Hanging by a Thread

by Margaret Evans

  “Why don’t you put half an ‘X’ in that box, Rina? I’m sure you can put the other half as soon as I’m done with the costumes. Shouldn’t be long.”

  Rina seemed reluctant but in the end, placed the half slash in the box by the costumes. As they moved through the agenda and she Xed off the rest of the items, the woman kept returning to the costumes line as if she wanted to mark it off completely. She was turning red in the face again, Laura noticed.

  “Rina, can we do this?” Laura got up to mark a dotted line across the half slash and recapped the pen, replacing it in its spot on the tray. “I’ll call you as soon as the costumes are finished and you can connect the dots.”

  The woman stared at it a bit and said nothing. The redness faded a little, but she wasn’t very happy.

  The meeting was coming to a close when Kelly mentioned the upcoming bridal/groomal shower for Sabina Morello and Jack Flynn. They would have to bump the next meeting to another night when they would discuss the particulars of the Gala itself.

  Laura thought Rina was going to have a stroke. The woman likely had her calendar mapped out in permanent ink for the next five years. Jenna went over to talk with her, put an arm around her, and offered help in reworking her month’s calendar. Rina calmed.

  Once the next meeting was rescheduled, Jade Olson Wilkin piped in with an entirely unexpected interruption.

  “I hear Sabina Morello knew that guy who disappeared from the bank a couple of years ago. Remember him? What was his name?”

  “Paul Dotson,” Aaron Nilsson responded, looking irritated. “And Paul knew a lot of people at the bank because he worked for us for six years. Of course he would know Sabina. We all knew him. What’s your point, Jade?”

  Laura had been ready to get up and run as soon as she’d seen Rina’s face grow red again, but this new twist in the conversation glued her to her seat. She pretended to fuss with her bag and phone.

  “Why are we bringing this up now anyway? It’s old news,” Kelly Rogers asked.

  “Because,” Jade continued, drawing out the attention on herself as long as possible, “Jessica Wright, who also works at the same bank—Aaron’s bank—has also disappeared.”

  It was quieter than pin-dropping, Laura thought, as she realized that nobody was breathing, either. Finally, the bank manager spoke.

  “She just didn’t show up for work today,” he said. “She’s not missing.”

  “But isn’t that what Paul Dotson did?” Jade pursued. “Not show up for work one day? And didn’t Paul and Jessica date or something?”

  Laura kept her mouth shut and her ears open, pretending to read and respond to a text. She was actually emailing everything Jade said to herself. She hesitated only when Jade was interrupted.

  “I think,” Jenna broke in, “that we’re just talking gossip here. Nobody knows what happened to Paul, and we may never know. This is not fair to anyone—not to Jessica or Sabina. I think we should stop now. Good night, everyone. We have our assignments for the next meeting. See you all then.”

  Laura would have loved to stay, but she realized that Jenna was right. It was all speculation. She clicked “send” on the email. And she suspected that Connor would not be happy to hear that Sabina’s name was being connected with a scandal or crime. She got up with Jenna, Kelly, and Erica and went to the door with them.

  Behind them, Jade was still talking.

  “But what about the money that was missing from the bank, Aaron? That mystery was never solved and the money was never recovered. Nobody ever found out who did it or where the money went.”

  Laura kept walking out the door with her friends, but she decided to drop in on Connor during her lunch break on Tuesday.

  nine

  Earlier Monday and into Tuesday…

  Jessica Wright sat on the floor in a corner of her bedroom, knees drawn up under her chin with her arms wrapped around her legs. She was staring straight ahead.

  As the day progressed to evening, the room grew darker, but she turned on no lights. In the waning visibility of the room, she again ignored the ringing telephone, as she had the whole day, and meals. Her stomach growled and fell on deaf ears.

  “They think I did this,” she spoke to the room. “They think I’m responsible for the whole mess.”

  Then she was silent again, not seeing the evening turn to night and not answering the door to her apartment when someone knocked loudly on it. It could be him. He might be back. She shrank further into the corner of the room, afraid to move or make a noise, waiting for something to happen, for something she knew not what.

  She drowsed through the night and into the next day, crouched in her corner, knowing she couldn’t take the chance of someone thinking she did this terrible thing, finding her, talking about her. For an inexplicable reason, she thought about Sabina Morello and wondered if she were the reason that they were looking into Jessica’s accounts. What part did Sabina play in this? Had she pointed a finger at Jessica?

  She started to pack a suitcase and stopped, put everything back as it was, then changed her mind again and messed up the apartment as if someone had been looking for something. Carefully going through her purse, she decided she would take just her wallet with the last of her cash in the world, thanks to her greedy co-worker, and the car keys. She could park her car anywhere off the highway and walk to the bus depot near Duluth or Eagle Junction and get lost in the crowd there. No one would know her, and she knew just the spot on the highway where she could do that. She’d even leave the keys in the ignition after wiping off her fingerprints, of course. Then she’d take a bus to the Twin Cities and from there, get lost in the world somewhere. It was the only way to stop this—this terrible thing that was happening to her.

  She was relieved she had taken care of that jacket but had been so rattled by finding it in the back of her coat closet. She swore she’d never seen it before and had no idea how it could have gotten there. There couldn’t be any connections between her and that man, not now, not ever. That was the day she had hopped a bus to St. Paul, thinking she had to run, ready to run screaming from her apartment and her job. After she had calmed, she came back. Went to work. There was more thinking to do about this whole situation. But not now. Sabina had caught her in the accounts. Sabina would not do nothing about it; she would tell the bank manager. Or worse.

  She had stopped going to work last Thursday; she couldn’t take it any longer. Called in sick last week. This week, she didn’t care anymore. People were watching her, suspecting her. She gathered her necessities into a small shoulder sack, checked the apartment for anything she might have left running, turned everything off, and pulled the door and her life in Raging Ford shut behind her.

  It was daylight, but she never noticed the car that followed her, lost among the other vehicles on the street around her.

  •••

  Second Treasures opened to another big crowd on Tuesday morning, anticipating more surprises and treats. There were so many squeals of delight that Harry Kovacs stopped by to see what all the fuss was about and ended up helping her take the little children’s pictures in the leprechaun frames for over an hour before he had to return to the barber shop. The popcorn treats were gone by noon, as well. It was a tremendously successful morning, but Laura knew she would have to face the music with Connor about Marie Vandergard overhearing her conversation with Erica, and also update him on what she had heard at the meeting the previous night. It couldn’t be put off.

  On her way to see Connor around one o’clock in the afternoon, she drove past the town center, much like the traffic circles that laced the District of Columbia and connected all of the angled streets and avenues. This circle, with its requisite statue of Samuel Rage, was filled with townspeople reading the posters and signs about the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Gala. She noticed someone had placed a green ribbon around Samuel’s neck and snickered, w
ondering if he were alive today how he would feel about that. His ancestors were Protestant English.

  “Now, Samuel,” she said, speaking to her ancestor, “you know that on St. Paddy’s Day, everyone is Irish, whether you want to be or not. So play nice and make sure we don’t have rain or snow or anything else bad happen for the parade.”

  She pulled into the small lot at the police station and greeted Colleen, on duty today at the front desk, who waved her up the stairs.

  “He’s expecting you, but don’t count on seeing him immediately. You know how it goes here,” she called to Laura.

  Laura avoided holding onto the railing, noticed its need of repairs, and warning signs taped along its length. At the top of the stairs, she nodded and smiled to a couple of cops, including Officer Brianna Broadmoor, cheerleader-turned-cop. She noticed Brianna’s second baby was now showing its “bump.”

  “How’s it going, Mama?” Laura called, knowing that Brianna would now be office-bound until she returned to duty after the birth.

  Brianna winked at her and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Through Sergeant Fitzpatrick’s office window, Laura saw he was on the phone, so she caught his eye and pointed to the Comm Center. He nodded, and she continued on her way toward Jack Flynn. Flynn kept his eyes on the screens but asked her how life was treating her.

  “Good. You sure you’re ready for this?”

  He grinned at her and returned to the screens then spoke to one of the officers remotely.

  “Is anybody ever ready for anything?”

  “Well, did you read any books on how to be a good husband?” she teased.

  “All of them. I know everything. ‘Happy wife, happy life.’ And I’ve practiced, ‘Yes, dear,’ a lot. I’m going to be a great husband.”

  She laughed, patted Flynn on the shoulder and turned to see Connor approaching. She followed him back to his office. This was not a meeting she was looking forward to, but he needed to know that the gossip about Flynn’s fiancée was out there.

  He shut the door on the pair and listened in silence to her account of both her chat with Erica that was overheard by Marie at the Valencia and the SPDP&G committee meeting discussions. His brows knitted a bit when Sabina’s name came up.

  “You should go visit Will’s bakery,” he said, interrupting her narrative. “He’s hired a new dessert specialist, one that isn’t a murderer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, but I hear he can make the fudge you like so much. Grumpy Gus figured out the right recipe and this new guy makes it well. Will says he can’t keep it on the shelves, especially with the green icing on it for St. Patrick’s Day. I hear there’s a version with pistachios, too.”

  Grumpy Gus was Raging Ford’s nickname for Bob Ferguson, the town’s most notable and accomplished cake baker and pastry chef. He was a long-time staple at the Kovacs Bakery. While he loved baking and creating yummy delights, he hated customers, so he was rarely seen in the front of the store. To many, he was just the myth behind the bakery’s delights. The last fudge-making employee Will Kovacs had hired delighted all the customers but turned out to be a murderer on the side.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Mahoney.”

  “I mean his whole name.”

  “No idea. Will says he just wants to be called Mahoney.”

  “Well, he sounds Irish, and that should make you happy.”

  “How so?”

  “You seem to have a problem with people who aren’t one hundred percent Irish,” she pointed out.

  “No, just your claiming to be Irish when you have so little of the gene pool.”

  She narrowed a glare at him.

  “You didn’t say anything at the meeting? Just the lunch with Erica that Marie overheard?” he asked, returning to the purpose of their brief meeting.

  “Yup. I was a half-good girl. Erica won’t say anything, but I don’t know about Marie even though I think she only heard our mention of this Dotson guy and not anything I said about the jacket showing up at my shop. At the committee meeting, I just listened. But the Fab Four did leave just as things were getting good. Jenna was driving and wanted to leave right then, so I had no choice.”

  “No one has reported Jessica Wright missing.”

  “Does she have any family?”

  “I don’t know her. She’s from New York originally, I think. Someone at her job or from her family, if she has one, has to report her missing before we can open a missing person’s investigation. With adults, once we’re told, we usually wait twenty-four hours, if twenty-four hours have not already passed.”

  “I got the impression it’s been longer than that,” Laura observed. “What about the missing bank money? Did you know about that?”

  “Open case, Laura.”

  “Okay, so you knew about that. Jenna seemed to want to cut off Jade’s gossiping, and she repeated that to all of us when we got outside of Rina’s house. I don’t believe that Erica or Kelly will pass any of this on to someone. My friends are pretty trustworthy and not gossipy. And it’s probably nothing, but I thought you should know Sabina’s name was mentioned.”

  •••

  Just as Laura was leaving the police station to return to Second Treasures, someone was standing at its front shop window, looking at the big pot of gold and wondering at the silliness of guessing a total of coins for a prize. Did these people not have enough to do in their lives? Others came to look in the window and left, but the person remained, quilted jacket collar pulled up in the brisk, early March air. Glancing at the reflection in the glass, it was clear that more needed to be done.

  As the person stood there staring into the window, a large gray cat sat atop the big glass bowl of chocolate coins watching, its tail sweeping back and forth across the side of the glass. Its tail stopped and it waited.

  Turning to leave and smiling, a thought came that even though much had already been done, there was more that should be done. Certainly, some things were about to change; much was in motion. And that meant changes in lifestyle. There always seemed to be something else, more items on the list. One thing often generated another, especially with all that was about to happen.

  The cat watched the person leave then hopped off the pot of gold and returned to the inside of the shop.

  Laura just missed seeing the person at her front window as she drove down Taylor Street, turned the corner and headed into the alley behind the shop. She pulled into her parking space, parked, punched in her security code on the back door and glanced up at the surveillance cameras she had had installed that saw and recorded nothing yet.

  Soon, she told herself. Soon she would contract with the security company.

  Soon.

  •••

  Sabina Morello wondered why she was being called to Aaron Nilsson’s office. She was always nervous when that happened and thought she had already done enough. Done her part and what he had asked. Now her mind was on the bridal shower and her upcoming wedding. There was so much to do—taste-testing different cakes, checking out the decorations and the venue, arranging for out-of-town relatives to have a place to stay, food and drink for the reception, the D.J. and selected music that she and Jack wanted. It seemed endless. Invitations had gone out; gifts had started to come in from the registry. Her bridesmaids were still arguing over their dress color and of course, there were the flowers. Flowers for the bouquets and bridesmaids’ hair pieces, flowers for the altar in church, flowers at the reception, boutonnières for Jack and his groomsmen, one of whom was Connor Fitzpatrick.

  She stepped into her boss’s office and took the chair he indicated as he closed the door behind her. There were no glass walls in this office. Nobody would know she was there unless they’d seen her go in, but the floor was pretty empty right now and likely no one knew she was there.

  “Tell me again exactly what
you know,” he said.

  She told him everything, all over again.

  “And when did you discover all this and what made you look?”

  “When I checked with Jessica on the status of her account work and she told me she would do it quickly. But she hadn’t touched a single account file. So after she left for the day, I checked the log to see where she had been in the system. And that’s what I found.”

  “And you didn’t ask her?”

  “She called in sick the next two days.”

  “And you waited until today to tell me.”

  “I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. When she didn’t come in yesterday or today, either, I thought I better tell you.”

  “And you have no idea what she was doing in those accounts.”

  Sabina shook her head.

  “Only that she was moving money around with no rhyme or reason. I’ve never seen anything like it. All over the place.”

  “And you’re certain that these were some of the questionable accounts that lost money two years ago?”

  This time she nodded.

  “Okay, I want you to go back and look at Dotson’s old log and see what he did.”

  “I already did that when you asked me the first time after he disappeared two years ago. He did nothing—moved no money anywhere. But the logs did show that he deleted his activity on a regular basis, so I have no idea what he did or didn’t do during those deleted times. You have to be pretty tech-savvy to know how to do that, and I’m pretty sure he was. I told the FBI all of this at the time. If we want it all restored, it could be done, but that would be costly. They told us not now because they couldn’t really find any missing funds, just funds that had been moved and moved back. They recommended we have auditors do a full assessment.”

  “Sabina, I don’t want you discussing this with anyone, even the FBI or the police, unless they ask, if they do ask. And only if we find out that Jessica is really missing. She could just be really sick and unable to call. Have you tried to reach her?”