Pouncing on Murder (11 page)

She was shaking her head again. “It’s not that. Well, it is, but I’m scared it’s all my fault.”

The idea sounded ridiculous, but I didn’t laugh. “How could that be?” I asked.

There was no one within earshot, but she looked left and right and then edged up to the very front of the desk. “Adam’s an accountant.” She was talking to the countertop, but I nodded anyway. “He’s a very good accountant and he was making a lot of money in Chicago working for a big firm. Now that he’s on his own he doesn’t have many clients, but he’s getting there and someday everything will be fine.”

“Okay,” I said, drawing out the word a little, and not having any idea where this was going.

She blew out a breath. “One of the things Adam does really well is find bookkeeping anomalies. It’s what made his reputation. Companies came to the firm he worked for just to get his opinion.”

I waited for her to go on, because this was clearly leading up to something.

“Anyway,” she said, “a few years ago, Adam turned
someone in to the IRS. He’d found evidence of fraud and was obligated by law to report this guy, Seth Wartella, who was ultimately convicted of tax fraud and sent to jail.”

I wanted to ask a question, but I could tell that Irene had started the real part of the story and I didn’t want to interrupt before it was over.

“For a long time I barely thought about it,” she said in a crowded rush. “It was years ago. It was history. It was over and done with and Wartella had never really been in our life; he’d just been a client’s employee that, by law, Adam had to report. Adam testified and I went to watch, but that was it. Wartella had committed tax fraud and embezzled, and went to jail because of it, and none of that was Adam’s fault,” she said in a fierce whisper.

“Of course it wasn’t,” I said. “It would be ridiculous to think otherwise.”

“The only thing is . . .” Irene’s voice was strained. “A couple of Saturdays back, I could swear I saw Seth Wartella.”

“A couple of weeks ago?” I asked, trying to summon a mental calendar.

She nodded. “The same weekend Henry died.”

•   •   •

Detective Inwood’s pen wrote for a long time before he looked up again. When he did, his gaze settled on me for a brief moment before he went back to Irene. “All right, Mrs. Deering. Please continue.”

Right after Irene had told me about Seth Wartella, I’d called the sheriff’s office and made an appointment with
Inwood. “Is this urgent?” he’d asked tiredly. Which wasn’t a good thing, since it was still morning.

“On a scale of one to ten,” I’d said, “with ten being a falling rock about to hit my head, I’d say this is a seven.”

“Come down at noon,” he’d said, sighing. “I’ll fit you in.”

So here we were, in that old familiar interview room. I’d made the strategic error of letting Irene enter first and I ended up in my regular seat. While we’d waited for the detective, I’d craned my head around, trying to see the ceiling dragon from the point of view of the table’s other side without moving over there, but all I got was a crick in my neck and an odd look from Irene.

Now Irene was sitting up close to the table, staring at her folded hands. “I called the arresting officers,” she said, “and they told me Seth Wartella had been released from prison in January. I didn’t want to tell Adam, because it was right after his heart surgery and I wanted him to focus on getting better, and not worry about Seth.”

The detective eyed her. “Have you told him?”

She nodded. “Last night.”

Inwood wrote, then asked, “Do you have any reason to believe that Mr. Wartella would want to injure your husband?”

She hesitated. “At the trial Wartella denied everything, but the evidence was obvious. He was angry when the verdict came in and I’ll never forget the look he gave Adam.” She hunched her shoulders.

“He never verbally threatened or accosted your husband?” the detective asked.

“Not as far as I know.”

Inwood wrote some more. “All right, Mrs. Deering. Thank you for the information. It’s a pity you didn’t come to us earlier, though.”

“I . . .” Irene’s shoulders hunched a little more. “I was scared,” she said in a small voice. “I just wanted him to go away. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t him that I saw. Maybe it was someone who looked like him.”

This seemed unlikely, since she’d told us Seth Wartella was about five foot five and had bright red hair and ears that stuck out, but I supposed it was possible.

“Possible,” Inwood said, “but unlikely.” He slid his notebook into his shirt pocket. “We’ll be in touch. Ms. Hamilton, I assume you can find your way out?” He nodded to us and left.

“You’ve been here before?” Irene asked.

“Never in handcuffs,” I said, and was rewarded with a glimmer of a smile.

Outside, the April sun was doing its meager best and I shied away from wondering how cold it would get that night. Irene got her car keys out of her purse. “Thanks for all your help, Minnie. I didn’t know who to talk to about Seth, that day a couple of weeks ago. I guess I just tried not to think about it. But now that someone might be trying to . . . trying to . . .”

I took the keys from her fumbling hand, beeped the car doors unlocked for her, and handed back the keys. “I
understand why you didn’t want to tell Adam about Seth.”

She looked at me ruefully. “That detective didn’t.”

“Mr. Sympathy? No. He didn’t. But then he’s not a wife who’s stretching herself thin to hold her husband and their life together. You were trying to protect Adam and I don’t blame you a bit.”

Her shoulders released some of their tension. “Thanks, Minnie. That means a lot.”

A brilliant idea sparked into my brain. Hooray! I’d been wondering how to tell her that I’d promised her husband I’d do a little Minnie-type investigating, and here was the perfect opportunity. “Tell you what,” I said. “I can do a little research on that Seth guy. See what I can find out.”

“Minnie, you’ve already done so much for us.” She shook her head. “I can’t let you do that.”

She and her husband were definitely two of a kind. “Ha!” I said. “Try to stop me. I’m a librarian, remember? Research is one of the things I do best.” That and collect Eddie hair upon my person. “From safe and sound inside my snug office, I’ll do a little digging. If I can find out that Seth was in, say, Australia last weekend, we’ll know he had nothing to do with that car.” And likely not with Henry’s death, either.

Irene reached out and gave me a hard hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.

I watched her get into the car and drive away, glad to given her a little peace of mind.

Then I walked back to the library and went to work.

•   •   •

After leaving the library the next day, I walked back to the marina, wondering how private investigators did their investigating. I’d spent part of the previous evening with my laptop, browsing the Internet for information about Seth Wartella, and had found essentially nothing. I’d found an eighty-two-year-old Seth Wartella in Phoenix and an eighteen-year-old version in the greater Washington, D.C., area, both of whom were interested in dating active women who enjoyed long walks and sunsets, but I’d found nothing about a forty-something Seth. Admittedly I didn’t spend too much time online, because the marina’s Wi-Fi connection was abysmally slow, but to not find anything seemed strange.

“What do you think?” I asked Eddie after opening the front door.

He was sitting on the dashboard, studying the passing seagulls, most of him in the evening sunshine, some of him not, and was apparently too busy to talk to me.

I looked at him. “You know, if you went to the effort of sliding forward three inches, all of you would be in the sun.”

He opened his mouth in a large yawn.

“None of that,” I said through an answering yawn. “There’s work to do.”

“Mrr,” he said, still looking outside.

“Ha.” I walked into the bedroom, texting Tucker,
Home at the houseboat cleaning the deck, wouldn’t mind some help
and got back a text reading,
Love to, but have chance 2 assist on emergency knee surgery. Next time?
Smiling, I changed out of school clothes and into grungy apparel, then came back to the kitchen and reached
under the sink for the plastic bucket and scrub brush, talking to my cat the entire time.

“Just because you don’t have thumbs doesn’t mean you can’t contribute to the running of this household. Oh, don’t give me that innocent look. I know you’re perfectly capable of cleaning.” Not that I wanted my socks washed with Eddie spit, but he didn’t need to know that. “There are all sorts of things you could do around here and it’s past time that you started doing your share. I mean, did you catch a single mouse for Aunt Frances last winter?”

He turned to stare are me, and once again I was glad that cats didn’t have the power to summon spontaneous combustion.

“Oh, come on.” I added a little soap to the bucket and ran it full of hot water. “I’m just giving you a hard time.” I went to kiss the top of his fuzzy head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t blame you about the mice. They can’t taste very good.”

“Mrr.”

“Better with mayonnaise? You’re probably right.” I lifted the bucket out of the sink. “Ready, Eddie Freddie? It’s time to swab the decks.”

For the next hour, I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the deck clean of the dust and grime it had accumulated while in storage. How a flat surface that was under a tarp and inside a building could get so dirty I didn’t know, but the dark gray color that the water was turning was clear proof.

“Or not so clear,” I said to Eddie, who was supervising from the small table I’d brought out for him to perch
upon. I sat back on my heels and pushed my hair out of my eyes for the zillionth time. My hands were encased in thick plastic elbow-length gloves, so my dexterity was limited and I was undoubtedly getting soapy water all over my hair, but Eddie was the only one around to see and he wasn’t overly critical of my looks. “Get it? The water is dirty, so it isn’t clear.”

Eddie blinked at me.

“Not sure what that meant,” I said. “Do you think I’m not very funny, or do you not understand the joke? Because I could explain it again, if you’re not sure about parts of it.”

“More of a pun than a joke, isn’t it?”

I spun around—which is hard to do while you’re kneeling—lost my balance, and flopped over onto my back with a loud
thump
. From my new position, I could see blue sky and the beginnings of a setting sun. And if I waited long enough, maybe Ash Wolverson would go away and forget everything he’d seen.

“Are you all right?” Ash vaulted the boat’s railing and crouched down beside me. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

So, not going away. “I’m fine.” I rolled onto my side and sat up. “Honest. You just startled me, that’s all.” I felt dirty water seep into the seat of my sweatpants. There was no way I was going to stand up in front of Ash Wolverson with a wet hind end, so I kept talking and tried not
to think about my tangled wet hair and the dirty soapsuds on my face. “What brings you down to the marina? Any news about Henry or Adam?”

“Oh.” Still in a crouch, Ash leaned back onto his heels and held his arms loosely across his thighs. It looked like a comfortable position for him, but I was pretty sure that if I tried it, my legs would start screaming at me within seconds. “No, sorry. No news.” He looked at the wet deck. “Detective Inwood did tell me that Mrs. Deering had stopped by, with information about a Seth Wartella. So I’ll be looking into that.”

“Oh. Good.” I almost told him that I hadn’t been able to find a trace of Seth on the Internet, but decided to keep quiet. That might be considered interfering in police business and . . . then I decided to heck with it. “Just so you know—”

But Ash’s words ran over mine. “Minnie, I heard your boyfriend moved downstate a few months ago. It’s not like I was stalking you,” he said hurriedly. “I just happened to hear from a friend. And I’m sorry things didn’t work out between you, but if you’re doing okay and you’re ready to go, you know, go out again, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go out with me.”

For a moment, the only thing I heard was the soft wash of waves against the side of my boat. A few months ago, when Tucker was still living in Charlevoix, Ash had asked me out and I’d had to tell him I was seeing someone else. And now I had to tell him all over again.

Or . . . did I?

The instant the thought oozed into my head, my mother’s voice chased it out.
Minnie, don’t you dare think about cheating on that doctor of yours. You agreed to a long-distance relationship, didn’t you? Well, then you’d best keep that agreement. Hamiltons don’t go back on their word.

Mom’s words zipped in and out of my thoughts in a heartbeat. I looked up at Ash and tried to smile. “Thanks so much for asking, but—”

He stood up fast. “But you’re not interested. Hey, don’t worry about it. I just thought maybe there was a chance. I won’t bother you—”

“Mrr!”

Ash whipped around. “Hey, Eddie. Sorry, big guy, I didn’t see you there.” He scratched my cat behind his furry ears. “How are you doing these days?”

“Just fine, thanks.”

Ash and I turned to see Rafe grinning at us from the dock, his teeth white against a skin that appeared tan even in April. Of course, his distant Native American heritage helped that look, but it still seemed inherently unfair. “How are you?”

I glanced from the slim, black-haired Rafe to the near-movie-star square-jawed looks of Ash. “You two know each other?”

“My man Ash?” Rafe saluted him with an index finger shaped into a pistol. “We go way back. Say, how’s your sister doing?” He waggled his eyebrows. “Still hot as ever?”

“Please tell me you’re here for a reason,” I said. “If you’ll notice, I’m trying to get some work done.” I’d had time to clean the houseboat’s inside before moving, but hadn’t had time to touch the outside until now.

Rafe looked down at the dirty, soapy mess I’d made. “Huh. You know it might freeze tonight, right? Better get that cleaned up or it could be nasty slippery in the morning.” He pointed at Ash again. “You doing anything? Because if we don’t get out of here, Ms. Hamilton here is going to dragoon you into helping her clean.”