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“Twelve years I’ve worked under that man, and he’s pretty much behind closed doors. All day, every day, except when he got called upstairs by the old man. Nobody in, nobody out. He is the single most sit-down man I have ever met in my life. But now, I haven’t seen him inside of that office in a week.”

“Where is he?”

“Who knows? I’m a busy woman. I don’t have time to babysit a grown man. All I know is that he doesn’t seem to like his office anymore. Everyone here knows why Henry was able to keep his job, and it wasn’t his keen business skills. Heck, maybe he’s decided that Sam is going to can him, and he’s looking for a new job. He’d be wise to do that.”

Was Henry looking for a new job? Now that Joel Winslow wouldn’t be around to protect him?

“Thanks, Miranda,” she said. “For the furniture. And the rest.”

“You’re welcome.” Miranda pushed off the doorframe, shuffling the papers in her hands. “And once again, welcome to Winslow Financial. I’m sure you’re going to do great.”

It had been an enlightening morning. So far, she had zero desks and chairs, and one panicking executive.

What else did the day have in store?

Chapter

Eleven

Sam's door was open when Alli returned to the office after her failed quest to locate the desks and chairs on the purchase order. She quietly knocked, hanging back in case he didn’t want to be disturbed.

“Alli, what did you find out?”

“A few things. Is now a good time, or should I come back later?”

He looked up and waved her toward the chair across from his desk before she'd finished asking. He always did that. Never let anyone stand in his doorway explaining themselves. He was decisive like that.

She laid the clipboard down and walked him through it. Three storerooms. Three pages of a purchase order that kept promising furniture that had never been received. And Miranda, who processed every PO in the building and planned her vacations around fiscal year-end because nobody else could do her job, making it clear that this one had never crossed her desk.

"She'd remember twenty desks," Alli said. "Her words. Her back would remember tagging twenty desks and chairs.”

Sam smiled slightly at the joke, chuckling to himself.

"So either it was canceled, and nobody updated the paperwork," she said, "or the furniture exists somewhere it shouldn't. That may be why Leigh had them in her desk.”

Sam leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on the dark oak desk.

"Or the money exists somewhere it shouldn't, and there was never any furniture at all."

Well…that, too. She hadn’t wanted to jump to any conclusions.

“That's a whole other thing."

"It's probably nothing." He said it the way people said things they didn't believe, or didn't want to believe yet. "Half of what I've found this month has been sloppiness. This place ran on my father's handshake for thirty years. There's no system, there's just people who knew what he wanted."

"But you'll check."

"I'll have accounting pull the payments." He wrote himself a note, one line, and set the pen down. "If a check cleared, there's a vendor on the other end of it with a name and an address. That's a thread worth pulling."

She retrieved her clipboard and was halfway out of the chair when he continued speaking.

"I've been thinking about Leigh's condo, and what needs to be done to get it all shipped to Florida for her partner.”

She sat back down, her pen poised over her notepad on top of the clipboard. He was in a mood to task things out. She’d already learned this particular expression was all about getting things done.

“The movers can do most of it. The kitchen, the furniture, the neutral things. But her personal items…” He paused, rubbing his chin in thought. "I don't want a stranger boxing up somebody's life. Thirty years, and then some kid from a moving company puts her photographs in a carton labeled MISC."

There was frustration in his tone, and she didn’t blame him one bit. Is that what Leigh’s life had come down to? A mover pawing through her personal papers and mementos, shoving them into a cardboard box? The woman deserved better.