That sounded shady to Seven, but maybe he was just a natural skeptic.
“What happened after that?” Enzo asked. “Did you look into it further?”
“I was going to. But before I could, Brioni came to me and said she could get into a lot of trouble for telling me this, but that Grant fudged some of our success stories and that the reason I couldn’t track some of these women down was because they never existed in the first place. But that didn’t track. I knew some of these women. I personally helped them. They definitely existed.”
“Did you tell her that?” Seven prompted.
She shook her head. “I didn’t want to get into an argument. I thought maybe I was just being paranoid. Two weeks later, I was promoted and Brioni wasn’t. I thought maybe Grant had found out about her gossiping,” Neith said, shaking her head like the pieces were falling into place. “I’m such an idiot.”
“No, you’re not,” Seven said. “These people set you up.”
Francesca patted her hand. “Seven’s right.”
“The gala planning was left to Brioni after that, which wasn’t her job. It had never been her job. I was going to continue helping with it, but then the DOJ audit was triggered, and after that, I was slammed, trying to make sure we had all our financial ducks in a row. Which wasn’t easy because I wasn’t familiar with the job. Brioni was always having to help me.”
“How soon after your promotion was the DOJ audit?” Enzo asked.
“Six weeks,” Neith answered, once more paying too much attention to the pastry on her plate.
“Can you think of anything else that might be helpful?” Enzo asked. “Anything at all?”
She started to shake her head, then stopped. “My predecessor, Damian…he died in a car accident three months ago. A DUI. Wrapped his car around a light pole at four in the morning.”
“You think it wasn’t an accident?” Enzo asked, tilting his head in a way Seven found hotter than he should.
“At the time, I chalked it up to poor judgment, but then I remembered something. At a fundraiser four years ago, I offered him champagne and he said he never touched the stuff. I must have looked confused because he laughed and said he wasn’t in recovery or anything, he was allergic. Something called an AL something deficiency.”
“Was it a fatal allergy? Would it have killed him to drink alcohol?” Francesca asked, leaning into his mother’s space, expression tense.
Neith shook her head. “He made it sound more like it was just very unpleasant. He said he would get flushed and sweaty and probably throw up all over our party guests and ‘kill the vibe.’”
“What did Brioni say when you mentioned it?” Seven asked.
“She said he was a recovering alcoholic with a good story. That he was likely just hiding it because he was embarrassed. I didn’t really question it because Brioni had worked closely with him for years. Why would she lie?”
“I want to make sure I have the timeline correct,” Enzo said. “Eight months ago, you noticed that women from the program appear to have disappeared. Two weeks later, Brioni is passed over for a promotion, but doesn’t seem at all upset about this. Six weeks after that, the DOJ sends word there’s going to be an audit. A few weeks after that, the man who used to have your job dies under mysterious circumstances. Does that sound about right?”
Neith nodded. “God, when you put it like that, it sounds so obvious that I stumbled onto something they didn’t want getting out and they set me up to take the fall. What do we do now?”
Enzo looked almost relieved, like it would be an easy fix. “Well, first, we let the twins do what they do with the thumb drive. Whoever set you up couldn’t have gotten much of a head’s up that the police were on their way to arrest you, which means the decision to toss that thumb drive into your purse was probably done in haste.”
“What if it was in my purse for weeks?” Neith asked.
“Doubtful. They would have been concerned about you finding it, and if it was in there for weeks, then whatever incriminating evidence they put on there would likely abruptly stop after a certain point.”
Seven hoped he was right.
“There’s a good chance they weren’t as thorough as they think,” Enzo continued. “While the twins do that, Seven and I are gonna start running down previous clients helped by WERC to see just how many of them are truly missing and if there were any common denominators.”
Neith hid her face in her hands, taking a deep breath and letting it out. When she dropped her hands again, she asked, “Do you think these women were harmed?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Enzo said.
“If I’ve helped these people…” Neith started, trailing off.
“You couldn’t have known what was happening,” Francesca reassured her. “But if we find out that these people are hurting women, then we’ll do what we’ve always done. We’ll handle it.”
Enzo nodded. “My mother’s right. First, we prove your innocence. Then we make them pay…in the most painful possible way.”
