Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,62
felt. “After the cup of coffee?” she teased. “I feel much better. We went for a long walk because the malls weren’t open yet,” she said. “Then we were just thinking about stopping for brunch when you guys said you were done.”
He nodded and motioned toward the booth they had settled into at the back of the restaurant. They were all alone with nobody around them.
As soon as they were seated, Kai leaned forward expectantly. “And?”
“How do you know there’s an ‘and’ anyway?” Tyson asked.
She smiled. “I can see that you guys found something.”
“A safe with some naughty photos and a black book. More naughty photos taped under the bed,” he said.
Joy stared at them. “And what difference does that make?”
“The photos were of men with men,” Johan said in a low voice. “And I presume that they are of people who don’t want anyone to be aware of their sexual proclivities.”
“So blackmail?”
He nodded. “That’s what we’re thinking. But we don’t recognize the faces. Can you take a look?” Joy nodded, and he brought up several of the photos and enlarged them so she could see the faces.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t know any of these men.”
He nodded. “We’re sending them to Levi, hoping he can ID them.”
“Barlow was well-paid by the company,” Joy said. “He wouldn’t need to blackmail anybody.”
“People blackmail for all kinds of reasons,” Kai said gently. “It’s not always about money. It’s often about revenge. It can be about power plays. Sometimes even for fun.”
“You guys don’t deal with very nice people,” Joy announced.
Tyson chuckled. “No, we don’t,” he said. “We often see the dregs of the dregs, but that doesn’t mean we have to be pulled into it with them.”
“No,” Kai said. “Taking the high road isn’t always that easy though.”
“Very true. And Barlow was getting five thousand a month from four different people,” Johan said. “A lot of cash was inside that safe.”
“What?” Joy cried out. “Five thousand dollars a month? From each?” The three men nodded. She sank back, looked over at Kai, and said, “I’m in the wrong business.”
Kai chuckled. “Of course it’s lucrative, and, in this case, instead of charging them hundreds of thousands of dollars, he kept bleeding them for a little bit every month, but then it never ends.”
“Well, it’s ended now,” Joy said. “Do you think that’s what happened?”
“It’s a very viable possibility,” Johan said. “That’s one of the reasons for sending the information to Levi. Then we can have him contact the detective to say that he ‘heard rumors’”—a phrase he put in air quotes—“so they could come and check out the house.”
“And, of course, we can’t just hand over the information, can we?”
“Not without having interfered with the police investigation,” Johan said cheerfully.
Joy rolled her eyes at him. “Which is what you just did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, innocent like.
“If we could identify these men,” Joy said, “you’d have four suspects.”
“We also don’t know if anybody else is being blackmailed,” Johan said. “We have four people, but we don’t know if it’s all four men in these photos or if Barlow has other photos somewhere.”
“You mean, like at his office?” Joy said.
“Yeah.”
“Any idea how many men are on the board?” Galen asked Joy.
“Not sure,” she said. “I’m sure their financial IPOs would tell us.”
Tyson was already looking it up. “Looks like six board members.”
“And Barlow is one of them?”
He nodded. “So five others.”
“One’s a woman,” Tyson said. “I’m looking for images right now.” He whistled silently and then stopped when the waitress came over with a coffeepot and filled everybody’s cups and handed out menus. He waited until she was gone, then he brought up a face. As they all looked at it, eyebrows shot up as they recognized the guy from one of the photos.
“Barlow was blackmailing board members?” Kai asked.
“Looks like one at least.”
“It depends. Remember. We don’t have the photos matched to the notations in the ledger book yet,” Johan said.
“Just a second, we’ll see who else is on the board.” Tyson waited for a photo to load. “So it looks like the two men in the photos under the bed are both board members,” he said. “I can’t find the other two men.”
“That would make Barlow happy, wouldn’t it?” Johan said. “He’s being chased out of his company, so he gets back at them.”
Joy shook her head. “He sits there, day in and day out, knowing that he’s the one bleeding them dry. Do you think they knew?”