I didn’t doubt that. I kept asking general questions, and at the same time kept an eye on Annie. She had to take over at some point, and I needed to be reasonably sure she wasn’t going to blurt out an accusation or even just say the wrong thing in anger. I was glad I wasn’t in her position. It can’t be easy to be sitting in the kitchen of someone you suspect may have done something terrible to your mother, so I was really proud of her for keeping it together.
Lenny seemed to have remembered that he was talking to the girl who’d been left without a mother. He didn’t say anything else that was critical of Gina, but I did notice that most of his answers were designed to make him sound pretty saintly.
Even if I hadn’t suspected him of something terrible, I’d have had a hard time picturing him as the great guy he was describing to us. That might just have been because he was unshaved and, quite frankly, didn’t smell particularly good. It was a combination of body odour and some kind of cheap cologne. I figured he hadn’t showered in a few days and was probably the sort of person who thought slapping on something scented did the trick. Ugh!
Annie interrupted my thoughts with a barely perceptible nod to let me know she was ready to pick up her part of the conversation.
“The day you and my mom left Little River,” she said, as if it had just popped into her head. “I can’t remember — where was she gone in the morning?”
“We left that morning, right after you went to school,” Lenny said.
“Right. But I mean before I went to school. You were there, but my mom wasn’t. I think you told me she had to go somewhere ...”
“Oh, yeah.” Lenny paused to think. “She had to go get her pay cheque from work. That’s why she wasn’t there in the morning.”
Annie nodded, like she was remembering, too. “Yes! That was it,” she said. She even smiled at him! He concentrated on his coffee.
We asked a few more questions, none of which yielded anything useful, that I could tell. Even so, I took notes, just in case.
When we left Lenny’s house I had an irrational urge to run, which I just barely managed to resist. I told this to Annie, who giggled nervously and admitted she felt the same way.
“Okay,” she said once we’d turned the corner and were out of Lenny’s viewing range, supposing he was watching us. “So, what did that prove?”
“Not yet,” I said. “We have one other stop to make first. But if I’m right, this is pretty solid proof of ... well, of something.”
“Of something?” she echoed. “Aren’t you looking for proof of a ... uh ... a crime?”
It chilled me to realize she’d been about to say: “murder.”
“What we’re looking for right now is evidence that Lenny is lying about your mother leaving Little River,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “We have to do this one step at a time, and this is the first step.”
“Okay.”
I was relieved that she didn’t push it. It was hard to imagine what it was like for her to have to deal with all of these horrible, dark thoughts.
We walked in silence and I remembered how she’d said that she could handle the truth, no matter how hard it was, just so long as she could find the answers. I wasn’t sure that included finding out something as terrible as what I now believed had happened.
By the time we got to Bea’s Bakery we were both shivering. The warmth of the place and the smells of breads and spices wrapped around us as we went in, stomping our feet to warm them.
“Hello, girls!” Bea was in the front part of the store, marking down some cookies for quick sale. “How’s the search coming along? Any leads?”
“Nothing definite yet,” Annie said. “But there was something else we wanted to ask you about. If you have time, that is.”
“Of course! Let me get Gwen to come out here and we can go into the back again.” As soon as she’d said this to us, she turned to face the kitchen and hollered, “Gwen ... can you come here for a few minutes?”
Gwen arrived seconds later, untying a full-length white apron as she rounded the corner. She hardly glanced at us as she made her way to a stool beside the cash register and hoisted herself up on it. I thought she looked quite content to have as little to do as possible for a while.
In the back room a moment later, I got right to the point.
“When we were here the last time you mentioned how disappointed you were that Annie’s mother never said goodbye to you.”
“Yes, I was. But don’t get me wrong. I felt bad about that all right, but it didn’t change my opinion of Gina. She was a really nice girl.”
“What I was wondering about,” I said, flipping back to my notes of our first interview with her, “was this one thing you said. That one day she was working and the next day you found out she’d left town.”
“That’s right. It was such a shock.”
“What about her final pay cheque?” I asked.
“Her last pay cheque ....” Bea paused and thought for a moment. “Now, let me think.”
I could hardly breathe. So much depended on her answer.
“I know she didn’t call with a forwarding address or anything,” Bea told us. She looked back and forth at us helplessly. “Was that what you were hoping — that I might have a starting point for you to check into?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Well, let’s see. It was a Thursday when she left. I remember that because it was always her day off. She liked to be off on paydays so she could do her grocery shopping and such.”
“So, it was payday when she left?”
“Yes. And she got that pay cheque all right, but I don’t think she ever got paid for the days she worked in the week she left.”
“Oh!” I said, realizing that the pay cheque we needed to know about wasn’t the last one she’d have been due, but the one for the previous week. That was the one that would have been paid on the day she left. “So, the cheque for the week before she left ... she got that okay?”
“Well, yes, she got that one,” Bea said.
“That’s what I was curious about,” I told her. “What you said before made me think that you hadn’t seen her at all, after her final shift here. Didn’t she come in for her pay cheque the next day?”
“Oh, I see.” Bea frowned slightly. “You were thinking that I would have seen her the day she left. But I didn’t, because Gina didn’t come in for her cheque. She sent that boyfriend of hers for it.”
Beside me, Annie gasped and reached for the table to steady herself.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Annie moaned softly, her head on the table, resting in her hands.
“It’s true,” she said. “You’re right. I know you are.”
Bea looked back and forth at us. “Is something wrong?” she asked, alarm growing on her kindly face.
“It gets to be a lot for her to handle sometimes,” I said quickly. Little River is a small enough town that if you told one person a secret, it could be all over town before dark that night. I was pretty sure we could trust Bea, but there was no need to risk it unless we had to. If Lenny heard about our suspicions, then our chance of ever proving anything would go way down.
“Of course it does,” Bea said. “Let me make you girls a cup of tea.” She hurried to the counter.
“Was it unusual for Gina to send Lenny for her pay cheque?” I asked while Bea plugged in the kettle and rinsed the teapot with hot water.
“Well, not that unusual,” she answered. “He’d picked it up a few times before. I can’t think offhand exactly how many, but I’d have her notes in the payroll book so I can check, if you think it’s important.”
“Her notes?” I could hardly believe my ears!
“Mmm hmmm. I have a strict policy when it comes to giving any employee’s cheque to someone other than that person. Something in writing — that’s what I insist on. I figure that covers me if there’s ever a problem.”
“And you keep all of the notes?”
“Absolutely
. I staple them right into the payroll book. It’s easier than filing them, and then they’re right there if I ever need something to back me up.”
“Would it be possible to see the note Lenny brought in that day?” I asked.
“Well, sure. The payroll books are right in the filing cabinet in my office. I can have it for you in two shakes of a dog’s tail. I’ll go get it now.”
Annie was just starting to compose herself when Bea returned with a couple of long, green payroll books. She laid them on the table and then picked up the one that was for the year Annie’s mother had supposedly left town.
Bea opened it and flipped through the pages until she came to the one where Gina’s details were recorded. At the top of the page were several pieces of paper, folded and stapled in a section of columns that weren’t being used. She pried at the staples that held them in place, then tugged them out, loosing the notes they were holding in place. There were three slips of paper there. Bea picked up the one on top and opened it.
“Yes, here we are.” She turned it to face us and we both leaned forward to read it.
Bea,
Give my pay to Lenny because I don’t have time to come for it today.
Thank you.
Gina
“Can we see the other notes, too?”
I asked. “I don’t see why not.” Bea passed those over without looking at them and we each took one, read it, and then swapped. The last note had been printed neatly (like the note that was left for Annie) while the other two were written in longhand.
The contents of all three were similar. Each started off “Dear Bea,” followed by a simple line. The signatures looked like they had been written by the same person, but the style was simple enough that I thought it would be easy enough to duplicate.
“The last one’s printed,” Annie said.
Bea was looking at them with us now, comparing the three. She had realized at once that we were trying to confirm if Gina Berkley had indeed written the last note that Lenny had given her.
“Oh!” she said.
Annie and I both turned toward her. Her hand was over her mouth and her eyes were wide with shock.
“Gina didn’t write this,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I never noticed before, but Gina had her own little way of writing “thank you.’ She always wrote it as “thanx.’ Always.”
So! I thought, even without being able to tell if the signature was forged, we had something to back up our theory.
“What’s going on, girls?” Bea asked.
I hesitated, trying to think of something convincing that wouldn’t tell her more than we wanted her to know. But before I could think of anything, she was speaking again.
“You wanted to see the notes because you already suspected that someone other than Gina had written the last one, didn’t you?” I was still working on an answer when she went on. “You think that Lenny wrote it,” she said. When she said his name, it was in the same tone she might have used if she was talking about a hair clog in the drain.
This time I just nodded. We were going to have to tell her the whole story, and hope she could keep it to herself. So many people just have to tell someone, and then they’re upset if the person they told does the same thing.
“I never trusted him,” she said. “Too smooth, for one thing. And he was always bossing Gina around. I don’t know what that girl saw in him.”
She wasn’t going to get any argument from us about that.
“So, I guess the real question is why,” Bea said. Annie and I looked at each other, and then at Bea. Annie started to sob quietly, which nearly made me cry, too. Bea crossed the room and put her arms around Annie, saying things like, “There, there, love,” and “I know, I know.” I thought both were an improvement from the usual “it will be all right,” which most people say at a time like that ... but which is hardly ever true.
I watched Bea as she soothed Annie. I had a feeling she was just going to figure the whole thing out without even trying. Sure enough, within a few minutes I could see it in her eyes — that kind of startled look that comes just as something hits you.
Bea gave Annie another weak pat and sank slowly onto a chair, her face registering the thoughts as clearly as if she were saying them out loud. I stayed quiet, letting her process it all, waiting to see what she’d say.
“If you girls are thinking what I suspect, then you’re treading on some pretty dangerous ground,” she said at last. “I’d sure appreciate it if you’d fill me in.”
“You’ve obviously guessed what we think might have happened,” I said.
Bea nodded solemnly. “You don’t think Gina wrote that last note because she couldn’t write it.”
We said nothing.
“It makes sense,” Bea said after a moment had ticked by. “In fact, it makes so much sense that I can’t believe I never thought of it before.”
She turned to Annie and went on. “Gina wasn’t the kind of woman to leave you, and even if that creep had somehow persuaded her to, she’d have been back for you in a flash. I should have realized that the only reason there could have been for her not coming for you would have been if she couldn’t.”
A tear slid down Annie’s cheek. I watched her take a deep breath and struggle to compose herself.
“Shelby put it together,” she said, “but I didn’t want to believe it. Now I know I have to.”
“Suspecting something and proving it are very different things,” Bea said. “Are you going to the police?”
“With what? The fact that Lenny lied about Gina picking up her pay cheque? He’ll just say she didn’t want to face Annie that morning so he said that to cover for her. Or the note? Another one he can easily explain away by saying he wrote it for her because she was busy packing. We don’t have enough evidence, and the police aren’t going to make an arrest without something solid.”
“Well, no, but it’s their job to find evidence,” Bea said, “and they do know what they’re doing.”
“I know that,” I said, “but the first thing they’d do is talk to Lenny and that might scare him off. Besides, how do we know they’ll even take it seriously? We don’t have anything that would convince anyone that there was a murder in Little River eight years ago.”
“I’m convinced,” Bea said.
“Because you knew Gina. It’s easier for you to see it because it fits what you knew about her. But the police didn’t.”
“Well, if you’re not going to the police,” Bea said, “what are you planning to do?”
“I’m sure you can understand how important it is that this doesn’t get out,” I said.
“Of course. You don’t have to worry about me,” Bea said, “unless I think you’re doing something that could put you in danger. In that case, I’d have no choice. And by the way, do your parents know what you girls are doing?”
We hedged a bit, but finally admitted that, while our folks knew we were trying to find out where Gina went, they had no idea that there were any sinister possibilities.
“That’s what I thought.”
“You’re not going to call our folks, are you?” I asked, struck by a sudden fear that she might be planning to do exactly that. “We’re honestly not going to do anything dangerous!”
Bea looked pretty sceptical. “I hope not,” she said, “but just to put my mind at rest, why don’t you tell me what you’re planning and then I won’t lie awake at night wondering and worrying about it.”
“We haven’t really gotten that far,” I told her, quite truthfully. “See, the idea that maybe Lenny had done something to Gina just occurred to us. We’d just started to look into whether or not there was anything to back that up.”
Bea hesitated, then nodded and told us that as soon as we figured out our next move, we were to let her know.
“I hope you understand that, as an adult, I have a responsibility just by knowing about this,” she said. “If I didn’t do the right thing and anything happened to either o
f you, I couldn’t live with myself. Now, promise you’ll call me.”
We agreed. (Like we had a choice.) And then we left, walking slowly back to my place. On the way, Annie was pretty quiet. She did, however, come up with one thing to say.
“So,” she asked, “what are we going to do next?”
I hated to tell her that I had absolutely no idea.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In addition to wondering what to do next in the search for Gina Berkley, I’d been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what to do about Betts. Then, quite unexpectedly, that particular problem solved itself. Sort of. It was Thursday evening and, for the first time that week, I had nothing to do. Greg was working and Annie was training at her new job. Since Betts wasn’t speaking to me, I had no idea what she was doing. I thought about calling someone else, but in the end I decided an evening alone appealed to me more than anything.
I was curled up with a copy of a cool book Annie had loaned me, a novel by kc dyer called Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook. I was just getting into it when Mom interrupted by tapping on my door.
“Phone,” she said. Her tone told me it wasn’t one of my friends. I’ve never quite figured out how I know that from her saying one word, but I always do.
My curiosity turned to alarm when I took the call and discovered it was Betts’s mother.
“Shelby, is Betts at your place yet?”
Yet?
“Uh, no, Betts isn’t here,” I said.
“Hmm. Well, I need to speak with her as soon as possible,” she said. “Would you get her to call home as soon as she gets there?”
“Did she say she was coming here?” I felt trapped!
There was a pause before Mrs. Thompson spoke again. “You’re not expecting her?”
“Uh, not really,” I said, “unless maybe she mentioned she was coming and I forgot.”
“Since half an hour ago?”
“Oh. Well, I don’t think my memory’s quite that bad,” I said. I followed up with a weak laugh and wondered what Betts had been thinking — telling her mother she was going to my place when it would be so easy for her mother to find out she’d lied.
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