“Hell of a moral line,” Davis said. “I think maybe she killed him over it.”
Chapter Eight
Had Theresa Quinn—or someone else at Petrov Armor—really murdered Neal Petrov?
Davis glanced at Leila from the spot where he’d taken up residence in the corner of her office. He’d managed to avoid her for the rest of the day yesterday, but when he’d come in today, he knew he couldn’t do it any longer. He needed the kind of access only she could give him.
To her credit, when he’d asked to see the company’s financial records, she’d frowned but given him access. He’d been reading through them ever since. The problem was, if Petrov Armor’s finances had been doctored, whoever was responsible would try to make things look legitimate. Davis might have to bring in some forensic accountants to drill down to the truth.
According to Leila, Theresa Quinn didn’t have access to these records. So, if Theresa was still trying to sell weapons to criminals or pass off faulty body armor to the military, maybe something wouldn’t look right in the financial records in the weeks since Neal Petrov had been killed. Of course, that was assuming he’d still had access to the finances and she’d just dealt with the production and delivery end of things.
Even if nothing looked off in the past month, maybe Neal himself would have made an error along the way. Presumably, he’d gotten away with making illegal weapons sales for so long, he was skilled at hiding all evidence. But sometimes people who got away with something for that long started making mistakes. If Theresa wasn’t involved, maybe Neal had gotten sloppy and someone else had noticed a discrepancy. Maybe they’d tried to blackmail Neal and when he hadn’t paid up, they’d killed him.
Right now, everything was conjecture. Davis sighed and stretched his legs underneath the desk Leila had set up for him on the far side of her office.
For what felt like the millionth time since he’d arrived that morning, Davis glanced up at Leila. Her office smelled faintly of citrus, the same scent he’d noticed when she’d been brought into the TCD office. The same scent he noticed every time he stood close to her. He was starting to have a real fondness for citrus.
Since he’d met her three days ago, he’d only seen her wearing pant suits in shades of gray, black and dark blue. Her makeup was always subtle, her hair constantly knotted up into a bun. It was as if she dressed as straitlaced as possible to try to hide her youth and beauty. But there was only so much she could disguise. Today was no different.
Still, ever since she’d made that ridiculous joke about an inflatable boat, he’d been imagining her differently. Wearing jeans and a button-down that was too big for her, with her hair long and loose around her shoulders. Instead of her standard too-serious expression, she’d be laughing.
Except right now, she had nothing to laugh about. If he was right about her father’s murder, things were only going to get worse.
He didn’t even know if it was true or just a far-fetched theory and yet, he felt guilty not telling her.
“What?” Leila asked, a half smile lifting the corners of lips that had been so close to his just the other day.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. You keep staring.” She came around from behind her desk, striding across the room and stopping in front of him. “What is it? What did you find?”
Davis glanced down at his laptop screen again, not wanting to look her in the eyes as he said, “I haven’t found anything. I’m just looking for discrepancies.”
“Because the armor used cheaper materials? You think there will be a double entry for supplies somewhere?”
“Maybe,” he hedged. He’d worked in white collar crime long enough to know that someone who’d been cooking the books for a decade was unlikely to make such an amateur mistake. But TCD expected him to keep the fact that Petrov Armor might have been illegally selling weapons from Leila. He closed the lid of his laptop, not wanting her to see the dates he was reviewing.
“Stop lying to me.”
He finally looked up at her, surprised by the vehemence in her voice. “I’m not lying. I don’t know what I’m going to find. Probably nothing. But if there’s anything that doesn’t seem right, it’s a place to start.”
“You don’t know what you might find, but you’re looking for something specific, aren’t you?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or is there something else you’re not telling me? You suspect someone besides Theresa? Don’t tell me this is about Eric again.”
“No, it’s not about Eric.” He wasn’t Davis’s top suspect at the moment, but that didn’t mean he’d been eliminated. And since Leila had brought him up... “You said Eric and your dad were close. Was that true even after you and Eric broke up?” Realizing the time line, he answered his own question. “I guess so if he hired Eric then, right?”
“He hired Eric back when the two of us were still dating. Eric is two years older than me, so when he graduated from high school, my dad brought him on. He went to school to get his bachelor’s degree at night. I was still in high school then. I didn’t join the company until I finished grad school. I’ve only been here full-time for five years—I started a couple of years before my dad took the company public. By the time I joined the company, Eric had already been working here for nine years. But yes, my dad and Eric stayed close. Eric was the son my dad never had.”
Davis squinted at her, trying to see through the mask she’d put over her features. Did she resent Eric’s place in her dad’s life?
