I logged off and returned to my room before I opened the file and started reading. What I found was very disturbing. According to the research, the college Alan supposedly graduated from in the Midwest was now defunct. There was no way to check whether he had ever actually been a student there. More importantly, the three clothing manufacturers that he had listed in his employment history also no longer existed. Apparently, they had at one time been legitimate companies, but eventually they had all been closed down through bankruptcy or merger or something else. The details were unavailable.

On a personal note, though Alan Bennet was currently single, he had been married three times. The first wife, an heiress, had died in a car accident. The second and third wives weren’t dead but merely divorced—with Alan receiving generous support payments in both instances! I thought of his dalliance with Judith Smythe and wondered if the stakes had been raised even higher now that she had inherited a large chunk of her father’s fortune.

I closed the file and pulled out my cell phone to call Harriet back at the home office in DC. As I waited for her to come on the line, I reached into the box Marion had given me and pulled out the heavy set of accounting records from inside. A groan escaped my lips at the surge of pain from my side; my fall into the grave still resonated within my aching muscles.

Finally, I heard a click on the phone and then the warm familiar voice of my friend.

“Callie?” she said, and I was surprised at my own sudden rush of emotion. Sometimes I became so tired of being surrounded by strangers.

“Hi, Harriet,” I said, sitting down on the bed. “Gosh, it’s good to hear your voice.”

We talked for a while. She caught me up on office happenings down there, and then I told her briefly about my work up here.

“I can’t believe you got stuck in that mess,” Harriet said, clicking her tongue. “Tom really got an earful from me. I let him have what for.”

I smiled, knowing that even a little “what for” from Harriet was a formidable thing.

“At least I think the end’s finally in sight,” I said. “But I need your help.”

“You got it.”

I gave her an abbreviated version of my discussion with Marion about the financial funny business at Feed the Need.

“I’ve got two sets of books here,” I said. “Looks like one is the public version and one is private, if you get my drift.”

“Oh, I getcha alright.”

“Do you think you can do your usual run-through?” I asked. “Sniff out all the discrepancies?”

“Like a bloodhound on the scent of a grouse,” she said, and I smiled. Harriet was from Texas, and every conversation with her was filled with colorful similes and metaphors.