CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Bernard left ajar the door to his office in city hall. Closing it would be…what? Suspicious? Yes, better to leave it open. Besides, it was Saturday morning, and if any other employees happened to walk by, he would see them from his desk chair.

From the start of this new job, just six weeks ago, Bernard had arranged his desk so that he faced the door. He had never liked surprises. But just yesterday the reservation’s new marshal had been an unexpected visitor in the mayor’s office. And, less than an hour later, there she was again: interrupting his morning break at the library.

Although Bernard had agreed, as part of his job, to handle the logistics of the city’s partnership with the reservation and Blackstream Oil, it would be better for him—infinitely better—if the deal fell through. The catch? He couldn’t be the one to scuttle it.

Bernard took a deep breath, settled his glasses on the bridge of his nose, rolled his neck to release as much tension as he could and began to study the budget files for every department of the city.

Bernard was good with numbers. Numbers always made sense. He never had to wonder what they were thinking. Not usually, anyway. He always looked forward to losing himself in their certainty.

The next few hours that passed were an extension of the last few weeks that he’d spent poring over the budget. A bit obsessively, even he had to admit.

It wasn’t until he’d worked through lunch and the numbers on his computer screen had begun to blur that Bernard stopped to remove his glasses and rub his eyes. It was there, and he’d finally found it, elegantly hidden and nefariously off-kilter. Numbers never lied, and now he knew what they had been trying to tell him. The mayor—definitely the mayor—had been skimming thousands upon thousands of dollars, and also, somehow, covering it up. The answer had eluded him for weeks, but he had it now. Clear as day.

Bernard congratulated himself as he took an external hard drive the size of his palm from his pocket and transferred the city’s budget files onto it.

He thought of Mitzie. About his awkward exchange with her in the library yesterday, his morning respite ruined by the appearance of Marshal Starr. How nervous they both made him.

He’d invested a lot of time in presenting just the right information to put the partnership between the rez, the city and Blackstream Oil in a good light, not that Mayor Taylor had noticed. She was always watching him, which put him on edge. And when he felt on edge, he liked to be prepared for anything.

It wasn’t that Bernard liked secrets. It was that he found them necessary. He tried locking them away in tight compartments so that he could go on with his life, but he had discovered, during those years of college and then grad school, that keeping a secret was terribly stressful.

He came back to Dexter Springs because of the job, Bernard told himself. And that was partly true. He had come back because of the job and because the economy was bad and because he had to take what he could get.

But there was something else that was true too. The reservation had pulled him back. It was like a missing tooth, and he couldn’t stop touching his tongue to its absence, to the sweet pain of it. He couldn’t stop.

He.

Couldn’t.

Stop.

Bernard watched the computer screen as the file transfer finished; then he removed the drive and palmed it into his pocket. He looked at his watch: one fifty-five p.m. He had five minutes to make it across the street to the library, where Saturday afternoon’s story time was ending.

As Bernard left city hall through its rear exit, the cool air of an autumn afternoon rushed around him, soothing the heat that had worked its way up his neck, mounted his cheeks and beaded perspiration on his forehead.

He exhaled and used one hand to straighten the collar of his shirt, anxious to put things in motion. He set a course to the library’s street-level double doors, and once inside, he traversed the stone floor to the main collection. Soon he was weaving his way between shelves to the children’s section, where a half dozen toddlers had just been released like doves at a wedding, scattering down the aisles carrying books or toys.

“Oh my gosh, Paisley. Come back here. Yes, girl, and give me that book. Sorry, Glenna.” Bernard could hear Mitzie’s voice. “At least she’ll be a reader someday.”

And with that Mitzie burst around the corner, trailing a wobbly toddler.

“Well, Bernie! I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. How are you?” She took him in, the sharply creased slacks, the tucked-in shirt. “Still no Google, huh?”

Bernard shrugged off the joke and, looking around, said, “Have a minute? Wondering if we could talk.” Then he quickly leaned in and added, “Quietly.”

This was a risk and he knew it. Maybe trusting Mitzie was too large a risk, but when he recalled the years that she’d spent patiently explaining calculus to him in high school, he had acquiesced. What choice did he have?

Numbers were a language he had learned to adore, and Mitzie was even more fluent than he was. Also, he’d never known her to keep a secret.

It’s what he was counting on.

“Sure thing, B-man,” she said. “Let’s do this. Here, Paisley. Come to Mama.”

She slung the child across one hip and followed Bernard to a study room at the back of the library, away from the rest of the patrons, who were paying no attention at all.

They entered the small room and Bernard shut the door, Mitzie setting Paisley on the floor with a hardcover of The Pictorial Guide to Tarot Wisdom, yet another book the toddler must have pulled from a shelf as she passed by. The little girl, her soft curls falling into her eyes, gurgled and pointed at the brightly colored cover.

“Whatcha got?” Mitzie said.

“Um, okay, here’s the thing.” He had practiced this, but now the words he had intended to say didn’t come to him. “You’re really good with numbers.” He stumbled. “I mean, really good.”

Mitzie crossed her arms over her chest and smiled, snapping her gum and waiting. She was the town’s unofficial tax accountant and ran an office out of her home, with small-business owners dropping off fat envelopes stuffed with disorganized receipts, hoping she would save them.

Bernard pulled the external hard drive from his pocket, his palm clammy.

“I’m wondering if you could take a look at this, but keep it between us. Really, Mitzie, only between us. If what I think is happening is happening, this is bad. Very bad.”

Mitzie’s eyes grew wide as she used a thumb and finger to pluck the device from his open hand.

“What is this?”

“The entirety of our city budget for the last three years. Every file. From every department. And something’s off. I can’t point to it, but it’s there, and if anyone can find it, you can.”

Mitzie laughed. Paisley dropped her book to the floor.

“Bern,” she said, “you’re not going to believe this.” She shook her head. “I’m one step ahead of you. I just made copies of this year’s published budget and had intended to go over it line by line, but this? This is so much better.”

They smiled at each other then, and a secret happiness welled inside Bernard. They were two conspirators on the right side of everything: honor, the law, their town. And, with any luck, they had the power to right this wrongdoing.

Bernard had his own reasons, and he hoped that Mitzie, who was making a life in Dexter Springs, would be a dog with a bone. Everything around the mayor turned to gold while the edges of town, including real estate and people, fell into decline, and soon Mitzie would know why. Bernard was filled with something he could think of only as joy.

Meanwhile, he knew he had an image to uphold.

Bernard was steady, reliable, composed, diligent. All the things that made him a good city manager made him good at other things too. He shook the thought out of his head.

“So you’ll take a look? Thing is, if you find something amiss, you can’t use these files to prove it. You’ll have to find the problem, if there is one, and somehow correlate it with the published budget. I can’t be involved. This could go to the highest level.”

He didn’t say things like fraud or embezzlement, but the words hung in the air.

“Ooh, I’m a forensic accountant now, B-man.” Then she saw his worried expression and leaned in close, whispering, “It’s okay. I’m on the case. Meet me back here next week. After story time.”

She slipped the external hard drive into her bag, scooped up Paisley and opened the door. Bernard watched her hips swing toward the circulation desk and then the exit. With any luck, he’d just transferred the heat to Mitzie, which would keep him where he needed to be: far, far from suspicion.

He looked out the library’s windows to city hall across the street, the parking lot a ghost town. The rest of the day stretched with possibility, and he had plenty of time for a hike.