Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) (10 page)

“Harry Rucker?”

County prosecutor, friend, enigma, that was Harry. He could’ve earned sacks of money in a big city, and never did say why exactly he stayed here. I nodded, but I felt sick to my stomach doing it.

We stared at the list. Seven names. All locally born and bred, which meant any could have easily encountered Craig McElroy or his accomplice. Or been encountered by them. Somehow. Some way. Somewhere.

I put out my hand and gently squeezed Aunt Marge’s. “Thank you,” I said. My voice crackled.

She patted my hand. “Don’t you worry, Lil. We’ll find out who was in on this. I wouldn’t say Josie Shifflett was right. Not
everyone
in town thinks these people had inside help. But I suppose it does make a terrible sense to think so.”

Now came the practical question. “Do I trust Breeden with this?”

“Yes,” said Aunt Marge firmly. “I’ll see to it. Now, will you be all right?”

What with healthy living and yoga and all, Aunt Marge usually looks twenty years younger than she is. Right that second, she looked twenty years older. I forced a smile and said, “Sure, nothing wrong with me a cup of cocoa can’t fix.”

Boris’s tail twitched twice. Fortunately for me, Aunt Marge has never believed me when I tell her that’s his signal someone is lying.

10.

I
found one quick way to narrow down the list of people who might have been in on the kidnapping. And I didn’t need Josie Shifflett to tip me off, which was a relief.

I was staring at my smeared-up white board that afternoon, feeling morally and emotionally bankrupt, when Tom ambled in for his shift. He glanced at me, then tipped his head to the side. “You okay? You look kinda…‌strange.”

“Mmmm,” I said, and noticed my cup of tea had been sitting in my hands untouched long enough to have gone cold. I got up and walked to the lunch room, also known as our interview room, and dumped it down the sink. Tom came in for a cup of coffee. Kim’s coffee reportedly makes hair grow on one’s chest. I doubt it. The smell alone is enough to singe the hairs out of your nostrils.

He started rummaging for the fake powdered cream. “I need a map,” he groused. “I can never find anything in here!”

Why, I don’t know, but I suddenly wondered: How had they known where to find me?

There’s a reason you’re never supposed to assume anything.

By the time Tom had dumped the fake creamer into his travel mug of coffee and gotten on the road, I was scrubbing the white board clean. Time for a blank slate.

Kim raised her eyebrows at me, and tossed me a piece of peppermint-infused dark chocolate from her drawer. “You look scary,” she commented. “Why’d you erase the board? New case?”

I started to answer her, then remembered she was on my list of People To Suspect. “Maybe,” I hedged, and bolted. Pure panic reaction. My job is my Safe Place. My office is where I can rant, cuss, and re-arrange facts on a white board as much as I want, and no one will find it odd. Except…‌now it wasn’t safe. Nowhere was safe.

You’d think being armed would be more of a comfort.

Once I calmed down a little, I went over to Shiflet Hardware and bought a huge roll of very plain wallpaper in a beige-ish color. I also picked up a few scraps of two-by-four lumber, and headed home. Nowhere was safe, but home at least meant some privacy.

Inspired by Bobbi and Raj, Aunt Marge had gone on an Indian cuisine kick. I re-heated some palak paneer and vegetarian kofta from last Sunday’s supper while I plotted my next move. I rinsed some of the paneer off for Boris, who sniffed the Indian cheese cubes suspiciously before he started wrestling one into his mouth. He’d gotten an accidental mouthful of tofu once when we still lived with Aunt Marge that had taught him culinary caution.

I also called Punk Sims.

By the time Punk arrived, I’d gotten the wallpaper rolled out from my kitchen to the front window of my living room. I held the piece in place with the wood scraps, set out some Sharpies, and greeted Punk at the door with, “How many times have you been in this house?”

If I’d surprised him, he hid it well. “Three times. The day you went missing, the day I booted Owens’s sorry ass outta here, and just now.”

That fit what I remembered, so I let him advance past the tiled squares that counted as my foyer. “Have some food.”

I’d half-expected him to balk, but he set to the Indian food like he’d had it a million times. Most people in Crazy run to what’s called American cuisine, meaning boxed or canned or fried, and lacking subtlety if not calories. Somehow Italian and Mexican are okay, especially if it’s from a chain restaurant, but even Chinese takeout was a bit of a stretch. Aunt Marge once brought hummus and pita to a church picnic, and been accused of trying to feed people dog food.

When we’d cleaned our plates, I told him what I was up to.

“Why not Tom?” he asked, sensibly enough, when I’d finished.

“He helped carry in my exercise equipment. He’d have known.”

Now
that
startled him. His eyes grew wary. “You really aren’t taking a chance, are you.”

“Gotta start somewhere,” I said, “so I might as well start over.”

He shrugged, took off his prosthesis, and made himself comfortable on the floor by one end of the wallpaper I’d laid out. He worked on the timeline, which he would know better than I would, what with my having been in a car trunk, and I worked on my shortened list of Potential Suspects.

Roger and Tom had both helped me move into my little house last fall. Roger had even helped me put up the little locked shed that held my shovel and rake and stepladder. Both would know where my exercise room was, and would know that I did yoga or the elliptical after church.

I give Punk credit for not needing me to explain why that was important. And it was. If my abductors had just waltzed in the front door, then they would have had to do so knowing they weren’t going to walk right into me. They’d needed to know where I was. As Tom had put it, they’d need a map.

Unless they knew where to find me already.

Harry was ruled out for the same reason as Punk: He’d never been in my house. Nor would he know enough about my routine to guarantee where in the house I could be found on a Sunday afternoon. That still left five names on the list, of course, but five was easier than seven.

Well, maybe not
easier
.

Raj was easiest to suspect, in a way. I’d only known him since he’d moved to Crazy the previous year. I liked him fine, but I mostly knew him as Bobbi’s man. He was the least personal of the suspects for me.

Roger was next easiest, though that didn’t mean much. If he had been part of this, it would just about kill Aunt Marge. She’d gone most of her life without a man of her heart, and I hated the idea I might take that from her. And I really did like him. He was quiet and odd and stalwart, not a word you hear too often, but it applied.

Hell, none of the people on my list were
easy
to think of as potential criminals. Not one of them. If Bobbi was involved, it’d tear the heart out of me. We’d been best friends since we were little. I’d sooner rip off my arm than lose her. She and I had kept each other sane through all sorts of ups and downs and curlicues in life. I’d trusted Tom implicitly, working together like we did, and we’d seen each other at some damn bad moments. Kim and I might not be as close as Bobbi and I, but she was one of the few women around who didn’t look askance at me for not wanting the whole fluffy-wedding-and-picket-fence routine. I’d have bet my kidneys that Roger’s moral character was incorruptible. And while I wasn’t exactly Raj’s buddy, Boris put up with him.

If I couldn’t trust Boris’s judgment, I might as well eat my gun and be done with it.

Punk scooted over and thrust a white square at me. A handkerchief, smelling faintly of detergent, and firmly ironed. I didn’t know until then I’d been dripping tears all over the junky wallpaper. Good thing I used Sharpies.

“It ain’t worth much,” said Punk, “but you’re right to be doing this.”

“Right,” I remarked as Boris sauntered over to sniff at me, “doesn’t make it feel good.”

Punk didn’t comment. I was glad. I had enough to handle with Boris deciding to lick my face clean, his paws braced on my collarbone while his tongue rasped up my cheeks.

Thank God for my cat.

Punk completed the timeline, up through the discovery of Craig McElroy’s body. Together we stared at the five names.

“Motives,” I said bleakly.

“Money,” said Punk, then realized that was too pat, too glib. “Well, Tom’s got Tanya Hartley talking rings at him, since just about Christmas, I’d bet.”

I jotted that down. “Roger’s retirement pension can’t last forever.”

He took on Raj and Bobbi. “New babies cost a lot of money.”

We stared blankly at Kim’s name. “She seems like her life’s on track,” I said slowly, “but it’s not easy living at home.”

“She makes enough to have a trailer,” said Punk sternly. He’d lived in one himself before he moved to Crazy last year, and took over Bobbi’s old place when she and Raj consolidated their lives into their house just north of the bridge over Elk Creek.

I circled Craig McElroy’s name in red. “We’ve got a pretty solid ID on his truck at the time of the kidnapping, all that,” I said. “So who on the list is connected to him?”

Punk whistled. “I don’t think we’ve got much grounds for that many subpoenas on phone records.”

I’d gotten more with less, but only with Harry Rucker’s connivance. I wasn’t sure I’d have it this time.

“Wish I could get Steven Clay to cough up the details,” I said wistfully. “We could get the feds to trace the money trail.”

“Why can’t we?”

I smiled sadly, an ex-fed. “The Ellers don’t seem to mind their money’s gone. They got reimbursed by the insurance company, after all. So they’re not actually out a single penny.” I jotted a note on a pad I snagged from the fridge, writing over my grocery list in red Sharpie. “I’ll call tomorrow, see what I see.”

“Can they do anything?”

“If it’s part of a criminal investigation, then yeah, they should be able to.” I stood, gently dropping Boris onto the couch, and went to the sink to pour myself a glass of water. “You want anything?”

“Water’s fine.”

I returned with the tumbler, and we sat companionably on my floor staring at the marks we’d made all over that wallpaper. The numbers especially began to nag at me. Two million cash, eight million in a numbered overseas account.

“Not gonna be Swiss,” I said aloud, forgetting I wasn’t alone.

Punk said, “Huh? Why not?”

“The Swiss have rules. You have to prove the origin of your money, and they need a passport to open the account. And you have to pay to open an account.”

Punk’s face was a portrait of confusion. “But I thought…”

I had to smile, even though Boris had just stuck his face in my tumbler to see if it was something good, like milk. “Yeah, I know. Not as easy as Hollywood says. It takes a while to set up an account unless you’re there in person, and you need a passport, and proof of address, too.”

Punk’s eyebrows were wriggling in confusion. “Um…‌To do it by mail?”

“Figure a couple weeks. Maybe three, if they needed to get a passport to start with. Even with online application, there’s still the fees, and you can use credit cards for that. But…‌Yeah, at least a couple weeks. And a good cover story for where the money’s coming from. If it’s coming from a crime, the Swiss’ll boot your butt.”

“What about the Cayman Islands?”

“Sure, there’s them. Panama. Even the Virgin Islands. Most people do it to dodge taxes, or keep from getting assets seized,” I explained, feeling weirdly like one of my old instructors when I trained at the FBI Academy. “But you still need a passport, proof of your identity, and proof of where the money is coming from.”

Punk beat me to it. “So how would they prove that?”

We both knew the answer: They couldn’t. Not without some high-placed help.

I let that rattle into my brain and concluded, “And a lot of banks will require a character reference, for non-residents.”

It hit us both, probably at the same moment, but I got in faster that time. “Son of a… They don’t
have
an offshore account! Not unless they’ve got money laundering already set up somehow!”

“Shit,” said Punk succinctly, though that might have been because Boris was now exploring his tumbler of water in case it had magically turned to dairy product.

I scrambled for my phone. I dialed Steven Clay’s cell number. I didn’t care if it was late. We’d gotten bamboozled, and in his line of work, he should’ve smelled the bamboozle a mile away. A couple of good old boys shouldn’t have been walking around with the kind of documentation an offshore account required. I could almost excuse my not seeing it‌—‌I was having a hard time separating myself-as-victim from myself-as-cop‌—‌but how could
he
have missed it?

The number boop-beeped and squealed. Then an automated voice told me indifferently that the number was no longer in service. I held my phone out so Punk could hear.

“The plot,” I said, “just thickened.”

Punk replied by picking up a Sharpie and writing Steven Clay’s name on the wallpaper. He put a big question mark next to it, with the query “Involvement?”

“Insurance wouldn’t have paid up without police confirmation,” I added, jotting Vernon Rucker’s name. “Just what did Rucker’s report confirm?”

“You really think Rucker’d be involved?”

I had to admit, “No. But he could be used real easy.”

Punk leaned back on his hands, stretched out his legs. “So now we gotta figure out who knew McElroy, and maybe Clay.”

Against all odds, I felt enormously better. Punk scowled at me. “I don’t see what’s to smile about,” he complained.

I scooped Boris into my arms and gave him an enthusiastic snuggle. “I know,” I retorted cheerfully. “But the more people you put into a conspiracy, the more chances you’ve got to crack it like an egg. We get one of them, just one…‌and it’s Humpty Dumpty time.”

11.

H
ow did they miss it?