A Tale of Two Tabbies (6 page)

“If Carissa was one of Theresa’s victims there must be evidence that can prove our theory, but where?” I asked Tara as she reconciled the cash register before we locked up for the day.

“The code is CMCC312,” Tara mused. “If the CM really does stand for Carissa Morton the CC must refer to the location of the evidence. Or at least it must if it follows the same pattern as the code she used to keep track of Felicity’s payments.”

“Okay, so what could CC mean?”

Tara thought about it. “Theresa used a locker to hide the evidence she had on Felicity. Maybe all the hiding places are lockers. Where else are there lockers on Madrona Island other than the high school?”

“That new gym that opened up in Harthaven does. I honestly don’t see Theresa as having a gym membership, however, and I’m pretty sure you have to be a member to have a locker there. Besides, the gym is called Bodies in Motion; I don’t see how you could get CC out of that.”

“What about the community center?” Tara suggested. “They have lockers, and CC could definitely stand for community center.”

“I bet you’re right. That would be perfect. If it is a locker at the community center, the 312 must be the locker number.”

“Yeah, but there’s no combination given.”

“Don’t need one. I had a locker when I taught that fitness class, and each owner brings their own combination lock. I still have the bolt cutters we used to cut off the lock on the box I found in Theresa’s wall. We’ll just cut the lock off locker 312 and hope it’s what we’re looking for.”

The store was closed, so Tara agreed to go with me. There was a Jazzercise class going on in the main room of the center and there were a lot of people about, but luckily, the shower room, where the lockers were, was empty. I used the bolt cutters to liberate the lock, and then, after quickly glancing at the envelope filled with financial documents I found inside to make sure they pertained to Carissa, I slipped it under my jacket and Tara and I headed to my cabin.

“I guess we should call Finn,” Tara said an hour later.

I’m not exactly a wiz when it comes to accounting, but Tara knew what she was looking at, and according to her, it looked as if Carissa had been embezzling from her employer. It took someone pretty gutsy to steal money from a law firm.

“Yeah, I guess we’d better. Although…”

“Although what?” Tara asked.

“What if Carissa isn’t our killer? If it’s made public that Carissa has been embezzling money and a link is made between her crime and Theresa’s death, whichever of the other three blackmail victims who did kill Theresa will have a heads-up that we’re on to things.”

“True, but if Carissa is stealing money she should be brought to justice, and we don’t really know that Carissa didn’t kill Theresa.”

“Actually, we do. There was a softball game on Wednesday on Orcas Island. There’s no way Carissa could have killed Theresa if Finn is correct in his assertion that she’d already been dead for several hours before her body was found. The ferry from Orcas wouldn’t have returned with the team until after five, and Finn thinks Theresa was killed between three and five.”

“I still think we need to call him. Whether or not to arrest Theresa should be his decision,” Tara insisted.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll do it now. Maybe I’ll see if he and Siobhan want to join us for dinner. I’m starving.”

“Me too. I’ll check your cupboards to see what we can whip up.”

It turned out that once Finn confirmed Carissa was off the island when Theresa was killed, he agreed we should sit on the information concerning the embezzlement for a few days, but only for a few days. We needed to identify the other three victims of Theresa’s blackmail scheme and we needed to do it quickly, before Carissa or anyone else was on to us.

I stared at my computer screen, which displayed the final three codes.

VWSP126

MHMB241-0668

TOSB

“I’m afraid nothing is jumping out at me,” I commented just as Finn’s phone rang.

He looked at the caller ID, then answered, “Finnegan here.”

I waited as he listened to the person on the other end of the line.

“Okay. I’ll be right there.” Finn turned and looked at Siobhan. “One of the residents who lives near the high school reported a break-in. I need to check it out. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay, but be careful,” Siobhan responded as Finn gave her a quick peck on the lips before leaving through the side door.

“This is the second break-in at the high school this month,” Siobhan informed us after Finn had left. “I feel like there’s been a shift in the social climate on the island. We’ve had a lot of families who have lived here for generations move away, only to be replaced by rich folks from the mainland who show up with their spoiled, bored kids.”

“Finn thinks it’s the rich kids who are vandalizing the school?” I asked.

“He knows so. He caught a couple of the little vandals the last time. They all have parents who can afford to hire attorneys to get them off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, which doesn’t seem to serve as any deterrent to them; they just turn around and do it again. I think I’m going to bring it up at the next island council meeting. It seems like we’re going to need to hold the parents responsible for the actions of their teens if we want the vandalism to stop.”

“Wow, look at you being all political.” I smiled at my sister.

“I
am
the mayor.”

“And a darn good one.” I returned my attention to the computer screen. “Do you think MH could be Martha Hanford?”

“What would sweet old Martha Hanford have done that Theresa could blackmail her for?” Tara asked.

Tara was right. Martha was a nice old lady who had lived on the island and gone to St. Patrick’s Catholic Church the entire eighty-four years she’d been alive. I couldn’t see her committing even a teeny tiny sin that would require confession.

“How about Mitch Henrey?” Siobhan suggested. “That guy is pretty creepy. I could see him doing something blackmail-worthy.”

“Yeah, but Mitch doesn’t go to St. Patrick’s,” I countered. “In fact, as far as I know, he doesn’t go to any church, and he doesn’t seem the type to travel in Theresa’s circle. Even if he’s up to no good it’s doubtful Theresa would have found out about it.”

“I guess you have a point. If Theresa was bugging the confessional, chances are all her victims go to St. Pat’s.”

“That’s most likely the case, but there are a lot of people who attend St. Pat’s with the same initials as our suspects, so guessing really isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

I was about to log off my computer when Sydney jumped up onto the counter where I was working. He lay down across the keyboard, which prevented me from doing much of anything.

“Did you want something?”

Sydney rolled over onto his back for a quick belly rub before he jumped off the counter and headed for the stairs. He turned around when he got to the bottom, as if he were waiting for me.

“I think he wants you to follow him,” Tara said.

“I figured.”

“It’s kind of creepy the way the cats communicate with you,” Siobhan added.

“Creepy but effective so far.”

Siobhan, Tara, and I all followed Sydney up the stairs. He ran over to my closet door and began to scratch it. I opened the door and he trotted inside, then jumped up onto the highest shelf and knocked off a box containing a pair of shoes I’d bought for a wedding and worn only once.

“Shoes?” I asked. “The clue is shoes?”

The cat meowed and, using his paw, turned the box on its side. I looked at Tara and shrugged.

“Maybe the clue isn’t the shoes. Maybe it’s the box,” Siobhan contributed.

“The last clue on the list is TOSB,” Tara contributed. “Maybe Theresa hid evidence she’d collected in a shoe box.”

I frowned. “That doesn’t seem very secure, and so far the other evidence has been in lockers.”

“True, but there are no numbers after TOSB to indicate a locker number, so a shoe box fits.”

I guessed Tara had a point. Maybe the evidence wasn’t as sensitive as the other things we’d found and Theresa figured a shoe box would do. I supposed it couldn’t hurt to look around Theresa’s house for a shoe box full of someone’s secrets.

“Okay, so say the evidence Theresa was using to blackmail TO is in a shoe box in her house. How do we get in to look for it?” I asked.

“Finn said he thought the person who vandalized the house got in through a back window. The window had a broken lock. Maybe no one has gotten around to fixing it yet and we can climb through the same way the vandals did,” Siobhan said.

“Let’s head over to see if we can get in,” I told them. “If someone
has
fixed the window we’ll just have to wait for Finn, but I’m feeling anxious to get this mystery wrapped up. We’ll bring Sydney. He seems to know his way around. I’m just going to run over to the sanctuary for a cat carrier.”

Luckily, by the time we arrived at Theresa’s it was fairly late and most of the houses on the street were dark. The sky was clear and the moon bright, which meant we were able to find our way around the house without having to turn on our flashlights.

“Which window do you think it is?” I whispered.

“I have no idea,” Siobhan answered. “Finn just mentioned that the access point seemed to be a window with a broken lock. We’ll have to try them all until we find the right one.”

Unfortunately, although the house was small it had quite a few windows, most of which were located behind thick hedges. I didn’t want to think about what it was that was crunching under my feet as I pushed my way into the hedge to access the windows along the back of the house.

“This one seems to be locked up tightly,” I informed the others before I moved down to the next window.

“Be careful,” Tara cautioned. “I can hear something scampering around in the hedge. Most likely it’s a squirrel you’ve disturbed, but you never know what might be living in that shrub.”

I just hoped it wasn’t something that would bite. I had on long pants, but still…

“I found it.” I pushed the window open enough for me to climb through. “Go around to the back door and I’ll let you in.”

Once everyone was inside I let Sydney out of the carrier. He immediately began to investigate. Poor kitty must be wondering what had become of Theresa.

“I’m going to assume if she’s hidden evidence in a shoe box it’s located in her bedroom, so let’s start there,” I suggested.

“Try not to touch anything,” Siobhan hissed. “I think they’ve already dusted for prints, but you never know when they might decide to come back for more.”

“Maybe we should have worn gloves,” Tara said.

“Just pull the arm of your sweatshirt down over your hand. That’s what I did when I opened the door,” I informed her.

I pulled the heavy drapes covering Theresa’s bedroom window closed before turning on a small bedside lamp. I was pretty sure that between the fence surrounding the backyard and the drapes, no one would see the light. It didn’t look like anyone had touched the room since the last time I’d been here. I headed to the closet, assuming—correctly—that that was where I’d find any shoe boxes she would have. And she had a lot of shoe boxes. At least fifty. The boxes were filled with shoes of all types, including really fancy heels, yet the only shoes I’d ever seen Theresa wear were sturdy black work shoes. Weird.

Probably about a third of the shoe boxes, which I imagined were at one time all stacked on the shelves that had been built along one wall, were already on the floor. Whoever had vandalized the house must have figured, after he’d opened twenty boxes, that shoes were all he was going to find in them and moved on. I had additional information, so I was committed to opening all the boxes until I found the one I was looking for.

As I might have predicted, the box with the clue in it was toward the bottom of the pile. It contained photographs of one of the attorneys who worked at Brown and Bidwell in a compromising position with Bidwell’s wife, Lorna. “That’s Tom Osborn,” I announced.

“What was he thinking?” Siobhan exclaimed. “I heard he was being considered as a third partner in Brown and Bidwell. A promotion like that would be worth a lot of money. What in the world would cause him to risk it all by messing around with the head partner’s wife!”

“Lorna Bidwell is very attractive, and she’s a good twenty years younger than her husband,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I guess. Still,” Siobhan insisted, “the guy was an idiot to risk a partnership for a relationship that was never going to go anywhere.”

“How much money do you think a partnership with Brown and Bidwell is worth?” I asked.

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. Maybe more.”

“No wonder Theresa was able to blackmail him. I bet he’d pay quite a lot to make sure these photos weren’t circulated. I wonder how she even managed to get them. She’d have to know exactly where and when the two were going to meet.”

Tara crossed the room and looked over my shoulder. The photos had been taken through the window of a motel that I was pretty sure was located on the mainland just outside of Seattle. It made sense that Tom wouldn’t want to engage in an affair with his boss’s wife on the island where they both lived.

“Here’s the thing I’m asking myself,” Tara said from her vantage point just behind me. “How did Theresa find out about the affair in the first place? Our theory is that she bugged the confessional in order to get dirt on the people she would eventually blackmail. Felicity commented about confessing to her maker, and prior to her departure from the island, she attended St. Patrick’s, so that fits. Carissa attends mass regularly as well. But I’ve never once seen Tom set foot in St. Patrick’s.”

“Good point,” I admitted.

“It does seem odd that Theresa would have dirt on two different people who work in the same office. Maybe she bugged the law office as well,” Siobhan suggested.

“Or maybe Carissa gave Tom to Theresa,” I speculated.

“Come again?” Tara looked confused.

“Here’s my theory: Carissa went to confession and confessed to the embezzlement. Theresa found out after she listened to the tapes she seems to have made and decided that if Carissa was embezzling money she must have some to spare, so she decided to blackmail Carissa. We can assume the amount Theresa blackmailed Carissa for wasn’t the entire amount she embezzled because Carissa has a brand-new car. A nice one. What if Carissa gave Tom to Theresa in exchange for a lighter payment? Carissa works as a secretary in the law office. Secretaries know things. Chances are she knew what Tom was up to.”

“I guess that’s as good a theory as any,” Tara agreed.

“So what now?” Siobhan asked. “Sleeping with your boss’s wife is downright rude, but it isn’t against the law, so there’s no need to bring Finn in on the fact that we broke into Theresa’s house unless we think he’s the killer.”

“I guess we can try to see if he has an alibi,” I mused. “If he does we can keep this to ourselves, and if he doesn’t we tell Finn what we know.”