Janice Bennett - Cold Turkey

“If it’s got the official seal intact,” I agreed. “How many different products, do you think?”

We finished checking the papers and found that same discrepancy for seven products. Seven cases. Sarkisian did some fast math on a scratch sheet and whistled. “That comes to over fifteen hundred, tax-free. Every month, do you think?”

I sighed. “Without the handwritten records, we’ve no way of telling, short of checking the raw materials.”

He nodded, but the light of the chase glittered in his eyes. “What do you want to bet Brody noticed something? Like a drop in the number of cases produced?”

“But wouldn’t Peggy…” I began, then broke off.

“Our thief may have begun in a small way, at first,” Sarkisian suggested. He avoided stating the obvious, that Peggy could have made those alterations herself to cover her tracks, that she could have known perfectly well why production dropped. “Just a bottle or two, increasing by one every month or so? That would make it less obvious.”

I nodded, seeing the potential. Peggy paid attention to the daily details. Brody, as the accountant, probably checked figures from year to year. He would have noticed a drop-off in production from February of one year to February of the next. And he might have gotten suspicious. He might even have wanted to be cut in on the scam. And Dave Hatter? Had he been the thief-or had he caught the culprit carrying out the cases or altering the records?

We held the solution to the deaths of Clifford Brody and Dave Hatter in our hands. And I just couldn’t see what it was.

My work, at least, at the Still seemed finished. Sarkisian would now turn those papers over to someone who knew about distilling and bottling and whatever else went into the whole process, and confirm our suspicions. But no matter how much I turned it over in my mind, I still couldn’t figure out who was responsible.

It could be anyone, not just someone who worked at the Still. If Dave Hatter had made the alterations on the inventory sheets, he could have passed the bottles to a partner to sell. I had only his wife’s assertions about their financial ruin to explain his depression. It might have been Brody’s death that had him in such a state. He might have only pretended to be glad. If Dave panicked over Brody’s murder, his partner might have killed him to keep him quiet. I shuddered. If Dave trusted his murderer, he wouldn’t have put up a fight. He might have let him-or her-close enough. I felt sick.

Sarkisian drove me back to the school, but no cars remained in the parking lot. Everyone had gone home, which I hoped meant they had finished the decorating. The SCOURGEs really have good hearts, and an amazing capacity to work.

“Home?” the sheriff asked.

I nodded, too tired to speak. I still had to face making whatever dish Gerda had signed us up for. He dropped me off in front of the house, and I climbed out into the non-stop drizzle. “Coming for the dinner?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“What are you going to do next?”

“Get warrants so I can check bank accounts. If someone really was selling that stuff, they were pocketing a tidy little sum every month. They’d have to put it somewhere.”

“Switzerland?” I suggested. “The Caymans?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

I stared at him, noting the set of his jaw, the glint in his eyes, and my stomach lurched. “You know! You know who killed Brody!”

His mouth tightened. “Let’s just say I have a very strong suspicion.”

“Well?” I demanded when he said nothing else.

He shook his head. “There isn’t any solid evidence. Not unless…this person,” he said, carefully avoiding any use of a pronoun, “made regular deposits to a bank account. Without that, I haven’t one single shred of real proof. It’s all just logic and instinct, all circumstantial. And a good lawyer could make out a circumstantial case against every one of the other suspects, which would create enough reasonable doubt to get the whole thing thrown out of court. I’d never be able to make the charge stick.”

“So what do you do if no one’s made any illicit deposits?”

He gave an eloquent shrug. “Make sure no one else gets hurt. Come up with a brilliant trap. Call in Sherlock Holmes. God knows. I’ll come up with something.”

“I’ll help if…” I broke off.

He met my gaze. Slowly, purposefully, he shook his head. “I’m not putting you in any more danger. You don’t know anything, I never said a word about this, you just go on as normal.”

I let the rain pelt down on me. “I’m going to be upset, aren’t I?”

His mouth quirked. “You’ll be upset no matter who it turns out to be. It’s your nature. You want this all to be a big mistake and have a happy ending.”

I caught my lower lip between my teeth. I didn’t have to nod. He was coming to know me all too well. And I knew him well enough to know that deep down, he wanted to feel the same. But he was a realist, and he would arrest the murderer because it had to be done. People had to feel safe. I doubted he gave a damn about justice in its abstract sense. It was people that mattered to him. Tom had been that way. It was why I’d loved him so much. And why he’d been such a good sheriff.

“Tell me,” I said at last.

He shook his head. “If you knew, you’d never be able to act like you didn’t. You’d do or say something that would warn the murderer.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but closed it again. He was right. I’d never be able to interact with that person without giving the whole show away. “The curiosity will kill me,” I said at last.

“Better it than the murderer.” He held my gaze for a long moment. “Besides, if I’m wrong, you’d laugh at me. I’m not going to give you that chance.” He waved and drove off.

Well, I’d find out soon enough, I suspected. Sarkisian seemed the type who would accomplish what he set out to do. With a sigh, I forced the matter to the back of my mind and dragged myself up the outside steps. I didn’t dare let Gerda get so much as a hint that Sarkisian was closing in on the killer.

“Well, I see you managed to get yourself out of helping us decorate,” my loving aunt said by way of greeting.

I fell into a chair in the kitchen, folded my arms on the table and sank my head onto them. Teeth settled into my ankle, and I reached down to scoop up Furface. “Next time you want me to take part in a SCOURGE project, just shoot me instead, will you?”

A silence of several seconds stretched between us. Then, brightly, she said, “I’ve already made our cranberry salad, and it’s in the fridge, setting up. Now, we’ve got a full hour before we have to go back down there. Why don’t you go soak in a tub?”

My head came up slowly as if rising to a glorious scent on the wind. “You mean that? A whole hour to relax?” I got halfway across the living room, with thoughts of lavender bath salts, hot water and wine filling my mind, when the phone rang.

Gerda caught it on the second ring. “Annike? It’s Ida.”

I considered running for it, but instead reached for an extension. “What’s up?”

“I forgot to tell people to bring chafing dishes.” It came across as a wail. “How are we going to keep things hot?”

I closed my eyes. “Lukewarm’s fine with me.” Before she could protest, I hung up.

Gerda settled in a chair, and three of the cats pawed for her attention. The black tom Clumsy scrambled into the coveted place in her lap. The rotund Siamese Olaf leapt up and pushed Clumsy aside to make a few inches of room for himself, although his haunches and a considerable portion of his stomach overlapped onto the padded arm. That left orange Mischief to curl himself around her feet. I looked away from the yellow police tape that still hung across the study door and dove for my room before anyone else could call.

Vilhelm greeted me with a round of furious cheeping. I opened his cage for his afternoon flap-an exercise he’d been forced to miss for the last couple of days-and changed into my bathrobe while he circled the room. He landed in my hair, and it took a minute to disentangle his feet and convince him not to bite my fingers. Leaving him to his own devices, I closed the door firmly, pushed away Birgit and Furface, and went to prepare my sanctuary.

I didn’t have much time, and I was going to make the most of it. I started the water running, threw in handfuls of herbs and a few drops of almond oil, lit candles, poured a glass of white zinfandel, then turned to the bathroom CD player. I hesitated over Gilbert and Sullivan, but that made me think of Sarkisian. I didn’t want to think about the sheriff right now and especially not about whom he believed to be the murderer. Instead, I selected Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I sank into the steaming water and closed my eyes. I was going to make this last every second I could.

I was only taking my fourth sip of wine when Gerda pounded on the door. “Time to dress,” she called.

“No it isn’t,” I called back, but without much hope.

“We have to leave in fifteen minutes. We’ve got the key, remember.”

I considered telling her what she could do with the key. I also considered telling her that she could go down alone and I’d come along later, like maybe tomorrow or the day after. Instead, I released the plug on the bath and felt all that beautiful relaxation draining away. If only we’d set the starting time for the dinner at five o’clock. But four o’clock it was, because that allowed people to arrive while it was still light. In the park, that mattered more than it did at the school, where floodlights illuminated the parking lot and overheads hung along the walkway leading to the lit-and well heated-cafeteria. Maybe we ought to see about holding the Dinner-in-the-Park at the school every year.