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Questions without answers, she thought, grateful she’d thought to bring the spare office keys. She shifted Jackson to her other hip and fished the keys from her pocket. The door opened easily. She walked into the small reception area. The desk was still there, along with a couple of club chairs for waiting clients. But nothing else was the same.
The two framed prints were askew and beside them someone had posted a notice claiming a warrant had been served. Every drawer in the desk was open and the contents were spilled onto the floor. It was as if a tornado had swept through the room.
Still holding Jackson, she walked down the short hallway. In all of the offices, desk drawers and cupboards were open, contents tossed to the floor. No space had been spared, not even the break room. On her return trip, she realized there were no computers anywhere. She saw printers and scanners, even a sad old fax machine, but no laptops.
She sank into one of the chairs and set Jackson on her lap. He immediately squirmed to get down. She set him on the floor and he ran to a pile of paper and tossed it into the air, then laughed. She looked around, trying to make sense of what had happened, only she couldn’t.
After a few seconds, she pulled out her phone and logged in to the company’s Wi-Fi, then went online and typed in “What happens when the police have a search warrant.” She clicked the first link.
She learned that the police, or whoever was executing the search warrant, didn’t have to be especially careful with the belongings, and depending on what they were searching for, they had every right to rip the place apart.
“But what would they be looking for here?”
She glanced around. They’d taken the computers, so what was left? She continued reading about how if it was something small, like a stash of drugs, the search could take hours and be more physically destructive to the location. Other examples were given. And then she saw the answer. A thumb drive.
The police or whatever agency had been here had been looking for financial information, so they’d been searching for a thumb drive or maybe a backup hard drive. Anything where Peter could store records of his supposed illegal activities.
The phone on the desk began to ring. Allison stared at it but didn’t pick it up. Jackson looked from her to the phone, then returned his attention to a pencil holder he’d found. He rolled it on the carpet, making sputtering noises. The phone went silent.
Despite her promise to herself not to fall into despair today, she felt the heavy weight of uncertainty and worry. Her husband was in jail, his office had been trashed and no employees had shown up to work. No business, no income. Which left her totally on her own. And even if he did get out on bail, how was he supposed to get things up and running again if all the computers had been taken by the police or FBI or whomever?
Her chest tightened and her breathing quickened. The panic returned. She was in so much trouble and didn’t know what to—
The phone rang again. Allison stared at it for a couple of seconds, then walked to the desk and picked it up.
“Um, Jenkins Accounting, may I, ah, help you?”
“What’s going on there? I’ve been calling for two days. I need my quarterly deposit number and no one has sent it to me.”
The woman on the other end of the call sounded furious.
“Okay, that’s not good.”
Allison spotted a loose pen on the desk, then grabbed a random piece of paper, turned it over and wrote, “Needs quarterly deposit numbers.”
“Let me get your name and number so someone can call you back.”
The woman gave her the information. “I need to hear today. You got that? Today.”
“Yes, I understand. I’m sorry you have to wait, but I’ll get you something.”
“You’d better.”
The woman hung up. Allison replaced the phone in the cradle, then stared at the message. How was she supposed to get the information the client needed? Ignoring the no-computers problem, she didn’t know what a quarterly deposit was. When Peter called, she would ask him what to do, but until then, she was stuck. They were all stuck.
The phone rang again. Allison ignored it. She tucked the message into her bag, then collected Jackson and made her way out of the office. As she reached the elevator, she could still hear the phone ringing.
“You’re distracted.”
Erica looked up from her salad. “Am I?”
“I’m not complaining, just observing.”
Killion smiled as he spoke, which deepened the lines around his eyes. What would have been aging on any woman on the planet made him look gorgeous. Yet another unfair advantage for men. Where a woman of a certain age and means would be talking to a dermatologist about slowing the ravages of time, men just looked good as they got older.
“I have things on my mind,” she admitted.
“Should we talk about them or pretend they don’t exist?”
