“Maybe. Depends on whyyoughostedme.”
He scowled. “I got called into work early Tuesday morning. It was an all-hands-on-deck sort of situation.”
It shouldn’t have been this hard to pick up where we’d left off, but I’d had time to think, time to wonder if I would be doing the right thing by hooking up with Malone. I didn’t know how to get back to where we’d been.
“What about you, Stark?”
“I got a job doing surveillance. It involved camping.”
“Fun!”
“Not fun. No campfire.”
“Bummer.”
We stared at each other while I grappled for a way to broach the subject of what I’d seen earlier.
Just ask him.
But how was I supposed to phrase that question? Maybe all forensic accountants wrote on the walls. Hadn’t I seen that in a movie?
“Come on, Stark. What’s ... bugging you?”
I snort-giggled. “I may have peeked in your guest room, and I’m a little concerned.”
“Huh?”
“The numbers, Malone. And the sticky notes. At least there wasn’t a murder board with red yarn crisscrossing it?”
“Oh, that. Uh, forensic accountant stuff. I told you, it’d make you want to run.”
That he had. I considered. “You told me I’d want to run because it was unsexy, not because I would worry you’d gone allBeautiful Mindon me.”
He laughed out loud. “They’re just numbers. Usually, I do my analysis on my computer, but sometimes I like to step back and lookat the whole picture. I figured if it worked forThe Accountant, then it was at least worth a try.”
“The accountant?”
“Ben Affleck movie about a—never mind.”
Ah. That was the movie where I’d seen something similar. Come to think of it, I’d found Ben Affleck hot in that. Maybe I had a type.
“Do you have Blake Malone’s personal accounts on that wall, too?”
He frowned. “I have to plead the Fifth.”
“His wife called me, as I’d suspected she eventually would. He’s cleaned out several of their joint accounts.”
“Interesting,” he said. “But not unexpected.”
We studied each other. Unfortunately for me, Malone didn’t mind silence. I was the one itching to fill the void. “He stole from Malone Construction, too, didn’t he?”
“Of all the amendments, my favorite is the fifth.”
“Are you pretending to be Blake Malone as a part of your investigation into missing money?”
“As the great philosopher Dave Chappelle once sang ... fifth.”
“Could you help Trista find the money that he took from her?”
