ve had access to your accounts, wouldn’t she? Maybe even your social security number?”
Natalie set her coffee cup down with a thump, frowning at Andrew. “Weren’t you listening to me? I said Amber was on my side. From the beginning.”
Andrew glanced up at her, and the expression in his dark eyes looked entirely too cynical for a man five years her junior. “Sometimes the people we trust most are the ones who do the most harm,” he said flatly. “If it turns out that she’s involved, she wouldn’t be the first to claim loyalty to deflect the blame from herself.”
Both Aaron and Casey were looking somberly at Andrew, as if they knew he spoke from experience when it came to betrayal, but Natalie shook her head. “That doesn’t even make sense. Why would she be calling me to give me updates if she’d had anything to do with it?”
“Maybe to see if you’ve made any progress in your research,” Aaron suggested. “You know that old advice about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“I am not Amber’s enemy. Nor is she mine. She’s a friend. One of the few I have left after this debacle.”
“Sounds to me like you didn’t have very good friends,” Aaron muttered.
Natalie bit her lip, thinking she’d come to that same realization recently. Casey squeezed her knee again.
“You should check out Cathy Linski,” she told Andrew, and spelled the name for him.
He wrote it down, making notes about what Amber had said about Cathy’s recent windfall and about what Beecham had told her. “I’ll look into it,” he said. “Anyone else?”
She shrugged with the feeling of helplessness that had overwhelmed her every time she’d tried to narrow down a list of suspects. “There are so many people at the firm. I just don’t know.”
“What about men? Were you romantically involved with anyone at the firm?”
Casey shifted on the couch, muttering, “Andrew.”
His cousin merely glanced at him. He hadn’t minced words about Natalie’s friend, and he wouldn’t about this, either, his expression implied.
“There’s a guy I went out with for a short time, though it wasn’t really all that serious,” she admitted reluctantly. “We dated for about three months. His name is Thad Wolff, but I doubt that he had anything to do with this. He hasn’t been with the firm all that long and he’s definitely looking to move up. He dumped me like a toxic chemical as soon as there was the faintest hint that I was in trouble.”
“No one else?”
“No. I haven’t really had time to date much in the past couple of years. All I’ve focused on was my job.”
And now that was gone, she thought glumly. Leaving her with…what? A ruined reputation, no friends, dwindling savings, and a foolish heart that was about to be battered again when her reckless vacation flirtation with Casey ended, as it soon would.
“Is there anything else you can think of to tell me?” Andrew asked, studying her a bit too closely.
“That’s all.”
“Would you mind giving me your cell number in case I come up with any more questions?”
She recited the number to him and watched him jot it down in his precise, neat handwriting. “What will you do now?”
Folding the notebook, he slipped it into the pocket of the blue cotton shirt he wore with his jeans. “I’m going to Nashville.”
“Oh. If the senior partners find out I have a private investigator looking into this—much less two…”
He flicked her a look that made her fall silent. “They won’t find out until you’re ready for them to,” he said. “I’ll talk to Beecham first, find out if there’s anything he hasn’t told you. You’ll probably be getting a call from him, asking if you really sent me. He’ll probably try to nag you into calling me off and letting him keep billing you.”
“I’ll call Beecham.”
“No. Wait until he calls you. I don’t want him to have advance notice that I’m coming—just in case he decides to go to one of the suspects on your list and offer any evidence he has uncovered, for a nice price.”
“You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
Andrew shrugged. “I trust my family. Outside of that…only a select few.”
“I see.”