She hesitated. “Yes, I...sure. That would be nice.”
She followed me to the kitchen, which was completely out of site of the upstairs offices. “Again, I’m sorry about Harvey. Losing those two men is a tragedy.”
“Yes, well, I’m hoping I can keep the business afloat, but I need some information from Gen. It’s important. I know she’s in town. Is she staying at your place?”
“Oh, well, I—”
“Chantilly, cut the crap. The police had me come when they notified me about Harvey, so it’s safe to say they called her when they found Jeffrey, too. Now, where is she?”
“She’s not here. She went back to Birmingham.”
She shook her head. “She’s not there. I checked. Even her housekeeper hasn’t seen in her days.”
I shrugged. “That’s odd. She sent me a text when she got back and said she was home. She said she’d let me know what was going on with the investigation, too.” I paused and acted as though I was thinking of where she could be. “And you know her housekeeper isn’t there every day, so she could have gone home and left again without Betty knowing.”
She nodded. “It’s important I talk to her immediately. There’s a lot at stake with the company.” Her voice shook when she spoke.
Like all of the stolen money, I thought. “Jackie, what’s going on? I don’t understand. Why were your husband’s murdered?”
She placed her coffee mug on the kitchen counter. “I have to go, but if you talk to your friend, tell her she can’t keep running. I’ll find her if it’s the last thing I do.”
If it’s the last thing she does? That sounded awfully familiar to me.
I FILLED GEN IN ON the details of my conversations with Jack, reiterating his mention that she stay out of sight, which I knew was hard for her, but I also knew her fear would accommodate his demand. “And I think I know who sent those emails,” I said.
“Jackie Barrington.”
“How did you know?”
“Olivia rushed up here and told me to stay put, but she scooted down the stairs and listened in on your conversation.”
I nodded. “Bless her for that. She read my mind.”
“What happened?”
“She said she’d find you if it’s the last thing she did.”
She gasped. “You didn’t tell her I was here, did you?”
“Of course not. But I’m not sure she believed me. She’s talked to Betty, so she knows you haven’t been home in days.”
“Betty’s fired,” she joked.
“I told her just because Betty hasn’t seen you doesn’t mean you haven’t been there.”
“Why do you think she wanted to talk to me?”
“Because she knows you know about the money. I think she’s looking for it.” I paced the small office. “I think she thinks you have it, too.”
“Jackie.” Gen shook her head. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe any of this is happening.”
“I’m going to go do some digging, but I need the name of the bank for the business. Do you know it?”
“Of course, it’s Bank of America.” She sighed. “I wish this was all over.”
“Trust me, I do too. May I have the files you brought with, the bank statements?”
She nodded. “Got them in my bag. I won’t leave them anywhere.”
“You can trust me.”
“Of course I can, honey. You’re my best friend.”
I tossed the files onto the passenger seat in my car and headed to my first stop, our local bank, Community of the South. I knew the president and figured maybe he could answer some questions.
The clerk behind the counter greeted me with a smile. “Miss Chantilly, it’s so nice to see you.” She typed onto her keyboard. “Are you depositing for the historical society today or your personal account?”
“I’m not here for any deposit, actually. I’m hoping I can have a minute with Mr. Reed. Is he available?”
“Sure. He’s in his office. I’ll get him right quick.”
I stopped her with the wave of my hand. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll knock.”
I tapped on his closed door.
“Come on in, it’s open.”
I smiled as I entered. “Hey George, do you have a minute?”
He greeted me by standing and smiling. “Always do for you, Chantilly.” He gestured for me to sit. “What can I do you for today?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but I have some questions I thought you could help me work through.”
He sat down too. “Okay, shoot.”
“It’s about money laundering.”
His eyes widened. “You’re not caught in a scam, are you?”
“No, no. It’s not that. I’m asking for a friend,” I said, smiling. “Just kidding, but I promise you, I’m not.”
He studied me. “I’m not all that familiar with it, but I know the basics. Hit me. I’ll see what I can answer for ya.”
“Do you know how it works? The process?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
I took a small notepad from my purse and set to write what he said.
He gave me a questioning stare. “Is everything okay?”
I sighed. “Have you heard about the murder?”
He nodded. “Tragedy. Man comes to town and winds up dead for no known reason.”
“George, can I trust you?”
He smiled. “‘Course you can. We’ve known each other since we were kids. And you know I never told a soul our little secret.”
I smiled at my lifelong friend. Our little secret was climbing the abandoned bridge crossing just on the south side of town so George could spray paint George loves Charlene forever on the side. I spray painted Go Braves because I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time. The bridge and the words were still there. Everyone knew George wrote his part, but he never told who did mine, and he spent a night in jail as punishment for not giving me up to the police. No court case, no fine, nothing on his record, and I was sure the adult George appreciated that, too. Small town judges liked to bend the rules and scare kids, and George and I were definitely scared. And I appreciated him going to jail for me. No other man had ever done anything close. I reminded him of that, too.
“There have been two murders, and they’re connected. The first one was my best friend’s husband. The second, his business partner. Gen, my best friend, discovered some money in an overseas bank account in her name. We’re pretty sure the money was laundered.”
He nodded. “Do you know anything about the deposits?”
I retrieved the paperwork from my bag. “I’ve got the statements here.”
He examined them one by one. “The process of cleaning money is a lot simpler than people think, and there are several ways to do it. Most of the time, varying accounts with different banks are used, but it’s not uncommon for someone to use the same bank. I suspect though, if your friend did more research, she’d find more accounts with her name on them at other banks.” He held out the last bank statements summary page. “This here looks like what financial experts such as myself call smurfing.”
“Smurfing?”
“Banks here in the states don’t have to report deposits under ten thousand to the government. Smurfs, the depositors, break money into amounts under that and deposit it into one or more accounts. Usually they do it over an extended period of time. Your guy here, he was a novice.”
“How do you mean?”
“Overseas banks like this one, they have secrecy laws. Anyone can deposit any amount into one of their accounts and nobody has to report it. If your guy knew what he was doing, he would have deposited it all in one lump sum.” He handed me the papers. “But he didn’t. He waited a week between each deposit.”
“So, how does that make him a novice?”
“Because doing it that way gave whomever wanted the money time to figure out what he was doing and go after him.”
“But they didn’t get the money.”
He nodded. “Wh
ich means they’re still looking for it.”
I sat back in my chair. “That’s what I thought.”
He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “Chantilly, do you know where the money is?”
I pressed my lips together, breathed out of my nose, and nodded.”
“Your friend?”
I nodded again.
“Are the police involved?”
I’d just become an expert and pressing my lips together. “Sort of.”
He sighed and tapped a pencil on his desk. When he finally spoke, he did it while shaking his head. “You need to get that money to the police. Your friend isn’t safe.”
“She won’t be safe whether she has the money or not.”
“True, but if the police let the public know they have it, she’s got a better chance of staying alive.”
He was right, and I planned to do that, but I had to convince Gen to give it up.
As George saw me out, I caught a glimpse of Jackie Barrington and Charles Clydesdale talking to the clerk at the counter. I grabbed George’s arm. “That’s the wife of Gen’s husband’s business partner and his ex-partner.”
George angled his body next to mine, effectively keeping me from their line of sight. Thankfully, the couple had their backs to us, but he rushed me to my car anyway. “I’ll find out what they’re doing here and let you know. You go. Get out of here. Hopefully, they don’t know you were here.”
“Thank you, George.”
“Hey, it’s not the first time I’ve protected you, but hopefully, it’ll be the last.”
I hugged him and climbed into my car.
What were the two of them doing at the bank? Were they trying to get information about money laundering, too?
As I left the bank parking lot, I noted the white BMW with the Alabama plates parked in the front row. No other car had Alabama plates.
That meant they’d come to town together. I called Jack, but it went straight to voicemail. I threw the phone on my seat and drove straight to the house where Anna Kentworth died. It was time I have a talk with her, let her know what happened to her husband, and get some answers.
Scared to death or not.
I pulled into the gravel driveway and parked next to the crime scene tape that hadn’t already been torn down or fallen on its own. Technically, I still shouldn’t have been there, and I would have parked on the side of the road again, but the tape was down at the entrance, so I pretended driving in was fine.
I stepped out of my car and hesitated but gathered my nerve and walked to the edge of the stairs leading up to the porch. “Anna Kentworth, I have information about your husband, William.”
The curtain in the front window moved, but I didn’t see any little faces peeping out. “Anna, please. I can help you.”
Anna’s spirit appeared on the front porch. Her mouth opened, and she stared at me with her hollow, dark pits for eyes.
I stiffened, not knowing what to expect, and afraid she’d do something to me, though I had no idea what that might be. “I know what happened to your husband. He died a hero, Anna.”
She moved closer, but I stayed still as a rock.
The details about the South and the Civil War confused or offended most people, but I understood the fine print of the ways of the past, especially during that time, and I knew Anna believed with all her heart that her husband fought for the right side. Political discord aside, I needed to support her belief, because I wasn’t there to teach her a lesson in modern interpretation of US history, but to help relieve her pain. “He’d died after you, on November 27, 1863 in the battle of Ringgold Gap along with almost five hundred other Confederate soldiers. They won the battle against the Union soldiers that day. Your husband died a hero, Anna. He died doing what he set out to do, win a war.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her the Confederates lost, and the South was still part of the United States.
She moved closer yet again, and I noticed her eyes weren’t hollow black holes anymore. Instead, they were more like Fran’s. She tilted her head as she spoke. “I promised I wouldn’t leave without him.”
I leaned my head back and thought carefully before speaking. “I know, but I think you can. I think he’s waiting for you somewhere else.”
She stared at me, confused.
“Not here.” I pointed to the sky. “Up there.”
She shook her head. “No, no. I can’t go. What if he comes here?”
“Anna,” I shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it. I don’t think he’s coming here.”
“But he promised.”
“I know, but sometimes things don’t work out as planned.”
She shook her head. “No, I cannot leave. We must stay.”
“Do you know what year it is?”
She swiveled her head, angling it to one side, and then shook it. “It’s...it’s...it’s 1863.”
I exhaled. “Look around you. It’s not 1863 anymore. Look at that.” I pointed to my car. “That’s my automobile. I drive that, and it can go really, really fast.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Anna, I’m sorry. It’s...it’s 2019. The war ended over a hundred years ago. It’s time for you to move on. Go to your husband. I’m sure he’s waiting.”
Her eyes widened. “It’s two thousand and nineteen?” She shook her head. “No, no. That’s not possible.”
I pressed my hands into a praying position, my fingertips touching my chin. “I know it sounds crazy, but it really is 2019, I promise.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and showed her the date on my lock screen. “See? See the date?”
She stared at my cell phone. “I don’t understand.”
I’d just held up a piece of modern technology to a ghost from the eighteen hundreds thinking she’d know what it was. What was I thinking? Oh, how I wish Fran would pop in and help me. Okay, I took that back. I needed to learn to do things on my own. I put the phone back in my purse. “It’s hard to explain, and I don’t even think I can, but I promise you, the war is over, and time has gone on.”
Her face softened and then grew with concern again. “Did we win?”
Well, darn. “It’s complicated.” I shrugged. “Do you remember what happened to you? What those men did?”
She shuttered and nodded.
“You don’t have to feel that pain anymore, Anna. You can go now. Take your children and go to be with your husband.”
She smiled, and I knew I had to act fast. “But I need to ask you a question about the other day. About the things that happened here recently.” I smiled at her. “Do you think you can help me?”
The timing was horrible, but I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs that I had the whole ghost talking thing nailed down, to share my success with the unbelieving world.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Your son. Your son saw something, and I hope you did, too. The other day, when you saw me talking to him, he said something I didn’t understand.”
She gave me a questioning look.
“Bleachers. He said bleachers. Do you know what he was talking about?”
She disappeared.
“Anna?” I did a circle, searching the area for her. “Anna? Please, come back.” I held my hands to my head and pulled at my hair. “Great. Just great.”
She and the little boy appeared in front of me, and I jumped back, yelping as I did.
“William, can you help this lady?”
The boy tugged onto his mother’s dress, his little eyes peering up at me. He was too skinny for his clothing, and his face, dirty and sunken in, scared and unsure. “Bleachers.”
“Yes,” I said. “Bleachers. What made you say that?”
He pointed to tire tracks on the ground. “The man. The man said it.”
That didn’t give me much. “Do you know what the man looked like?”
The little boy bent his head down and stared at the ground
. “Bleachers.”
I was stuck.
“I saw them, too. There were two of them, and then there were three of them again,” Anna Kentworth said. “There was a woman. She exited from something like that.” She pointed to my car.
“An automobile? The woman was in that?” I tried to get a description of any of them, but Anna didn’t understand.
A cold air surrounded me, and I could suddenly see my breath. Seconds later, a dirty, thin man in a soldier’s uniform I knew was Confederate, appeared in front of me.
Anna gasped, and the little boy latched onto her tighter.
Another cold breeze hit, and the little girl that peeked out from the curtains appeared, too.
“William,” Anna said. “William.”
The man I assumed was the adult William Kentworth, smiled.
The air around me changed.
“It is time for us to leave, my love,” he said.
“Wait, I just need to know what happened here,” I said, begging them to wait.
But they didn’t. Anna’s eyes softened, and she whispered thank you before the four of them became balls of light and shot up into the sky, disappearing in a flash.
Chapter Eight
“She’s got the money. They’re going to kill her.” I cornered Jack outside of Community Café.
He yanked me over to the side and looked around. “Keep your voice down.”
I kept my voice to a whisper. “I tried calling you, but it went to voicemail. Gen’s got the money, and I think I know who killed Jeffrey and Harvey. They’re going to come after Gen now.”
He dropped his head and groaned. When he looked up at me, I knew he wasn’t happy. “Why the–where’s the money? And why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t want you to arrest Gen for having it.”
He grunted out a few choice words, none of which a Southern lady would dare repeat in public. “You need to get that money and your friend to the police station.”
“It’s Jackie Barrington and Charles Clydesdale. They did it. They were at the bank asking about accounts in Gen’s and my name. Look.” I showed him the text George Reed sent thirty minutes before. Your friends were asking about accounts in Gen’s and your name. Wanted to know if you’d had any large deposits made recently. My clerk told them we can’t reveal whether a person is a bank customer. Bought you some time, but you need to go to the police.
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