Troubled Treats (14 page)

“What’s true?” I asked.

“I’ve been coming across several references that the original owner of the factory, Martin Polly, hid a fortune in this building that no one could ever account for.  He never trusted banks or the stock market, which turned out to be pretty savvy, given that the Great Depression occurred just a year after these bills were printed.  The thing is that I was certain that his cache was in gold, not paper money.”

“Three bills doesn’t exactly make a fortune,” the chief said.

“There was a great deal more down here than that, and recently, too,” Jake explained as he showed the police chief what he was talking about.

“Why is this bill over here by itself?” Momma asked as she started to reach down and retrieve the bill I’d placed on one of the crates.

“Don’t touch that!” I said a little too loudly in such a confined space.

Momma jerked back her hand as though she’d been reaching for a snake.  “Why on earth not?  What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, but it might be evidence,” I said in a much calmer voice.  “Someone paid me at the donut shop today with it, and it’s a match with the others we found up here.”

“They’re counterfeit?” Momma asked.  “Who would fake a batch of old bills?”

“It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Phillip said.  “Think about it.  There weren’t any of the modern security measures in the old bills like the holograms and embedded strips we have now.”

“True,” the new chief said, “but these are legitimate, at least as far as I can see.”  He looked over at me and asked, “Suzanne, I don’t suppose you remember who gave you this one, do you?”

“Sorry, I don’t, but I think I can narrow it down to one of three people.  Shirley Edam, Carl Descent, and Jim Burr all came by the donut shop today, and every last one of them paid me with at least one twenty.”

The chief looked disappointed, and who could blame him?  It would have been nice to be able to narrow our search even a little bit at that point.  Chief Grant took out another evidence bag and carefully placed the bill I’d taken in a bag of its own.  “We’ll dust it for prints anyway,” he said.  “Thanks for calling.”

“Is that it?” I asked. 

“What else can I do?” Chief Grant asked me.  “Suzanne, Sully’s murder is a priority for me, but I’m trying to run an entire department, too.  As much as I’d like to, I can’t spend every waking moment worrying about one case, even if it is murder.  There’s just too much on my plate as it is right now.”

“I understand,” I said, and I did.  I’d never given my new stepfather enough credit when he’d had that job, and I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake with my friend.  In my mind, it was even more reason for Jake and me to dig into the case.  For us, it would be our only priority.

“I still don’t understand why you found paper money in that cache,” Phillip said.  “I need to go back to the library and do more research.”

“I’ll drop you off on my way, dear,” my mother told him.  Before she left, she kissed my cheek.  “Come see me later, Suzanne.”

“Why?  Is anything up?” I asked her, concerned by her summons.

“Isn’t it enough that I miss my daughter?” she asked, and I realized that I’d been spending so much time with Jake since I’d been back that I’d neglected her, and Grace as well.  I’d have to make more of a conscious effort not to let my new married life interfere with the two women in the world who meant the most to me.

“I promise,” I said. 

“Good.  Phillip, are you ready to go?”

He’d been conferring with Chief Grant and Jake about something, but he quickly broke away from them.  “Bye, all.”

The chief said, “Hang on a second.  I’ll walk you out.”  When we didn’t follow, he asked, “Was there something else you two needed to see here?”

“We might hang back and look around a little more,” Jake said, “if that’s okay with you.”

Chief Grant grinned, showing his youth for a moment.  “Are you kidding?  I’ll take all of the help I can get.  Thanks, I mean that for both of you.”

“We’re happy to do it,” I said.  It was good to see a flash of my old friend, even if it was brief.  The weight of being temporary police chief was impacting him, and I wondered if he’d be able to stand up to the added strain of the job at his young age.  He was smart, and he was tough, but I couldn’t help worrying about him.  After all, that was what I did with the people in my life that I cared about.

“What exactly are we looking for?” I asked Jake after everyone else had gone.  “Do you really think there’s more money hidden around here somewhere?”

“This isn’t a treasure hunt, Suzanne.  I’m looking for clues.”

“Sure, but if we stumble across a fortune along the way, we’re not going to just ignore it, are we?  It sounds as though it might add up to be a great deal of money.”

“I’ve got a hunch that the rumors are just that, rumors, plain and simple.  I’ve learned over the years that there’s more phantom gold than has ever been mined in the history of the world.  Besides, what would you do if you found a fortune?  You wouldn’t retire from Donut Hearts, and don’t try to tell me that you would.”

“I’m not so sure about that.  Sleeping in until seven sounds like a little bit of paradise to me right now.”

“You’d get bored within a month of retiring,” he said.

“How could you possible know that?  Are you?” I asked, turning the topic to one a great deal more serious than our previous idle speculation.

“Not a chance.  Being married to you is anything but boring, and besides, who’s retired?  Here I am, working on a murder case, just like always.  The only differences are that this time I’m doing it for free, and I have no official status.”

“The upside is that you get to work with your wife, though,” I said with a grin.

“Believe me, that makes up for the difficulties, and then some,” he said as started investigating the flooring in one of the other rooms upstairs.

“If we’re not looking for treasure, then why are we trying to find new caches?” I asked him.

“Suzanne, we saw someone prowling around up here this morning with a flashlight.  What if their presence wasn’t related to the money we found earlier?  They could have been here looking for something else that had been hidden away earlier, something that might give us a clue about the identity of the killer.”

“That’s something that I never considered,” I admitted.

“That’s why there are two of us,” he answered with a grin. 

We spent the next few hours kicking, tapping, and probing the upstairs floorboards, but we didn’t have any luck finding any other secret caches, or anything else, for that matter.

Whatever wealth had been taken out of the old wagon factory was apparently all that there had been, at least as far as we could see.

Chapter 17

“What should we do next?” I asked Jake as we headed down the stairs.  It looked as though someone had tried to clean the central wagon wheel emblem in the floor, but I could swear that I saw a hint of something remaining now that the temporary plastic sheeting had been removed.  No matter how much they cleaned, sanded, or even replaced the wood and stones inlaid in the floor, I knew that I’d probably always see it there.  My stomach rumbled a little as if on cue.

“I know you’re hungry,” Jake said.  “I am, too, but can it wait half an hour?”

“I think I can stand going without food for that long,” I said with a smile.  “What did you have in mind?”

“I’d like to look around the murder scene while we have it to ourselves, and then we’ll grab a bite to eat before we look for Bob Greene.”

“Okay by me,” I said as we reached the center emblem.  “What exactly are we looking for?”

“Anything that we might have missed before,” he said.  “The chief is going to release the building soon, and I want to have one last look around before he does.”

I felt a slight shiver as we approached the exact spot where we’d found Sully the day before.  Had it been just twenty-four hours since he’d been murdered right under our noses?  A part of me was still in shock from the event, but I’d learned early on that life goes on.  There was nothing we could do to bring Sully back, but at least we could do our best to catch his killer.

Jake looked around intently, but I honestly didn’t have a clue what he hoped to see.  After all, the police had examined the crime scene thoroughly, no doubt photographing it from every angle as well, and then we’d studied it ourselves.  Besides the torn fragment of the twenty-dollar bill—which was beginning to look more and more significant—no one had been able to come up with anything useful, at least as far as we were aware.  I decided to widen my focus a little and started walking around the room in broadening circles to see if there was anything outside of Jake’s narrow scope of interest.

“What are you doing?” he asked me.

I glanced over and saw that my husband had been watching me.  “The same thing you are.  I’m trying to make sure that we didn’t miss anything.”

“Good.  Keep it up,” Jake said, and then he went back to his close examination of the exact spot where the murder had occurred.  How long could he keep analyzing the same few square feet?  I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary during my own search, and after a few minutes, I decided to get a breath of fresh air.  I didn’t want to go out the front door since Officer Griffin was still posted there, so I headed for the back; it was the same avenue the killer had used to make their escape, as well as whoever had visited the wagon factory the night before, which more than likely was the same person.

I had my hand on the doorknob when something caught my eye.  Squatting down to get a better look at it, I could see that it was a torn piece of flannel sporting a partial red-and-black-check pattern.

I’d seen that same pattern on Sully’s shirt, as well as Bob and Jim’s tops.  Even Shirley Edam’s robe had sported a similar design.

It appeared that we were on the right track after all.

“Jake, I need you over here,” I said without disturbing the cloth.

“Hang on one second,” he said absently.  “I think I might be onto something.”

“This is important!”

That got his attention.  As he walked over to me, I saw that he was frowning.  “What is it, Suzanne?  I had the inkling of an idea, but now it’s gone.”

I pointed to the torn cloth.  “This counts more than a fleeting thought.  Look at this.  I know for a fact that it wasn’t here yesterday.”

Jake knelt down and studied the fragment without touching it, either.  After he took a few photographs of its location with his cellphone, he said,  “I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t there, either.  Whoever left this behind must have done it last night when we spooked them.”

“I don’t know who did the actual spooking,” I said.  “All we have to do now is find the shirt this tear matches, and we could have our killer.”

“Or not,” Jake said as he pulled out a plastic baggy and placed the cloth inside.

“Since when did you start carrying evidence bags on you?”

“Since I started digging into murder with you,” he said.  “These aren’t official.  I just grabbed a few baggies from our pantry at home.”  I loved when he called our cottage home.

“Why don’t you think it will help?” I asked.

“Suzanne, chances are that whoever tore their shirt knew it and disposed of it.  I’m guessing that we’ll never find the original garment this matched.”

“Maybe not, but at the very least, it eliminates Descent from our equation, don’t you think?”

“What if he has a red-checked flannel shirt, too?” Jake asked.

“What are the odds of that?  Sully and his men wore them as a kind of a uniform, and just because Shirley’s bathrobe pattern matched last night, that doesn’t mean that her closet’s full of them, too.  At least that much could have been a coincidence.”

“So, you think that either Bob or Jim killed Sully?”

I shook my head.  “I’m not willing to go that far, but they do both deserve closer looks.  I just wish we could get into their closets and have a look around.”

Jake looked at me carefully.  “Suzanne, I’m not breaking into anyone’s apartment, do you understand that?”

“Relax, Jake.  I wasn’t suggesting it,” I said.

“Really, because that’s what it sounded like to me.”

“There must be another way to do it without breaking the law,” I said.

“First, we have to find Bob Greene,” Jake said.  “I know we’re both hungry, but if we stop to eat, we might miss him.”

“I can go without food as long as you can,” I said.  My stomach betrayed me by rumbling at that moment.  “Pay no attention to that,” I added with a grin.

“Don’t worry.  We’ll eat soon enough,” he said as we headed back to the front.

Officer Griffin was pulling down the last of the crime scene tape as we walked out.

“Is the building officially being released now?” Jake asked him.

“Yes, sir,” he replied.  Though Jake was no longer an officer of the law, he still commanded the respect he deserved.

“Like I said before, just call me Jake, Happy.  Do you happen to know where your boss is at the moment?”

“I sure do.  He’s at the Boxcar,” Officer Griffin volunteered.

“Thanks,” Jake said.

As we got into his truck, I said, “I thought we were going to look for Bob before we ate, not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

“We are, but we need to bring Grant up to date on what we’ve found first.  We can’t conduct searches, but he can.  Who knows?  Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of our suspects neglected to get rid of that torn shirt.”

“Only if they were drunk,” I said.

“Well, wouldn’t they both qualify as being inebriated last night?” Jake asked as he drove us to the diner.

“Bob was a little tipsy, but I’m starting to have second thoughts about Jim’s true condition,” I said.

“Why do you say that?  I thought Jim Burr was the one who looked the drunkest between the two of them.”

“There’s something I’ve been wondering about.  It almost felt as though it was all just an act.  When we found them at the bar, Jim seemed to be hammered, and when we got to Shirley’s, he kept acting as though he was under the influence, but I’m beginning to wonder whether he was ever really that drunk, or was he just putting a show on for our benefit?”