St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

asked, pulling out a small digital recorder. Elena’s directives rarely came in twos or threes.
    “Several things.” Elena lowered her chin and looked at Kayla over the top of her sexy Italian sunglasses. “Are the finances all in order for the Desert Art Week?”
    “I don’t know about the rest of the festival, but everything is ready for your event. I wish we could call it something besides ‘The Fast Draw.’” Kayla kept her voice neutral, but it was an effort. If I was a self-respecting painter, I’d sharpen the end of a brush and fall on it before I entered that contest. I don’t care if first prize is twenty-five grand. There’s something belittling about the whole thing.
    Elena shrugged. “I didn’t choose the name. I simply supplied the money and the place. The arts are very important.”
    Especially for the socially ambitious, Kayla thought sourly. Social climbing was one of Elena’s less charming traits.
    Hey, if you’d been raised next door to a slum, you’d want to be accepted by the high and mighty, too, Kayla told herself. You’re just jealous of her looks.
    They’re worth being jealous of.
    With an effort Kayla dragged her mind back to the Fast Draw event, which was part of an annual art festival conducted to raise funds for the Scottsdale Desert Museum. Thirty landscape painters had been invited to paint the same subject in a two-hour timed contest. This year the Bertones had made quite an impression by offering their estate as the painting site and promising to purchase the top three canvases. Then they had doubled the total prize money to fifty thousand.
    The local press had gone gaga. Not only was Elena Bertone ravishing and intelligent and a sublime hostess, she was incredibly generous too. Definitely the best thing to happen to Scottsdale since reliable tap water.
    “The Fast Draw is the name they’ve used for years,” Elena continued. “I’m not ready to change that tradition yet. Have you done everything I required?”
    Kayla didn’t have to check her notes. The Bertones were far and away her most important client. The fact that her boss, Steve Foley, had given the Bertones exclusively to her a few months ago still amazed her. Maybe he’d guessed that she was mentally packing up and heading out for greener employment pastures.
    “The funds are all in the prize account,” Kayla said. “I’ve arranged for a commercial sign painter to do the presentation checks so that they’ll show up in the press photos.”
    “Good.” Elena made no secret of the fact that she wanted her face and discreetly presented cleavage on the society pages at least once a week. “The caterer has given me a price of two hundred dollars a head for the Fast Draw party, but he demands a cashier’s check before he serves a single canapé.”
    He must have worked for the superrich before, Kayla thought. People who spent lavishly didn’t always pay on time. In fact, they rarely did. “If you want to pay the wine bills and the rest of the party expenses when you pay the caterer, you’ll have to top up the entertainment account. I can pull it from the household account as usual.”
    Elena removed her sunglasses and looked at Kayla like she was interviewing for a job rather than already an employee. “No.”
    The tone and the cool appraisal in the wide brown eyes made Kayla’s neck tingle.
    “Deposit this in the entertainment account,” Elena said, takinga cream-colored vellum envelope from beneath her plate. “It should settle all bills.”
    Kayla took the envelope. The heavy paper flap wasn’t sealed. She lifted it and removed a single handwritten check. It was drawn on a foreign bank she’d never heard of. Her eyes widened.
    “Twenty-two million dollars,” she said. “Holy—there must be some mistake. Even you couldn’t spend that much on a party.”
    “Your job isn’t to judge my expenditures.” Elena’s voice was as cold as her eyes. Her faint exotic accent deepened. “Your job is to deposit and withdraw money at my desire.”
    Kayla’s stomach knotted. The words compliant and complicit were part of any private banker’s training. Compliant and complicit bankers were no longer legally immune from the implications of their acts. Or as Kayla thought of it: Launder money and go to jail.
    “I’ll be glad to deposit this check in any account you specify,” Kayla said, “but, as I’m not familiar with the bank the check is drawn on, I’m required by federal government