by ACF Bookens
* * *
Mayhem pulled me home with her incessant sniffing, which apparently wore her out because when we got the house, she went right to her dog bed and collapsed. Aslan, my cat, was less than thrilled to be displaced from her makeshift bed in the sun, but the dog was not to be dissuaded. Aslan begrudgingly took up her place on the cashmere throw on my reading chair. Oh, to have the life of one of my pets.
I opened up the e-lending app for the St. Marin’s library and click on Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here. I’d long been an audiobook listener, but it had taken me a while to warm to checking out audiobooks electronically from the library. I don’t really know why I’d stalled – this was the best thing, even if the selection was a bit limited. I knew libraries thrived on circulation numbers, so checking out my audiobooks when I could made sense. Plus, the due date made me listen more and, thus, read more books. It was a win-win.
I had just flipped the burgers in the skillet when I heard car doors slam and the skitter of Mayhem’s nails as she went to welcome everyone. In came most of the people I loved: Mart; Stephen and Walter; Cate and her husband, Lucas; my parents, Sharon and Burt; and, of course, Daniel. I glanced at the clock on the microwave – six-thirty on the dot. A punctual bunch, these.
Mart brought in four bottles of wine from the winery where she worked, including a chardonnay that I loved. Mom and Dad brought salad as requested. Stephen and Walter came bearing some steamed green beans with dill and lemon, and Lucas and Cate carried in two bakery boxes that were, without a doubt, the best cupcakes in all the world. Lucas was the director at the maritime museum in town, but I was not the only person who said he could open a cupcake shop in a heartbeat.
The dogs – Mayhem and Taco – and their two buddies, Sidecar, Mom and Dad’s rescue, and Sasquatch, Cate and Lucas’s Miniature Schnauzer, went right to the water bowl before draping themselves over the cluster of dog beds in the corner of the living room. They were sleeping soundly before we even got the plates out.
This had become our new Friday night ritual, and even in just a month’s worth of Friday evenings, we’d fallen into a routine. Stephen and Walter set the table while Mart and Dad got drinks. Mom helped me plate up the burgers and fixings, and Daniel fed the pups under the careful and skeptical eye of Aslan, who could not be bribed – even with tuna – to eat until she had her kitchen back to herself.
We weren’t a formal crowd, so everyone grabbed mismatched plates and filled them up before taking seats on the couch and floor in the living room. We didn’t have enough dining room chairs for everyone, and also, it felt cozier, more fun, to just picnic in the living room.
I forced myself to wait to ask Cate about the co-op until the second bottle of wine was open, but then my curiosity – a trait my mother had always called nosiness – got the better of me. “Cate, I ran into Henri today. She got into a real hullaballoo with Wilma over at the bank.”
“She did? That doesn’t seem like Henri.” She took a sip of wine. “But then again, it does seem like Wilma, so . . . what was the ruckus about?”
It was my turn to take a sip of wine. “Well, I told Henri I’d ask you about it and let her know, but apparently, Wilma said the bank is going to foreclose on the co-op because the mortgage hasn’t been paid.”
I put my wine glass up to my mouth and tilted it back both as shield and salve.
“What in the—?” Cate was on her feet faster than I could blink.
Lucas stood with her and put a hand on her arm. “This must be a mistake, Cate. We can clear it up first thing Monday. Or we can call Wilma at home, if we can find her number.”
Cate slapped his hand away. “Of course it’s a mistake. And any self-respecting banker who had been dealing with another business for as long as they have should know that there’s a mistake. How dare she threaten to foreclose without talking to me! How dare she give that information to anyone but me!” Cate’s voice had gotten very quiet, and I could see from the set of her jaw that the quiet belied the rage.
I let out a long breath, hoping that might inspire Cate to do the same, but instead, she locked eyes on me. “You say Wilma Painter had the gall to bring this up just before the close of business on a Friday? That woman is unbelievable. Unbelievable and cowardly. When I get my hands on her—“
“We all know this is a mistake, Cate.” Daniel’s voice was firm and even. “And we all have your back. We won’t let Wilma do anything to the co-op.” He wasn’t a man of many words, but when he spoke, people listened. The energy in the room was quelled to only slightly uncomfortable.
Cate’s eyes welled up. “I know. Thank you, Daniel, but it’s a bank. Banks are ruthless institutions. If they think I haven’t been paying our mortgage . . .” Her eyes snapped up to mine. “Oh, Harvey. How was Henri? She must have been horrified.”
“Apoplectic might be a better adjective. She knew there was an error, and she was furious that Wilma would contend that it was some lack of judgment or moral diligence that caused this situation.” I waited a minute and hoped there was enough oxygen in the room to handle my next question. “I told her I’d ask you about it and let her know. Do you have any idea what happened?”
My question brought Cate to her knee on the floor. Lucas handed back her wine glass, and she took a long sip. “I don’t. I send the payment with the deposit on the last day of the month. Always have.”
Stephen leaned forward. “You don’t pay it electronically?”
Cate shook her head. “Nope. I knew I could have, and Wilma put some pressure on me to do that – I expect I’ll hear a big ole hair-dye-stained ‘I told you’ so on that one now – but it always seemed easier to just write up the transfer form and put it in with the cash. That way, there was a paper trail.”
I stared down into my now-empty wine glass. “Did you take the deposits yourself?”
Cate’s eyes whipped up to mine. “No. No, I didn’t.” I could see the rage building behind her eyes again. “I had Ollie do it because I like to work on my images in the afternoon. I’m so stupid.”
“Ollie – the kid with the gauges in his ears?” Lucas asked, trying to sound neutral. But from the look on his face, I could tell he was thinking what we were thinking, Why would you trust that knucklehead with anything, much less bank deposits? I’d talked with him several times, and while he was nice enough, he always seemed a little distracted.
Cate sighed. “Yep, he’s the one. We never have much cash to deposit. A couple hundred dollars a day since our artists get paid directly. Mostly, it’s just sales from the few gift items and rent from the artisans. I checked the account the first few times he went, and everything was good. Then, I kind of assumed we were fine. Apparently, we were not.”
Walter adjusted his hips on the couch next to me. “So he just didn’t turn in the transfer request for the mortgage payments and then withdrew the money that should have gone to the mortgage.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “For a kind of dumb kid, that’s a pretty smart move. You wouldn’t even notice because the amount would have been the same in the account, unless you checked your mortgage statement, I mean.”
I banged my wine glass onto the table. “But wouldn’t the bank have warned you that you missed a payment? Or several? I mean they don’t want to foreclose, right? It’s not good money for them. So much better to get your mortgage payment and all that interest.” I looked to Stephen for affirmation.
“Right. Foreclosure isn’t profitable for the bank. It just staunches the hemorrhage of money from someone who doesn’t pay. They definitely would have sent notices.”
Daniel’s voice was very tiny when he spoke. “I expect that Wilma had those sent by hand with Ollie.”
“What?!” Cate was on her feet again, and I was glad when Lucas took her wine glass away. She had looked ready to throw it.
“That’s what she did when I missed a payment for the shop.” He looked at me quickly. “I had the flu and didn’t get my transfer done in time. When I went in th
e next week to set things right, the teller handed me a late payment notice. No email. No call. Just a piece of paper.”
“Probably too cheap to pay for the stamp, the old bat. So she probably gave the man who was stealing from you the notifications that would have let you know he was stealing. Unbelievable,” Mart shouted.
Now I felt like throwing my wine glass.
“I think that’s probably illegal,” Walter said quietly. “A breach of confidentiality at least. That may be your best way forward here, Cate. A lawyer arguing that the bank failed in its due diligence.” Walter had sold a very successful construction business in San Francisco when he and Stephen had recently moved to St. Marin’s, so I expected he knew what he was talking about.
Mom and Dad had sat quietly through this whole exchange, but now Dad’s voice was clear. “I’ve just texted Sheriff Mason. He’s on his way over.”
It took me a minute to figure out why Dad had asked the sheriff to come when this was clearly a business issue. Then I realized what he was saying. “Ollie is a thief,” I whispered.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Dad said. “But it’s time to hand this query over the authorities, don’t you think?”
Daniel, Mart, Stephen, and Walter looked at me pointedly. I had a habit of doing a bit of investigating on my own, and my friends did not like it.
“Good idea, Dad.” I stood and walked over to Cate. “We’ll figure this out, Cate. The co-op is going to be fine.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I hoped I was right.
2
Sheriff Mason had been all business when he’d arrived a few moments later. He took Cate’s statement and then mine about what I’d discussed with Henri. Then, he asked all of us if we might know where Ollie was.
Oddly enough, no one did. St. Marin’s is a very small town, so while we may not know the minutiae of each other’s days, we did usually know where each of us was likely to be at a given time. Pickle, Henri’s husband’s best friend, for instance, would likely be at the wings place down in Salisbury nursing one beer while he watched a baseball game. Max Davies, the owner of the French restaurant in town, was at his restaurant every Friday since that was often the biggest sales day of the week and he didn’t trust his staff to manage without him. Elle, our friend who owned the local farm stand, often bragged about how Friday night was her date night with DCI Barnaby from Midsomer Murders. Any deviation – like the fact that Henri and Bear were at that fundraiser instead of the wings place – was also usually common knowledge.
So when no one could suggest where Ollie might be, a heavy silence sank on the room. We looked at one another, hoping someone could offer something, but no one had any ideas. The longer the silence stretched, the more I realized how very little I had known about Ollie at all. In fact, I hadn’t even known his name until that very night.
This void of information felt disconcerting, but it also made me feel guilty. Had I really not asked this guy his name on any of my visits to the co-op? I was really good at talking with people, so good that many folks thought I was an extrovert even though I was pretty high on the introvert scale. I did, however, have a deep interest in people and stories, so the fact that I had never bothered getting to know any of Ollie’s stories, that bothered me.
“Okay,” the sheriff sat back against the couch. “Tell me what you know about this guy.”
Cate began pacing the living room. “His name is Oliver Blessing, at least that’s what he told me—“
“Wait,” the sheriff stopped taking notes. “Why do you say it like that?”
Cate stood in front of him. “Because if he stole from me, I don’t trust anything he said.”
The sheriff nodded. “Okay, fair enough. What else?”
I took a deep breath and waited.
“Nothing. I mean I have his social security number and stuff in our files since we had to get that to pay him. His address is there probably, too. But beyond that I don’t know anything.” She began pacing again and then stood in front of me. “That’s weird, right, Harvey? I mean that I don’t know anything about him.”
I nodded. “I was just thinking the same thing. It’s weird.”
Daniel scooted closer beside me and picked up Aslan. This whole thing was feeling hinky, and we needed a little cuddling for comfort.
The sheriff said, “Alright then. But maybe you know more than you think you do. Did you ever see what kind of car he drove?” He addressed his question to Cate but then looked around the room.
“I didn’t,” Cate said, “but now that you mention it, I don’t think I ever saw him in a car. He biked everywhere.”
Daniel nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t see him with any kind of car.” Daniel noticed every car, so this was certain confirmation of the no-car theory.
“So he biked to work. He must have lived in town,” the sheriff said as he made a note.
Cate paused her pacing again. “No, I don’t think so. He often came to work a little sweaty – not gross or anything – but like he’d been exerting himself. Now, I wonder if that meant he was biking some distance.”
The sheriff continued to take notes. “About how old is he?”
Cate glanced at me. “You’re better with ages than I am.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say about twenty, twenty-five tops. The ear gauges made him seem young, but he wasn’t a teenager. He kind of carried himself like he’d been out in the world a bit more, so to speak.”
The sheriff winked at me. “Is that what we’re calling “old” these days – out in the world?”
“Yes, yes we are,” I said, lifting my chin snootily into the air.
“We’re kind of missing the obvious, right?” Stephen asked with a small wave. “What did the guy look like?”
The sheriff nodded. “Thank you, Stephen. I wondered when we were going to get there.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Tall, very thin. Curly, unkempt brown hair. And those ear gauges, not huge ones but big enough to stand out,” Cate said.
The sheriff had his pen hovering over his paper like he was waiting for something.
“That’s it. I mean I didn’t notice any tattoos or anything.” Cate looked puzzled.
“His race?” The sheriff’s voice had just a bit of an edge to it. “Most of us,” he looked at all of us in the room, “are prone to forget to describe someone’s ethnicity if they are white. We act like being white is “normal.” He shook his head just slightly.
Sheriff Mason Tucker was one of the very few black sheriffs in the state of Maryland, and I knew he’d caught more than his fair share of ugliness because of his ethnicity. He played off the hatefulness most of the time with wisecracks and a tendency to pull the best pranks on the Eastern Shore, but I imagined the specter of racism was never far away from him.
I sighed. “You’re right, Tuck. Ollie is white. Sorry I didn’t think to tell you.”
The sheriff gave me a kind smile. “Thanks, Harvey.” He stood. “I’ll get in touch with Wilma Painter first thing in the morning and figure out the status of things at the bank. No need to go accusing anyone if this is just a paperwork error.”
Daniel glanced up at the sheriff. “Have you ever known Wilma to make a paperwork error?”
Tuck let out a long sigh. “I have not. But still, better to get all my ducks in a row . . .” He headed for the front door.
My mom skittered into the kitchen and then back out. “A little thanks for coming out on a Friday night.” She held two of Lucas’s cupcakes on a paper plate.
“Just doing my job,” the sheriff said, “but always happy to accept gratitude.” He turned to Lucas. “Is this one of those strawberry-filled ones that Lu keeps telling me about?” Luisa, the sheriff’s wife, ran the best taco truck on the Eastern Shore, and on Fridays, she’d started selling Lucas’s cupcakes.
“It is. Hope you like it.”
“Don’t have to hope. Lu always saves me one, so this one will need to be our secret, okay?”
Lucas winked with a
smile.
As soon as Sheriff Mason left, the group migrated to the kitchen to clean up and gather their things. We all knew there was nothing to do but wait.
* * *
We didn’t have to wait long, though. I had a a leisurely breakfast on the water with Stephen and Walter at the house they were renting until their contract closed in two weeks and by the time I got to the co-op about ten-thirty the next morning, , the sheriff had already been by to tell Cate what he knew.
Apparently, it had been four months since any payment had been applied against the mortgage for the co-op building, so the bank was well within its rights to begin foreclosure procedures. In some odd way, Wilma’s warning to Henri had been a gift since it gave the co-op a heads up before the legal proceedings began.
“Still, she could have been more, I don’t know, friendly about it,” I said when Cate relayed that piece of info.
She nodded. “What I have to do is figure out how to bring our account back up to black. Fortunately, the co-op has some cash reserves, so we can do that. But it basically zaps our emergency fund. We’ll just have to hope the building doesn’t need any major repairs.”
I groaned. “I’m glad you have the cash, but I know it’s stressful to not have any backup. Hopefully, the sheriff can arrest Ollie soon. Maybe he hasn’t spent the money yet?”
Cate rolled her eyes. “If you had stolen almost sixteen thousand dollars, would you have put it away for a rainy day?”
“Right. You may have a point.” I had to admit that Ollie didn’t strike me as the altruistic type. But then, he also didn’t strike me as a hardened criminal either . . . or even a criminal with the forethought to plan such a heist. “Is the sheriff looking to at least arrest him?”
“I think the phrase he used was ‘bring him in for questioning.’” Cate leaned against the counter at the front of the co-op. “I’m glad of that, but on top of all the missing money, that means I’m going to be down an employee—“
Just then, Ollie Blessing walked through the front door, tossed his messenger bag over the counter, and said, “Hi Boss,” before proceeding to walk around and join Cate against the counter.
