beautiful. Beauty had nothing whatsoever to do with investigations. Yet as she paused just inside the doorway, I remained captured by this inconvenient observation.
Fortunately, the angle let me see her and avoided her catching me as she scanned the ballroom, the layout, the people—everything.
When she finally continued into the ballroom, it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds at most, yet the pause felt like it lasted so much longer.
Flint Carter entered half a step behind her. Behind and slightly to her left. Interesting. He wasn’t just escorting her, he covered her blind spot and protected her.
His eyes moved continuously. Crowd. Door. Podium. Waitstaff. Then back to Mallory.
Protective. Not possessive. An important distinction. Carter watched the room so Mallory didn't have to. He never once asked her to watch him in return. I had underestimated him.
That could make him an asset.
Mallory with Flint shadowing her made her way across the room toward a table on the far side. She was taking a perimeter position. It was a tactic I was using as well, putting myself in place to monitor those in attendance.
She was here to see, not be seen. Clever. I approved.
Then Agent Brewster appeared. He strode into the room wearing authority as carefully as his navy suit. Crisp white shirt. Dark burgundy tie. Shoes polished to a mirror finish. Nothing about him seemed even remotely accidental. He cultivated his appearance like armor and wielded it like a weapon.
For a man who rarely seemed to leave anything to chance, he didn't scan the exits first. He zeroed in on Mallory.
Tactical mistake?
I watched him continue watching her. Every few seconds, his gaze found her over and over. Each movement she made was something he tracked. He ignored the room. Mallory came to see what she could see, Brewster was here for her.
Fascinating.
Flint noticed Brewster’s arrival, likely because unlike the FBI agent, the newsman was aware of everyone in the room.
Yet, he didn’t make eye contact or acknowledge him.
Didn’t point him out to Mallory. Instead, he shifted his position by half a step which put him next to Mallory and effectively made himself an obstacle to approaching her.
Almost invisible, but elegant and protective. So much better. One of them protected her, the other wanted to own her.
I mimed a half sip of the bitter black brew. It tasted like they’d spent some money on the catering, so at least it wasn’t burnt.
The lights dimmed once, a subtle cue from the event planners that the program was about to begin. Conversations softened as guests drifted toward the rows of linen-covered tables, guided less by respect than choreography.
Not everyone complied.
Some, like me, remained standing.
Others lingered at the bar, reluctant to surrender perfectly acceptable whiskey for perfunctory speeches. Still others migrated toward the perimeter of the ballroom, close enough to be seen, closer still to the exits.
Pragmatists.
They had fulfilled their obligation. They'd shaken the appropriate hands, issued and accepted condolences they neither needed nor believed, and allowed themselves to be counted. Attendance was now a ticked box on the checklist. Their absence, when it came, would be forgiven.
Corporate memorials were merely another exercise in political theater, negotiations conducted beneath the umbrella of grief.
Politics and bereavement had always shared the same accounting principle.
Appear sincere.
Spend as little as possible.
The program began with a professionally produced tribute video scored with music designed to manufacture nostalgia. The polite applause at the end lacked any real sense of passion.
Waiters whisked quietly through the room delivering drinks and appetizers to the tables as the speeches began. Every executive seemed determined to invent a man none of them had actually known.
Guy believed in journalism.
No. Guy believed in quarterly growth.
Guy championed investigative reporting.
No. He championed profitable investigative reporting.
Guy never compromised his principles.
That one nearly made me laugh aloud.
Memory, like accounting, became remarkably flexible when you were allowed to get creative with the record.
The interim Vice President approached the podium. A practiced smile in place, he spoke confidently. “Guy understood where the future of this company was heading...”
It sounded rather bland and unremarkable except three board members looked toward one another. One of them—an attorney—stopped taking notes. The chief financial officer’s jaw tightened and his lips compressed.
Tiny reactions, they lasted a second or two at most. But long enough that I caught them and across the ballroom, Mallory had turned her head toward the same table.
She'd seen it too. Our eyes connected for a brief instant, but she wasn’t looking at me. She didn’t even notice me, she was scanning the room before resuming her observation.
Were the interim VP’s words a slip? It was a good question.
After nearly eighty-seven minutes, the speeches concluded.
People migrated toward cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.
I “finished” my coffee as the real memorial began.
With care, I set the cup on one of the large trays near the exit.
I made sure to wipe the handle down under the guise of wiping my hand off of some dribbled spill of the drink.
I wandered then, drifting through the conversations, the whispers, the hushed truths, and even saltier lies. I didn’t linger with any one group for any time.
“...federal investigation…”
“...those files…”
“...before the last audit…”
“...delete…”
“...Reardon insisted…”
Pieces. So many pieces, but like any puzzle, you needed to identify the edges before you filled in the center.
Near the bar, two executives stood shoulder to shoulder. Neither noticed me. One accepted a fresh bourbon.
The other loosened his tie. “...thank God Reardon never woke up.”
The bourbon stopped halfway to the second man's mouth.
They stared at each other for the space of two heartbeats. They didn’t laugh or correct the statement. But their relief—not grief—was palpable.
I needed more information so I memorized their faces and the first name of one of them. I’d find out the rest.
As the evening continued, Mallory and Flint drifted through the room. They were following a different path. Like me, they spent brief spurts of time with each group exchanging a few words before moving on.
Mallory was a known quantity. Some wanted to talk to her, be seen with her, let some of that glory she’d earned through her work be rubbed off on them. Others made excuses and slipped away, perhaps worried what she might discover.
More than once, Brewster made as if to intercept but Flint blocked like a pro football player. He didn’t let him get near her. The byplay intrigued me because Mallory knew the agent was there, but she wasn’t paying attention to him.
I gave myself another thirty minutes. Long enough to be remembered as present, but not so long that I would leave a lasting impression if any.
The evening had already paid dividends. Faces. Names. Reactions. Half-finished conversations people believed had disappeared into the noise. They hadn't.
My work here was complete.
“Excuse me.”
Mallory's voice carried just enough to reach me as she slipped around a woman balancing a champagne flute and an untouched dessert plate.
I shifted aside as though she'd been addressing me, offered the faint, apologetic smile strangers exchanged a hundred times a day, then turned toward a nearby knot of executives as if I belonged among them instead.
No one questioned it. No one ever did.
From the corner of my eye, I watched Brewster finally manage to intercept Mallory and Flint before they reached the doors.
“Mallory...”
She stopped. Barely. “Agent Brewster.” The frost in her voice could have preserved evidence.
“Do you have a moment?”
“No.” She didn't apologize, soften, or invent an excuse or pretend to be in a hurry. She simply walked around him.
Flint followed without hesitation.
The interaction confirmed what I'd suspected all evening. One man wanted to control her. The other trusted her. The distinction mattered.
I allowed myself the smallest hint of satisfaction before turning away. Smiling would have drawn attention, and attention was an extravagance I rarely indulged.
The dead could tell me nothing more. The living were only beginning.
I fell into step beside another departing couple, matching their pace without appearing to do so. By the time we reached the revolving doors, we looked like we'd arrived together.
I had work to do. It was finally time to audit everyone else.