by Lakota Grace
“Lenny,” she called as she went in the front door, “where are you?”
The living room was quiet, the television uncharacteristically silent. Maybe he was sleeping late. He’d still been in bed when she’d left this morning. She walked into the bedroom to check. But the bed was empty, unmade. There were towels on the floor in the bathroom and a damp smell in the air. She picked up the towels with a practiced motion and folded them neatly on the rack.
Then she walked into the kitchen. The coffee pot gave off a burned smell. Lenny had forgotten to switch it off again. She pressed the off button and looked around. Lenny’s dishes from breakfast were in the sink. Nothing unusual there. She’d made him a special coffee cake. He’d had a piece but forgotten to cover the rest.
She pulled open the paper drawer for plastic wrap. That’s when she noticed the piece of typewriter paper propped against his dirty coffee mug. The note was carefully folded once with her name in the middle of it, awkward letters with a heart over the “I.”
Hi Harry,
The boys called and we’re making a last-minute trip up to the casino. Sorry I won’t be here to celebrate our anniversary tonight, but I’ll return tomorrow. I’ll win big and we can go out to dinner when I get back. See, I remembered. Ha. Ha.
Lenny.
The note slipped from her hand. Slowly, she walked over to the cabinet and reached behind the flour canister where she’d put the envelope from Malcolm last night. Her searching fingers located nothing.
The blackmail money, the entire ten thousand dollars that Malcolm Vander had given her the night before, had vanished along with her husband Lenny.
CHAPTER 24
I slept in the morning after my late night encounter with Gary Marks. There wasn’t much I could do until Thorn elected to reappear, or Ben decided to let us know where she was. And both circumstances were out of my control at this point. It was a good time to catch up on household chores.
I took some wash up to the laundromat and sat in one of the rigid plastic chairs, half mesmerized by the swish and pull of the clothes going round and round. I kept a close eye on my undies, though. I’d learned the hard way that when the laundromat burglars were at work, they always picked the expensive bras, not the Goodwill-special dungarees.
It was midweek, and I’d caught the slack time between the housewives with loads of kiddo tiny garments and the after-work crush of construction workers with their piles of dirt-laden clothes that tied up the dryers for hours.
I’d just dumped my now-clean laundry on the folding table when the front door opened, blowing in the rain and cold air. The weather had shifted, and we were due for snow and ice tonight.
“Hi, stranger. I saw the Jetta parked outside and thought that might be you.”
It was Rory Stevens, my on-again, off-again boyfriend. We’d been mostly off, since my torrid, short-lived affair with a lover who had since departed for parts unknown. I’d been expecting Rory to appear sometime soon. That sixth sense of his.
Rory was also with the sheriff’s department, stationed over the mountains rimming the Verde Valley at the Prescott office. But he visited our valley on a regular basis, and I was glad to see him. Cooper Davis had never called me back, and I needed somebody that was not connected with the case to process the new developments.
“Hi, Best Buddy,” I said.
He nudged me over and took up the challenge of folding my T-shirts. I let him. He folded them with military precision, unlike my bundle-in-a-heap method. Rory had been a SEAL before entering law enforcement, and it showed.
“So what’s up?” he asked.
I didn’t know where to start.
“You heard about Shepherd’s daughter?”
“You mean that she’s on the lam, hiding out on the Rez? Yeah, that’s old news. Have you leaned on Ben to find out where she’s stashed?”
Good old sheriff’s grapevine. Rory undoubtedly knew more about the case than I did.
“Ben’s not returning my calls.” I was used to that with Ben. He would disappear for days at a time, taking Shaman training on the Navajo Reservation. But now, with Thorn missing, we needed to keep in touch, and he wasn’t.
“You think Thorn did it?” Rory lay another T-shirt on the growing stack and rummaged for a missing sock.
“No way. She’s Shepherd’s daughter!”
I handed him the orphan that I had on my side of the pile.
“Well, there’s that, but anybody is capable, given enough reason.”
“Would you?”
“Murder somebody?” He paused to think. “Self-defense, sure, but there you are acting on instinct. We had training in the SEALs but I never had to.” He crossed himself as if to ward off future occurrences. Rory was a non-practicing Catholic, but knowing his reputation with the ladies, the rite of confession had to come in handy sometimes.
“But premeditated?”
“Hard to say. If something happened to you, maybe.” There was a steely glint in his eyes that left no doubt he’d do exactly that, damned the consequences.
“That’s why I think Thorn didn’t do it. She got fired from the company, sure, but it was a lousy summer intern job. And she was totally spooked at the sight of Jill Rustaine’s dead body.”
“Understandable, for a civilian,” Rory remarked.
He held up my one good black bra. Damn! I’d forgotten I’d tossed it in with the darks. I grabbed it from him.
“Hey! I didn’t fold it yet.”
“Never mind.”
I looked out the front window. The rain had settled to a steady drumbeat. Would it be turning to snow at higher elevations?
“What’s the weather forecast for Flag?” I asked.
“Possibly heavy snow. Possibly nothing. You know how unpredictable it can be this time of year.” Rory was our local weather expert, keeping track of the highs and lows and isobars.
Heavy snow possible. And Thorn Malone alone on the Reservation. Damn Ben Yazzie! He should know better.
“The use of a knife usually indicates passion,” Rory said, returning to the murder. “Jill involved with anybody?"
I considered sharing my late-night encounter with Gary Marks, but decided it might be wise to save that news for the ears of Cooper Davis first.
“Jill was single,” I hedged. “Her assistant, Harriet Weaver, says she used Malcolm Vander as an escort for company functions but had no obvious boyfriends.”
“Well anyway, that fire put an end to getting fingerprints off that knife,” Rory said.
“Oh, yeah. Shepherd bribed the arsonist, right?”
We both chuckled at that, but knowing Shepherd, he might have done the deed himself. Then I told Rory how Silas Wooster had turned up at just the opportune moment to guide me to the murder scene.
“That coot still wandering around those hills? Did you hear the rumor he might have caused the Slide Fire a year or so ago?”
I thought about the old man’s fiercely protective attitude toward West Fork. I didn’t think he would deliberately harm the preserve. A more reasonable explanation would be that he’d be taking the vigilante path for whoever caused the destruction.
I shook out a red-checked flannel shirt. Worn at the cuffs, it was a favorite sleeping spot for Reckless and had been full of dog hair. I inspected it front and back. The fur had disappeared. Effective commercial washers. Maybe I’d get a wear or two out of the shirt before Reckless claimed it again.
“How’s your relationship with Davis?” Rory quirked an eyebrow at me.
“I’m on his black list, along with whatever idiot caused the fire at the forensics lab. Cooper blames me for Thorn’s disappearance. He’s convinced she murdered her boss and has stopped looking anywhere else. He's given me three days to get her back, and I’ve used up more than half of that already.”
“Doing laundry.” Rory’s scorn was obvious.
“No! I’m thinking. I get my best ideas when my hands are busy.”
“Give me an underwater scramb
le of weeds for my creative thought,” Rory said, “But same thing. I understand.” He ruffled my hair. “Call me again when you need help.”
I’d met Rory several years ago, when I sat on top of a muskrat house in the middle of a swamp watching him do underwater recovery. I guess he thought that gave him permission to take liberties like hair mussing. But it didn’t feel too bad, even so.
Rory roared off in his orange Hummer, and I stuck the load of clean clothes in the back seat of my Jetta. Before I started the car, I tried Cooper Davis again, but his phone was on automatic shift to voice message. Where was the man? Maybe in transit.
What was I missing? This case held too many secrets, and each led back to Jil-Clair Industries. I needed more information. I dialed Harriet Weaver and got shunted to voice mail there, too. However, I doubt that lady missed a single day of work during the year. She’d be there at the office, somewhere.
Rather than returning to my cabin, I drove to Jil-Clair Industries. Clues in this murder investigation were locked behind those walls, and I intended to pry them loose.
* * *
When I walked into the reception foyer of the company, the receptionist gave me a startled look. Maybe they weren’t used to having unannounced visitors. I showed my ID and asked to speak to Harriet Weaver.
“She’s not here.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was let go, fired! First Jill was killed and now Harriet is gone.”
She talked in a mournful tone as though overwhelmed with events. I knew how she felt.
“Do you have a home address on file for Harriet?” I asked.
“Give me a moment.”
The receptionist looked at her computer, tapped a few keys and then grabbed a sticky note. She scribbled an address and then handed me the note propped on the end of one long red fingernail.
“Malcolm Vander. Is he in?”
“Mr. Vander gave specific instructions that he is not to be disturbed this morning.”
I thought about interrupting whatever time-wasting project he was engaged in and then decided to let it go.
“Fine. I’ll stop by later.” I stuffed the note in my pocket.
“Wait. Do you want me to give him your card?”
“He has it,” I lied. I wasn’t officially on the case, and Cooper already had one of my ears in traction. I didn’t want to lose the other one as well.
Harriet Weaver lived not far from the company, on a modest street in Cottonwood. A service truck was blocking the driveway, so I pulled the Jetta in front of the house and got out.
When I reached the front door, a man in white overalls with “Wilbur’s Lock Service” embroidered in red was working on the front door locks.
He got up as I neared.
“Go right in. I’m finished here.”
Harriet Weaver wasn’t my new best friend forever, so I stopped to ring the bell first. When there was no answer, I pushed the door open and peered inside.
Harriet stood at the end of the room. She wore a wool plaid skirt and a twin-set of sweaters that had gone out of style twenty years ago. Smeared mascara gave her eyes a raccoon effect, and her hair stood up on one side as though she’d forgotten to brush it.
“You! What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“The office said that you’d been—”
“Please sit,” she said. “I’ll be with you in a moment."
She spoke briefly to the locksmith, pocketed the new keys, and handed him a check. She walked to a small desk, pulled out a bank register and precisely entered the date and amount.
I wish I could be that exact with my money. But I didn’t write that many checks anymore, just used a debit card for purchases and checked my balance online. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d balanced my checkbook. I figured that was the bank’s job.
Harriet closed the register with a nervous slam and perched on the edge of the couch.
“I was at Jil-Clair Industries this morning,” I said.
“I was fired. So what?” Harriet said defensively.
I didn’t blame her for being upset. But I needed to neutralize that simmering anger somehow. I wanted information and that meant her cooperation.
“You having lock problems?” I asked in a casual tone of voice.
“I needed a re-key. We moved in here five years ago, but there’s been some burglaries on the street. Pet sitters and that sort, you know.”
I looked around but didn’t see any evidence of a pet.
“Right, good to be on the safe side.”
There were piles of clothes stacked on one chair.
“You planning a trip?” I asked.
“I’m going to see my sister. She’s been feeling poorly.”
I recalled the conversations that Cooper Davis and I had, back when we were still speaking to each other. He said that Harriet had no close relatives. Check. So no sister, no pets. What other lies did this lady have in store for me?
“Your husband going with you?” I asked. If Harriet skipped town, we’d likely never find her again. She wasn’t a suspect, but she could lead me who might be.
“No, he’s not.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Lenny’s taken our money, all of it,” she blurted out. “He’s gone to the casinos. I don’t know what I’ll do!”
“Hey, there, don’t cry.” I grabbed a package of tissues out of my purse and poked them her direction. And then I listened to her amazing tale of her blackmailing husband and the fearful CFO of Jil-Clair Industries.
“You said your husband wrote the note and had it delivered. Why would Malcolm pay without question?”
“Lenny forged my signature. Of course, Lenny and I both did that. I signed his name on checks all the time.” She had a guilty look on her face.
“And what would Malcolm think that you knew, then, worth paying blackmail for?”
“It might be the corporate records,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“The books were off. I tried to balance them for the last business quarter, and I couldn’t get them to match. You know when you’re off a dollar here or there, and it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is, according to basic bookkeeping rules. Jill said to just let it go, to round it up, but you can’t do that using proper accounting principles.” Harriet’s mouth pursed.
“Can you access the corporate records on your computer here at home?”
“Not a chance. The firewalls protecting the internal systems are government-security tight.”
I wasn’t too impressed with our government security, but I followed her line of reasoning.
“That means you’d have to be inside the corporate building,” I said.
“That’s not a problem. I can get into any room in that company I want.”
“But if you were fired, you don’t have keys anymore.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” Her smile seemed forced. “Could I be prosecuted for what Lenny did?”
“That’s a good question,” I said, “but I’m not a lawyer.”
She probably could be. On the other hand, this blackmailing event might be the leverage I needed to gain more cooperation from this person who seemed to know everything.
“When you went to the Cultural Park, what did you say to Malcolm?”
“Nothing. He just handed me this envelope.”
“And you didn’t look inside, see what was there?”
She shook her head, but she wouldn’t make eye contact.
I mulled that over. Worse case basis, she was an accessory to a crime, but odds were, a good attorney could get her off. And if Malcolm Vander wasn’t talking, there wasn’t anyone to press charges. And if he were an embezzler, he wouldn’t be talking. I handed her Myra Banks’ card. Best defense lawyer I knew in the Valley. Shepherd could vouch for that.
“Look,” I said, “it’s best if you return the money to Vander. Then you are out of it entirely. But let’s face it. You got manipulated by two unsc
rupulous people—your husband for blackmailing, and Malcolm, for whatever he did that was worth blackmail. Can you prove it was Malcolm that cooked the books?”
She hesitated.
“Jill trusted few people. Me, of course, but not many others. I think she got that from her father. She kept a journal that recorded everything that went on at the company. All the real news, but also all the gossip and mean things that could make or break a person’s career. She said it might come in useful someday. There might be something in there about what Malcolm was doing.”
“Did he know about the journal?”
“Jill may have mentioned it to him. He came into the office after we got the news of her death looking for it.”
“But he didn’t find it,” I said.
Again, the head shake and lack of eye contact. I had a good idea where that journal might be right now. With someone else who needed insurance and might need to collect.
“Do you think Malcolm might have murdered Jill?”
“He’s a snake,” Harriet said. “But I don’t think he’s got enough spine to do something that awful. The company is everything to him though. There’s a morals clause in the corporate structure. If Jill were doing something that violated it, he might have hired someone else to do it for him to protect the company.”
“Hence the need for money to purchase a murder-for-hire.”
“Perhaps.” Harriet looked doubtful. “But there are some other people that need to be checked out.”
“You for instance? Did you kill Jill Rustaine?” I asked. “I heard she had a fierce temper.”
“Of course not! I’d never hurt Jill.” Her denial was vehement.
That might be the case. Or it might not. But this wasn’t my murder investigation. My responsibility was Shepherd’s daughter. I needed to know how much trouble the girl was in.
