The Hemlock Falls Savings and Loan stood at the corner of Main and Maple. Like many of the buildings on Main Street, it’d been built in the boom years after the Civil War. It was a solid cobblestone building, three stories high, designed in an architectural style somewhere between Greek Revival and Georgian. There were a few modern touches; the big doors opening into the main lobby were glass and an ATM kiosk sat under the portico. The parking lot was at the rear of the building, sharing space with a 7-Eleven that had been tucked well out of the view of tourists.
At Quill’s suggestion, the three other women drove to the bank separately, and by the time she had talked to Meg and checked with Doreen to make sure Jack’s activities were covered for the afternoon, everyone Mark Anthony Jefferson had called to the meeting was there. She walked into the small conference room—which smelled like fresh paint for some reason, and had for years—and sat down in the corner.
Mark Anthony sat at the head of the table, his laptop opened in front of him. Davy Kiddermeister stood behind him. Davy had been promoted to sheriff after Quill’s husband Myles decided to work for the government. He was well past thirty, but his fair hair, red cheeks, and mild blue eyes made him look years younger. Davy Kiddermeister didn’t look anything like a sheriff, in Quill’s opinion. He looked like he’d just graduated from high school. He blushed easily and often.
Howie Murchison sat at the opposite end of the conference table, Miriam at his side. In his late fifties, with a comfortable paunch and a fringe of gray hair, Howie looked exactly like what he was, a village lawyer who took on town justice duties once a month.
Marge stood by the room’s only window, looking out at the parking lot. Carol Ann, her ponytail restored to glossy perfection, sat upright in the chair across from Miriam. She watched Mark Anthony with the intensity of a cobra after a mouse.
“Hello, Quill,” Mark Anthony said. “Glad you could make it.”
“I’m not glad to be here, under the circumstances,” she said honestly. “I’m sure we can get this all cleared up quickly.” She looked at Howie. “And should we be doing this without Adela? I think she would want to be here, too.”
“She took off in that underpowered little Toyota and no one’s seen her since,” Carol Ann said. “She’s on the lam.”
Quill looked at her watch. “Marge adjourned the Chamber meeting at eleven thirty. It’s twelve thirty now. I doubt that she’s on the lam. She’s probably at home.”
“Crying her eyes out,” Miriam agreed. “This whole thing is shameful.”
Quill nodded. “I think so, too. Adela should be here to answer these ridiculous charges. Besides, don’t you need her permission to access the fete account?”
“Well, no, we don’t,” Mark Anthony said. “We just need the written permission of someone on the fete committee. Everyone on the committee is signatory to the account.”
“Oh,” Quill said. She’d been afraid of that.
Mark Anthony passed his hand over his skull. He’d recently taken to shaving his head and his skull shone like polished ebony under the fluorescent lights. “You’re on the committee,” he added.
“True.” She bit her lower lip.
“So if you could just sign this?” He picked up a legal-sized piece of paper. “We can proceed. Perhaps you’d like to join us at the table?”
Reluctantly, Quill abandoned the safety of her corner and sat down at the table. She cast a quick glance over the permission affidavit, and then scrawled her name at the bottom.
Mark Anthony nodded gravely, filed the affidavit in a manila folder, and then tapped at the computer. He waited a moment, his eyes on the screen. “Any idea how much should be in this account?”
Quill patted at her skirt pockets and withdrew the sketch pad she used for Chamber meeting notes. The fete committee notes were on it, too. “I don’t know why everyone insists on making me secretary. I’m not a very good one.”
“No kidding,” Carol Ann said.
“It’s because you never say no,” Marge said. “And you shut up, Carol Ann.”
“I don’t recall making any notes about the budget.” She flipped through the pages and paused. “Okay. This is it. At the last meeting Adela reported that all of the booths had been sold and that eighty percent of the fees had been collected. So at a hundred dollars a day…” She trailed off.
“Sixty thousand dollars, give or take,” Marge said.
Quill flipped the page. “There’s ticket money, advertising revenues for the program…Aha! Here it is. I have a subtotal here of one hundred thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars and sixty-five cents.”
Mark Anthony frowned. Davy leaned over his shoulder and frowned, too.
“What’s the balance in the account?” Quill asked.
“Twenty sixty-five,” Davy said.
“Twenty thousand and change?” Marge snorted. “She could have paid the tent bill and the landscapers already. I wouldn’t call that definitive.”
“No,” Davy said. “Twenty dollars and sixty-five cents.”
The room was filled with a shocked silence.
Carol Ann shot her fist into the air in victory. “I knew it!” She whirled, her eyes glittering in triumph, and faced Davy Kiddermeister. “Sheriff, I demand you arrest that woman.”
“There could be a good explanation for this, Carol Ann,” Howie Murchison said testily. “Mark, when was the money moved?”
The banker tapped at the computer. “Late last night. The transaction was recorded at 3:14 a.m.”
“Where to?”
Mark shook his head and muttered to himself. He continued to tap at the keys.
“Right to that woman’s bank account, that’s where,” Carol Ann said. “And then into her pockets. She’s on her way out of town right now, with a suitcase full of cash in the trunk of her car. Sheriff, I demand you put out an APB.”
Davy leaned against the wall, his face a careful blank. “Mr. Jefferson?”
“We don’t have any proof that a crime’s been committed yet,” Mark Anthony said. He looked at Davy. “This is going to take a while. We’re a local, privately owned bank, as you know, and we don’t have a fraud unit as such.”
“You don’t have a fraud unit at all.” Marge snorted. “I’ve got somebody you can hire as a consultant, Mark.”
“We’ll see.” Mark moved his shoulders uncomfortably. “I’ve got to call a meeting of the board of directors. I think it would be a good idea to talk to Mrs. Henry. I’ve got some questions, certainly.”
“Questions!” Carol Ann was almost bouncing with anger. “I’ve got a question for you. Why aren’t you sending a squad car for her right this minute?!”
Mark sat back in his chair with a relaxed air that didn’t fool Quill at all. “Ms. Spinoza, Mrs. Henry has sole discretion over this account. The money was moved to a bank in North Dakota. I’ve just sent an inquiry about the balance. They’ll get back to me. Maybe it’s an interest-bearing account, and Mrs. Henry decided that the fete funds would be better served with a bank that can afford to do that. I just don’t know. To go any further than that, I’m going to need to talk to the other people signatory on the account. That’s right, isn’t it, counselor?”
Howie nodded.
Mark folded his arms across his chest. “As president of this bank, I will go so far as to say, I’m concerned enough to ask that the fete steering committee grants permission for an investigation.”
Davy nodded. “Sounds good to me. Quill? Who all’s on the steering committee?”
“Me, Reverend Shuttleworth, Elmer, and Althea Quince.” Quill pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll see if I can get them all here, shall I?”
“Cover-up!” Carol Ann shouted. “I am so sick of you people thinking that you run this town. You know what? I’ll tell you what. It’s time we fixed that.” She narrowed her eyes to a threatening glare. “There’s quite a few of us ready to change things around here. We’ve been, like, totally pissed off at the high-handed way you’ve been running things, and the theft of this money is just the tip of the corruption iceberg, the tip!”
“The what?” Miriam asked.
Carol Ann took a deep breath and smiled; the effect was a lot scarier than her threats. “You’ll see. You all might want to make a point of watching the six o’clock news.” She looked at her watch. “Pardon me. Better make that the eleven o’clock news. I’ve got a lot of phone calls to make.”
Without another word, she walked out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
Miriam threw up her hands. “The woman’s crazy.” Mark Anthony Jefferson looked uneasy. Marge rubbed her chin thoughtfully. Davy muttered, “What the hell?” and punched a number into his cell phone. Howie put his pen into his sports coat pocket and his yellow pad into his briefcase.
Quill, who had been sending and receiving texts, slipped her own phone back into her pocket. “I reached Dookie. Althea Quince is off on a wine tour with her husband, and she’s more than an hour and a half away, but they’ve turned around and headed back. Harland is bringing Elmer back here right now. That’s three of us, Mark. Is that going to be enough to authorize whatever we need to authorize?”
“Sure. I’ll just need you to agree to remove Mrs. Henry from the account and maybe file an official request to move the inquiry forward.”
“We can do that,” Quill said sadly. “Davy?”
“Yeah,” Davy said. “I’ll go out and talk to her.”
~
“I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more awful afternoon, Myles,” Quill said into her computer screen. “The whole village is in an uproar.”
It was late, well after midnight, but Myles had e-mailed her the only time he was available for his call, and they were both hostage to his schedule. “That’s not the worst thing. I told you Carol Ann said she was going to make the eleven o’clock news? Well, she did. She and Brady Beale have started something called Citizens for Justice. They managed to organize some of the people who’ve been unhappy about having the fete here in Hemlock Falls all these years. The first meeting was out at the car dealership and Carol Ann talked the anchor from Channel 11 out of Syracuse into covering it. They’re claiming corruption, cronyism, and all kinds of inflammatory things. Oh! And conspiracy. That’s what caught the attention of the TV people.
“Davy had to send the patrol cars out to Peterson Automotive—Carol Ann kept insisting that the Citizens for Justice needed police protection. Of course, the presence of the patrol cars made really great TV.” Quill shook her head in disgust. “Some citizens’ movement. There were twenty or so people there, at most, none of them with anything substantial to say. Brady kept shoving people in front of his store sign so the TV cameras would pick it up. If you ask me, he’s in it for the free advertising. Too bad for us it was a slow news night. Oh! And Carol Ann’s started a Twitter campaign. She’s calling it fete-fraud. Very catchy, which is also too bad for us.”
“What does Adela have to say?”
Quill rubbed her forehead. “Nobody can find her, poor thing. Dookie, Elmer, and I signed all the permissions to launch a bank inquiry. Elmer’s a mess. Davy let all the deputies know we needed to talk to her…in an informal way, since there’s no evidence a crime’s been committed yet—but then they got diverted with this protest Carol Ann organized.
“Marge and I went over to Adela’s three times today, but her car wasn’t there. Then I had to go to Syracuse to see about renting those crates for the Furry Friends booths, and by the time I got back, Carol Ann was blatting away about the conspiracy. Don’t ask me what kind of conspiracy. It doesn’t make any sense. She’s named herself president and the whole purpose seems to be to hang poor Adela out to dry. It’s awful. I went down to the Croh Bar for a glass of wine after Doreen put Jack to bed, to kind of get a feel for things. Everybody shakes their head and says: “I always knew there was something funny about those Henrys” and “I didn’t want to say anything before, but…” And then they go on to say the most dreadful stuff. She’s got a few supporters, all of us at the Inn, and Marge, and Miriam, and Clare’s people up at the academy, but everyone else is just nasty. I’ve been an innkeeper too long to be disillusioned, but still.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “Ugh.”
Her husband shook his head slightly in sympathy.
Myles was in an airport lounge, she could tell that much. But where the lounge was located and where he was going was a complete mystery. She never wanted to know, in case it was one of the hot spots featured so terrifyingly in the New York Times and the Syracuse Herald. He’d been traveling for at least twenty-four hours, so it had to be halfway around the world. Beyond that, she didn’t want to speculate.
“This will blow over, dear heart.” Myles’s voice was deep and resonant, even through the distortion of the speakers. Quill’s heart turned over. Somehow, phone calls had been easier than the video conferencing and she wished, briefly, that she’d never set up the video software. She missed him less when she couldn’t hear him and see him at the same time.
“I suppose you’re right. The big question is the fete. Elmer keeps saying the fete’s the responsibility of the steering committee, which it is, of course, except that Adela took care of everything. I got a little ruffled when Brady Beale accused us of being doormats and rubber-stamping everything, but he’s right! And it’s not that big a committee. Just me and Adela and Elmer, who’s a mess, of course. Dookie Shuttleworth is so gentle he can never put his foot down about a thing. So guess who’s been elected temporary chair?”
Myles bit his lip.
“It’s not funny, Myles! I was perfectly happy being a doormat. I’m totally fine with rubber-stamping. I do not, not, not want to run another damn committee!”
“What about this Althea Quince?”
“What about her?” Quill said crossly. “She was just super sympathetic when she and her husband finally got here, but she’s not a native, and she’s clueless about what needs to be done next.”
“Do I know her?”
“You met her. She’s that woman who’s renting the Federal Suite at the Inn for three months. That’s not the problem!” Quill wanted to pound the desk, which would wake up Jack, or throw something against the wall, which would also wake up Jack. Instead, she dug her fingers into her temples and took a long breath. “Where’s the money? If Adela moved it, where did she move it to? If she didn’t move it, who did?
“None of us had access to the checkbook. Adela guarded it like a lioness. She’s always been so proud of how much we’ve been able to donate to the literacy program. Handing over to the charity was one of the highlights of her year. No. Something else must have happened to the funds. A computing error, maybe, although Mark Anthony got really ruffled when I suggested that.”
“I should think he would. If it is a bank error, it’ll show up soon enough.”
“Mark Anthony won’t talk to me about it. I called him at home. All he said was: ‘the bank end checks out,’ whatever that may mean. And then ‘we’ve hired a fraud consultant,’ which says to me that the money’s actually gone and somebody actually took it.”
Myles maintained a diplomatic silence.
“Marge is going to put one of her tech guys on it, if she can get the bank to agree. Doesn’t think much of the bank’s consultant. Anyhow. All this will take enormous amounts of time, and since the money’s gone, and we can’t find Adela, it’s pretty clear that the fete will be toast if we don’t find the thief pretty soon.”
“So you’re pretty sure you’re looking for an embezzler.”
“But who?! Out of Adela, Elmer, Dookie Shuttleworth, and me, who would you pick? I didn’t do it. And for God’s sake, literally, we can’t suspect Dookie of all people…” She stopped and said, with emphasis. “Althea Quince.”
Myles smiled. “Tell me about Althea Quince.”
“Sure. Well, you’ve met her. She and her husband were the first to sign up for the Long-Term Let. They moved into the Federal Suite and the Colonial Suite last month.”
Myles looked a little startled. “Both suites?”
“Althea said she’s been happily married for forty years and living in two suites would insure that she and Nolan would make it forty-one.” Despite her agitation, Quill laughed. She’d liked the flamboyant Althea Quince. But not if she was a thief. “There’s your suspect, Myles. The day after she and Nolan moved in, she asked if there were any openings in community service. They’ve taken the suites for three months, and she said she’d go stir-crazy if she didn’t have something interesting to do. And you know how hard it always is to get local people to serve on the fete committee. It’s strictly rubber-stamp. Adela’s show. Only wimps allowed, which is why Dookie and I get drafted every year. But we did need another body, and Althea was more than happy to take on the more tedious tasks, like the ads and the mailings. I could just kick myself.” She grabbed her hair with both hands and tugged at it. “Who likes to spend their time collating mailing lists? Nobody. I can’t believe I was so mistaken about her.”
“Quill…”
“I’ll bet she’s flown the coop—and she prepaid for the three months, too!”
“Quill!”
Quill released her hair and sat up. “I know. You’re right. I’m jumping the gun. I’m theorizing ahead of the facts. You just wait. I’ll get Marge to dig into her background and we’ll get that money back.”
The computer screen was high res, and it didn’t obscure Myles’s slight frown.
“Don’t worry. I’m not getting involved with anything like murder. I promised, remember? But I’ve got to find out who took that money. If I don’t—I’m chair of the fete steering committee.”
“I’ve said it before so I don’t need to say it again.”
“Leave it to the professionals. Right. I will. Don’t worry. I’ll just make a few…inquiries. We have an emergency meeting of the committee tomorrow morning to decide what to do next.” She sighed. “Let’s leave it for the moment. How are you doing? Did you get the photos of Jack I sent in his bath tonight? I wish we didn’t have to talk so late at night. You never get a chance to actually see him.”
He held up his phone. “Received and stored. And the move back to the Inn went smoothly?”
“It did. We’ve got a lot of practice switching back and forth from the house to here. Mike brings the van and I’ve got it down to less than an hour.” Suddenly, she felt tears at the back of her eyes. “I wish. Never mind. I love you, Myles. Stay safe.”