“The prototype,” he murmured.
“For the Living Ruff merchandise you ordered. Yes. All the way from Shenzhen Industries, China.”
He looked at her uncertainly.
“Well, officially,” Felicity continued. “Unofficially”—she leaned in and flipped it over, exposing the etched Made in USA—“not so much.”
Harvey exhaled heavily and nodded. Remorse, anger, and regret filled his face. “Christ. You know it took me months to notice that? To turn it over, see the sticker, and wonder why it was there. When I realized, I felt such a fool.”
“You are not a fool.” Felicity said, injecting every ounce of sincerity she could manage into her voice. She leaned in, meeting his eye. “I’m paid to pick things over. I look for the tiniest irregularities like this every day in my job. You’re a bookkeeper who runs a charity you love. Unlike me, you are not always on the hunt for the lies, the loopholes, the con. That does not make you a fool.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly. Tears pricked his eyes, and he brushed them away angrily. “I’ve been in agony over this. The stress is killing me. I feel sick all the time. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I just… I couldn’t talk about it to anyone.”
“Not even Rosalind?”
“Rosalind still thinks my new program is the vet-tech scheme. It was going to be that. When Ms. Bartell’s donation came in, I told my wife that’s how I’d spend it. It was going to be so wonderful to help some of the clients who could embrace this opportunity and really get back on their feet.”
“So what happened?”
He suddenly froze. “Don’t you know? I thought you knew. You said you did!”
“I do.” Felicity prayed her poker face would hold. “I’d like to hear your version, though. Charles’s version is so…self-serving.”
Another educated guess. He was the best fit in all this as the con master, even if he had somehow managed to hide his stolen donation well enough to evade even Saul.
On the balcony earlier, she’d remembered reading The Girls by Diana McLellan, an intriguing book documenting Hollywood’s sapphic sewing circle—closeted lesbian and bisexual stars from the early days of movies who socialized together. One line had always stuck with her: look for the unnecessary lie.
In one case involving Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, the actresses repeatedly and stoutly claimed to have never met, despite proof that they had. Why the lie? Pull the string, find the truth. McLellan had deduced the lie was to hide that they had been secret lovers.
In Charles’s case, he’d told her two unnecessary lies. He’d said he was all out of Babe Ruth collectibles. She’d seen four on shelves in his office. He’d claimed his box of collectibles in the storeroom was six months old, but it didn’t have a lick of dust on it. And it wasn’t as if he habitually dusted his boxes; he’d also told her the room always made him sneeze.
Why the lies? What was the point? She had no idea, and it didn’t even matter. The fact that he’d lied about minor things made it likely he’d lied about everything.
It was such a rookie error. Con artists tended to embellish stories to sell their lies, and the devil was in the detail. Lawyers did it, too. You could always spot them making up BS by the sheer layers of intricacy their arguments contained. Felicity had a lot of practice spotting liars.
“I know this is Charles’s con,” Felicity said with more conviction when Harvey didn’t correct her earlier statement. “He set you up. And again, I don’t blame you. The incredible story he told me today about how you came to be so committed to your merchandise range was a masterful performance. Throwing in a real-life landslide to explain why you had no goods to show for it was a particularly clever touch. I was ready to take that back to my boss and walk away. He’s a very compelling man, Charles Stone.”
“He is,” Harvey said in a monotone. “So why didn’t you tell your boss his story was what happened? Your case would be closed, and you could go back to your regular life.”
“Because I had loose ends. Because he lied to me. He’s not out of stock on the collectibles he says he is. He’s had recent, fresh shipments. And I found out the landslide didn’t affect Shenzhen Industries at all. It was enough to reevaluate everything he said. So yes, while Charles was convincing and I’d like to wrap this up, he wasn’t convincing enough.”
Harvey’s fingers traced the stitching on the sofa. “I suppose you think me very foolish not to see I was being conned before it was too late. You worked it out in a week. It took me six months and Charles’s secretary, Darlene, putting the dots so close together that even I could get a clue.”
“I think scam artists can be very clever,” Felicity said, filing away the secretary comment for later. “One person I admire a great deal has been taken in by people she trusted implicitly.”
Felicity still wasn’t over the fact that Elena of all people had been duped for so long by those in her inner circle, including her now ex-husband.
Maybe it was the sincerity of Felicity’s words or maybe he was just tired of hiding, but the next moment Harvey buried his head in his hands and—
Oh God. Was he…crying?
Alarm shot through her. What the hell was she supposed to do with that? There was no crying in business! You just…did not…do that.
To give him his privacy while he collected himself, she shifted her gaze out the windows into a copse of tall up-lit elm trees lining the property border.
The sniffling eventually ceased, and Felicity turned to see where Harvey’s breakdown had progressed to.
“Sorry,” he muttered, fumbling around in his pocket and withdrawing a handkerchief. “I’m even more stressed than I thought. The lack of sleep is so bad. And Charles threatening me didn’t help.”
“He…threatened you?” Felicity asked. “What with?”
Harvey looked traumatized all over again. “Everything,” he croaked out. “Look, I suppose you’ll need the whole story. For the police. That’s—well, that’s fine. I knew this was coming one way or another. I’m glad it was sooner. I don’t know if my mental health would have coped waiting for the independent audit. Those things can take forever.”
“You know that’s coming?”
“Of course. It’s standard. In fact, the only thing that gave me a smile in this sorry affair was that Charles doesn’t know that. He’s never bothered to find out how charities are run, despite our family having a few. There are checks and balances in place to prevent people doing exactly what he’s done. He too clueless to know he could never get away with it and will be caught eventually.”
“Does that make you feel any better? Knowing he’s not getting away with it?”
“Some. But not really. It doesn’t remove all the ways I feel so terrible. All the ways I should have seen what was happening and didn’t.” He shook his head.
“How did it start? Did you tell him of your dream to have a merchandise line for Living Ruff?”
“God, this wasn’t my idea. None of it was.” He sighed. “Three years ago, a homeless woman gave me a little orange dog she’d made. It was a bit…” He hesitated. “It wasn’t attractive, but it had been made from the heart, so I put it on my desk. You know—it was polite. Besides, Harriet is a delightful woman with a wonderful sense of humor. Truly, she’d overcome so much, and her dog had just died despite our every effort…” He sniffled again.
“Go on,” Felicity prodded.
“Before long, people started calling it my mascot, and I went along with it. Why not? Ugly dogs, beautiful dogs—they’re all creatures who need our love. In a way, it’s poignant that Living Ruff should have an ugly mascot. We deal with things other people turn away from.”
