Page 45 of Her Hidden Smile

Where in the hell had that word come from? Millie hadn’t abandoned me. We’d spent maybe twenty or twenty-five hours together total, and a lot of those hours had been on the phone. How could a woman who I barely knew have possibly abandoned me?

Cut the horseshit, Drakos!

I shook my head and got out of my truck to visit Wylie Plumbing Supply again. Junior Hanson better be there this time, or I was going to kick his motherfucking ass. I went in the back door; I didn’t want to deal with the showroom.

I nodded to Baily. She was another one of Wylie Senior’s grandkids.

“He’s not here,” she said before I could even ask my question. “But Jenny said you could go on back.”

I nodded and weaved my way past Baily and the file cabinets and headed down the hall. Junior’s door was open, but he wasn’t there with his eyes stuck to his computer monitor. I had a bet with Harvey that Junior spent all day just surfing porn sites, but I hadn’t been able to prove it yet. Harvey’s bet was that he was just reading articles on hunting and fishing. I kept telling him that Junior couldn’t read, so I had to be right. One day I would get proof, and I’d win my hundred dollars.

I tapped on Jenny’s doorjamb so she wouldn’t be surprised when I walked into her office. Her eyes were glued to her monitor, but I had no doubt she was doing work.

“So how bad is it?” I asked.

She looked up at me, her face pale.

“Real bad.” She waved at me to sit down on one of the threadbare chairs in front of her desk. That was about all her tiny office could handle.

“Hold on while I print these reports out for you.”

“Jenny, it’s going to be okay. I’m just going to go with another contractor for the school build. It’s not the end of the world.”

“I wish it were that simple.” She blew her bangs away from her face. She had that whole nineteen-fifties pin-up girl look going on, with a Bettie Page haircut. Right down to the cat’s-eye glasses. I wondered how many times Junior had hit on her.

She pulled papers off the printer and handed them to me. The first page was titled, Report for Sadowski Construction prepared by Jenny Brooks on Behalf of Wylie Plumbing.

I scratched the back of my neck. “Isn’t this kind of official?”

“It needs to be. I emailed both Senior and Junior last night to say that I would be presenting this to you. I left them voicemails as well. Like normal, they ignored me. I couldn’t, in good conscience, not tell you my findings.”

I frowned and started reading through the pages. At first, I thought she’d made a mistake, then I started getting concerned. When I got to the part where she showed that the substandard material had been used for all our jobs as soon as Junior took over the company, I was furious.

“How did you find this out, Jenny?”

“I couldn’t understand how Junior could possibly post better quarterly results than his daddy ever did, since he took over. His men hate him, and he doesn’t know shit about business. So, I started digging.”

“That’s when you figured out he was sourcing low grade product?”

Jenny nodded. “He also started an account in Nashville with a large printing company. He’d been personally signing off on the receipts, and when I called over to the printer and asked for proofs of the artwork, that’s when I found out he was having boxes made to mimic the higher-grade suppliers.”

“The fucker was then switching the low-grade stuff into the high-grade boxes, then when it showed up at our job sites, we’d be none the wiser,” I spit out.

Jenny nodded. “I’m so sorry, Renzo.

“You realize we’re going to have to go in and replace the plumbing on all of those jobs, right?”

She nodded again.

“Where the fuck is Junior?”

“He said he was taking a vacation. He wouldn’t tell any of us here where he was going, but he’s kind of dumb.”

“But he fooled all of us, so not so dumb,” I bit out.

“Dumb enough to use the company credit card so I knew everyplace he’s used it. He was staying at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas at a suite, but he checked out almost immediately after I sent out my report to him. Then he pulled out a cashier’s check for forty grand. So, I guess he’s smart again.”

“Of course. Look, I’ve got to take this to Harvey. We need to determine what our liability is. How many more contractors do you have to talk to?”