Sink Trap (14 page)

“Wasn’t Wade on the debate team with you?”

“Yeah, why?” For a second I thought it was another one of Sue’s detours, but then I made the connection. “Wait! Yes he was, and he got a lot of sponsorship that year. It was right after his folks split up.”

“Right,” Sue said. “I think there were some serious money problems when his dad left. His mom wouldn’t have been able to afford any extras, I’ll bet.”

“And Miss Tepper came through for him. I wonder if that’s what made him so upset the other night?”

Sue waved a hand in my face. “Upset? Wade was upset about something, and you didn’t tell me? Come on, Neverall, I count on you for my vicarious romance here.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. I told her about the conversation at my mother’s house, how Martha Tepper’s finances had come up, and Wade’s discomfort with the subject.

“Now I wonder,” I said, “if he knew Martha Tepper was his sponsor. That would explain why he got so tense when the subject of her finances came up.”

“Or it could be what he said,” Sue argued. “The man really does take his work seriously, Georgie. He knows more about the finances of most everyone in town than anyone, except Brian at the bank. And neither one of them is about to give away anything about their customers.”

“Whatever.” I waved away her comments. “But we know Martha Tepper wasn’t stingy. My mother says she thought of her as frugal, and that could be true. She didn’t live in luxury. But she was generous when it counted. And I think that would include Janis.”

Sue nodded her agreement.

“She was always considerate of people’s feelings, too. None of the kids who got sponsors ever felt like they were getting special treatment. I don’t know how she managed that,” I said, “but she did.

“So she would have been sure to say her good-byes.”

“Especially to Paula,” Sue added. “She visited the library almost every day after she retired. She’d stop in, have a cup of coffee with Paula, and take a walk down Main Street before she went home.

“You know what we’re saying here, don’t you, Georgie?”

I bit my lip. I didn’t want to say it out loud but knew I had to.

“Yes. I do. We’re saying something bad happened to Martha Tepper. We’re saying she was kidnapped. Or worse.”

4

when in doubt, improvise

If the chain on your toilet flapper breaks, and you can’t get to the hardware store for a replacement, use a chain of paper clips as a temporary fix. Adjust the number of clips in the chain to reach the desired length.

—A Plumber’s Tip from Georgiana Neverall

chapter 13

“Worse, Georgie. We’re saying worse, and you know we are.” Sue looked grim, and I was sure I wasn’t any better. “The question is,” she went on, “who benefits if she never comes back?”

I didn’t have to think about it. I knew who stood to gain the most if Martha Tepper never returned to Pine Ridge. “Gregory Whitlock.”

“You don’t mean that!”

Sue jumped up and came over to the sink, where I’d started washing dishes. She pulled my hands out of the soapy water, and held them in hers. “Just because the guy is sleeping with your mother—”

I yanked my hands away. “Which you promised never to mention again.”

“That was before you started accusing him of being some kind of criminal mastermind.” She held up her hands, blocking my protest. Drops of soap bubbles dripped from her palms. “I get that you don’t like him, and I know you have your reasons. But there’s a big jump from not liking to accusing him of a crime.”

“I know men like that,” I said. My voice shook with suppressed anger. I was dangerously close to subjects I refused to talk about, but I couldn’t back down. “They expect everybody to give them whatever they want. If you don’t give it to them, they take it anyway. They’re ruthless, Sue. They don’t care about anyone or anything but themselves.

“And they don’t take no for an answer.” I swallowed hard, forcing myself to calm down, to bury the anger. “If Gregory Whitlock wanted to develop that property and Martha Tepper said no, he’d find a way to get what he wanted.

“No matter who it hurt.”

Sue’s eyes narrowed, and she looked me up and down. “Okay, Georgie. Something bad happened to you when you were gone. I know that. You won’t talk about it, and I accept that, too. But that doesn’t give you the right to jump to conclusions about Gregory Whitlock. It just doesn’t.”

She took a step toward me, and gathered me into her arms, hugging me hard and patting my back at the same time. “I know you’ll tell me someday,” she said lightly.

Sue released me and leaned against the counter. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor. “Actually,” she said, “I was thinking of someone else. That housekeeper, Janis. What if she knew Martha Tepper was serious about leaving Pine Ridge? She’d lose her job and her home—which, yes, she did—but if she was going to lose it anyway, she might have been pretty angry about it.

“And she would have had a key, if she lived there.”

I rinsed the mugs, and set them on the counter. Sue grabbed a dish towel, and started drying.

“But she said she had waited for someone to leave the door unlocked,” I pointed out. “So that would imply that she doesn’t have one anymore.”

“Right.” Sue put the mugs back in the cupboard and reached for the wet spoons. “So maybe she waited until she thought she could get in, and didn’t realize that there were still people in the house. Maybe there’s something hidden in the house, and she wanted to get rid of it before anyone found it?”

“She seemed harmless,” I protested, unwilling to give up my suspicions of Gregory, “and all she took were some old clothes.”

“That’s all you saw.”

“She wasn’t there very long . . .”

“So you saw her before she could take anything. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t going to.” She tossed the spoons into the silverware drawer and shoved it closed with her hip. “Admit it, she’s a better suspect”—she choked a little on the word, then forged ahead—“than Gregory.”

“But she’s an old woman!”

“Not that old,” Sue said. “And she was desperate. People, even women, will do crazy things when they’re desperate, Georgie.”

I didn’t tell Sue how right she was. I had been willing to do almost anything to save my company and my reputation. Turned out, there were some things I wouldn’t do that Blake Weston and his cronies would. Yeah, I knew a little something about desperate people.

“Gregory Whitlock isn’t desperate. And desperate people are a lot more dangerous than greedy ones, if you ask me.”

I bit my tongue to keep from saying I hadn’t asked her. I knew there was some truth to what she said, even though I wanted it to be Gregory. It would get him out of my mother’s life once and for all.

And why did I care who was or wasn’t in my mother’s life? Because I knew, no matter how crazy and annoyed I got at Sandra Neverall, she was still my mother, and I loved her.

“So, say she might be a suspect. Might,” I emphasized. “What do we do about it?”

We looked at each other for a moment, then said in unison, “Paula.”

She would know about Janis.

 

 

When I checked in at the Hickey & Hickey office the next morning, I got an unpleasant surprise. Barry and
Paula were gone for a couple days, a family emergency of some kind.

The work on the Tepper house was temporarily suspended, and I was reassigned to the McComb site with Sean.

I groaned. The thought of more digging and pipe hauling was bad enough. But it also meant we couldn’t ask Paula about Janis until she got back.

It also meant the Tepper house would be empty for the next two days. It was an open invitation for someone who wanted to recover evidence hidden in the house.

I checked the job board one more time, lingering over the hastily erased assignments. When Angie, the office girl, turned her back, I snagged a key from the Peg-Board. Hook number 3, the one that corresponded to job number 3, Tepper.

So maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea. But Sue and I, and Paula, were the only ones in town who seemed to be bothered by Martha Tepper’s disappearance. With Paula gone, it was just Sue and I.

If there was anything in that house, maybe we could find it first, before anybody had a chance to destroy evidence. Well, “evidence” might be overstating the case, but I was starting to believe that there were clues to Martha Tepper’s disappearance in her house, and I didn’t want them destroyed.

I was due at the McComb site, but I took a quick detour on the way to my car. Doggy Day Spa was only a block away from Hickey & Hickey, and I hurried along the sidewalk.

“Got a minute?” I said to Sue, as I walked in the front door. “I’m on my way to work”—I glanced meaningfully at my battered watch—“but it’s important.”

Sue motioned me over next to the washing station, where a yellow Labrador turned sad eyes on me. “Her owner won’t be back for another few minutes,” she said, giving the dog a pat. “He can’t stand to watch her get bathed, because he says she looks pathetic.”

I had to agree with the missing owner. Labs were really good at the sad puppy eyes, and this one was an expert.

“So, what’s so important you’d risk being late to work?”

“Paula’s out of town for a couple days,” I whispered, then felt foolish. Who was going to overhear me, the dog?

“Shoot!” Sue rubbed shampoo into the Lab’s coat and began massaging it into a thick lather. “Guess we’ll have to wait ’til she gets back to ask her about that housekeeper. How about the work out there?”

“Suspended until Barry comes back. They both went, some kind of family emergency. I don’t know any more than that.”

I reached in my pocket, glancing around to make doubly sure we were alone. “But maybe we don’t have to wait.”

I dangled the key in front of her face.

I thought Sue’s eyes were about to pop out of her head. Her expression was so comical, I let out a little giggle before stashing the key back in my pocket.

“Is that . . . ?”

I nodded. “The key to the Tepper house. I took it from the office while Angie wasn’t looking. With any luck, no one will miss it, or they’ll think Barry has it with him.” I shrugged. “I just thought you might want to help me do a little searching tonight.”

Sue just stared. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. For once, she was speechless.

“I’ll call you this afternoon,” I said, heading for the door. “We can make plans then. Right now, I have to go dig a moat.”

It all seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

 

A few hours later, parked in Sue’s SUV a few doors down from the Tepper house, we weren’t so sure. We’d taken Sue’s car because it didn’t stand out quite as much as either of mine, though the dog barrier across the backseat was distinctive. Not as much as a candy apple red ’Vette, though.

Sue often used it to pick up or deliver her canine clients, and it smelled of the many dogs who had been passengers.

We sat in the dark, neither one of us ready to leave the relative security of the car and venture down the street to Martha Tepper’s house. But neither one of us was ready to call off our adventure, either. We were like a couple of twelve-year-olds who had dared each other into something foolish, and neither one could back down.

“Well, if we’re going to do this . . .” I said.

“Then we better get going,” Sue finished for me.

It was nearly midnight, the night pitch-black outside the dim glow of a streetlight on the next block. Without consulting each other, we had each shown up dressed all in black, down to the dark sneakers I had fished out of the back of my closet.

I opened my door and slipped out, quickly closing it to extinguish the interior light. Sue did the same. We stood next to the car, waiting for our eyes to adjust.

Key in hand, I led the way down the shoulder of the road to Martha Tepper’s driveway. The porch light was out and I had to move slowly, peering into the dark for the cracked concrete walk that led to the front door.