The Missing Dough (15 page)

 

“Can I help you?” Vivian asked as we walked into the Clean Break the next morning. She didn’t even look up from her newspaper to see who was in her shop.

“I’m glad to see that you’re out of jail so fast,” I said brightly.

No one else was around, but as she looked up at me, she said urgently, “Would you keep your voice down? How did you know about that?”

“It’s not supposed to be some kind of big secret, is it?” Maddy asked. “If it is, you’ve got a problem. We found out an hour after you were arrested. How long do you think it’s going to take the citizens of Cow Spots to find out? If they’re anything like the people who live in Timber Ridge, it’s already common knowledge around here.”

“It was all just a misunderstanding,” Vivian said.

“Really? Is that how you’re going to try to spin it? Vivian, you were booked for soliciting gambling and released on a higher bail than I could have scraped together in a year. That doesn’t sound like a misunderstanding to me,” Maddy said.

“My employer has hired an attorney for me,” she said.

“Once he’s got this all straightened out, it’s not going to matter.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Maddy said. “Even if they did try to forget about it, a new murder charge will remind them pretty quickly.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” she said flatly.

“Hey, I can understand it,” I said. “It couldn’t have felt good when Grant dumped you like that and decided to chase back after his old girlfriend.”

“Do you honestly think that he’d dump me for a run-down old hag like you?” she asked Maddy.

My sister didn’t blow up, which might not have been a good sign, but I was going to pretend for the moment that it was. Instead, she said, “We weren’t talking about me. Besides, I was
married
to him too, remember? Why on earth would I want to have leftovers after I didn’t really enjoy the meal in the first place?”

“Who are you talking about, then?” she asked petulantly.

“Samantha Stout,” I supplied.

“There was no way that was going to happen, either. Grant told me he was done with her when she lost her faith in his money-managing skills.”

Now, that was a spin if I’d ever heard one. “He stole from her, Vivian, and then he begged Samantha to take him back, but she wouldn’t do it. How’s that fit into your skewed little view of the world now?”

“Grant was cheated right along with everybody else,” Vivian said. “Bernie Maine took it all himself and then blamed Grant for it so people wouldn’t lynch him instead.”

Was there any chance that had a hint of truth in it? If I hadn’t heard Chief Hurley’s story about Grant’s massive bank account withdrawal, I might have even believed it myself. “Then why did Grant suddenly have so much in his bank account, and more importantly, where did it go?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Grant was extremely well off. He always had been.”

“Is that what he told you?” Maddy asked her. There was more than a hint of condescension in my sister’s voice, but I couldn’t blame her. After all, Vivian had already taken a fair number of shots at my sister. “And you believed him? You poor thing.”

“He showed me his checking account,” Vivian said triumphantly.

“How hard could that be to fake?” I asked.

“And a bank statement, too,” she added.

“We’re not saying that the money wasn’t there at one point. The fact is, he pulled every last dime out of his account right before he died, and now it’s all disappeared.”

“He scammed me,” Vivian said with a hiss, the air deflating out of her. “I can’t believe it. What a jerk he was, and what an idiot I was for believing him twice.”

“If it’s any consolation, he fooled more women than you, and that includes me,” Maddy said, softening toward the woman suddenly. My sister was a mass of conflicting actions and beliefs, but I knew that in the core of her heart, she cared about other people, no matter how much she protested at times that she didn’t.

“Vivian, is there a chance he gambled the money away before he died?” I asked. “We found a slip in an envelope from the dry cleaner.”

“Sure, maybe twenty bucks on a pony that couldn’t run, but nothing over that,” she said, and then Vivian realized just what she was admitting to us. “I take that back. I’m not admitting that I ever did anything but take in laundry here,” she added quickly.

“Understood,” Maddy said, “but how can you be so certain he didn’t just bet it all away with someone else?”

“Nobody around here could cover that kind of bet, especially without me knowing about it. But none of that matters. Grant quit gambling after he crossed the wrong guys in Vegas last year. They made a very convincing argument, and he was afraid to flip a coin after that. Or didn’t you know about what happened there?”

“Thankfully, our ex-husband didn’t share his later adventures with me,” Maddy said. “How sure are you that he wouldn’t gamble?”

“As sure as I can be,” she said.

“So, if he didn’t gamble it away, where did it all go?” I asked. “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars doesn’t just vanish into thin air.”

“You’d be surprised by how fast someone could spend it if they were determined enough to do it,” Vivian said.

“That sounds like the voice of experience,” I said.

She shook her head. “The most I’ve ever had at one time to blow was three thousand dollars. Granted, I went through it pretty quick myself, but it was bush league compared to what some folks have done.” She paused and then added, “Listen, I was told to cooperate with the two of you if you ever came back, but there’s nothing more to tell, and that’s the honest truth.”

“Vivian, we need to contact your alibi,” I said, “and the exact times you were together. If everything checks out, we’ll promise to leave you both alone.”

“I can’t tell you where he is,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Then I’m afraid we aren’t finished here yet,” Maddy said. There was an edge of determination in her voice that was unmistakable.

“Hang on,” she said and then dialed a number. “I need more instructions,” was all that she said. After a moment, she whispered into the phone, waited, and then spoke again. The next second, she was handing the telephone to Maddy.

My sister took it and said, “Hello?” After a pause, she added, “No. One second.”

She thrust the telephone at me. “He wants to talk to you.”

I took it from her, identified myself, and then listened.

“Vivian was with me from six to eleven fifteen the night Grant Whitmore was murdered.”

“No offense, but why should I believe you? I don’t even know who this is.”

“You might not, but we have a mutual acquaintance, and I promised him on my mother’s eyes that I’d tell you the truth. If you don’t believe me, then I guess you’ll just have to believe him. We both know that it would be foolish for me to lie to you at this point.”

For some reason, I believed him. It was nothing I could take to Chief Hurley, and now, more than ever, I was determined not to even mention it to him.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

I handed the phone back to Vivian and then turned to Maddy. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

“Are you sure?” she asked me, still staring at Vivian.

“I’m positive. Whoever was on the other end of the line might not have a problem lying to me or even the police, but I know that he would never mislead my friend.”

“Okay. Got it.”

When we left Vivian, I could swear there was a look of respect in her eyes, as if the fact that my connections were deeper than hers gave me something in her eyes. It was not something I wanted, but it had been useful, and I hadn’t regretted using it.

At least Maddy and I could strike one name off of our list of suspects, and that was real progress in my mind.

A
s I drove back to Timber Ridge, Maddy asked me, “Who do you think killed Grant, Eleanor? Don’t try to tell me that you don’t have any idea, because I know you better than that. You’ve got to have come to some conclusions by now.”

I thought about her question for nearly a minute before I answered her. “Maddy, it’s like asking a mother of twelve who her favorite child is. Who knows? They might even have one, but I doubt they’d ever admit it out loud. If I guess right now, there’s a nearly certain chance that I’d be wrong. How about you?”

“I was hoping you had something more than I did,” she admitted. “What’s going on with us? We usually have a lot more luck with these cases than we seem to be having right now. Or is it just me?”

“I guess that it’s still just too early to say. You’ve got to remember that Grant has only been dead a few days. Most likely, it’s going to take quite a bit longer before we figure this out, if we ever do.”

“Don’t even think that,” Maddy said, the angst in her voice coming through loud and clear. “I don’t know how Bob is going to handle this if the killer isn’t caught soon.”

“Has he said anything to you about how this is affecting him?” I asked her.

“He called me last night on my cell phone after we went to bed. He was troubled by all of this and wanted to talk, and I was up half the night with him trying to calm him down.”

“You didn’t say anything to me about it this morning,” I said.

“Bob asked me not to, and since it concerned him, I didn’t see how I could refuse the request, you know?”

“But aren’t you breaking that right now by telling me about it?”

“He knows that when my promises concerning you are the subject, he’ll be lucky to get an hour of silence out of me.”

“If that,” I said with a slight grin.

“What can I say? I tell my sister everything.”

“And your sister appreciates that,” I said. “How bad is it?”

“He’s considering packing up his practice and moving somewhere else if things don’t get better soon,” she explained.

“Is he serious? Does that mean that you’d go with him?” I couldn’t stand the thought of Maddy leaving Timber Ridge. Not having her in my life would make my existence a pretty bland experience all in all.

“I don’t even want to think about it right now. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said.

That was not the answer I’d been hoping to get. I had to let it go, though. “Then we need to work harder at finding the killer, and fast.”

“What more can we do that we haven’t already done?” she asked, the exasperation clear in her voice.

“We need to keep digging, keep poking around, and get as many people off balance as we can,” I said. “Somebody’s bound to snap.”

“That sounds like a recipe for our own lynch mob,” Maddy said with a smile.

“Hey, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to drive the killer out into the open,” I said.

I was about to say something else when I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a black BMW following us five or six cars back. “You are not going to believe this.”

“What’s happening?”

“Don’t look behind us, but I think I just found Bernie Maine.”

“Are you kidding?” Maddy asked. She started to turn in her seat, but I put a hand on her shoulder.

“What did I just ask you? If you have to look, use the vanity mirror on your visor.”

She did as I requested and then slowly nodded in agreement. “It’s Bernie, all right, unless somebody else is driving his car. What’s he doing following us?”

“I don’t have a clue. If he’s tailing us, he must be lost. Could he honestly believe that we’re a threat to him?”

“He must. Why else would he risk being caught following us? That’s not exactly an inconspicuous car he’s driving. What are we going to do?”

I had taken my phone out and had put it on the dash between us. “I’m going to call Chief Hurley,” I said.

“He’ll see you making a call, and we can’t afford to spook him,” she said. “Let me do it.”

“Go on, then. Grab my phone and try to get him,” I instructed her. “He’s on my contact list.”

“I can use my phone. He’s on my list, too,” she said. That was news to me. Perhaps my sister was getting a little more prudent as she got older. Having the chief of police’s number on automatic dial meant that at least she was finally beginning to realize that we couldn’t handle every situation by ourselves. I never would have believed it if Maddy hadn’t told me herself.

She put her phone on speaker so we could both talk to the chief of police.

When he picked up, I said, “Chief, this is Eleanor.”

“Am I on speaker? I hate speakerphones. You know that.”

“Sorry if it’s inconvenient, but I thought you might like to know that someone is following us. Maddy and I just noticed him four cars back, and I doubt that he realizes that we’re onto him. Care for a guess about who it might be?”

“It’s not Bernie Maine, is it?” he asked.

“It is indeed, or at least his car,” Maddy said.

“Don’t do anything, Eleanor,” the chief said.

“If I stop driving, he’s going to rear-end me,” I said.

“You know what I mean. What I should have said was, ‘Don’t do anything different.’ Where are you right now?”

“We’re on two-fifty-eight, between Cow Spots and Timber Ridge.”

“In which direction are you traveling, and which town are you closest to?”

I looked at Maddy and asked, “We’re about ten miles from Timber Ridge, wouldn’t you say?”

Before she could answer, Chief Hurley asked, “How should I know?”

“I was talking to Maddy,” I said.

“That sounds about right to me,” my sister said.

“Are you heading toward town or away from it?”

“Toward,” Maddy said.

“I’ll be there in nine minutes,” he said.

“Are you sure you don’t . . . Maddy, did he just hang up on us?”

“He must have, unless there’s a dead spot in my coverage here.” She leaned forward and closed her phone. I doubted that her action looked that suspicious from the distance Bernie Maine was from us, but something must have spooked him. At the next intersection of an old country road, he pulled off abruptly.

I did a wide U-turn on the shoulder as I told Maddy, “Call the chief and tell him what’s going on.”

“Yee-haw, I just love a high-speed car chase,” she said.

“When you tell him that, try to find a way to word it so that his head doesn’t explode,” I said as I pulled my car onto the road Maine had just taken. It was paved for fifty feet before it changed into a dirt road, and I could see the dust springing up like a plume behind the BMW.

“Hang on,” I said as I pressed the accelerator down closer to the floor.

“Chief, we had to take a detour on Meadowbrook,” Maddy said out loud as soon as he answered. I was glad we were on speakerphone again, no matter how the chief of police felt about it.

That was when it hit me. In my haste to follow our suspect, I’d completely missed the name of the road we were on, a crucial bit of information that my sister provided. Then again, I’d been pretty intent on not driving into a tree, so my attention had been focused elsewhere, like on not killing us.

“What are you doing there?” he screamed. “You were supposed to drive straight to Timber Ridge.”

“There was a change of plans,” I said as I fought my car’s desire to become airborne. “Bernie got suspicious and shot down a side road.”

“And you had to turn around and follow him. Is that it?”

“What choice did we have? We couldn’t just let him get away,” I protested.

“Listen to me. You are to stop your car immediately, pull over, and wait for me. Do you both understand?”

“You . . . break . . . can’t . . . ,” Maddy said in a stuttering voice before she hung up. “What do you think, Eleanor? Was that convincing?” she asked.

“I bought it, and I was sitting right here beside you.” When I looked ahead again, I lost sight of Maine’s car in some tortuous twist. The road was now more of a path than a legitimate country lane, and I had to wonder if Maine was going to run out of room soon. The real question then would be, what would we do with him if we caught him? I tried not to think about that and focused on the road ahead instead.

It was a good thing that I did, too.

We hit a patch of gravel I spotted barely just in time, and as the front tires hit it, I felt us start to spin. Fighting down my sense of panic, I remembered from a driver’s ed class a long time ago to turn into the skid. It didn’t save us completely, as we slid off the shoulder and nearly hit a tree, but it kept us both from being injured, and that was a win in my book any day.

“Are you okay?” I asked Maddy as I tried to start the car back up.

“I’m just peachy. Now I know what an ice cube feels like in a blender.”

I wanted to continue the chase, but my vehicle had other ideas about that.

The car wouldn’t start. Maybe it was flooded. I gave it two minutes and then tried again.

Nothing.

I got out, and Maddy joined me. After I popped the hood open and looked inside the engine compartment, Maddy asked, “Sis, do you have any idea what you’re looking at?”

“No. I took home ec, not shop,” I said.

“My, how our public educations have let us down,” she answered.

A minute later the chief of police drove up and parked with his front bumper nearly touching mine.

“Forget about us. Go after him!” I said a little louder than I should have.

“He’s long gone,” the chief said. “He must have cut back onto the highway, because if he’d stayed on this dirt path, he would have had to run me off the road to get past me.” He glanced at my car and asked nonchalantly, “Having car troubles?”

“It won’t start,” I admitted.

He reached under the hood, fiddled with something, and then said, “Try it now.”

Still nothing, not even a whir, a grind, or a grunt.

“Sorry,” the police chief said. “That’s the sum total of my car knowledge. Should I call Bob Pickering and have him come out and tow this to his shop?”

I put the hood down on the Subaru, patted it affectionately, and then said, “You might as well. We’re not going to be moving otherwise.”

“Let me see if I can get him,” he said and then looked at Maddy for a second. “Besides, your phones don’t get reception out here, do they?”

Maddy pulled out her phone and acted surprised. “Hey, I’ve got bars now. Imagine that. We must have been in a dead spot.”

“If you’d caught up with Bernie Maine, that’s exactly what might have happened. I distinctly remember telling the two of you to stay away from him,” he said.

“Do you see him anywhere around here?” Maddy asked.

“Maddy, you’re not nearly as funny as you think you are.”

After the chief talked to Bob and gave him directions to where we were, I said, “I’ll stay here with the car. Maddy, maybe the chief here will give you a ride back into town.”

“You don’t have to,” the police chief said. “Bob said that he had his own key to your car. Is your Subaru in the shop that much?”

“Not often, but it runs in spells,” I admitted. I glanced at my watch and saw that if we didn’t hurry, we were going to be late getting the Slice ready to open for the day. “Is there any chance you could give us a ride to the pizzeria?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Can I ride in back?” Maddy asked. “I’ve always wanted to be a perp. Isn’t that what you call them?”

“Maybe they do on television,” he said. “I don’t care where you sit, if you don’t. Eleanor, do you want to ride back there with her?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll sit up front with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Then let’s go.”

As we drove, Kevin repeated his earlier scolding. “That was incredibly reckless of you to follow him like that.”

“Hey, he started it,” Maddy said from the back.

“It doesn’t matter who started what. I told you that the man was armed. I’m just afraid how it might have ended.”

“Do you really think that he’s that dangerous?” I asked Chief Hurley. “He’s a businessman, for goodness’ sake.”

“You tell me. One man’s dead, and Bernie Maine is one of my prime suspects. How much more dangerous can you get?”

“So, do you really think he did it?” Maddy asked, peeking her head out from the cage that separated us.

“I like him for it better than most of the other suspects on my list,” Chief Hurley said.

“Hang on a second,” Maddy said. “Did you just share something with us?”

“Sorry. It won’t happen again,” Chief Hurley said as he shook his head. As much as I loved my sister, there were times when I wanted to stick a sock in her mouth.

“Chief, I still can’t figure out why Bernie was following us. It was pretty risky, wasn’t it, given that you’ve been looking for him all day?”

“Is that a jab coming from you, too, Eleanor?”

“No way. I know how slippery the man can be. But why is he so interested in us? We’re not making any progress at all.”

“Who knows? He’s got to realize that the two of you have been digging into his life these past couple of days. Maybe he thinks you got lucky and stumbled across something that could nail him. After all, even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the analogy, but I wasn’t about to comment on it. “So, does that mean that you’ve written off Rebecca, Samantha, and Kenny?” I wasn’t about to include Bob’s and David’s names in that particular roster.

He shook his head. “Like I said, Maine’s the most likely, but nobody’s been eliminated. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that you left Vivian Wright off of your list.”

“That’s because Art Young got us her alibi,” Maddy said.

I turned and stared hard at my sister, and she got the message immediately. Maddy made a motion as though she was locking up her lips, but if she was, I wanted the key so nothing else could slip out “accidentally.”