Lena had kissed her and watched her walk out with her basket under one arm. She made herself another cup of coffee and laid the paper flat on the table. Half an hour of news and caffeine and she would go to work with her new watcher dogging her every move.
She skipped over the main news and went straight to the entertainment section. The coffee cup half way to her lips, Lena glanced at the first page and turned to the next. A large color photo of her café looked up from the page. The heading, Such A Let Down, screamed out at her.
No, no, no! The coffee spilled over the edge of her cup and splattered the page. She heard the cry of despair and tried to swallow the sound. Jeff had warned her he couldn’t sugar coat anything, but he’d done nothing to prepare her for what was printed in the paper for all the world to see.
You all know Lena Hawkins is one of my favorite chefs and this man was super excited to hear she’d opened a little restaurant/café in Mudgee. What was I to do—I had to investigate.
I can’t tell you how excited I was. So much so that I took a group of friends and made it a weekend away from the hustle and bustle of my favorite city. But sadly I was disappointed. We arrived to find the stunning old building locked and nobody home. Hardly the way to win friends and influence this reviewer, Lena. Perhaps I should revisit your old haunt and see if you’ve returned there.
This let down reviewer gives you 0 out of 5 stars.
* * *
“They said if I didn’t go along with it and take the fall for Sally, the police would find me in bits floating in the harbor.” Simon snorted a half strangled laugh. “Didn’t need much persuasion I can tell you that.” He glanced at Ben before looking back at Adam and Jeremy sitting in front of him with notebooks out, a file to one side. “At first I thought she was the nicest person. She picked me out and said she wanted to learn from me so I helped make sure she learned the ropes. I walked her through some of my accounts and showed her the way I worked and said if she ever needed advice I was happy to be there. I mean, let’s face it, we worked for the same company and if that company did well, so did we.”
“When did you discover she was laundering money through the bank?” Jerry tapped his note pad with a slim black pen.
“When the board pointed out there were more loans in the last quarter than we’d made before. I normally gave final approval on most of them, part of my portfolio and I know how many I’d signed off on. The others could do it but they usually ran it past me anyway.” He bit his lip and looked up. “I started looking into it. That’s when I began sending copies of documents to a safe address that only I knew about.”
Jeremy and Adam shared a glance. “Go on,” prompted Adam. Talk about being taken for a ride.
“She caught me and threatened to take me down for it if I said anything. I laughed at her. Seemed crazy at the time but I didn’t know who she was.”
“And now you do, care to share with me, Simon?”
“Lee-Ling Chin? Her old man runs the biggest triad in Sydney.”
“I still don’t understand why she would want to steal from the bank if it was only in the hundreds of thousands.”
Jeremy glanced at Adam. “You really don’t know what you were mixed up in, do you? Didn’t the judge tell you?”
Simon leaned back and shook his head, his gaze going to Adam. “As if I’d take the fall for small change.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Your little girlfriend was using the bank to launder the triads money. It was in the hundreds of millions.”
Jeremy nodded his head. “And, a lot of it was going into businesses in Sydney.”
Ben sat forward. “Tell me more.”
Simon looked at Jeremy who nodded his head and opened the file in front of him. “This is one of the businesses we’re still watching. It was brought with dirty money and its owner, one Cole Franklin, is heavily involved in the family business.” He passed over a photo of Cibo Buono.
“No. It’s not possible.” Ben paled and suddenly it all fell together for Adam. His father’s behavior, Sally suddenly leaving without trying to say goodbye. They’d all been used. Including Lena.
“I’ll give you the emails if you promise us a new life well away from here. Get us out of Australia if you can because their reach is unreal. You know it is.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
Simon looked at Adam, shaking his head. “Would you have?”
“I guess not.” He looked at Jeremy. “So what now then?”
The policeman leaned back in his chair. “I think it’s time to kill Simon.”
* * *
“But, Papa, how can that be? There must be something you can do for Simon.” This isn’t how it was supposed to work out.
“Sorry, but the courts turned down the appeal. Seems they don’t agree with us.”
Lena stood up and pushed her chair away. A tsunami of emotions rushed at her. Horror, despair, helplessness, and plain old disappointment. She’d been sure her father and Adam would be able to get Simon out of jail.
“Does he know yet?” This is going to kill him.
“No. I’ll have to call him in the morning. I stopped at the office on the way home and it was there in my emails. We did our best, Lena.”
I
