Doggie Day Care Murder (26 page)

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Authors: Laurien Berenson

BOOK: Doggie Day Care Murder
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The opening screen appeared and I typed in Steve's password. That took me to a screen saver whose image was a tranquil river scene. Shortcut icons dotted both sides of the picture.
I'm not a computer whiz by any means. But if I go slowly and take things step by step, more times than not I eventually end up where I want to go.
Now I paused and examined each of the choices. It made sense to me that Steve would have a shortcut leading directly to his business files, and he did. The accounting software was Peachtree. Sam used the same system for his small business.
The first page I came to gave me a number of choices including Business Status, Customers & Sales, Vendors & Purchases, and Employees & Payroll. I was guessing that Business Status most likely held the profit-and-loss statements that I wanted to see, but first I went to Vendors & Purchases.
That screen offered more choices. I typed the name Byram Pet Supply into the search box and watched as a long list of invoice dates, starting in early January and continuing right up until Steve's death, appeared. A tab at the top of the page offered me access to the same records for the two previous years. Now I was getting somewhere.
Starting with the most recent invoices and working my way back, I began to skim through the information. I tried not to get bogged down looking at the individual items, focusing instead on the order patterns and totals, but even so it was slow going.
When Candy stuck her head in the office door to say that she was leaving, I was surprised to see that an hour had already passed. I hadn't even made a dent in the amount of information there was to process.
“I'm the last one out,” she said. “And we're all locked up. Feel free to stay as long as you want. Just turn out the lights and lock the back door behind you when you leave.”
“I will,” I said, blinking as I pulled my eyes away from the screen. “There's a lot of stuff here to go through. I'll stay for a little while now, but I'll probably have to come back tomorrow and finish.”
“Whatever.”
She pulled her head back and disappeared. I followed the sound of her footsteps, and Winston's, until they reached the end of the hallway and let themselves out. Then I went back to work.
An hour later, I looked up again, realized it was getting late, and called Sam.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Still at Pine Ridge. What are you up to?”
“Feeding the kids dinner. I thought you'd be home by now.”
“So did I . . . sort of.” I felt guilty for losing track of time. “But I'm going through Steve's records, and I'm right in the middle of things. I'd hate to have to stop now.”
Sam sighed. I heard him, even though I was pretty sure he'd tilted the receiver away to mask the sound.
“Give me another hour,” I said. “Ninety minutes, tops. What I don't have done by then, I'll leave til tomorrow.”
“I'm holding you to that,” Sam said sternly.
“I love you too,” I said, and hung up the phone.
Once again I went back to work. The sun outside began to set. I turned on the lights and kept going. Things were beginning to fall into place now. By the time I neared the end of my self-imposed deadline, I'd found the first half of what I needed.
Steve's buying patterns with regard to the purchases he was making at Byram Pet Supply had changed dramatically from the first year Pine Ridge had been in business to the second, most recent year. Even allowing for the fact that the business was growing and therefore expanding its needs, there was no logical way to account for the fact that—according to the invoices I was reading—the purchases of dog food, grooming equipment, and other dog related supplies had more than tripled. Especially when I factored in a reasonable usage schedule.
Kibble was a resource that would need to be replenished regularly. But dog beds, brushes, clipper blades? I used all those items regularly myself and I knew how long it took to wear them out. Despite what the evidence in front of me seemed to indicate, it didn't happen overnight.
For Pine Ridge to be going through as many supplies as the invoices showed, they would either have to be tending to several hundred dogs a day or else throwing out equipment that had barely been used. Or there was the other option—they were never taking delivery of those supplies in the first place.
I was voting for Plan B myself.
Basically, Steve had figured out a way to steal from himself . . . and his other two partners, of course. He hadn't been satisfied with the profits he'd been drawing from the business through legitimate means, and he'd devised a way to siphon off some extra funds.
Despite what I'd uncovered thus far, however, I was still a long way from proving my hypothesis. A pattern of erratic purchases wasn't enough. Nor was the tracking graph I found on the Business Status page of the software that clearly showed a recent dip in revenue. What I needed now were the bills of lading—the signed receipts showing exactly what had been delivered to Pine Ridge by Byram Pet Supply, and when.
I glanced down at my watch. Time was running out. And yet I hated to stop now when I was so close.
I shoved back the desk chair and strode to the most obvious place to look: the file cabinet near the closet. Of course the receipts weren't there, though I did come across the hard copies of what I suspected were Steve's fraudulent invoices—the ones he'd filled out himself on the blank sheets Cole had so conveniently supplied.
One by one, I slammed the drawers shut. Then I moved onto the desk. Those drawers looked like a tornado had passed through them recently. That explained how the desktop had been cleared—someone had simply swept all the papers inside, out of sight.
But I still didn't find any bills of lading. They weren't on the high shelf in the closet, nor under the cushions of the couch. I looked behind the calendar on the wall and even lifted a section of rug to check beneath it.
Nada.
Now, not only was I late, I was frustrated.
Think! I told myself. I stood in the middle of the room and spun slowly to look in all directions. If you had papers to hide, where would you put them?
When the answer came to me, it was so simple that I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it sooner.
I stared at the empty dog crate in the back of the room. It was a medium-size Vari-Kennel, so familiar to me, so like those I had at home, that I hadn't even really noticed it. After all, who would pay any attention to one more crate in a facility that was essentially a kennel?
Except that from what I'd heard, Steve hadn't really liked dogs. Winston followed Candy everywhere, but Steve had had no similar companion of his own. Her office was awash with dog hair, his was pristine.
So who, or what, had the crate been intended to hold?
In a flash I was on my knees and leaning down to look inside. The crate had a pile of bedding—towels and a faux sheepskin throw—on top of its pegboard floor. I sniffed experimentally.
Nope. No way. No dog had ever lived in here.
Reaching into the crate, I shoved the rugs to the back of the container, then threaded my fingers around the edges of the floorboard and lifted it up to reveal the small space beneath. And saw a bulky, nine-by-twelve envelope nestled within.
“Finally.” I exhaled.
“Indeed,” said Roger Cavanaugh.
I whipped around, hit my head on the crate, lost my balance, and ended up sprawled on the rug. But even from that ungainly position, it was hard to miss the glint from the overhead light on the metal object he had in his hand.
Candy and Steve's silent partner was holding a gun.
26
L
et me tell you something about guns. Or more specifically about bullets. I've been shot before, and it hurts. Like,
really
hurts.
So when someone holding a weapon tells me to do something, chances are, I'm going to obey.
“Get up,” said Cavanaugh.
I scrambled to my feet, then moved over slightly so that I was standing in front of the crate and blocking his view of what lay within. Maybe he hadn't seen the envelope yet. If not, I wasn't about to give him any help.
“Don't be stupid,” said Cavanaugh.
So much for that idea.
He gestured to one side with the hand that held the gun. It looked like a move he'd seen in the movies. Why do people always do that? If I was holding a gun, I would want to keep my hand very, very still. Nevertheless, Cavanaugh was using the weapon to indicate that he wanted me to move aside.
So I did.
He took several steps closer and looked inside the crate.
“Hand me the money,” he said.
“Money?” I squeaked.
My normal voice seemed to have deserted me. Not that I could blame it. I wouldn't have been there either if I could have avoided it.
“The envelope. Get me the envelope.”
I stared to comply, then abruptly stopped. “You think there's
money
in there?”
Cavanaugh looked amused. “You don't?”
“Not really,” I admitted.
“Then pull it out and let's see who's right.”
I got back down and retrieved the envelope from its hiding place on the floor of the crate. Its contents felt thick and bulky in my hand. Once I had the envelope, I took a minute to replace the crate's pegboard floor and smooth the bedding back into place. Once a mom, always a mom.
“Hurry up,” said Cavanaugh. “I don't have all night.”
I stood up, turned around, and placed the envelope on the desk between us. Cavanaugh was standing between me and the door. But he couldn't reach the envelope from where he was. In order to pick it up, he'd have to come farther into the room. And maybe that would give me a chance to escape.
It wasn't exactly a great plan but it was the best I could come up with while staring at that gun.
“Speaking of all night,” I said. “What are you doing here? And how did you get in? This building was supposed to be locked.”
“Candy called me. Since she and I are partners, she felt obliged to tell me that you thought you'd uncovered some irregularities in the company accounting.”
Cavanaugh gave a dismissive shrug. As if the turn of events that had landed me in this predicament had been just that unremarkable.
“She told me not to worry. She said you were working late on the problem tonight and that it would all be fixed by tomorrow.”
Damn, I thought. That woman was dumb as a brick.
“Candy was just trying to be helpful,” Cavanaugh said with a small smile. “And she was.”
“To you, maybe.”
“Ah, but you see, that's all that matters to me.”
“Candy probably gave you a spare key, too, didn't she?” I asked.
“No, that was actually Steve's doing. I've had one from the beginning. And why not? After all, it was my hard-earned dollars that financed this place.”
I nodded. Anything to make myself agreeable. “And you expected a reasonable return on your investment.”
“Of course. Any businessman would. Otherwise, why invest money in the first place? Steve was the one who came to me, you know. He and Candy had what they thought was a great idea. They were sure they could make it work. But the two of them were just about broke. Without my money, Pine Ridge would never have existed.”
“So you must have been really angry when you found out that Steve was skimming off some of the profits for himself.”
I trailed my hand aimlessly across the edge of the desk. On the other side of the computer was a paperweight shaped like an old-fashioned dog house, the kind that Snoopy used to sit on, with frame sides and a peaked roof. It didn't look like much of a weapon but you know what they say . . . any port in a storm.
“How'd you figure that out, by the way?” I asked.
“Give me some credit. I'm a businessman. That's what I do. I may not have been keeping tabs on the day-to-day running of this place, but I sure as hell had my eye on the bottom line. Let's just say Steve Pine wasn't as smart as he thought.”
“In what way?”
“The business was thriving. Anyone associated with it could see that, and I was here almost every day with Logan. The facility was in good shape and the client roster was growing. So the fact that my share of the profits leveled off, then even began to dip a bit during the second year, came as a bit of a surprise. Funny thing is, if Steve hadn't gotten so greedy, I might never have noticed. That was his first mistake.”
No, I thought, Steve's first mistake had been taking Roger Cavanaugh on as a partner. But I wasn't about to mention that.
“I've been going through his records,” I said. “From what I could see Steve wasn't taking out a huge amount of money.”
“I guess that depends on your perspective. Maybe if the money had belonged to you, it would seem like more. A couple thousand here, a couple thousand there . . . over time those amounts add up.”
Cavanaugh eyed the envelope on the desk. As he spoke, he took a step or two toward it. It was as if the mere mention of the money he thought it held was luring him closer.
Me, I was watching the door. Because when it came to shooting someone, I figured a moving target had to be harder to hit than a stationary one. And as soon as Cavanaugh gave me enough of an opening, that was what I planned to be doing—moving as fast as my feet would go.
“Here's what you need to understand,” said Cavanaugh. “Steve Pine was stealing from me and it had to stop.”
“So you killed him,” I said.
“Not on purpose.”
He didn't sound contrite. More matter-of-fact. Like he'd merely performed a service that had to be done. Cavanaugh tore his eyes away from the envelope and looked up at my face.
I used the opportunity to quickly palm the paperweight. Its heft and its sharp edges felt good in my hand.
“I'm not a monster,” he said.
“No, just a murderer.” My gaze dropped. “And a man who feels comfortable holding a gun on someone else.”
“It wasn't like that. You weren't there. You couldn't possibly know what happened.”
No, but I was pretty sure he was going to tell me. It seems that confession really must be good for the soul, because most of the criminals I've run across have felt the need to unburden themselves. As if coming up with a good excuse can make everything all right.
“I only came here that night to talk to Steve. I intended to threaten him into changing his ways. That's all.”
“And yet you brought a gun with you.”
Cavanaugh spread his hands. “Call me a realist. It wouldn't have been much of a threat without one, would it?”
I nodded as if conceding the point. The more he was thinking about how to explain what he had done, the less attention he was paying to me.
“Steve Pine was an idiot. Somehow he'd gotten things all turned around in his mind. In the beginning, he couldn't have been happier to take me on as a partner. To help him make his dream come true.”
Cavanaugh grimaced at the trite phrase. “But as time went on he began to resent the fact that I was due a bigger share of the profits than he was. Steve convinced himself that the distribution of funds wasn't fair. Especially when he was here every day working his butt off and I wasn't.”
“I'm guessing he didn't respond well to your threats,” I said.
“He told me to go fuck myself.”
“Brave language from a man facing a gun.”
“That's what I thought. But Steve just laughed. He said he knew I wouldn't use it. And you know what? He was right. I wouldn't have used the gun. That's not who I am. Jesus, look at me. I drive a Hummer. I wear suits to work every day.” His voice rose. “That wasn't how I was going to settle things. I would have sued the bastard. I would have taken him to court.”
“So what went wrong?” I asked.
I really wanted to know. Maybe that meant I was buying into Cavanaugh's story, but now I wanted to know how it ended. The man had brought a gun to a business meeting, but he'd intended to walk away when it was over. And yet somehow Steve Pine had ended up dead.
“He jumped me and tried to wrestle the gun away,” said Cavanaugh. “Like he'd been watching too many action movies and he thought he was Rambo or something. Of course I fought back. That's just instinct. No way I was going to give up the gun.”
“You're saying it was an accident that Steve got shot?”
“Of course it was an accident. How else could it have happened? We both had our hands on the gun when it went off. I don't even know who pulled the trigger. I'm just lucky it was pointing away from me when it fired.”
The I'm-just-lucky-it-wasn't-me defense. I wasn't sure it was entirely creditable. Still I was willing to accept it, even if the police most likely wouldn't, because I had a different stake in the outcome.
As long as Cavanaugh believed that he wasn't a killer, that Steve's death had merely been a tragic and unavoidable accident, maybe there was a glimmer of hope that we could both walk out of this room alive.
“You should have called the police,” I said.
“I panicked. And then it was too late.”
“You'll have to talk to them now.”
“I don't think so.”
The four short words, spoken so calmly, sent a chill racing up my spine. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted.
“See, the problem is, things have changed. What happened to Steve was an accident. But running made me look guilty. I know that. And the police . . . they're never going to believe me now. And I can't afford to take that chance.”
He gazed at me with what looked like genuine regret. “I'm not the kind of guy who would do well in jail. You know what I mean?”
Cavanaugh asked the question as if it were a perfectly reasonable query. And I supposed to him it was. Unfortunately, the answer it led to was going to get me killed.
“So now what?” I asked.
Hand resting lightly behind my back, I squeezed the paperweight between my fingers, then released. Under other circumstances, I could see how that might reduce stress. But right now, what it did was keep me grounded. And offer the slightest possibility that I still had a chance.
“I'm sorry,” said Cavanaugh, “but you're going to have to die too.”

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