Stiff Competition

by Annelise Ryan

  My heart aches for Emily, remembering the pains I experienced as the weird kid in school—the one who was freakishly tall, the one who didn’t have a father, the one with feet the size of a Sasquatch—and that was among kids I’d known all my life. Poor Emily has the additional burden of being the new kid on the block, and that can’t be easy on top of all the other upsets she’s had in her life lately.

  Beneath the comic books is another one of those composition notebooks, but the pages of this one are empty, leading me to think it’s an extra. At the bottom of the drawer are some drawings of animals and people, including one of Emily’s mother, Kate. The level of detail in the pictures is amazing and once again I find myself in awe of the kid’s talent. Finally, at the bottom of the drawer is a collection of cards from Kate to Emily, marking birthdays, holidays, and a few just because. I read a few of the messages but then stop. They feel exquisitely personal and I feel like an unwelcome interloper reading them.

  I leave the desk and move on to the dresser, where I go through every drawer, and handle every item of clothing looking for any hidden items. I strike gold in the underwear drawer where I find a half full pack of cigarettes and a lighter tucked inside an otherwise empty tampon box.

  A search of the closet with a close examination inside each shoe, bag, and box reveals no more secrets. I toss the bed, looking under the mattress and the bed itself. Having exhausted the potential hiding spots, and with the noon hour rapidly approaching, I grab the laptop and head out, making sure to lock the door when I leave.

  Chapter 21

  It’s been almost a year since the last time I saw Joey Dewhurst and he looks a little different. His hair is a smidge longer and combed back with some sort of product, and his clothes are a little more fashionable than the baggy jeans and shirts he used to wear, but his lumbering gait, immense size, and sweet face are all the same.

  “Joey, you are looking really good,” I say as I enter Arnie’s lab area.

  Joey gawks at me, as does Arnie.

  “You changed your hair color,” Arnie says in a neutral tone.

  Uh-oh.

  Joey, who often doesn’t grasp the concept of political correctness or polite conversation, is less deferent. “Hi, Mattie,” he says with a big smile. Then he frowns and adds, “I don’t like you with red hair.”

  I look over at Arnie and he shrugs. “You don’t like it either, do you?” I say. He gives me an equivocal look, and a little head dodge. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I say before he can hand me whatever line of bull he’s thinking up. “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I need the truth.”

  “Okay,” Arnie says with a shrug. “It doesn’t work on you. And it smacks of desperation.”

  “Desperation? How?”

  “Are you going to tell me that Charlie’s presence has nothing to do with your decision to change?”

  “Who’s Charlie?” Joey asks.

  “Only the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Arnie gushes.

  “Charlie is a girl?” Joey says, looking confused.

  “She’s all woman,” Arnie says. “She has a beautiful face, gorgeous red hair, freckles that lead to all kinds of interesting places, and legs that never quit.”

  “You mean she walks a lot?” Joey says, forcing me to bite back a laugh.

  Arnie smiles and says, “I’ll explain it to you later. Let’s get down to business.”

  Joey’s attention is easily diverted. Arnie directs him to the only desk in the lab, and one of the only spots that isn’t covered with some type of machinery or equipment. I hand over the laptop and explain to Joey what I want him to do.

  “This belongs to Detective Hurley’s daughter and she’s missing. We’re hoping to find some clues about where she might be if we can get into the computer and check out her e-mails and her social networking, but the computer is password protected. Do you think you can get into it and snoop around?”

  “Do you think she was kidnapped?” Joey asks, his eyes wide.

  “It’s possible,” I admit, and I see Arnie’s expression change to one of dark worry. “But we’re thinking that she’s probably run away. She’s got a lot of problems and she’s disappeared before, just never for this long.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Joey says. As he settles into the chair at the desk, the back of his shirt rides up and I can see a flash of silky red material. Joey is wearing his Hacker Man outfit and the knowledge makes me smile.

  “I’m going to run home and see Matthew and then I have some interviews to do with Richmond,” I tell the guys. “But I’ll keep my phone with me. Call or text me if you find anything, okay?”

  “Who is Matthew?” Joey asks. “Is that your boyfriend? You should have a boyfriend, Mattie, because you’re very pretty, even with red hair.”

  “Okay, okay, I give on the red hair,” I say, holding my hand up like a traffic cop. “I’ll change it back. And no, Matthew isn’t my boyfriend, Joey, he’s my son. I had a baby a couple of months ago.”

  Joey’s eyes grow wide and his mouth drops open. “You had a baby? How did you do that?”

  Arnie and I look at one another for a few seconds. “You can handle this one,” I tell him, and then I leave before any more awkward moments can crop up.

  I head home hoping for a quick lunch—giving it rather than getting it—and I’m lucky enough to catch Matthew just as he’s waking from a nap. I manage to sneak twenty minutes of blissful mother-son bonding in the bedroom rocking chair nursing Matthew while Dom fixes sandwiches for us in his kitchen since my cupboards are looking a little bare. I need to get back online.

  Just as we are about to sit down and eat our lunch, my phone rings. I’m hoping it will be Hurley, but it’s Richmond instead. “Good news, bad news,” he says. “The storage facility does have security cameras, but the footage gets recorded over every month. So we know that no one approached Morton’s storage unit in the past month, but anything that happened before that is lost.”

  “Bummer,” I say, taking a bite of my sandwich. It’s liverwurst with mayonnaise and a thin slice of onion on a hard roll, a treat that Dom and I love and share once in a while since everyone else we know thinks it looks, smells, and tastes like dog food. And yes, I discovered I can order liverwurst from Amazon, but it doesn’t qualify for Prime shipping and because of the refrigeration needed, the shipping costs are prohibitive. So I let Dom handle the liverwurst.

  “There is some good news,” Richmond continues. “Junior has been looking through Sanderson’s financials and all those files we got from his home office. And he turned up some unusual transactions in Sanderson’s bank accounts, including an account he established using a false name and identity.”

  “A false identity . . . why would he need that?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Is there a lot of money in it?”

  “Actually there’s no money in it, despite the fact that Sanderson deposited several large sums of money over the past year or so, two of them over twenty thousand bucks.”

  “Where did it all go?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. It looks like Sanderson wired money out of his business account into this other account, which is based out of a bank in Illinois. He then took the sums out of this account as cash a number of times, typically small amounts of one or two thousand, always less than ten thousand to avoid the IRS paperwork. He had a file in his home office filled with receipts he paid for in cash, but it turns out that some of the company names are phony, and others that he supposedly paid cash to said no such transaction ever occurred.”

  “Interesting,” I say pondering the meaning behind it all.

  “Yes, it is,” Richmond agrees. “I think we need to go back to Sanderson’s house and have another look around. Want to come along?”

  “Absolutely,” I say, swallowing and giving Dom an apologetic look. “I’ll meet you at the station in ten minutes.”

  I disconnect the call and after grabbing the r
est of my sandwich, I put on my coat. “Sorry,” I tell Dom. “I’ll have to share the rest of this sandwich with you in spirit only.”

  “That’s okay,” he says. “I know how it is. Duty calls.”

  “Thanks for lunch. I owe you.” I turn to leave but Dom calls me back.

  “Mattie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you given any more thought to what we discussed the other day? You know . . . the baby thing?”

  “I have, but I haven’t made a decision yet,” I lie. “You need to discuss it with Izzy first.”

  “I’m afraid to broach the subject.”

  “Yeah, about that . . . I think it may have been broached for you,” I tell him with a guilty smile. His eyes grow huge and before he can ask me anything else, I give him an apologetic shrug and head out the door at a fast clip.

  A little over ten minutes later I am in my car following Richmond back to Lars Sanderson’s house. Junior Feller and Karl Young, aka KY, are both going to meet us there. Just as we arrive, my cell phone rings.

  “Mattie Winston.”

  “Hey, Mattie, it’s Arnie. Joey got into Emily’s computer.”

  “Fantastic!” I say. “Give him a hug for me.”

  “I would, but I think he’d rather it came from you.”

  “Take a look at her e-mails, and any social networking sites she’s been on to see what you can find.”

  “Will do. We’re looking at her e-mails already, but there isn’t much there.”

  “Pay attention to anything that looks like it might be from people down around the Chicago area. I’m on the way to Lars Sanderson’s house with Richmond and some others to search for some more evidence. And Richmond and I have meetings at two and three with some other possible suspects. If you find a smoking gun, call me, otherwise I’ll check in with you when I’m done.”

  I hang up and call Hurley, but it flips over to voice mail. I leave him a message letting him know that Joey has gotten into Emily’s computer and that he and Arnie are looking through the contents now. I ask him to call me with any updates on his end and say I’ll do the same.

  Richmond and Junior are already at Sanderson’s front door and KY has pulled up and is headed that way, so I scramble out of my car and hurry up the walk to catch up. As I step onto the porch, I realize Junior is staring at me.

  “You did something different to your hair,” he says in that cursed neutral tone.

  “It’s temporary, okay?” I snap. Both he and Richmond stare at me as if they just saw my head spin around three hundred and sixty degrees. KY comes up on the porch and looks at all of us, sensing that something has just happened. His eyes linger on me and when I see his gaze shift to my hair, I beat him to the punch. “Yes, I did something different to my hair, and yes, I know it doesn’t look great. I’m changing it back. Okay? Can we please move on now?”

  Richmond turns away, slices through the evidence tape, unlocks the door, and lets us in. No one says another word about my hair, which is probably a good thing because along about now it feels like I’m wearing Medusa snakes on my head.

  “Let’s split up,” Richmond says as we all don gloves. Then, to prove how brave he is, he says, “Junior, you and Karl take the living room, kitchen, downstairs bathroom, and laundry room. Mattie and I will take the upstairs. We’ve gone through the home office pretty thoroughly already, so if we don’t find anything in the other rooms we’ll take another look in there at the end. Use your cameras as needed.”

  Junior and Karl nod, and with Junior manning the camera, they head for the kitchen. Richmond hands me his camera and I follow him upstairs.

  “I’m thinking if he had a cash stash somewhere, he’d want it in a private place,” Richmond says, “so let’s start with the master bedroom.”

  We head there and I have to suppress a shudder at the tacky décor, even though it’s lessened slightly now that the bed linens are missing. We start with the obvious places: the dressers, the bedside stands—which contain some interesting sex toys—and the closet. We empty everything out of the closet that’s on a shelf or on the floor and then Richmond looks up at the ceiling area. “No panels or ceiling covers,” he says as I film. Next he starts knocking on the hardwood floor to check for loosened floorboards, but nothing turns up. With no success there, we probe the mattress for any unusual lumps. Even with gloves on, I have an overwhelming urge to wash my hands when we’re done. The last place we look is in a clothes hamper that’s full. We pick it up and dump out all the dirty clothes, but that’s all we find in there. We move on to the spare bedroom, which is thankfully plain, sparse, and rather dusty. Once again we go through the same routine and once again we come up empty.

  Back out in the hallway, I ask, “How much money are we looking for?”

  “More than a hundred grand,” he says. “That kind of cash would have some bulk to it so wherever he stashed it has to be big enough to hold it.”

  “I don’t suppose he had a safe deposit box somewhere.”

  Richmond shakes his head. “If he does, we haven’t found any trace of it—no paperwork and no key.”

  “All we have left up here are the bathrooms. I vote we look in the master bath first. It’s more private.”

  Richmond nods his agreement and we start to head that way when something in the hallway catches my eye. “Richmond, look at this.” I point to a small door, less than a foot square, built into the wall.

  “That’s just a laundry chute,” he says.

  I pull it open and peer inside. It’s dark other than a dim rectangle of light I can see at the bottom where it exits into the laundry room. “Do you have a flashlight?” I ask.

  Richmond gives me an impatient look as I hand him the camera and he hands me his key ring, which has a small flashlight on it. “If you can see down it, there’s no cash stashed in there,” he says. “A bundle with that much cash in it would hardly fit down that chute.”

  “I just want to make sure. If he has a laundry chute here, why did he have a hamper full of clothes in his bedroom? Why have a hamper at all?”

  Richmond shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t like the chute for some reason. Or maybe he dumps all his stuff down it at once.”

  I stick my head through the opening and can barely manage to get my hand in with the light to shine it down the chute. I finally manage to get the light in far enough to see that the chute is empty. When I go to pull my head back out, it hits the top of the chute and I feel something give.

  “Ow,” I say, pulling my head the rest of the way out. I palpate my scalp to make sure it’s still intact. It is, so I get down on my knees and shine the light up the inside of the chute opening. A few inches above the opening is what appears to be a solid wooden ceiling. I reach in with my hand and push up on it. It gives a little so I push harder. A faint click sounds and when I pull my hand back, the ceiling drops down, swinging on an inside hinge. There is a sudden whoosh and something hits my fingers before plummeting down the chute.

  “What the hell was that?” Richmond says.

  I look down the chute and see a sack lying on the floor down in the laundry room. “It’s a bag of something,” I tell him. “I don’t think it’s big enough to be a bag of cash the size of what we’re looking for, but maybe it’s part of it.” I pull out of the chute and Richmond sticks his head in for a look. As soon as he pulls out, he takes the camera and aims it down the chute at the sack, then up the chute at the opening with the hinged door.

  “There’s a magnetic catch on that door,” he says when he’s done. He reaches in and closes the panel, which snugs back into place with a tiny click. Then he pushes up on it until it clicks again and the door drops open. “Let’s go see what we found,” he says.

  We head downstairs to the laundry room, hollering along the way for Junior and KY, who are still in the kitchen going through its many storage spots. In the laundry room lying on the floor beneath the chute opening is a sack about the size of a ten-pound bag of flour. Richmon
d hands me the camera and I start filming.

  “It’s heavy,” Richmond says, picking up the sack. It has a drawstring tie at the top that is knotted to keep the sack closed. He squeezes the bag in several places and gives us a perplexed look. “It isn’t cash,” he announces. It takes him a moment or two to undo the knot and open the drawstring. Then he reaches in and pulls out a block of something. As I zoom in with the camera I see that it’s a stack of what looks like credit cards rubber banded together. He removes the band and sets the cards down on top of the nearby washing machine, spreading them out. I see dozens of VISA and MasterCard logos, though none of the cards have names on them.

  “These are prepaid gift cards,” Junior says, looking through them. “I send them to my nieces and nephews every year for Christmas. It looks like each one of these can hold up to five hundred dollars and there are forty or fifty of them here.”

  “And that’s just the beginning,” Richmond says. He takes another stack out of the bag and hands it to Junior. He repeats this five more times until the bag is empty.

  “This is brilliant,” Junior says, eyeing the cards. “If he went to a bunch of different stores in different towns to buy these over a period of time, no one would be the wiser. You can get them at tons of places these days, even the grocery store. And you have to pay cash to get them, so it’s a completely anonymous purchase if you buy them somewhere where no one knows you.”

  “Don’t you have to pay a fee to activate them?” Richmond says.

  “You do,” Junior answers. “But if you’re trying to hide a boatload of cash, those activation fees are a lot less than the taxes you’d pay on the money. Not to mention the other penalties you might have to pay if the money was obtained illegally.”