Carter had everything under control when I got there, but I still felt bad about being so late. The last time I’d come in late had been after finding a dead body in my apartment. Overslept sounded so mundane compared to that excuse.
I managed to get the window open within a few minutes of the usual time, but I had that rushed feeling all morning like I was continually late for something. Part of that feeling was accurate because the lunch crowd was larger than normal today. I had no idea why. I would have to check Land’s totals for the day as well to see if the uptick had carried over into the dinner rush as well.
Thinking about the finances for the food truck made me start thinking about the disappearance and the murder. Given that both seemed to be related to the same financial issue, I was struggling to see why the two would be separated by years. James Carr had been killed at least four years before Longhill disappeared. Carr could have no inkling of the price of oil in today’s market, and Longhill could have no idea that Carr, who had gone missing years ago, was in a freezer somewhere in Capital City – or could he? I wondered if the very thorough Mr. Longhill could have traced the disappearance of the external accountant back to wherever the freezer was located. If so, why had I not been able to do the same? The police had asked questions, but had no luck in finding out where the freezer had been stored all this time.
I remembered what people had said about him. Had he indeed found out the details of James Carr’s disappearance and learned what had happened? Had that caused Murray to also disappear? The notion that he’d gone missing too was ominous, given the way that James Carr had been found. That worked great as a theory, but in reality, Danvers would want to know how Longhill had found out about Carr’s death.
I had no idea how that had happened. Was there a link to the apartment? Was there a link to someone at RGF? I would have to find that out in less than a week or see my father eviscerated by the press when the police took an interest in the man who had replaced the very dead and frozen James Carr.
After we finished for the day, I took a walk over to Basque in the Sun. Land was hard at work, so I hopped into the truck and helped him out for a while. I liked the camaraderie with Land in moments like these, and I mentally kicked myself for possibly ruining that with a kiss. However, I had to give it to him. He’d responded well. When Danvers and I had smooched once before, he’d gone weeks without discussing the event at all. The potential for something more was available and communicated, even if it had to be postponed until I was more emotionally ready. Land knew me well enough to know that I would be upset about my father’s possible implication. My emotions ran high right now, but the mundane details of collecting the cash and taking orders helped keep them under control. I always like to lose myself in the mundane when I’m stressed. It helps me to focus on the routine and ordinary and forget about the troubles of the world for a while.
I told Land my ideas about how Murray Longhill might have uncovered the solution to the earlier disappearance of Carr, and he liked the idea, though he wasn’t keen on the notion of my looking into any possible connection between the two.
First it would mean that I was in the midst of an active police investigation. Land knew that Danvers would be very unhappy to learn that I’d figured out the name of the corpse in the freezer, and he’d be more upset to learn that I was looking into motives for the man’s murder. I knew Land was right. Detective Danvers was very territorial about his cases, and the notion that I’d beat him to a solution, however partial it might be, would not sit well.
Secondly, I would be looking into a murder where a killer had already killed twice, the second time for knowing the exact information that I now possessed. It was only my good fortune, and Longhill’s lack of social graces that I’d shared that information with others, while Murray had kept it to himself. The killer would have to eliminate me and anyone else who knew, including my father and Land – and the police for all he or she knew. There was indeed safety in numbers now.
I bristled a little listening to Land rattle off the reasons why I should back off. I wondered if the thought of a potential relationship with me had made him more possessive and worried about me. I was used to being on my own somewhat, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about suddenly taking someone else’s feelings into consideration. Granted, I liked Land and knew that he was a good balance for me. Yet the idea of anyone putting restrictions on me made me prickly.
I changed the subject to the food truck’s revenue, and slowly those feelings went away. Land’s profits had risen all week, meaning that we were headed for a record week for both his truck and the business. Land was pleased, because as a minority owner, he was entitled to part of the profits, which were becoming more sizable by the month.
We discussed a few more recipe ideas and the notion of some radio or TV advertising in the near future before I checked my watch and knew I had to leave. I had made an appointment with James Carr’s widow.
I said my chaste goodbyes to Land and headed back to my car. I knew that the interview would be dicey as Mrs. Carr had no idea that her husband’s body had been found. Yet I wanted to find out what he’d been working on at the time of his disappearance and if he’d indicated that anything was wrong. I didn’t want to be the one who told her. First, I wasn’t sure that I was prepared to break that news to someone, and also the more people who knew it was Carr, the more likely it would be that I wouldn’t get my week to solve this case.
I practiced various scenarios in my head on the way to her house, but nothing seemed to be workable. Her home was a large Georgian structure on the outskirts of Capital City where people could buy large plots of land and build immense homes. I found her house without trouble and parked in the driveway that wound its way back 100 yards or so before it came to the house.
Mrs. Carr was waiting for me at the door when I arrived. She beamed at me. “Maeve Kinkaid, how are you? You look all grown up.” She held out her hands so that I could take them. She pulled my arms out to the sides so that she could inspect me. If Land’s words had raised my feminine hackles, being treated like a piece of livestock rankled me no end.
“I bet you don’t remember me,” she continued. She was right. I had no idea who she was or where we might have met. I was assuming at my father’s work functions or a party, but I didn’t recall this woman with her birdlike features and soft graying hair. She looked older than the age I knew she had to be, and I wondered if the disappearance had taken a toll on her.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” I said honestly. At least I can give her that much of the truth today, I thought. That would likely be all of it.
“You were about 15 at the time. You had to come to the company Christmas party, and someone had made the mistake of thinking you still believed in Santa Claus. You were stuck with about 10 children under the age of seven. You were mortified, but too polite to say anything.” Her eyes looked off in the distance as if she was remembering this as an image.
“I was probably warned within an inch of my life to be pleasant,” I replied, knowing that I’d been outspoken as a teenager. That was a trait that hadn’t really changed since then.
She laughed. “Probably, but you were still polite about the whole matter. I pulled you aside and asked you to help serve the desserts. You looked so relieved that you looked like you could have burst into tears. It was such a cute moment.” Her eyes stopped staring off and turned back to me.
At that moment, I remembered the event. She’d been right. I had been pissed that my father had wanted to not rock the boat more than he’d wanted me to spend time with real people rather than the midget brigade. I’d actually toyed with the idea of telling all of them that Santa was a crass commercial con job, but since two of the VPs had kids in that group, even I knew better than to spout that out. “I do remember that,” I said. “I was so grateful that someone cared that I was miserable.”
“Come on in, dear. I have tea waiting for us.”
I followed her into the home and
down the entryway hall. Rooms branched off on both sides of the hallway, but we walked at a trot, and I couldn’t see into them easily. We stopped at one door, and Mrs. Carr led the way into the room.
I would have called it the library; at least it housed a number of books. The walls were lined with shelves, and the books must have numbered in the thousands. On the table in the center of the room was a teapot and full set of cups and saucers for us. I had thought that she’d meant sweet tea, which was all the rage in restaurants these days. A cup of sugar and a tea bag – what a way to make money.
However, this was the more traditional English tea, with the tiny slices of lemon and some silver tool to select one. We sat down, and she served. I half-expected an English butler of impeccable breeding to come out and pour, but we had to slum it with just the hostess doing the work.
The tea served, Mrs. Carr looked at me again with those bright blue eyes. I felt slightly like I was under interrogation here despite my attempts to question her. “So what exactly did you have in mind today, dear?” she asked. Her words were direct, and I hadn’t expected such an opening.
I stuttered for a second, trying to think of a response. I finally opted for, “I’ve been concerned about my dad. I mean, I know that your husband disappeared when he had this job, and now I have to wonder from time to time, if the same thing might happen to my father.” It was a crappy opening, but it was the best I could do. I wanted to be able to talk about the incident without tipping my hand that I knew her husband was dead. I didn’t want to share what I suspected. It wasn’t my place to tell her, and it certainly wasn’t gracious to tell her just in order to get more answers to save my father.
“My husband is dead,” she said quietly. “Best be worried if something’s going to kill your father, not make him disappear.”
I started at her words. Only two people besides me knew that it was her husband who had been found in the freezer. How could she have known? Panic welled up in me that she knew and so did the police.
I started to stutter over a response, when she said to me, “I’m not psychic or anything, dear. A wife just knows. I could feel his presence in my life even when we were apart. But now there’s nothing. That tells me that he’s gone. That’s how I know.”
I sighed, the fear of being found out subsiding into the chair. “I understand. You miss the way that things feel when that person is around.”
She nodded. “The police wouldn’t take me seriously. I was just a silly woman who couldn’t possibly know more than they did.”
I thought of what Detective Danvers would have thought in that situation. He probably would have been just as dismissive. He wasn’t a huge proponent of women getting involved in crime solving.
Yet I knew that this case would have been before Danver’s time. Five years ago, he would have been just graduating from the academy.
Five years can be a long time in police work, so I wasn’t sure what had become of the officers involved. I also knew that I couldn’t ask Danvers who the officers in charge were. It would have been an immediate red flag to him, and an end to the promise of a week that my father had given me to sort this out.
I asked her who the officers were in charge, but she just shrugged. I got the impression that she felt the outcome would have been the same – no matter who was in charge.
“So do you know what happened to him?” I asked. If she knew that her husband was dead, then she’d had years to go over the likely candidates in her head. I could easily imagine myself spending my sleepless nights trying to ponder why someone had been killed and by whom.
“Well, it had to be work-related. I went through his friends and family – our family, and there was no one who could have wanted to harm him. He just wasn’t that type of person. We had money, but a disappearance means that seven years would have to pass before we could collect on the insurance policies and such. That rules out greed as a motive. Jim wasn’t cheating on me, so there was no jealousy. He hadn’t fought with anyone in the family, which rules out anger or hate. It had to be from his work.”
“So who from work could it have been?” I asked. I cringed inside, worried that she was going to name my father as a suspect. I didn’t want to add her testimony to the others that would soon come if the word got out about who had been stored in the freezer.
“Hal Wallace or Mark Jeffries were always my first choices. They had the most to gain from his death, and both have come out of the last few years with more money and success than perhaps they would have had otherwise. They were also managers, and neither of them was above reproach when it came to finance.”
“Are they both still around?” I asked. I had heard my father mention these men at times in the past, but since I no longer lived at home, they could be retired or dead for all I knew.
“Oh yes, both are still working there. I saw Hal at a function not too long ago.” Two bright pink spots had formed on her cheeks. She was still angry about what had happened to her husband, and I wasn’t sure I blamed her. I felt bad for delaying her discovery for a few more days, but it was so I wouldn’t lose a loved one too. I hoped she would understand.
“So why would they resort to murder?” I asked.
“You have to remember that this was in the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown. All of the short cuts and poor accounting practices were coming under scrutiny. I wondered if my James had discovered something that he shouldn’t have. People had gotten fairly lax in their accounting practices over that decade. A number of companies had to go back and rework their annual statements because of Jim’s oversight.”
“But wouldn’t that just delay things? Murder is a big crime to commit just to delay the discovery of the business problem anyway.”
She nodded. “That’s why it had to be an accounting practice that could be covered up in a short amount of time. A shortage that could be replaced before anyone else noticed, perhaps?”
“Buying a short that tanked and then recovered?” I asked, thinking of the derivatives scheme that Longhill had suspected that RGF had perpetuated.
She paused a moment. “Perhaps, if you knew that the price would bounce back in the very near term, but that would almost require insider knowledge. I don’t think either one of those two men were that well-connected. Unless it had already bounced back, but the evidence of the purchase of those shorts would still be apparent. That could be covered up quickly.” She sat quietly for a moment, and I assumed that she was thinking about the skills and knowledge that would be needed for that particular act. She looked at me. “Why specifically are you asking about shorts and derivatives? It’s not the typical thing for someone to bring up in casual conversation. Do you know something that I don’t?” Her eyes, which had appeared soft and sky blue before, were now hard and darker. This was definitely not a woman to be trifled with. She was an avenging fury in floral prints.
“Nothing in particular,” I said quickly. “You’d just mentioned the meltdown from 2008, and I knew that derivatives and other financial gambling had played a large role in that, so I thought I’d ask. Just a logical conclusion to jump to.”
She seemed satisfied with the answer. “I’d not thought of that one, but I will certainly be thinking about it now. I went as far as to hire a private detective to get alibis for both men for the night that James disappeared. That’s how certain I was that something bad had happened.”
I nodded. “What did the private eye learn? Anything useful?”
She shook her head. “Neither one of them had a decent alibi, so it could have been one or the other or both of them. Apparently airtight alibis are just something from crime fiction. Most people have huge holes in their schedule that could easily allow them to commit three or four murders.”
“Do you think that you could arrange for me to meet them? Something casual, so they wouldn’t think that I’m out to spy on them.” I asked. I wanted to see what five years had done to these men. Had they grown wealthy in the meantime, or gone bankrupt? Since this case see
med to be about money, I wanted to see if anyone had profited from the murder. It seemed the easiest way to learn who was more likely to have done it.
She gave me the first real smile of our conversation. “Why wouldn’t you ask your father to do that?” she said. Even though she made it a question, I had an idea that she already knew the answer. I wanted to keep my father away from this matter for as long as possible. Even if I found an answer to the murder, I didn’t want him to be seen as the company snitch. It could hurt his chances for promotion and raises in the future. Mrs. Carr had no such worries. She wasn’t going to get anything else from the company, so she would be able to help without any concern for her future.
“I’d prefer to do this on my own,” I answer, truthfully, but incompletely.
“I’d be happy to help. I’ve been meaning to update my portfolio. I can use that as a pretense for the meeting, and we’ll do it at Government Square, so it will seem natural to visit you there.” Her wheels were already turning. I could tell she’d wanted to move things forward in some way for ages, and this was going to give her the chance. While she didn’t know what information I had, she apparently recognized that I knew things I wasn’t telling yet. “Today’s Wednesday, so let’s say on Friday. That way, I can get in touch with them and make it sound casual.”
I agreed and headed home.
Chapter 8
Maybe it’s my lack of trust in general or my experience in being involved in crimes, but just because I have one good hunch doesn’t mean that I can skip the rest of the leads. After leaving Mrs. Carr’s house, I went home, got cleaned up, and got back in the car for another interview.
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