So About the Money (21 page)

And her daughter.
 

“Don’t worry. I won’t deliberately fail the exam.”

“That thought hadn’t even occurred to me.”
 

Until that moment.
 

Holly tugged open the outer door of the office building. She walked into the office and stopped dead in her tracks.
 

“Oh. My. God.”

“What? What’s the matter?”

“Gotta go.” Holly ended the call.

Open-mouthed, she looked first at Tracey and then the metal contraption in the center of Desert Accounting’s lobby.
 

There was a pig.
 

In a cage.
 

In the middle of the lobby.

“We’ve been pigged,” Tracey announced.

The porker shuffled through the litter and emitted a few grunts.
 

“No kidding.” Giggles built in Holly’s chest. The complete absurdity of the situation hit her. “Please tell me somebody didn’t use him, uhm, her? to pay their bill.”

The receptionist’s laughter rolled across the lobby. “It’s a fundraiser.” She held out a bright green piece of paper.
 

Only in Richland.
 

“What’s the deal?” Holly managed around her giggles. She ignored the buzzing phone in her pocket. Her mother would find out about this when she got to the office.
 

“A guy from FFA dropped her off. Sammy’s sister is dating the FFA advisor, so they probably got Rick’s name through him. Anyway, Rick has to come up with three hundred bucks to get rid of her. The pig. Not the sister.”

“Is anyone not related in this town?” Holly glanced at the flyer. The pig stayed with the recipient until they raised the “purchase price.” Once the money was delivered and the pig “owned,” the owner chose the next target/recipient.
 

Thank you, Future Farmers of America.

The pig made a wet, sputtering noise.
 

“Ugh,” Tracey and Holly groaned in unison and clamped hands over their noses.
 

“Are there any clients in the office?” Holly asked.
 

The receptionist shook her head.

Holly dropped her hand and yelled, “Rick!”

A moment later, the manager stuck his head around the corner. “You bellowed, boss?”

“You really didn’t want to go to the big city.” She nodded at the pig.

“Figured you needed to see where bacon came from.”
 

“I hate bacon. Get this thing out of here.”
 

Rick ambled into the lobby. He stopped a few feet from the crate and inspected its contents before giving her a disingenuous smile. “I hit up the staff, but I need another hundred. Open your pocketbook and pony up.”

“Why is this
my
problem? The crate has
your
name on it.”

“Your lobby. Enjoy the ambience of
eau-de-
pig.” He turned and sauntered toward the staff area.
 

Dammit. Rick knew she couldn’t leave the pig in the lobby
and
that she wouldn’t fire his insubordinate butt. She jerked open her purse. “Lucky for you I hit the ATM on the way to work.”

He re-crossed the lobby and reached for the money. “Think of all the happy future farmers.”

Inspiration flashed on the one bright spot in Piggy-Gate. She whipped her hand back. “You get the cash on one condition.”

His eyes narrowed. “Which is?”

“The pig goes to the police department when it leaves here.”

He didn’t try to hide his smile. “Any particular officer? Or should I say detective?”

She tapped a finger against her cheek, pretending to consider his question. “The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department could use a laugh today.”

“Done.” Rick grabbed the cash. “This job’s been good for you. A couple of months ago, you wouldn’t have bellowed.”

“I didn’t bellow. Bellowing would not be an improvement in my disposition.” Bellowing was a nosedive off the IQ platform.

“Sure it is. You needed to loosen up.”

The pig flopped on its side. Shavings drifted through the wires and littered the carpet.
 

Holly turned to the amused receptionist. “Think the cleaning service has some industrial-strength deodorant?”

Tracey’s laughter followed Holly down the hall. She’d love to see JC’s reaction when the pig showed up. After all, she could sweetly explain it was for charity.
 

After dumping her briefcase on her desk, Holly made a quick pass through the office. She glanced in her mother’s office—still vacant—and checked on the staff—busy. She settled at her desk with a cup of coffee, and stared at the piles of paper.
 

As Tim had noted, life had an annoying habit of moving on. Business withholdings still had to be calculated and filed. The end of the year would come whether she wanted it to or not. The Washington State Department of Revenue and the IRS didn’t care about personal problems—they wanted their money.
 

Holly gave the papers another disgruntled look. Maybe they’d magically review themselves. “I need to focus.”

She pulled the accident report from her briefcase—she had to call her insurance agent—and placed it on her desk. JC’s bold signature scrawled across the investigating officer’s line. Her finger followed the flowing ink in an idle caress. It felt as though a lifetime had passed since Sunday morning instead of a mere three days. In less than a week, JC had strolled back into her life and taken up residence.
 

Damn him.

Was she too close to the situation to be objective? JC thought Alex was responsible for the damage to her car. She didn’t want to believe it. Alex had a hot temper, but he’d never shown signs of violence.
 

Did Alex not like her talking to JC because he picked up echoes of the old attraction? Or did he have something to hide? Something she might spill to the detective?
 

But if Alex didn’t key her car, then the vandalism must be because she’d stirred up trouble. But all she’d done was talk to Yessica.

Holly pressed her hands against her forehead. No. The damage couldn’t be related to Marcy’s death. Some thrill-seeking kid or local gang-banger—probably the same ones who tagged the building—had keyed her car, pure and simple.

With a sigh, she dropped her hands. Her gaze landed on the newspaper. At least today’s article focused on Marcy’s husband. Lee Alders was the most logical murder candidate. He was violent. He’d hurt Marcy before. He had to be the killer. The police would track him down. For once, the word “closure” didn’t sound like a cliché.
 

The case wasn’t anywhere near closure. The article contained far more speculation than facts, but if there was one thing Holly knew how to do, it was background research. She turned to her computer, launched the Internet browser, and typed Marcy’s name into a records search program. Within seconds, she was looking at a marriage certificate. Maricella Camelia Ramirez had married James Lee Alders in King County.
 

Interesting. The ceremony had been in Seattle and not in Marcy’s hometown. From the size of the crowd at the wake, she’d have thought the wedding would’ve been held in Pasco. Maybe Lee Alders insisted on the inconvenient location. Or maybe Holly was reading too much into the information. Marcy and Lee might have had more friends in Seattle.
 

She opened another tab and googled “Lee Alders Seattle.” Amid the links to a museum in Georgia, genealogy sites, and sports results, she found multiple references to Lee Alders’ sale of his company to Telnex.
 

The sale made a minor splash in Seattle but the news faded quickly. Subsequent references mentioned a lawsuit filed against Alders in the state’s Superior Court.
 

“He stole my idea and I can prove it, ” Nyland, the CEO of a competing tech company, claimed in the newspaper article. “His message caching system uses elements I invented.”

A female spy in Nyland’s company allegedly provided Alders with key features that allowed him to quickly bring his system to market. The following paragraphs compared details of the two companies’ designs.
 

Holly didn’t understand the technical issues, but one thing was clear. Nyland felt he had a good case for patent infringement. And Alders had done the infringing.

She scrolled through the links. No court decision. Weird.

She googled Nyland’s name. Dozens of hits filled the screen. She clicked the first link and rocked back against the desk chair. Nyland had died during an extreme sporting competition.
 

He was ice climbing with Lee Alders when he fell.
 

Son of a bitch
.

“It was an accident,” Alders asserted in a statement to the police. “I heard the crack, yelled at him to get clear, but there was nothing I could do. The first screw pulled and he was gone.”

She read the rest of the article. Either Nyland lost his footing and fell off the face, or someone tampered with his equipment.
 

An accident or murder? Either way, the man who’d challenged Alder’s success was gone.

Holly stared at the computer screen. In addition to abusing his wife, Lee Alders had evidently abused professional relationships. And possibly killed a man as a solution to his business problems.

Had he also found it a convenient way to get rid of an expensive, inconvenient ex-wife?

She returned to the computer. The patent infringement case died with Nyland, but the story didn’t. Speculation about Alders’s role in both the infringement and Nyland’s death abounded—that kind of mud stuck to a man and never washed off.

She clicked through more links, trying to find what Alders was doing now.
 

No current mention of him.

The guy couldn’t just vanish.

The public databases exhausted, she tried the SEC website and queried public companies without success. If Alders went private—joined or started another company—she didn’t have the resources to find him.
 

But she had friends who did.
 

She picked up the phone and made a call.
 

Chapter Twenty

A squeaky wheel announced the arrival of the file cart. The mailroom kid stopped outside Holly’s office and deposited a handful of envelopes in her in-box. “You won the jackpot today.”

He reached under the hanging files, hefted a package, and dumped it on her desk. “Some woman from Stevens Ventures dropped this off.”

Holly eyed the huge manila envelope. She emptied the contents onto her desk and groaned at the pile of forms and reports. The temp agency had sent someone to Stevens Ventures to fill Marcy’s job. Clearly the new person had no idea how to organize and summarize the information. It looked like she’d packed everything remotely related to the company’s finances.
 

Holly was half-tempted to send the mess back and tell Tim to organize it himself. “What’s with the shoebox approach?” she grumbled. “They're a business, for heaven’s sake.”
 

“Don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She crammed the papers back in the envelope. “Take this to Rick.” If the guy had time to hustle a pig, he could clean up Tim’s mess too.
 

The file clerk scooped up the package and moved down the hall.
 

The phone rang, the single beep of an internal call. “What’s up, Tracey? Is the pig gone?”

Tracey’s amused tone rolled over the line. “On its way to its new home with the sheriff’s department.” She hesitated a beat. “Crystal Blue called. She canceled.”

“Canceled as in needed a different time? Or canceled as in don’t call us, we’ll call you?”

“Crystal didn’t ask to reschedule. She mentioned the Person-of-Interest thing.”

Damn
. Another lost opportunity. She couldn’t afford many of them if she was going to sell Desert Accounting and get out of Richland. “Thanks for letting me know.”