Dying for a Change (26 page)

We walked back into the living room, my hand still in Dan’s. He stopped, looked at the plates that had held the pizza we’d had delivered, the empty cups and glasses, the crumpled napkins I hadn’t yet had the energy to remove, and said wistfully, “I don’t suppose you have anything left.”

“
We saved some, and the coffee’s fresh and hot,” Susannah told him, “but if you tell my Mom one thing while I’m not here...”

“
I won’t.” He dropped on the sofa, dragging me down beside him. “Like mother, like daughter,” he muttered, as Susannah rushed out toward the kitchen.

He’d finished two pieces and downed a cup of coffee before we got one word out of him.

“
Where’s Sharon now,” was the first thing Susannah wanted to know. “She’s not out on bail, or anything?” There was touch of apprehension in her voice, a feeling I shared.

“
Murder One doesn’t come with bail. Don’t worry. She won’t be out anytime soon. She can’t seem to stop talking. Her attorney is having apoplexy.” Dan grinned a little, but immediately turned serious. “She’s completely cracked up. I think she needs a doctor a lot more than that attorney.”

“
If she’s talking that much, you must know everything,” I said. “Go back to the beginning, and explain all this.”

“
Evidently it all happened in stages.” He settled himself a little more comfortably on the sofa. The cushion moved, and I slid closer to him. I didn’t move away. “Sharon met Mr. Marburger and the Stop N Shop people while she was living in Seattle. When her father got sick, she left the man she’d been living with, who is a developer, and came back home. Sharon’s had her brokers’ license for years, so it was easy for her to take over the business. She found that piece of land, and realized right away it was exactly the size and location Stop N Shop liked to build on. She didn’t have any money, so she put together the partnership, incorporated it, and declared herself president, and general manager. Then she started negotiating with Stop N Shop.”

“
Only she didn’t tell any of her partners?” Susannah asked. She was sitting forward, listening to all this intently.

“
Not for quite some time.” Dan settled himself a little deeper in the cushion. I slid a little closer. He smiled before he went on. “Not until she was positive the deal was going to fly. Now here’s where the bad part starts.”

I couldn’t help it. I stiffened, thinking of Hank and Dottie, their families, all the pain Sharon had caused.

“
I don’t have to go on.” Somehow Dan’s arm had slid around me and he squeezed me softly.

“
Oh yes you do,” Susannah told him. “Mom’s feeling bad for everybody, I can tell by her face, but she wants to know how all this happened as much as I do.”

“
That right?” Dan looked down at me.

I looked up at him, gave into temptation, pushed the lock of hair back off his forehead, and nodded emphatically. “Go on.”

The look I got before he started again was very nice. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Sharon had negotiated a much higher sales price than even she’d expected, and greed set in. By this time her Dad had died, and she borrowed against everything she could to raise cash, and started buying out her partners.”

“
I understand all that. Where do Hank and Dottie come in?”

“
Dottie had always done all the paper work for the partnership,” Dan said, “and when these supposed new partners appeared, she wanted information about them for her files. Sharon, of course, couldn’t provide any. They were nothing but names she’d made up, names she didn’t want to appear anywhere in any official records.”

“
Which is why Dottie couldn’t give Alice Ives an address for Paul Cameron.”

“
Right.” Dan looked down at me approvingly. He moved his arm a little so I could nestle against him, just a tiny bit. “Sharon managed to keep Dottie from being suspicious until it was time to mail out the Schedule K-1’s. Each shareholder has to get one and send it in with their income tax return. Dottie wanted addresses, tax ID numbers, all that. Sharon wasn’t about to make that up, so she took over all the bookwork. At first, Dottie was hurt. Then she told Hank about it, and he got suspicious. Sharon thinks, and I’m sure she’s right, Hank put Dottie up to getting him the new names.”

“
Sharon told me Hank thought she was bringing in outside people to buy out the locals, and make the big profit.”

“
He probably did,” Dan replied. “No one knew a thing about Stop N Shop until after Sharon had used up all her money, and couldn’t buy out any more people.”

All of a sudden I remembered something. “Tom! I saw on the news you’d arrested Tom. You don’t still have him in jail!”

“
We never arrest more than one person at a time for any one murder.” Dan smiled down at me. A nice kind of a smile. “He’s probably home by now, recovering.”

“
Serves him right,” Susannah said heartlessly. “Maybe he’ll learn to control his temper.”

I started to ask how she knew about Tom’s temper problems, but stopped. Maybe she’d learned how to tap into the small town hot line, but, as long as Tom was free, I really didn’t care.

“
Was that Tom’s gun?” Susannah evidently referred to the one Sharon had tried to use on us.

“
It was. Tom has a permit, and it matches.”

“
So, all the loose ends are tied, except for one. Or maybe two.”

“
What’s that?” asked Dan, surprised. “I thought I told you everything.

“
I saw you on television, announcing Tom’s arrest, just minutes before Sharon arrived. You were in San Luis Obispo. How did you get back so fast?”

Dan looked blank, then laughed. “I made that statement early this morning. They ran that thing every half hour all day. I’d been back since noon.”

“
Okay.” Now explain how you knew to turn up here.” Susannah held up her hand, and hastily said, “Not that I’m complaining.”

“
Actually,” Dan said a little slowly, carefully not looking at me, “we’ve been a little interested in that partnership ourselves. I think Sharon knew that, because she’d taken all of the files home. She evidently spent all day Friday holed up, going through them, throwing out anything that might incriminate her.”

That explained why I got stuck with Mr. Marburger, but I didn’t stop to think about that. “You didn’t tell me!” I sat straight up. “I could have been killed! So could Susannah!”

“
No, I didn’t tell you,” Dan admitted, “it seemed the right thing at the time. I’d no idea all these people, Mr. Marburger, Alice Ives, Mrs. Pierpont, all had pieces of the puzzle, and that they’d pass them on to you. We were working from a completely different end.”

“
You still didn’t say how you knew we needed you,” Susannah insisted.

“
We were looking for Sharon. More and more, it was evident she was deeply involved in something. If not in murder, certainly in fraud. One of my officers saw her car in front of your house and called in. It seemed a perfect time for a little interference.”

“
Just like in the movies, or one of Mom’s books,” Susannah said. “Boy, were we glad to see you.”

“
Always nice to be wanted.” Dan grinned at Susannah, then smiled much differently down on me.

“
Will you look who’s back.” There was Jake, standing at Dan’s end of the sofa, tail slightly twitching, looking thoughtfully at Dan’s lap. He gave me a disdainful look, sailed up on Dan’s legs, and started to purr. I may have been forgiven for throwing him at Sharon, but not for setting him down when Dan came in. Besides, it seemed Dan gave better ear rubs.

Dan took his arm from around my shoulders and started to scratch Jake’s ears. “Had a bad morning, didn’t you, old fellow.” He crooned to the cat, who crooned back with a loud purr. I looked first at Dan, then meaningfully at the cat.

“
We’ll have to give some thought on how to work this out, won’t we?” Dan laughed.

“
Oh, I think we can find a way.” Susannah walked across the room, scooped Jake up in her arms and headed for the kitchen. “Come on, you hero you, let’s go call Neil.” Without a backward glance, she quietly closed the door.

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