“She thought we’d come to tell her you’d arrested Dave for murder,” I said as we returned, shaken by the ordeal, to the Honda.
Sarkisian held the door for me, then closed it without answering. He went around to the other side and climbed in.
“At the breakfast the other day,” I went on after he’d started the engine, “she was afraid he was going to hurt himself. But I don’t think that was on her mind tonight.”
He looked at me. “Ever thought of becoming a psychologist?”
“If you’re going to insult me—”
“I’m not. I was just working around to that conclusion, myself. Something must have happened to make Dave Hatter feel better. To make his wife no longer think in terms of him killing himself.”
“He came into some money?” I suggested.
Sarkisian kept his gaze on the road. “Blackmail?”
“No, he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to meet his victim at the Still with no one else around. I mean, no one could be that dumb!”
He shook his head. “You’d be surprised.” Silence settled between us, then abruptly he slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Damn, why couldn’t I have figured this out sooner! If I’d solved Brody’s murder, Hatter might still be alive!”
“If the murders are connected,” I pointed out in a vain attempt to relieve his guilt.
He cast me a withering glance. “What are the odds they aren’t?”
We’d reached the intersection of Fallen Tree Road and Last Gasp Hill. We had to turn right to get to Gerda’s. Abruptly, we swung left. “Where…?” I began.
“The office.” Anger sounded in his voice. “I’m drafting you again. The answer’s got to be somewhere in those damned ledgers or papers, and I’m going to find it before anyone else dies.”
Half an hour later, we settled in the small room given over to the Still’s financial books, armed with a pot of strong coffee and a plate of brownies fetched from a grocery store bakery by Jennifer.
“All right,” Sarkisian heaped sugar and cream into his mug, “how many bookkeeping or accounting cons can you think of?”
“You’re back to Peggy again,” I said. “And Peggy couldn’t have killed Dave! She was at the park, then we followed her to the homeless shelter.”
“Was she at the park the whole time? Could she have left for an hour without our noticing?”
She could, of course. Anyone could have. There was so much chaos, and people racing off to get things they’d forgotten. And if I protested too much, he might go back to the theory that Gerda and Peggy were pulling this off together. And Gerda would have had time to kill Dave, no matter how much I couldn’t believe it possible.
“And don’t forget Tony Carerras,” Sarkisian stuck in.
My head came up. “None of this might have anything to do with Peggy, at all! Tony might…”
“Does he have access to a key to your aunt’s house?”
That stopped me, but only for a moment. “He might.”
“Okay, let’s look at Tony. Why would he kill Brody at that particular time and place?”
I swallowed. The only link between the two was that they both worked for the Still. Tony had no involvement in the financial matters.
“Unless,” Sarkisian went on with ruthless determination, “he did it to protect Ms. O’Shaughnessy.”
“And Dave?” It was time to get Sarkisian’s thoughts running along another line. “Why would he kill Dave?”
“Same reason, I suppose. To protect Ms. O’Shaughnessy.”
That seemed all too possible, but I forged ahead. “Peggy could—must—be completely innocent. Maybe Tony just thought she was going to get into trouble, so he killed Brody and then Dave because Dave guessed…” My words trailed off under Sarkisian’s pitying look.
“Would you like me to take you home?” he asked, all solicitude. “A few hours’ sleep, and I’ll bet your brain will be back on track again.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my brain,” I snapped, but I feared he might be right. I needed to think clearly, logically. And for any relative of Aunt Gerda’s, that took some doing. “We don’t even know when Dave was killed,” I managed at last, trying to regain some measure of credibility.
Owen Sarkisian actually smiled. “Sarah will be able to give us a rough idea. Now, back to the matter at hand. Bookkeeping cons?”
I tried to shift my maligned brain back into gear. “Entering invoices with wrong amounts,” I said after a moment’s consideration, “but that’s the easiest to catch. Phony personnel for a payroll scam is always popular. And then there’s always phony vendors.”
“Right.” Sarkisian took a swallow of coffee, then started sorting through books. “Those last two don’t require any accounting knowledge, just grunt work. That’ll do for me.”
Leaving me to continue checking the journal entries against their source material and their posting accounts, he turned his attention to the payroll ledger to see if any nonexistent employees had been drawing wages. Apparently he could verify every name, for a little over an hour later he slammed the book shut and shoved it aside. “And I have to do that with every damned supplier?” he demanded in disgust.
I shoved a file of paid invoices toward him. “Starting with January,” I said, and went back to my own comparisons.
He spent a lot of time calling information for phone listings for out-of-area venders. Just because an invoice had a phone number printed on it didn’t mean it was real. The same went for websites. Almost anybody, he said, could make what looked like a legitimate business website, and for very little money. There were companies on the internet that made it incredibly easy.
I left him to it and went back to checking the accuracy of figures. My head had been throbbing for some time, and I was nibbling my second brownie, when Sarkisian gave a deep sigh. “Ever hear of ‘Discount Office Supplies’ here in Meritville?”
I shrugged. “Is it one of those large outfits that move in and kill the business for the small, privately owned companies?”
“Sounds like it, but there’s no phone number, and the street address isn’t real. It’s a cover for one of the post office box companies.”
“For what?”
He looked up, his eyes gleaming like a hound that has caught a scent. “They’re designed for small businesses, sometimes operated out of people’s homes, that want to look larger. Gives them more legitimacy than a box number.”
“So how do you find out if it’s real?” I asked.
“For starters, check with the service and see who rented the box.”
Since it was late on a Saturday evening on a holiday weekend, this took a little time. Jennifer got stuck with finding the appropriate person to provide the required information. The sheriff’s office obviously had more pull than mere civilians, because in an amazingly short time she managed to track down the company’s manager at the restaurant where the woman was having dinner with her family. The woman pronounced herself thrilled to be able to help in an official investigation and didn’t even demand that the sheriff obtain a warrant. She promised to go to her office at once to check her records, adding that she would call the sheriff as soon as she had the information in hand.
Owen Sarkisian spent the intervening time searching for other invoices from the same company. He found them, too, at the rate of one a month. Always for unspecified office supplies and always for the same amount of one hundred and fifty dollars, even, no loose change. Every month and I didn’t know how many years back they might go.
Almost forty-five minutes passed before the manager called back. Sarkisian listened, thanked her and hung up. For a long minute he sat in silence, then a deep sigh escaped him.
Cold, uncomfortable dread settled like lead in the pit of my stomach. But I had to ask. “Who?”
He looked up, troubled. “It’s rented in the name of Margaret O’Shaughnessy.”
“No,” I said, even though I knew how ridiculous it was to protest. “It can’t… I mean, okay, maybe Peggy went in for a bit of petty embezzling, but not murder. Can you actually envision her taking that damned letter opener and stabbing someone? Even Brody? Oh, I know she demonstrates how to do it, but that’s a lot different than actually doing it.”
The look he gave me held a wealth of disillusionment. “I’ve run into a few people who seemed even less likely. You just can’t tell what lies deep inside a person.”
“But—not someone I’ve known almost all my life,” I finished lamely, then brightened. “Tony—”
He cut me off. “Yeah, I know. If Brody threatened Peggy, or just seemed like a threat to her, Tony might have jumped in and either done the murder or helped her cover it up. I’m not leaving him out of the equation.”
“I still can’t…”
He held up a hand, silencing me. “I know, but try to look at the facts, without the emotions and loyalties or whatever. Brody’s spent a great deal of time going over these books. He may have noticed the oddity of that same amount going to the one company every single month. And he might have confronted her with it.”
“But the money just doesn’t add up to enough…”
“It’s not the amount,” Sarkisian pointed out, “but the being caught.”
“But murder?”
He shook his head. “I think I’d better talk to her before I come to any conclusions.” He rose. “I’ll take you home, first.”
I nodded. We locked away the books, then set off on the drive back to Upper River Gulch. The rain had stopped some time earlier, but the sky looked like it might let go again at any moment. Neither of us said anything until we’d turned onto the second street past Last Gasp Hill. Then, as we neared Peggy’s, I asked, “Can I come with you?”
He hesitated. “Sure you want to? It might not be pleasant.”
“I—” I shook my head. “It might make it easier for her.” To do what, I had no idea. I just didn’t want her to face what might come alone, even if it were just her disillusionment in her protégé.
We pulled into her driveway to find the old Pontiac poking out of the carport. Lights showed behind curtains, and almost as soon as we came to a stop the porch light flicked on. Peggy opened the front door and peered out at us. “Annike? Are you all right?”
“Sorry to bother you, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, I need to talk to you.” Sarkisian waited for Peggy to step back and usher us into her cluttered but comfortable living room.
She waved us to chairs, then perched on the edge of her sofa. “What’s up?”
“We found out about Discount Office Supplies,” Sarkisian said.
Her eyes widened in dismay, then she gave a philosophical shrug. “Well, that was clever of you.”
The sheriff blinked. “You aren’t going to try to deny it?”
Peggy peered over the top of her glasses. “Would it do me any good?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Besides, I’m proud of it,” she added.
“Proud? You’ve been paying a dummy company every month. Ms. O’Shaughnessy, that’s called embezzling and in case you weren’t aware, it’s illegal.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. A bit unorthodox, certainly, and I admit I didn’t want to be caught at it, but I was only doing what was right.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” I suggested.
Peggy nodded. “You’ll appreciate this, Annike. It all started at last year’s Christmas party at the Still. Hugh Cartwright always puts on such a spread and he was in such a good mood because the raspberry liqueur was selling so well. So when I suggested that he make a pledge to support the homeless shelter, he agreed, even on the amount.”
“So he made a pledge,” Sarkisian murmured, his gaze narrowing. I began to see what had happened.
Her face worked. “But when I brought him the first check to sign, he refused. He actually said he’d changed his mind. And after he’d pledged!”
“He didn’t do it in writing, did he?” I asked.
“I should have made sure he did,” fumed Peggy. “He had the nerve to claim the pledge wasn’t legally binding! And then he gave that exact same amount to himself every month and called it a bonus, just to spite me because I called him a skinflint to his face.”
“So you came up with a creative way to make him honor that pledge anyway?” Sarkisian sounded resigned.
Peggy raised her eyebrows. “Well, wouldn’t you?”
That silenced the sheriff, but I got the distinct impression he didn’t wholly disapprove of Peggy’s outrageous stunt. “Is that why you lied about being at the shelter on Tuesday?” I asked.
She hesitated, then nodded. “I really didn’t want to bring attention to how much time I spend there. How much the place means to me.” She straightened, and her chin came up in defiance. “It’s important work, you know.”
Sarkisian stared at her, frowning, then looked to me.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that my aunt can help out with this. Hugh Cartwright listens to her, sometimes. I think she can shame him into endorsing what Peggy did.”
He nodded, obviously relieved. “We’ll have a talk with Ms. Lundquist, then.”
Peggy beamed at him. “Did you want to arrest me? That would have been quite an experience. I’ve never been arrested before.”
“One can only wonder why not,” Sarkisian muttered as we at last headed out the door.
“No one’s dared, I expect.”
He climbed into the car, then turned to look at me. “If she didn’t really mind our finding out, it doesn’t seem likely she’d panic over Brody’s finding out, either.”