Kusack kept his eyes on hers as he leaned forward. "Must be some trick, keeping all kinds of numbers in your head."
"I'm good at it. Most people keep numbers in their heads. Social security, PIN numbers, telephone numbers, dates."
"Me, I have to write everything down. Otherwise I mix it all up. I guess you don't worry about that."
"I don't—"
"Kate." Josh interrupted again, met her impatient glance with a quiet look. "Where do you record the numbers?''
"In my head," she said wearily. "I don't forget. I haven't had to look up the security code in years."
Lips pursed, Kusack examined his ragged nails. "Where would you look it up, if you had to?''
"In my Filofax, but…" Her voice trailed off as the impact hit home. "In my Filofax," she repeated. "I have everything in it."
She grabbed her purse, fumbled through it, and took out the thick, leather-bound book. "For backup," she said, opening the book. "Backup's the first rule. Here." She located the page, nearly laughed. "My life in numbers."
Kusack scratched his chin. "You keep that with you."
"I just said it's my life. That's literally true. It's always in my bag."
"Where do you keep your bag—say, during office hours?"
"In my office."
"And you'd carry it around with you. I know my wife never takes two steps without her pocketbook."
"Only if I was leaving the building. Josh." She clutched his hand. "Only if I was leaving the building. Anybody in the firm could have taken the code. Christ, anybody at all." She squeezed her eyes tight. "I should have thought of it before. I just wasn't thinking at all."
"That's still your signature on the forms, Ms. Powell," Kusack reminded her.
"It's a forgery," she snapped and rose to her feet. "You listen to me. Do you think I'd risk everything I worked for, everything I was given, for a lousy seventy-five K? If money was what was important to me, I could have picked up the phone, called my aunt and uncle, called Josh, and they would have given me twice that without a single question. I'm not a thief, and if I were, I sure as hell would cover my tracks better than this. What idiot would use her ow
n code, her own name, leave such a pathetically obvious paper trail?"
"You know, Ms. Powell"—Kusack folded his hands on the table again—"I asked myself that same question. I'll tell you what my take is. The person had to be one of three things: stupid, desperate, or very, very smart."
"I'm very smart."
"That you are, Ms. Powell," Kusack said with a slow nod. "That you are. You're smart enough to know that seventy-five large isn't peanuts. Smart enough to be able to hide it where it couldn't easily be found."
"Detective, my client denies any knowledge of the money in question. The evidence is not just circumstantial but highly questionable. We both know you can't make a case with this, and you've taken up enough of our time."
"I appreciate your cooperation." Kusack tidied the papers and put them back in his file. "Ms. Powell," he continued, as
Josh led her to the door, "one more thing. How'd you break your nose?"
"Excuse me?"
"Your nose," he said with an easy smile. "How'd you break it?"
Baffled, she lifted a hand and rubbed it, felt the familiar angle. "Bottom of the ninth, stretching a double into a three-bagger in a bad imitation of Pete Rose. I cracked it against the fielder's knee."
His teeth flashed. "Safe or out?"
"Safe."
He watched her go, then flipped the file open again and studied the signatures on the forms. Stupid, desperate, or very, very smart, he thought.