Crops and Robbers (29 page)

“I’ve got the account information for the association. I think you’ll find it as interesting as I did,” she said, her brown eyes alert and bright.

She’d found something good.

“How did you get all this?” Sam asked. Aldous had excused
himself again, and Officer Norton had escorted Betsy back to the interview room. Vivienne was probably flexing her muscles and making Betsy sweat.

Allison looked at me and then at Sam. “Well, you’re fully aware of the recent problems with the bank?” She was referring to the last murder Monson had seen. Sam and I had both been pretty beaten up as a result of that one. We both nodded. “In hindsight, I wished I’d used my influence to help out more then. I decided not to have the same regrets. I have a friend at the bank. She’s willing to break the law for me if I promise she won’t get in trouble. She won’t get in trouble, will she?”

“Not from anyone here; however, you know you can’t use these in the trial considering the way they were obtained,” Sam said.

“I know. But maybe they can still help. If we need to find a way to get them legally, we can try,” Allison said.

“Let’s take a close look,” Sam said.

I peered over their shoulders as Allison pointed out what she discovered.

“This statement itemizes where all the money from the association went for this month. All banking is done online, so we only had account numbers, until my friend helped even more. She told me who belongs to the account numbers. Here’s that list. Combine the two and you can see that five hundred dollars went to the
Monson Gazette
, for advertising, I presume. Then each of these five accounts got a thousand dollars.”

“Who do those accounts belong to?” I asked.

“Hang on. Bear with me a minute. Notice that this account got five thousand dollars.”

Sam and I nodded.

“Okay, these five accounts, the ones that each got a thousand dollars, are the five yes’s on the list that Becca and Ian took from Bistro.”

“Betsy gave me a copy of the list this morning,” Sam said. “I think she gave Aldous one, too.”

“Good. Okay, while I don’t think that’s a coincidence, here’s the kicker. This one, the one with five thousand dollars deposited into it, is Nobel Ashworth’s personal account.”

“Nobel was taking money from the association? And those five were getting extra money?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s theft, fraud, something,” I said.

“Yes, and illegal,” Sam added.

“Do you suppose this has been going on for five years?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Allison said. “I don’t know how someone couldn’t have figured out something was up, though. Someone who wasn’t getting the money, I suppose.”

“Maybe someone did figure it out,” Sam said.

“And that person just might be our killer?” Allison said.

Sam shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, but I think I need to get some officers out to the other restaurants that were marked with yes. I see a pattern emerging, and I’d like to stop it before someone else dies. Excuse me a minute.”

I watched him walk away and through the back door of the office.

“But,” I began to Allison, “who? Who’s doing the killing? This”—I pointed to the paper Allison had brought in—“is lots and lots of motive, but for a lot of people and from a lot of angles. Who is doing this?”

“I don’t know, Becca. Sam will have to investigate everyone involved.”

“All forty-two restaurant owners?” I asked.

“If that’s what it takes.”

I sat down. It was my turn to be deflated. My mother was going to be in jail a long time.

“There has to be something else we can look at,” I said.

While the other officers got organized and went to work, Allison and I pored over the bank information. We found nothing else. Sam talked to Betsy in private and then sent her on her way. We visited with our parents but didn’t tell them about the new discoveries. The discoveries needed to add up to something more than what we had before we got them excited about anything.

When the day turned into evening, Allison had to go attend to Mathis, and Ian had left me a message that I needed to pick up Hobbit from George. We went our separate ways, with the plan to regroup later if necessary.

My head buzzed as I hurried to George’s. He heard me open his back door and travel through the kitchen toward the book-filled library.

“Becca, is that you?” he asked.

“Hi, George,” I said. I hugged him as he sat in the chair. Hobbit greeted me with a smile and a wagging tail.

“Have a seat,” George said as he used a remote to turn down the volume on the speakers that held his MP3 player. “Tell me. How’s the new case going? I’m concerned that there’s been another death. Manny was a nice man,” he said.

George loved murder mysteries, the gorier, the better. Ian had spent many hours reading to him from the vast library that surrounded us. It was clear that this one had hit him closer to home, though.

“Well, we figure they must have been killed because of something financial, but there are so many suspects that it feels like we’re beginning again.”

George nodded. “That happens. Tell me more.”

I told George about the strange day that included a miniature Dracula mansion, and the financial discrepancies.

“Interesting,” he said when I’d recounted everything. “Of course, something there is going to lead you directly to the killer. We just don’t know which something.”

“It’s so convoluted.”

“Something will break. It always does when good detectives are on the job.”

I smiled, but I didn’t feel like it.

“There’s something else I’d like to talk to you about, Becca. I was hoping the murder, now murders, would be solved before I brought it up, but time is becoming of the essence.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m thinking about selling the house. It’s getting to be too much for me.”

My heart sunk. George loved his house. He was probably thinking of selling because Ian was building a new place to live and work. Ian and I had made sure not to let George think we were going to abandon him. We weren’t. We were going to work something out so George would always feel comfortable and safe, but he knew about the changes. He must have known what was coming, what was inevitable.

“What can Ian and I do to make it less work for you?” I asked.

“You do plenty. It’s just too big. I need something smaller—with a room for a library, of course, but something smaller. I have a real estate agent coming over to talk to me tomorrow. I don’t want Ian to think I’m kicking him out. I won’t do anything too quickly, and I want to make it clear that I’ll only sell to someone willing to let Ian continue to rent.”

“George, we’ll do whatever you need—make this house more manageable, help you find something else you love, whatever. You don’t need to worry about Ian—but I appreciate that you are. Don’t move if you don’t want to. I promise it isn’t necessary.” I went to him and gave him another hug.

“Thank you, dear. We’ll work it out. Now, you need to go home and get some rest. It sounds like it’s been an incredibly long day.” He was changing the subject. He was wrong, though, if he thought Ian and I wouldn’t approach the topic again.

“Come on, girl. Let’s go.”

Hobbit licked George’s fingers and then stood next to me.

“Oh, and you need to get her collar back on her. She doesn’t run away, but I worry about her walking with me. I’d like to put the leash on her. I can see better, but not perfectly.”

“Her collar’s not on her?” I said as I reached and scratched at her neck.

“No.”

“I don’t . . . That doesn’t make . . . When?”

Of course! I’d taken it off when Ian and I gave her a bath to get rid of the blood. Why hadn’t I put it back on? I’d been so distracted that I hadn’t done something that had become automatic. I had remained so distracted that I hadn’t noticed it after the fact. And Ian had been so busy that he hadn’t noticed it missing either. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used a leash on her, but I kept the collar on her for identification. At that moment, I wasn’t even sure where the collar was, but as I thought more about the reason it wasn’t on her, I realized something—it might not be important, or it might be. My heart started pounding in my chest. Could it really be that easy? Had the answer been right there the whole time? Could Hobbit, in a sense at least, really talk?

“Oh, George—you might have just solved the murder!” I said, suddenly wide awake with an adrenaline-induced rush.

“Really? How?”

“I’ll tell you later, I promise.” I kissed his cheek and hurried to the truck.

Hobbit had been put into my barn. She never would have gone
on her own unless I (or Ian or Allison) had called her in. She had to have been forced, and how does one force a dog into someplace? Either carry or drag—and if they’re wearing a collar, it is used in the dragging. Hobbit wasn’t huge, but she was too big to carry if dragging was another option. If whoever dragged her into the barn wasn’t wearing gloves, there was a chance there were fingerprints on the collar.

It was probably a small chance, but it was something. It was definitely better than nothing.

As I drove toward my farm, I called Sam and told him what I was thinking. He agreed it was a possibility and I should get the collar—by using a handkerchief or something to pick it up—and bring it to him at Gus’s office in the building next to the county building.

The collar was on the shelf in the bathroom, right where I’d left it. I gathered it using a clean washcloth and put it in a paper bag.

Hobbit and I hurried back to the truck. Just as I clicked my seatbelt back into place, my phone beeped in my pocket. I pulled it out and read that I had one new message. Somehow I’d missed a call. I was in a hurry to get back to town, but I took a few minutes to check the message.

“Hi, Becca, it’s Betsy,” the message began. Betsy’s voice was quiet, as though she wanted to make sure I heard her but no one else did. “Listen, I don’t think Nobel’s the killer. I think I know who it is, though. I tried to call Officer Brion, but he didn’t answer. Would you tell . . .” And then the message was abruptly cut off, as though the signal was suddenly lost.

I didn’t know how Betsy had gotten my number. I didn’t remember giving it to her. I checked the received call list and hit Call on the most recent number. It rang numerous times before going to her voice mail message. I didn’t say anything but hung up the phone and drove back to town. Sam needed to know about the message, but it wouldn’t do any good just to tell him about it. He’d need to hear it.

How did she come to think that Nobel wasn’t the killer? Where had she gone after the police station? Who did she think the killer was? And why was her message cut off so abruptly, seemingly right when she was about to tell me her suspicion? It sounded bad.

There was no traffic, but it seemed to take forever to get back to town. Sam was standing outside Gus’s tiny building. He was doing his best not to look impatient, but I could tell he wished I’d gotten there sooner.

“Collar?” was all he said as Hobbit and I met him.

I handed him the bag and said, “There’s also something you need to listen to. I got a message from Betsy.”

“Sure,” he said, his eyebrows coming together. “Let’s get this to Gus first.”

Hobbit and I followed him into the building that housed Gus’s tiny office. There really wasn’t room for all of us in Gus’s small space, but we crowded in anyway. It was just a small room with a low shelf on one wall and a big table in the middle. A computer and a microscope sat on the big table, and the shelf was full of thick hardbound books that looked like textbooks, but I didn’t inspect them closely.

“Ms. Robins,” Gus said in greeting as he nodded. He wasn’t wearing the baseball cap, and I could see his hair was short and reddish brown, and his eyes a darker brown. He looked younger than he did in the cap. He might have been in his thirties, but the cap had made him seem about twenty years older. I didn’t point that out.