Thirty-Two and a Half Complications

by Denise Grover Swank

  Suddenly, I felt hot and was having a hard time breathing.

  Mason’s eyes flew open in alarm. “Rose? What’s wrong?”

  I started to fan myself with my hand. “There was more than the usual amount of cash in the deposit bag, Mason. A lot more.”

  His voice hardened. “How much?”

  “Nine thousand dollars.” Feeling lightheaded, I stumbled backward.

  Mason grabbed my arm and helped me sit down in the office chair in front of the desk I’d just hopped down from, taking the seat next to me. “What were you doing with that much cash?”

  Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them drop. “The big landscaping job Bruce Wayne and I just finished—”

  “The retaining wall, trees, and shrubs for Mr. O’Leary?”

  I nodded, feeling like I was gonna hyperventilate. “He paid me in cash.”

  He grabbed my face between his hands, his fingers gently rubbing my cheekbones. “Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.”

  I nodded again. But nine thousand dollars was an awful lot of money. Money we needed. Violet had already allocated all the grant money we’d received from the Arkansas Small Business Administration and then some for our expansion into the empty lot next to our existing building. Unexpected expenses had popped up along the way, and we needed every penny we could get. We couldn’t afford to lose nine thousand dollars.

  “You have a copy of the receipt, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you’re fine.”

  “Except for the deductible. And our insurance rates will raise.”

  He frowned, then leaned in and gave me a gentle kiss. “You’re forgetting that your bag was taken during a bank robbery. The bank’s insurance should cover you one hundred percent. I know my own insurance predicament must have you worried, but I’ll eventually get reimbursed, and so will you. Stop worrying.”

  I blinked in relief. Mason was right. He’d been fighting to get a settlement ever since Crocker burned his condo down weeks ago, and he was living with me until it was all sorted out. “Thank you. It’s at times like these that I’m particularly glad I have you around.”

  He laughed. “Because of my legal expertise?”

  I shook my head and grinned at him. “That comes in handy, but no.” I leaned over the arm of my chair and looped my arms around his neck. “Because you’re so calm, it makes me calm too.”

  His smile turned wicked. “You make me sound boring, but that wasn’t the impression I got last night.”

  A blush rose to my cheeks.

  He leaned closer, until his lips were practically brushing my ear. “There’s a time for calm, and a time for…”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Not so calm?”

  “I had a few other word choices in mind,” he teased. “But you’re right. I’m supposed to care about my reputation, and someone could hear us.”

  “I should say,” said Miss Mildred, my old across-the-street neighbor, who seemed to have appeared out of thin air and was standing next to us. “I thought you were supposed to be a good example for the citizens of Fenton County, Mr. Deveraux. Not an example of lewd behavior. I can see that Rose’s debauched nature has rubbed off on you.”

  Mason leaned back in his seat and smiled good-naturedly up at the elderly woman. Miss Mildred was eighty-three years old, but nothing slipped passed her. Which made her the perfect president of the neighborhood watch committee, also known as the Busybody Club. She was probably bored to tears since I was no longer in the neighborhood. Who was she spying on now?

  “What are you doing here, Miss Mildred?” Mason asked. “How’d you get past the crime scene tape?”

  “I’m here to see to it that my money’s safe. The fool loan officer Mr. Sullivan’s damn near given half the money in the bank away to the riffraff in this town.” She shot me a glare, making sure I knew she included me in that category, before turning her annoyance on Mason. “And Officer Ernie wouldn’t dare turn me away. I expected to find a crime scene, not your seedy display.”

  Who was she fooling? She was here to snoop.

  “Not to worry, Miss Mildred. Your money’s federally insured, so I can assure you that you haven’t lost a penny.” He chuckled. “And my girlfriend just had a brush with death. You can’t fault a man for wanting to confirm she’s okay…and that she knows he can’t live without her.”

  Her frown froze, as if she couldn’t think of any negative way to spin his statement…a first for her.

  “What about your husband?” Mason asked. “I bet you two were inseparable when he came back from the war.”

  The elderly woman’s cheeks turned pink.

  Miss Mildred was actually blushing.

  I almost gasped in surprise.

  “He was a sailor, wasn’t he? At the end of the Second World War?” Mason asked, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and pulling me closer as he spoke. The arm of the chair hit the spot on my ribs where I’d been kicked, so I shifted slightly. “I hear it’s hard for a young girl to resist a man in those Navy whites.” He grinned at me. “Maybe I should join the Navy.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered.

  Miss Mildred tugged at her sleeve, avoiding eye contact. “He had been gone a long time.” Then, as though remembering who she was talking to, she stiffened. “Shouldn’t you be investigating the robbery, Mr. Deveraux?”

  He grinned and relaxed his grip on my shoulder. “Nope. The fine officers of the Henryetta PD have it under control. I’m here to make sure my girl’s okay. I’ll take over when they’re done.”

  She gave her head a little shake, then pulled back her shoulders. “Fine officers, my foot.” She cast a scowl at me. “They never did a blessed thing when I called them about her.”

  “I can assure you that they’d arrest her if they could find the evidence to warrant it,” Mason said, grinning.

  I pulled away from him. “Hey!”

  Miss Mildred walked away, muttering under her breath about my wicked ways.

  I turned sideways and glared at Mason. “The police would arrest me if they could? And why would you sound happy about that?”

  His grin turned wicked again. “I like thinking about you in handcuffs.”

  My eyes flew open. “Mason!”

  He laughed. “She’s harmless, Rose. I don’t know why you let her get you so worked up.”

  “You try living across the street from her for twenty-four years, and then we’ll revisit the topic of how harmless she is.”

  “I’d rather spend every minute with you.” He kissed me again, then pulled back with a sigh. “But the duties that accompany the never-ending job of an underpaid, underappreciated county attorney tend to interfere with that.”

  I smoothed out a wrinkle on his shirt with my thumb, wishing we could go back to the farm so I could take it off of him. “You love every minute of your job and you know it.”

  “Almost every minute.” He gave me another peck on the lips and stood. “Except for the minutes it takes me away from you. I cleared my schedule for the next hour. Let’s get out of here. I want to spend time with you, but not in this mess.”

  I looked around, taking in the sight of the still-chaotic bank lobby. “Don’t I have to give my statement? I’ve got details about the robbers that I need to share.”

  “Not until Detective Taylor shows up. When I called him, he told me that there was something he needed to wrap up on another case before heading over here. I’ll tell Ernie that I’m taking you into my personal custody in the meantime,” he smirked. “And maybe we can borrow a pair of handcuffs for good measure. I’ll be doing a public service by protecting the innocent citizens of Fenton County from a whirlwind of trouble.”

  “Very funny,” I said sarcastically, but I couldn’t hold back my laughter. I cast a glance at my second least favorite police officer—Detective Taylor being the winner in that category. Officer Ernie was trying to break up an argument between Mr. Murphy and the bank manager, reaching for the
cane the older man was beating the younger one with. “Officer Ernie isn’t going to like it.”

  Mason straightened his back, instantly looking more official. “Officer Ernie will have to deal with it.”

  As I’d expected, the Henryetta police officer frowned his disapproval, especially after an errant cane swing from Mr. Murphy hit his arm, but he didn’t try to stop Mason. Most intelligent people with even half a brain wouldn’t. After Mason took over the assistant DA position last spring, he quickly convinced most of the town he was someone to fear. Which is why I received applause when I told him off in front of a group of courthouse employees while I was serving on a jury. I was one of the few people with the gumption to stand up to him, and by the time the case I’d been a juror on was settled, Mason and I were friends.

  Which had been a huge sore spot for my old boyfriend Joe. For more reasons than I’d understood at the time.

  But just as we were slipping out the front doors of the bank, a black sedan pulled into the parking lot. Mason stopped in his tracks when Detective Taylor got out and started walking toward us.

  My toast from breakfast turned into concrete in my stomach. “So much for escaping.” A brisk November breeze lifted the hem of my jacket, and I reached down to flatten it against my jeans.

  “I’m going to ask him to take your statement first. I want to be there when you give it.”

  I slipped my hand in his and squeezed in gratitude. He knew how nervous I got whenever the police questioned me. Especially after Henryetta’s finest made me their number-one suspect after my mother was murdered months ago. They’d spent a good amount of time trying to find enough incriminating evidence to arrest me instead of looking for the real killer. But I also suspected he was impatient for more details about what had happened in the bank that morning.

  He dropped my hand and left me by the doors, meeting the detective halfway down the sidewalk. They talked in voices too low for me to hear, and then Taylor shot me a scowl and headed my way, Mason by his side.

  “Ms. Gardner,” he began, and I had no delusions about why he was being so formal. It could be entirely attributed to the intimidating presence behind him. “Mr. Deveraux would like me to take your statement before he heads back to court.” While his words were polite, there was an undercurrent of hostility in his tone, making me even more grateful for Mason’s presence. “Let’s go inside and see if there’s somewhere to take your statement.”

  I followed him back into the chaos without saying anything. While Officer Ernie had successfully wrestled the cane from Mr. Murphy, his forehead now sported a red welt. Miss Wilma dabbed her eyes with a tissue, shouting protests of police brutality. Taylor walked past the commotion as if it were an everyday affair, stopping in front of the bank manager.

  “Is there anywhere quiet—” he cast a quick glance toward the shouting match four feet away “—I can take this witness to interview her?”

  Mr. Burns’s face was red and he appeared pretty flustered as he looked around. “Uh… yeah… Norman Sullivan didn’t come in this morning. You can use his office.”

  Taylor’s eyes widened. “The loan officer? Did he call in sick?”

  “No. He just didn’t show up.”

  “Does he usually do that?” Mason asked.

  Concern flickered in Mr. Burns’s eyes. “No.”

  Detective Taylor pulled his notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open to jot something down. “I’m going to need Sullivan’s address and phone number.”

  The bank manager nodded, then pointed to a small office to the side. “I’ll get it for you. That’s his office over there.”

  Mason led the way to the office and motioned for me to sit in a guest chair. Taylor, who pushed in past me, ignoring Mason’s well-mannered gesture, circled the desk and sat in the loan officer’s chair. My gaze swept the room as I sat down, and I noticed Mr. Sullivan’s family photos were missing. I’d spent a good twenty minutes examining them several months ago when I’d been in this office applying for a small business loan.

  Taylor shifted his chair and clicked his pen, narrowing his gaze on me. “And what was your purpose of bein’ at the bank this morning?”

  I looked at Mason for reassurance. He stood against the wall with his arms crossed. His face was expressionless, but he nodded his head. The last time I’d been questioned was after Jonah’s mother had tried to kill me. While I’d been completely innocent in that case, Detective Taylor had made his extreme dislike for me crystal clear. “I was making a deposit for our business.”

  “The Gardner Sisters Nursery?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So tell me what happened at the bank.”

  “I was standing in line waiting to make my deposit when two men wearing ski masks—one decorated with SpongeBob, the other with Batman—burst in. They had guns and they pointed them at us. SpongeBob seemed to be in charge. He told all the customers in the lobby to get on the floor. But Miss Honeybelle had trouble getting down because of her knee replacement surgery last month.”

  He looked up. “So what happened?”

  “I walked over to help her, but the guy didn’t like that we were taking so long and he got grumpy.”

  Taylor started writing again, but Mason’s jaw twitched.

  “You need to tell him everything, Rose.” Mason’s voice was tight. “What did he do?”

  I felt my cheeks redden. “He shoved me when I tried to help her, but I convinced him that she couldn’t get down on her own, so he let me help her.”

  “Then what happened?” Taylor asked.

  “The man with the Batman mask handed Samantha Jo Wheaton a plastic Piggly Wiggly bag and told her to fill it with cash.”

  Taylor scribbled his notes. “And how do you know Samantha Jo Wheaton?”

  “She’s a new bank teller here. But that’s not how I originally know her. We went to school together. Plus everyone in Henryetta knows she burned her husband’s fishing boat in their front yard last year. The married men were afraid to cheat on their wives for a spell, and the single men were afraid to date her after her divorce was finalized. She used to work at Wal-Mart.”

  “So are you friends or not?”

  “No, more like acquaintances.”

  “Uh-huh,” he grunted, writing his thoughts. “What else can you tell me?”

  “I took note of what they were wearing while the Batman guy was getting the money. He had on jeans, a Jack Daniel’s T-shirt, a gray fleece jacket, and worn Nikes.” I looked over at Mason, who gave me an encouraging smile and a nod.

  “And a Batman ski mask?”

  “Yeah. Now that I think about it, I saw some of those Batman hats at the Piggly Wiggly last week when I was there. The SpongeBob one too.”

  Taylor looked up, suddenly more engaged in the conversation. “Now that’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged, uncomfortable with being on the receiving end of his cold, calculating attention. “I was there shopping. I thought about getting one for my nephew, but I didn’t realize they were adult sizes until I picked one up and noticed the seams were off. The seam on the Batman hat the robber wore was catawampus. I’d bet my right arm it came from there.”

  “You don’t say.” He turned back to his notebook. “And the other guy?”

  I rattled off my description, unnerved now, which probably made me seem guilty, although of what, I didn’t know. I’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time. The only thing I could be accurately accused of was having extremely bad luck.

  “What happened next?”

  I squirmed. “I was purposely trying to take note of any identifying details about the robbers, and the guy in the SpongeBob mask didn’t like it. He pulled me up off the floor and started to take me to the safety deposit box room. But we heard sirens and the other guy told him they had to go. He called him Mick.”

  “Mick? Anything else? Did he say a last name?” the detective asked.

  “No.”

  “Any
thing else you remember about him?”

  “When his sleeve got close to my face, I smelled rust.”

  “Was it a faint odor or a strong one?”

  I thought about it for a moment, then cringed when I remembered him grabbing my face. “Pretty strong. He told me not to tell anyone else about what they looked like. Then he picked up my deposit bag off the floor and left. I watched them get into their getaway car right before the police showed up. It was an older Dodge Charger. Gold. Officers Ernie and Sprout ran right past them on their way into the bank. But when I tried to tell Ernie, he wouldn’t listen. He pointed his gun at me and told me to get on the floor.”

  Mason’s eyes widened. “So the police let them get away.” It wasn’t posed as a question.

  I sighed. “By the time Mr. Murphy and I got a chance to tell them, the car was already gone.”

  “Did you get a license plate number?” Detective Taylor asked, his mouth puckered in irritation.

  I shook my head. “No. I only saw the front of the car, and it didn’t have a license plate.”

  Taylor looked up and quirked an eyebrow. “You have to admit that it looks suspicious that you’ve been dead center in a lot of illegal occurrences in Henryetta over the last few months.”

  Mason’s crossed arms dropped to his sides. “Are you calling her a suspect?” he asked in his no-nonsense voice, the one that made people quake in their shoes.

  Taylor cleared his throat. “No. I’m just saying it’s an odd coincidence. You can’t deny it, Deveraux.”

  Mason pressed his lips into a tight line and crossed his arms again.

  Taylor gave me a sideways glance, the tiniest bit of a smirk in his eyes. “And how much money was in that bag of yours, Ms. Gardner?”

  “About three hundred dollars in checks.” I took a breath, feeling like I was gonna throw up. “And nine thousand in cash.”

  The detective’s pen stopped mid-stroke and he looked up at me with narrowed eyes. “Why’d you have so much cash?”

  “Mr. O’Leary paid me yesterday for a job we’d finished at his place.”

  “And he paid you in cash.” His mouth twisted to the side. “That’s an awful lot of cash.”