by Maris Soule
For what seemed like forever, but probably wasn’t more than a few seconds, Madeline Welkum said nothing, her gaze never leaving my face. I stared back at those cold, blue eyes, unwilling to look away first. Finally, she gave a harrumph and faced Anna. “Did you find the February bank statement in the in-box?”
“I did.” Anna touched the folder on the desk. “It’s now in here. Should I have left it out for your daughter to see when she returns?”
Madeline Welkum’s gaze dropped to the folder. “Those are the bank statements?”
I held my breath and watched Anna. Would she say something about the doctored statements? If so, how would Madeline Welkum react?
“Yes, I wanted to check them against the ledger. The two balance.”
“Good.” Madeline Welkum looked at me. “And what do you think, Mrs. C.P.A.?”
“I think . . .” I paused, searching for the right words. “I think Ms. Carr is doing exactly as she should for this audit.”
Welkum’s eyes narrowed slightly and her nostrils flared. And then she smiled. A forced smile that stretched her lips but failed to reach her eyes. “Now, I think it’s time for you two to leave. The office is closed.”
I glanced at the computer. To my relief, it had finally shut down. Anna started to take the bank statement folder to the file cabinet, but Mrs. Welkum stopped her. “No, leave that there.”
The way the woman was looking at us, I knew she meant “leave now.” Anna set the folder back on the desk, and I grabbed my coat and purse. We inched our way past Mrs. Welkum and headed for the front door. Before we were out of the reception area, she called after us, “Make sure when you make your report to the board that you can verify everything. You wouldn’t want to make a mistake. That might hurt your reputation—both of your reputations—and your business.”
Chapter Twelve
Once outside, we stopped at the top of the steps. “Oh no.” Anna looked back at the closed door. “The February statement. The copy I made of the real one. I left it in the folder. It’s there with the doctored one.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.” I certainly wasn’t going back inside. “Besides, she knows we know. She just threatened us. Threatened our careers.”
“But that would have been my proof to the board.”
“We have proof.” I tapped the side of my purse. “As soon as I get home, I’ll send you the pictures I took. That’s all the proof you’re going to need.”
“I guess.” Anna sighed and looked toward our cars. “Speaking of home, we’d better get there soon. This weather is getting bad.”
While we’d been inside, the wind had picked up, and it had started snowing again. We both hurried to our cars, being careful not to slip on the icy pavement. Tiny, needle-like flakes hit my face, stuck to my hair, and had frozen on the car’s windshield. I got in and started the engine, but I had to use my scraper before I could see clear enough to drive.
Days were getting longer; nevertheless, it was almost dark by the time I pulled out of the parking lot. As soon as I made it through the downtown area, I merged onto I-94. I reasoned that the county salt trucks should make the freeway faster than taking back roads.
That assumption ended before I’d passed the Sprinkle Road off ramp. Ahead of me brakes were being applied. Traffic slowed, then nearly stopped. Both eastbound lanes had become a quasi-parking lot as we inched ahead. A police car, lights flashing and siren blaring, passed on the shoulder. Then another police car.
I took the Sprinkle Road off ramp.
That road wasn’t bad, but as soon as I turned off Sprinkle and headed east toward Zenith, the driving became more treacherous. Below the snow, a thin layer of ice made the roads slippery, and I didn’t dare go over thirty-five. Even at that speed every nerve in my body was on edge. My hands cramped from gripping the steering wheel and my back ached from leaning forward to peer through a windshield that my wipers were barely keeping clear.
A drive that normally took forty minutes had already stretched into an hour. All I could think about was being home. I was tired and hungry. I was going to be late for those slow-baked spareribs. I knew I should call Wade, but I didn’t want to stop and didn’t dare try to talk while driving.
Time and distance lost meaning. I was on the road that went past my house, but how close or far, I wasn’t sure. Snow and darkness obliterated my usual reference points. I passed a group of trees, then an open field, but one wooded area looked the same as the next, and a harvested field of corn, now covered with snow, was no different looking from a harvested field of soy beans covered with snow. Was I close to the VanderMeld’s farm? The Mullen’s pig farm?
The monotonous beat of the windshield wipers began to hypnotize me, and I felt my eyelids closing. Shaking my head, I struggled to stay alert . . . and then, suddenly, I was wide awake. Straight ahead of me, on the road and barely discernible through the falling snow, I saw three huge shapes.
I stomped on the brake pedal. Fought the steering wheel as my car went into a skid. Tried to remember which way to turn the wheel. Saw a mailbox coming toward me.
I couldn’t react fast enough.
Couldn’t stop the momentum.
My body jerked forward, then back as the airbag slammed against me, and for a second a billowing pillow of white engulfed me, took my breath away. Then the airbag deflated. The car had stopped.
My first reaction was to place my hands on my belly. Was my baby all right? When I left Kalamazoo, I’d made sure my seatbelt was positioned above and below my abdomen. Only the pressure of the air bag had impacted my baby, but had that hurt her?
I held my breath, waiting. Praying.
A nudge against my palm gave me hope. Then a kick.
She wasn’t happy, but as far as I could tell, Paige Joy was alive. Alive and angry.
For a moment I sighed in relief. Then I heard a noise outside my car door. A sucking sound on the other side of the window. I jerked my head that direction.
A dark shape was pressed against the glass.
Too scared to even scream, all I wanted to do was escape. Pushing myself away from the door, half leaning across the console, I searched for the release of my seatbelt. Eyes on the window, I pressed the latch and felt the belt loosen.
The shape on the other side of the window pulled back, giving me a better view of my attacker, and I stopped struggling to escape. Heart still thudding in my chest, I half laughed, half choked in a calming breath.
With a snort, my attacker turned away, and I watched as a sow—a very big sow—ambled off from my car to join two other very big sows.
“What?” I yelled through the window as I straightened up in my seat. “Is this payback for having ribs for dinner?”
The three pigs continued on down the road.
“Damn.” I leaned back and closed my eyes. Slowly my heartbeat returned to normal.
Once I had my wits about me, I assessed my situation. My car was sitting in a shallow ditch, its left fender hugging a mailbox. From where I was seated, I couldn’t tell how much hitting that mailbox had damaged the car, so I cracked open the car door. A blast of icy cold air hit me, and I quickly closed the door again. So much for checking for damage. I would simply drive home and look at the fender when it wasn’t snowing.
That plan died when I put the car in reverse and tried to back up. The tires spun, the engine revved, but the Chevy didn’t move. I was stuck. The only way I would be driving anywhere was if someone pulled my car out of the ditch and back onto the road.
With a sigh, I turned off the engine and reached for my purse. I wasn’t far from home. It wouldn’t take Wade long to get here.
I clicked on the phone. Nothing. Tried again. Still nothing. Not even a narrow red line.
That’s when I remembered how low the battery was when I was taking pictures of those bank statements. Before leaving the parking lot, I should have connected my phone to the car’s charger. But I hadn’t, and now the battery was dead. Absolutely dead.
I couldn’t call anyone, and I was leery about running the car to charge the phone. If I’d gotten snow in the exhaust pipe . . . Well, I didn’t want to become a statistic.
Waiting for a car or truck to come by and offer help was also an iffy proposition. I hadn’t seen one vehicle on the road in the last ten minutes. There was no telling how long it would be for one to pass, or if the driver would even realize I was sitting in my car and needed help. In the few minutes since sliding off the road, snow had already covered my windshield, and I could barely see the name on the side of the mailbox I’d hit.
Hammon.
Although the Hammons’ house was just a little over a mile from mine, I’d never met them. Nevertheless, if I were lucky, they’d be home and would let me use their phone to call Wade. Or maybe Mr. Hammon would offer to pull me out of the ditch.
This time I didn’t let the cold air stop me from getting out of my car. I could only button the top two buttons of my coat, but I held the lower portion over as much of my abdomen as I could and began the trudge up the Hammons’ long driveway. By the time I reached their front door, my feet were freezing and snow kept sliding off my hair and down the side of my face.
George and Ina Hammon were home and willing to help, but the moment I saw the oxygen tank George was using, I knew I shouldn’t ask him to go out in this weather. And, Ina wasn’t fairing much better, her hoarse voice, along with the lingering odor of stale smoke, hinted at too many years of cigarette use. She did fix me a cup of hot tea while I called Wade.
Never had a man’s voice sounded so good as when he answered.
“I almost hit a pig,” I told him. “I didn’t, but my car’s now in a ditch about a mile down the road. I tried to back it out, but it’s stuck.”
I assured him that I was fine and that the baby was fine, and five minutes later, he pulled his Jeep up behind my Chevy. I thanked the Hammons for their courtesy and went back outside to join Wade. The snow was still falling, and I could barely make out the footprints I’d made going to the Hammons’ house. As I approached my car, I could see Wade frowning as he checked the front fender, then he walked around to the other side and back again.
Finally, he looked at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said stopping by his side. “We just got bounced around a bit. Damn pigs.”
The way he looked at me, I knew he didn’t understand. “There were three of them, in the middle of the road,” I said. “I had to hit the brakes, or I would have run into them. The car went into a skid, and . . .” I motioned toward my car. “Here’s where I ended up.”
“Pigs,” he repeated. “I thought you said something about pigs on the phone, but it didn’t make sense.”
“There were three of them. Probably from Mullen’s pig farm.”
His eyebrows rose. “Three pigs, huh?”
“Yes. Big ones. Very big ones. Honest. You can see their tracks.” I pointed the direction the pigs had gone.
But there were no tracks. No pigs. Not a sow or a boar anywhere to be seen.
“Honest,” I repeated, turning back to face Wade.
He nodded and smiled.
“They were there,” I insisted, but I could understand his disbelief. There wasn’t a sign of the animals.
“Maybe they flew away,” he said, grinning as he gazed up at the clouds.
“Just pull my car out,” I finally grumbled, suddenly unsure if I’d really seen them or not. “I’m tired and I’m hungry.”
Chapter Thirteen
Wade’s slow-baked barbeque ribs were delicious. As I ate, I told him about Mrs. Welkum catching Anna and me at the charity office and that someone—probably Madeline Welkum—was embezzling money from the charity. I’d plugged my cell phone in as soon as I arrived home, and I told Wade I’d show him the pictures after I ate, except I was so tired by then I forgot. I also forgot to show him the pictures the next morning, mostly because I was still tired. Tired and sore. I woke with a stiff neck, aching muscles, and a bruise across my chest where my seatbelt had been.
All night I’d worried about the baby, but as far as I could tell, she was fine. She still kicked my ribs from time to time, and I could almost see the impression of her fist against my belly. “She wants out,” I told Wade. “And I’m sure ready.”
Except I wasn’t, really. I still had tax forms to complete for three clients as well as ours. I’d hoped to get the most complicated return finished that morning while Jason was in school and Wade was at work, but the weather was thwarting me. “They cancelled school,” I told Wade when he stepped out of the bathroom, dressed in his suit and tie. “It’s March. Almost spring.” I handed him a cup of coffee. “When is it going to stop snowing?”
I knew Wade couldn’t answer that. In Michigan, there were times when it snowed in May. But I was frustrated. “I need to get these taxes done before the baby arrives.”
“I’d take Jason with me,” Wade said, “but I have to be in court.” He walked over to where Jason was seated at the table, finishing his breakfast. “You can keep busy while P.J. works, can’t you? I’m sure you have some reading you could do for school. Some math. And I’m sure she’d like it if you would shovel off the back steps.”
“Sure,” Jason agreed, almost too quickly, I thought.
“And no playing video games all morning,” Wade added.
Jason’s smile turned to a pout.
* * *
As it turned out, Jason did no homework or chores, and I had no idea if he would be playing video games or not. A half hour after Wade drove off, my neighbor Sondra Sommers called and asked if Jason would like to come over and spend the morning with her four children. She even offered to pick him up and bring him back in the afternoon.
Once Jason was gone, I got to work. Celia Hyland’s state and federal taxes were next on my list, and even though they always took a fair amount of time to prepare, I loved doing her taxes. The woman was amazing. At eighty-five, she owned several rental units, bought and sold stocks, and went to the casinos regularly, winning more often than not. What I loved most was the paperwork she gave me at tax time was well organized and complete. My job was to find ways she could avoid paying taxes. Nothing illegal, but her philosophy and mine was why pay more than you owe?
I was totally focused on the form I was filling out when Baraka rose from where he’d been sleeping near my feet and started barking. As he limped toward the front door, I quickly saved the file and stood to see what had alerted him. A black sedan sat in my driveway.
I watched a tall, willowy woman ease out of the driver’s side, pause to slip a black trench coat over a tailored black pantsuit, grab a briefcase, and close her car door. Salesperson? I wondered. Lawyer? I was at my front door, Baraka beside me, by the time she came up the steps to the porch.
“Yes, how can I help you?” I asked, keeping the door only partway open.
“You’re P.J. Kingsley?” she asked and at my nod, said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“And you are?”
“Agent Andrea Tailor.” She pulled a black case from her pocket and flipped it open to show a badge and her ID.
“Customs and Border Protection?” That surprised me. “What’s this about?”
“May I come in?” she asked, slipping the case back in her pocket.
For a moment, I didn’t move.
I knew I should say yes. It was still snowing, though not as hard as the night before, and the wind was blowing. It wouldn’t be polite to force her to stand outside in the cold and talk to me. On the other hand, old habits are hard to break. Because of my mother and her schizophrenic episodes, I’d learned as a child not to let law enforcement into my house without a warrant or to say anything to the police.
The irony of being married to a sheriff’s deputy never failed to amuse me.
Finally, I shook off my stupor. “Come on in,” I said and held Baraka back so the woman could enter.
As I led Agent Andrea Tailor into the liv
ing room, she asked the usual questions about Baraka and the ridge on his back. I gave my usual explanation of how the European dogs owned by the colonists who migrated to southern Africa interbred with the semi-domesticated native hunting dog that had a ridge. “Over time the men realized the pups in a litter that had a ridge grew up to make good family dogs and protectors,” I told her, “as well as hunting dogs.”
“He seems gentle,” she said. Baraka had put his head on her leg the moment she sat on the couch.
“He can be aggressive,” I told her, smiling when she began rubbing his head, which was exactly what he wanted. “But they’re smart, and as long as you’re not a threat, he’ll be a sweety. By the way, you’ll be taking part of him with you when you leave.”
Her look was a mixture of disbelief and curiosity. “How’s that?”
“You’re wearing black. He sheds like crazy.”
She looked down at pant legs that were already covered with reddish-brown dog hairs and shrugged. “Could be worse.”
I made myself comfortable in my favorite upholstered chair and repeated my earlier question. “What is this visit about?”
“Brenda Cox,” she said and stopped petting Baraka to open her briefcase and pull out a pen and notebook. “You called the police Saturday, asking about her.”
“Technically, my husband called,” I said. “At my request.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to know if Brenda was the woman killed in that hit-and-run in front of a church. If it was, I’d talked to her not long before she was murdered.”
“Murdered,” Agent Tailor repeated. “You’re saying you think she was purposefully hit, that it wasn’t an accident?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“And why is that?”
