“Ouch. On a Friday night, Thanksgiving weekend.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Ouch,” he repeated. He was silent for a long minute, then shook his head. “I know the party supply place in Meritville can get hold of them, but I think it takes a week or so to get them shipped. And even if it didn’t, they’d be closed now, with no way to reach anyone.” He fell silent again, then at last shook his head. “Sorry.”

I shrugged. “That’s what I was afraid of. Emergency backup arrangements should have been made weeks ago.”

“Cindy Brody,” Simon said, and we nodded in unison. “Well, I’d offer to let you use my place…” He gestured around the decidedly unspacious cabin.

“Thanks all the same. Well, maybe it’ll clear up.” I paused, and the pelting of the rain on the roof made its point. “Oh, well.”

“Oh, well, is right. Anything else I can do for you? What brought you out? You could have just called about the tents.”

I explained about needing to get away from phones, then told him about the need for a chain saw.

“I’ll bring tools if you’ll bring a break in the weather,” he offered.

That seemed to sum it up. Thanking him, and armed with his envelope, I left. I didn’t really want to go home, yet. And there was still one matter I hadn’t taken care of. If, on the slim chance I really did bring a break in the rain, we had to hang the Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa decorations. And, unlike the frozen pumpkin, I knew where the town stored them. At the Still. And since both Adam Fairfield and Dave Hatter would be on duty at the moment, I might as well head over there, remind them about the promised bottles of liqueur, and see if I could pick anything up now. Maybe I could leave the turkey in exchange.

Pine and redwood needles littered the road to the distillery. I inched along the hazardous curves, the river roaring in its gulch not that far below. It must be rising steadily with all the rain. With a sigh of relief, I spotted the glow from the parking lot lights and rounded the last curve with more confidence.

Several cars stood in the lot, including Sheriff Sarkisian’s Jeep. That surprised me. What I didn’t see was Adam’s pickup. I continued along the road and turned down the hill that led to the lower level with the shipping and receiving dock. After all, I hoped to receive a trunk-load of decorations. But the odds of being able to ship out a turkey seemed pretty slim. Maybe the Still would like to adopt it as a mascot. I could but try.

And there was Adam’s pickup, parked next to the loading dock. I pulled in beside him, glared at my unwelcome passenger and climbed out into the downpour. I ran up the cement ramp toward shelter and in a few moments rang the bell.

Several minutes passed before Dave Hatter appeared. “What are you doing here?” he demanded with less than enthusiasm.

“Came for the holiday decorations. We need them for the park tomorrow, remember?”

“Rain’s not going to let up.” But he stepped aside and let me in.

“That’s the ticket,” I said cheerfully. “Think positive but prepare for the worst. What’s going on around here?”

“A full-scale police investigation.” He sounded glum.

“Has something happened?” I looked around, fearing to see some vandalism, some damage. My gaze met only the clean emptiness where trucks pulled into the dock. Tony Carerras’ motorcycle parked near the massive roll-down doors, and a few crates stood at one end, neatly sealed with the distillery’s name and logo stamped on the cardboard, but that was about it.

“The sheriff’s looking at the books.”

So, he hadn’t wasted a minute getting that warrant.

“Might as well come on up,” he added. “He’ll want to know you’re here.”

“I’ll bet,” I murmured, but followed Dave through the door that led to the storage area.

Tony was there, sweeping. He stared at me but made no response to my wave, merely turning back to his work. Then we passed through to the production floor, where a middle-aged woman wandered around in a white lab coat checking instruments and making notes on a clipboard.

“The current experimental batches,” Dave explained as we mounted the iron grate stairs to the office level, with their glass windows looking down on the rows of copper stills and the single bathtub-sized vat.

I nodded, looking straight ahead, anywhere but down.

The accounting office was one of the few that didn’t overlook the production floor. It held two desks, a wall of filing cabinets, another of shelves partly filled with binders of completed financial records, a table piled with purchase orders, inventory printouts, memos, and every other bit of paper Peggy had yet to process, and four people. Adam Fairfield and Sarkisian stood to one side, watching the plump, fiercely concentrating Roberta Dominguez at work with her official cameras. Her accomplice, a man of medium build, black hair and a handlebar mustache he obviously spent hours tending, dusted for fingerprints.

The sheriff turned as we entered and snorted. “I should’ve known you’d turn up.”

“She came for the holiday decorations,” Dave explained. “I thought you ought to know she was here.”

Sarkisian nodded, his gaze lingering on me. Abruptly he turned back to the two technicians. “Almost done?”

“Just this last one,” said the photographer.

Sarkisian waited, Roberta Dominguez finished, and she and the other man packed up their equipment. “All yours,” she said as they loaded themselves down with their cases of gear. “We’ll take people’s prints downstairs,” she added as they left. At the sheriff’s signal, Adam and Dave followed them.

I eyed the mess that remained. “Did they fingerprint everything?”

Sarkisian nodded. “So now it’s safe to touch.”

“Well, have fun.” I turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“Decorations?”

He looked at his shoes, then up at me. “I don’t know anything about bookkeeping.”

I nodded in a sympathetic manner, a touch of unholy glee starting deep within me. “That’ll make it a lot harder for you.”

He glared at me. “You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?”

I grinned, savoring the moment. “Only ask. But I wish I could have witnesses.”

“For?” He sounded suspicious, and well he should.

“For the next time you ask the world in general if anyone heard you asking me to help with the investigation.”

He grinned. “All right, you win. Please, An…Ms. McKinley, will you help with the investigation?”

My own grin of triumph faded as I turned to regard the pile of ledgers and printouts that sprawled in untidy heaps across the desks and table. I’d had a really long day, what with fighting with pies, before, during and after the event. I was going to have another long day tomorrow. I sighed. “Let me call Gerda to tell her I’ll be a little later than planned.”

I was going to be a whole lot later. We had no idea where, if, or how any discrepancy might have occurred. I determined to prove to Sarkisian that Peggy had to be innocent of any wrong doing, but that required going back to the beginning of the year and checking every entry against every receipt and every invoice. And if we didn’t find anything we’d have to do the same thing for the previous year, and maybe all the many long years she had worked for the Still.

Sarkisian went to get us coffee and returned bearing snacks from the machine and with Adam and Dave trailing after him. The clock read twelve-twenty. I yawned, downed a cup of barely palatable caffeine, sank my teeth into the bliss of pure chocolate, and checked more entries.

“Did you look to see if Brody left any notes in his office?” Adam asked as I finished another page of the daily journal.

“Nothing pertaining to anything amiss, here.” Sarkisian sounded bored. I had set him to work unearthing paid bills and receipts from file folders for me, but the delights of that occupation had worn off for him within a very few minutes. “Why?” he added.

Dave peered over my shoulder. “He’s been here an awful lot, lately,” he said. “Turning up at odd times, wanting me to let him in at night, poring over the books. You know, definitely above and beyond what you’d think was normal duty.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “For about a month, now, wouldn’t you say?”

“Six weeks?” suggested Dave.

Sarkisian picked up a handful of reports from the table, then glanced at the bound journals and ledgers that surrounded me. “The books or some of the rest of this stuff?”

Dave shrugged.

“The books,” Adam said after a moment of thought. “At least, they’re what he was studying whenever I looked in on him.”

I finished my last bite of chocolate. Paper rustled, and Sarkisian handed me a fresh bar. I really could begin to like this man, I decided. I bit into it, savoring that miraculous blend of caffeine and chemical nirvana, and set to work on the next page of entries. Brody’s intense interest implied he suspected Peggy of being up to something. Sarkisian suspected the same thing. I was determined to find some other reason for Brody’s preoccupation with the books.

“Time to quit for the night.” Sarkisian’s hand rested on my shoulder, shaking slightly.

I looked up, bleary-eyed.

“You were nodding off to sleep,” he explained.

I peered at the clock. Either it was ten after midnight, or-

“It’s two in the morning. Come on.” He took my elbow and helped me to my feet. “I’ve already called Adam and Dave.”

The two men appeared a few minutes later, both armed with boxes stacked on handcarts. In a little over half an hour we had carefully packed away every financial record, whether bound or filed, the place boasted. Dave and Adam transported them to the parking lot where they began stacking them into the Jeep.

Sarkisian turned to me. “You be all right?” Then, “Where’s your car?”