25
I left Byram and drove home where I dropped off Faith and picked up Sam and Kevin. Together, the three of us headed over to Davey’s camp.
The Field Day had a round-robin format with several games being played at a time, and a call had gone out beforehand for parent volunteers to help out with the busy schedule. Sam and I had both signed up.
He served as referee for a couple of games while I handed out snacks and juice boxes during the breaks. Kevin, whose job was to sit in his stroller and enjoy the spectacle, shuttled back and forth between us like a baby commuter.
Davey and Joey, Alice’s son, had been assigned to the same team. Both were playing defense; Davey at center halfback and Joey in the goal. Since Alice was stuck at work, I was also manning the video camera, recording the day’s events so that she could enjoy the replays later that night.
Juggling tasks like the experienced mom I was, I also found time to make a quick phone call to Pine Ridge.
“You and I need to talk,” I told Candy when she came on the line.
“That sounds serious.”
“It is.”
“Go ahead.”
“Not over the phone,” I said. “There are still some details I have to work out. And there’s stuff I need your help with. I want to do it in person.”
A raucous cheer went up. Somebody’s team had scored a goal. All around me, parents were jumping up and down, screaming. Even Kevin was waving his hands in the air. I had to wait for the tumult to die down before I could hear what Candy was saying.
“What’s all that yelling?” she asked. “Where are you?”
“Soccer game. It’s Field Day at Davey’s camp.”
“When does it end?”
“Four o’clock, give or take.”
“See you then,” she said and hung up.
Davey and Joey’s team won their first two games, then lost the third. Since the defeat had come at the hands of boys who were two grades ahead of them in school, neither was unduly upset by the loss.
Last game of the day pitted the kids against their parents. Sam played the first half, I went in for the second. If it wasn’t for a last minute block by my own son that didn’t look strictly legal to me, I would have scored a goal. The game went down to the wire, and the kids beat us in overtime.
When we got back to the house, I grabbed a quick shower, then explained to Sam that I had to go out again.
“Let me guess,” he said, cocking a brow. “Pine Ridge?”
I nodded. “I’m meeting Candy there. I think I’ve finally figured out what’s going on. I just need a few more answers, and then I’ll take everything to the police and let them work on it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Sam. “Be careful.”
“You know I will.”
Candy was waiting for me when I arrived. In fact, she was pacing back and forth in the grassy area between the front office building and the Dog House.
Winston was outside with her. The plump Welsh Corgi had more sense than to stride up and down in the sun, however. Instead, he was flopped down under a nearby tree with his muzzle nestled between his front paws. Only the Corgi’s eyes were moving as he kept tabs on her progress from his comfortable spot in the shade.
“I thought you said four o’clock,” Candy snapped as I approached.
“That’s when the event ended. Then I had to go home and change.”
It was closer to five now. But anxious as I was to try to fit together the last pieces of the puzzle, I wasn’t about to let Candy bully me. Solving Steve’s murder was important to me, but not nearly as important as my family.
“Would you rather we do this tomorrow?” I asked mildly.
“No, of course not. You’re here now, let’s get on with it. Tell me what you’ve found out.”
“For one thing, I’ve been told that there are some irregularities in your bookkeeping.”
Candy stopped pacing and spun around to face me.
“Bookkeeping?” She sounded incredulous. “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“For starters.”
“Who cares about that? I thought you were going to tell me who killed my brother.”
“I’m getting there. And the trail starts—or maybe ends—with your books.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m pretty sure that Steve was keeping two sets of records.”
“No.” The denial was quick and automatic. Candy didn’t even stop to think. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Tell you what? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe I should back up,” I said.
“Feel free,” Candy muttered.
She walked over and sat down on the bench. Even in repose, she still hummed with nervous energy. Winston watched her take a seat but made no move to join her on the bench.
Taking my cue from the Corgi, I remained standing. “Earlier today, I went over to Byram and had a chat with Cole Demarkian. You know, the guy who makes the deliveries for Byram Pet Supply?”
“I know who Cole is,” Candy said shortly. “Why would you want to talk to him?”
“Because for one thing, he’s making a lot more deliveries to Pine Ridge now than he used to before Steve died.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me so this morning.”
“And I’m supposed to think that matters?”
“Yes,” I said emphatically. “I’m pretty sure it does. Remember yesterday when Cole was here and Bailey was complaining that she had so many new grooming supplies that she didn’t even have enough room to store them all?”
“Crap,” Candy said with a frown. “What are you, omniscient? How do you even know about this stuff?”
“I was here, remember? We’d just been talking in your office and when I was leaving I ran into Bailey and Jason outside.”
“Jason? He’s just a kid. Summer help. How could he possibly know anything?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
Candy stared up at me, lifting a hand to shade her eyes from the slanting sun. The look on her face was equal parts frustration and annoyance.
“Let me tell you what I remember from yesterday. I told you I was innocent and you told me you’d help me prove it. And now you’re saying that all you’ve done is discover there’s some sort of problem with the books?”
“Not just some sort of problem,” I said firmly. “Something potentially big enough to lead to murder.”
“How?”
I walked over and joined her on the bench. “Who’s been doing the books since Steve died?”
“I have . . . after a fashion. Numbers aren’t my strong suit. Anything that resembles actual accounting is a nightmare as far as I’m concerned. Basically all I’ve been doing is keeping up with the payroll and the purchasing, and then paying the bills when they come in.”
“So you haven’t made any changes to what Steve set up?”
“Heck no, why would I do that? Just looking at those columns of numbers is confusing enough. It’s not like I’m going to jump in and try to improvise. I figure Steve must have had a system that worked, so why mess with it?”
The door to the Dog House opened and a staff member came out leading a matching pair of Bulldogs. While Candy and I had been speaking, there’d been a steady one-way stream of dogs on the walkway between the two buildings. Clients were arriving at the front office to pick up their pets. Pine Ridge was getting ready to close for the day.
“Eventually I’ll have to hire someone who can sort the whole thing out,” said Candy. “But in the meantime, I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t just muddle along for a month or two.”
“So if there was something unusual going on in the accounting—maybe some numbers that didn’t add up in purchasing and accounts payable—you probably wouldn’t have noticed?”
Candy shook her head. “Trust me, there could be a great big picture of Brad Pitt wearing nothing but a smile sitting in the middle of those files and I wouldn’t have noticed. That’s how little time I’ve spent in there. I just get in, find what I need to know, and get out.”
Candy’s reticence to deal with numbers certainly explained how Steve had been able to get away with what I suspected he’d been up to. As long as he was the sole person with access to the ledger, there’d be no one to complain about figures that didn’t always make sense.
“Another question. How do you decide how much stuff you need to order? You know, dog food, grooming supplies, whatever.”
“That’s easy.” Candy looked relieved that I’d finally asked her something she knew the answer to. “That stuff’s all in Steve’s computer too. I just looked back over the invoices for the last couple of months, saw what he was doing, and kept it up.”
Easy for Candy, perhaps. And maybe even logical. But I was pretty sure that that system had had the effect of flooding Pine Ridge with unneeded supplies.
“Would you mind if I went into Steve’s computer and had a look for myself?” I asked.
Candy thought for a minute before answering. “You won’t erase anything?”
I shook my head.
“Or make any changes to stuff that’s in there?”
“Definitely not. I just want to have a look at some of the company accounting and see whether everything adds up the way it’s supposed to.”
“I guess that’s all right,” said Candy. “On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“When you get finished snooping around my brother’s files, will you go back to trying to figure out who killed him?”
I stared at her, perplexed. That was exactly what I was doing. How could Candy not see that?
I’d run across people before who had a mental block about math. My sister-in-law, Bertie, was one of them. But the information I needed wasn’t so much about the numbers themselves as it was about the internal logic of how money was being distributed within the business. Maybe if I found what I was looking for and then laid everything out in front of Candy in very simple steps, she’d be able to understand.
“Well?” she prompted, and I realized she’d mistaken my silence for hesitation.
“It’s a deal,” I replied. “Your brother’s computer—is it password protected?”
“Of course. Steve was very careful about things like that. I guess I have to give that to you, huh?”
“Either that or come inside and sign me in yourself.”
Candy looked down at her watch. “No, I’m already running late. I have a few more things to finish up and then I’m gone for the day. I’m assuming you don’t mind if I don’t sit and hold your hand while you go on this fishing expedition?”
There it was again, Candy’s total disbelief that the files could reveal anything of importance. She must have trusted her brother and the way he was managing their accounts implicitly. Unfortunately, I suspected I was going to be destroying that illusion.
“No, that’s fine. In fact, I work better when things are quiet. Password?”
Candy rose from the bench and headed toward the back of the office building. She waggled her fingers at Winston and the Corgi hopped up and scampered along. He and I fell into step beside her.
“It’s Nathan,” she said.
“Like the dog?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah.” Pulling open the door, she smiled sadly. “Funny choice, huh? Steve had a real soft spot for that old Dachshund. He once said he thought that dog would outlive us all. Too bad he turned out to be half right.”
Candy and I walked down the hallway together. The door to her office stood open. The door to Steve’s was closed. When I hesitated in front of it, she reached around me, turned the knob, and pushed it open.
“There you go,” she said, flipping on a light switch just inside the door. “Computer’s on the desk, file cabinet’s over by the closet. Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”
I sat down in Steve’s leather chair, rolled it closer to the desk, and got my bearings. The last time I’d seen Steve’s office there’d been stacks of paperwork on the desk’s surface. In the interim, all that had disappeared. As had the dead plant in the corner of the room. Obviously, Candy had gotten around to hiring a cleaning service to put the room back together.
As the computer powered up, I heard a hum of voices from the reception area, punctuated by the occasional happy bark. Madison was greeting returning clients and checking dogs out for the day. Things were wrapping up out front. Pretty soon the place would be empty. Too bad it hadn’t occurred to me to bring Faith along for company.
The opening screen appeared and I typed in Steve’s password. That took me to a screen saver whose image was a tranquil river scene. Shortcut icons dotted both sides of the picture.
I’m not a computer whiz by any means. But if I go slowly and take things step by step, more times than not I eventually end up where I want to go.
Now I paused and examined each of the choices. It made sense to me that Steve would have a shortcut leading directly to his business files, and he did. The accounting software was Peachtree. Sam used the same system for his small business.
The first page I came to gave me a number of choices including Business Status, Customers & Sales, Vendors & Purchases, and Employees & Payroll. I was guessing that Business Status most likely held the profit-and-loss statements that I wanted to see, but first I went to Vendors & Purchases.
That screen offered more choices. I typed the name Byram Pet Supply into the search box and watched as a long list of invoice dates, starting in early January and continuing right up until Steve’s death, appeared. A tab at the top of the page offered me access to the same records for the two previous years. Now I was getting somewhere.
Starting with the most recent invoices and working my way back, I began to skim through the information. I tried not to get bogged down looking at the individual items, focusing instead on the order patterns and totals, but even so it was slow going.
When Candy stuck her head in the office door to say that she was leaving, I was surprised to see that an hour had already passed. I hadn’t even made a dent in the amount of information there was to process.
“I’m the last one out,” she said. “And we’re all locked up. Feel free to stay as long as you want. Just turn out the lights and lock the back door behind you when you leave.”
“I will,” I said, blinking as I pulled my eyes away from the screen. “There’s a lot of stuff here to go through. I’ll stay for a little while now, but I’ll probably have to come back tomorrow and finish.”
“Whatever.”
She pulled her head back and disappeared. I followed the sound of her footsteps, and Winston’s, until they reached the end of the hallway and let themselves out. Then I went back to work.
An hour later, I looked up again, realized it was getting late, and called Sam.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Still at Pine Ridge. What are you up to?”
“Feeding the kids dinner. I thought you’d be home by now.”
“So did I . . . sort of.” I felt guilty for losing track of time. “But I’m going through Steve’s records, and I’m right in the middle of things. I’d hate to have to stop now.”
Sam sighed. I heard him, even though I was pretty sure he’d tilted the receiver away to mask the sound.
“Give me another hour,” I said. “Ninety minutes, tops. What I don’t have done by then, I’ll leave til tomorrow.”
“I’m holding you to that,” Sam said sternly.
“I love you too,” I said, and hung up the phone.
Once again I went back to work. The sun outside began to set. I turned on the lights and kept going. Things were beginning to fall into place now. By the time I neared the end of my self-imposed deadline, I’d found the first half of what I needed.
Steve’s buying patterns with regard to the purchases he was making at Byram Pet Supply had changed dramatically from the first year Pine Ridge had been in business to the second, most recent year. Even allowing for the fact that the business was growing and therefore expanding its needs, there was no logical way to account for the fact that—according to the invoices I was reading—the purchases of dog food, grooming equipment, and other dog related supplies had more than tripled. Especially when I factored in a reasonable usage schedule.
Kibble was a resource that would need to be replenished regularly. But dog beds, brushes, clipper blades? I used all those items regularly myself and I knew how long it took to wear them out. Despite what the evidence in front of me seemed to indicate, it didn’t happen overnight.
For Pine Ridge to be going through as many supplies as the invoices showed, they would either have to be tending to several hundred dogs a day or else throwing out equipment that had barely been used. Or there was the other option—they were never taking delivery of those supplies in the first place.
I was voting for Plan B myself.
Basically, Steve had figured out a way to steal from himself . . . and his other two partners, of course. He hadn’t been satisfied with the profits he’d been drawing from the business through legitimate means, and he’d devised a way to siphon off some extra funds.
Despite what I’d uncovered thus far, however, I was still a long way from proving my hypothesis. A pattern of erratic purchases wasn’t enough. Nor was the tracking graph I found on the Business Status page of the software that clearly showed a recent dip in revenue. What I needed now were the bills of lading—the signed receipts showing exactly what had been delivered to Pine Ridge by Byram Pet Supply, and when.
I glanced down at my watch. Time was running out. And yet I hated to stop now when I was so close.
I shoved back the desk chair and strode to the most obvious place to look: the file cabinet near the closet. Of course the receipts weren’t there, though I did come across the hard copies of what I suspected were Steve’s fraudulent invoices—the ones he’d filled out himself on the blank sheets Cole had so conveniently supplied.
One by one, I slammed the drawers shut. Then I moved onto the desk. Those drawers looked like a tornado had passed through them recently. That explained how the desktop had been cleared—someone had simply swept all the papers inside, out of sight.
But I still didn’t find any bills of lading. They weren’t on the high shelf in the closet, nor under the cushions of the couch. I looked behind the calendar on the wall and even lifted a section of rug to check beneath it.
Nada.
Now, not only was I late, I was frustrated.
Think! I told myself. I stood in the middle of the room and spun slowly to look in all directions. If you had papers to hide, where would you put them?
When the answer came to me, it was so simple that I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it sooner.
I stared at the empty dog crate in the back of the room. It was a medium-size Vari-Kennel, so familiar to me, so like those I had at home, that I hadn’t even really noticed it. After all, who would pay any attention to one more crate in a facility that was essentially a kennel?
Except that from what I’d heard, Steve hadn’t really liked dogs. Winston followed Candy everywhere, but Steve had had no similar companion of his own. Her office was awash with dog hair, his was pristine.
So who, or what, had the crate been intended to hold?
In a flash I was on my knees and leaning down to look inside. The crate had a pile of bedding—towels and a faux sheepskin throw—on top of its pegboard floor. I sniffed experimentally.
Nope. No way. No dog had ever lived in here.
Reaching into the crate, I shoved the rugs to the back of the container, then threaded my fingers around the edges of the floorboard and lifted it up to reveal the small space beneath. And saw a bulky, nine-by-twelve envelope nestled within.
“Finally.” I exhaled.
“Indeed,” said Roger Cavanaugh.
I whipped around, hit my head on the crate, lost my balance, and ended up sprawled on the rug. But even from that ungainly position, it was hard to miss the glint from the overhead light on the metal object he had in his hand.
Candy and Steve’s silent partner was holding a gun.