Before the shop opened, Laura remembered to color in the bar with markers up to a higher level and put in the dollar amounts on both donation posters for the fire station and the police station.
Throughout the morning, she continued to sell popcorn, wax green teeth, green tees, Irish proverbs and curses, and Jenna’s tote bags, but the huge numbers were beginning to wane as the days before St. Patrick’s Day decreased. People were getting ready for the parade and gala, but the real draw now was the contest and the kids getting their pictures taken through the face-holes in Kelly’s hand-painted leprechaun board.
Around noon, Laura Keene got a phone call from Police Chief Arthur Mallory.
thirty-five
Chief Mallory’s phone call had been a surprise. For one thing, she had never met him. For another, he had never met her. He asked her to stop by the station after work. He wanted to engage her services as a consultant. Laura agreed to come to the station and talk to him as soon as her business closed for the day.
She was too busy to think anything more about the call and didn’t have time to text Connor about it. Contest entries continued to pile up as she stuffed them harder and harder to fit in the box. More and more guesses. More entry money to cover the cost of the theater tickets, other prizes, and the chocolate. She was getting closer to the black on this contest, at which point any extra cash would go to charity, in this case, split evenly between the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts.
“St. Patrick’s Day better come quickly, or you’ll need another box,” one of her customers remarked.
During a brief lunch break, Laura checked the bidding again and saw it creeping closer to her maximum bid amount.
Then she returned to her customers for more St. Patrick’s Day sales. She also put the coming interview with Mallory completely out of her mind.
•••
It was early afternoon outside town. The two cars were near nothing in any direction, except each other.
“Okay, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but that’s not what I paid you the last time.” The big stash of cash would have to cover all this as well as the trip overseas. That better happen soon or there wouldn’t likely be enough money left for that. And in Europe and Asia, they had different ways of helping people in pain.
The dealer took off his sunglasses.
“Look, I’m getting you the best deal I can—”
“But sometimes I feel on top of the world or forget where I parked my car or like I could kill somebody. I can’t have that happening in the middle of an important meeting at work. I’d get fired. Then how would I pay you?”
“Look at it this way. Your pain is gone. As long as you take the pills exactly as I tell you, you’ll be fine. I’ll give you a break today. Let’s see if it works for you, okay? Then later we can talk about…money. Let’s just get you better.”
The buyer popped a pill followed by half a bottle of water. It wasn’t long before the worries of the previous two hours began to evaporate. And the strength returned. Into the car, turning the key, waving and grinning to the dealer who waved back, and off down the road at twice the speed limit.
“Boy, you got a gift, boss,” the dealer’s muscle said. “That’s the stronger stuff, too, isn’t it?”
The dealer just nodded. Pretty soon that buyer would be ready for pure meth and willing to do anything to get it.
•••
The rest of the afternoon at Second Treasures was fun. Laura enjoyed the children more than anything, with their honest and clear joy at playing leprechaun. It was harder than usual to close the door promptly at five o’clock and shut down for the day.
But she had an appointment at the police station, brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, washed her face and hands, making sure there was no green caramel from the popcorn on her anywhere, grabbed her bag and took off to meet the police chief.
He was not as tall as Connor, older and less solidly built. He probably worked harder to stay fit than the younger officers. Her father had told her it wasn’t as easy as it had been in his youth, but you had to do it to run after the bad guys if you wanted to catch them.
Mallory didn’t keep her waiting. He called her in almost as soon as she reached the top of the staircase, right after she noticed that Connor’s office was empty. When she sat in his office, she noticed that his eyes told her he had seen a lot in his lifetime as a peace officer in the State of Minnesota. He was younger than her father was when he and her mother were murdered, but he looked older with a face filled with creases and lines. Laura had the pictures to prove her memories were true.
He got right down to business after shaking her hand.
“I want to hire you as a consultant.”
“How do you know I would be helpful to the officers?”
“You have a reputation in the town for having a keen mind—no, I’m not meaning that to be a pun. Sorry.”
His voice in person was more gravelly than on the phone.
“No, I didn’t take it that way. But thank you.”
“Please just fill out the paperwork and sign here. We have some challenges going on right now and I want them resolved as quickly as possible. That means getting all the sharp minds together that I can find. Sergeant Fitzpatrick tells me he mentioned this to you and that you might be interested. And before you ask, I know the two of you are dating. He disclosed that. I don’t have a problem with it.”
“Where do I sign? You know I can’t promise anything except to do my best to help.”
“I met your father twice when I was a young officer. If you have even a pinch of his qualities, you’ll be helping us. And to start, I want this business with the bank cleared up. I know the FBI is working the case, but so are we working the Wright murder. New evidence has come up, and I’m convinced the two are related. Ah, here’s Sergeant Fitzpatrick now. He’ll read you into everything we have. I’ll get you a copy of what you signed before you leave.”
And he rose, shook her hand again, and turned her over to Connor.
•••
In his office and behind closed doors and blinds, Connor gave Laura some of the details she hadn’t known before, but many of which, surprisingly or not surprisingly, she had already guessed. He did tell her something new that she hadn’t expected.
Aaron Nilsson had come forward and shared with the FBI that he wouldn’t be surprised if Sabina Morello wasn’t involved more than she said. He had trusted her and given her accesses to get into all the systems, and she was very skilled in everything she did.
Laura’s mouth was open and her eyes wide.
“He threw her under the bus?”
“Pretty much.”
“But you don’t seem worried.”
“I was going by your gut feeling about her because mine was the same. I just needed proof. My friend Nolan, the senior FBI agent in charge of the bank investigation, said their IT forensics team has been able to trace all of Sabina’s movements in the system. It doesn’t add up to her doing anything out of the ordinary. As far as remote access is concerned, it looks like Paul Dotson did more remote logins than anyone else they can trace so far, but Sabina only logged in remotely a few times. They were able to restore what she did, and it was regular work that she finished and nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Then who did it?”
“The FBI found something called a dual-firewall which in itself is not unusual in a bank’s network for security purposes, but there’s something fishy in what they found and they’re not giving up. They’re still digging in the hole. I’m confident they’ll find what we’re looking for.”
“Someone else who’s been hacking into the network or perhaps even left themselves a back door to get in,” Laura finished for him.
“You watch way too much television.”
But Laura had already moved on to something else.
“Oh, those. We found the dress they came from, shoved into the back of Jessica Wright’s closet. Looked like someone did some cutting with scissors or a knife to make it look like the dress was coming apart.”
Laura looked horrified.
“That dress was made of real gold fibers.”
“We know. And Jessica’s finances haven’t revealed any large sums of money going in. But she has been cashing out her savings and retirement funds on a regular basis over the past year or so. Any money she had is gone. There’s no evidence of where it went or was spent.”
“Could she have bought that dress with the money? From what I hear of her, and it isn’t much, but it doesn’t seem like her lifestyle.”
“The dress was paid for with a credit card that’s in her name but doesn’t appear to be connected with her credit reports. It’s connected with a post office box, not her home address.”
“Somebody got a credit card in her name, opened a post office box, and bought the dress. But they would need a really high credit limit for that, wouldn’t they?”
Connor nodded.
“There’s more. Everything in her apartment has the scent of lavender. She must have put it everywhere—drawers, closets, couch cushions—literally, everywhere. The gold dress couldn’t have been there very long because it didn’t smell of lavender.”
“When did you find the dress?”
When Connor told her, she spoke again.
“Jessica was already dead by that time. Somebody wanted to make sure the police found that dress. Any forensic evidence on it?”
“Yes, actually, but it’s still in process.”
“Yikes!” Laura exclaimed as the idea hit her. “Jessica was the one being blackmailed. That’s where her money went.”
“That’s the line we’re pursuing. I’ll know more after I talk with Nolan tomorrow.”
“Your answer to all of this is at the bank. The golden threads will lead you to the killer. Keep them safe and secure. You’re dealing with a very skilled and clever individual, and that means anything can happen, and they can probably hack into anything, even the Raging Ford Police Department.”
•••
At dinner, Laura sat thinking, chin in her hand, elbow on the table. She picked up the remote to turn on the television. Almost immediately, the cat appeared and stood in her way of seeing whatever was on the screen.
“Now, what? Do you think I made a mistake?”
But Isabella hopped to the table and perched herself next to Laura and rubbed against the arm that held up her chin. The cat purred.
Then the cat jumped to the laptop and gave Laura a glare and flicked her tail.
“Oh, come on,” Laura complained. “That was not enough warm and fuzzy. I’m still thinking about the new career I’ve just agreed to. I’m not sure I did the right thing. I want to think about it a little more. And I could use some support.”
But the cat murrowed at her and stayed on top of the laptop.
“Okay, okay. I’ll check the bid. You’re right. I almost forgot in all the excitement.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the bidding which had slowed considerably as the bidders were all waiting until the last minute to get in a super bid. She waited and waited, along with them. At four minutes to midnight, Laura put in her super bid and crossed her fingers.
Isabella purred.
Laura won.
The exquisite antique glass pieces were hers.
thirty-six
It was Wednesday morning. And every Wednesday, there was blasting at the Raging Ford Mine. Today, the engineers placed an exact quantity of controlled explosives along a specific ridge in the huge open pit mine. The explosives varied between dynamite, ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, and other substances dependent on the placement and purpose. Today, the engineers were using dynamite for what they needed to happen to open up the area where the next layer of taconite was likely to be found.
The sun was bright in a cloudless sky, a bit unusual for mid-March, but everyone had noticed the changes in the weather patterns in recent years. Some said it was the climate change from what people had done in the name of progress; others said it was the natural order of cyclic changes that had occurred throughout the history of the world since it had broken apart from the other bits of flotsam and jetsam in space and began its own journey around the sun. Nobody knew for sure, but the arguments and discussions could be heard endlessly, especially over a pint in the local bars, and were not likely to stop any time soon.
The engineers were setting the timers on the blasting caps when one of them noticed a sharp glint where the sun was hitting something that was clearly bigger than a breadbox. It was on the far side of the pit from where they were working, but safety regulations were king here as they were in all mining operations. He squinted through his polarized sunglasses at the object.
He called a halt to the activity and pulled out his binoculars, putting them over his sunglasses.
“Looks like some kid’s bike,” he called out to the others then held his hand up again to stop everyone. As he radiated his binoculars around the general area of the bicycle, he zeroed in on what he believed to be the remains of a human being. It was not what he had ever seen here, not in all the years he’d worked this mine, and nothing he had ever wanted to see.
“Call 911,” he radioed to the mining crew that waited with some of the biggest machines in the world…enormous diggers, shovels, and loaders, in a location far from today’s explosion site, far from where the engineer saw the body and the bicycle. The miners would not be operating their equipment or taking any blasted rock or ore out of the ground today.
It was the first Wednesday in over twenty-two years that no blasting was done in the mine at noon.
•••
It was nearly noon, and Laura Keene, as everybody else in the town of Raging Ford, expected to hear a blast and maybe a slight ground shake, but sometimes not. The mine was not that close to the town, a couple of miles north along the southern edge of the Mesabi Range that continued to run northeast up through the state near Hibbing, Minnesota, closer to the Canadian border. But the blasts could still be heard, every Wednesday, the kind of noise and sometimes vibration that one grows up with, like the mini-earthquakes in California that can wake someone up at night and they turn over and go right back to sleep. And like those mini-earthquakes, the residents of Raging Ford and other nearby towns heard the blasting every Wednesday but didn’t really hear it.
Laura was selling her last three bags of green-tinted buttery caramel popcorn and figuring she would be making popcorn during her lunch break and trying to figure out where she could make room for the antique etched glass collection she had won in the auction. Plus she had to make sure her orders for bunny ears, baskets, rabbit teeth, egg decorating kits and supplies, and
cotton tails that stuck on with Velcro would all get here on time.
And she also had to figure out that very shortly now, she actually might need a second box for the guesses on the number of chocolate coins in the big bowl in her front window. The excitement over what she considered her “little contest” hadn’t slowed, and every day, she diligently changed the dollar amounts of donations from the contest entries for the fire station’s new microwave so everyone could see the progress. She knew they would get their new microwave soon. It felt good that the community was helping. Erica begged Laura to let her eat up the chocolate coins after the contest was over. And that reminded Laura that she needed to find a way to give out the gold coins, after giving a good amount to Erica, of course. Perhaps in the parade or at the gala? Was that even allowed?
And the new information on Jessica Wright and the golden dress. Wow. So much to think about.
The money from the popcorn bags was also g
rowing the numbers for the repairs of the brass railing at the police station. Every morning, she changed the number and drew the bar up higher. She wished she could do more. It would take a lot of fund raisers and a longer time to come up with the money for that repair. Now she was getting focused on the spring holidays and Easter. She had to think of something unique and fun so people wouldn’t mind parting with a few quarters now and then.
That’s when she heard it. Or rather she didn’t.
Everyone in the store noticed the silence of the noon hour, people walking past, a man on a bicycle checking his watch. Shortly after that, they heard the sirens—distant but coming from several directions, some from the highway—all in the direction of the mine.
There was no doubt that something very bad had happened.
•••
Crowds were gathering outdoors on the sidewalks and the streets. Cars stopped. Everyone looked to the sky as if there were a solar eclipse. They looked around at each other.
What was most notable was the hushed atmosphere, with folks whispering as if afraid to speak aloud. They could still hear sirens in the background. It was the air of waiting; everyone was waiting.
Miles Gunnarsson and Aaron Nilsson had been eating lunch at the Valencia Café across the street from Second Treasures, and they wove their way around the stopped traffic to cross the street and talk with Laura who stood outside her shop door. It looked as if everyone was checking their phones, texting someone for verification that they were okay.
“What happened?” Nilsson asked.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”
“It’s one thing for there to be no blast on Wednesday, but when you hear sirens…” Miles left his sentence unfinished.
“I was a teenager the last time this happened,” Nilsson said. “One of the miners got hurt and by the time they got to him, it was too late to do the blast. They had to postpone it a week. The hospital was geared for the Wednesday blasts and it was too cumbersome for them to change their routines.”
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