One Was a Soldier

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Sometime in the past week. The investigating officer was an army MP, but it might have come through the DA or the Feds.”

  “Lemme check with the other girls.” The line went to music. She was back in less than a minute. “Last thing fitting that description came out of your own department on the thirteenth. Deputy Chief MacAuley got a warrant against Mary McNabb’s Allbanc accounts.”

  “Okay. Thanks much, Lila.” He hung up. “Seelye never searched the house.”

  “Legally,” Lyle said.

  “Or the accounts. A suspect has money hidden away. What’s the first thing you do?”

  “Search all the accounts I can find.” Lyle rubbed his lips. “Damn, I wish I’da spread the net wider when we asked Ryswick for that first warrant.”

  Russ shook his head. “Not your fault. We didn’t know McNabb had stolen the money at that point.”

  “We’ll never get another warrant out of him. The case is in Seelye’s jurisdiction, not ours.” Lyle straightened in his chair. “Wait a minute. If she’s looking for the money for herself, how come she didn’t go ahead and search those accounts?”

  “Maybe she already found out where it’s hidden. She might have talked to McNabb. Or like you said, she could’ve searched his place illegally.”

  “Or she might have been behind the B and E at Tally McNabb’s mom’s place.”

  “Maybe. If she’s dirty, everything’s up for grabs.”

  “Your fingers are twitching.”

  Russ looked down to where his hands were resting atop paperwork. “Yeah?”

  “You do that when you’re trying to figure something out.”

  Russ sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Army property. Stolen in Iraq. No way it’s our case.” Lyle buffed his nails against his pants. “Officially.”

  “It’s definitely not our case.”

  “So there’s no call for us to do any investigating.” Lyle looked up at him again. “Officially.”

  “Nope.”

  “It sure is interesting, though.” Lyle grinned at him.

  Russ found himself grinning back at his deputy chief. “It sure is that.”

  * * *

  Russ picked up and put down the telephone three times after Lyle left. He had been an MP for a long time, but he was a civilian cop now, and he knew the kind of runaround he would get if he tried to trace Colonel Seelye through the usual channels. If he was going to ignore his good sense and pursue this, he had to figure a different way in, but it was getting late, and his brain kept stalling out. The mental snapshot of Clare in his truck had become a motion picture, complete with interesting sound effects. He’d have thought after all those years of holding himself in check, he’d be able to do without for a few lousy weeks, but Jesus, he was going cross-eyed from wanting her.

  The hell with it. He shelved the problem of the out-of-his-jurisdiction theft in favor of loading the pickup with quilts and driving over to Clare’s place.

  Unfortunately, when he got home he discovered a dead furnace, a rapidly cooling house, and a mother who had been waiting for him to play handyman.

  “I’m sorry, Russell, but you know the repairman charges sixty dollars just to come out, let alone the cost of fixing up the old beast.” His mom fussed around him as he disassembled the pilot light, looking for the problem. “You didn’t have any plans, did you?”

  “No, Mom, it’s fine.” He managed a quick call to Clare between flushing out the draw line and his trip to Tim’s Hardware for new spark plugs. She commiserated with his oil-stained, thwarted lust, told him he was a good son, and then hammered the nail in his coffin when she said she was headed out the door to the Foyers’ dinner, and no, she didn’t expect to be home before ten or eleven.

  As a result, he went to bed as frustrated physically as he had been mentally, and he woke up like a man who had been bitten by bedbugs, his involuntary abstinence transformed into an itch to find out the truth about Arlene Seelye.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14

  It was an itch he didn’t have a chance to scratch until after he had given the morning briefing and taken an A.M. patrol. He got back to the station at lunchtime, shut the door to his office, and tossed his lunch bag onto his desk.

  He needed a favor. Who did he know who could help him? He had been out of the army for a decade now, an eternity in an organization where twenty years meant a career and the unwritten law was up or out—rise in the ranks or leave. He flipped through his ancient Rolodex, passing on one name and discarding another until he came to the card for Major Anthony Usher.

  Tony Usher had been a raw WO1 when Russ took him under his wing during the brief, intense days of Desert Storm. Impressed by Usher’s combination of careful attention to detail and sheer smarts, he boosted him into the ranks of the CID. After several years of solid investigative work, Usher decided his true calling was on the other side of the aisle. He applied for and was accepted to OCS and from there went on to law school. He’d been with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps for three years now, and if he didn’t know everyone involved in army law enforcement, he knew someone who knew someone.

  Russ had copied Usher’s latest contact information from the annual Christmas letter he got. He figured it was a fifty-fifty chance the man was at the same posting, so he felt he’d already accomplished something when the private who answered put him through.

  “Major Usher.”

  “Tony? It’s Russ Van Alstyne.”

  “Chief Van Alstyne! Well, I’ll be damned. How are you? Hey, Latice and I were so sorry to hear your news about Linda.”

  “Thanks. I appreciated the card. I’m doing well. I’m actually getting married again. End of this month.”

  “Well, hush my mouth. Good for you. Let me guess, high school sweetheart?”

  “Nope. She’s an Episcopal priest from southern Virginia who’s fourteen years younger than me.”

  Usher roared. “Damn, Chief, you always could land in a pile of horse shit and come up smelling like roses.” His laughter died down to a wheeze. “So. Sweet as your life is, I don’t think you’re calling me just to brag.”

  “Got a favor to ask.” He outlined the situation with Seelye, what he knew about her so-called investigation, what he had heard about Quentan Nichols, and what he suspected, based on the events of the past week and a half.

  “Hm-mm. It does sound like sloppy police work, to say the very least. Can I ask your part in this? I’m not seeing where you have a duty to investigate.”

  “I don’t. Which is why I’m calling in a favor instead of going through official channels. There’s been no crime in my jurisdiction—yet—but several persons of interest live in my town, or worked in my town, or keep popping up in my town. I want to be prepared, and for that, I need more info.”

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Might take me a while. I’ll try and get back to you before the end of the day.”

  As it turned out, Russ had logged out and swapped his uniform for jeans and a flannel shirt and was headed to the parking lot before Usher called again. He checked the number on his cell phone to make sure it wasn’t his mom—if her furnace acted up again, she could start a fire and wait till he got home. He was looking forward to an entirely different sort of hot date tonight.

  “Van Alstyne here.”

  “Hey, Chief, it’s Tony Usher.”

  Russ climbed into the cab of his truck to escape the cold wind blowing off the mountains. “You know, Tony, you can call me Russ. You outrank me now.”

  Usher laughed. “Right. How many people you know in that little burg of yours call you Russ?”

  “Well … the Episcopal priest does, but I call her ma’am.”

  “Mm-hm. That’s what I call Latice. You know the three little words every woman wants to hear? ‘Right away, honey.’”

  Russ laughed.

  “Okay, I got the skinny on this lieutenant colonel of yours. She’s U.S. Army Financial Command, attached to the 10th Soldier Support Battalion, but you proba
bly knew that already. Her specialty is financial fraud and loss prevention, which makes her a logical go-to person when you’ve got a theft of this size. She has a good record, nose clean. Married, with two kids in college.”

  Russ started up the truck’s engine. “That must call for some money.”

  “Tell me about it. The schools Kanisha’s looking at run to fifty thousand a year. I may have to rob a bank next fall to pay for it.”

  Russ twisted the temperature control to hot and turned the blower on. “What about the investigation?”

  “Well, that’s the real interesting part. I asked a JAG who’s prosecuted several fraud cases to talk to her contact in FINCOM. As far as she could tell, no one in that office has seen a major theft investigation come across the transom. Now, Seelye is high enough up there to take a case without having to run it by her colleagues, but regs state everything must be logged and a file started, both hard copy and electronic.”

  “Let me guess. There’s no record of the missing million or Tally McNabb.”

  “You got it. No log, no file, no nothing.”

  Quentan Nichols had told Clare that he was the one who had started the investigation, and when he went looking for more help from FINCOM, Colonel Seelye had shown up and taken the case away from him.

  “Tony, did you get a sense of what Seelye was doing in Iraq? Could she have been part of the plot to steal the cash from the start?”

  “She was doing loss prevention in Camp Anaconda, according to my contact. Reviewing contracts, running spot accounting checks, the sort of thing a bank’s financial control officer does—and don’t forget, we’re running the biggest bank in the country. I have to say, though, you’re not talking about a high level of sophistication here. This is basically a couple guys shifting a box out of a warehouse. It doesn’t take any special knowledge.”

  “Except knowing that the box had a million inside.”

  “Right. My guess—and you can take it for what it’s worth—is that she spotted something that tipped her off to the missing money. It was her job to pass on all accounts coming in and out of Anaconda. For whatever reason, she decided she could use that money more than the army could. I bet if you dug into her personal life, you’d find a major weak spot. Husband’s business failed, or they lost all the kids’ college money.”

  Russ smiled. “Good to know you can still think like a cop, counselor.”

  “Hey. I learned from the best.”

  “Thanks—and thanks for getting me the info. I owe you a big one.”

  “You can pay it off by sending us a picture of your wedding. I want proof you’re not getting hitched to some gap-toothed second cousin. I know how you northern rednecks roll.”

  Russ was still laughing when he said good-bye. His smile faded as he thought about Seelye, and the money, and about Nichols and McNabb. McNabb and Seelye were out of his reach. Nichols, on the other hand …

  He glanced at the instrument panel clock. Five thirty. He made another call, to the same Fort Gillem MP station that had sent him a copy of Nichols’s transfer orders. “This is Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne from Millers Kill, New York,” he said when he had gotten hold of the officer of the day. “Chief Nichols was consulting with me about a veteran’s suicide we had here.” That wasn’t stretching the truth too much. “I need to follow up with him.”

  “Sorry, sir, but Chief Nichols is off base at this time.”

  “Can I reach him later?”

  “No, sir, he’s been temporarily detached to Fort Drum to assist in an investigation. I can look the number up for you if you want to contact their MP station.”

  “Thanks, no. I’ll try them later.” Russ hung up. Fort Drum. Four hours away by car. That was quite a coincidence. He wondered who Nichols knew in their MP post. Obviously, Seelye wasn’t the only officer who could pull a string and get someone reassigned.

  Russ tried on the idea that Nichols had been telling Clare the God’s honest truth. He wasn’t prepared to credit the man with no interest in getting the monies for himself, but it was sure looking more and more likely that he had been right when he said Seelye was on the take.

  He needed to talk to Clare. He shifted the truck into gear and pulled out of the station parking lot. Traffic at this hour was as heavy as it ever got out of tourist season. Brake lights bloomed and faded in the twilight as cars and SUVs stopped and started their way up Main toward Church Street. Which is why Russ was able to spot Clare, in jeans and a jacket, coming out of the Rexall.

  He jerked his truck out of traffic and pulled into a no-parking tow zone. He unrolled the passenger-side window and leaned over. “Hey!”

  She looked up, surprised.

  “Didja walk?”

  “Of course.”

  “Get in.”

  She hopped into the cab, stuffing the small paper pharmacy bag into her coat pocket. “When you said you wanted to take care of me, I didn’t think it would involve driving around town looking for a chance to pick me up.”

  “I was on my way to talk to you. Were you getting a prescription filled?”

  “Mmm. I know things are cheaper at the Super Kmart in Fort Henry, but shop local and all that. What did you need me for?”

  He saw a break in the traffic and took it. “What? Oh. Quentan Nichols.”

  “You’ve found him?”

  “Nope. Although I found out how he’s been able to do his little appearing acts here. He’s still posted to Fort Gillem, but he’s TDY to Fort Drum.”

  “Ah.”

  He swung into the wide curve of Church Street. The single spot on the flagpole was the only light in the park now; the bandstand was a pale outline in the shadow of the maples. “Tell me what he said about Seelye.”

  “I already told you everything I heard. He applied to her office for the original shipping manifests, and she showed up in person a couple weeks later and took him off the case.”

  He turned onto Elm. They passed the stone bulk of St. Alban’s. “How did he seem when he was talking about her? Emotionally?”

  “A little frustrated, maybe.”

  “Did he seem angry? Make any threats against Seelye?”

  She turned to him as he rolled his truck up her drive and put it into park. “Oh, my God. You don’t think she disappeared because he killed her, do you?” She frowned. “No, that couldn’t be it. Ron Handler at the inn saw her check out.”

  “I’m just trying to sort out the possibilities. Could she be after the million for herself? Or is she just an ambitious officer who doesn’t want to share the limelight when she gets it back? Is Nichols trying to stop Seelye, or is he trying to screw her out of the money?”

  “One doesn’t preclude the other.”

  “No.” He unbuckled and slung his arm over the back of the seat. It was familiar, talking to her like this, sitting in the cab of his truck in her driveway. There was a time—a long time—when it was the only safe and private place for them. “I want to find that cash.”

  “Get to the back of the line.”

  “We should be able to figure it out. There has to be some evidence of what happened stateside in her house, or her mother’s house or her bank. If we had Nichols to tell us what went down at Balad Air Base, we could do it. It’s an equation. Millers Kill plus Iraq equals one million dollars. Which means he ought to be somewhere around here, looking for that evidence.” His chain of thought unlinked at the sight of her smile. “What?”

  “Just you. I like watching your mind work. It’s sexy.”

  “It is, is it?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” She smiled again.

  He mentally tossed the missing million aside. “You know, I just happen to have a box full of quilts in the back. Feel like taking a ride?”

  She laughed. “When I suggested the truck bed, it was a sunny afternoon. Not nighttime, thirty-eight degrees and falling.”

  “Chicken. What happened to army tough?”

  “You’re the one who always knows when the snowbirds have flown. D
on’t you have some friend or acquaintance with an empty house and a working furnace?”

  The answer hit him hard enough to snap him upright in his seat.

  “What?” Clare sounded alarmed.

  “I know where Nichols is.”

  “You do?”

  He buckled up and threw the truck into reverse. “He has a friend with an empty house and a working furnace.”

  Clare looked up from fastening her own seat belt. “Tally McNabb’s place.” Russ nodded. He threaded through the Friday evening traffic, surprising her when he turned off onto the Cossayuharie Road and began the twisting drive through the hilly farmland. He pulled into the driveway of a large, well-lit home and disappeared inside, returning five minutes later with a key and an expression of grim satisfaction. He dropped the key into her hand. “We have Evonne Walters’s permission to enter her daughter’s residence.”

  “Oh. Does this mean you can legally search the place?”

  “Hell, no.” He peeled out of the drive. “Anything I found would be tossed out before it reached trial. I don’t want to search the house tonight. I want Nichols.”

  “Are you going to arrest him?”

  “No. I want his cooperation.” The truck jounced down the road. “Which is why you’re coming along. He trusted you enough to talk to you. I want you to get him to trust me.”

  “He might not believe me. I’m a little biased.”

  “You? Darlin’, if you thought he was right and I was wrong, you’d not only refuse to give him up, you’d hand over half your paycheck and drive him up to Canada personally.”

  She laughed.

  “Which is why, if you say he can trust me, he’ll believe it.”

  They left the truck on Saber Drive. Russ retrieved his Glock from the truck’s gun locker and slipped it into a flat holster he hung from the back of his belt. She frowned at it. “Just in case I’ve misjudged him,” Russ said.

  They walked through the neighbor’s yard silently. Past the tangle of brush between the properties it became much harder to stay quiet; no one had raked in a long time, and the ground was littered with dead leaves. “Don’t walk. Shuffle,” Russ whispered. He demonstrated. It looked like he was ice-skating beneath the leaves, and all she could hear was a rustle, as if the wind were passing by. Her attempts were less successful. She swish-crunch, swish-crunched past the pool fence to the far side of the garage, where Russ was waiting.