The Longest Yard Sale

by Sherry Harris

  I glanced down at the folders in my hands. One had Carol’s name on the label, followed by a long number. I set the others down, staring at it. This might be the case the state had laid out against Carol. If I read it, I might be able to help her. But if I read it, I’d be betraying Seth in the worst possible way. I held it with both hands, debating. A creak sounded behind me.

  “I’ll put the steaks on,” Seth said, coming up behind me. “You didn’t need to get the dishes and silverware. I would have done it.”

  I kept my back to him a few seconds longer and held the folder against my waist. It felt like it was searing my hands. But there didn’t seem to be any way to keep Seth from knowing I had it. He nuzzled his lips against my neck, and his wet hair sprinkled a few drops of water on me. I closed my eyes for a minute, breathing in his fresh shower scent, realizing I had to tell him what I was holding.

  “What do you have?” Seth drew back as I turned. He wore worn jeans and a cream-colored shirt, sleeves rolled up, showing his strong forearms.

  The place on my neck where his lips had been felt cold. I handed him the folder. “I saw it when I came to set the table. I didn’t open it.”

  Seth’s face settled into a grim expression as he took the folder from me. A pulse beat madly at his temple. “I think you’d better go.”

  When I got to the front door, I opened it but turned back. Seth stood there, clenching the folder in one hand.

  “I swear I didn’t look at it, Seth. I was tempted, but I didn’t.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Back home, I turned my grandmother’s oak rocking chair to look out over the empty town common. I turned the lights out and opened the window to let some cool air rush in. I tried to sort out what was going on in my mind about Seth and CJ—the alarm I’d felt at Seth’s house when the routine of setting the table had confused me. Maybe somehow I liked our clandestine meetings, the risk of getting caught. On the other hand, I really, really didn’t want CJ to know I was seeing Seth. Then there was Seth’s expression when he saw me with his file. I knew so well how it felt when you thought someone you trusted had betrayed you. It hurt me to see what I’d done to him.

  But had tonight proved to me that I belonged with CJ? We’d been so happy for so long. Then when I’d thought he’d slept with his subordinate, I hadn’t believed it was just one time, and I’d bolted. To here, my cozy apartment. Part of me liked being here, being on my own. I’d left my parents’ house at nineteen to marry CJ. The other part of me missed him on so many levels, I didn’t know what to think.

  A car door slammed. I heard Stella and Bubbles laughing as they came up the steps. The screen door creaked opened and shut. Stella started singing her aria. It was beautiful. Seth must be nothing more than a jog off the path of my life. I cried for a few minutes for all I’d lost because I hadn’t been able to trust CJ or myself. Then I gave myself a talking to about how if I didn’t like my life I could change it. I rose and closed the window, closed a chapter in my life. Next time I got the chance, I’d tell CJ it was time for us to be back together, where we surely belonged.

  By nine the next morning I sat in Gennie’s fifties room, puzzling over how to price a boomerang coffee table and matching chairs. She’d left a note on the door that she was working out in her basement and for me to come in. It struck me again that she’d left her door unlocked, this time with a note on it that any random person could see. I finally decided to hold off pricing the table and chairs. I needed to meet with a friend in Acton, an expert in estate sales and antiques.

  After pricing and tagging for another hour, I heard Gennie come up from the basement. She leaned against the door, holding a bottle of water. “I don’t want to interrupt you, but I have a question about something unrelated to the sale.”

  That sounded intriguing. “Hang on. Let me put the price tags on these two items.” I carefully placed the tags on two pictures of Elvis, making sure they were in a spot where the price would show but the sticker wouldn’t do any damage. I stood and stretched my arms up over my head. “What do you need?” I asked when I finished my stretch.

  “Want something to drink?” Gennie asked.

  “Water would be great,” I said.

  We headed to the kitchen, my curiosity growing with every step. It seemed like Gennie was putting off asking me anything. I settled on a stool at the kitchen island. Gennie grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and handed it to me.

  Gennie pulled out another stool and sat. “I hate to involve you, but since you’re friends with Dave, I thought you might be able to help me out.” Gennie took a long drink of her water.

  “I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “I know he’s probably overwhelmed right now because of Terry’s death, but I haven’t gotten my monthly statement yet. It’s only a few days late, but I like to stay on top of things.”

  I’d seen Bubbles leaving Stella’s apartment this morning, whistling a ditty and tossing his keys in the air. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Sharing that with Gennie didn’t seem wise. “I can call him for you.”

  “I’ve left him a couple of messages, but he hasn’t returned my calls. I don’t want to be insensitive.”

  “I’ll call his cell phone. It’s probably just a problem with the post office. Although he did mention the other day that he was looking for help.”

  I took out my phone and searched my contacts for Bubbles’s number. He picked up on the second ring. “Hey, good lookin’, what’s up? Stella can’t get enough of me and wanted you to call?”

  I laughed. “No. I’m with Gennie. She said her statement hadn’t shown up and was worried.”

  “Please apologize for me. Or better yet, let me talk to her.”

  I handed Gennie the phone.

  She said “uh-huh” a few times before laughing. “It’s okay. Thanks for letting me know.” She hung up and handed my phone back to me. “Dave said they went out a day late.”

  “What about the statements from the fund company? You could look at those.”

  “Dave gets those directly so he can do a consolidated statement for me.”

  That sounded a little odd, but it had been years since I was in the business. “But you can look online.”

  “I didn’t ever set up an online account. Dave was always so prompt.”

  “We could set one up now. All we need is the account number for the fund from one of the consolidated statements from Dave.” It always felt odd calling him Dave, because I’d always known him as Bubbles.

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “I worked part-time for a small independent financial planning company a long time ago. It wouldn’t be that much different than Dave’s setup.”

  “Were you a financial planner?”

  “No. I was the assistant to one. But I learned a lot about how the stock market works.”

  “My laptop’s charging upstairs,” Gennie said. “I’ll grab it and a statement.” When she brought it back, Gennie typed in the information. The fund sent her an error message.

  “Let me read the fund number to you,” I said. “Those things are so long it’s hard to type them in accurately.” I wanted to believe that was the problem, but concern niggled the back of my head.

  I read off the number, but the same error message came back up. “Do you have your other statements? Maybe a number somehow got transposed on this one.”

  When Gennie went off again, I studied the statement. It looked legit and had everything the Security and Exchange Commission required.

  Gennie spread out several months’ worth of statements on the granite island. The account numbers were the same on each statement.

  “If he entered it wrong the first time, it makes sense it would be wrong on all of these, right?” she asked.

  “Let me call Bubbles, Dave, back and get the right number.” I dialed again and explained the situation to Bubbles.

  “Terry did the statements. I’m horrified and embarrassed. But you know I can’t
give you that information, Sarah. Privacy laws.”

  “I’m still with Gennie, so hang on.” I handed the phone over to her.

  Gennie listened again and smiled. “Great,” she said. She looked at me. “He’s getting the number.” Gennie held up a finger to me. “Okay,” she said into the phone. “Let me know.” After she disconnected the call, she looked at me. “The system’s down. He’s going to call me back.”

  A system being down when the market was open was almost unheard of. Even if Bubbles’s system was down, he should be able to quickly contact the fund and get the information. While we waited, we talked about dates for the yard sale. I needed at least another two weeks to get through everything. As we talked, I kept wondering if Gennie suspected the same thing I did—that something was very wrong. After a half hour, I turned to Gennie. “Could I look at your statements and look up some things online?”

  Gennie’s eyebrows slanted together in worry, and I was pretty sure my expression echoed hers. I worried about what Terry had done to Bubbles behind his back. Apparently enough to get himself killed. “Sure,” she said, “if it will help get this resolved.”

  I clicked away at the computer for twenty-five minutes, verifying and reverifying what I’d spotted. My mouth settled into a grim line as I worked.

  “What is it?” Gennie asked.

  “Your statements show a lower profit than the fund actually made on any given day.” I pointed to the number on the statement and the number on the fund’s website. “It’s not off by much, just a few dollars. But a few dollars every month adds up.” In my head, I extrapolated that number. If Dave and Terry had one hundred clients, it would be a decent amount of money. If they had one thousand, it would be a jaw-dropping figure.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I think someone was skimming funds from your account.”

  CHAPTER 29

  I sat in the lobby of the Ellington Police Station, waiting for CJ to see me. I’d come straight from Gennie’s house and had tried calling CJ on the way over. Both his cell and office phones went straight to voice mail. I told the person at the front desk it was urgent, but apparently if no one was bleeding, it was kind of like being in the hospital. I was triaged and deemed of low importance. I’d even been desperate enough to ask if Scott Pellner was in, but he was out on patrol.

  As I waited, I hoped that all of this was Terry’s doing and Bubbles wasn’t involved. After all, Terry ended up dead, not Bubbles. I sifted through all the events that had occurred, starting with New England’s Largest Yard Sale—fires, the missing painting, a dead body, and erroneous financial statements. Was it possible that Bubbles or Terry was the mystery man who’d commissioned the copy of Battled? Carol’s painting had been stolen sometime between Friday evening and Saturday evening. That person set the fires as a distraction and switched the paintings during the commotion. But why?

  Maybe someone knew that Terry was scamming people. I hoped it was Terry and not Bubbles, but he hadn’t returned Gennie’s call, which alarmed me. She’d promised to let me know as soon as she heard from him. Maybe one or both of the men came up with the idea to have Battled copied and to steal the original so it could be sold to repay the accounts and chalk it all up to a computer glitch. I warmed to that theory.

  But I couldn’t figure out why Terry had been killed or why at Carol’s shop. Terry might have been unhappy that a simple con game had turned into so much more. Or perhaps Terry didn’t even know that Bubbles was scamming people. When he found out and wouldn’t go along with it, Bubbles killed him. Terry had called Carol that afternoon and said he wanted to meet her. What if someone had overheard the call, followed Terry to the store, and made sure Terry couldn’t tell her anything. As much as I didn’t want Bubbles to be involved, I hoped this would be enough to get Carol off the hook.

  The biggest flaw in my theory, as far as I could tell, was that Bubbles showed no signs of having amassed a lot of money. He drove an old truck, and he lived in simple quarters on the base. It wasn’t furnished lavishly. Sure, he had some nice electronics, but as a colonel he could easily afford those. That thought made me feel better. It must have been Terry.

  I clutched copies of Gennie’s statements. I jiggled my foot and glanced at my phone to check the time again. Just as I was about to blow up with impatience, someone opened the door, and I hurried to CJ’s office.

  CJ smiled when I came in. It seemed like the first time he’d smiled at me in a long time. It made me happy. “I heard you were about to blow a gasket out in the lobby. What has you so fired up?”

  It only took a few minutes to lay out my case to CJ. He’d learned almost as much about the market as I had during the time I worked for the financial planning company. It made explaining my theory to him much easier. “Now you can drop the case against Carol,” I said.

  CJ leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. I waited quietly, knowing how he processed things.

  “It’s all conjecture,” CJ said, leaning his arms on his desk.

  “But I have these statements.” I handed them over to CJ but didn’t tell him I’d kept another set for myself.

  “They are so consistently off it could be a glitch in their computer program.”

  “Bubbles didn’t answer my call.” It just struck me that I might have alerted him that he’d been caught.

  “Bubbles could be at the gym or in the shower. He might be trying to figure out what went wrong and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “He could be packing up right now.”

  “Why? He’s almost ready to retire. He has a successful business. Everything else is just speculation on your part.” He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the top of his desk. “You’ve forgotten that he was threatened as well as Terry. Maybe someone set them both up.”

  I had forgotten that. I’d seen the notes myself and their similarity. That cheered me a bit.

  “I’ll give him a call or drop by his place,” CJ said. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  I must have given him a skeptical look. CJ hadn’t shared any information with me for a long time.

  “I promise.”

  I spotted Vincenzo’s car outside Carol’s shop. I zipped over. The two of them were huddled together at a table. They looked up, startled when I flung open the door.

  “I have news that might help Carol,” I said as I hurried to where they were sitting and sat down with them. I explained what I’d found out at Gennie’s house.

  “Will it help?” Carol asked, leaning forward toward Vincenzo.

  Vincenzo stared up at the ceiling. “It’s huge. It means every client they have is a suspect. Not to mention Dave’s possible involvement. But any good prosecutor would say it was a computer glitch or irrelevant to the murder.” He turned to me. “Do you know anyone else who invests with him? One person’s erroneous statement could be a fluke. More than one, and it’s a trend.”

  “I might know someone else. I’ll call her right now.” I called Laura, and when she didn’t answer, I left a message. We sat in silence for a moment. Then I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “How does your son afford three cars?” I asked, though “asked” might have been a stretch and “demanded” more accurate.

  Vincenzo smoothed his purple silk tie and assessed me. His face said “hysterical female alert.”

  “Do you give him the cars?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure which cars you’re talking about or which son. I have three.”

  “I’m talking about Jett, his Mercedes, the red sports car, and the yellow one.”

  A flicker of doubt crossed Vincenzo’s face. “As far as I know, he only has one car. An older Mercedes that I gave him when he returned from the Marines.”

  “I’ve seen him driving two other newish-looking cars. And from what I’ve heard, his income wouldn’t support three such cars.” I didn’t mention that he’d started driving them right after the painting was stolen. The thought that Vincenzo’s son might be a thief was a
wful. I didn’t want to spell it out, but I hoped Vincenzo caught my meaning.

  Vincenzo looked thoughtful. Carol looked back and forth between us. “Anyone want some water?” she asked. She hopped up and disappeared into her studio.

  “Let me call him and see if we can get this cleared up.” The normally unruffled Vincenzo looked very unhappy. He made the call and hung up. “He was on his way over with Olivia, anyway.”

  Carol came out with a pitcher of water and glasses. A few minutes later, a red sports car pulled into a parking spot right in front of the store. Vincenzo paled a bit. Jett held the door open for Olivia as they walked in wearing matching black T-shirts. Olivia wore another tiny skirt with tights, and Jett wore distressed jeans that he’d probably paid way too much for.

  “Hey, Dad, what’d you want?” He tossed the keys up in the air and caught them behind his back, executing a snazzy full turn in the process.

  Olivia took one look at all the tense faces and bolted to the back room.

  “Where’d you get that Mazda?” Vincenzo jabbed a finger toward the red sports car. “And I hear you’ve been driving some yellow flashy car, too.”

  “That’s what this is about? You think I did something?”

  “I know you can’t afford those cars on what the family pays you.” He blew out a deep breath and took Jett’s hand. “If you’re in some kind of trouble, I’ll help you. I always do.”

  Jett jerked his hand away. He wheeled toward me, his face red and his nostrils flared. “This is your fault, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 30

  Vincenzo leaped up. “Calm down, Jett.”

  Jett shook his head. “The Mazda belongs to a Marine buddy of mine. He’s deployed and asked me to drive it a couple of times a week for him.”

  My mouth formed a little o.