Wishing in the Wings Read Online Free PDF Page B

the room was waiting for my answer. “I’m sorry,” I said, settling my palms next to the manila envelope that still sat in front of me like a placemat. “I didn’t catch that.”
    “I said, ‘Do you know where we can find Dean Marcus?’”
    “I have absolutely no idea.”
    And I really, truly didn’t. He’d lied to me. He’d deliberately set me up, left a note so that I wouldn’t question his whereabouts until it was too late. Way too late.
    Everyone stared at me. Hal was clearly angry; the tendons in his neck looked as if they’d been sculpted into his flesh. I could only hope that his rage was directed at Dean, not at me. A couple of the other board members had pity painted across their faces. Alicia Morton looked blatantly skeptical, as if she thought I could actually snap my fingers and make Dean appear, but I just wasn’t willing to try.
    “There are computer chips in cell phones, aren’t there?” I asked anyone who wanted to listen. “If we call him, the police can locate the phone, can’t they?”
    Bill nodded and said, “We’re already working on that.”
    “I can go through his desk at home,” I said. “I might be able to find more information there. I don’t think he has any relatives; he said he doesn’t, but maybe…” There was a rustle among the directors, and no one would meet my eyes. I knew what they were thinking: if he’d lied about bank accounts, why wouldn’t he lie about family? About anything else? About everything else.
    Bill spoke to me as if I were a small child. “Your apartment has been sealed off. The police are there now—they’re treating it as a crime scene. Once they’re through looking for evidence, they’ll probably let you back in.”
    “Probably?” My voice broke on my incredulous question.
    “It should only take a week or so for them to finish.”
    “A week!” This had to be some sort of bad joke. The police never took a week to complete an investigation in the movies.
    Bill shrugged, and his tone was apologetic. “If there’d been a murder, they’d move faster. As it is, they’re going to want to go through everything. Every single drawer, every last computer file. Financial crimes can be concealed in ways that murders can’t.”
    “Great,” I muttered. It sounded like he was saying I’d actually be better off if someone had died.
    This couldn’t be happening to me. I couldn’t be locked out of my own apartment. I couldn’t be worried about police going through every last atom of my stuff.
    But with a final oomph of recognition, I realized that I wasn’t actually, completely, one hundred percent surprised.
    Oh, I hadn’t known that Dean Marcus was a thief. He hadn’t told me that he intended to embezzle millions from our employer. He hadn’t dropped hints around the house like a naughty eight-year-old, hoping to be caught before he got into really big trouble.
    But little things about the past couple of months suddenly crystallized, suddenly collapsed into place. Dean, logging off of computer Web sites a little too quickly when I walked into the room. Dean, pushing off my playful suggestion that we spend an entire Sunday in bed together, saying that he had to finish balancing books for the Mercer. Dean, zoning out while I talked about my pet projects, missing my words so thoroughly that he didn’t even hear when I started quoting from Shakespeare, just to test if he was paying attention.
    I’d thought that he was just preoccupied. I’d thought that he was just being a guy.
    But that bizarre—for Dean’s notion of bizarre—note on the fridge: “Gotta run. Don’t wait up.”
    He just didn’t say where he was running to. Didn’t say how long he would be gone. And like an idiot, I’d waited up anyway.
    My fingers tingled, and I realized that I hadn’t drawn a complete breath since Bill had told me what Dean had done. I forced myself to inhale, only to discover that my eyes were burning, stinging. I caught my lower lip between