She does that?” Johan asked. “On purpose?”
“Maybe she was blackmailing Barlow.” Joy looked from Johan to Galen.
Johan shook his head. “Doris blackmailing Barlow? Or Phyllis blackmailing Barlow? Either way, doesn’t fly for me. Barlow’s heartless. He wouldn’t care if the world knew he had a daughter who he disowned before birth. But it would be karmic justice if he were being blackmailed by someone. If so, then he’s blackmailing others so he can get the money to pay his own blackmailer?”
“It’s possible.” Galen shrugged. “It would explain the cash in his safe.”
Johan paused. “What seems more probable is that Barlow was stockpiling money and jewels to make a run for it, now that the heat’s turning up on their smuggling op.”
“Yeah, now I can see that,” Galen stated. “I wonder if he would’ve taken Phyllis with him.”
“Huh. Doubtful. I don’t see him as the loyal type,” Johan stated.
“That adoption would have been tough,” Galen noted.
“Yeah,” Joy said. “On both women. Somehow I think Phyllis cared about Doris, in her own limited way, yet not so much that Doris cared for her mom, who abandoned her early in her life.”
“Seems Phyllis’s death may have made Doris care a bit,” Galen commented.
“Too little, too late,” Johan noted. Just then Johan’s phone rang. “This is one of the guys where we set up the cameras at his mailbox.”
“What’s up with him?”
“Hello? This is Johan.”
“We got emails. He wants the money today!”
“Okay. So go ahead and put the money in the box,” Johan said. “We’ve already got it set up.”
“Oh, good,” he said in relief. “We didn’t know if it was good to go or what.”
“Are you at work?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then come home as usual and put the money in the box. We’ll keep track of it and be in touch. Try to keep your cool and don’t do anything suspicious.”
“Done,” he said and hung up.
Johan looked at Joy. “I wonder if it’s a coincidence that Doris left here early.”
Joy sat back and stared. “That would be a little too unbelievable.”
“Not really,” he said. “We’ve often wondered if there was more than just one team at work here.”
“Well, I think the smuggling was one team, but I’m not sure what is going on now with the blackmailing part.”
“Exactly.” He held out his hand. “Sounds like you’re done for the day.”
“I have a lot of work to do,” she said, “and if these two aren’t here, I can—”
Just then Edward burst in. “What the hell is going on?” He looked completely frazzled.
“Phyllis has been murdered,” Johan said, “in case you hadn’t heard the news. Likely by the same person who murdered Barlow. Considering the camera down here facing Phyllis, which fed back to Barlow, that would make sense.”
Edward just shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I really don’t understand.”
“Well, according to Doris,” Joy said, motioning to the seat beside her, “the two of them—Barlow and Phyllis—have been smuggling from the company for many years. Westgroup was originally set up as a shell company to move materials that he could then sell on the black market. He had to legitimize it in order to make it survive. Then he moved the smuggling operation into a much smaller scenario. All of that with help from Phyllis.”
Edward’s skin faded even more and took on a waxy pallor. “This will ruin us,” he said. “You know that? This will ruin us.”
“Well, this isn’t the first time it’s come up though, has it?” Johan asked, crossing his arms. “The woman who was here before Joy brought up findings indicative of theft.”
Edward frowned and shrugged. “But she wasn’t here very long.”
“No,” Joy said. “She was also killed in a hit-and-run before she could do any more.”
He gasped, his hand going to his heart. With that, he turned and bolted.
“You know this just might lead to him resigning from the board today too,” she said in a conversational tone. “I feel sorry for the rest of the people who work here, but it sounds like a lot of people will jump ship really fast.”
“Rats always jump ship as soon as there’s any sign of trouble,” Johan said. “Don’t worry about it. They also have a really good survival instinct.”
She looked around, sighed, and said, “I have to leave, don’t I?”
“The sooner, the better,” he said. “So get up and log off. Let’s see if we can sort all this out today.”
Chapter 19
Outside in the front seat of the vehicle, she asked, “Where are we going?”
“We’re just waiting to find out