Without cutting its payroll, Wolverine had cut its payroll tax by a third. Since Gordon Pearce had been named CFO, Wolverine Motors had “saved” over three million dollars.
He did the math again. Then again. The totals didn’t change. He sat on the dirty metal ledge and stared unseeingly into the gloom. Could Gordon Pearce have stolen almost three million dollars without anyone noticing? Helen Busheé Page had done it, after all.
Except someone had noticed. A tide of quiet euphoria rose in Milo. His wild hope, first raised two weeks ago in the back room of the pawn shop, was answered. He and Alf Farnon were completely, blessedly wrong. Tim Shoemaker was not the embezzler, not a relapsed gambler, not a back-stabbing coward. He couldn’t have done this; he hadn’t been here.
So he hadn’t killed himself, either.
The shame of having believed all those things wasn’t enough to dampen the joy spreading through Milo. His dad had been a Good Guy.
A rattle at the door shocked him out of his bliss. Milo slipped the sheets he held into his shirt and stood up. Voices sounded as a tunnel of sunlight probed the dim interior of the shed. Two silhouettes entered as Milo slipped between the cabinet at the end of the balcony and the gap next to the wall. The harsh bare lights sprang on, showing him how exposed he was. He felt like a three-year-old playing hide and seek behind a glass door.
Footsteps crossed the floor.
“Whoa. Hot in here,” said a voice. Milo’s head jerked up. Zaffer?
“We won’t be long.” Gordon Pearce.
The wire elevator creaked to life. Steps came down the ledge toward Milo, making the floor vibrate under him. Closer. They were heading right to where he was. The rumble of wheels explained Zaffer’s presence. The VP of Finance didn’t drag carts around.
An almost irresistible urge to step out and give himself up seized Milo. He closed his eyes and fought it.
“Which ones are we after, Mr. Pearce?” Zaffer was asking.
Pearce slapped a file cabinet a few feet away, and Milo’s ears rang. “This one, all the files. This one too,” another bang, “and then just the top drawer from that one.”
A navy pant leg intruded on Milo’s field of vision. Pearce was eighteen inches away, facing Zaffer. “Can you handle that?”
“Sure. I brought plenty of boxes.”
“Bring them around back and I’ll meet you.” The pant leg vanished. Pearce’s steps moved off toward the ladder.
A squeak of wheels sounded, and Zaffer’s khaki overalls appeared. A second later his face came into view. His mouth fell open at the sight of Milo huddled on the floor.
Milo held a finger to his lips. Zaffer stepped in front of him and turned, blocking him in case Pearce turned on his way out of the shed.
He didn’t. He crossed the floor without looking back, and they heard the front door click shut behind him.
Milo toppled out onto the ledge.
“Weird place to take a break,” Zaffer said.
“Jesus, that was close. My leg is asleep.”
“What are you doing in here?” Zaffer began emptying the top drawer, stacking file folders neatly into cardboard banker boxes.
“Looking for what you’re taking, I bet.” Milo stood up and shook out his leg. Pins and needles shot up it. “He’s been stealing the payroll taxes. Three million dollars’ worth.”
Zaffer paused with a sheaf of files in midair. “Three million dollars! One guy?”
“It only takes one guy, if he’s the controller.” Zaffer was missing the point. “One guy, Zaff. One. It’s been going on for three years. Eighteen months before my dad was even hired.” Milo’s voice cracked. “My dad didn’t steal anything.”
Zaffer’s answering smile was more worried than jubilant. “So he was innocent. I’m glad, buddy. Really glad. But it doesn’t answer everything. Like how he died.”
Milo’s face darkened. No, it didn’t. At that instant he could have dropped a file cabinet on Pearce with no hesitation. “Maybe not how, but why. If Pearce was running a scam like this, I’ll bet you three million dollars my dad uncovered it. That’s what got him killed.”
He thought of the call he’d overheard on his first day of work. “Good with numbers!” Pearce had told Farnon. “I’ll say he was.” Like Farnon, Milo had taken the jibe to refer to Tim’s embezzling from Wolverine. But Pearce had been making a private joke. Tim Shoemaker had been too good with numbers, for Pearce.
Sweat glistened on Zaffer’s face. He slammed shut a bottom drawer, then heaved the last carton of files onto his cart. “I gotta get this stuff out there, he’s waiting. You got the pages you need?”
Milo patted his shirt. “Enough.”
They rattled down in the lift. Zaffer turned toward the back of the shed. Behind what appeared to be a solid wall of files was a door Milo hadn’t known was there.
“Short cut,” Zaffer said. “There’s a big Dumpster back here. I bet he’s getting rid of the evidence.”
Milo checked his watch. It felt like he’d been in this hot, filthy place for years, but only thirty-five minutes had elapsed. Amber and J’azzmin would be back and busy gossiping about where he could be, but Leslie should be still in her meeting.
Milo wanted to see the man who’d framed his father.
He held the door open from the inside as Zaffer backed his cart onto a small concrete stoop. An overgrown hedge bordered this stretch of the grounds, shielding the door from sight of any cars on the little-used road beyond. Milo glimpsed a Dumpster and some tall metal drums and on the ground around them, assorted junk—boards, old vehicle parts, some rusted tools. Zaffer better hope this bit wasn’t on the fireworks tour. Or Harry would hand him a toothbrush and tell him to get a move on.
“Need a hand?” said Pearce.
His voice came from inches away, from the other side of the door. Milo leaped back into the shed.
“I got it, thanks.” Zaffer kicked the door shut in Milo’s face.
Milo ducked behind a cabinet anyway.
“Over here,” Pearce was saying on the other side of the thin metal wall. “That’s good. Just stack them, then take the cart back.” Milo heard boxes being shifted. At one point something struck either the Dumpster or one of the oil drums, with a hollow, metallic clang.
“That’s it,” Zaffer said.
Pearce was right outside the door now. “What’s your name again?”
“Ben Zaffer, sir.” Then, “Oh, no, really, that’s all right.”
“No, take it.” He must be tipping Zaffer, Milo realized. “Thanks for the help. I know it’s your lunch hour.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pearce,” Zaffer said, in his most unctuous golf caddie voice. The rumble of cart wheels died away.
Milo breathed deeply. It did not sound as though Pearce knew of any connection between Zaffer and Milo, though he couldn’t be sure. He should leave out the front, right now. But he wanted to see what Pearce did next.
Small ventilation windows were spaced under the roof on the balcony level. Moving quietly, Milo climbed the metal ladder and hoisted himself onto cabinets under a window on the back wall. This opened out several inches directly over the door. Milo looked down through the dusty screen onto the top of Pearce’s slick black hair. He’d tossed his suit jacket onto the grass and rolled up his sleeves. He was swinging cartons of files into the tall drums by the Dumpster, hoisting each one as if it was empty.
Pearce threw in the last box, then walked out of sight. He reappeared a few seconds later with a small red gas can. Sprinkled the contents into both drums. Took out matches. Lit them. Within seconds flames shot skyward, rippling the still air with heat waves.
He was in profile to Milo, and viewed from above, but Milo could see his expression. He’d seen Pearce leering, and rude, and grudgingly subservient, but this fierce absorption was new. He looked almost happy. Milo remembered the arson charge. Was he seeing an artist—not at work, burning paper took no skill—but at a warm-up exercise?
A movement caught his eye.
From inside the rusting Dumpster, a head had appeared. The furry blob of Fatso the raccoon glided over the rim. Down the gangplank lid. It waddled toward the flames, as big as a hunting beagle, eyes beady in its black masked face. Why it was drawn to fire Milo did not know. Maybe it thought Pearce would throw bread at it.
The raccoon made a little trilling noise. Pearce turned, scowled. From the rubble around the drums he picked up a 2 x 4, charred on one end. He waved it threateningly and the raccoon stopped, its head cocked to one side. It started backing up, obviously thinking twice about cooked food. But not fast enough. With a great swing Pearce brought his stick down. The animal curled into a ball as Pearce clubbed it again, then again, with that same fierce absorption. Milo felt sick but he couldn’t look away. At length Pearce used the stick to prod a very still raccoon onto a square of oil-stained plywood. With forearms straining, he picked this up and tipped the body into the closest drum. The black-ringed tail vanished. Pearce brushed off his clothes, panting slightly. Smiling. Pleased.
Milo slid down. He let himself out the front door of the shed. If Leslie asked where he’d been he would tell her he’d had to throw up. It would be true.
***
Chapter 17
Milo sat on a bench outside the entrance to Cabela’s until a family in Cedar Point T-shirts asked him to take their picture under the twenty-foot statues of fighting black bears. Zaffer arrived a few minutes later.
“So now what?” he wanted to know. “The police?”
They headed toward the fishing department. Their decision to meet here in Dundee was multipurpose: Zaffer needed new waders, and Milo craved the soothing atmosphere only an enormous outdoor equipment superstore could supply. He and his father had once counted thirteen different state license plates in the Cabela’s lot, their all-time high. One from Wyoming. “Checking out Michigan salmon,” Tim had said. Now, as they made their way past the diorama of two giant mountain rams and through racks of $400 graphite rods, sleek titanium canoes and kayaks, parkas and sleeping bags to keep you toasty at fifty below, Milo drew a breath of contentment. “I love this place.”
“Yeah. My brother says this is what heaven must be like.” Zaffer stopped in front of a display of tall wading boots.
“Well, Jesus was a fisherman.”
That’s what he and his father used to tell each other when they’d skip mass after driving all night to the pier at Oscoda to get a good spot before the locals did. Tim said they were invoking the Vatican’s “fishing dispensation.”
“Shoe,” Zaffer said. “Do we go to the police?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?” Zaffer sat back on his heels. “You’ve got the proof. Let’s get this guy before he suspects we’re on to him.”
Milo crouched down as though examining a price tag. “I didn’t tell you. He killed—”
“He might have killed—”
“…that raccoon,” Milo said, just as Zaffer said, “your dad.”
“Huh? What raccoon?”
“Fatso. He beat it to death. Just after you left. It was poking around in the Dumpster, scrounging for food. Zaffer—it was like Pearce…enjoyed it.”
Zaffer let out a little grunt, as though Milo had punched him. “Shit.”
“And that’s not all.” Milo told Zaffer about the flip-flop in his out-tray. “It showed up after we went to his restaurant. He must have seen Ellie and me, and thinks we were the two running through the woods.”
Zaffer flinched as though something had crawled on his neck. “Yikes. I could swear he didn’t suspect me at all today—or why would he let me see him burn that stuff?”
“He wouldn’t. You’re in the clear.”
“Except now he will know me again.” Zaffer stood up and pulled Milo to his feet. “Even more reason to go to the cops.”
“We will. But I want to tell Alf Farnon first.”
Zaffer gave him a sideways look.
“I mean it. It’s his company that’s getting robbed. You know the police’ll pay more attention if Farnon calls them in, than if it’s just us.”
Zaffer held up a pair of rubber waders to his chest. “Somebody’s got a crush,” he chanted into the full-length mirror. “Payroll Clerk Uncovers Fraud at Wolverine Motors, Wins Kiss of Thanks—no, make that French Kiss, from CEO’s hot daughter.’”
“You’re a jerk.”
“Oh, look at Shoe, he’s all red.”
“Shut up. It’s not about that.” It wasn’t. “It’s—I want to be the one to tell Farnon that Tim Shoemaker didn’t steal from him. That someone did betray him, but it wasn’t my dad. It’s the only good news he’s going to get from this mess. If he hadn’t let me work at Wolverine he might not have found out about Pearce for years. I owe him this.”
Zaffer studied Milo. “And then we call the cops?”
“With Farnon. I promise.”
“Or without him?”
“Or without him.”
“What about that restitution schedule?”
“Faked,” Milo stated. “Has to be. Pearce probably learned how to forge stuff in prison. Or maybe my dad really did write it, but for Pearce. Maybe that schedule is why he asked Pearce to meet him in the first place, to tell him he’d been found out. What’s important is that those payroll taxes were getting stolen long before my dad was hired.”
Beside the wader display were rows of fly-fishing hackle in multiple shades, including one the identical glossy brown of Fatso’s fur. Milo squeezed the plastic bag of pelt between his fingers. Had Pearce struck Tim Shoemaker father down with that same fierce enjoyment?
“And once the IRS proves his three million dollar motive,” Milo said, locking his unsmiling gaze to Zaffer’s, “even Valeene cops will wonder where Gordon Pearce was the night my dad had his ‘accident.’”
All day Wednesday Milo pondered how best to approach Alf Farnon. He had to have privacy. It wouldn’t do for Gordon Pearce to walk into Farnon’s office while Milo was there ratting him out.
He wasn’t afraid of Pearce, exactly. Even a raccoon-killer was unlikely to go berserk in a plush executive suite. But Milo’s bloodlust of just a few days before had cooled. It seemed better to let Farnon do the messy part, call in the cops. Since that euphoric moment in the storage shed, when he’d realized his father had not betrayed anyone, had not abandoned Milo, he’d felt almost…peaceful. Like an ache he thought he would have forever had just vanished. The grief for his father was still there, but it was untainted now by the resentment he’d tried, and failed, to conquer. He didn’t need Relative Justice on this. He’d let the system punish Pearce.
So the Wolverine plant was out. And the employee parking lot. It would have to be Farnon’s house.
Zaffer called twice to ask if he’d talked to Farnon yet, and Milo told him no, he’d have to do it Thursday. He had taken the precaution of checking with Margaret, and learned Farnon wouldn’t be in until then. “I’ll call you,” Milo told Zaffer. “Trust me on this.”
After work on Thursday he noticed that both the red Shelby and Farnon’s SUV were gone from the lot. That was okay; it wouldn’t matter if Ellie was home, too, he would ask to speak to Farnon privately. He’d only seen Ellie once since she’d kissed him. She had winked at him from across a crowded cafeteria.
He called his mother to say he’d be working late. “Getting ready for the fireworks,” he told her.
Gloria hadn’t made dinner anyway, it turned out. “I have some writer friends coming over, so just take your time,” she said.
Writers! Who’d have guessed Lenawee County was so thick with literary talent? Milo could get arrested and it would just have to wait till the group had critiqued her latest story. He hoped the little wolverines were worth it.
In Adrian he parked on the opposite side of the street from the Farnon house. Ellie’s car was in the driveway. Farnon must have parked in the detached garage around back.
Ellie answered the door in a swingy, backless black dress Milo knew he’d never seen—
he’d have remembered. The little white apron and black high heels were a nice touch.
“Milo! How nice! Come on in.”
He stepped inside and saw at once he’d picked a bad time. They were having a party. Where had everyone parked? The insistent beat of a Bangles CD came from the living room, a tantalizing smell of roast meat filled the air, and through an archway he saw a white tablecloth gleaming with china for…he counted…twelve. Tall candles flickered in silver holders.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you had company. I wanted to see your father, but I can find him tomorrow.” Dammit.
Ellie closed the door behind him. “You’re here for my dad? Not for me?”
“No, no, I’m happy to see you, but—”
She laughed and took his arm. “I’m kidding. He’ll be here soon. It’s his birthday—come see what I’m making for dinner.”
Milo held back. The music was all he could hear. No other voices. “Are you expecting a lot of people?”
“Just Daddy and me. And you, if you’ll stay. There’s plenty.”
“But the table—” He pointed toward the dining room.
“Oh, I just felt like putting out all the place-settings. We don’t get to eat together much. It looks good, doesn’t it?”
“Terrific.” And weird. Very weird. Covertly he sniffed his armpit. His mother always made him change when he got home from work, and he suspected it wasn’t just to save wear and tear on his shirts.
If he stank Ellie didn’t seem to care. She was steering him into the kitchen. It smelled even better in here, with the sizzle of fat popping in the oven and pans simmering on the stove. “Beef tenderloin from The Food Network. I took the whole afternoon off. Daddy’s real birthday was last week, but he was travelling, so I made him promise we’d do it tonight. Here.”
Unaccounted For Page 16
