Cut and Run (Lucy Kincaid #16) - Allison Brennan Page 0,9

to herself, mostly to see how he would react.

“But how?”

“They were killed late September three years ago. We’re scrambling now that we have the bodies identified, and unfortunately, we don’t know much about the missing money or how you came to accuse Albright of embezzling funds.”

Kiefer took a moment to regroup. “I—well, I went over this with the DA here in Kerr County, and again with the FBI a month or two later. I never imagined that Denise would have stolen from me. That week, I told her that I was bringing in an outside auditor. It’s not unheard of, and I do it every couple of years. With all the tax regulations changing constantly, I wanted to make sure everything was accounted for, especially since this was such a big federal project. Well, big for me. The new contract we’d received—it was one of the largest we’d had, and it would have brought hundreds of jobs to the area. Not just my company, but supporting companies, small businesses in the area. The three million she stole was only the initial funding—it would have been a thirty-five-million-dollar project for us.”

“So her work had been audited before.”

“Yes—at least twice since she’s been working for me. So when she didn’t show up to the meeting with the auditor on Monday, I thought she’d forgotten. He went to her office and grabbed the files—they were right where they were supposed to be.”

“When did she leave Friday?”

“She didn’t work in my office full-time, and I don’t think she was in at all on Friday. She was a CPA, had several clients. She worked out of her house to keep expenses down, though she had a small office with me because she spent so much time on my books and it was convenient for both of us. She was there at least one day a week, but because of this project she’d been spending more time in the office.”

News to Lucy. Why hadn’t Chavez given them that information? Why wasn’t it in the files she had?

“I tried calling her that morning, she didn’t answer, didn’t return my calls. I didn’t really think much about it until Wednesday morning—I think it was Wednesday—when the independent auditor said that the trust account was empty.”

“How did you come to suspect that Denise took the funds?”

“I—well, she was the only one with access to the trust account other than me. It was wired to another account in her name, and then wired to another account in a business name, and then wired to another account and closed. The FBI said they haven’t been able to trace it since. But it was her log-in and password. And she changed the protocols with the bank so there didn’t need to be a dual signature—the bank said that I signed off on it, but I didn’t. Either she tricked me and said I was signing something different than I was, or she forged my signature. I don’t see how else she could have done it.”

He paced the small, crowded trailer. “I lost everything. I couldn’t keep staff, I couldn’t fulfill my obligations to the federal government—it was a federal contract. I was lucky that the AUSA and the FBI agent who worked the case were able to prove I didn’t steal the money, otherwise I would have lost more than my business. I used my own money to pay off my creditors. That meant I had to shut down. But I shut down without debt. Still lost everything.”

He sounded bitter and angry, but then he looked at the picture of his daughter and his expression softened. “I knew Denise for years—I just can’t picture this…” He cleared his throat. “So what happened? I don’t understand why she was killed. Was she killed for the money?”

“We don’t know yet,” Lucy said. “We just got this case this morning when the bodies were identified. I want to go back to something you said—I was under the impression that Denise Albright was your employee.”

“No. She worked for me, yes, but I was one of at least a dozen clients. Mostly small to medium-sized businesses, it was her specialty. She worked for me for eight years—eight years! I trusted her. And then this. I’d wanted to leave a legacy, a solid business for my grandchildren. Now, I’ll be working here until I retire because I don’t have the heart or energy to start another business from scratch, not now. I’m not complaining—I have a job, a