I shook my head with a chuckle. “Sure. Anything else you’d like?”
Evie reached over and grabbed my plate. She smiled while cutting off a piece of my salmon and replacing it with a piece of her chicken. “Actually there is.”
“Why am I not surprised…”
“Oh, pipe down. I just want to ask you some questions about the office.”
I took my plate back. “What would you like to know?”
For the next half hour, she peppered me with questions about trading, mostly how things ran and what my staff were and weren’t authorized to do. She seemed to have a pretty good grasp on a lot of industry terminology.
“You don’t have any experience in a brokerage house,” I said. “Yet you seem to understand a lot about how things work.”
“I read a bunch of books when I was offered the job.”
I nodded. “Anything else you’d like to know?”
“Actually…” She drummed her fingers on the table. “When I was reading up on your company, I found an old article from the year you opened. It said you had a partner. But I read your last few prospectuses, and the name disappeared from the stockholder section a couple of years back. Amelia…Evans, I think it was?”
I looked away. “That’s right.”
“What happened with her?”
I looked around for the waitress. Catching her eye, I raised my hand to call her over before returning my attention to Evie. “I don’t think that’s relevant to the job you were hired to do.” When the waitress walked over, I requested the check.
She slipped a leather padfolio from her apron pocket and set it on the table. “I’ll take it whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now.” I pulled out my wallet and tucked a credit card into the slot before handing it back.
“Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Evie waited until the waitress disappeared, but didn’t miss a beat picking up right where she’d left off. “I’m asking because oftentimes a change in management can have a major effect on employees.”
“If anything, Amelia’s departure relieved the firm of stress, not added to it. She ran the IPO division—bringing companies public for the first time. There’s a lot of pressure involved with that type of deal. We no longer take on that type of work.”
“Oh…okay. How long ago did she leave the company?”
“Three years.”
“Did any staff go with her when she left?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Was the split amicable? Did she start her own firm?”
The waitress returned with the credit card receipt, so I scribbled my name. When I looked up, Evie was still waiting for an answer. So I gave her one.
“There was no split. Amelia Evans died.”