Page 73 of Her Hidden Smile

After Harvey finished his first donut and had snagged his second, he turned to me. “This is your meeting, so start.”

“Did you get a chance to read Jenny’s report that I sent you?”

Both men nodded.

“Seems kind of slick for Junior to have come up with.”

“It does, don’t it?” Harvey said as he reached for his coffee cup. “That’s what I told Renzo. Junior is a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you get my drift.”

We all nodded.

“Course, he fooled Red. I guess that shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. Red missed a lot of things. That’s why I fired the man.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Simon asked.

“Junior can’t be found,” I explained. “Not only do we want him prosecuted, we need to find out which projects did he sell Harvey the shitty material.”

“Exactly. I’m going to lose my shirt having to retrofit my projects with the right stuff. I don’t want to do every project, just the ones he fucked me over on. I need answers.” Harvey hit the mahogany conference table with his fist.

“This is what I know. Four weeks ago he was at the MGM Grand in Vegas. At that point he was using the company credit card. He stopped using any credit card that Jenny Brooks has access to. Plus, he pulled forty grand out of the company’s payroll account the day after Jenny sent out a report outlining what she would be presenting to me.”

“Is this that report?” Simon asked as he pointed to the report sitting in front of him.

I nodded.

“She emailed it to him?”

“Yeah. She sent it to both Junior and Senior. When I’ve talked to Wylie Senior, he’s not saying anything. No apologies, no comment on where his son is. Nothing.”

“Why haven’t you brought in the police?” Roan asked.

“We’re afraid we won’t get the answers we need,” Harvey answered. “He might be charged and out on bail for God knows how long before they pull him into court. I wanted Renzo to lean on him. I heard rumors about how Renzo beat up his sister’s boyfriend. That’s what I needed to have happen.”

“What?” I turned to Harvey. “How in the hell did you hear about that?”

“Evie Avery, or O’Malley, or whatever her name is. She mentioned it to my wife. Apparently your brother was bragging about it. Anyway, I figured if you’d do that for your sister, you could do it for our company,” he said hopefully.

Simon chuckled. “You beat up your sister’s boyfriend?”

“He was a douche and he was threatening to go to the tabloids with some lies about Angelica. She’s an actress. He needed an attitude adjustment,” I explained.

“You did the right thing,” Roan said.

“Anyway, we need to hire you two right now. We think that Junior’s back in town. We think he tried to break into Millie Randolph’s house last night.”

“God, he is stupid,” Simon said. “You got a gun?” he asked me.

“I’ll pick it up from the cabin this afternoon.”

“I’ve got a SCAR. That’ll protect you. I’ve got one for everybody in the house.”

Of course he did.

“Your wife and Tina both have assault rifles?” Roan asked.

“Yep. My wife only uses hers when I take her out for target practice, but Tina keeps hers under her bed. Just like the brochure says, it’s great for home defense.”

Roan caught my eye and I knew what he was thinking. Harvey had done a hard sale on him to marry Tina. Same as me. The broad was scary, and now knowing she kept an assault rifle under her bed just made her scarier.