Page 50 of The Children of Eve

“A large discrepancy?”

“I told you, I don’t balance the books.”

“Which isn’t to say you don’t glance at them.”

“You know,” said Rybek, “I really am sorry I agreed to talk to you.”

“You’d have been sorrier if you hadn’t. I’d have stuck to you like gum on your shoe.”

“Huh. Is that wheregumshoecomes from? I’d never thought of it that way.”

“I believe it refers to rubber-soled shoes, which make less noise. So we just missed out on being calledgaloshes.”

“Small mercies,” said Rybek. “As for the accounts, I’ve seen inflated bills from some of our contractors, large and small. I only raised them once with Donna, in a jokey way, and that was during my probation period. She accidentally included an invoice from one of our courier companies, misfiled with plans for a reorganization of the customer displays. I found it, handed it back to her, and said I’d get a couple of kids on bikes to make deliveries for a quarter of the price. She thanked me for my input but advised me to mind my own business. I didn’t bother to point out that she’d made it my business by misplacing the paperwork to begin with. I didn’t think it would go down well.

“And on the cash side, even when we had quiet weeks, we didn’t really, or not on paper. That’s what surprised me, if only for, like, thirty seconds. I could understand a business underdeclaring to hide money from the IRS but not overdeclaring, until I remembered Devin Vaughn. If the feds arrest me for involvement in money laundering, I suppose I can always claim brain impairment and behavioral disinhibition due to my working environment.”

I wouldn’t have wanted to spend an evening at Rybek’s condo listening to his choice of music, but if drollness ever became an Olympic sport, he was a shoo-in.

“But there’s less of that now?” I asked.

“Yeah, now we’re not overdeclaring, but the opposite. For us, cash is king and it goes out as soon as it comes in. BrightBlown is doing better than okay, but that doesn’t mean some other part of the Vaughn empire isn’t. Cannabis is making up the shortfall.”

He gazed at me sadly.

“You know how they say confession eases the soul?” he asked. “I’d like to interrogate that view. I may just have implicated a friend in a kidnapping and my employer in criminal activity, and I don’t feel happy about either.”

“I’m still not going to talk to the police,” I said. “What I have is a rumor that Wyatt Riggins may have been involved in the removal of four children from Mexico, and the possibility of poor accounting practices at a largely cash-only business. The second is none of my concern. As for the first, I’m being paid to establish Riggins’s whereabouts, and one task may feed into the other. Have you been completely straight with me?”

“About Wyatt and BrightBlown? Absolutely.”

“Then I’ll keep your name out of it, whatever happens. But if you hear anything else, especially if Riggins gets back in touch, I’d appreciate you letting me know.”

I passed him a business card.

“Try not to use that for a roll-up,” I said.

He fingered the card dubiously.

“I prefer higher-quality material. Did you run these cards off yourself? Because I swear, we have a better grade of paper in the employee restrooms. What now?”

“You spend a few days out of town, just as Donna Lawrence instructed—or more than a few, if she’s willing to cover the tab. Getting rid of you was a way to buy time, but would only ever be a temporary fix. I’m not even sure why she brought up your name. I think she might have panicked; that, or she was worried Zetta might already have mentioned your friendship with Riggins.”

“It’s a mess, isn’t it?” said Rybek. “Even before Wyatt reappeared, I’d been considering working somewhere else. There’s a startup outside Bangor that looks promising. It’s honest, as far as I can tell. Then again, compared to where I am right now, Enron was aboveboard.”

“I didn’t know anything about Devin Vaughn’s ownership of BrightBlown until this week, when my lawyer informed me of it,” I said. “He got the story from a client, who also heard rumors that Vaughn is overextended financially, which may be forcing him to blur the lines between his legitimate and criminal interests. If those rumors are in the air, you can be sure law enforcement won’t be far behind. BrightBlown may soon come under intense federal scrutiny.”

“Shit,” said Rybek.

“In addition, Donna Lawrence’s actions indicate that it may have been Vaughn who sent Wyatt Riggins to Mexico as part of a snatch team to abduct or retrieve those children. If that’s why Wyatt disappeared, the operation has started to go bad. It can only mean someone has come looking for the children and, by extension, whoever took them.”

“Double shit,” said Rybek.

And if those people came hunting for Wyatt Riggins but failed to find him, they might instead apply pressure to those who knew him, which would put Zetta Nadeau in their sights, not to mention the man seated opposite me. The look of worry on Rybek’s face implied he had reached the same conclusion.

“Being advised to skip town to avoid private investigators is not conducive to a contented life,” he said, “but skipping town to avoid disgruntled Mexicans might be. I feel an extended vacation coming on, one that could shade into permanency. I may have been wise to talk to you after all.”

“Wisdom comes with age,” I told him. “Like arthritis. One last question: Did Wyatt own a gun?”

---