Page 25 of Fade Out

“I’m going to have the accounts frozen.”

“No, don’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because Rita might try to access one of them.”

“But that’s what I want to avoid.”

“If she accesses an account that would help us find her.”

“The police should be doing that, not us. Our responsibility is to protect the firm from financial liability.”

“I’ve been accused of killing Rita,” I admitted.

“Well, if she’s dead then she can’t access anything.” I was a little annoyed that’s where her mind went. She didn’t seem at all concerned about how much trouble I was in or whether or not I might have killed someone.

“She’s not dead. The body the police found wasn’t Rita.”

She looked at me a long moment. Then after a nod, she said, “I’m going to assume you didn’t kill anyone.”

“Thank you for that. I think Rita killed some poor woman and is trying to put the blame on me. It was all in the papers.”

“It was in the papers that Rita’s trying to frame you?”

“No. I mean, what’s in the papers was wrong.”

“Exactly why I don’t read them.”

Just then Raymond Dewkes, who worked in their MIS department, walked into the office. He was young, small and kind of sexy, despite the fact that he wore a white shirt with an ink stain flowering at the base of his breast pocket. He saw me and smiled—it wasn’t until then that I remembered him flirting with me.

“Thank you for coming down, Raymond,” Jill said, then looked at me, making her decision. “I don’t think we need you after all.”

“Yes, we do,” I said, then immediately asked my question, “How long since you ran the report on dormant accounts?”

“About ten days.”

“Can you run it again?”

“What? Why?” Jill asked.

“It’s possible Rita may have accessed an account or two in the last ten days.”

“Oh, right. I suppose that’s true. All right, Raymond, rerun the report every morning until further notice. Does that work, Mr. Nowak?”

“Yes.”

“What are you looking for?” Raymond asked.

“If Rita is able to access an account we may be able to find her.”

“So you need to know which office she’s gone into?”

“Yes, if you can tell us that, as well, it would be great.”

“You realize there are other ways to access accounts,” Jill pointed out. “Depending on the type of account: checks, wire transfers.”

“But she’d need to have the checks or access to private information,” I pointed out.