“Is this what you were after?” I said to Owen. There was a clump of dust on his paw and I reached over to brush it off.
The page looked to be the image of a check that had been deposited electronically. I picked it up for a closer look. The check was made out to a holding company: Mulberry Hill Holdings. There was something familiar about that name but I couldn’t place it. I did recognize who wrote the check. It came from Sullivan Enterprises. Sullivan Enterprises was Sean Sullivan, gym owner and Kassie’s father. I looked at the amount. Five hundred thousand dollars. Sean Sullivan had written a check to someone for half a million dollars. The page must have slid under the refrigerator when Owen knocked down some of the papers that had come from Kassie’s desk. How had she gotten this? Was Kassie Mulberry Hill Holdings or . . . ?
I got to my feet, picked up my phone and scrolled through the list of contacts. Lita answered on the third ring.
“Hi, Lita,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you at this time of night.”
“Kathleen, it’s eight thirty,” she said, an edge of laughter in her voice. “What time do you think I go to bed?”
“Umm, after eight thirty?”
She did laugh then. “Sometimes after nine. What do you need?”
“Have you ever heard of a company called Mulberry Hill Holdings?” I crossed my fingers.
“Of course. That’s one of Elias Braeden’s companies.”
I gave a small fist pump.
“I think he named it after that piece of land Idris Blackthorne owned out by Wisteria Hill,” she said. “Ruby would own it now, I think.”
Mulberry Hill. Rebecca had mentioned it when we were talking about Everett’s family homestead. That’s why the name had seemed familiar to me.
“Thanks, Lita,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. I heard the rumble of Burtis’s voice in the background. “Burtis says to tell you he has the house high score at the moment.”
“Tell him I said that all good things must come to an end and his end is nigh.”
Lita was still laughing when she hung up.
I pulled out a chair and sat down. Owen leapt onto my lap and put two paws on my chest.
“Elias,” I said. “He’s Mulberry Hill Holdings.”
One ear turned sideways and his expression soured a little bit. I stroked his soft fur. There was another dust bunny on his tail and I picked it off. “I can’t find anything that points to someone else being Kassie’s killer, and there are random things like his fingerprints and the fact that Elias was in the building that suggest he did it. And I don’t know what to make of this check.”
Ruby was a strong person, but if Elias really had killed Kassie, I didn’t see how she would ever get over the betrayal.
And just that quickly I was angry. Angry at Elias for only telling part of the truth or maybe even none of it. Angry that Ruby had put her trust in someone I didn’t think deserved it, even if he hadn’t killed anyone. Angry at the prevarications and omissions from just about everyone involved with the show.
I set Owen on the floor and grabbed my keys and my wallet. “I’ll be back,” I told him. I didn’t think about whether or not it was a good idea to go confront Elias. I just went.
It wasn’t hard to find the man. His fancy SUV was in the parking lot at the community center. I signed in with Thorsten and on a hunch climbed the stairs to the second floor. I didn’t see Elias giving up his private workspace. The hallway was dark with just a bit of light spilling out from one open doorway.
I was right. Elias was in the office, talking on his cell phone. “I’m going to have to call you back,” he said to the person on the other end of the call when he noticed me standing in the doorway.
I set the image of the check in front of him. He looked at it and the only reaction I saw was a tiny twitch at one corner of his mouth. “Where did you get this?”
I had the urge to say from under my refrigerator, but I resisted the impulse. “Kassie had it.”
He leaned back in the chair. “She kept hinting she had something.”
“Sean Sullivan gave you half a million dollars.”
“He invested half a million dollars in my company.”
“It’s the same thing.”
Elias shook his head. “No, it’s not. Half a million dollars to me is a gift. Half a million dollars to my company gets him a tiny piece of it. In theory.”
I remembered what Eugenie had said to Russell and me: “I do have more than enough money to relieve Elias of any financial obligation he might have to Sean Sullivan, Kassie’s father.” Would she have spent half a million dollars?
He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. “Have a seat, Kathleen.”
I sat down, picking up the piece of paper as I did. “Kassie thought this was important. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “You would have to ask her and since she’s dead, you can’t.”
I thought about doing something dramatic like slapping my hand on the desktop. Instead I stared silently at him for a moment. Then I said, “You’re lying.” I leaned across the desk. “If it weren’t for Ruby, I would take this to the police and wash my hands of you. I would leave you to twist in the wind. But I can’t do that. You’re the closest thing to a father Ruby has. And that more than anything tells me what a kick in the head life has given her that you . . . you of all people . . . get that honor.” I struggled to keep my voice under control and shook the paper at him. “This is just one more thing that makes you look bad. One more thing in a long list. You better be innocent, Elias.” My voice cracked. “You damn well better be innocent, because if you’re not, you’re going to break Ruby’s heart.”
All the lines on his face had seemed to have gotten deeper. That was the only sign that my words had affected him at all. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t kill Kassie, Kathleen. I swear on—”
I cut him off. “Don’t go there, Elias,” I warned, hoping my voice conveyed how angry I was in that moment.
“The money was for me. Sully made it look like an investment in my company because neither one of us wanted to explain why he’d given me, personally, half a million dollars. He still has several boxers and I’m involved in several TV projects. Optics. You understand that.”
“I do.”
His face hardened. “What he didn’t tell me was that he’s being investigated for insider trading, which puts all of his business practices under a microscope.”
“Not good for you.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“So Sean Sullivan paid you five hundred thousand dollars to hire his daughter because she had aspirations of being a TV star, which wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up. And then he made that money look like an investment in your company, which also wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up.”
“Yes.”
I folded the piece of paper and put it back in my pocket. “Kassie found out.”
“She did. I was having some temporary cash flow problems. I shouldn’t have taken the money. That was stupid.”
“She must have been angry finding out her father had so little faith in her that he paid you to hire her.”
Elias gave a humorless snort of laughter. “You didn’t know Kassie. She was going to use that payment to blackmail her father. If he’d pay me half a million dollars so she could do the Baking Showdown, he could pay more than that to get her on some other show.”
I wondered what had happened to Kassie to turn her into such a self-absorbed person.
“Do what you want with the information, Kathleen,” he said. “I didn’t kill Kassie Tremayne. And this is the last time I’m going to say that.”