wanted to avoid talk of their previous meeting until he had a better sense of who Josie Rector was.
She took another sip and continued. “I relied on Caesar to do the basic bookkeeping for the clinic, and we have an accountant that takes care of the clinic’s final accounting to maintain its tax-free status. Actually, it’s my father’s accountant. Henry Begay. He’s from the Acoma Reservation. He and Dad became friends in university. I don’t normally study the accounts and records, but Caesar had mentioned that we’d gotten donations from your father’s event, and I simply decided that I should take a look and see who had donated. If it were people that I or my family knew, then it would be smart to make a personal thank you instead of just one from the clinic.”
“Was Caesar surprised when you looked at the records?”
“I have access to the program, so he didn’t even know I was going to do that. I stayed late a few evenings, and it didn’t take long to realize that something wasn’t right. Please understand, Cobb, accounting and finances are not my strong suit, so I can’t give you dollar amounts and tell you exactly what would go where, but I knew things didn’t look the same. Several donations came in from corporations that I’ve never heard of. People who’ve never given to us before. Okay, in and of itself, that could be seen as good. But when I glanced at deposits that were being made into our accounts, none of it made any sense.”
“When did you talk to Caesar?”
She scrunched her nose again and chewed on her lip, her eyes sliding to the side. “Um… well, it was about two-and-a-half weeks ago. I called him into my office and showed him what I was looking at. He was always so easygoing, but his body language was off. It was hard for him to keep his eyes on me. His fingers were twitching. And he was perspiring even though the room was not warm. He kept trying to convince me that everything was fine, and I told him that I was going to dig deeper to see who some of the donations were from. I knew he didn’t like that, but I chalked it up to him being offended that I was essentially checking up on him.”
The more she talked to him, the more at ease she seemed to be. Her fingers were no longer clenched together, and she occasionally waved her hands when she spoke. Her words were clear and articulate, and her memory of the details excellent. Nodding, he encouraged her to continue her recitation.
“The next day was Thursday, a day that he wasn’t supposed to be with us. I started looking up the new companies that had made donations and found that I was running into difficulty figuring out who they were and where they were. I finally got hold of one of them. ILT International. I spoke to several people, being transferred from one person to another until I felt sure I was right back to talking to the first person who answered the phone. I identified myself and why I was calling. Essentially, I was told that there was no one person at the company that handled donations and that I should simply accept the charity and be satisfied with that.”
She leaned forward, placing her hand on the cushion next to his leg, her eyes boring into his. “But this is where it got interesting.”
His breath caught in his throat, and as much as he wanted to hear what she had to say, it was the closest she’d ever gotten to him on her own. At the gala, it had been because he took her hand. At the front door, it had been because he wanted her to step to the side while he performed a security sweep on her house. But now, caught up in her tale, she was leaning near. Without makeup, he could see a few freckles that scattered across her cheeks, each one capturing his attention. Her pale blue eyes held him mesmerized, and her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. Always focused on a mission, he couldn’t believe how distracted he was. “What was interesting?” He realized his words were almost a grunt but was surprised he was even able to make a sentence.
She jerked, then leaned back slightly, and he was both glad and hated it at the same time. He needed to focus