When she was through, she continued. “Lea’s first dog was named Frisky, rather than Stubby. Try that. Also, I’ve been doing some research on Lea’s family, thinking she might have used some of their names in her passwords. Her mother is Ethel Donovan Logan, and her father was Oliver Logan, known as Ollie. She had a stepbrother named Terry Forsythe. I’ll write those down for you.” She took out her notepad.
“Dates of birth might be useful, too, if you can find them.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Andrea had brought her laptop with her, and she set it up on a table in the corner and went to work.
I felt useless, so I got out of their way and went to the living room. I’d moved the roses to the coffee table there, and I wondered whether I should just get rid of them. I wasn’t going to allow myself to think I was a tragically romantic figure, destined to be loved by an unattainable man. Staring at the roses, a thought hit me. Could there possibly be a bug in the roses?
I went back to the office. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but please come to the living room, Andrea. Bring your bug detector.”
“I checked in there already.”
“I know, but I want you to check again. Check the roses.”
“Oh, I didn’t even think of that. Good idea.”
We went to the living room, she turned on the gadget, and the red light started blinking. I almost couldn’t believe it.
Andrea motioned for me to follow her, and we headed back to the office. The blinking light went out as we went through the dining room. “At least we know he can’t hear what we say in the office,” she said.
“I’m stunned. I can’t believe he’d be so brazen as to bring a bug here in a bunch of flowers.” This was the final blow to my ego. If he wanted me to become totally committed to sending him to prison for the rest of his life, he’d gone about it in the right way.
“He’s desperate to find out what we know. Of course he heard everything we said last night in the kitchen.”
“Oh dear. I hadn’t thought about that. What did we say?”
“I told you he was trying to get close to you so he could get information on our investigation. You hoped he wouldn’t come back, and I told you not to answer the door. Stuff like that. I don’t think we said anything that’ll be a big problem, but he does realize now that we know he’s trying to get information from us.”
“What’s happening?” Chad asked.
“We just discovered that there’s a bug in some flowers that…well, I guess you don’t know about my interaction with Stuart Kerr.”
Andrea told the story, and Chad laughed even louder than she and Jack had. “You’ll have to take me to that country club sometime. I want to stand in the spot where that happened and laugh again.”
“We’re not members, but we’ll get Jack to take all of us,” I said.
“At least we know we can talk all we want in here without being heard,” Andrea said. “I think we should do the same with this bug as the others and leave it in place. We’ll try to figure out a way to use it to our advantage.”
“If Stuart Kerr brought the bug here in the roses, he must be responsible for the other two,” Chad said. “He must be guilty of something illegal, if he’d go to such lengths to find out about our investigation.”
“Yes. At first we thought maybe he was having an affair with Lea, but it’s looking more like she was blackmailing him,” I said. “He undoubtedly was doing something illegal. Was he embezzling the club’s funds?”
Andrea reached into her purse and pulled out the flash drive she’d used to download information from Stuart’s computer. “That’s what we need to find out. I hate to break the news to you, Chad, but when you’re finished with Lea’s stuff, I need you to work on the information on this flash drive. I went into Stuart Kerr’s office and downloaded everything I thought would be helpful from his computer.”
Chad looked a little shocked. “Was that legal?” I’m sure he knew it wasn’t.
Andrea put the flash drive back in her purse. “Of course not. And of course this is going to cause a problem if we find evidence of a crime in his records. I can’t admit to Jordan how I got the information, but I’ll have to think of something.”
“This gets more intriguing by the minute,” Chad said with a big grin.
“You must never repeat anything you hear from us. Not to anyone except Jordan. And don’t ever mention anything we did that was illegal to her or anyone else.”
“My lips are sealed. I love it!” He went back to working on Lea’s laptop.
And I went back to the living room, where I settled down on the couch with Ben Rehder’s Bum Steer. I needed a good laugh while sharing the room with a bunch of flowers I had now grown to hate.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We got to the sheriff’s office early so we could fill Jordan in on just who Chad was and how he was helping us with Lea’s laptop. She seemed impressed and said she’d welcome him as a volunteer. She was also delighted that he was ready to try to open the safe. We also told her about my big adventure at the Spring Fling and Stuart’s subsequent visit, complete with roses and bug. I had now become accustomed to everyone laughing hysterically over this.
Chad arrived shortly, and after the appropriate introductions and getting him signed up as a volunteer, we left the office. Jordan went with us, even though she’d written down what she thought she remembered of the combination.
“Everybody remember that the office is bugged,” Andrea said as we started down the stairs. “Don’t mention that we’re trying to open the safe, because we don’t want word to get back to Walter Stanley that we’re having a problem.”
Jordan looked a little embarrassed. “He gave me the combination on a piece of paper and told me to memorize it and burn it, but I got so busy with getting started as sheriff that I didn’t get around to opening the safe for weeks. I guess I’d forgotten the combination by then.”
“That’s understandable,” Chad said. “I explained to Miss Flynn that I’ve never tried to open a safe before, and it’s probably not going to work.”
“I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to try.”
Giving it a try was all Chad was able to do. He spent thirty minutes with his ear pressed against the safe and his fingers playing with the combination knob, but the safe failed to open. After fifteen minutes Jordan went back upstairs. Andrea and I had coffee, made with the new Keurig coffeemaker she bought for our office.
We finally told Chad to give up—we were taking him to lunch. It was a disappointment that it didn’t work, because Lea’s purse might have been in the safe. Of course the purse—wherever it was—might contain nothing to shed light on Lea’s murder, but we’d like the chance to find out.
I wondered whether Chad would be uncomfortable being seen having lunch with two older ladies, but he seemed to be so caught up in his new role as a crime fighter that he appeared not to mind.
We went to the Courthouse Café, and upon walking in, we saw Walter Stanley, Stuart Kerr, and Chester Hubbard in a booth toward the front of the restaurant. I was thinking of the three now as the Axis of Evil. We nodded as we walked by, at least Andrea and I did, and Stuart winked at me.
“Who were those guys?” Chad asked when we were seated at the back.
We described them one by one, and Chad was laughing at my Axis of Evil phrase when we were through. “One or all of them is guilty of something,” I said. “Probably all. We just haven’t been able to prove anything yet.”
“I’ll spend the afternoon working on Lea’s laptop, and maybe we can find evidence against all of them,” he said.
His words were somewhat prophetic, anyway. When we got home, he went right to work in my office. Andrea went home to pay some bills, and I got busy cleaning bathrooms. After an hour I heard Chad shouting. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, and I wished he’d be quiet. His voice at that volume might reach the bug in the roses. I rushed back to the office.
“I found the password for the
computer, and she used the same one for three password-protected folders.”
“I’ll call Andrea. Can you tell what’s in the folders?” Without waiting for him to answer, I dialed the phone. “Come down here. Chad has something to show you.”
She didn’t even bother to answer; she just hung up and was there in minutes. “What’s happening?”
“I found the password for the laptop—it’s Frisky12. I was able to open three folders she had protected, because she used the same password on all of them. One contains an Excel calendar she labeled ‘Money from Stu.’ It looks like she recorded a two thousand dollar payment around the first of each month.”
“Stu obviously is Stuart Kerr,” I said. “That confirms what we assumed from her letter to her father. Can this be used as proof that he was embezzling?”
“No, but I think an audit of the country club books is in order. Transfer that to my flash drive, Chad, and I’ll show Jordan. Did we tell her about Lea’s letter? I can’t remember. If we didn’t, I’ll do that too. This still doesn’t solve Lea’s murder, however, which is our main purpose.”
I had to think about this for a minute. “If we discover that he was embezzling and he’s charged with it, then it should be easy to show Lea was blackmailing him. That certainly is a motive for murder.”
“Yes—we’ll have to take this one step at a time,” Andrea said.
Chad had been fiddling with the laptop. “This second folder looks like it contains nothing but copies of emails…must be from a boyfriend. Someone named Hank.”
“Yes, he was her boyfriend,” I said.
“What’s the other one?” Andrea asked.
“It contains a document she called ‘My Budget.’ It contains a list of things she’d spend money on monthly. Probably nothing significant here.”
“Good work, Chad. You’ve done enough for today. Go on home, and I’ll take a look at the other two folders to make sure there’s nothing important there. Tomorrow, or whenever you’re free, you can start on the Stuart Kerr flash drive. I’ll try to get as much information as I can about his family, whether he has any pets, and so forth.”
“I’m free tomorrow. I’ll be here.”
Andrea looked at me. “And you and I are going to see Jordan tomorrow. She’ll know what it’ll take to get that audit done.”
#
We were on our way to Martindale. Andrea had spent the previous evening going over Lea’s folders. Two of them didn’t provide anything useful. It was the one about the money from Stuart Kerr that would help us. Then she had found out as much as she could about Stuart’s family, looking for names and dates that might be useful in figuring out his passwords.
I was really impressed when she came up with his dog’s name. “How in the world did you find that?”
“Facebook and Twitter. He’s active on both, and he loves to post photos of Scamp.”
We had left all this information with Chad that morning, hoping his computer skills would triumph again.
Andrea ran the bug detector again when we got to Jordan’s office. Then she laid out our evidence against Stuart. “Can you arrange an audit of the country club’s books?”
“Of course, but first—the treasurer of the club lives in my neighborhood. I’d like to know how the funds are handled at the club. I’m going to pay him a visit this evening and ask some questions. That’ll be the first step.”
“I hope that won’t tip him off and allow him to cover up something he’s involved in, too,” I said.
“I’d bet my life that he’s honest,” Jordan said. “I need to get some information before we call in the auditors.”
“In the meantime, Chad’s at my house doing some more research for us,” I said.
“What’s he researching?”
I realized in an instant that I’d almost spilled the beans and let her know Chad was researching Stuart’s records. That would have brought up the question about where we got those records. Now I didn’t know what to say.
“He’s trying to see if he can find anything else useful about the case.” Andrea jumped in and saved me.
We left copies of our documentation with Jordan, and she promised to call us the next day and tell us what she found out about how finances are handled at the country club. On our way out, Andrea said, “This is Ruth’s day off, and Tony asked us to invite her to lunch. I’m going to call her and see if she can meet us at Nell Flanagan’s.”
“Why have her drive all the way out to Pine Summit, when we’re here in Martindale? We could just meet her at the Courthouse Café.”
“The group you call the Axis of Evil might be there, and if she has something she wants to divulge that would have a bearing on our case, I think she might be intimidated at seeing the three of them.”
“You think she might have something to tell us about Lea?”
“Tony said she expressed an interest in getting to know us better. That just didn’t ring true to me. I think she wants to tell us something, but she doesn’t want Tony to know she’s doing it.”
“Sounds complicated, but no more so than most everything else we’re involved in.”
Andrea called from the car with Ruth on speakerphone, and she sounded downright friendly. She also sounded delighted to be asked to lunch, and eager to drive to Pine Summit. She loved driving country roads, she told us. She had an appointment later in the day, so she asked if we could meet at eleven, and we agreed.
We got to Nell’s a few minutes before eleven and went straight to the patio after leaving instructions with the waitress that a friend would be joining us.
Ruth showed up shortly. “This is delightful, and the drive was so beautiful, coming through the hills. Thanks for asking me.”
“So glad you could join us,” I said.
The waitress came and took our orders, and we chatted about the lovely May weather and the scenery till the food came. It was becoming obvious to me that Ruth had nothing to tell us that would help us find a murderer. We all enjoyed Nell’s specialty, meatloaf, and when we had blackberry cobbler, Ruth said, “I wonder if Nell would give me the recipe. Not to use in the Garden Room, of course. That wouldn’t be fair. I’d love to have it to make at home.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I said. “I haven’t seen her here yet today, but she’s usually around. She may be in the kitchen.”
We’d ordered coffee with the cobbler, and we leaned back in our seats, getting ready to enjoy it. A few customers were drifting in now. We’d had the patio to ourselves before, getting there so early.
“I want to tell you something,” Ruth said. “I should have given you the information before, when we were alone out here, but I don’t think anyone can hear.”
“No—go ahead,” Andrea said.
“When I worked at the Garden Room before, I went to pick up my paycheck one day. When I went in the office, Lea was there.”
“Which office was this?” I asked.
“It was Stuart Kerr’s. It’s the only office at the club. The whole arrangement is pretty informal. Anyway, Lea was there, and Stuart was handing her an envelope. They both looked so strange, like they didn’t want me to see this, that I couldn’t help feeling that something unusual was going on.”
“Could it have been her paycheck he was handing her?” Andrea asked.
“No, they didn’t put those in envelopes…just handed us the checks. But anyway, it was just two days after that that he fired me. I got a job in Pittsburgh, and I’d been working there a few years. Tony and I were in touch all that time and visiting on our days off sometimes. He persuaded me to come back. He threatened to quit if they didn’t take me back, so they finally agreed.”
“Interesting,” Andrea said. “What excuse did Stuart give for firing you?”
“It was more like he was laying me off. He said they didn’t need so many people in the kitchen. Then as soon as I was gone, they hired someone to replace me. Tony was furious.”
“I don’t blame him. This is helpful
information, Ruth. We appreciate your telling us.”
Something underhanded was going on when Ruth walked into that office. Stuart was handing Lea her monthly money, there’s no doubt about it. It wouldn’t do at this point to tell Ruth what we knew about Stuart, but the fact that he fired her after she saw the transaction is almost proof that a crime was underway. She’d find out about Stuart soon enough, anyway. Word would spread like wildfire when they started auditing him.
“Of course Lea was still alive when he fired me. I heard about her death after moving to Pittsburgh. I know this sounds far-fetched, but I couldn’t help wondering whether Lea had been blackmailing Stuart and he killed her, considering how ruthless he was about firing me.”
“That’s certainly something to consider,” Andrea said.
“I hope you won’t repeat anything I’ve told you, especially my idea about Stuart being a murderer. Since you’re investigating Lea’s death, I just had to give you my opinion.”
“We may need to tell Jordan, but it won’t go any farther,” Andrea said.
“Who’s Jordan?”
Wow, she really is new in town, I thought. “She’s the sheriff. Jordan McAlister. She beat Walter Stanley for the job last year.”
“Wonderful. I didn’t realize he’s no longer in office.”
“He’s not well-liked at the country club?” I asked.
“Not especially. He’s part of the clique that runs the place, and they aren’t popular with the employees.”
I looked around. “The patio’s filling up. I suppose we need to give up our table.” I didn’t think she had anything else to tell us, anyway.
Nell had an appointment in Martindale, so Ruth wasn’t able to ask about the cobbler recipe that day. We parted in the parking lot, promising to meet for lunch again sometime soon. When Andrea and I were alone, I said, “What do you think accounts for her change in attitude toward us?”
“I think she decided that since we’re investigating Lea’s death, this would be her chance to tell someone what she knows and get it off her chest. That probably made the difference.”
Evil Under the Moon (Moon Mystery Series Book 5) Page 14
