“Is Norah with you?” Aunt Liz asked.
The extra beat it took him to find his voice was the kiss of death. “No.”
“Then we were right,” Reed said. “You are having problems.”
“And that’s any of your business why?”
“No one knows where she is. She’s not answering her phone. And the last person we know saw her was Violet, who said she left the nursery this afternoon looking like you’d punched her in the stomach.” Mitch looked like he wanted to return the favor.
That was certainly a switch from what he’d seen. “She was perfectly calm when she left me.” No fight, just straight-up rationality, moving on to business as usual. With a short detour to clean herself out of his life with cold, clean efficiency.
“What did you fight about?” Grammy asked.
Cam struggled for patience. He hadn’t come here expecting an ambush. His mistake. “We didn’t fight.” He’d made sure of that, hadn’t he? Cutting her off at the first sign of conflict because he couldn’t deal with the confrontation and just wanted it over. But maybe she’d been more upset than he thought.
Absolutely nobody looked like they believed him.
“Look, did you try talking to Molly? Norah was going to check in with her on the petition. She’s probably holed up somewhere working on a new campaign.” Which he could verify with a few swipes of his phone, but God knew that damned app had given him more grief than it was worth. He didn’t want to check it again to find her halfway to…anywhere that wasn’t here.
Aunt Liz moved off to grab the phone, presumably to follow that lead.
“You can all take potshots at me later. I need to talk to Mom about city business. In private.”
They relocated to Uncle Pete’s study. Cam shut and locked the door behind them, which caused his mother to arch a brow.
“Not one word about her, Mom.”
Sandra Campbell Crawford knew when to choose her battles. Cam fully expected she’d pick this one when he least expected it.
“You said this was something to do with city business.” She nodded at the books under his arm. “What are those?”
“The copies I made of the city financial records. Norah was analyzing them for one of her projects. And she noted something unusual.”
“What kind of unusual?”
Cam laid out what first Norah and then he had discovered. “It was subtly done, but you see here? The digits are transposed. It starts with small amounts. And if it was just that, maybe we could chalk it up to human error or dyslexia or something. But over the next year and a half, they get bigger and bigger. If I did the math right, we’re talking about a difference of near to a hundred thousand dollars of city funds.”
“Dear God.” Sandra scooped a hand through her hair. “How far back does it go?”
Cam chose his words carefully. “Best I can tell, it started when you were out on medical leave. When Vick took over extra duties because Leigh Billingsly had to go on bed rest. Since she only came back half time after the baby was born, she probably just picked up where the books left off and didn’t go back to check the work that was done in her absence.”
“Cam, this is a huge accusation.”
“I know it. And maybe I’m wrong. But what if I’m not? Vick’s been living large when almost everybody’s hours and salaries have been cut to the bone. He’s just bought an SUV that’s almost as much as his annual salary. Where’s he getting that money?”
Sandra sat back and sighed. “I just can’t believe he’d be embezzling from the city.”
“Then how else do you explain these numbers? The system is obscenely antiquated. We’ve talked about it for years, but we haven’t ever done anything about it because there was always some other financial priority. We’ve got to look into this.”
“And we will, but quietly. Both because I’m not willing to make accusations without more definitive evidence and because if it’s true, I don’t want to spook him into covering his tracks.”
Sandra crossed to pick up the cordless phone on the desk. “Robert, it’s Sandra. No, no, I’m fine. Listen, are you busy? There’s something I need to discuss with you. No, it’s probably best if Cam and I come to you. We want to keep this on the down low. I need you to open an investigation into Vick Burgess.”
Chapter 22
Norah left Molly’s primed to knock Cam down a few pegs and make him listen, whether he wanted to or not. So the fact that he wasn’t home put a real crimp in her plans. Since she’d rashly left her key after packing her stuff, there was no waiting inside. Damn it.
So she sat in her car. Courtesy of the fact that half her stuff was in the back, she had plenty of clothes to layer for warmth. The temper helped. Her phone kept blowing up with calls and texts from the Campbell clan. She hadn’t listened to the voicemails and hadn’t answered the texts. Given that the theme of most had been Are you okay? Norah figured that despite Molly’s promise of secrecy, someone else had blabbed something. Maybe Liam had spoken to Mitch. She wasn’t talking to any of them until she’d talked to Cam himself and had the chance to pry his head out of his ass.