1 In For A Penny

by Maggie Toussaint

“I mean it. A vacation would do you a world of good. You ought to take Jonette and go up to Berkley Springs. Soaking in that mineral water and getting a massage or two would do wonders for you.”

  So would getting laid, but I didn’t see any help for that either. I wasn’t about to run off and leave Mama in charge of the girls for a long weekend. You had to stay right on top of teenagers or they ran all over you.

  I wasn’t sure Mama still had the right stuff anymore. I had visions of her being tied to a kitchen chair and stuffed in the coat closet as Charla and Lexy’s friends drank all the booze in the house, played Russian Roulette with the guns under my bed, and tore up the furniture.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said to placate her.

  * * * * *

  Britt Radcliff dropped by my office the next day. His sour expression could have sucked the joy out of an amusement park.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” I teased, but Britt didn’t crack a smile. So much for trying to lighten his mood.

  Britt flipped open a small notebook pad. “I’ve got Charlie Jones down at the station. He says he was here the night bank guard Bennett Glazier was killed. Is that true?”

  I wasn’t keen on it getting around that Charlie had slept over. “It was a one-time thing.”

  Did Britt think I was sleeping with Charlie? I flushed with heat. It shouldn’t matter what Britt thought but it did. I wished I could come right out and say that I wasn’t sleeping with my ex, but I didn’t want to broach such a humiliating subject.

  “Charlie’s been arrested for Glazier’s murder,” Britt explained. His rigid posture and curt tone implied that this was serious business indeed. “What time did he arrive and depart on the evening of the murder?”

  My heart skipped a beat. Charlie, arrested for the bank guard’s murder? I leapt to my feet so that Britt wasn’t looking down at me.

  Charlie needed my help. I wasn’t going to spend the next few years taking the girls to prison to visit their father. “He arrived between ten and ten-thirty p.m. I was watching that TV drama where half the program is devoted to cops and the other half is devoted to lawyers. I’d been watching the show for a while, but I wasn’t to the lawyer part yet. Charlie spent the night and he left the next morning to take the girls to school. That time I know for certain. It was a quarter of eight.”

  “Any chance he slipped out during the night?”

  “It’s possible but extremely unlikely. Dudley’s dog would have heard him moving about the house. If Charlie had been up after we went to our separate beds, I would have known about it.” It was extremely clever of me to have worked the fact that I didn’t sleep with Charlie into the conversation.

  Britt scribbled down a few notes on his pad. His stern features were inscrutable. Was my recollection of the evening the same as Charlie’s? “What time did Bennett Glazier die?”

  “The medical examiner believes it was after midnight, but there are a few hours’ variance.”

  So Charlie might not be off the hook. It was possible he murdered the guard first and then came over to my house. “Do you have any other suspects for Glazier’s murder?”

  Britt sighed heavily. “A whole bank full, but the evidence points to Charlie. He accessed files on his bank computer the night of the bank guard’s murder. He didn’t have an alibi for either murder. We have a ballistics match. The same gun was used for both murders.”

  My skin prickled. Charlie was in big trouble here. “But you said the evidence pointed to Jonette not so long ago.”

  Britt sighed. “Jonette has a solid alibi for the second murder.”

  “I can’t believe Charlie killed anyone.”

  “Reliable sources confirmed Charlie and Dudley had a heated discussion at the bank on the afternoon of Dudley’s murder. This information didn’t come out until we questioned the bank employees after the second murder.”

  Discussion? I doubted it was that civil. Charlie was used to being king in his own domain. Dudley had clearly encroached on Charlie’s territory. “What about?”

  Britt looked pained. “Stay out of this. Charlie Jones wasn’t right for you, and it always boggled my mind that you couldn’t see it. Don’t get sucked into his problems.”

  I exhaled slowly. Britt didn’t trust Charlie. Unless new evidence came to light, Britt would lock him up and throw away the key. “Charlie used people, but he could be generous and charming.” Why didn’t Britt see that?

  “He’s a long way from that person now. Rumor has it his wife’s been sleeping around on him and he’s unhappy about that.”

  Who wouldn’t be?

  “We have a cold-blooded killer on the loose,” Britt said. “Lock your doors and stay in at night.”

  He couldn’t scare me off so easily. “You’re concentrating on the wrong people. What about Robert Joy?”

  “What about him?”

  “He blames Dudley for that White Rock boondoggle. I bet he lost a lot of money because of Dudley’s wink and promise business philosophy.”

  “You think these killings are related to Old Man Wingate’s farm? Isn’t that far-fetched?”

  “If you don’t like Robert Joy for the murders, what about my oddball neighbor? Ed Monday hides out in his house and he has a problem with the bank.” I took a deep breath. “Right before Dudley’s death, Ed was escorted from the bank by the security guard. The same guard who is now dead.”

  Britt scribbled a few words in his notepad, then flipped it shut. “Do you suspect everyone in Hogan’s Glen?”

  “All I know for sure is who isn’t the killer. It’s not Charlie or Jonette or Bitsy or Violet Cooper.”

  Britt visibly started. “Violet Cooper? How does she fit into this?”

  Did he think I was making all of this up? “She blames Dudley for the schoolteacher pension fund swindle. He was on the board when all that went down. But I spoke with her and she’s legally blind. She couldn’t do it, although her son Jasper is certainly angry and hotheaded enough to have killed Dudley.”

  “I don’t like you snooping into everyone’s business.”

  “That’s the beauty of this. Accountants get paid for snooping through dirty laundry.”

  “You know anything about these murders, you jolly well better tell me.”

  “I told you everything I know.”

  “Investigating homicides is dangerous. Stay out of this.” Britt stormed out of my office without waiting for my reply.

  I ground my back teeth together and ignored the resulting jaw pain. Wasn’t it obvious that I was doing his job? My friends and family weren’t killers.

  If Britt didn’t see that, how was he going to solve these murders? No matter what he said, he needed my help. I was clearly better at detecting than he was. Britt should have stuck to teaching Sunday School.

  Chapter 21

  Lexy had a twenty-four hour vomiting bug and I did the Mom thing for the next few days. By the time I got my life back I was in desperate need of golf therapy. It had been two weeks since I’d swung a golf club and that was unacceptable.

  My phone rang Wednesday morning as I headed out to my golf league. I didn’t want to be late. But what if the call was one of my girls with an emergency? I walked back into the kitchen and grabbed the phone. “Hello.”

  “Cleo, it’s Charlie.”

  Did he think I wouldn’t recognize his voice? “Yes?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  I glanced at my watch. If I were late checking in at the course, I would lose my preassigned tee time in the first group. And since the tee times rotated, I didn’t often get the chance to be in the group that went first. “I’m in a hurry. Can’t this wait?”

  “This won’t take but a minute. I looked into that bank loan of your sketchy neighbor. All the paperwork is here. Ed Monday took out a loan, all right. And he hasn’t paid a penny back to the bank.”

  Ed took out a loan? “I don’t get it. I saw the man almost have a heart attack when he opened his statement. He swears
he didn’t take out a loan.”

  “Believe me, Ed Monday took out a loan.”

  The sarcasm in Charlie’s voice wasn’t lost on me. I well knew that tone. It implied that I’d wasted his valuable time.

  “All the paperwork is in order,” Charlie said. “Dudley was always very thorough about that sort of thing.”

  The hair on the back of my neck snapped to attention. “Dudley?”

  “Dudley was the Loan Origination Officer for this loan. Why do you find that strange?”

  “My neighbor said he’d talked to Dudley and that Dudley promised him he’d get it straightened out. Why would Ed lie to me?”

  “I’ve never felt good about Ed Monday living next door to you and Charla and Lexy. He probably killed Dudley over this loan. I want you and the girls out of that house today.”

  I glanced up at the clock, aware that my morning was ticking away. What a time for Charlie to be concerned for our safety. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Ed’s my neighbor, not a career criminal.”

  “How much do we know about him, Clee?” Charlie asked. “He hasn’t lived here very long. He’s a stranger, really.”

  It didn’t matter that I’d had the exact same thoughts myself. The fact that Charlie believed my neighbor was guilty automatically pushed my buttons to defend Ed. I gazed at the shuttered house next door and it didn’t appear threatening to me. Sleeping maybe, but not threatening. “I’ve lived next door to the man for over a year. He doesn’t stay outside long enough to murder anyone.”

  “I don’t know, Cleo. What causes a person to snap? How do you know he got upset over a bank statement? What if it was something else?”

  What was he implying now? That I didn’t know what I was talking about? “I saw the statement, you blockhead,” I shouted into the phone. “What if it happened just as Ed said? That he didn’t take out a loan and when Dudley looked into it and discovered Ed was right, what if the real killer took Dudley out of the game? For that matter, what if Dudley and the killer were in league together?”

  “Dammit, Cleo. Dudley was my best friend. He was not a crook. He wouldn’t have killed for the fifty thousand this loan is worth. Not when he routinely administered million-dollar trust funds. Fifty thousand would have been small change to Dudley.”

  How could Charlie remain so loyal to a man who’d had an affair with his wife? “Look. I don’t have time to discuss this right now. I’m late for an appointment.” I took a deep breath. “Thanks for looking into Ed Monday’s banking problem. I appreciate your help.” The conversation I had with Britt Radcliff came back to me. Was Charlie out on bail or had the charges against him been dropped? “Are you out on bail?”

  “Yes, that Britt Radcliff has it in for me. I’d still be rotting behind bars if you hadn’t corroborated my story.” He paused for a moment before adding, “Thanks for saying I slept over.”

  His intimate tone irked me. Did he think we were a team now that we were being civil to each other? He’d better think again. “I’m surprised you told anyone.”

  “When faced with jail or an upset wife, I’ll take an upset wife any day. By the way, Denise is furious with me. She’s sure I slept with you and she accused me of cheating on her. That’s rich.”

  I rolled my eyes at the phone. I didn’t want to hear about Charlie’s sex life or lack thereof. I had enough problems of my own in that area. “I would rather not have this discussion with you. Thanks for looking into Ed’s loan. Bye.”

  I clicked the phone off before he could say another word. If he was having trouble with Denise, he’d have to work that out on his own. I was no longer his sounding board. I was his ex-sounding board and I didn’t have to do it any longer.

  I breezed into the golf course parking lot, and Christine Strand fairly spit at me. “We were ready to give your tee time away, Cleo. If you need to warm up, I’m moving someone else in your slot. Your foursome is ready to go and the next one is on deck.”

  I managed a tight smile. “Sorry, I got hung up at the last minute. I’ll be right back.”

  I bopped into the pro shop and was instantly blindsided by a beaming Rafe Golden in a crimson polo and dark slacks. Had he greeted everyone with that gigawatt smile this morning? “I need to sign in for the Ladies League,” I mumbled, steering clear of the golf club display.

  “Walking or riding?” he asked. His bedroom eyes swept my length. I could feel myself warming under his perusal. This was lust. A biological reaction. I wasn’t responsible for the way I responded to him. My brain chimed in to remind me that I was taking this slowly. Rafe flirted outrageously with every woman in the club.

  “Riding.” Who would walk when they could ride? I had never figured that part of the sport out. Driving those little golf carts around was more than half of the fun. A better question would have been, are you going to drive the cart or entrust your life to someone else?

  “Morning, Cleo.” Jonette sauntered in behind me. Her skintight matching lavender top and shorts looked like a breath of leftover Easter in the pro shop. “Morning, Rafe.”

  Oh goody. Jonette was here to watch me melt under the hot gaze of the golf pro. “Morning, Jonette,” I said. “You in the first group?” I tore my gaze from Rafe.

  “I am now. I offered Betty a two for one deal at the tavern if she’d swap times with me.”

  “Great. Are we riding together?”

  Jonette appeared to think for a moment. “Gosh, I don’t know. It’s so hard to choose between you and Christine.”

  I flicked a quick glance to Rafe, who’d given up the pretense of working the cash register. He leaned over the counter to catch our every syllable. “I was looking forward to riding with Alveeta, myself,” I said.

  “You do that, sweetie. You take Alveeta and I’ll take Christine. We can dump them both deep in the woods and they’ll never find their way back to civilization. Rafe wouldn’t mind, would you?”

  Rafe grinned at Jonette. “Anything you ladies want is fine with me. Although it would be best if you didn’t discover more dead bodies. That’s bad for business.”

  That thought was sobering. Had it only been two weeks ago that I’d found Dudley? It seemed like a lifetime ago. So much had happened that I didn’t feel like the same person.

  I snatched a cart key from the plastic bin next to the cash register. “I believe it’s my turn to drive.”

  Jonette held out her hand. “Think again. It’s my turn until you beat me. Hand it over, sister.”

  I hated when she was right. At this rate, I’d be a hundred years old before I was driving the cart again. Before leaving, I exchanged another one of those earth-moving glances with Rafe.

  Jonette must have been singed with the afterburn. As I strapped my clubs in her cart she asked, “Are you sleeping with him?”

  I arched my eyebrows at her. “No commitment, no sex with Cleo.”

  Rafe Golden was in the same category as chocolate cake, ice cream, and strawberry daiquiris. Bad news. I could devour a whole tub of ice cream when I was feeling needy.

  Jonette punched me in the shoulder. “That man is after you, mark my words.”

  The new and improved Cleo was okay with his pursuit, but I didn’t know how to respond. As soon as sex entered my romantic equation, additional variables came into play.

  Logistics, performance anxiety, old lingerie, countless fears, personal hygiene. The obstacles multiplied as I thought more about having sex with Rafe. Better not to think about it.

  We worked our way down the number one fairway under the disapproving glares of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I’d already used six strokes to get my ball to the fringe of the first green, including one short tour through the woods. I selected my nine iron for a little pitch and run shot, hoping for solid contact so that I’d have a short putt to hole out.

  Christine’s ball lay in the lower sand trap, Alveeta’s ball balanced on the downhill slope behind the green. Jonette’s third shot cackled gleefully on the green.

  At this rate, Jonette wou
ld drive the cart for the rest of the season. There was no way I could beat her today without asking for extra strokes and even that wasn’t a sure thing.

  I took dead aim at the pin and struck the ball firmly. My ball rolled right into the cup like it was supposed to. I gave a yippee squeal and danced up to the pin to pull my ball out.

  Celebration. Now this was something I hadn’t done in a while. I’d missed it. The new Cleo wanted to have more moments like this. I threw my ball high in the air and caught it on the fly.

  “Lucky duck,” Jonette said.

  My success went right to my head. “How about we switch to match play for the remainder of the round?”

  “Get serious,” Jonette said. “One chip in and you think you can take me? Your luck isn’t that good.”

  “This is going to be my day. I just know it.”

  Jonette laughed at my cockiness. “I’ll spot you two strokes a hole. What am I going to win?”

  “I’m going to win a home-cooked meal.”

  Jonette’s eyes twinkled. “Dinner and a dare.”

  “What kind of dare?”

  “Winner’s choice.”

  We’d played this game a lot as teens. A shiver of reckless anticipation sped down my spine. “Definitely.”

  With three holes to go, we were even in the match. That’s when disaster struck. Alveeta casually mentioned something about the bank. I wasn’t so swept up in my golf game that I had forgotten all about the murders of two bank employees. What else was going on at that bank?

  “Excuse me,” I interrupted. “Did you say your daughter was having trouble at the bank?”

  Alveeta nodded. Her luminous brown eyes glowed with motherly pride. “Shaquell works in credit-card collections down at the bank. Folks swear they’re all paid up but Shaquell has unpaid invoices that prove they’re lying.”

  I knew some people didn’t keep up with their credit-card payments, but to have many complaints that something was amiss with their accounts was unusual. Best of all, this new bank problem supported my theory that the murders were related to money.

  Dudley and Charlie were bank vice-presidents. Were they aware of what had been going on? My instincts had been wrong about Charlie’s personal life. What if the police were right to suspect him of the murders?