Tapped Out

by Emily James

Stacey opened the door, and I let the call go to voicemail.

  I held up the bag of popcorn. “Test batch number...uh…”

  Stacey laughed and stepped out of my way. We’d eaten enough popcorn together that it was a miracle I wasn’t waddling the same way she was. Still, if I had to fail at creating the popcorn for her shower a hundred times just to make her laugh, I’d do it. It’d been months after Noah’s death before I even saw her smile.

  Between handfuls of popcorn, she filled me in on her doctor’s appointment. When she finished, she held up the half empty bag. “This one’s exactly what I wanted.”

  At least one thing was going right for me. I let the silence stretch for another breath, but I couldn’t wait too long. If Stacey started into another topic, I might lose my nerve to come back to this one.

  I filled my hand with more popcorn, studiously taking my time and keeping my gaze on what I was doing. “Russ said you weren’t interested in a long-term position here.”

  I’d learned that, with Stacey, leading statements were often better than questions. She still had moments of that teenage defensiveness toward direct questions, but if I made a statement, it was like she was a mouse who smelled cheese in a trap and couldn’t resist it.

  She moved back on the couch and tried to pull her legs up to sit cross-legged. Her belly blocked her progress. She settled her feet back on the floor. “That’s not exactly what I said.”

  I chewed a piece of popcorn. I hadn’t been around many teenagers, so I didn’t know if Stacey was normal or not. She seemed to be a walking contradiction at times. She was more responsible than most forty-year-olds when it came to business, but in her personal life, she had a stubborn, sometimes irresponsible, streak.

  It was possible Russ came on too strong and made her feel like she didn’t have a choice in her future. “Russ must have misunderstood, then. I’d love to know what your plans are. If you have any.”

  Stacey twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “Everyone else seems to have plans for me, and they expect me to do what they want.”

  And there it was.

  As much as I wanted her to stay, I didn’t want to be another person telling her what to do. If she felt forced to work at Sugarwood, she wouldn’t stay. Eventually, she’d move on and then we’d potentially be in a bad spot. And with all the challenges she’d already faced, fighting to be allowed to be with her fiancé and then losing him, only to find out she was pregnant and would be a young single mom…she’d survived all that. She should have a chance to pick the kind of future she wanted for herself and her baby, even if it was only picking her job.

  I didn’t want her to feel trapped the way I had before Uncle Stan left me Sugarwood.

  I pulled one leg up under me so I could turn on the couch to face her. “I don’t care about what anyone else wants you to do with your life. What matters is what you want to do with it.”

  She tugged the piece of hair up to her mouth but stopped short of actually chewing on the ends. “My dad wants me to come back to the garage once the baby’s born. I’m not sure I want that anymore.”

  I could understand the pressure of wanting to please your parents. “My dad wants me to come back to work at his business, too.”

  Stacey lowered the hair away from her face. “In DC?”

  I nodded.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet, either. Why don’t you want to go back to your dad’s garage?”

  “Part of it’s Noah. I can’t go in there without seeing him everywhere.” She ran a hand over her belly. “Part of it’s how hard it’s always been to get anyone there to accept me. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m a girl or young or what. The employees wouldn’t respect me even if I was their boss.”

  Her words bounced around in my head. The employees wouldn’t respect me even if I was their boss. I hadn’t been able to put it into words before now, but that was one of my fears about returning to my parents’ firm. I’d been liked, but never respected. Every new person my parents hired thought I only had my job because of my parents. And I couldn’t say they were wrong. They were probably right.

  But not working for your parents and not working in the same field as your parents were two very different things. “Do you think you’d still like to work in a garage?”

  “I like fixing things, but I can do that here. Or I could save up and buy an old classic car to fix up the way Noah and I always talked about. I liked balancing accounts for my dad, and here I get to do that and manage the online orders.”

  “But you turned down Russ’ offer.”

  Stacey crossed her arms and shrugged. It was one of her tells—protecting herself and trying to shrug off something important as if it weren’t.

  Earlier Stacey had said that everyone was making plans for her life. Her dad was only one person. “Did Russ ask you, or did he lay it out for you like it was a done deal?”

  The way she shifted her gaze to the side gave it away completely. She was balking the same way I had when my dad demanded I come back.

  Poor Russ. He always felt like he was doing the right thing by “protecting” people. He meant well.

  “Why don’t you want to go back to work for your dad?” Stacey asked. “Did you not like being a lawyer?”

  Ugg. I had brought that one on myself. “I didn’t like defending people I knew were guilty. It made me feel sick inside. It felt wrong.”

  “You have to do that if you work for your dad?”

  At the start I would. Maybe in a few years, once I became partner, I could be choosier, but even then, I’d have to pull my own weight. “Yeah.”

  “Then you can’t do it.” Stacey’s face had taken on that immoveable-mountain-meets-unstoppable-force look that seemed to be trademarked by toddlers and teenagers. “Remember how much Noah and I wanted to be together, but he said we couldn’t until I was eighteen and legal. He was right, even though I couldn’t see it then.” She twisted a strand of her hair around a finger. “Besides, defending guilty people when you feel it’s wrong doesn’t seem to fit with all the stuff you’ve been telling me about from the Bible.”

  Stacey had come to my baptism last month. Ever since, she’d come out with questions about my faith, usually when I least expected it. I did my best to answer her questions, though a couple of times we’d had to call Mrs. Cavanaugh because I didn’t know the answer. I could tell by the way Stacey’s questions built on each other that she listened carefully and thought about what I’d said.

  This only proved that even more.

  And the way she said it, so matter-of-factly and Stacey-ish, it seemed silly that I’d been considering it at all. No amount of money was worth selling out my integrity for.

  I felt like I could take a full breath for the first time since Mark and I came back from DC. If we moved there, I’d have to take the job with the district attorney’s office, assuming they offered it. Whatever else happened, I had to do what I believed was right.

  I was halfway home when I remembered the call that came in while I was standing on Stacey’s doorstep.

  “Ms. Fitzhenry-Dawes, this is Hal from Frontline Investigations. I found some items that raise red flags for me. Please give me a call back.”

  He left a number.

  My hands went cold, and I wished I still had something sweet to drown the empty feeling in my stomach. The first task I’d assigned Frontline was to look into Dean’s financials. I wanted to know if there was a possible financial motive for Sandra’s death, either by Dean’s hand or someone else’s due to something Dean was involved in. Too many things hadn’t added up where money was concerned.

  I dialed the number Hal left. He answered quickly, and I told him who I was.

  “Sandra didn’t have any hidden money that I could turn up, and Dean has a life insurance policy, but Sandra didn’t,” he said. “It looked like she made about the same as she spent and had nothing left to save. No recent lottery win, either, and no extravagan
t purchases. She didn’t have enough to fully pay off her credit cards each month, but she wasn’t in serious debt, either.”

  Dean’s supposed motives for killing Sandra were getting thinner all the time. Since he had the life insurance policy, it would have made more sense if he’d been the one found smothered to death. Combined with the glimpses of grief he seemed to want to hide, I had to admit he might be innocent after all.

  Though Hal had mentioned red flags. “That doesn’t sound concerning. Did you find something else?”

  “It’s nothing concrete,” he said. “But he paid cash for his car three months ago, and within the last two months, he’s cleared off all the creditors who were bringing down his credit score.”

  He was definitely getting a sudden influx of money from somewhere. Based on what Nadine said and Hal confirmed, it also wasn’t because Sandra had a lot of money in savings that Dean suddenly gained access to upon her death. A woman with a lot of money in savings could have afforded to continue working only part-time with her sister.

  “You want me to keep digging?” Hal asked.

  “Please. And do a little light surveillance on Dean.”

  Even if Hal didn’t turn up anything suspicious, a tail would tell me if Dean was obeying my orders to stay away from women. I’d have no chance at showing the jury he was a grieving husband if the prosecution had pictures of him cavorting around so soon after Sandra’s death. If he wasn’t following my orders, I wanted to know who the woman was. She might end up as another avenue I could use to cast reasonable doubt.

  While Hal worked on his end, I needed to have a talk with Dean about money. I finally had enough information that I could go into it with the advantage.

  I punched Dean’s number into my phone. Literally. I had to remind myself that the phone wasn’t the one causing me headaches.

  “Scott,” he answered.

  It was a bit eerie since Elise answered her phone the same way when she was on duty.

  If I came right out and accused Dean of anything, it’d be about as useful as trying to cut a diamond with my teeth. He’d never be forthright with me.

  I’d have to come at it from a different angle. My dad liked to say that the best lies used the truth. In this case, I wouldn’t be lying, exactly. I’d simply be collecting information for multiple reasons and only telling him about one.

  “It’s Nicole. I’ve been working on putting together your defense, but I need to ask you about a couple of things I think the prosecution might try to use against you in court. I need to make sure I have all the information so they’re not able to surprise me.”

  “You don’t like surprises?”

  There was too much smirk and innuendo in his words for my comfort. His tendency to turn everything into a joke or a come-on was really starting to irk me. It wasn’t at all like the Cavanaughs, who teased each other but somehow always understood where the lines were and managed not to cross them.

  “Not in court I don’t, and that’s the only part of my life that you need to be concerned about.”

  He let out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. What do you need to know?”

  “Your financials show recent large deposits, and you’ve been making purchases with cash and paying off a lot of debts recently.” I didn’t know all that was true. He might not be depositing large amounts into the bank, but it seemed like a fair assumption. “The prosecution could spin that in a lot of different ways, but my guess is that they’re going to say you’re into something illegal and Sandra threatened to expose you.”

  The silence on the other end of the line stretched too long, like he was trying to make up a believable lie to tell me.

  My throat burned. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was guilty, but because I couldn’t prove it, I couldn’t leave the case. Once we got partway into the trial, if it became clear he had murdered Sandra, I’d have no way out.

  He still hadn’t answered me.

  “How do you explain the money?” I asked.

  “I run a business. I take payment in cash because I don’t want to risk a check bouncing or a credit card being declined.”

  That sounded…reasonable. Except everything I’d heard about him from the Cavanaughs before I met him had made it sound like he couldn’t hold down a steady job, let alone run his own successful business. “What business? How long have you owned it? Those are questions the prosecution will ask if that’s how we explain the money.”

  “Construction. I’ve been at it for a year with a buddy of mine.”

  Even if he only took cash payments, he’d need records for tax purposes. “I’ll need your friend’s name and contact information, as well as copies of all your invoices for the past six months.”

  Another long silence. “Okay.”

  “By tomorrow.” Which shouldn’t give him time to fabricate fake records.

  I thought I heard him swear, but I couldn’t be certain. If he had, I’d want to look closely at whatever records he gave me.

  11

  The next morning, I picked up the files from Dean, drove to the nearest fast food restaurant, and turned my car into a mini mobile office. I didn’t want to drive all the way back to Fair Haven only to drive back here to interview his clients if I decided I needed to talk to them. Today was Saturday, so more people would be home over a weekend than on a weekday, making it the ideal time to try to reach them.

  The stack of invoices Dean gave me seemed to have no order to them, either alphabetical or chronological. It was almost like he’d printed them off, shuffled them up, and tossed them into his box. Hopefully his partner kept better records or they’d be in trouble come tax time.

  There also weren’t as many as I’d expected for a company that’d been in business a year and was making enough for Dean to start paying off all his debts and helping Elise with the kids’ expenses.

  I sorted the invoices by date, and wrote down each client’s name, address, and phone number on a separate sheet of paper. I’d start with the most recent and work my way back.

  I added the contact information for Dean’s partner at the top, then I went through the invoices one more time. This time I didn’t care about the names. I paid attention to the amounts billed and the description of the work.

  The work descriptions themselves looked legit. Repairing water damage, replacing a roof, building a gazebo, building a porch.

  The amounts though…I wouldn’t have paid those prices even in DC.

  The prices explained how they’d made such a large profit without working a higher number of jobs, but it created the new question of why people hired them at all. I could see Dean and his partner duping a customer here or there into paying an exorbitant price, but every customer?

  Calling them was an option, but my instincts said I should go in person. I needed to see the work Dean and his partner did and read the reactions of the people I spoke to.

  I plugged the first five addresses, including Dean’s partner, into my GPS. It set out the most efficient route. I’d keep track of anyone who wasn’t home and swing by again some weeknight evening.

  Then I sat in my car for a few minutes even after the GPS told me to drive to the highlighted route. I needed a game plan. Anytime I tried to operate by the seat of my pants, it ended in embarrassment for me.

  I had to be careful, too. If Dean was doing something illegal under the front of his construction business, I didn’t want to tip his clients off to my suspicions. My knowledge of building things was limited enough that I couldn’t pass for a building quality control inspector. It seemed like my best tactic would be another version of the truth. I’d be Dean’s defense attorney, trying to establish that he was a reliable, conscientious businessman.

  Putting that spin on it should make them believe that all I cared about was whether Dean showed up on time and did a good job.

  The first two clients didn’t answer their doors when I rang the bell, and they didn’t have cars in the driveway. I lucked out on the third.

&n
bsp; A woman whose wrinkles put the lie to her dyed black hair answered the door.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  I’d worked out my spiel carefully on the drive. I handed her my card—I’d had some printed specifically for this case at Fair Haven’s print shop. “I’m representing Dean Scott against an accusation made against him, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to me about the work he did for you.”

  Hopefully she’d assume I was representing him in a lawsuit having to do with his business.

  She squinted at my card in a way that said she normally wore reading glasses. She kept holding the card in both hands even after she looked up. “What do you need to know?”

  Her voice had the same hesitation people tended to get when they answered a call and weren’t sure if the person on the other end was who they said they were or a scammer.

  I gave her a calculated smile—not too small, because that would make me look nervous, and not too big, because that’d make me look like I was trying too hard. My mom called it the Goldilocks smile.

  “Nothing invasive or personal. I’m only interested in whether you were satisfied with his work.” I flipped through the notepad I’d brought with me as if I were looking for something even though I already knew the answer. “What exactly did he do for you?”

  She glanced up. “Our roof. New shingles.” She looked down again quickly and examined my card again.

  That part of my questions shouldn’t have made her nervous, but it had. “About how long did the work take?”

  “I don’t remember.” She worried the edge of my card with her fingers. “It was a while ago.”

  Theoretically, she could be having memory issues. I’d have placed her age somewhere in her early seventies. But I had a feeling it was something else. “Were you happy with the quality of his work?”

  “No problems.”

  I wrote that down as if I actually needed to take notes, so as to give myself a little time. There wasn’t anything obviously wrong with her answers, but they were so short that I couldn’t read much into them. It was almost like she kept them brief on purpose.