“That’s your actual devious ploy? The coffee was a ruse?”
“What?”
She crossed her arms. “You telling me about Nicky Santoro and breaking your own rule about sharing police business with me was just a front to pick my brain so I would help you win a game of mine is bigger than yours with your friend?”
Marc sputtered his mouthful of coffee across the counter.
Chapter 31
“Look at you.” Paige eyed the stool Addie was perched on behind the counter. “There’re a few days when I’ve been stuck back here but never thought of doing that.”
“Feel free to anytime. I know it doesn’t look too professional for customers to see us sitting down on the job”—Addie winced—“but my feet gave out hours ago. How are yours holding up?”
“Well”—Paige looked down at her feet—“they are a few years younger than yours, so . . .” She giggled and dodged a swat from Addie.
The door chimes jingled. Addie’s shoulders slumped. “Good, then you can help what I hope is our last customer of the day, because I’m done.” She stretched out her legs and tapped her boot toes together. “They’re so numb, I may never walk again.”
“Addie?”
She spun around. “Hi, Joyce, Jack. Normally, I’d ask what I can help you find, but judging by the looks on your faces, something tells me you aren’t here to shop.”
Joyce leaned across the counter, her voice muted. “I came to talk to you about Jonathan.”
“Why? What happened? Is he okay?” A mixture of fear and dread churned in Addie’s stomach.
“That’s the trouble.” Joyce pursed her lips. “We still don’t know.”
“You mean he still hasn’t shown up?” She flicked a gaze to Jack. He shook his head. “Has he at least called Catherine?”
Jack’s scowl deepened. “Not a word.”
Addie winced and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Well, he does have a long history of disappearing. I wouldn’t worry too much.”
“Catherine is beside herself.” Joyce braced her hands on the counter. “She thinks he’s lying in a ditch somewhere, and I’m starting to think she might be right.” More like another woman’s bed. Addie wanted to scream but bit her tongue.
She had convinced herself that Jonathan and Crystal were meeting at the Grey Gull Inn after she witnessed that little sideshow under the table at brunch, and then there was the whole flirty thing at the tree-lighting ceremony. Marc said it was all harmless and every other connection she’d made between the two of them was merely a coincidence, but could it be chalked up to happenstance when they were both still MIA today?
She swallowed hard. This was one of those odd-shaped puzzle pieces that had haunted her for too long now. It was time to shove it into the big picture and see how it fit. Either they were having an affair or they were partners in this whole murder and book theft thing, and it was time to find out if one or both of her hunches were right.
“Are you okay, Addie? You suddenly don’t look so good.” Jack peered owlishly at her. She was surprised that he didn’t pull a stethoscope out of his back pocket and begin examining her right there.
“No, I’m fine.” She waved him off. “I was just thinking about other times Jonathan has done this.”
Jack’s brow creased. “Anything we should know?”
“No, but he does have a tendency to get lost in his pet projects at times.” She patted Joyce’s hand. “Tell Catherine not to worry. He’s bound to show up again. Look, I know Serena had some errands to run today. I’ll text her to see if she ran into him while she was out and about.”
Joyce gave her a weak smile and nodded.
Addie picked up her cell phone and turned away from prying eyes.
Text Zach and ask him if a blue Honda and a black Land Rover with New York plates are in the Grey Gull parking lot.
“There, we’ll see what she says.” Addie slipped her phone into her pocket. “Can I get you a coffee or a hot spiced punch while we wait?”
Joyce shook her head and slumped onto a counter stool. It didn’t take long for Serena’s short and sweet reply, but it wasn’t what Addie expected to hear.
He said no cars like that in the lot. Why?
Addie’s thumbs flew across the keypad.
Thanks, I’ll head over to the hospital and look there. I have a couple of hunches I want to check out. Fill you in later.
Addie snatched her purse from under the counter and tossed in her phone. “Unfortunately, Serena said no, she hasn’t seen him today, but she did remind me that I have an appointment. I’m afraid I’ll have to run. I’ll call you if I hear anything, promise.” She patted Joyce’s hand and hobbled toward the back room. “Paige,” Addie called as she passed her assistant in the Cookbook aisle. “I have to go. You can lock up whenever you’re ready, thanks.”
Addie cringed when the deep alley snow spilt over the top of her knee-high boots lodging between her toes, but sighed with relief. Standing in the icy slosh immediately eased the burning on the balls of her feet. She brushed the snow off her car and headed toward the hospital. As luck would have it and her throbbing feet, she found a spot in the visitor’s parking area close to the main entrance. After today, she was finally convinced that it was time to ditch the heels and buy some of those huggy-snuggy things, whatever they’re called, that Serena wore and raved about. She grabbed her bag, opened the door, and then slammed it shut, remaining in her seat.
Carolyn’s truck was idling in the drop-off zone by the front doors. She craned her neck to see who was driving. Her chest constricted when Simon walked out of the hospital, arm in arm with Courtney. Addie slumped back in her seat. She had no right to be jealous. She had held him at arm’s length, but darn. It hurt. She rubbed the spot over her heart.
“I can do this.” She sucked in a deep breath and counted. “. . . eight, nine, and ten.” No one was going to stop her from her mission. Not Simon. Not Courtney and not Marc, no matter what he’d said about her staying out of this. If it was facts and evidence that he wanted, she was going to darn well get it for him. How dare he call her theories harebrained? She got out of the car, thrust her head high, and marched, as best her aching feet could march, toward the main doors.
Her keen peripheral vision came in handy as she studied the couple talking beside the truck. As she drew closer, their raised voices pricked her ears. So, this wasn’t a lover’s tête-à-tête. Courtney was, in fact, refusing to get into the truck.
“I agree completely that the Tesla is a nicer vehicle to ride in, but be realistic, Courtney. The truck is safer in this deep snow. I don’t want to get high centered on that road out to The Smuggler’s Den restaurant.”
“I am not going to be seen driving around in that . . . that farmer’s truck.” Courtney crossed her arms and glared at Simon.
Simon clasped her shoulders and drew her close. “Come on, Court. Wouldn’t you rather be safe than . . .”
Addie couldn’t bear to watch or hear any more. She darted through the front door. “Wow,” was all she could manage as she wobbled across the lobby toward the elevators. As it whisked to the third floor, she wondered if Simon would give in and drive her ladyship in a chariot she deemed worthy of her, or would he leave her on the curbside? Stay tuned for the next installment of As Greyborne Harbor Turns. She crossed her fingers that his decision was the latter. Otherwise, she would have to admit that she had misread him. And she rarely misread people.
With heavy strides, she made her way to the reception desk in the north wing. No one. She glanced at the wall clock, past five. She’d missed her. If Crystal did happen to show up to work today, she was obviously gone now along with everyone else on the floor. She shivered at the empty eeriness.
She started to turn back to the elevators. Out of the corner of her eye, a dim light escaping through a partially opened office door caught her attention. She checked over her shoulder and tiptoed toward it. Patrick’s old office? Filled with a combination of
stomach-knotting fear and relief that she wasn’t alone up here, she knocked on the doorframe and poked her head inside. His winter jacket hung from the coat rack, and his keys and a file box on the desk indicated he planned to return. She glanced back down the hall, went in, and seated herself on a chair.
Addie clutched her purse in her lap, studying the cramped room. If the third key on Teresa’s key ring didn’t fit anything in her office, maybe it opened something in here? After a quick check of the hall again, she rounded the desk to the file cabinet behind it and caught sight of two red journals previously hidden from view by the file box. She slid one of the ledgers toward her. It appeared to be this year’s foundation financial records. The ones Walter, the board chair, had referred to when he was talking to Dan at the meeting. She scanned through the journal entries and frowned. It seemed the foundation was, in fact, broke, just as Patrick claimed. She pushed it aside and opened the second one, skimming through it. Her eyes fixed on the last entry, and her mouth dropped.
“What are you doing here?” Patrick’s raspy voice barked. The door banged shut behind him.
Chapter 32
“That’s a question I should be asking you.” Addie slammed the ledger closed. “You’re keeping two sets of financial records, aren’t you?” Tiny pearls of perspiration glistened on his brow. “And by my guess, I’d say you’ve been embezzling money from the foundation ever since you started here.”
Without taking his eyes off her, he snatched the account book from her hand, tossed it in the box on the desk, and grabbed his keys from beside it. She shrank under the gleam of malice in his eyes as he laced them between his fingers. She swallowed hard. Maybe poking the bear hadn’t been such a good idea. Because what he was doing with the keys was exactly what she’d been trained to do in a woman’s self-defense class. Create a weapon to use during an attack. However, in this case, she knew his weapon wasn’t one for defense.
A low growl escaped his throat as he inched his way toward her around the side of the desk, his eyes locked with hers. “I asked you what you’re doing in here.”
“I was looking for Crystal.”
“And you assumed she was in my office?”
“Well . . . she wasn’t at the front desk and being your assistant . . .”
“Was my assistant.” His circling paused. “Crystal doesn’t work here anymore, and she’s long gone.”
“That’s too bad, I just thought—”
“What, what did you just think?” The fine hairs on her arms quivered at the glint of deviltry in his eyes. She braced her trembling knees. “I wanted to ask her if she had any idea where Jonathan was.”
“Why would she know where he is?”
“You know, since they seemed to be on rather friendly terms.”
“Huh,” he grunted. “She’s not with him, that I can guarantee.” His lips twisted into a sardonic smile. “She could never resist the attention of an older guy, and would usually only hang around long enough to see if they’d pamper her with expensive gifts.”
“Is that what he did, and now she’s taken off with him. Is that why you’re so angry?” She didn’t miss the tic in his cheek.
“I’m angry because as usual you’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Not being one who could ever drop the bear-poking stick once she’d picked it up, Addie thought, why not give him another jab and see what happens? “By the look of what’s going on in here”—her hand gestured to the box—“I’d say it’s more than that. You and she were business partners in the whole fraud thing, right? What happened, did they run off with all your embezzled money? Leaving you to clean up the mess and take the fall, is that why you’re on the run tonight?”
He snorted. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”
Addie continued to work her way around the opposite side of the desk from him. “What did he do, move in on your woman, and then they robbed you just like you’d robbed the foundation?”
“He’s just some old fool she liked to toy with and lead on. It amused her. I have no idea where the guy is, but I can assure you that he’s not off with Crystal.”
“How can you be so sure?” His dark blue neck veins bulged, visibly pulsating as his heart rate accelerated. Addie glanced at the chair and her key chain dangling out of the side pocket of her purse and inched toward it.
His gaze flashed to where she’d looked. “You really shouldn’t have telegraphed your next move.” He smirked and backed toward the chair. His eyes held fast on hers. He reached behind him, dropped her purse to the floor, and kicked it underneath the chair. His eyes unwavering, he shuffled to the door, leaned against it, and waved his knuckle-bound keys in the air. “There’s no way out.” His crooked smile made her sick.
She met his gaze head on and slid her hand into her jacket pocket. Her fingers fished for her phone. Empty. Her chest tightened. She glanced at her purse, took in a slow breath unscrambling her thoughts, and leaned forward on the edge of the desk. “So, tell me, Patrick.” Her eyes held steadfast on his. “Did Teresa discover you were keeping two sets of books? Is that why you killed her?”
“It’s not my fault that she fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”
“Really?” She forced the rising bile back down her throat and sucked in another steadying breath. Breathe, just keep breathing. You have to breathe to think, and she needed to think fast right now. There was no way she could afford to lose in this the cat-and-mouse game that she’d been thrust into. Reassured by the continued rise and fall of her chest, all the clues and theories she’d come up with flashed through her mind. She pasted on her most confident grin. “But I’m guessing you know whose fault it is? After all, the day she died, you picked up three lunches. Who was the third one for?”
“You always did ask too many questions.” The hatred burning behind his eyes reflected on his face. He took a step toward her. “Yes, Teresa found out I was taking money out of the account even though I had the other books to show her everything was in great shape. Then after she was, well . . . gone, the board started asking questions when it looked like I was going to have to refund the ticket money. I knew then that I’d have to show them the real books, the ones Teresa found in my locked drawer one day.”
“So, that’s what the third key was for?” She studied his ruddy face beaded with perspiration. “I’m surprised that when you took the keys off her dead body, you didn’t remove that one.”
“I should have.” Her cheek twitched. Was that a confession? Too bad she couldn’t get her hands on her phone to record it. “It might have stopped you from sniffing around so much,” he spat, glaring at her as he moved closer.
“Then you don’t know me very well, do you?” She forced a laugh.
“To be honest, I didn’t know she had a copy of my key until Crystal overheard her on the phone with someone. She told her caller that she came across a second set of books while in my office looking for the donor’s list and said she had no choice but to go to the police.”
“Then why didn’t she? Right then?” So far, he was ticking off most of the unchecked boxes on her crime board, but why was he telling her all this? Was he bragging, feeling cocky about what he did? Or . . . as the callous look in his beady little eyes suggested, did he plan to kill her, too? Well, she had a plan of her own. What it was she wasn’t certain, but she knew she had to keep him talking until she figured one out. “I said why didn’t she report the fixed books to the police?”
“I guess whoever she was on the phone with convinced her to wait. That bought me a little more time to get the real account ledger out of here. That’s why I wasn’t worried about anyone discovering what the third key was for until you showed up. But you were too late anyway with all your questions because the proof was already gone.”
“So why kill her then? Why not just take the money and run?” A slow grin spread across Addie’s lips. “Unless, of course, she’d made a copy of the ledgers. Is that when you decided
to get rid of her permanently, just in case she had her own set of books? She wouldn’t be able to go to the police.”
“Yeah,” his voice hoarsened. “The original plan was just as you said, to get out of town before she turned over the cooked books, but Crystal, my partner, as you’ve already guessed, was afraid Teresa had made a copy, which was why Teresa wasn’t in a hurry to call the police. Crystal got nervous, so she hatched the scheme to kill her. Then she thought, why not steal the book, too, and make even more money selling it than we had already gotten out of this deal.” He licked his lips, his eyes showing a glimmer of pride. “And it worked even better than we thought it would. After she was dead, I just brought back the other set of books, proved the foundation was broke, and the hospital committee gave me another nice, fat check on top of it all to save the gala and then . . . you walked in tonight as I was packing to leave.” He toyed with the keys, his jaw set. “And now I seem to have one last detail to look after before I go, and then I’ll be off to meet Amy, err Crystal—”
“Amy? You mean Amy Miller?”
His face turned ashen. “How do you know that name?”
God, it felt so good to watch him sweat. A sly smile crossed Addie’s lips. The puzzle pieces were finally beginning to slide into place, and one more box on her board could be checked off. “Because you got sloppy when you cleaned up Teresa’s office after you killed her and forgot about the garbage can. A lipstick sample on one of the cups found in it was tested for DNA, and it came back from the lab as belonging to one Amy Miller, and you’ve more or less just confirmed that Crystal is none other than her.”
“Damn it!” he hissed, spraying spittle in the air and glaring at her. The hold on Addie’s chest twisted. She inched backward. A humorless laugh ripped out of him, but the mocking glint in his eye grated on every nerve ending in her body.
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