Prime Crime Holiday Bundle

by Cleo Coyle; Emily Brightwell; Kenneth Blanchard

  We went back to the beginning and Mason brought up how the SEC investigator had based his belief that Bradley had taken his own life on the hunk of money left in the checking account. “What did you say the guy said?” Mason said, “Something about someone running off would never do that. They’d clean out everything.” Mason looked up at me as he absently fiddled with the holiday top. “Obviously the investigator was wrong and Perkins was clever enough to figure out that was what the SEC people would think.”

  I thought about it for a moment as E. Conner put one of his chocolate kisses into the pot. When no one else made a move to put their bet in, he took one of Mason’s raisins from his pile, a chocolate coin from mine and then reached for a candy bar from his sister’s. Ashley-Angela started to fuss because her brother hadn’t let her do it herself. I tried to calm her down and told her she could spin first.

  I turned to Mason. “Does it make sense that somebody who’d be calculating enough to leave money in an account to validate his suicide would also gamble away millions of dollars?” I said. Mason asked me how they figured out Bradley had lost the money by gambling. “I overheard the SEC investigator say that there were piles of checks written to different casinos and no money besides the amount in the checking account.”

  Ashley-Angela’s spin came up with the Hebrew letter Shin that meant she had to put one of her pieces into the pot. E. Conner went to add it for her and she went into a tantrum and said she didn’t want to play anymore. She went to take back her pieces, but instead she took all of her brother’s candy kisses. While I tried to keep them from socking each other, E. Conner said, according to the rules you couldn’t start with one kind of candy and then when you quit, take something else out. Mason made a joke that it was candy laundering.

  “I wonder ...” I was staring at the candies and thinking. “What if that’s what Bradley did—like Ashley-Angela, he put in one thing and came out with something else?”

  Mason’s face lit with understanding. “Good thinking, Sunshine, but in his case the stakes were a little higher,” Mason said with a chuckle. “He could have been putting in checks and coming out with cash.” Mason reached for his BlackBerry and started scrolling through numbers. “There’s a way to find out.”

  Mason said he had a contact in Vegas, which was no surprise. He seemed to have contacts everywhere. He made a call, and when he hung up, he was smiling and nodding. Mason’s contact was someone who acted as a concierge for big gamblers. He worked for one of the major hotels and it was his job to keep them happy. He knew who Bradley was right away.

  “He said the guy would change a big check into chips, he’d hang around and play a few hands of blackjack or something and then start turning in the chips for cash. He knew that as long as he turned in less than three thousand dollars worth at a shot, there was no paperwork. The guy I talked to said he thought Bradley spread money around and had some help with cashing in the chips and did the same thing at a lot of casinos. So now the question is, what happened to all that cash?” Mason said. He was standing now and walking back and forth thinking. “I’m guessing he stashed it somewhere offshore.”

  “So he didn’t lose all of Mrs. Shedd’s money after all,” I said.

  He put up his hand to temper my excitement. “Don’t rush and tell her. The money is probably in an account somewhere, but only the dead guy knows where.” He was right and I felt my initial enthusiasm drain out. The money might be stashed somewhere, but for all intents and purposes it was still gone.

  The kids had long since stopped arguing and had fallen asleep on the couch. We carried them into the bedroom and put them to bed.

  Dinah came home glowing. She pulled me aside and said Commander had accepted the kids no matter who their parents were. He realized her involvement with them showed what a big heart she had. Her smile dimmed when I told her what Mason and I had figured out. “But what’s the point if nobody knows where the money is?” Dinah said and I agreed.

  CHAPTER 27

  TWO DAYS WENT BY AND WE WERE NO CLOSER TO finding Bradley’s stash. It was down to the wire for the Anthony launch, and with the holidays filling the store with customers, frantic was the word of the day. I barely noticed that Mr. Royal hadn’t brought in his mountain bike as promised. Maybe it was as I’d thought: He’d just agreed to end my questions.

  I’d gotten wrapping-desk duty, which it turned out also meant I was the chief question answerer. Most of the questions involved the book launch. Was Anthony going to be there in person? No, because he was a fictional character. Was it true that Mrs. Shedd was the author? I didn’t think so, but who knew for sure? Was it safe to come to the launch since the bad vampires might show up and make trouble? See the answer to question one.

  I was so busy I didn’t notice that Adele wasn’t around until Mrs. Shedd came by the wrapping table looking for her. My boss seemed very agitated and I asked if there was anything I could do.

  “Adele talked me into having a display of Koo Koo books for the launch. She seemed to think that people would be particularly interested in them. I agreed to the display, but said the books needed to be signed in advance. She was supposed to put up the display today. Now I can’t find Adele or the books.”

  Rayaad overheard our conversation and told us Adele had left, saying it was some kind of emergency and she had to drive her boyfriend to the airport. Rayaad remembered that Adele had taken the box of Koo Koo books to be signed with her the night before.

  “Those books weren’t hers to take,” Mrs. Shedd said, seeming even more agitated. “Molly, please see what you can do. I better not walk in the kids’ department and see an empty display.”

  I had never seen Mrs. Shedd so upset about something as small as a box of books. But I was sure it was just a cover for what was really bothering her. I hadn’t told her that I thought Bradley’s ill-gotten money was hidden somewhere. There was no point in giving her hope unless I could deliver the goods.

  I called Adele’s cell phone to read her the riot act. “I can’t bring the books in right now,” Adele said in an irritated tone and made some comment about Mrs. Shedd making a fuss about nothing. She explained William was filling the gas tank and then they were stopping for snacks on the way to the airport. She wasn’t supposed to be back at the bookstore until the evening anyway. When I said Mrs. Shedd was really upset about the books leaving the store and implied this might be the swan song for Adele’s job, she finally got that she was in trouble with our boss.

  “Pink, you have to help me,” she said. “The books are at William’s.” She sounded desperate. “I left the keys to his place in my cubby.” She asked me to get them and actually added a please. I must have really gotten through to her.

  On the way to the parking lot I ran into Ryder making a video of a woman in a Santa hat sitting on the curb. He saw me rushing and wanted to know what was up. When I told him, he asked if he could tag along. Dinah was just turning the corner. The kids were helping Commander at the mail-it center. When she heard I was on a mission, she said she’d come along, too.

  Ryder had his mother’s Mercedes SUV and offered to drive. We all piled in and headed for William’s house. It was late afternoon as we drove onto his street. In the time since I’d been there, the rest of his neighbors had put up their holiday decorations, though for now the lights weren’t on and the street looked normal.

  We passed the giant Koo Koo on the lawn as we walked to the front door. Adele had told me she thought the books were in the living room. I was going to get the box and go, but Dinah wanted to see what had made Adele think William was the real A. J. Kowalski. The three of us went into his writer’s room and I cautioned everyone to keep their hands to themselves. I pointed out the worktable. The crochet books were still on it.

  Ryder had picked up that William might be the vampire author and was filming the room and adding his commentary. I put my hand in front of his camera and ordered him to stop. No way was he going to post anything to YouTube and ruin the bookst
ore’s thunder. In my haste I knocked into the table and books and papers fell off. I explained about William’s eye for detail and the three of us went to try to replace all the things on the table just as they had been.

  I set down the crochet book William had borrowed from Adele where I thought it had been. A piece of green paper had fallen down with the book. I recognized it as the sheet I’d seen when I’d been there with Adele. I had only gotten a glimpse of it then and remembered she’d said it was notes she’d made when she was figuring out the pattern of the afghan for me. This time I looked at her scribbles. There were all kinds of notes, and in the middle she’d drawn a rectangle and divided it into rows of boxes. The first couple of squares had Xs that probably were meant to stand for the flowers in them. Then she’d changed to just writing in numbers in a couple of the boxes. She’d just drawn one flower with a question mark in each of the rest of the squares. Across the top, in big letters, she’d written a note about the tassel situation stating that there should be one tassel on each corner or just one tassel on one corner, but not one tassel on one corner and two tassels on the next one and then none. I studied the sheet and showed it to Dinah and said William must have been really hard up for a bookmark to have kept the paper.

  “Or maybe he was planning to have Anthony make the afghan in the next book,” Dinah joked.

  “He’d have a hard time using this for a pattern unless he understood Adele’s secret code,” I said. As I said it my eye went to a book on the floor.

  “Ciphers and Codes?” Ryder said, noticing what I’d focused on. I stared at it for a long moment and then suddenly I had a thought.

  We all gazed at the paper as I pointed out the afghan drawing. “What if the flowers really were some kind of code?” I said. Before anyone could answer, I pulled out my BlackBerry and scrolled through the contacts until I found Madison’s number.

  I called and asked her how she’d come up with the pattern of flowers for the afghan she’d given her brother as a wedding present.

  “Not that afghan again,” she said with annoyance in her voice. “I don’t know who told you it was a wedding present. Bradley paid me to make it for him. He wanted it to be some kind of numerology thing. He gave me several long numbers and said they represented important dates for him and Emily and her kids and he wanted them incorporated in the coverlet. They had to be in the right order,” she said. As she said it, I thought of Adele’s note about the tassels and something clicked in my mind.

  “And so that’s why you put a tassel on one corner and two tassels on the next. You were showing where the numbers started, weren’t you?” I said.

  “Right. It made it weird looking, but Bradley didn’t seem to care,” she said. She said she’d given him the paper with the numbers when she gave him the blanket and forgotten all about it. She faltered and I said I knew she’d made another crocheted blanket for her brother. She admitted that Emily had contacted her with some confused message that Bradley wanted another afghan like it. She’d made up something quickly, but the only thing it had in common with the first one was that the background was green and it had some flowers incorporated in it.

  When I repeated what Madison had said, Dinah got a skeptical expression. “Important dates? I don’t think so. I bet all that fuss Bradley made about getting the afghan had nothing to do with sentiment.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “More likely it had to do with where he stashed all the money.”

  “Numbers, stashed money, huh?” Ryder said. “Like maybe he had one of those Swiss accounts. There was this show on the Crooks and Spies channel called Dude, Where’s the Money? It was all about those accounts that don’t use names, just numbers.”

  Ryder’s words hung in the air for a moment, and then everything really made sense. “Of course, that has to be it. Talk about hiding something in plain sight. What a way to keep track of the account number so no one would know. That’s why Bradley wanted the afghan before his faked suicide. And why he took the risk of breaking into my house twice. Now it makes sense why he kept upping his offer to Emily to get it to him. And now I understand why whoever killed Bradley took the afghan with them.”

  “Right,” Dinah said. “They had to understand what the flowers meant.”

  Ryder held the sheet of paper. “Do you think the clown figured it out?”

  I suddenly had a strong urge to look in the garage.

  Dinah and Ryder followed me. When I turned on the light, I saw it. The mountain bike was leaning against the wall, and when I took out my print of the photo, it was a perfect match to the size of the tire and the tread.

  “Oh my God, William is the killer,” I said. And something else popped forward in my mind. The image of William buying the wool-lined boots for his trip. “He’s not going to Miami, he’s going someplace cold, like maybe to Switzerland.

  “We have to stop him,” I said, rushing toward the front door. We got outside, hopped into Ryder’s mother’s Mercedes and he put the car in gear. By now it had gotten dark and all the holiday displays in all the front yards were illuminated. Ryder started to back out but stopped with a start. He hadn’t seen that the street was clogged with cars because they had all turned out their headlights so they could see the lights of Candy Cane Lane.

  He finally was able to pull out, but now we were part of the procession of slow-moving cars. I tried Barry’s cell and got his voice mail. I began leaving a message, but it was so convoluted that it didn’t make sense even to me. I took a deep breath and called Detective Heather. I got her voice mail, too. I cut to the chase with her message and just gave her the facts that I thought William was the killer and that he was on his way to the airport, and I bet he had the afghan. I had no idea if she would believe me.

  “Adele is going to have to keep him from leaving,” I said as I called her cell.

  I heard Dinah snort from the backseat. I admitted it was going to be a challenge.

  I got Adele in the car. She cut me off before I’d even finished hello. “Pink, just tell Mrs. Shedd I’m dropping William off at American Airlines and then I’ll come back to the bookstore and straighten everything out about the books. I cut her off and told her I had to tell her something very important and that she should just listen and say nothing.

  “Pink, if it’s some of your detec—”

  “Hush,” I yelled at her. “I said just listen. You’re not going to be happy with what I’m going to ask you to do. I need you to keep William from getting on the plane.” She made a sputtering sound, but I quieted her again. I told her he wasn’t going to Miami. I took a deep breath and told her that he had killed Bradley and I could prove it. I heard her gasp and then tell me I was nuts.

  I told her to check his ticket and she’d see that he wasn’t really going to Miami.

  “You’re ridiculous and I’m not going to do anything,” Adele said. I made one more attempt to get through to her.

  “I know you don’t want to believe me because he’s your boyfriend and what I told you is a total shock. I hate that it’s true, but it is. I always thought you were too good for him, anyway.” She didn’t say anything else, and when we hung up, I figured the last thing she’d said still stood. She was in total denial and was going to let him leave.

  By now Ryder had gotten out of the clog of cars and hit the gas as we headed for the freeway. The freeway wasn’t moving, but Ryder said not to worry, he knew all the short-cuts.

  I tried Barry again, thinking we were never going to make it in time. Ryder did know every back road. We went up steep streets and along the paved part of Mulholland before getting onto Sepulveda as it paralleled the freeway. I was leaning forward, willing the SUV to go faster. Ryder was a typical young adult male driver. He wove through traffic like he was braiding a ribbon. I finally closed my eyes and hoped for the best.

  “Hey, MP, here we are,” he said, finally pulling up to the white curb in front of American Airlines. I got out and he started to follow me, but the recording playing over a loudsp
eaker reminded us it was for loading and unloading only. Dinah came around to the front seat and said she’d park the car.

  We looked in through the glass door at the line waiting to check in, but there was no Adele or William in sight. We took the elevator up a level to the area just outside the restricted zone on the slim chance William was up there.

  There was just a small area before the first checkpoint for last good-byes. I didn’t see Adele at first. She was hidden behind a post. When I checked the screening area, William was just putting his shoes, jacket and carry-on in plastic bins to go through the X-ray machine. He took off the vampire scarf around his neck and added it to one of the bins. Ryder was right behind me with his video camera going. What was he going to call this YouTube piece—“Murderer Escapes”?

  What could I do? It only took a moment to realize the answer was nothing. If I made some kind of fuss, the only one who’d get detained would be me. All I could do was watch him go. He was pushing the bins with his stuff onto the conveyer belt and the TSA guy said something to him and pointed. William nodded and reached into his pockets. As he pulled his hand out, he looked down and his face registered surprise as his hand came up.

  Suddenly it was like everything went into slow motion. The TSA guy pointed at William’s hand and yelled, “Gun,” just as I saw it. All the people waiting in line screamed and dove for the floor as another TSA guy jumped over the row of metal tables and tackled William, before two uniformed officers ran from their station and joined the fray.

  “Is it over yet?” Adele said, stepping from behind the post.

  As they led William away, he caught sight of Adele and his usually placid face twisted in a grimace. “You,” he spit out in anger. “I should have known that you’d ruin everything. The only thing you were good for was pushing the Koo Koo books.” He grunted at her. “You and your ridiculous clothes, you’re nothing but a big—”