Beware False Profits (24 page)

At last I understood the problem. “I think it’s pretty swell you’re worried about her.”

“Somebody has to,” Teddy said.

I’m afraid worrying about people is going to be Teddy’s mission in life. Just like her father’s.

Ed and I worked on dinner preparation together, and as he made the salad and I made the pasta sauce, I told him what I’d figured out about the Cinderella crisis.

“Will you talk to Teddy?” I finished. “She’s having a moral crisis, and that’s your bailiwick.”

“What do you think she wants to do?” He stole a few sunflower seeds before he sprinkled the rest on his salad. Ed’s salads are masterpieces of design, colorful layers that seem too pretty to toss—although that’s never stopped either of us.

I threw a handful of chopped mushrooms into my skillet and turned the heat up higher. “I don’t think she knows. But worrying about Rene is taking all the joy out of the play. She feels guilty she got what she wanted and Rene didn’t. And she’s figured out that Rene isn’t as lucky as she is in her daily life.”

“Doesn’t it seem like she should have a few years when she’s completely self-centered? I thought that was more or less the definition of childhood. She’ll have the rest of her lifetime to worry.”

Despite the words, I heard pride in his voice. “She takes after you.”

“So you say, but who’s the one in our family who’s running all over Emerald Springs trying to save everybody in sight? You’re trying to help so many people at once, I’m surprised you can keep them straight.”

I didn’t pick up even a hint of censure. “All of a sudden you sound pretty comfortable with this.”

“Maybe I’ve been doing some soul-searching.”

I let the mushrooms sizzle and put my arms around him. “At least you get paid for it. Nobody can say you’re not doing your job while you’re thinking about big moral issues.”

He rested his cheek against my hair. “We all serve in different ways. I guess yours is offbeat, but who am I to critique my children’s most important role model?”

I thought about that after the meal, when Ed took Teddy out for a heart-to-heart at Way Too Cool. I was still luxuriating in his support. I’d never considered what my girls were learning from my obsession with finding answers. But maybe there was more to this than being nosy. I really did care that bad people got caught and good people went free—although things were never quite that simple. I cared that justice triumphed because that enhanced my view of a world in balance. I liked helping people I loved or admired. I liked bringing closure.

I spent a full minute basking in the warmth of my own regard. Then I went upstairs and got the folders I’d brought home from Hazel’s and spread the contents on the kitchen table.

Ed and Teddy came home, and he took her upstairs to supervise bedtime. Deena watched a tape of
Zoey 101
, then went up to read before lights-out. Junie wandered through the kitchen on her way to and from the basement where she was dyeing wool. Lucy was sitting in a car somewhere hoping the neighborhood dogs were off on vacation.

Nobody needed me. I took advantage of that.

It was past nine before I began to see patterns emerging. I had separated the lists by dates, pairing the donations list with the list of inventory that most closely matched it and paying particular attention to donations that Hazel or someone had checked with a red pen.

I found proof that some of the food had made it into inventory, but I drew a blank too often. A farmer donated a side of beef, but the only record I could find was forty pounds of hamburger added to a food bank freezer a few days later. Forty pounds? Had the rest of the beef been used right away by the meals for seniors or homeless programs? Is that why it hadn’t been added to inventory?

A grocery store donated thirty crates of dried pasta because the packaging was updated. The warehouse inventory that week didn’t show a one. Could thirty crates of pasta be used so quickly that none made it to a shelf?

I jotted notes on every donation that didn’t appear. Three sheets of lined paper later, I stopped. This could go on all night. Maybe there were good explanations why donations weren’t showing up on the shelves, and maybe there weren’t. But the possibilities for abuse seemed endless. Even if the donations showed up temporarily, who was to say that from that point on, they reached their target?

Exposing fraud was going to take a lot more expertise than I had. A real exposé would take a forensic accountant. Clearly, I needed to get in touch with Roussos and tell him what I had learned and why it pertained to Hazel’s murder. If he believed me, he would take it from there.

I hoped Roussos wouldn’t shrug this away just because it came from me. Hazel had suspected abuse, and she had attempted to track down the culprit. Look what had happened to her.

I was glad I shopped for every single ingredient in our dinner myself and that Ed and I had fixed it with our own hands.

Passing the phone on my way upstairs, I thought about Phil O’Hara. I wondered if his observations would make Roussos take notice. Something on Hazel’s list had caught his eye.

I couldn’t help myself. I stopped and thumbed through the phone book. There he was. If I called him, he’d have to respond verbally, right? He couldn’t count on body language to make his point.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I dialed the telephone. O’Hara answered immediately. I launched in after “hello,” apologizing for calling him at home. Then before he could answer—which seemed a long shot anyway—I told him what I’d been doing this evening. I wondered if he had anything to add, because the figures seemed suspicious to me. And unless he could explain the discrepancies, I was going to have to show them to the police.

“Something funny going on,” he said.

I waited, but that was it. “In other words, some of the donations aren’t being used to feed the hungry? I’m not imagining it?”

“Nope.”

I tried for clarification. “Then you’re saying somebody’s committing fraud?”

“Could be.”

“Mr. O’Hara, how can you tell?”

The silence went on so long I wondered if he had hung up. Finally he spoke. “We got so low on beef a month ago, we were serving beans and rice to our old folks. Macaroni and cheese, all that carrot-eater trash.”

I didn’t take offense. “And I’m guessing you saw donations of beef on that list I showed you. For the same time?”

“Yep.”

“Who do you think’s cheating?”

“Chad Sutterfield. Miss Hunter and I showed him your list and told him so this afternoon.”

I nearly dropped the phone. “You and Cilla confronted him?”

“She came down to talk to me and saw me with your lists. We discussed it. Soon as he got back we asked him. I told him I knew about the beef. He tried to tell me I was imagining it.”

“You know, Hazel Kefauver was murdered, maybe because she realized something was up in the warehouse. You’d better take extra care locking your doors tonight.” And maybe I needed to hang up and call Cilla right away, then Roussos.

O’Hara gave a humorless laugh, just like the one he’d favored me with when I told him Joe was supposed to be in New Jersey. “You know where the food bank gets most of its venison?”

I made a guess. “You?”

“Yep. You ever hear this old joke? If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat? Well, somebody tries to get in my house, the humanitarians are going to have a feast.”

I hung up and swallowed a few times to make sure I still could. I was about to pick up the phone when it rang again.

“Aggie?”

I recognized Lucy’s voice. “Boy, have I got a story for you,” I said.

“Aggie, the food bank’s on fire!”

For a moment I couldn’t absorb this. And when I did I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

That didn’t stop Lucy. “I was in the neighborhood with my client. We were driving around when we saw the flames shooting into the sky and heard the sirens. We came over to check it out. We can’t get too close, but it looks like the fire’s in the warehouse. And it’s some fire. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Ed might be coming to terms with my avocation, but when I told him why I was on my way to Helping Hands, he threw on jeans and a T-shirt and told me he was coming along. While I waited, I tried to reach Cilla, but no one was home.

The fact that nothing much happens in Emerald Springs means that when something does, it becomes a community event. The closer we got to the food bank, the denser the traffic. We finally parked some distance away and hiked in. I was glad when I realized we were moving a lot faster on foot.

As we drove I told Ed what I’d learned tonight. Now he questioned me as we jogged toward the scene. Flames leapt into the evening sky, and the air grew steadily thicker and smokier as we got closer. Showers of embers threatened to catch nearby woods on fire. I thought it was going to be a long night for our firefighters.

“This O’Hara character actually said he thought it was Chad Sutterfield who was ripping them off?” Ed asked.

“He confronted Chad. To his face.”

“Did he say why he thought it was Chad?”

“Getting him to say that much was miraculous. He didn’t provide me with reasons.”

“Do you think O’Hara will talk to Roussos?”

“I think Roussos will make him. But I bet they call in an investigator who’s trained in this kind of scam and can get all the evidence they need through the records.”

“The books probably look fine. I’m sure the food bank has to have audits annually, maybe more often. It sounds like Hazel got hold of a list of donations before it was doctored. The investigator can use her list to go right to the donors and see if their own records match hers.”

“I can’t understand how Chad got away with it.”

“More likely
they
, don’t you think? Not Chad alone. Some of the employees must have been in on this with him.”

“I guess. It would take a crew to pick up donations and store them in somebody’s garage or barn, then haul them out of state.”

“They were stealing food from hungry people. I hope they catch every single person who was involved.”

We were about fifty yards away now. I could see the road was blocked by a couple of cop cars, and men and women in uniform were holding back the crowds on foot.

We slowed and I began to search the crowd around us. “I wonder where Lucy is, and I wonder if Roussos is here. I’d like to tell him what I discovered. What are the chances this fire is a coincidence? And if it is arson, Hazel’s list could be the match that set it.”

Ed shook his head. “Look at that.”

We got as close as we were allowed to. In the distance the smoke was so thick I couldn’t tell which buildings were burning. I thought about the hard work that had gone into making Helping Hands a thriving enterprise, the store where families were able to maintain their pride and still supply their needs, the garden with so much time and love invested.

My eyes burned, but not from smoke or soot. I unzipped my purse and rummaged for a tissue.

“One question answered,” Ed said, nudging me. I looked where he was pointing and saw Roussos moving through the crowd toward the barrier closest to us.

I took off after him, and Ed didn’t try to stop me. We wiggled through the crowd until I was in touching distance.

“Roussos. Kirk.”

Roussos turned and frowned, but he waited until I was almost on top of him.

“Why am I not surprised you’re here?”

“Do you know what’s burning? I can’t tell.”

“The warehouse.”

“Do you know if they can contain it?”

“They’re hoping.” He turned as if he planned to move on, but I put my hand on his arm.

“Listen, I have information you need.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“It’s about the food bank. It might have something to do with this. Somebody set this fire, didn’t they?”

I could see him debating with himself. Then he took my arm and pulled me up to the barrier through the crowd with him. Ed was right behind.

The cops doing crowd control let him through, and us along with him. The air was getting smokier, and the only light came from flames in the distance and headlights behind. I was in such a hurry to keep up I stumbled over a root and dropped my purse. Items spilled to the ground around it.

“I’m sorry. Hold on.” I grabbed my wallet and stuffed it back in, followed by a pack of tissues, my keys, and Maura’s, too, which had flown farther afield. I found a hairbrush and the original lists of Hazel’s that had started me down this road. Even in the dim light, I was pretty sure that was everything.

We stopped about ten yards beyond the barrier, and Roussos waited.

I held out the lists and told him what I knew, starting with the way I’d come to find them and ending with Cilla and O’Hara’s confrontation with Chad today. I explained what I thought had been happening and that even though it sounded petty, if these guys had been at it awhile, they had probably pocketed a lot of money.

“If Chad thought he was going to be caught, he might have done something crazy like set fire to the warehouse.”

“And when were you going to tell me all this?” he demanded, taking the lists and tucking them in a pocket. “When were you going to turn these over?”

“I’m sorry, but I only figured it out tonight. I was about to call you, then I heard about the fire.”