The Missing Dough (11 page)

“About which part? The fact that you got caught watching out for us, or that you know he has a new girl in his life?”

“I’d greatly appreciate it if you didn’t let on about either one of them,” the chief said.

“Okay, but what do we get in return?” Maddy asked.

That got the police chief’s back up, and for once, I couldn’t blame him. I loved my sister more than anything in the world, but sometimes she definitely had shoe-in-mouth disease. “I’m sorry. Were you under the impression that your discretion counted as something more than a courtesy to me? If that’s the way you feel about it, tell my son whatever you want to. I don’t care anymore.”

He was about to get back in his squad car when I said, “Hang on a second, Kevin. Of course we won’t tell him about any of this. You can trust us.”

He shrugged, but at least he stopped retreating, so Maddy added, “I’m sorry for what I said. This whole thing has got me pretty rattled, but I shouldn’t try to use your friendship with either one us against you.”

“You’re forgiven. Given your situation, I can’t say that I blame you a bit,” the chief said.

“Are you making any progress?” I asked timidly and then hastily added, “You don’t have to answer, but you know that we’re dying to find out.”

He took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair, and then said, “It’s slow, that’s for sure, but we’ve got a few leads we’re pursuing.”

I smiled at him. “Chief, we aren’t interviewing you for the newspaper. You can be a little more forthcoming than that.”

He laughed. “Sorry. I guess I just got a little guarded. I’ve been burned a few times in the past, though not by you two. I meant it, though. We’ve got a few irons in the fire going. I’ve got Chief Hudson from Cow Spots looking into a few things right now for me, too, but he’s got his hands full with a mess of his own, so I’m not sure when I’ll hear from him.”

“What’s going on there?” Maddy asked.

“I don’t guess it will hurt to tell you. He and the state police just broke up a gambling ring in town. It was being run right under his nose, and Hudson didn’t know much about it. He’s as mad as I would be, and nobody’s going to get away with it if he has a say about it.”

“It wasn’t at the dry cleaner, was it?” I asked. I based my guess on how Vivian had reacted to us when we pressed her for information, and how she’d folded once she found out that Art Young was in my corner.

Chief Hurley looked at me with widened eyes. “How could you possibly know that, Eleanor?”

“It was just a lucky guess,” I said.

“I doubt that. Are you sure your buddy Art Young didn’t tell you anything about it?”

I was glad that I could answer honestly. “I guess you haven’t heard. I haven’t talked to him in a while. Our friendship is on the rocks.”

“So, you finally wised up and dropped him from your group of friends, did you? That’s smart, Eleanor.”

I wasn’t about to get into that discussion with him.

“We know the woman who runs the place,” I said. “Was Vivian arrested, as well?”

“She’s in one of my holding cells even as we speak. The chief didn’t think she’d be safe in his lockup. How do you happen to know her? It’s a little far to take your dry cleaning, isn’t it?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I came up with something else to distract him from pursuing the matter any further. “Grant Whitmore took his dry cleaning to Cow Spots, you know.”

“No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t,” he said. “How did you figure that out?”

I’d done it now. There was no way I could disclose the fact that Maddy and I had done a little B and E, but what else could I say?

Fortunately, I didn’t have to. Before I could come up with an answer, the chief’s radio squawked. He had a quick conversation with his dispatcher and then got into his car as he said, “We’ll have to continue this conversation later, but don’t think it’s over just because I’m leaving. There was a pileup on the outskirts of town, and they need me on the scene.”

He took off with lights flashing, siren wailing, and tires screeching.

“Whew, that was close,” Maddy said.

“I think we just delayed answering the question,” I said. “Remind me to come up with a good answer for him. Is there any reason to hang around here?”

“Not that I can think of. Whoever was searching the promenade isn’t about to come back any time soon.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Listen, instead of splitting up like we’d planned, I think I’m going to follow you home so you can pack a bag. I’ve got a weird feeling that something’s about to happen, and I don’t think we should be splitting up.”

“Is it something worse than murder?” she asked me.

“Not necessarily. Just something bad.”

“Dear sister, your imagination is in overdrive these days. I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will,” I said stubbornly, “because I’ll be right there with you.”

“What makes you think that having two of us will help?”

“I don’t know it for a fact, but I do know that if I don’t go with you and something happens to you, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

“Okay, tag along, then,” she said.

After we got in our separate cars, I followed her through town to her apartment. I watched as she grabbed a few things and threw them all into an overnight bag, but I didn’t breathe any easier until we were at my place.

As we walked inside my Craftsman-style bungalow, I waited for Maddy to get over the threshold, and then I firmly latched the heavy oaken door behind us. I didn’t realize that I’d been holding my breath, but the second that lock clicked firmly into place, I let out a deep breath.

“You really are spooked, aren’t you, Eleanor? I’ve never seen you like this before, even when we were tracking down killers.”

“I don’t know what it is. For some reason, this one is just hitting closer to home than the others did. Don’t you get the same feeling?”

She thought about it and then nodded. “I guess that I’ve been fighting it myself, but if I’m being honest with you, I do wonder what’s really going on here. Our suspects and allies seem to change with every passing hour, and I’m beginning to wonder who we can trust.”

“You can trust me, and I can trust you,” I said.

“How about David and Bob? What about Josh, Greg, and Kevin Hurley? Is there any reason we shouldn’t trust any of them?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “Just ignore me. I’m in one of those moods I get in sometimes. I’m sure that all I need is a good night’s sleep.”

“That and catching the killer,” Maddy added.

“Yes, I admit, that would help make things all better as well. Are we too tired to look at the papers we took from Grant’s place? If we are, we could always look at them in the morning.”

“I don’t think so. I’m wired on adrenaline right now,” Maddy said. “Since sleep is out of the question, I say we do a little crime busting.”

“Okay then. I’ll put on a pot of coffee, and we can get started on the kitchen table. I’m glad we don’t own a bakery or a donut shop.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of getting up in a few hours to go to work. I don’t know how Paul does it.”

“Well, for one thing, he’s younger than we are, and for another, he loves to bake, whereas all we really like to do are pizzas.”

“Hey, we do other things, too.”

“Sure we do, but they’re all pizza related. Now, how about that coffee?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Right away, Ma’am.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said with a smile.

As I set up the coffeepot and started brewing the coffee, Maddy grabbed the papers we’d taken from Grant’s from her purse and spread them out on the tabletop.

“What’s left since we tracked down those telephone numbers?” I asked.

“Oh, there is lots of flotsam and jetsam here,” she said as she started pushing the papers around. “There’s got to be at least one clue in all of this.”

“If there is, it would be great if we can find it.”

She drew out the first piece of paper and then said, “Then let’s start digging.”

S
adly, after an hour of staring at the same pieces of paper over and over and finishing the entire pot of coffee, we were no closer to a real clue than we’d been before. I was about to put it all away when I spotted something on the floor beneath the table. “What’s this?”

I leaned over and picked it up as Maddy explained, “I didn’t realize that was down there.”

It was a piece of paper covered with random numbers and letters in combinations that didn’t make any sense to me at all. Mostly, it looked like an accountant’s worst nightmare on tax day.

“What is this supposed to be?” I asked as I studied the paper.

Maddy stared at it for a second and then said, “Funny, I don’t remember seeing this. Flip it over.”

I did as she asked, and we both saw that this sheet had a list of numbers in an order that at least made some kind of sense.

“The numbers keep increasing as you go along,” Maddy said as she looked at it with me.

“Honestly, they almost look like banking amounts,” I said. “Do you notice something in particular about these numbers? The increases are always less than ten thousand. These have to be bank deposits.”

“That’s quite a leap, given the fact that there aren’t any dollar signs or decimal places on the paper,” Maddy said.

“Maybe so, but if a deposit is over ten thousand dollars, the bank employees have to notify the government. Somebody was trying to fly under the radar here.”

“Do you really think that Grant was hiding deposits of this size?” she asked. “There’s only one reason he’d do that. He wasn’t just trying his best to hide the money from the government. He obviously didn’t want
anyone
to find out about what he was up to.”

“But where could it all be now?” Maddy asked as she started looking through the rest of the pages we’d taken from his basement apartment. “Eleanor, did you happen to see any checkbooks in his desk, or maybe a stack of deposit slips?”

“There was nothing like that,” I said. “The only thing I found related to money was the ten grand I found in the false bottom of his desk drawer.”

“But it wasn’t ten thousand exactly, was it?”

“No, I put the five hundred you found in with it, and that brought it up to the ten grand count.”

“That has to mean that he was getting ready to make another deposit,” Maddy said as she looked at the page we’d been studying again. “There’s no nine-thousand-five-hundred-dollar deposit listed here,” she said, deflated that her theory was off.

“That’s probably because he hadn’t made the deposit yet.”

“So, do you think we’re right?”

“Until we can come up with a better theory, for all the good it’s going to do us. I suspect that Chief Hurley has the checkbook in his possession, along with all of the deposit slips. He might have already taken the money out himself.”

“To keep?” Maddy asked, surprised by what she thought was an accusation.

“Of course not, but that doesn’t mean he would want it to be accessible to anyone else. We need to tell him our theory and ask him if we’re right.”

“Do me a favor. I want to be there when you corner him,” Maddy said. “His response will be worth recording on my cell phone.”

“You can actually take movies with that thing, too?”

“It’s amazing what my little device is capable of. Besides, we both know that we can’t go to him with this. It’s the same problem we’ve had before. We can’t ask for help unless we’re willing to admit what we were doing when we found it, and I wouldn’t put it past our chief of police to lock us both up out of pure frustration. And honestly, who could blame him? We probably even deserve it from time to time.”

“I don’t care what he does. I’m calling him,” I said. “There’s no way I’ll be able to get to sleep not knowing if Grant was hiding all of that money.”

“I think you’re crazy,” Maddy said.

“So, are you saying that you think that I shouldn’t call him?”

“Are you kidding? I think it’s great that you’re even trying. I’m just not sure you’re going to be happy with the results.”

I dialed the chief’s direct cell number, something I’d needed a few times in the past, and he picked up on the second ring.

“Eleanor, shouldn’t you be asleep by now?”

“Shouldn’t you?” I asked.

“I’m covering tonight for one of my deputies. His wife’s in labor, so I told him to go on and take her to the hospital. For the next few days, I’m working double shifts.”

“That’s awfully sweet of you,” I said.

“Sweet nothing. If I made him stay here and work, I couldn’t be sure he’d do a thorough job, not that I’d blame him.”

“You’re not as tough as all that, and we both know it.”

The police chief’s voice softened as he admitted, “It’s a big deal, having a kid. He should be there to enjoy it. Now that we both know why I’m awake, what’s on your mind?”

“Maddy and I have been thinking,” I said, and I looked up to see my sister stick her tongue out at me. I grinned and continued, “And we were wondering if Grant had any money when he died.”

“Why would you ask something like that?” the chief asked.

At least I was ready with an answer this time. “He still owed her money from when they were married, and she’s wondering if she’ll ever be able to collect any of it now.” It was a plausible enough of an excuse, and something that the police chief couldn’t easily verify.

At least I hoped that he couldn’t.

“Well, she can always file a lien against the estate. I’m sure Bob would be glad to handle it for her.”

“But is there any estate at all? Besides the house, I mean.”

“I really can’t say,” the chief said without a moment’s hesitation.

“Does that mean you don’t know?” I asked.

“No, it means exactly what I said. I can’t say.”

“That’s fine. We’ll have Bob check around for any bank accounts he might have in the area tomorrow.”

I was about to hang up when the chief said, “Forget it. There’s no use keeping it from you, since it’s going to be public knowledge soon enough. I found his checking account at his mother’s place, and Grant had less than ten bucks in it as of close of business on the day he died.”

“Ten bucks? Surely he put more than that away.”

“Oh, he did. The only problem is that he didn’t keep it in the account. When he closed it out, he took one hundred and fifty thousand dollars out of the bank.”

“Where did he deposit it after that?” I asked. “I’m just asking for Maddy’s sake.”

“As far as we can tell, he didn’t stick it anywhere. For some odd reason, he took it all in cash. When he walked out of the bank, he had enough money on him to make some folks think of murder. It was a dangerous stunt to pull, no matter what his reasoning was, and it might just have been what ended up getting him killed.”

Chief Hurley yawned and then said, “Keep that under your hat until tomorrow, okay? Somehow a reporter from Charlotte found out about it, and it’s going to be in the paper tomorrow morning. Check that. It’s after midnight. It’ll be in today’s paper. Tell Maddy I’m sorry. I’m afraid she’s not getting anything out of Grant’s estate, but I heard that she was named in the mother’s will, so she won’t come away from all of this empty-handed, at least not unless Rebecca finds a way to cheat her out of her share. Tell her to keep an eye on that woman. I don’t know what it is about her, but I’m not sure that I trust her.”

I hung up and then turned to my sister. “Maddy, was Grant a hoarder?”

“You mean like those people I see on television sometimes?”

“No, I mean like someone who would take a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash out of the bank and hide it somewhere.”

She thought about it for a handful of seconds and then said, “You know, I can totally see that. He never completely trusted banks, and it was nothing to find him with five grand on him as walking-around money, like he used to call it.”

“Well, I don’t know how he got his hands on a hundred and fifty grand, but nobody knows where it is at the moment.”

“Does the chief think he might have been murdered for it?” Maddy asked.

“He thinks it’s a possibility, and so do I,” I said. “That kind of cash, being untraceable and all, would make him a pretty tempting target for an unscrupulous thief.”

“It hurts just thinking about him being killed for his cash,” Maddy said. “What if the chief is wrong, though?”

“It’s always a possibility. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Eleanor, what if the money is still out there somewhere, just waiting for someone to figure out where it is and take it?”

“What are you suggesting, Maddy? That we go off on some kind of scavenger hunt? I thought we were searching for Grant’s killer, not his cash.”

“Of course we are, but if we happen to stumble across the money while we’re hunting down a murderer, what are we going to do with it?”

“I’ve run into something like that before,” I said, “and I’ll do now what I did then. I’ll turn it over to Chief Hurley and let him sort it all out. I haven’t missed a night’s sleep because of it, and I’m not about to do anything stupid to risk that now. Are we agreed?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “It
is
a lot of money, though, isn’t it?”

“And that’s why there’s even more reason to turn it in,” I said. “We don’t want someone coming after us for it, do we?”

“No, thanks. The two of us have enough problems as it is without adding any more to the mix.” She gathered the papers up and then looked at me. “What should we do with these now that we’re finished with them? I doubt we’re going to get anything else out of them.”

“Let’s just store them here for now,” I said as I lifted up a cushion on the bench of the dining nook. The builders had installed storage areas all over the cottage, and I loved the stowing capacity my little Craftsman-style bungalow had. “When this mess is all over, we can safely get rid of them all, but for the moment, I’d feel better having them nearby, in case we missed something the first few times we looked at them.”

Maddy yawned and then said, “I hate to be a party pooper, but I’m really beat. Do you mind if I go on to bed?”

I couldn’t remember the last time my sister called it a night before I did, but I wasn’t about to crow about it. We’d both had a tough time during the last day and change, but she had the added emotional stress of having her ex-husband murdered near where she lived and worked. It would have been nearly too much for anyone to take, and though Maddy often put on a brave face for the world, I knew that my sister was still feeling the impact of Grant’s murder.

“I’m beat myself. I’ll see you in the morning, Sis,” I said as I double-checked every door and window to be certain we were safely locked in.

“Eleanor, let’s just have cereal tomorrow, okay? Nothing fancy, if it’s okay with you.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like my pancakes anymore?” I asked her with a grin.

“They’re perfect, and you know it, but I’d like to get started early. There’s a lot of digging we can do before we have to open the Slice for business tomorrow.”

“You’re okay with us still staying open, aren’t you?”

“You bet,” she said. “It makes too much sense not to close, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to dig into this more, too.”

“Is there anything in particular you have in mind?” I asked as I paused at her bedroom door.

“No, but maybe if we both sleep on it, we’ll come up with something.”

“Good night, then,” I said.

I was afraid that I might have trouble sleeping after all we’d done, and with all the information swirling around in my head, but I dropped off before I even realized it.

Apparently, Maddy wasn’t the only one who was exhausted from all that had happened.

 

“Eleanor, there’s someone on your porch,” Maddy said the next morning, after I finished washing out our cereal bowls. “Are you expecting anybody to visit this early?”

“No,” I said as I shut off the water. “Can you see who it is?”

“Truthfully, I just saw a shadow pass by,” she admitted. “But I don’t like it.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said as I walked to the front door. Before I opened it, though, I reached into the hall closet and got out the baseball bat I kept there. I knew that it wouldn’t do any good against a gun, but it still made me feel better holding it.

I took a deep breath and then pulled the door open as quickly as I could manage.

Samantha Stout looked startled as I did so, and she was even more surprised by the baseball bat I was holding in my hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you, so when I saw that your sister was here with you, I was planning on just leaving you a note.”

“Well, you’re here now, and we’re finished eating, so why don’t you come on in? Would you like a cup of coffee?”

She glanced back at the bat. “That depends. Are you two going to play a game this morning?”

“No, it’s just for protection. A girl can’t be too careful these days.”

“Don’t I know it,” she said. “If you don’t mind, some coffee would be great.”

I led her in, stowing the bat back where it belonged along the way. That didn’t mean that I trusted the singer any farther than I could throw her, but I sincerely doubted that she was there to physically attack either one of us. If I was wrong, though, I was fairly certain that Maddy had the armaments in her purse to defend us both.

“Hello, Samantha,” Maddy said as she handed her a cup of coffee. “I heard you and Eleanor talking, so I got a cup ready for you.”

“Why don’t we go into the living room, where it’s a little more comfortable?” I suggested.

After we were all seated, Samantha said, “First off, I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday at the pizzeria. I reacted badly to your reasonable request, and I’m sorry.”

“I have to admit that it was kind of strange of you to refuse a simple request, especially given the fact that you came looking to
us
for help, I said.