Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13)

by Jenna Bennett

  “The M.E. issued that yesterday,” Grimaldi said. “Mr. Knight is definitely dead. But I’m not sure she cares about the refund any longer.”

  Probably not. She and Magnolia must be on their way to Curacao to live it up with Magnolia’s five hundred grand.

  “When does the flight take off?” Grimaldi asked.

  The security guy checked the schedule. “The plane came in from Newark forty minutes ago for a stopover. They should begin boarding within the next few minutes.”

  “Can you point us in the right direction?”

  “We’ll take a cart.” He rose from behind the desk, and turned out to be around Rafe’s height, with an impressive military bearing. “This way.”

  He ushered us out a side door, into a corridor where a row of what looked like little open golf carts were parked.

  He chose one, and got behind the wheel. “Get in.”

  I scrambled into one of the two rear-facing seats in the back, while Grimaldi took the seat beside our new friend.

  “Strap in,” she told me over her shoulder. “We’re in a hurry.”

  I had gathered that. And no sooner were we out of the corridor and into the terminal than the cart put on a burst of speed. I was still fumbling to get my seatbelt strapped across my waist, and for a second I was afraid I was going to tumble off the back of the cart. As we flew through the terminal at what felt like breakneck speed, I clung to the seat and did my best not to be bothered by the fact that I was going backwards.

  We got to the gate with time to spare. Boarding hadn’t started yet. No one was lined up at the gateway. There was a uniformed airline employee behind the podium nearby, though, so it looked like something was imminent.

  Grimaldi and I scanned the crowd. “Do you see them?”

  I shook my head. I had never actually met Magnolia—either Tim had kept her to himself, or she just hadn’t felt the need to visit the office at any point when I’d been there—but I did know what she looked like. And of course I’d been looking at Brittany almost every day for more than a year. “No. I don’t see either of them.”

  “They haven’t called first boarding yet,” the head of security said. “Once that happens, everyone going on this flight will come to the gate.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Let’s just sit and wait. If they’re going on the plane, they’ll show up sooner or later.”

  Hopefully sooner, or they’d miss the flight.

  Of course, the way things were going, they were going to miss it anyway.

  So we sat and waited. The two of them peering forward, me peering backward. The first announcement of boarding came and went, with no sign of Brittany or Magnolia.

  To be honest, I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around this new development. Brittany and Magnolia were working together? Why?

  The situation had made sense for as long as I thought Magnolia was behind the wire transfer, that she had talked—or seduced—Devon into doing her bidding, and then had killed him after she had her money. That was neat and tidy, but didn’t allow for Brittany’s involvement.

  Why would Brittany work with the woman who had been sleeping with her boyfriend? Or had that been a setup, too? Had Brittany been in on it from the start? She’d met Magnolia somewhere, they had come up with the plan to buy Miss Harper’s house, have Devon reroute the money, give the money back to Magnolia, and get the insurance company to pay for the house.

  No reason in that scenario for Magnolia and Devon to sleep together, though. If there were sexual favors to be dispensed, Brittany could have dealt with them.

  And there was also nothing in it for Brittany—unless she’d wanted Devon dead, and Magnolia had offered to take care of that in exchange for Brittany’s help with the money. Brittany might know how to spoof an email; she’d been living with Devon for long enough to probably pick up some tricks from him.

  But why would Brittany want Devon dead? Especially if she was still planning to marry him?

  Unless the marriage and honeymoon had merely been a story she’d told me. Just a way to excuse the trip out of the country with the money. But that didn’t make any sense, either. It had been Magnolia’s money in the first place. Now she had her money back, but if she was in Curacao, it wasn’t like she’d get to enjoy owning Miss Harper’s house, even if the insurance company did end up paying for it. Magnolia was left with the same five hundred thousand dollars she’d always had. She might as well just have kept it.

  The airline employee at the gate announcing general boarding woke me from my rabbit warren of thoughts, and I took a quick look around to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. There was still no sign of Brittany and/or Magnolia.

  “There,” Grimaldi said. I could barely hear her over the noises of people walking and talking, announcements over the speaker system, and jet engines roaring outside the window. “Savannah!”

  I twisted in my seat. “What?”

  “That’s them. Isn’t it? Coming out of the bar?”

  It took me a second to find the bar. And once I did, it was hard to get a good look at the two women. Until they turned and headed toward us.

  They were clearly dressed for the beach, in summer dresses with thin shoulder straps, and flip-flops instead of proper sandals. One was skinny as a snake, in a hot pink dress and with hoops the size of my biceps in her ears. The other was a little shorter, a bit chubbier, and had black, curly hair hanging to the shoulders of a bright blue dress that matched her eyes.

  “That’s not Magnolia Houston,” I said brilliantly.

  Grimaldi shook her head. “It’s Brittany Stevens, though. Isn’t it?”

  It was. But— “That’s not Magnolia Houston.”

  “No,” Grimaldi said.

  “That’s Molly. Lane DeWitts receptionist.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Molly can be a nickname for Margaret, can’t it?”

  It could. Of course it could.

  “You said it yourself,” Grimaldi reminded me. “They’re two common Irish names. The combination is no doubt common, too.”

  No doubt.

  “So it wasn’t Magnolia.”

  Grimaldi shook her head. “I’ll have to get them into interview before I can say for sure, but I think Brittany probably found out that Devon was cheating. Because she worked for your company, she knew that Magnolia was paying five hundred thousand dollars for a house. She told Molly about Magnolia, and between them, they came up with the idea to use Devon’s computer—”

  Which had been in the apartment Devon shared with Brittany.

  “—to divert the five hundred thousand into Devon’s account to make it look like Devon was guilty, and then to shoot Devon and make it look like Magnolia did it.”

  “And Magnolia couldn’t prove that she wasn’t there because it was the middle of the night and she didn’t have an alibi.”

  Grimaldi nodded.

  “So if Brittany was upstairs in bed, Molly must have shot Devon.”

  “And got paid five hundred thousand dollars to do it,” Grimaldi said. “Or whatever split they worked out between them, for the theft and the murder. The check was in Molly’s name, but she might turn around and give some of it back to Brittany.”

  “I guess the honeymoon reservations was just camouflage, then, so we wouldn’t guess that Brittany knew about Devon and Magnolia.”

  “I would say so,” Grimaldi said.

  “And Devon’s check really was written by Devon. But for five hundred dollars. And Brittany wrote the ‘thousand’ onto the line behind it. That’s why it looked so squeezed.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “She must have asked him for five hundred dollars for something. The cashier’s check was never intended for Magnolia, of course. It was for Molly. Who just happened to have the same name.”

  While this conversation had been going on, Brittany and Molly had been making their way toward us—or toward the gate, rather. I hadn’t taken my eyes off them, and I doubted Grimaldi had, either. Now all that staring seemed to penetrate. Brittany lo
oked up first, straight at me. For a second, she looked blank, like she knew me but couldn’t place me, and then panic flashed in her eyes.

  She turned on her heel and ran. A second later, Molly had followed suit. They thundered down the walkway with skirts flying. Brittany’s ponytail swung from side to side, and Molly’s beach tote hit her butt with every two steps or so. Grimaldi launched herself off the cart in pursuit. Our driver, meanwhile, waited until she was clear, and then started the cart up and followed. I stayed where I was, hanging on as the cart moved.

  Grimaldi reached Molly first, and knocked her over. They landed in a tangle of arms and legs, and took out a couple of other travelers while they were at it.

  “Go!” Grimaldi yelled, pointing after Brittany. “Get her! I’ve got this one.”

  She yanked her handcuffs off her belt and slapped them around Molly’s wrists. The girl was already crying.

  The security chief hit the gas on the cart, and we whizzed forward. Brittany was running like a gazelle up ahead. I swear, at one point she vaulted over a kid in a stroller and kept going. I think even Grimaldi might have had a hard time gaining on her. Or if she could, it was only because Grimaldi was wearing sensible boots, and Brittany had on flip-flops.

  No, scratch that. The flip-flops had gone flying. I caught a glimpse of one of them next to the window. Brittany must have kicked them off on the go. They aren’t the easiest things to run in.

  “She’s heading for the escalators,” the security chief yelled. Not at me; he was on the radio, or a walkie-talkie, with someone else. Members of the security staff, I guess. “Female, five-six or –seven, blonde and blue, barefoot and in a pink dress with a ponytail.”

  The radio squawked. It sounded like static to me, but it must have meant something to him. “Copy that.”

  He dropped the radio into a holder on the dashboard and gripped the wheel with both hands. I braced myself, just in time to avoid flying when he stomped on the gas.

  People and stores flew by, amidst screams and sounds of hysterical beeping from the cart. People stared after us with wide eyes and open mouths. I wondered whether they might have thought I was a Very Important Person who was very late for her flight.

  Or perhaps a very pregnant woman in labor who had to get to the hospital ASAP.

  We squealed to a stop by the escalators, and this time I really did almost roll off the seat. The only thing that saved me was the seatbelt across my lap. By the time I had straightened up and untangled myself and my skirt, I was alone. My driver had leapt from the vehicle onto the escalator and was on his way down. I could just see the top of his head descending to the next level.

  I climbed down, as carefully as I could. My knees were a little wobbly from the wild ride, and I kept my hand on the cart as I made my way over to the escalator.

  Brittany was trapped halfway down the down-side. There were a couple of burly guys in security uniforms waiting at the bottom, and my driver was on his way down from the top. Brittany’s only option for getting away was to climb to the next escalator, and just as the head of security was about to reach out and nab her, she did. Vaulted over to the escalator going back up, and started running.

  The security guards down at the bottom started up after her, their boots pounding on the treads. The security chief turned and started back up the down-escalator, but for every step he took, Brittany outpaced him by two, and the guards weren’t gaining fast enough. Brittany was already almost at the top of the escalator.

  I stepped to the side. It wasn’t cowardice. I just couldn’t think of only myself anymore. If she ran into me, and maybe hurt me, she could hurt the baby, too. And I hadn’t been carrying it around with me for more than six months just to lose it now.

  So I stepped to the side. And when Brittany took the last step off the escalator onto the floor, I stuck out my foot and tripped her. And although I felt just a little bit bad when she fell forward and smacked her head against the fender of the cart we’d been riding in, and lay still, I didn’t feel too terribly bad about it.

  * * *

  “AND THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED,” I told Tim several hours later.

  He looked quite overwhelmed. And not surprising, since I had just dumped the whole sordid story on him. “I can’t believe it. Brittany and Molly stole Magnolia’s money? And Molly shot Devon while Brittany was upstairs in bed pretending to sleep?”

  I nodded. “And they tried to frame Magnolia Houston for all of it.”

  I had been allowed outside the interview room while Grimaldi talked to first Molly and then Brittany, and they had confessed to everything we’d surmised. Including the fact that Brittany had made up the story about the honeymoon to make it seem like she and Devon were still together and everything was great. On Tuesday, when she’d told me that, she’d already known he’d be dying the next night.

  “You can give this check to Magnolia,” I added, and put it on Tim’s desk. “Detective Grimaldi said to give it to you to give to her.”

  Tim peered at it. He must have known Magnolia’s real name all along, because he didn’t say a word about the way it was made out. And of course he would have known: unless she’d changed it legally, Magnolia/Margaret would have had to sign the paperwork to buy the house with her legal name and legal signature. “So Molly’s real name is Margaret Murphy, too?”

  I nodded. “She never pretended it wasn’t. Molly is just a nickname. She’s been Margaret Murphy her whole life. She didn’t know it was Magnolia Houston’s name, too, until the paperwork for the closing came in to DeWitts a couple of months ago.”

  “And that’s when she and Brittany planned this?”

  “After Brittany found out that Devon was sleeping with Magnolia,” I nodded. “Up until then, it was just a funny coincidence. But when Brittany discovered that Devon was having an affair, she thought up this way of framing Devon for the theft, and framing Magnolia for his murder, as well as getting to keep the money. All she had to do was talk Molly into shooting Devon. Brittany did everything else.”

  Tim nodded, looking overwhelmed.

  “Did you know they were sleeping together?”

  Tim shook his head. “No, and if I had, I would have told her to knock it off. She’s Magnolia freaking Houston. What would she want with some two-bit loser like Devon?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me to ask. Maybe he was really good in bed. Or maybe they connected on some deeper level. None of my business. “Maybe she just liked that he belonged to someone else. Some women are like that.”

  Tim shrugged and put the check in his desk drawer. “I’ll make sure she gets it. And then we’ll start the process of closing on the house all over again.”

  “Better you than me,” I said. “It’s a nice old house. I hope she does right by it.”

  “After the check goes through,” Tim said callously, “she can do whatever she wants with the house.”

  I guess technically she could. I would hate to see it painted bubblegum pink with unicorn shaped topiary bushes in the pasture, but if that happened, there was nothing any of us could do about it.

  “I appreciate all your work on this, Savannah,” Tim said.

  “It was no problem. I was happy to help.” And it had been fairly interesting. I probably would have enjoyed it more if the whole situation with Denise Seaver and the baby hadn’t cropped up in the middle of it and taken a lot of my attention.

  “Do you know what they say about the reward for a job well done?”

  “No,” I said. “What do they say about the reward for a job well done?”

  Tim grinned. “Another job. How would you like to be our fulltime receptionist?”

  I thought about it. For about two seconds. It would mean a steady salary and a paycheck every other week. It would also mean being stuck here in the office from nine to five every day.

  “Not on your life,” I said, and walked out.

  Sign up for Jenna’s email newsletter—HERE—and be the first to learn about new releases, sales, exclus
ive newsletter reads, and other exciting things.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jenna Bennett (Jennie Bentley) writes the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime and the Savannah Martin real estate mysteries for her own gratification. She also writes a variety of romance for a change of pace. Originally from Norway, she has spent more than twenty five years in the US, and still hasn’t been able to kick her native accent.

  For more information, please visit Jenna’s website: www.JennaBennett.com

  SCARED MONEY

  Savannah Martin Mystery #13

  * * *

  Copyright © 2016 Bente Gallagher

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4