Stopping him, I stood up and said, “Let me go get Craig. Give me a minute.”
“Okay. I’m going to print these out, so take your time.”
I took an easy stroll down the hallway to Craig’s desk and found him reading the Sunset Ridge Officer’s Handbook. Engrossed in whatever it had to say, he didn’t notice me standing in front of him, so I softly tapped on his desk.
“Hey, I didn’t know you were standing there,” he said, quickly closing the handbook and shoving it into his side desk drawer. “What’s up?”
“Alex has Samuel’s bank records, so I figured we should all be there when we start reading through them,” I said with a smile as I motioned back toward his office.
Craig frowned but nodded. The effect seemed strange and awkward. “Oh. Okay. Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.” He stopped for a second before he stood up and said, “Forget it. I’ll come right now.”
I wanted to ask if something was wrong, but he walked away toward Alex’s office without another word, so I followed him, wondering what was bothering him. I couldn’t catch up to Craig before he walked in and began talking to Alex, but I made a mental note to be sure to find out what was on Craig’s mind.
“Harlow is on a roll today,” Craig said as he sat down in his usual seat in front of Alex’s desk. “Josh said he got him to sign an order already today too.”
“If only every day could be Sunday,” I mused as I sat down next to him. “Or if we lived in a dry town. That would work too.”
Alex laughed, but Craig remained stone-faced after my joke. I wasn’t a comedienne by any stretch of the imagination, but my humorous comments usually at least got a smirk from most people ever since Stephen quit the force. Had something changed between Craig and me that I didn’t know about? Had I offended him in some way?
I definitely needed to talk to him at some point so I could straighten out whatever was going on. What had happened with Stephen wasn’t going to happen again.
Alex handed us each copies of the bank records. “I’ve skimmed through these already and some things jumped out at me, but I want to know what you guys think.”
“You know, you could have just sent the file to the two of us and saved all this paper and ink,” I teased him.
He smirked and pointed at the stack of papers in my hand. “I’m old fashioned. It’s something you’re supposed to love about me. Take a look and tell me what you see in them.”
Surprised he’d said anything about how we felt about one another at work, I made a silly face at him and then focused my attention on the information the bank had provided. Samuel banked at Third National Bank of Maryland, but had a number of accounts with them. The commercial account for Morrow Jewelers seemed to be pretty much straightforward with deposits each day and withdrawals for bill payments and salary payments for Samuel, the only person who worked at the store.
As I scanned the numbers, for the first time it dawned on me that Samuel ran that entire business by himself. He was the only sales employee while at the same time being the only buyer for the store.
The numbers surprised me somewhat, though. Eliza Morrow hadn’t exaggerated by much when she said her husband was worth more alive than dead. Although Morrow Jewelers rarely had more than one or two customers in the store at any time I’d noticed, the business made a substantial income each month, surpassing one hundred thousand a month.
“How on earth did that business make that kind of money in this town?” I asked as I continued to peruse the bank records for the store.
“Online sales,” Alex said, making me look up in surprise. “He had a website and even sold on Amazon.”
“Really? I’d pegged Samuel for some small town, old fashioned shopkeeper, and here he was selling thousands each month online. Good for him.”
The level of insensitivity in my words hit me as both Alex and Craig stared at me. “Well, it was good until some monster took his life. That’s all I meant. I’m going to close my mouth and read through these records now.”
I returned to scanning the numbers in front of me, feeling awkward about how I’d put my foot into my mouth. After a few minutes of silence, Craig spoke up and said, “What is the payment to someone named Jefferson Sterling? It’s on page eighteen from the personal account that had only his name on it. It’s for five grand in January of this year. That’s a lot of money, don’t you think?”
As I shuffled the stack of papers I held to get to page eighteen, Alex said, “What name did you say? Jefferson Sterling? I know that name. How, though? Give me a minute. It will come to me.”
I read the information on the page about this Sterling man and then flipped the page to see if any other payments were made to him from that same account. I read back as far as the records went and saw nothing more mentioned about him, so I continued into the personal account Samuel and his wife shared and saw no other entry about any payment to Sterling.
“That’s the only one I can see,” I said to Alex and Craig.
“One payment of five grand to him from a private account only Samuel drew on. Any chance it had something to do with the jewelry business but he just needed to use money from his personal account?” Craig asked, directing his question more toward Alex than me.
“I don’t know. What I do want to know is who Jefferson Sterling is. I know that name. It’s from something…” Alex said, letting his sentence trail off into silence.
“Maybe he has a website,” I suggested, growing more curious by the second who this man was and why Samuel had paid him five thousand dollars at the beginning of the year.
Alex pointed at me, nodding his head enthusiastically. “That’s a good idea. I might as well Google his name and see what comes up.”
While he typed away to search for information on Jefferson Sterling, I walked around the desk to see what came up. As soon as Alex read the first listing—a headline from a Baltimore newspaper article—he clapped his hands together in excitement.
“I knew it! I knew I’d heard his name before and in a case too. He’s a private eye in the Baltimore area.”
Scanning the page, I read through the entries until his website came up near the bottom. I pointed at it. “Click on that. I want to see this guy’s website. What exactly do you put on a private eye’s website? Hoping to catch your significant other cheating on you with some beefcake? You’ve come to the right place. We’ll prove she’s unfaithful or your money back.”
Alex looked up at me and rolled his eyes as the page loaded. “You’re in rare form today, Poppy.”
Before we could examine Jefferson Sterling P.I.’s site, Craig announced, “I need to go talk to Derek about something. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
We looked at him, the two of us surprised as he walked out without saying another word, and then at each other. “Was it something I said?” I asked, half-joking but still worried about what could be bothering Craig.
“I don’t know. I guess he had to talk to Derek about something.”
“I guess so.”
Focusing my attention back on the website of our P.I., I noticed whoever had made his site hadn’t put much effort into it. A basic black background and some white text in Times New Roman font showed he’d either done it himself or he’d been overcharged by someone who created it for him.
“This is the lamest website I’ve ever seen,” I said as I pointed to his name at the top of the page. “I think I feel bad for this guy.”
Alex shook his head and scrolled down to where his office address was listed. “Don’t. I remember where I knew him from. A case right after I joined the force. He was hired by a husband who thought his wife was cheating on him with his business partner. The man ended up murdering both of them on Sterling’s report that they had been sleeping together. The guy said he wished he never found out the truth. Sterling’s kind are nothing but trouble.”
He jotted down the office address and closed the page as I walked toward his office door to look out into the hallway. “It’s not like it was Sterling’s fault anyone got killed. He was hired for a job. He didn’t kill them.”
“No, he didn’t, but maybe if that husband hadn’t seen pictures of his own wife and his business partner naked in a cheap motel room acting like he didn’t exist in the world, he might not have taken a shotgun and blown the two of them away one night.”
I smiled at Alex, knowing that case still stayed with him until that day. “So ignorance is bliss is what you’re saying?”
“Sometimes it is.”
“Are we heading out to see Mr. Sterling or is that for another day?” I asked, hoping we’d be taking a road trip that afternoon.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to find him at his office on a Sunday, but if I remember correctly, he pretty much lived in that place, so it might be worth a try.”
He stood to leave, closing his laptop and grabbing his notebook and pen, as I wondered aloud, “He lives in his office? Is he trying to be some gumshoe from some forties film? Does he sleep on the couch there and complain about how bad his back is from it too?”
Alex smiled at my characterization of Jefferson Sterling and shook his head. “I don’t remember, but I think you might have made it way more glamorous than he really is. I think you might be disappointed if that’s what you think you’re going to see.”
As we walked down the hallway to leave on our road trip to Sterling’s office, I said, “You know, I think being a private detective might be interesting. I think I’d like that kind of thing.”
Stopping right outside of Derek’s office, he pushed his eyebrows up in disbelief. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Hollywood makes it look far cooler than it actually is.”
And that’s when we heard Craig say, “I didn’t know what to say. He as much as threatened her. I didn’t know what to do. I read through the handbook, but it didn’t say anything about this. I thought maybe I should tell Alex, but I didn’t know what to say, Chief.”
Before I could even process what Craig may have been saying, Alex walked right into Derek’s office and said loudly, “I think I should be part of this conversation.”
I didn’t know what was going on, but I sensed it wasn’t good. I walked in behind him and waited to hear some explanation.
Derek put his hands up to calm us all. “Before this gets out of control, please close the door, Poppy. This needs to stay with the four of us.”
I did as he said and turned back to hear what this was all about. Craig looked downright upset, his expression dark with worry, and Alex stood with his arms folded across his chest giving off the vibe that he was ready for a fight.
What he’d be fighting about I had no idea, though.
“Alex, Craig didn’t do anything wrong coming to me with this. I want you to know that he said he wanted to discuss this with you, but he didn’t know how to.”
In a stern voice, Alex answered, “I heard that. What I want to know is what’s going on.”
Craig and Derek looked at each other, and then Craig looked down at the floor as his chief explained why he’d come to him. “There’s nothing to get upset about here. I just want you to know that before I tell you what’s going on.”
I knew Alex well enough that Derek’s dragging his feet was only making this worse. Alex nodded and merely said, “Uh huh,” as he waited for the chief of police to get to what had happened.
As all this was going on, I stood there with my mind racing as to what all this could be about. Who threatened who? Was this why Craig had been so strange earlier? And what did all of this have to do with me?
I sensed Alex knew a little more than I did about the situation, but at the moment, he wasn’t telling anyone anything. All he was doing was standing with his arms tightly folded across his chest, letting his body language say what he refused to for the moment.
“Okay,” Derek said as calmly as possible as he began once again to explain. “Craig came to see me because of a situation he didn’t know how to handle exactly. I don’t want anyone to get worried because I’m on top of this. It seems that Craig and Stephen were talking at the Food King last night and Stephen had some rather unpleasant things to say about Poppy in the course of their conversation.”
Alex and I looked at each other like we hoped the other person could understand just what Derek was trying to say. I turned toward him and finally blurted out, “Do they make you take special classes once you become a police chief to teach you to use all those words to say absolutely nothing?”
He grimaced from my forthrightness and shook his head. “You’re not helping, Poppy.”
“Well, either are you, Derek. Let’s lay our cards on the table here. We overheard Craig say someone threatened some female. Was that person Stephen and was I the female?” I asked in my typical way I knew made my old friend uneasy at times.
At that moment, I didn’t care.
“Well, I don’t know if legally it could be called threatening,” Derek said, hedging like he often did when he feared a situation was about to get out of hand.
“What could it be called then?” Alex asked in a low voice. “What did he say exactly?”
Craig lifted his head, and I thought he might break into tears he looked so upset. He cleared his throat and said in a quiet voice, “I saw him at the Food King and we got to talking. He said he heard about what happened to Samuel and that the only thing taken from his store was Poppy’s ring. I swear I didn’t tell him, but he knew. And then he said it would have been better if it was her instead of Samuel that got murdered.”
For a moment, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’d always known Stephen didn’t like me, but I’d never actually believed that had risen to the level of hate. However, if he was wishing me murdered, it obviously meant he truly did feel hatred toward me. I just never thought anyone would feel that way toward me since I couldn’t say I hated anyone ever in my life. I didn’t like Stephen at all, and after Jared broke my heart and ran away with that grocery clerk hussy, I wanted to hate him.
But I never had.
Now to know there was someone out there who actually felt hate in his heart from me made me genuinely frightened.
After I could take a full breath of air into my lungs, I looked over at Alex standing beside me and saw the rage in his expression. He’d stopped himself more than once from giving Stephen exactly what he deserved, but now that he wasn’t a fellow officer anymore, I worried nothing would prevent him from finding Stephen and beating the hell out of him for this.
And then he spoke and I knew how much he was working to hold back his emotions.
“I want him taken care of, Derek. That may not meet the legal standard of a threat to Poppy’s life, but it sure sounds like he has an ax to grind. She’s a citizen of this town and another citizen, a police officer no less, has heard him say he wishes she was dead. What’s going to be done about this?”
Derek stood from behind his desk and sighed. “I’ll talk to him. He has to know this can’t go any further. I don’t care how he feels about Poppy. She won’t be threatened by him or anyone else.”
“Good. He should be glad I’m still a cop in this town or I’d give him a sample of what payback feels like,” Alex said, reaching his hand down to hold mine. “But make sure you let him know he needs to stay far away from me. I’m not playing here. Cop or not, if I see him and he so much as makes the wrong face at me, I’ll give him everything he’s deserved for way too long, Derek.”
The police chief nodded and sighed once more. Derek had never liked confrontation or fighting. That he became a cop had simply been the natural progression of his life once his brother became one. I had a feeling Derek would be far happier stocking shelves at the Food King or coaching the high school football team.
The three of us began to file out of his office, but he stopped us. “One more thing. Craig, I’m going to put you on another case, and I’m working this one with Alex and Poppy. It’s not a punishment, but if Stephen does figure into this case in any way in the future, I don’t want what he said to you last night to be thrown out on some technicality.”
All of us stared at Derek in shock. He hadn’t worked a case as an actual officer since becoming chief. Most of his days were spent cajoling the council and the mayor into letting his force have more equipment like new walkie talkies and police cruisers that didn’t break down every other week. In fact, I had a sense that the wheeling and dealing he did as chief suited him just fine and far better than being a cop.
“You’re working this case?” Alex asked in a stunned voice. “Is there something you haven’t told us? You don’t work cases anymore, Derek.”
“I know I don’t, but I’d never forgive myself if something happened to one of my oldest friends and the woman you’re marrying in a month. Consider it to be one of my best man duties and don’t make a big deal out of it. We’ll just get this case solved and then I’ll go back to spending my days sitting back with my feet up on my desk. That is what all you guys think I do all day, isn’t it?”
“Whatever you say, Chief. As our new partner, I guess I should let you know that Poppy and I are heading to Baltimore to talk to a private detective by the name of Jefferson Sterling. It seems Samuel hired him for some work and paid him five grand.”
“Okay. I’ll have Craig catch me up on the case before I assign him a new one, and then I’ll have a chat with Stephen.”
Turning to face me, Derek smiled. “Don’t worry about this, Poppy. Your groom and his best man won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
I didn’t know what to say to that except thank you. It was times like this that made me happy Sunset Ridge was such a small town and everyone knew everyone’s business.