Crops and Robbers

by Paige Shelton

  “Good, good,” I muttered, hoping for something else, something that would keep it from going to trial at all. Yes, there might be reasonable doubt, but you could never tell what a jury would think or do.

  “Becca, we’re getting there. One step at a time,” Sam said.

  Suddenly, the door to the station swung open hard and slammed against the wall. Officer Vivienne Norton had, presumably, opened the door with a hard kick. She was wrangling a much smaller, much less muscled Betsy.

  “Seriously, you are a beast,” Betsy screeched to Vivienne.

  Little did she know, this was a compliment to the weightlifting police officer. Vivienne Norton was proud of her muscles and the power they gave her. She smiled as she directed Betsy to Sam’s desk.

  “Am I under arrest?” she demanded when Vivienne released the vice grip she had on the smaller woman’s wrist.

  “No,” Sam said. “Perhaps there’s been some misunderstanding.” Sam looked at Vivienne, who lifted her eyebrows in mock innocence. “But perhaps you could answer a couple questions while you’re here.”

  Betsy’s face was flushed. She looked at Sam and then at me. She was probably wondering how much I’d told Sam about our trespassing and thievery incident from about half an hour ago. I tried to keep my face neutral.

  “I told you everything I know earlier.”

  “I have more questions.”

  “What?”

  “Have a seat.” Sam directed. She sat next to me but far enough away that it didn’t feel like we were together. Aldous sat on my other side. He wasn’t going to miss a minute of whatever was about to happen now.

  “Betsy, it’s come to my attention that you drove Joan to the Bailey’s Farmers’ Market on the day she was killed. Is that correct?” Sam said.

  “Yes,” she said. Her eye twitched.

  “Did she leave with you as well?” Sam asked.

  Betsy deflated, her shoulders suddenly slumped forward. “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “And where did the two of you go?”

  “I guess you had to find out sooner or later. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand.” She folded quickly.

  “Telling me now would be good.” Sam sat back in his chair, his ice blue eyes staring at Betsy. He would listen to what she said, but he would also inspect her every move as she spoke. He’d look for signs she was lying or perhaps hiding something.

  But she wasn’t scared, despite how she’d just reacted. She sat up straighter and showed a resolve that must have been building inside her.

  “I’ve done nothing wrong, except not tell you what I did do, which was nothing wrong.”

  I swallowed an urge to laugh, but I followed Sam’s lead and kept my face steely still.

  “Okay, yes, I drove Joan to the market. I wasn’t even supposed to be going. She knocked on my door and woke me up. She said that she changed her mind and wanted me there. She was acting unlike herself.”

  “In what way?” Sam interrupted.

  Betsy shrugged. “She was nervous. She was never nervous. That morning, it seemed like she didn’t want to be by herself . . . until . . .” Betsy shook her head and seemed to become distracted by her own thoughts.

  Sam sat forward. “Betsy, I need you to focus and tell me what happened.”

  Betsy looked at Sam with teary eyes and nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I just keep thinking that she’d still be here if I hadn’t . . . Anyway, I drove her to the market and we left together. She had me drive her to Becca’s farm . . .”

  “Wait, why?” Sam asked.

  “Because I told her she should.” Betsy’s eyes were brimming with tears as she looked at me. “After the incident at the market and while everyone else looked at products, Jake pulled me aside and told me that you were part of such a great family. He told me I should take her by your farm so she could see your amazing place—your kitchen. He said it was something to behold and that you make the finest jams and preserves around. He thought he was helping. He thought if she saw your place, she’d be kinder to you. He gave me your address.”

  Betsy sniffed and then looked at Sam. “She agreed, but on the way, she kept looking at the mirrors and out the back of the car. No one was following us—literally, no one. There wasn’t another vehicle in sight. I asked her what she was doing. She said, ‘Nothing.’ When we got to your farm, we both got out of the car and started to walk toward the barn, but then she told me to go away for an hour or so.”

  “Why?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know, but I did as she asked. I left.”

  “Where did you go?” Sam asked doubtfully.

  “Just back to town. I went to Jake’s and had a soda. I don’t have a receipt, but I sat with Viola. She could confirm I was there,” Betsy said. She knew Sam was having a hard time with her story.

  “You went back to Becca’s after an hour, though?” he said.

  “Yes, but no one was there. I should say that I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t see . . . I didn’t see the dog, though. The dog had been there when I dropped Joan off. The dog was gone, and that worried me.”

  “But not enough to call the police?” Sam said.

  I was attempting to keep a surge of anger under control. Hobbit was my family, and though her disappearance was enough to throw me into a panic, other people wouldn’t necessarily feel the same way. I thought they should, but it wasn’t the right time to make that point.

  “No. It was a dog. Dogs roam.”

  Sam gave me a glance that said, “Not now,” before he said, “Did you explore the area at all? Did you get out of the car?”

  “No. I felt wrong being there in the first place. I thought Joan must have had someone else pick her up. Nobel had driven separately. I thought maybe she was with him. Actually, I was angry at her at that point. I left and drove home, got ready, and then went to work. When Joan wasn’t there, I got worried.”

  “You didn’t think you should call the police at that point?” Sam asked.

  “It crossed my mind, but—and this seems like a bad decision now—I didn’t want to cause a big scene for the wrong reason. I didn’t think of the possibility that she might be dead! I thought I would talk to Nobel when he got to work, but we were busy by the time he got there. I didn’t have time to talk to him, and then we heard . . . heard about her death.”

  Sam was about to say something else when the station door flew open again. Allison burst through the doorway and held a small stack of papers in her hands.

  “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.

  Twenty-six

  “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.

  Twenty-seven

  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 cal
led 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.”