Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money by Linda L. Richards

Author:Linda L. Richards [Richards, Linda L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Suspense, Suspense Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Thriller, Romantic Suspense, Stock Exchanges Corrupt Practices Fiction, financial thriller, mystery and thriller, mystery ebook, Kidnapping Fiction, woman sleuth, Swindlers and Swindling Fiction, Insider Trading in Securities Fiction
ISBN: 9780778321033
Publisher: Linda L. Richards
Published: 2004-11-30T13:00:00+00:00

2225262728

_____________________________________________

65 1/243 1/23

-2-10-15-15+42

-179.5

+126

= 53.50

The meaning was not instantly clear to me. Just apparently unrelated numbers that mostly didn’t even add up. Not a calculation then. But the way the second line was notated, it could refer to a stock price. And if the first line represented dates, then... my face must have registered something as the notation’s meaning started to become clear — a widening of my eyes or just a look of sudden and shocked understanding. Arianna noticed right away.

“You see it.” Not a question.

I nodded. “I... I think so. Do you know what it is?”

“I think so, too.” I must have looked a question at her because she said, “I have a financial background. It’s how Ernest and I met.”

“But it’s crazy,” I said. “It’s beyond crazy. I can’t imagine Ernie doing something like this. Can you?”

The shrug again. “I don’t know what to think anymore,” she said softly. “I just wish he’d told me something. Anything.” Now it was my turn to watch closely: to gauge the expressions flitting across her face and calculate their sincerity. Honestly, though, there wasn’t much to see. Just that cool, clear profile. Arianna’s was a face that didn’t give much away.

“Did you show this to the police?”

She shook her head: No.

“Why?”

“If I’m correct and Ernest engineered this whole thing, well then, he’s doing it for a reason, isn’t he?”

I shrugged my shoulders. It was too big a mess to even contemplate engineering it.

“Well,” she said, considering, “that’s what I think. And then there’s another thing: what if I’m wrong? And what if I told the police I suspected my husband of doing this? And then they stop looking and something... something terrible happened? Then it would all be my fault,” the well bred control seemed to be slipping slightly. Arianna looked close to tears for a second. Then the cloud was gone, or I’d been wrong about it in the first place.

“But why are you telling me all of this? Why bother talking to me at all?” I had to ask.

“I thought about it a lot after I saw you earlier today. I had to stop at home to get these things and I checked on you before our meeting. You’re in this business,” she indicated the paper between us, “the business of stocks. Or you were. So I guess part of me wanted to know — to know, you understand — if you were involved on some level. That seemed important to me.” I could understand that. All of it. It was Ernie we were talking about.

“When I first saw you,” she went on, “I thought you might represent a missing piece. You know: an old girlfriend suddenly back on the scene. Quite a coincidence. Then, when Ernest was... missing... I thought... I thought maybe you were in on it. That maybe you knew things I didn’t. But you don’t, do you Madeline? You don’t know anything.”

Since this summed things up even more neatly than I would have done — after all, I’d been the one driving all over West L.

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