Dearly Depotted (13 page)

“It blew everyone away,” she gushed. “I could tell by the looks on their faces.”

I’ll bet it had.

“You don’t want it back, do you?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “It suits your decor to a
T
. I wouldn’t dream of moving it anywhere else.”

She smiled and blew a big bubble with her pink gum.

“Okay, Karl,” I said, “let’s go.”

“Now? Why? I don’t have to be anywhere.”

Karl didn’t seem to realize he was overstaying his welcome. No one needed a hormonally charged teenager hanging around, drooling all over the floor. “I need your help, that’s why.”

“I’m not finished with my water,” he protested, holding up the sweating glass.

“I’ll buy you a bottle,” I told him and grabbed an earlobe to drag him out the sliding door.

He yanked his head away, rubbing his lobe. “All right! You don’t have to rip my ear off.” He snatched his shirt from a lawn chair as we crossed the deck, and I could hear him grumbling as we walked around the house to the front yard. As soon as we were in his mother’s car I said, “What’s up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s pretty obvious you have a crush on Mrs. DeWitt.”

“You’re insane,” he said and slumped down in the passenger seat.

“How were you going to get home?”

“I figured Trudee would give me a lift.”

“It’s Mrs. DeWitt, not Trudee,” I reminded him.

“Whatever. You can drop me at the sports center.”

My ears perked up. “Mini-World sports center?”

“Yeah, why? Is that off-limits?”

I pulled off the road to call the shop. Grace answered on the second ring. “Have you talked to Richard yet?” I asked.

“Yes, dear. He said you’re welcome to stop by anytime.”

“I’m on my way there now. Any messages?”

“Just your mother, reminding you—”

“—about Friday-night dinner,” I finished with her. “Got it. I should be back at the shop in an hour. Tell Lottie that Karl is with me and I’ll explain why later.”

“Thanks a lot,” he muttered, shooting me murderous looks. “Like you never had a crush on anyone.”

Here was my chance to talk some sense into him. “I’ve had many crushes, and that’s why I’m doing you this favor now.”

He sat up, taking new interest in me.

“In high school,” I told him, “I was crazy about my biology teacher, and in college it was my speech professor, who used to let me hold his watch and time the other students’ speeches. I was sure that watch symbolized something. And then there was a mailman . . .”

He chortled. “A mailman?”

“Don’t laugh. I was only eleven years old. Besides, he was very charming, and he had nice legs. Mail carriers wear shorts in the summer. I remember following him down the block on my pink Rollerblades. I thought I was really hot stuff in those blades.”

That made Karl laugh so hard the car rocked as he slammed his body against the seat.

We pulled into the sports complex’s huge blacktop parking lot and parked near the main entrance. Karl got out of the car and started for the building, with me right behind.

“You’re not going to follow me around, are you?” he asked.

“Not even if someone paid me to do it. I have to see a man about a body.”

We walked up to the entrance where wide, glass doors slid open to admit us, letting out a blast of ice-cold air. Inside, I looked around, trying to decide which way to go. The huge, open room ahead of me looked like the lobby of an enormous hotel. There was a reception counter to my left, a sandwich shop to my right, a brightly patterned carpet on the floor, and a room straight ahead that extended as far as the eye could see, where the beeps, buzzes, and bells of video games could be heard.

Karl started off in the direction of the arcade, so I called, “Thanks for helping with the flowers today.”

“That’s cool,” he called over his shoulder.

“Are you staying here or coming back to the shop with me?”

“Staying. I’ll have one of my brothers pick me up later.”

I walked up to the semicircular counter, where a smiling girl greeted me with a cheery “How can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak with Richard Davis. My name is Abby Knight.”

She picked up a phone, made a call, and told me to take the elevator to the second floor. I found the stairs and used them instead. That container of Chunky Monkey ice cream in the freezer was just waiting for someone with a negative calorie count to dig into it.

At the top of the stairs I went through more glass doors into a reception area that was tastefully decorated in muted colors and artwork. A neatly dressed woman about fifty years old came out from behind a counter to usher me down a quiet hallway to an office at the far end. She opened the door and we both stepped inside, breathing in the tangy aroma of men’s cologne.

I gazed around the room in awe. Not only was the office itself gigantic, but so were the windows, the highly polished wood table that served as a desk, the leather chairs, the sofa, the floor-to-ceiling bookcase jammed with books, a bronze sculpture of a horse, and the paintings on the walls, all scenes of the Old West. Oddly, as big as it was, it still had a comfortable, cozy, denlike atmosphere that made me want to curl up with a good book and a cup of coffee.

“Abby Knight is here, Mr. Davis,” the woman said softly.

A burgundy leather chair behind the enormous desk rotated, and Richard Davis jumped up, striding around the desk to greet me, his hand outstretched. He had on a brown, Western-style shirt, string tie, and tan slacks, all of which set off his white hair, blue eyes, and tanned skin. I almost expected to see a ten-gallon hat parked nearby.

“Well, hello, little lady!” he said, clasping my hand hard enough to make me wince. It didn’t help that he had on a big silver and turquoise ring that dug into the tender flesh below my pinkie. “Great to see you again, although I wish it was under better circumstances. Sit down and take a load off. Adele, would you see what she’d like to drink, please?”

“Would you care for coffee, tea, iced tea, or a lemon-lime drink?” Adele asked with a pleasant smile.

“Iced tea would be great. Thanks.” I sank into one of a pair of buttery-soft, caramel-colored leather chairs opposite his desk. Richard took the other one, exuding confidence and charm. I could see why Grace found him attractive.

“I understand you have some questions for me about last night.”

“I do.” I dug through my purse and pulled out a tattered notebook and pen.

He leaned forward, pinning me in place with a commanding look. “Before we get started I want you to know something. I’m a private person and I don’t normally discuss my business with anyone but a few carefully chosen people. I’m doing this for Grace’s sake because I think the world of her and I understand her concern for my well-being. If it were just me, I’d tell the cops to take a long walk off a short pier. But I want to ease Grace’s mind, so I’m putting myself at your disposal.” He leaned back, elbows on the arms of the chair, hands folded on his stomach, and waited.

If he was the killer, he certainly knew how to put on a good front.

“We have a common purpose,” I told him. “I’m doing this for Grace’s sake, too, so let’s start by reviewing what I know about your movements yesterday evening.” I read from my notes. “You left the banquet center immediately after the ceremony, around eight forty-five, and used the back stairs to come up to your office; no one was here to verify either your arrival or your departure.”

“That’s right.”

“Why did you use the back entrance?”

“It’s easier and quicker.”

“What was your reason for coming here?”

“Business.”

I thanked Adele for the iced tea, then said to Richard, “Could you be more specific?”

“I had a big deal in the works and it was in danger of falling through. I had to come back here to handle it because this is where I keep all my information.”

I wrote it down, with a note to ask Adele what she knew about the deal. Richard hadn’t waited until she left the room to talk, so obviously she was one of those carefully selected confidants. “Grace said you’d received a call on your cell phone. To whom did you speak?”

“It wasn’t a call; it was a voice-mail message. I had to come here to check data on the computer and make a decision, which I did; then I sent out an encrypted file over the Internet.”

“What time was that?”

He got up and typed something into his computer. “Nine twenty-three p.m.”

“You returned to the banquet center then around ten fifteen?”

“That sounds about right.”

“Does anyone else have access to your computer?”

“Adele does.”

Then Richard wouldn’t be able to prove he’d been the actual one to do the sending.

This wasn’t looking good. No one had seen him in the building, he hadn’t spoken to anyone on the phone, and he’d been gone over an hour, which left him plenty of time to kill Jack, conduct his business at the sports center, and return to the reception. “Jack Snyder used to work for you, right?”

“He worked in the accounting department.”

“How did you come to hire him?”

“I did it as a favor for his pa, who was one of the most upstanding men I’ve ever met. He introduced me to the right people in town so I could get the center built. I owed him for that, so I agreed to hire his son, who’d just graduated from college with a business degree. With a pa like that I never would have guessed him to be a low-down thief and liar.”

“How did you catch him?”

Richard shook his head, as if he still couldn’t get over it. “Jack was wily. He never took a vacation day and always insisted on staying late to finish up. One day Adele mentioned to me that she had a bad feeling about him, and I always trust Adele’s instincts, so I ordered a surprise audit. That’s when we discovered he’d siphoned off over twenty-five thousand dollars.” Richard pounded his fists on the arms of his chair. “The dirty varmint had devised a scheme to defraud my company!

“I called the police and filed charges, but Jack was long gone by then, probably hiding down in Mexico. The next thing I heard was that he was doing time in prison. I felt sorry for his pa, but Jack deserved that jail time.” Richard leaned forward, his blue eyes blazing with anger. “If I’d gotten my hands on him first, he’d have gotten a whole lot worse than a prison sentence.”

I watched him carefully, wondering if there was an even darker side lurking beneath that tanned face. “Like maybe a death sentence?” I asked.

 

 

 

 

“A
death sentence.” Richard threw back his head and let loose with a Texas-sized laugh. “I like you, girl. You’re not afraid of the tough questions. No, I wouldn’t have killed the varmint, but I’d have taught him a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.”

“I hope you didn’t say that to the cops. They tend to misinterpret statements like that.”

“They can misinterpret all they want. That doesn’t mean they can prove I did anything wrong.”

“They don’t always have to prove it to put someone behind bars. People are convicted on circumstantial evidence every day,” I reminded him.

He drummed the fingers of both hands on the arms of the chair as he considered my advice. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be so bumptious. I forget people in these parts don’t always understand my ways.”

“Oddly, I find that applies to me, too.” I finished my iced tea and put away my notebook. “That’s all I have for now, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask Adele a few questions.”

“Be my guest. I don’t have anything to hide.” Richard took my glass and rose to see me to the door. “I appreciate your help, Abby. You’re a kindhearted little lady. A man can’t go wrong with you on his side.”

I wasn’t on his side—I wasn’t on anyone’s side until I had more information—but I didn’t want to risk losing Richard’s cooperation, so I said nothing.

I stopped at Adele’s desk to ask her what she knew about the emergency Richard had come back to the office to handle. She told me the name of the company it concerned and verified that he’d been working on the deal for months.

“It almost fell through, but he managed to salvage it by the sheer force of his personality,” she explained. “Naturally he’d have to come back to his office so he’d have his financial data handy.”

“Is it typical for him to come here in the evenings?”

“For something like this, absolutely.”

“Have you ever sent anything over the Internet from his computer?”

“Yes, I have, on his authority.”

I studied Adele as she spoke. She seemed very certain of her answers, didn’t fidget, and maintained eye contact with me throughout our conversation, which meant that she was either honest or a very cool liar. My instincts told me she was honest.