Chapter 10: Sam's Audit

Sam's POV

On Monday morning I printed Travis Odell's expense reports for the last twelve months and laid them out on my conference table.

I had looked at them one line at a time for a month.

Now I knew what to look for.

A steakhouse dinner for two, $1,860, charged to client entertainment the night of the courthouse wedding.

Two plane tickets to Charleston, booked on the same card the week after.

Nine hotel nights across the last year, every one in a city where Redfield Freight had no customer.

Brooke Pennell's name was on the guest line of six of them.

I added it up twice.

It came to $14,212 of my company's money spent on a woman who was now his wife, or was not.

At two o'clock my assistant knocked.

"Mr. Pennell is in the lobby. He doesn't have an appointment."

"Send him up."

Nobody in my building calls Mr. Pennell by his first name.

He came in alone, in his vest, with a folded newspaper under one arm, and did not sit.

"Sam," he said. "I'll be short. My company ships forty percent of its freight with you."

"Forty-three."

"Forty-three. I'm told you've been looking into my son-in-law."

"I look into everyone's expenses."

"He's family now," Pennell said. "I'd like his accounts to stay with him.

"Whatever you think you've found, I'd consider it a favor to let it lie until after the reception."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I take my forty-three percent to a competitor." He smiled.

"I like you, Sam. Your father and I played golf. Don't make it difficult."

I thanked him for coming.

He left.

I stood at the window for ten minutes, looking down at High Street, where a green van was parked outside a flower shop.

I did not call Pennell back.

At nine that night I climbed the stairs to Jenna's apartment with nothing in my hands.

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