“I don’t know about that. He bought state-of-the-art security gear but that doesn’t mean he used it. Look at the burglar alarm.” I got up and refilled my cup, needing the extra caffeine to bolster my spirits as they sagged in the face of his irrefutable logic. I hated logic. Especially since I knew Jepsen had killed Burke and I didn’t want anyone poking holes in my theory. Not even Connor.
“So, if we stick with our assumption that Mitchell Burke got killed when he discovered the embezzlement, how did Jepsen steal the money? And where is it now?”
I started to pace in the small room. Four steps to the window, turn, four steps back to the table. Back and forth as I thought. We were missing something. I could feel it.
“He had help,” I suggested. “Someone other than the most personal of personal assistants.”
“Yeah. Which brings me back to my first point. Are we sure the deaths of Mitchell Burke and Matthew Cort are connected?”
I sat back down, setting my cup on the table and running my hands through my hair. “Matthew Cort figured out that the pension plan was short. No. We’ve already concluded that there was no way he could have found that out. It’s all handled by the lawyers, and they don’t tell anyone anything. Joe practically forced me to sign a confidentiality agreement in blood.”
“Let’s forget the blackmail scenario for a second. Is it possible Cort found out something entirely different that got him killed?”
I stared, watching as Connor shuffled through the papers.
“Like?”
“Like where is Stuart Masterson?”
I dropped my head into my hands. “My brain hurts.”
“Jepsen’s asking for a meeting in that alley would have rung all kinds of bells with Cort. It just wasn’t his kind of place. Who would blend in in a place like that? Who had reason to want Masterson out of the way?”
I reached into the stack of papers, pulling out the credit reports I’d run the morning after I found the body.
“Bud and Stewie.”
“Bud and Stewie,” he agreed, raising his water glass to me in salute.
“What about the woman at the diner?”
“Jepsen’s secretary can’t be the only black woman with a manicure in the state of Washington.”
“It’s Jepsen.” I felt defeated.
“All I’m saying is, maybe it’s both.”
The phone rang but I didn’t have the energy to get up to answer it. Connor raised eyebrows in my direction, then stood to pick up the receiver.
“McNamara. Yes, she is. Hold on.” He held the phone out to me. “New York,” he whispered.
“This is Sara Townley.”
“Ms. Townley, my name is Elspeth Siwicki. I’m the owner of Private Placements Employment Agency. You left me a message.” She had the strong nasal accent of a native New Yorker.
“Thank you for returning my call so quickly, Ms. Siwicki. I was calling to ask about one of your employees, Millicent Millinfield. She worked for you some months ago.”
“She is one of our most reliable people, but I’m afraid she won’t be available until the end of September. We do have several other highly qualified people who might suit your needs. What position are you looking to fill?”
“Excuse me. I think there must be some mistake. I wanted to ask about Millicent Millinfield.” I looked at Connor and he shrugged.
“As I said, Ms. Townley, Millicent is unavailable. I think I should also tell you that she doesn’t accept out-of-town placements.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Siwicki, but Millicent Millinfield is dead. She died four months ago in Seattle.”
Silence.
“Ms. Siwicki?”
“Is this your idea of a joke?”
“No. I’m sorry to have to be the one to—”
“Millicent Millinfield is alive and well. I saw her yesterday.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Millicent Millinfield was killed in a car accident in April. In Seattle.”
“Millie’s never been to Seattle.”
“Is it possible you could be mistaken?” Either she was or I was, or there were two Millicent Millinfields working at the same temp agency. Not much chance of that.
“Of course not.” Her accent flayed me. “We’ve been friends since our first day at Miss Ella’s Boarding School.”
“And you’re sure she never came to Seattle?”
“Of course I’m sure. Ever since her mother’s stroke last year, she’s spent all her time with her. I had the hardest time convincing her to take some time off now that her mother is gone. I took her to the dock myself yesterday.”
“Dock?”
“Yes. She’s on a six-week cruise.”
“Is there any way I could talk to her?”
“I don’t think so,” she said doubtfully. “What is all this about?”
“There was a woman in Seattle named Millicent Millinfield who died last April. She worked for a local businessman, and she listed your agency on her job application.” I leaned against the wall.
“I see. I don’t know what you are up to, young lady, but I can assure you it will not work.” Siwicki’s tone had taken on a frosted edge.
“I’m not up to anything. I’m just trying to figure this out.”
“Well, figure it out without trying to get my agency involved. We don’t want any trouble. We insist on speaking directly with all of our clients before placing anyone with them. Our Web site includes complete résumés with photographs of all of our personnel. If you’ve been taken in by some con artist, it hasn’t got anything to do with us. We are not responsible if you failed to make reasonable inquiries into someone you hired, and if you have anything more to say to me, you can speak with my attorney.” She slammed the phone down.
I held the receiver away from my ringing ear, dumbfounded.
“What?” Connor asked, taking the phone from my hand and returning it to the cradle on the wall.
“Millicent Millinfield.”
“What about her?”
“She’s not.”
“She’s not what?”
“She’s not Millicent Millinfield.”
“What are you talking about?”
“According to her”—I waved at the phone—“Millicent Millinfield still works for the Private Placements Employment Agency and was seen very much alive just yesterday. Alive enough to be on a cruise, anyway.”
“Who’s the woman calling herself Millinfield?”
I went into the living room and looked around. I grabbed my cell phone from the hall table. I lugged my laptop into the living room and set the computer on the coffee table, attached the phone, and logged onto the Internet. Connor sat down on the couch next to me.
“What are you doing?”
“The agency owner said they have photographs on the Web.” I typed in my query.
“What kind of jobs are they filling?”
“Beats me. Anyway . . .” I found the Web page and went to the personnel site. I started clicking through résumés, scanning faces. “If our Millicent isn’t the real deal, then she must have known the actual woman.”
“Not necessarily.” Connor went into the kitchen and came back with a copy of the photo that Jeff had given me, the one with Millicent and Flash. Connor laid the picture next to the computer and resumed his seat. “She could be a total stranger.”
“No way.” Click, click. “The agency woman said that Millicent was home taking care of her dying mother. She hadn’t been working. The impostor must have known that. If they had both been using Millicent’s name at the same time, somebody would have figured it out. Social Security, the agency, somebody. Whoever took Millicent’s place was relying on her not turning up. That means it’s either a friend or . . .”
“Someone she worked with,” Connor finished.
“Exactly.” I flipped to the last resume. None of them looked even vaguely like Millicent. I sighed. “I was so sure.”
“Don’t give up yet,�
� Connor advised, moving his hand to the mouse. He went back to the home page and clicked on the group photo on the main page. He zoomed, then zoomed again, enlarging the photo enough so I could make out the slightly blurred features of a middle-aged woman standing in the back row of a posed photo of the entire staff. Connor moved the cursor onto the photo and a small pop-up box appeared. It read, Margaret Trilling, clerical support staff.
Connor looked over at me, a smile on his face. “Allow me to introduce Millicent Millinfield.”
I stared for a long moment before adrenaline surged through me and pushed me to my feet. I paced back and forth from the windows to the kitchen doorway and back. Connor leaned against the cushions, resting his arms along the back of the couch.
“Talk about your curveballs. The murders aren’t part of the theft. They’re the consequences of it.” I tunneled my fingers through my hair. “It would be so easy. Just like Joe said. Simply change the routing information for the deposits. Any clerk with the right signature could do it.”
“I’ll buy that. Jepsen picks his stooge in advance. Probably approached Margaret what’s-her-name with the plan.” Connor leaned back on the chair again, rocking, staring at the ceiling as he did the mental gymnastics. “There’ve got to be checks in place for that, Sara.”
“Yeah. A reference check. Which Margaret probably couldn’t pass, but Millicent did with flying colors. The other fail-safe was requiring two signatures. While Jepsen was still around it was easy. They were partners. After he left, things got trickier, but they’re enterprising individuals.”
“So Millicent forges Burke’s signature . . .” Connor suggested.
“Or Masterson’s,” I shot back. “It doesn’t really matter which. What matters is that Burke found out when he was getting ready for his deposition.”
“And then Mitchell Burke, honest man, tells Jepsen, scumball. Why didn’t Burke go to Masterson?” Connor was looking directly at me, and I could practically feel the intellectual pulse as we pulled at opposite ends of the puzzle.
“Masterson’s nowhere to be found. He’s missing or maybe dead. Anyway, Burke was under subpoena as part of that whole court case thing. He was going to have to tell. And in the absence of his friend and mentor, Stuart Masterson . . .” I spread my hands like a preacher reaching out to his congregation.
“Mitchell Burke tells Masterson’s former partner.” Connor laced his fingers behind his head, once again seeking inspiration in the ceiling tiles before turning back to me.
“Giving Henry Jepsen a motive for killing Mitchell Burke. And that probably went down just the way we figured it. Burke turns his back. Jepsen clubs him with something handy, then stages the accident with the help of the secretary.”
“Or she could have hit him. Either way . . .”
“Right. Either way, they’re off pushing the car over a steep cliff on an icy night. They catch a break with the local cops, who are overworked, understaffed, and have seen real accidents happen just that way a hundred times. The report comes back a possible suicide.”
I sat in an armchair, tucking one leg underneath me. “That’s when their luck runs out. Emma doesn’t believe Mitch killed himself. She hires Matthew Cort to check it out.” I rested my chin on my folded hands, watching as several expressions washed over Connor’s features. “Matthew Cort looks at everyone around Burke at the time of his death. Which includes those who are now dead, as well as the living.”
I nodded.
“He makes calls to everyone’s former employers. Including a certain temp agency in Manhattan. Where he discovers that Millicent Millinfield is caring for her dying mother.”
Connor leaned back and stared at me, a half smile on his face. “So, Sherlock, how are we going to prove it?”
“Prove what?”
“There has to be a trail. Something that connects your greedy partner to his moll.”
“What’s a moll?”
“The lady friend of a guy with a questionable reputation.”
“Like me?”
He reached over and pushed a curl of my hair back behind one ear. “I don’t have a questionable reputation.”
“Really? That’s too bad. I was hoping maybe you knew somebody who knew somebody who could run a background check on our impostor secretary.”
“There’s always Sergeant Wesley.”
I grimaced. “I don’t think he’s too anxious to be doing me any favors, but you might have better luck.” I disconnected the computer and handed him the phone. I listened as he left a message, asking Wesley to call and leaving both the home and cell phone numbers.
“Any other ideas?”
Connor dialed again. He talked to someone for a couple of minutes, asking for background on Margaret Trilling. He told the other person about the agency and her picture on the Web site. Then he hung up.
“Now we wait,” Connor said.
“I hate waiting.”
“Really? You don’t say.”
I swatted at him. “You don’t like waiting any more than I do. Admit it.”
He shrugged. “So, it’s not my favorite thing.” “Let’s not,” I said.
“Let’s not what?”
“Wait.”
“We haven’t got any proof.”
“I’m not going to arrest him. I think we should just go over there and make sure he’s not headed for Rio or Canada or wherever.”
“It’s Wesley’s case, babe. We should let him handle it from here.”
I got out of my chair. “I should do lots of things, Connor. Are you coming?” I held out my hand.
He shook his head slightly, letting me pull him up from his chair. He followed me out of the apartment and down the stairs, opening the passenger door for me to get in. He leaned into the car as I put my seat belt on.
“What?” I asked.
“Smart is very sexy.”
I giggled, leaning forward to kiss him deeply. His hand cupped the back of my head and he let the kiss linger. He tasted like coffee. I loved coffee.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider going back upstairs and leaving the felon chase for another time?”
Connor’s phone rang. He answered it. From the side I heard, he could have been doing a survey for laundry soap. A lot of okay, reallys, yeahs.
“What?” I asked the second he was off the phone.
“Margaret Trilling is really her name.”
“And?” He was killing me.
“Three arrests, no convictions.”
I grabbed at his T-shirt. “For?”
“Fraud. Seems she liked the husband-wife con. Always worked with a partner until her last caper. She got a walk. Her partner got three to five.”
“So Millicent—I mean Margaret—if she were still grifting, would need a partner.”
“Yes.”
“Jepsen.”
“In the current context, I’d say that’s an affirm.”
“Bingo!”»
“Okay, tiger. Let’s go play your hunch. Just remember that we’re only sitting on Jepsen until Wesley gets there. He’s a killer. Probably armed. We’re just watching, and I’m calling the shots.”
Yeah, right. “Roger that,” I told him.
“Smart-ass.”
Chapter Thirty-three
“I told you he’d run. Coward.” Connor and I were crouched behind the hedge that ran alongside the driveway, fifty yards from Henry Jepsen’s open garage door. Jepsen’s black Mercedes had been backed half inside, half outside the garage with the trunk open. We watched as Jepsen, dressed in wrinkled suit pants and a short-sleeved white shirt, came and went through the garage’s interior door to the house, moving boxes into the trunk. The contents of the boxes seemed to spill out the tops, but we were too far away to make out any of the specific items.
Connor turned my chin toward him, and I watched as he pointed at me before raising a hand to his ear, mimicking a telephone call. I was shaking my head before he pointed back in the direction of the car. The cops weren’t going
to be any help. They were the reason this psycho was still walking the streets.
“No.” Connor placed his hand over my mouth, peering back in Jepsen’s direction. I looked, too, waiting for a moment as Jepsen brought another box to the trunk.
I turned back to Connor, who glared at me. I shook my head. I pointed to him, to me, then finger-walked for a second before pointing to Jepsen and twisting my hands as I pretended to wring his fat neck.
Connor shook his head emphatically. He pointed to me and back toward the road. I mouthed the word no. He put his palms together as if in prayer before placing a hand over his heart. A total manipulation. Crossing my arms over my chest, I shifted, my knees and legs beginning to ache from the squatting position. He touched his chest again before reaching up to cup my face, leaning over to place a soft kiss on my lips. He kept his eyes open, the green plea unwavering. He was totally cheating, playing the endearing-husband card, but I could feel myself softening. I scuttled back a step, creating a scant few inches between us. After making him wait for a long moment without looking away, I rolled my eyes and shrugged. He should have kept the smile to himself.
I checked for Jepsen. He’d disappeared back into the house, so I took the opportunity to drop to my hands and knees and crawl away from the house, following the hedge as it curved along the driveway toward the street, using the same screen of bushes we had used to creep closer to the house on our way in. Reaching the thick stand of pines that lined the street, I stood, keeping the boughs of one tree between me and the house while I rubbed at my bruised knees. I brushed at my clothes, stopping at the bulge in the front pocket of Connor’s brown windbreaker. Reaching into the pocket, I pulled the cell phone out. Damn him, he knew we had the phone all along.
I dialed Sergeant Wesley’s number, having committed it to memory days ago. I probably should just put it on speed dial. It rang twice before connecting to voice mail.
I pressed zero to bypass the mail and go back to the operator, waiting impatiently while Muzak played. Two minutes later I was still on hold. Impatiently, I ended the call and redialed. Reaching voice mail a second time, I left a message.
“This is Sara Townley. We’re at Henry Jepsen’s house in Magnolia. He killed Mitchell Burke, and we’ve got proof.” Maybe not proof, exactly, but I was in a crisis. “Unfortunately, he’s packing to go on a trip. A long trip. If you don’t want to let him to get away a second time, I suggest you get out here ASAP. We’re gonna try to stall him, but you’d better hurry.”
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