Ground to a Halt

by Claudia Bishop

  so softly that Quill had to bend to hear her. “He had other

  companies, other businesses, but this was the one that reflected his own philosophy. His own principles. He loved animals. Not,” she jerked her chin contemptuously toward the parking lot, where Olivia Oberlie’s crew was setting up the cameras, “that kind of exploitative crap. But he had a real appreciation for who they are. How they relate

  to the rest of us.” She bent over and ruffled Max’s ears.

  “He would have had a soft spot even for this guy.” She

  straightened up. “As for Millard. Well, I was fooled, at

  first, by the wire-rimmed glasses and the ponytail and all

  that blather about our animals are our brothers and how

  material things didn’t matter. But he turned out to be just

  like the rest of them. After my money.” Her mouth drew

  downward in a bitter curve. “What happened, exactly?”

  “Rudy and Millard were pretty upset that I’d discovered the freezers full of . . . umm . . . product. Rudy’s solution was pretty straightforward. If they got rid of

  me, they got rid of the problem. But Meg and Jerry burst

  in, and for a few seconds, there was a free-for-all.”

  “Millard actually hit somebody?” Priscilla said with

  mild interest.

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  “Well, no,” Quill admitted. “Actually, he ducked out

  the door and jumped into Rudy’s Cadillac. Rudy

  jumped in after him. The last I saw, they were headed

  north on I-80.”

  “Toward the Adirondacks?” Priscilla’s odd laugh

  barked again. “Millard hates trees.”

  “I did overhear something that puzzled me, Priscilla.

  Millard said that he’d paid the last five hundred thousand to Kittleburger Monday morning?”

  “The last five hundred thousand what? Dollars?”

  “To complete the purchase of Pet Pro. Yes.”

  “Nonsense. I was in the process of buying Pet Pro.

  Max and I had an agreement in principle, but nothing

  had been signed yet.” Priscilla’s face was set in ugly

  lines of anger. “Five hundred thousand, you say? The

  only way Millard could have gotten that kind of money

  was to borrow on his stock. Where’s Victoria?”

  Quill looked around the field. “There she is. It looks

  like she’s just leaving.”

  Victoria, trailed by a sulking Robin, was halfway

  down the trail to Peterson Park.

  “Hi! Victoria!” Priscilla shouted. “Come here!”

  Victoria said something to Robin, and then headed

  across the field toward them. Robin turned and disappeared into the green of Peterson Park.

  “What is it, Priscilla?” Victoria’s face was flushed

  with annoyance but her tone was polite. She’d made a

  bright print scarf into a headband to hold back her dark

  hair; the effect made her look gaunt.

  Priscilla thrust a long finger at her. “What was

  Maxwell on about, selling Pet Pro to Millard behind my

  back?”

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  “Maxwell wasn’t doing any such thing,” Victoria

  said. “Who told you that?”

  “I did.” Quill frowned a little. “I’m afraid I have

  proof.”

  “Proof?” Victoria’s lips thinned. “What kind of

  proof?”

  Quill felt herself blush. One of the unpleasant parts

  of being a detective was that you had to snoop. And in

  the process of solving the case, sometimes other people

  would realize that you were a snoop. It was very embarrassing. But nothing would be gained by backing away from the current situation, so she said: “I overheard

  Millard tell Rudy Baranga that the last payment of five

  hundred thousand dollars had been made to Maxwell

  Kittleburger on Monday. It was the final earnest money

  for the purchase of Pet Pro.”

  “What Millard said and what Millard did could be two

  different things entirely,” Victoria said. “That isn’t proof.”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars had been deposited

  into Lila Longstreet’s money-market account Monday

  morning,” Quill said. “She supervised the bookkeeping

  for Pet Pro, didn’t she?”

  Victoria shook her head slowly. “This makes no

  sense to me at all. And how did you get access to that information anyway? You aren’t with the police.”

  “Um. No. But we were, ah—doing a credit check,”

  Quill improvised, “and we sort of ran across the information accidentally.”

  “At the least,” Victoria said icily, “you’ve obtained

  that information illegally. And I want to see it.”

  “And I,” Priscilla was equally angry, “want my five

  hundred thousand dollars back.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “It was there this morning,” Devon said. “I saw it. Agent

  Quilliam saw it . . .”

  “Agent Quilliam?” Victoria stared at Quill. Quill in

  turn stared accusingly at Marge. Since Marge had the

  sensitivity of a charging rhino, she merely said, “Shut

  up, Devon. And how long are you two planning to tie up

  my consultant? I want to know where to send the bill.”

  Victoria gave Marge a brief flash of teeth, “Not long.

  And I’m sure that you wouldn’t want me to make public

  the fact that your genius consultant here,” she laid one

  hand on Devon’s shoulder, “is committing at least three

  federal offenses. If not more.”

  It was Marge’s turn to glower accusingly at Quill.

  “You’re sure you saw my money, young man,”

  Priscilla said.

  “If that five hundred K was your money, then yeah,

  we both saw it.”

  “Then where is it?”

  Devon clattered away at the keyboard for a moment.

  “It got moved to an offshore account,” he said. “And let

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  me tell you, even I can’t hack into those Cayman Islands files. And if I can’t do it,” he added with simple pride, “no one can.”

  “So you don’t know who has it?” Victoria said. “If it

  even existed, that is.”

  “Oh, it existed all right.” Devon clattered away at

  the keyboard again. “There it is. The account history.”

  Devon stretched his arms over his head and yawned.

  Priscilla gave a howl of rage. Victoria leaned over his

  shoulder and stared at the scene intently. “It looks as if

  close to two million dollars has moved through that account in the last few weeks.”

  “That’s how much Maxwell wanted up front,”

  Priscilla said. “We’d agreed on that in principle last

  week.”

  Victoria pulled her cell phone from her purse. “I’m

  going to punch in a call to the bankers. I wonder if they

  know anything about this.” She thumbed the phone,

  looked at it, and said, “Damn it all to hell.” She tossed

  the phone onto the floor. Without thinking, Quill bent

  and picked it up. “Maxwell’s been dead, what, two

  days? It didn’t take them long to cut off the company

  phones.”

  Quill looked at the cell phone in her hand. It was a

  Nokia, an expensive one. “Did everyone at Pet Pro have

  a cell phone like this?”

  “What?”
Victoria had grabbed the handset of the

  landline next to Devon’s computer.

  “You’re not making long-distance calls on that

  phone,” Marge said. “Hang it up.”

  Quill repeated her question.

  Victoria threw the handset into the rest with a clatter

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  and a nasty look at Marge. “Yes, we all had phones like

  this. Why?”

  “Mr. Kittleburger had a Nokia, just like this one?”

  Quill persisted. “And Lila Longstreet, too?”

  “What of it?” Victoria snapped. “Max got a volume

  discount.” Victoria glared down at Devon. “Can you

  print that bank statement out for me?”

  “Not without getting the bank on my tail,” Devon

  said cheerfully.

  “Not on your life,” Marge said. “I’ve had it with this

  hacking business. Close it down, Devon.”

  “I can bring it up on someone else’s computer,

  though,” Devon offered. “If you want to print it out, it’ll

  be your problem. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Schmidt is

  right, I should get out of there right now.” He bent forward and punched several keys. The little spinning icon that had driven Trooper Brookes to distraction replaced

  the data on the screen. “Don’t want to hang out there too

  long, or they’ll be knock-knock-knocking on my door.”

  For a moment, there was silence in the room. Quill

  was absorbed in assessing the significance of the Pet

  Pro cell phones. Provost had told her Kittleberger had

  been found with a Minolta. The Minolta was on the evidence list. The time of Kittleburger’s murder was wrong. It had to be.

  Devon broke the silence with a loud yawn. “Guess I’d

  better be going. Got a hot date. See you tomorrow, Mrs.

  Schmidt. Watch your back, Quill.” He gave her a thumbs-

  up, grabbed his briefcase and shambled out of the room.

  Victoria watched him leave. She looked at Marge.

  “Can he keep his mouth shut?”

  “I don’t know,” Marge said testily. “Probably, yeah,

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  if I ask him to. But I didn’t exactly have this kind of

  crap in mind when I hired him on.”

  “And what kind of crap would that be?” Victoria

  asked silkily.

  “Money laundering?” Marge folded her arms under

  her considerable bosom. Her jaw was at a truculent angle. “Illegal transfer of funds? Theft?”

  Victoria’s smile combined superiority and condescension in equal parts. “We’ve been watching too much television, Mrs . . . Schmidt—is it?”

  “M. E. Schmidt,” Marge said. “Yeah. That would be

  me.”

  “M. E.” Victoria’s smile faltered. “You wouldn’t be

  related to the M. E. Schmidt Corporation of Allentown,

  Pennsylvania?”

  “I’d be the owner, yeah,” Marge said.

  “Mrs. Schmidt.” Victoria, Quill noticed, fawned like

  an expert, “If anything I’ve said has offended you at

  all . . .”

  “You breathin’ my air has offended me. If you’ve finished your business in here, you can beat it.”

  Victoria scrabbled in her briefcase. “Just for emergency purposes, Mrs. Schmidt, here’s my card. I’m licensed to practice in the state of New York, and compared to that, the Pennsylvania bar is no . . .”

  Marge narrowed her eyes to steel points. Victoria adjusted her hair band, gripped Priscilla by the elbow, and left, trailing “good-byes” and “real pleasure to meet

  you’s.”

  Quill leaned against a filing cabinet. “Marge, do you

  mind if I make a call on that landline? It’s to Ithaca, so

  it will be a toll call.”

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  “Help yourself.”

  Quill dug Simon Provost’s card out of her purse and

  keyed in the numbers. He answered on the first ring,

  which was good, but he sounded extremely testy, which

  was bad.

  “It’s Sarah Quilliam,” she said. “You said to call if I

  had any new information for you?”

  “Yeah,” Provost said warily.

  “Well, I might. But I need to know what kind of cell

  phone was found on Maxwell Kittleburger’s body. I

  think you said it was a Minolta? ‘We checked out the

  Minolta’—those were your exact words?”

  “That’s right, Mrs. McHale. Now what . . . ?”

  “Thank you!” Quill hung the phone up with care.

  “Yes!” she said. “The first break in the case.”

  Marge looked at her glumly. “Can you maybe forget

  the darn case for just a couple of minutes?”

  “But, Marge . . .”

  “Hey!” Marge blew out her breath in a long whistle.

  “I thought maybe you could give me a hand with something right now.”

  “But Marge! The case has opened up. The whole

  thing is making a lot more sense to me now.”

  “It is?” Marge said without much interest. “This

  thing I want you to help me with can’t wait. Those dead

  guys can. C’mon. I’ll tell you about it over Betty’s pot

  roast.”

  Max had abandoned his spot by the lamppost outside

  Marge’s office for parts unknown. Quill called his name

  to no effect.

  “He’ll be rummaging in somebody’s Dumpster,”

  Marge said.

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  This was true. Quill tried unsuccessfully to suppress

  her guilt. “I should train him better.”

  Marge tramped halfway down the sidewalk and

  turned impatiently. “C’mon. There’s usually a run on

  the pot roast Friday nights.”

  “I’d just like Max to enjoy staying home,” Quill said

  a little wistfully.

  “Then you’d have to get another kind of dog,” Marge

  said unfeelingly. She snickered, “Like a Pekinese,

  maybe. D’ya see Harland with that damn little dog of

  hers?”

  They were passing by Pamela’s Pampered Puppy

  Palace. The windows were dark, the CLOSED FOR NAP

  PIES! sign prominent in the window. Pamela herself was

  nowhere in sight. “I did,” Quill said. “And he didn’t

  look too happy about it, Marge.”

  “That little pink leash? That rhinestone collar? You

  can bet old Harland’s going to hear about it.” Marge’s

  satisfaction was short-lived. She sighed, and they

  trudged along in silence. “You know about men, Quill.

  All the experience you’ve had.”

  “Me?” Quill said in indignation.

  “Musta. Men seem to like the beautiful ones.”

  “On a first date,” Quill admitted, “that’s true. But

  men stick with the good ones, Marge. Looks don’t matter a whole lot after the first infatuation’s over.”

  “So you say,” Marge said bitterly. “Well, hang it.

  There’s his dually. He’s in my bar right now. What d’ya

  want to bet it’s with her?”

  Harland’s familiar red pickup was parked right in

  front of the bar. Quill followed Marge in, and yes, there

  he was, the bozo, sitting at the bar up front, a beer in

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  one hand, and Pookie’s pink leash in the other. Pamela

  herself was nowhere in sight.
<
br />   Marge behaved as if he were invisible. Quill said,

  “Hello, Harland.”

  “ ’Lo, Marge. Quill.” He eased himself off the bar

  stool and thrust the leash in Quill’s direction. “I was

  wondering, Quill, if maybe you’d hang on to this for a

  little bit.”

  “Well, sure, Harland. But . . .”

  “Just till she gets back from the ladies.”

  “Ol’ Harland’s gonna start using the ladies, too!”

  Geoff Peterson, another member of the far-flung Peterson clan, shouted out down the length of the bar. “Coeee, sweetcakes!” A roar of laughter swept the room.

  Pookie yapped in excitement. Harland, Quill noticed,

  seemed to have spent most of the afternoon in embarrassment because of the Peke, and it looked as if this evening was going to continue the trend. The blush

  crept up the back of his neck and seemed to suffuse his

  eyeballs.

  “Anyhow,” he rumbled, “I gotta go somewhere.” He

  thrust the leash at Quill again. This time she took it.

  “And Margie?”

  Marge, nodding to various acquaintances, affected

  deafness. Harland scraped his feet. “You tell her, Quill.

  I’ll see her around.” He shouldered his way out the door.

  Quill looked down at the Peke, who had lifted his leg

  against a bar stool. “Cut that out, you.”

  “Pookie!” Pamela’s long red nails flashed in front of

  Quill’s eyes. The leash was snatched from her hand.

  “Hello, Quill. What are you doing with my dog?”

  “Harland had to go somewhere,” Quill said, scrupu

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  lously exact. “And he left the dog with me. Until you

  got back from the bathroom.”

  “Oh.” Pamela looked disconcerted. “What about dinner?” She flashed her teeth at Marge, who’d turned to give her a scathing stare. “I’ve heard Betty makes the

  best pot roast in the county. It’s funny though, the Big

  Guy didn’t seem to like it all that much. He wanted to

  take me all the way to Syracuse.”

  “Dog’s not allowed in the bar,” Marge said gruffly.

  “State health rules. And we’re out of pot roast.”

  “But I just saw Betty serving some!”

  “You coming, Quill?” Marge turned her back and

  marched down the center of the dining room to her

  usual booth. Quill gave Pamela a little wave and followed her.

  “Well,” she said, as she settled herself across from

  Marge, “I’d say that was quite encouraging.”