Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tatum approached the small bar she had set up in the corner of her apartment and poured herself a tumbler of Glenmorangie.
She took a couple of aspirin with a swallow of the single malt scotch, and closed her eyes.
She'd left the gala via the kitchen because she was sure someone was following her.
Not that they couldn't figure out she'd gone home.
Still, it had made her feel slightly better to sneak out.
Maybe whoever was following hadn't noticed. If there was someone at all.
She rubbed her temples. The headache was raging at this point, but she needed to focus.
Grabbing her drink, she headed into her walk-in closet.
Catching her reflection in the mirror, she sighed.
Her makeup didn’t quite cover the dark circles under her eyes, and a brittle look around her mouth that told the whole story.
Japan hadn't helped. If anything, the trip had made things worse.
Ten days of chasing paper trails through three different law firms in Tokyo, surviving on bad hotel coffee and four hours of sleep a night, if she was lucky, and she had come home with exactly nothing.
Another dead end. Another layer of shell companies that dissolved into nothing the moment she got close enough to see through them.
Bunny would have something to say about the circles under her eyes. She always did.
She opened the closet door, dropped the wrap on a shelf, and kicked off her shoes. Then she pulled the pins from her chignon and let her hair fall, massaging her scalp in hopes of helping the headache.
Of the many things Tatum had insisted on doing on her own, this apartment was one of the most important.
Her parents had offered to buy her an apartment befitting the family name when she'd been in law school.
She'd flatly refused. It had led to many arguments with Bunny, but her father had taken her side, which made Bunny back down.
It hadn't stopped her from digging at Tatum every chance she got after that, but it had settled the matter.
Tatum had lived in a fifth-floor walk-up in Alphabet City for years. She worked around the clock and saved every penny until she finally had enough for a down payment on a penthouse apartment in a doorman building in midtown.
Her father had been proud of her. Bunny had grudgingly admitted that Tatum had made a sound choice and then gone on to tell her how to redecorate it.
Tatum sipped her drink as she walked to the back of her closet and pressed the hidden panel.
She'd let Bunny take over hiring the designer and directing the makeover for the most part, but then Tatum had hired someone else and had a secret room created at the back of her closet.
A room that wasn't on any plan anywhere.
A room where she could be herself and do what she needed to do without prying eyes.
Tatum stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
No need for the world to find out about her secret, not that she expected anyone to show up uninvited.
A couple of friends had keys to her place in case she ever locked herself out.
Her parents did as well. It wouldn't do to have any of them stumble in here.
It would require an explanation she wasn't prepared to give.
She sat down in the comfy leather chair, put her drink on the side table, and stared at the wall opposite.
Her research covered it entirely.
Vince Kelly, Timothy Lebowitz, and Richard North. The men behind the Granite Industries Ponzi scheme. They had collectively stolen close to three hundred million dollars from not only the wealthy but from retirees and ordinary people who couldn't afford to lose a cent.
One of those people was her dear friend and mentor, Martha Gibson.
Martha had been Tatum's English teacher in high school, and they'd kept in touch over the years.
When the news of the Ponzi scheme broke, Martha had reached out, desperate for any help Tatum might be able to offer.
She had invested her life savings with Granite Industries on the promise of a twenty percent return.
Tatum's heart broke for Martha and for all the other well-meaning people who had simply wanted a leg up in the world. She didn't lose much sleep over the wealthy investors. They were smart enough to know better. If it seemed too good to be true, it usually was.
She had told Martha she would look into it, but the truth was she'd known from the beginning that her options were limited.
The Southern District of New York had already indicted the three men, so the wrongdoing was established.
They would go through the system and probably end up at Club Fed, as they called the white-collar prison.
They wouldn't get much time. They knew too many people in power, and frankly, there didn't seem to be much appetite these days for punishing the wealthy.
The most Tatum could do was launch a class action suit. It would take years and more money than any of the victims had. If she could hold out long enough and get her family firm to eat the cost, she would win. There was no question about that. But the reality was that it would be an empty victory.
The money was missing. Gone. And the three men responsible weren't talking.
That was what Tatum was really doing in here at midnight when she should have been sleeping.
She held her glass to her temple, trying to ease the tension there.
She’d tried to track the money. She'd been so certain that Japan would crack it open.
One of the shell companies she'd been tracing had a registered address in Tokyo, and two of the signatories on the original Granite documentation had ties to a small private equity firm operating out of Osaka.
She'd booked the flights herself, told no one except her assistant, and spent ten days working her way through every contact and document she could get her hands on.
Her result was…dismal. The Tokyo address was a mail forwarding service used by hundreds of companies.
The Osaka firm had dissolved eighteen months ago.
The signatures belonged to men who, according to two separate sources, didn't exist. She had flown halfway around the world on a hunch and come home empty-handed, jet-lagged, and angrier than she'd been when she left.
She let her head fall back to the cushy headrest, and her eyes slipped closed.
The long hours were catching up to her, but the Granite case held her captive, not letting her succumb to the need to rest. Her fingers tightened automatically on the tumbler, refusing to set it aside, but not wishing to drop it.
The money trail was the most sophisticated thing she had ever encountered.
Whoever had constructed it was light-years ahead of the run-of-the-mill scammers, which brought her back to the same conclusion she kept circling.
The three men currently facing indictment weren’t capable of building something like this.
They were the front of the house. The glad-handers who signed people up, who made people feel it was safe to invest, and presented themselves as the good time guys that people wanted to be friends with.
They were not the brains of the operation.
Someone else was. And that someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure they couldn't be found. Ten days in Japan had proved that much, if nothing else.
She thought about the feeling she'd had at the gala. The prickling between her shoulder blades. The certainty of being watched. It had to be her imagination. Why would someone follow her? The three men were already known to the world.
Her stomach cramped.
Unless she was right and there was more to Granite Industries than those three men.
She hadn't found proof yet. Just whispers in the paperwork. Names that appeared and then couldn't be located in real life. Signatures that were unreadable. Addresses that didn't exist. Japan had given her more of the same and nothing else.
Tatum lifted her head and took another sip of her drink, letting her gaze drift to the photograph on the wall beside her. The stately looking gentleman staring back at her made her smile despite everything.
It had been her grandfather who had started her on this path. Peter William Wellington III. Her father's father. The man who had started Wellington, Wellington, and Smith. The beloved gentleman who had given her the membership to the Lock and Key Society.
He had taken time with her from a young age, teaching her about the law but also about how the world really worked.
He was the kind of grandfather who got down on the floor and played whatever she wanted, tea parties, dress up, all of it, and always made time for her.
During her teenage years, he took her to plays and shopping, but also to soup kitchens and volunteering with the unhoused.
He made sure she saw both sides of life.
She had asked him about it once: Why was he doing all this?
He told her he'd known since the moment she was born that she was his mini-me.
He had started the firm not to get rich but to help people.
He had an unerring sense of justice and believed fully in holding people accountable.
He wanted to make sure she understood the realities of life that wealth cushioned people from.
He said he knew one day she would make a great difference.
She heaved a yawn and let her lashes drift down again.
Lethargy gripped her body and lulled her to sleep even as her mind continued to reel.
While she wanted to help Martha, it was really her grandfather she was doing this for.
He was long dead, but she still wanted to make him proud.
Japan had felt like a failure on that count, too.
Ten days away and nothing to show for it except a deeper hole in the money trail and a bone-deep exhaustion she couldn't seem to shake.