Chapter 49
COOPER
I’ve been in a fog all morning.
I don’t know where Debbie went last night. I mean, geographically, I know where she went. But I don’t know why she would go to the shipyard in the middle of the night or what she was doing there.
I don’t think she was out there for a tryst with her lover. Debbie wouldn’t do that. She just…she wouldn’t. But if that’s not what she was doing, then what the hell was she doing?
Part of me wanted to confront her in the morning, but instead, I end up avoiding her. I’m dead tired and not in any condition to have a serious discussion right now, and I’m pretty sure this is going to be a very serious discussion.
We do have to talk though. I’ll lay it all on the table—everything I’ve been keeping from her. And if she hates me? Well, I hope she doesn’t hate me. I hope we can find a way to work through it. I’ll do counseling, whatever she wants.
But this needs to come to an end. The lying and sneaking around need to stop.
It’s a miracle that I manage to get to work on time.
Ken might still be on his fishing trip, but Mrs. McCauley is keeping track of the exact millisecond when each of us arrive and will be reporting back to Ken when he returns.
Not that it matters, considering I’ve already handed in my two weeks’ notice.
But I don’t want to give him an excuse to kick me out even sooner. I desperately need that last paycheck.
(Who am I kidding? I’ll probably be on my knees, begging for my job back the second Ken returns to the office.)
When I get to the office, Jesse is standing behind Mrs. McCauley at her desk. The two of them are both staring at her computer screen with identical furrowed brows.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Jesse raises his eyes from the screen. “It looks like there’s money missing from the company account.”
What?
“Money missing?” I repeat numbly.
Mrs. McCauley peers up at me through her spectacles. “I noticed the discrepancy this morning. Quite a bit has gone missing, and it looks like it’s been going on for several months now.”
“Are…are you sure?” I stammer.
“Of course I’m sure!” Mrs. McCauley seems offended at the suggestion that she could get anything wrong. She is very rarely wrong. “I suppose it’s possible that Mr. Bryant moved the money himself. I’ve been trying to reach him on his phone since I got in, but he’s not picking up.”
“Well, he’s fishing,” I point out.
“He usually picks up his phone when he’s fishing,” she says. “You know how he is about not missing calls.”
That’s true.
“It was probably him who moved the money,” Mrs. McCauley says thoughtfully. “Hopefully at least. It does look like it was done internally.”
“Internally?” I repeat. “You mean by someone who works here?”
Jesse looks up at me and grins. “Did you take the money, Coop? Fess up!”
He is joking around, but I have a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach.
It doesn’t feel like any of this is a coincidence.
Ken Bryant randomly disappears on some fishing trip in the middle of the week, and nobody can locate him.
And then a bunch of money disappears from the company account, and it looks like an “inside job.”
And where does Debbie keep going in the middle of the night?
“I guess you should just keep trying to reach him,” I mumble. “He’ll want to know about all this right away.”
Maybe I’m suspicious over nothing. But I can’t seem to push away the feeling that a noose is closing around my neck.