by Jeff Shelby
I reached for my own mug. “Well, you’re clearly upset about something. Maybe that’s a good starting point? The thing upsetting you?”
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
My frown deepened. “Does this have anything to do with Leslie?”
She stared blankly at me for a minute, almost as if she didn’t recognize the name. It was the second time that day that she’d seemed to forget she had a stepsister. Maybe she was suffering from memory loss? Early-onset dementia? Maybe this was the reason she’d called me over, to disclose a newly discovered diagnosis? But that didn’t make any sense: why on earth would she tell me, of all people? We weren’t close. We didn’t share secrets. I wasn’t even sure we were friends.
But then her expression cleared and she shook her head. “Oh. No, not Leslie. This time,” she added faintly, a scowl threatening her pretty features.
I nodded. I still wasn’t sure about the robustness of her memory, but at least she wasn’t asking me to help find a missing person. Leslie’s disappearance had put me through the ringer, in multiple ways.
“No,” she said again, sighing. She’d finished her cookie and I quickly scanned her lap. Not a single crumb. “This is worse. Much worse.”
The weird feeling in my stomach was back again. What could be worse than a missing family member? Warning signs were going off in my brain, in bright neon lights.
“Um, if it’s worse than that, maybe I’m not the best person to talk to?” I suggested. “Maybe you should call”—I tried not to cringe as I said the name—“Sheriff Lewis?”
Vivian looked at me with wide eyes. “No,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “No. He can’t know any of this. Not yet, anyway.”
I was cradling the mug in my hands, letting its warmth seep into my skin. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what she deemed so bad that she couldn’t tell the sheriff. Was she really in that much trouble, or was her statement a reflection of what she thought of his detective skills?
My bet was on the latter.
“Okay,” she said, expelling a breath. “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise me you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
I briefly debated my response. What if she was about to share something truly horrific with me? What if she’d committed espionage or treason, or what if she was a mass murderer who suddenly felt the need to confess her crimes? There was no way I could keep something like that quiet.
I glanced at Vivian and felt the heat rise in my cheeks.
The woman sitting across from me was not a spy. And she was not a cold-blooded killer.
She was a prim and proper member of the Latney Ladies Society, a rich socialite who spent her time volunteering for charities and going to hot yoga classes and concocting new recipes using whole, raw foods.
She was staring at me, her expression both hopeful and concerned as she waited for my response.
“Okay,” I said, bringing the mug to my lips. “I promise.”
Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank goodness,” she murmured, almost to herself.
Her eyes refocused on me and she cleared her throat. “It’s about the Latney Ladies Society.”
I gaped at her. A problem with her uppity charity group was worse than her stepsister disappearing?
“What about it?”
Her eyes clouded again with tears and she blinked rapidly, trying to keep them from spilling onto her cheeks. “It’s…it’s the bank account,” she managed to say, her voice almost a whisper.
“The bank account?” I repeated.
She nodded. “It’s…it’s empty. Completely empty.”
THREE
“Empty?”
Vivian nodded, and a single tear slipped from her eye, streaking toward her chin. She wiped it away with a perfectly manicured nail.
“I…I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said. I took a sip of the apple cider, which had cooled off significantly but still tasted just as good. “Why are you telling me? I’m not a member of the society.”
Vivian set her own mug down and stood up. She began to pace the living room, her feet soundless as she walked back and forth on the thick carpet.
“Walter and Sophia are on vacation,” she said.
This was news to me.
“Miami,” she said quickly. She must have seen the confusion on my face. “They left for a little weekend getaway and, well, they were due back today but their flight was delayed due to weather.”
I glanced out the living room window. The sun was low, a soft yellowish-orange orb in the sky. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen.
“Weather in Miami,” Vivian explained, once again intuiting what I was thinking. “I’m not sure when they’re getting home…maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. It just depends what flight they can get on.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. I still wasn’t sure what the Rey’s vacation plans had to do with an empty bank account.
Vivian stopped and folded her arms across her chest. “I went to the bank today,” she said. “I was out running some errands and the bank was on my list. I had to stop at Toby’s too, for groceries, and St. Simon’s to talk to Declan about using the church for the Fall Festival.”
“Fall Festival?” I had seen flyers up for it around town—the Wicked Wich had one up, as did Sophia’s boutique, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it. The last time I’d noticed a sign was for Dorothy Days, and I’d been roped into volunteering. My new motto while in town, at least for the time being, was to not read signs. Or if I did, to not actually act on any of them.
Vivian reclaimed her spot on the couch. “It’s our Halloween party for the town. Well, it’s mostly for the kids, but everyone comes. There’s a costume contest and a hay ride and a bunch of games.”
“A hay ride? At the church?”
“We don’t do the hay ride in the church,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “How on earth would we manage that?”
I honestly didn’t know.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “We use the fields nearby. The farmer—Glenn—kindly volunteers his land and his tractor and wagon. It’s great fun for the family.”
I knew the field she was talking about. It was the same one I’d chased Shawn into, when he’d tossed my purse one way and ran off another. It didn’t bring back fond memories.
“Anyway, I stopped at the bank to make a withdrawal for the Money in the Hay game.” Before I could even ask what that was, she told me. “Glenn brings over a few bales of hay and we create a big pile. Rope it off right in the middle of St. Simon’s parking lot. We toss in a whole bunch of coins and the kids dive in. Whatever they find is theirs to keep. We split them up by age groups to try to keep things fair.”
“That sounds like a fun game.”
“Oh, it is,” she said, a faint smile playing on her lips. “It’s the highlight of the event. And it was my idea, if I do say so myself.” Her smile broke through. “Anyway, we usually withdraw two hundred dollars, all in coins. Quarters, dimes, nickels. The Latney Ladies Society is very proud that we donate our time and our resources to this fun, community-wide event.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t smile at her statement. It sounded like she was making some sort of pitch to me, the way she might do when soliciting donations or trying to woo new members.
“So you went to the bank to get the coins,” I prompted.
Vivian’s hands were folded in her lap and she looked down at them. Her nails were painted a muted red, and several gold rings adorned her slender fingers.
“I did,” she said softly. “There are only a couple of us on the bank account authorized to withdraw money. So I filled out the withdrawal slip and handed it to Debbie.” She glanced up at me. “She’s one of the tellers. Gray-haired, a little on the…stout side.”
I knew who she was talking about. The Bank of Latney was a twice-monthly stop on my errand list, too.
“Anyway, I handed it to her and she typed it into the computer and she got this
funny look on her face.” Vivian’s own features screwed up into an expression of confusion, and I didn’t know if she was mimicking Debbie or if she was conveying her own feelings on the matter.
“And…” She swallowed, and her gaze shifted so she was looking down at her hands again. “She told me there wasn’t any money. The balance was zero.”
I frowned. “And that isn’t correct? You’re sure there’s money in there?” I had no idea what the financial situation looked like for the Latney Ladies Society; perhaps they flirted with a zero balance on a regular basis.
Vivian shook her head, her auburn hair swinging on her shoulders. “No, that absolutely is not correct. We are a well-run charitable organization. Our bank account is nearly three thousand dollars. Or was,” she added darkly.
My frown deepened. “Did Debbie have any suggestions as to what might have happened? Maybe it was just a simple accounting error or computer glitch?”
“Debbie was just as confused as I was,” Vivian said. “She double-checked the account number, and she even had Frank come over to check out the monitor.”
Frank was Walter Rey’s right hand man. I didn’t know if he was an official manager of the bank, but he always stepped into Walter’s shoes in his absence. I’d dealt with him a couple of times and had had no complaints.
“And he couldn’t figure anything out?”
“Nothing,” Vivian replied, rather sadly.
“Nothing?” I repeated. “Doesn’t he have access to the account? Couldn’t he tell you when the last withdrawal had been made, and how?”
“Of course he can,” she said. She pushed at a lock of hair, tucking it behind her ear. “But I was so mortified by what had happened, I just left.”
“You…left? Without asking any more questions?”
“I was a little flustered,” she admitted. Her cheeks reddened, but unlike me when I blushed, turning as red as a beet, the extra color only enhanced her pretty complexion. “I…I just wanted to get out of there. I was so embarrassed.”
It seemed like an odd reaction to finding out your bank account had been drained to zero, but I didn’t say this. Instead, I asked what I thought was the most obvious question.
“If you think it’s theft, shouldn’t you be contacting the police?” I tried not to choke on the word ‘police,’ because in Latney, that only meant one thing.
Sheriff Lewis.
She gave me a horrified look. “Goodness, no!”
“Why not?”
She was now wringing her hands, her fingers twisting and turning.
I waited.
“Vivian?” I said cautiously. “Why haven’t you called the sheriff to report it?”
Her fingers stilled and she took a deep breath.
“Because Sophia is the treasurer.”
FOUR
“I’m sure it’s just a mix-up,” Vivian said as she topped off my mug of apple cider.
I’d sat frozen on the sofa after she mentioned Sophia’s name, and she’d taken the opportunity to go and retrieve the kettle from the kitchen. She set the shiny silver teakettle on the hot pad she’d brought with and then settled back on the couch.
“A mix-up?” It felt like something a little bigger than a mix-up, a bank losing track of three thousand dollars of someone’s money. I had a moment of panic, wondering if perhaps I should move the thousands of dollars I’d parked at the Bank of Latney before something similar happened to me.
But I stopped myself from that reactionary kind of thinking. Banks didn’t make mistakes like that; not in this day and age of computerized banking. Something had probably happened to the money alright, but I was pretty sure the bank itself had nothing to do with it.
“Yes,” Vivian said, nodding vigorously now, as if she were trying to convince herself of her own words. “I can talk to Walter in the morning, and see if we can figure out what happened. Sophia, too. There’s no need to bring law enforcement in on this. None at all.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So why did you tell me?”
She picked up her mug and hid behind it, taking slow, tentative sips of the steaming liquid.
I ignored the spicy aroma of the cider beckoning to me. “I mean, if you think Walter can clear everything up, why did you call me over? And why were you almost in tears telling me about all of this?”
Vivian took another sip of cider before finally lowering the mug. She set it gingerly in her lap, cradling it between her hands. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess I just sort of panicked. I…I was so worried and so mortified when I got home from the bank and…well, I just needed to tell someone.”
I didn’t buy that reason for a second. Vivian and I were not friends. Sure, I’d helped her find her stepsister, and we made small talk and exchanged pleasantries when we saw each other around town, but that was the extent of our relationship.
“Why?” I asked.
She gave me a puzzled look. “Why what?”
“Why me?” The implication was there: why, out of everyone she knew in Latney, of all the people she was closer to and better friends with, had she chosen me?
“I don’t know,” Vivian said. “I just thought…well, with your…background…I thought you might be able to help. Maybe have some ideas or suggestions that I hadn’t considered.”
My background.
I had lived in Latney for over six months, and people still seemed to think that just because I’d worked in a private investigator’s office that I was a PI myself. Nothing could be further from the truth, but it had become a hard reputation to shake. I didn’t like it, but I could see why people made the leap.
Because trouble—and crime—had an eerie way of finding me in Latney. Especially when I wasn’t looking for it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and hoped I sounded sincere. I mostly meant it. “I have no idea what might have happened to the money.”
Her shoulders sagged a little. “None?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m not a private investigator,” I reminded her.
She didn’t get a chance to respond because the doorbell rang. She startled at the noise, and drops of apple cider sloshed out of her mug and onto her lap. She looked in horror at the dots of moisture on her designer jeans, viewing them as if they had permanently destroyed her outfit.
The doorbell rang again.
“Do you want me to get it?” I offered.
She blinked, and then shook her head. “No,” she said, standing up. She set her mug on the coffee table and marched toward the door.
“Vivian!”
Two women’s voices greeted her, one of which I immediately recognized.
Savannah Springs.
I wondered how easy it might be to slip out a back door, unnoticed.
It wasn’t that I disliked Savannah. As head of the Lake Dorothy Conservation Group, I’d had plenty of opportunities to spend time with her during the Dorothy Days planning, as well as the festival itself.
And that was part of the problem. She was nice enough, but she was…pushy. She didn’t know how to take no for an answer. And she’d somehow managed to rope me into doing way more for that festival than I’d ever dreamed of doing.
Sitting in Vivian Sumner’s living room made me feel like prey trapped by a predator. I was sure my eyes were wide as they shifted from the door where the ladies were standing to the hallway that led to the kitchen, calculating whether or not my departure could go unnoticed.
I was almost ready to stand and make a run for it when Savannah peeked her head around the door. Her face lit up when she saw me.
“Rainy! What a surprise to see you!” she exclaimed. “I thought that might be your car out there in the driveway.”
It had only been a month since I’d seen her, but she’d cut her hair since then. Her dark hair, last worn in Dorothy-style braids, now barely dusted her shoulders. She wore faded bellbottom jeans and a burnt orange sweatshirt that hung almost to her knees. On me, this get-up would like a sad attempt at a 70s costume. On
her, though, it looked fabulous, the very definition of shabby chic.
“Hi,” I said meekly, shrinking into the sofa a little.
She stepped inside and another woman followed. She was a little shorter than Savannah, with hair the color of spun gold. She flashed me a hesitant smile.
“Do you know Elena?” Savannah asked me, motioning to the woman standing next to her.
I shook my head.
“Elena Klersy, this is Rainy Day,” Savannah said. Her smile was over bright, as usual. “Rainy was an instrumental part of the Dorothy Days volunteer team. I don’t know how we would have pulled it off without her!”
I waved my hand dismissively and mumbled a thank you.
Elena studied me with barely concealed interest. “Are you a member of the Latney Ladies Society, too?”
“Me?” I squeaked, pointing to my chest. I shook my head. “No, no I’m not.”
“It’s a shame, really,” Savannah said, clucking her tongue. “The Society is always looking for more women to help out. Aren’t we, Vivian?”
Vivian had closed the front door but she’d made no move to return to the living room. In fact, she looked a little uncomfortable having Savannah and Elena in her house, and I was starting to wonder why.
“What?” Vivian asked absently, when she realized we were all staring at her.
“Rainy.” Savannah repeated my name, turning her mega-watt smile on Vivian. “We were saying Rainy should join the ladies society. What do you think?”
“Oh, I don’t really have the time,” I said quickly. “What with the new house and everything.”
A frown marred Savannah’s pretty features. “New? Haven’t you been here for a while now?”
“Well, yes,” I admitted, shifting my gaze so I wouldn’t have to look at her. “But it’s a big house and a lot of land, and there still is quite a bit of work to do…” My voice trailed off, and then a light bulb went on. “Before winter! Quite a lot of work to do before winter.”
I practically beamed at how well I’d managed to improvise. It sounded almost believable, and not much like a lame excuse at all.
