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Excerpt
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"Are you sure my breast implants aren't tax-de-ductible?"
The blond bombshell sitting across from Keeley Davis tapped her
acrylic nails on the rich brown maple desk. "That exotic
dancer in Indiana got hers deducted and they weren't that much
bigger than mine."
Keeley turned away from her laptop screen, where she was reviewing
Sugar's tax return. Tax season was finally wrapping up, and none
too soon for a poor, worn-out accountant. "Sorry, Sugar—it'd
be a long shot. The tax court is cracking down on what they regard
as frivolous deductions and I doubt we could get it past them.
We can write off your costumes and the tinted latex nipple makeup,
but that's about it. No personal care like tanning, manicures
or hair extensions."
"And we can't appeal? I only got the implants for professional
reasons, you know." Sugar pursed her pink glossy lips.
Keeley had known her friend and client too long to fall for her
act. She peered over the tops of her glasses. "And you get
no personal benefits from them?"
Sugar smacked her arm playfully. "Oh, all right, you naughty
girl. I didn't lose any nerve sensation from the surgery and my
last boyfriend and I did enjoy them."
"Thought so." Keeley pushed her glasses back up her
nose to focus on the computer again. "And if we make an issue
over this, the IRS might want to look in to how much of your cash
tips you've been reporting as income." Keeley wasn't a novice
to IRS audits, but didn't exactly enjoy them, either.
"Hmmph." Sugar backed down, like Keeley thought she
would. As a certified public accountant, Keeley couldn't take
part in tax evasion in the form of under-reporting garter or G-string
tips, but she had a good idea thatSugar salted away her own personal
cash stash, and who could blame her? Keeley would do the exact
same thing in the same situation.
But Keeley was on the straight and narrow, just taking the figures
Sugar gave her and plugging them into the tax program, although
sometimes she raised an eyebrow at an obviously low figure. Sugar
would revise it upward without blinking.
Keeley added in a couple of last-minute expenses Sugar had brought
over today. Sugar, not one to sit still for any period of time,
paced around the small office. Her long legs took her rapidly
from one terra-cotta faux-painted wall to the other, the beige
Berber carpet muffling her sneaker-clad steps. Like some dancers,
Sugar had foot problems and only wore high heels onstage and on
dates.
Keeley rotated her own brown-pump-clad foot under her desk. Her
shoes matched her hair, her eyes, her jacket and her skirt. She
was a big brown wren in comparison to her flashier blond friend,
but accountants couldn't exactly sport cleavage T-shirts and midthigh
denim miniskirts.
Sugar stopped to eye a pair of watercolor prints of Florence,
Italy. Keeley had never been there, but the red tile roofs matched
the whole rich, Tuscan, trust-me-with-your-finances theme she
wanted to emphasize. After all, accountants working in Renaissance
Florence had invented double-entry bookkeeping.
Keeley printed the return and eyed it one last time before passing
the pages to Sugar. "Read these over before I file electronically."
Sugar sat and speed-read through the papers. She looked as if
she was skimming, but Keeley knew she was tallying every number
to the penny. She finally raised her blond head and smiled. "I
suppose that's as good as it gets without writing off the breast
implants."
Keeley shrugged, palms upward. "If you really want me to
try…"
"No, I guess not. After all, pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered."
Sugar signed the bottom page for her own records.
"That's right." Keeley'd heard that saying more than
once growing up in downstate Illinois. Not that there had been
enough to even get slightly plump on. "Off it goes to Uncle
Sam. Since you've made your quarterly payments, you don't owe
any more than usual."
"Whoopee. I'll have to schedule myself at Frisky's a couple
more nights to make up for it."
"If any of your clients work for the IRS, charge them double."
And now that Keeley's highest-earning season was almost over,
she'd have to save her money to make it last as long as possible
until next winter.
Sugar passed the papers to Keeley. "By the way, Keel, I
recommended your accounting services to an old friend of mine."
"Oh, who?" That might help tide her over while she
built her client base.
Sugar grinned. "Binky Bingham."
"Boy, when you said 'old,' you weren't kidding. I thought
he croaked last fall after hot-tubbing with that dancer from Chicago
Gentlemen's Club." And why on earth would Binky Bingham,
billionaire, need accounting services from her fledgling business?
"Alive and kicking. He's still one of her regulars, in and
out of the club."
Keeley made a face. Binky fancied himself quite the ladies' man
and had the money to make it so. Sugar was Binky's occasional
arm candy, especially when he wanted to scare his children and
grandchildren into thinking he was going to leave his money to
her. He was lucky they hadn't had him declared legally incompetent
and locked him up somewhere.
Sugar laughed. "Don't look at me like that. Aside from dancing
for him at Frisky's, I sure never spent any time naked with him,
hot tub or no."
"That's a relief." Binky Bingham was older than dirt
and twice as ugly. Keeley was glad to hear Sugar hadn't slept
with the old goat.
"You're telling me. Not even all of his money would be enough.
For such a financial genius, he sure wasn't thinking with the
right head. Viagra, a hot tub and a previous heart attack? Why
didn't he just step in front of a bus? Potentially less fatal
and definitely less embarrassing."
"You know Binky is incapable of embarrassment."
Sugar raised a perfectly French-manicured finger. "Personally,
no. But professionally, yes. That's why your name came up."
She leaned over the desk. "You absolutely cannot tell anyone
what I'm going to tell you. Promise?"
Keeley narrowed her eyes. "I can't be party to anything
illegal, you know that."
Her friend shook her head. "Not illegal—not so far."
"So far? Sugar, this doesn't sound good at all."
"It's about Binky's company. He thinks one of his executives
is stealing money from the trust funds."
Keeley gave an astonished whistle. Bingham Brothers was the granddaddy
of Chicago's financial companies, managing hundreds of millions
of dollars since before the 1929 stock market crash. "It's
possible, of course, but there are so many safeguards to theft.
These huge companies have hundreds of people overseeing the books."
"Binky grew up with those books, and he has a gut feeling
they're bad. He went into the office several times to poke around
and says the atmosphere is pure poison."
"Hmmm." Keeley turned over possibilities in her mind.
"Why doesn't Binky call for an audit?"
"And flush his company's reputation down the toilet? Not
to mention his family's reputation. Hot-tub hijinks are one thing,
but missing money is unforgivable."
Keeley nodded. A whiff of scandal and the company would bottom
out. It had happened before to Chicago financial firms, usually
involving bankruptcy, corporate dissolution and prison terms.
"So what does Binky think I can do? I can't exactly walk
in off the street and look at the books. It would take months
for a whole team of auditors to examine everything."
"He has a smaller, specific group of accounts to audit first.
When I told him you'd completed a certificate in forensic accounting,
his wrinkly little face just lit up. He said his representative
would be in touch to get you inside for a covert audit."
"A covert audit?" Despite her misgivings, Keeley's
investigative antennae perked up. She loved digging for money,
ever since she was a kid checking the couch for loose change.
"So you'll do it? Binky knows absolutely everybody and can
get you on the fast track if he recommends you to his friends.
And you know you can bill him a bundle."
Binky would probably expect her to bill a respectable hourly
consultant fee. She wouldn't gouge him, but she could legitimately
bill more for doing the audit on the sly, and probably expert
witness fees as well if it became a matter for the courts. Although
she'd worked her way through school and had no student debt, she
did have obligations. "I'll listen to what his representative
says. Did he say who that is?"
"No names were mentioned, just that he was one of Binky's
protégés and totally trustworthy."
Keeley snorted and Sugar giggled. Men were so naive. Nobody was
totally trustworthy, especially when large sums of money were
concerned.
"I WOULD HAVE BEEN happy to come to your office, Binky."
Dane Weiss leaned over the small table to shout into his elderly
friend's ear over the pulsing rock music. "Or your condo."
Penthouse, rather, overlooking Lake Michigan and the rest of the
city. Binky had an entire floor in Lakenheath Towers, one of Chicago's
most exclusive buildings.
But Binky preferred a different kind of penthouse— the
kind with naked women in it. "And miss the lunchtime show
at Frisky's? At my age, I can't stay awake for the evening show."
He cackled and gestured expansively to the nubile chicks cavorting
above them on the runway. One flipped over and slid down a pole
using just her thighs, and Dane winced. He'd never figured how
they did that without friction burns, but probably some trick
of the trade involving baby powder.
It wasn't as if he were a stranger to these places, having worked
his way through grad school as Binky's driver/personal assistant,
but he did his best to ignore the buffet of female flesh literally
spread in front of him. He wasn't there for a lap dance—not
that Binky would mind if he did partake.
Although the lunchtime dancers weren't quite the A-string team
in their G-strings, Binky didn't care. With his overtipping, he
was the life of the party. "Here, sweetheart, this is for
you." He slipped a fifty into the nearest girl's garter.
Dane tried to stop him, not because Binky had to watch his pennies,
but because the other girls spotted Ulysses S. Grant's bearded
scowl and flocked to Binky like seagulls on a leftover sandwich.
The other customers grumbled as all the entertainment clumped
around the oldest and richest patron in the club.
Binky passed each of them a fifty, accepting their coos and cheek
pinches. Of course the old reprobate knew them all by name.
Dane checked his watch. He'd do about anything for Binky, but
sitting in a titty bar wasn't the best use of his time. Besides,
Dane's fashion designer sister Bridget still occasionally made
costumes for her stripper friends here and would give him hell
if she caught him. Something about being a hypocrite for complaining
how she had put herself through school sewing specially designed
outfits for the dancers. Time to move this meeting along.
Dane raised his voice and gestured at the disgruntled mob across
the runway. "Okay, girls, thanks for visiting, but we have
business to discuss."
His meaning was clear. Dane figured his blond bulk helped put
the point across. The dancers slinked off, Binky staring wistfully
after them, his white hair mussed and cheeks marked with five
different sets of lip prints.
"Dane, Dane, Dane, my boy. There is no business so urgent
that one must disappoint the ladies."
Dane wanted to say that the ladies were only disappointed by
not getting another fifty in their garters, but kept his comments
to himself. "On the phone, you said this was urgent."
Binky sighed, his shoulders drooping. "I did invite you
here for a reason—besides the entertainment. This was one
of the only places I go where I am reasonably certain that none
of my staff attend."
Dane nodded in agreement. Bingham Brothers was, to put it charitably,
a traditional financial organization. Hidebound and stuffy were
other less charitable descriptions. But despite its moldy-oldie
air, it had an impeccable reputation. Binky was still the chairman
of the board despite his semiretirement. "What's up, Binky?"
His friend leaned in. "I think one of my executives is stealing
from the funds entrusted to us by some of our oldest and most
vulnerable clients."
That jolted Dane out of his complacency. "The trust funds?"
Bingham Brothers managed money for the richest families in the
nation, not just Chicago.
Binky nodded, misery apparent on his quivering lip. "It
might even be Charlie."
"Charlie? Your Charlie?" Charles Andrew Bingham VI
was Binky's grandson and a total prick, but Dane had never figured
him for a thief. "But he's the chief financial officer. Why
would Charlie steal from his own company? Doesn't he make over
ten million a year?"
"It may not be the money, Dane. Charlie's always blamed
me for his father's death."
Binky sighed. "As if I ever had any control over Quint.
Reckless, foolish boy. I thought having a son of his own would
settle him, but sadly that was not to be."
Dane blew out a long breath. For Binky this wasn't only professional,
it was personal. Damn. "Who else knows about this?"
"I asked a friend for advice. She's very savvy and gave
me the name of a forensic accountant who can audit the accounts,
if it comes to that."
"Can you trust this friend of yours not to blab?"
"Of course. Sugar Jones and I have been dear, dear friends
for years." Despite his low mood, Binky managed to leer convincingly.
"Sugar Jones?" Dane fought back a groan. Sugar's mind
was one giant business plan. She probably knew to the penny how
much money Binky had stuffed into her garter over the years. Plus
compounded interest.
"You know her?" Whoops, now Binky was getting territorial
on him, like a miniature white poodle protecting a favorite squeak
toy.
Dane held up his hands in a gesture of appeasement. "Purely
business. She models for my sister's lingerie company."
"Lovely!" Binky beamed, his face crinkling into a map
of wrinkles. Friends again. "I'll have to get her to model
for me."
Dane figured modeling lingerie was more clothing than Sugar usually
wore. "Binky, what do you want me to do?"
"Welcome aboard, you're my new controller-in-training."
Dane's jaw dropped. "But you already have a controller.
Do you think he's involved in the missing money?"
"Glenn? No, of course not. He's wanted to retire for some
time now but hasn't found a successor to his liking. Now he has."
Dane nodded. Glenn would do whatever Binky wanted. After all,
Binky was still the boss.
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