Poor Mrs. Shedd. Poor all of us.
“Do you think the wife was an accomplice in the fraud?” the woman said.
“Hard to say. It’s not as if he left her a hunk of money,” the man said.
“That we know about,” the woman added.
“And the whole episode of fainting at the mailbox could have been staged to buy time so she could hide whatever she did have.” The man paused. “Still, I tend to think she was just another of his victims. Everything she has is going to end up being seized. Too bad since it’s around the holidays.”
I waited until Emily came back from her bathroom stop and then slipped out of the empty office. The receptionist had a hopeful expression, which I quickly dashed when I told her the office wasn’t quite what my husband was looking for.
Mrs. Shedd was pacing across the front of the bookstore when I returned. “Well?” she said. I think my expression gave away the fact that I didn’t have good news. I put my hand on her shoulder for support and then told her the SEC people thought Bradley had gambled all the money away.
“Oh, no,” she said as the color drained from her face and she slumped against one of the bookcases. “We can make it through the holidays, but after the first of the year I have to pay the bank back.” She glanced around the bookstore and her eyes grew watery. She loved the store and didn’t want to lose it. “Let’s try to make the holiday season our best ever, since it might be our last.” We hugged on it.
I didn’t tell her, but I wasn’t giving up. There had to be something I could do to save the bookstore.
It was dark when I headed home. The bookstore had gotten crowded and I’d spent the rest of the evening helping people choose gift books. There hadn’t even been time to go back to the yarn department. I patted the tote bag on the passenger seat. It overflowed with yarn that needed swatches and the elephant in progress. I was also hoping to make some more snowflakes to add to the ones Adele had made that were still sitting on my dining room table. At least my street was quiet, the way it was supposed to be. As I drove past the Perkins’, I automatically looked over, wondering about Emily. What a day she’d had—from the morning in Long Beach, seeing Bradley alive for the last time as he got on the ferry to being grilled in the so-called friendly interview with the SEC people.
Her driveway was long like mine and at the end curved toward her garage door. The motion-sensor light came on and I noticed a gray cat running across the driveway. Then something else caught my eye. A wheel or a portion of one showed beyond the bush that obscured the area in front of the garage. Before I could make out what it was, the light went off.
My only excuse was extreme nosiness, but all things considered I wondered what was in her driveway, particularly since it seemed hidden. After pulling into my own driveway, I cut across my lawn toward her place. I didn’t want my nosiness to be obvious, so I crept up the edge of the driveway, hoping to stay out of the range of the motion sensor.
My best of intentions failed and I got in the path of the sensor and the light flipped on. I dropped next to the bush to avoid being seen. The light stayed on long enough for me to get a good look at what was behind the bush. A motorcycle? Emily hated motorcycles. She’d said more than once that she thought they should be banned from the road. So what was one doing hidden in her driveway? Or more importantly, who did it belong to?
Enough sleuthing, I thought as I backed down the driveway. The light didn’t go on again, and I was just about to step onto the street when a hand grabbed my shoulder and I jumped straight up.
CHAPTER 11
“HEY, WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?” RYDER LOWESTEIN, the kid neighbor from down the street, said. He peered at me as my breath came out in a ragged gasp; it felt something like when you jump into water that’s too cold.
“You could have given me a heart attack,” I said.
“Sorry, MP. I forgot I was dealing with someone older. You know you really can frighten someone to death. Something about the vagus nerve. I read about it—”
“MP?” I said interrupting. Then I got it. Everything was down to abbreviations—even me.
He nodded toward the driveway. “You doing some kind of reconnaissance?”
It was too embarrassing to admit that I’d been snooping, even if Mr. YouTube was as nosey as I was. Instead of answering I asked him if he knew who the motorcycle belonged to. He couldn’t see it in the darkness, but I assured him it was there. Then I asked him what he was doing wandering around in the dark.
He pointed down the street with his video camera in his hand. He’d been taping the holiday decorations at the different houses. He was going to sync it up to some music and give it to his parents to use as a holiday greeting on their Facebook page.
We finally parted company and I watched him saunter off with his slightly shuffling walk.
I retrieved my tote bag and purse from my car and walked into my dark yard. Something brushed against my leg and my breath immediately went back to that jumping-into-too-cold-water mode. It only got worse when more something touched me. Moving things with fur. I looked ahead toward my kitchen door, which only had a worse effect on my breath. Even in the dark, I could see it was ajar.
I rushed ahead and reached inside the door and used the switch on the wall to turn on the yard lights. I saw that what I’d felt was the two cats making figure eights around my legs. They knew they weren’t supposed to be out alone at night and they were freaking out. Cosmo charged out of the bushes and started barking, which seemed kind of after the fact. Even Blondie had come outside and was sitting on a chaise lounge. She regarded all of the action with her usual calm expression.
I took out my cell phone and called Barry. Within minutes a helicopter was circling overhead with its rhythmic thwack sound, bathing my yard and the bushes that marked the border with its spotlight. Barry arrived at the same time, along with two uniforms in a cruiser. They all went inside while the animals and I stayed in the yard.
“Molly, you’ve got to stop leaving windows open,” Barry said in a frustrated tone when he came back outside. Whoever had been there was gone. There was no sign of forced entry and whoever had broken in had used the door to exit like before. “Why bother to break in when you practically put out the welcome mat for them?” Barry said, throwing up his hands.
I didn’t know what he was talking about until he took me inside and pointed out the open windows in Samuel’s room. Mr. Detective hadn’t noticed the suitcases or the note on the bed announcing that Samuel was back from the road and had gone out to meet up with some friends. He said he’d opened the windows to get out the smell of the cat throw up and would I close them when I got home. There was a post script asking what happened to the front door.
Barry led me to my craft room. All the grocery bags had been dumped on the floor. Everything on the shelves pulled out. And the containers holding the finished pieces for holiday gifts had been dumped.
“Ugh,” I said when we got to the den. All the cabinets were open and the contents pulled out. “It was probably the same person as before,” I said. I tripped over a book, and when I picked it up, saw that it was Caught By the Hook. I showed it to Barry. “See, I told you someone thinks that I am hiding the identity of A. J. Kowalski here. They must have thought I kept it in here or with my crochet stuff.”
“You must have some idea who it is,” Barry said, putting the box of photos back in the built-in cabinet.
“Whoever it is obviously knows Cosmo is all noise and no bite,” I said as the black mop of fur raced through the den and stopped at Barry’s feet.