Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 01 - Wendy and the Lost Boys Read Online Free PDF Page B

put an irritating smile on his smug face.
    In the ten seconds I’d known him, he had managed to piss me off royally. What was this gumshoe bookkeeper up to? Dressed in a brown suit, with a brown tie and wearing brown wing tips, he had brown hair and those Johnny Depp eyes.
    I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I silently took the armchair across from him. Rustling through his brown briefcase, he pulled out a file. “I’ve connected the dots between you and Marni Kimble. She’s a key part of Hook’s international swindle and his collection of stolen artifacts.”
    “Marni Kimble worked for me as a real estate agent. She’s no more a crook than I am.”
    He pointed his finger at me. “That’s probably true. You can be charged with receiving funds you knew or should reasonably have known were tainted, not to mention the stolen artifacts.”
    I wanted to punch his snippy mouth. “I never received any money from Hook. And I had no idea he was running a Ponzi scheme.”
    “Dumb can be a defense. Stupidity in the first degree is not a crime.”
    “I’m calling my lawyer.”
    He put his hands up, palms facing me. “Calm down.”
    I jumped up. “Calm down? Don’t tell me to calm down after you come in here with all these outrageous accusations about me being a part of his swindling and… stolen artifacts? What the hell are you talking about?” That Internet story I skimmed must have had some truth in it, but how could this bozo think I had something to do with artifacts or the Ponzi?
    “While our team was looking for Hook on the 30 th floor of his building in Manhattan, his people were loading a van with antiquities in his private underground parking garage. The truck got away. As a big time real estate agent, you have access to a lot of vacant homes with big garages – garages where the truck could be stashed.”
    I damn sure wasn’t going to dignify that idiotic conclusion with an answer. I crossed my arms, compressed my lips, and tapped my foot to let him know the interview was over. Of course, he was too much of a cement-head to pick up on it.
    “That pirate has his own museum on wheels somewhere in the states.”
    “Can’t you see I’m done listening to your baseless, insulting, and moronic accusations?”
    He pulled some papers out of a file and smiled smugly. “You and the Hooks have been in constant phone communication for weeks.”
    That slammed me hard. My head felt light. I sat down. Innocent phone calls from Marni were about to hang me. I should have known better than to have anything to do with her after she attached herself to that slime-ball. No good deed goes unpunished.
    “Wendy, you know how those optical illusion pictures work? It looks like a crazy pattern, but if you relax your eyes you see a three dimensional object rise from it? All I had to do was step back, relax, and I knew the players in this game. You’re in this with Marni and Hook.”
    “This is outrageous. You’re just fishing. If you had something on me you’d be arresting me. But that’s not going to happen because there’s nothing to get on me.”
    Special, not in my opinion, Agent Roger Jolley tucked his tie into his jacket, and his infuriating, supercilious smile got even more so. He paused for effect. “There’s an even stronger link between you and Hook. He has offshore accounts on Nevis Island in the Caribbean and makes frequent contact with someone on that island at a place called Nevisland, somebody named Peter Payne. Does that name mean anything to you, Wendy?”
    I gulped so loud my ears rattled. “Peter Payne!”
    Jolley looked jolly. He’d hit a nerve. “You and Payne are lovers.”
    “You idiot, Peter Payne was my first love. We were high school sweethearts, not lovers. I haven’t seen him in almost twenty-five years. You say he’s on an island? Nevis Island?”
    “I’m going to get this bastard.” Reaching into the file, he pulled out a fistful of receipts and shoved them at me. “While Hook was