Partnerships Can Kill: The Third Charlie Parker Mystery (18 page)

"Did you know that Vicky has a twin sister?"
I asked.

"I guess there are a lot of things about
Vicky I didn't know," he answered in a flat voice.

He got up from the couch, his boots scraping
along the hardwood floor as he crossed the hall to his own office.
I felt like such a shit for being the one who had broken the
news.

My briefcase sat beside the desk. It reminded
me of the second shitty thing I had to do today. Sharon wasn't
going to be any happier to receive her news.

Chapter 22

Ben Murray wore a different shirt, but
nothing else had changed. The gold chains and rings, the slicked
back hair—he was as sleazy as ever. He sat at David's desk, looking
quite territorial, when I walked in. Sharon sat across from him,
acting about as assertive as a jellyfish. Whose office was this,
anyway?

Murray saw me standing in the doorway, but
didn't acknowledge me. His right index finger was stabbing at the
stack of envelopes on the desk. From the little I had heard as I
approached, I gathered he was demanding payment for his services.
Well, stand in line, I thought.

Each time Sharon tried to open her mouth, his
finger got more adamant with the envelopes. When I saw her lower
lip begin to quiver, I cleared my throat. Sharon spotted me and
brightened somewhat.

"Charlie! I'm glad you're here," she
said.

"Is there a problem?" I asked, letting my
eyes roam slowly over the desk.

"Mr. Murray was just saying how he better
take over our finances. At least until I find someone
permanent."

"You didn't agree to that, did you?"

"Well... we were still discussing..."

Murray was on his feet. "This is none of your
business, sweetie. Maybe you better go on and play detective
somewhere else."

I could feel heat rising up my neck. I
glanced again at Sharon. She was looking more helpless by the
minute. Her eyes were sending out strong non-verbal distress
signals.

"Mr. Murray," I said, pulling myself up
straighter, "I'm afraid we have no need for your services. Sharon
has already made arrangements for me to handle the work. If you
will please excuse us." I moved aside, indicating the door to
him.

He sat back down in David's chair. "You gonna
throw me out yourself?" he taunted.

Really. I had just about had it with this
jerk. If he hadn't outweighed me by more than double, it would have
been tempting. I do, however, still have a few grains of good sense
left in me.

"Sharon, when I arrived a few minutes ago,
there was a police officer sitting in his patrol car out front. Go
see if he is still there. If not, call 911 and tell them we have an
intruder."

She slipped past me like a cat wanting out of
the dog pound.

Murray's taunting expression did not change,
but he stood up. "You're a real little toughie, aren't you, baby."
His voice had all the tender qualities of a snake hissing. I was
beginning to wish I hadn't bluffed about the police car
outside.

Murray came around the desk. I backed out,
leaving him a wide path. In the doorway to David's office he
turned. His thick hand came toward me. I tried to be prepared for
anything. A male voice, along with Sharon's, came toward us from
the main dining room. Murray turned and flung the back door to the
alley open. In less than a second, he was gone.

My knees went a little weak. Sharon came
around the corner just then, followed by a young Hispanic man
wearing a white apron. They stopped when they saw me standing there
alone.

"He's gone," I said.

Sharon ran up to me and put her arms around
me. We were both trembling.

"It's okay," I said. "I don't think he'll be
back. His kind are only brave in the company of people they think
they can bully."

"There wasn't any police car out there," she
said, "and I called 911, but I got worried they would take too
long, so I grabbed Ralph out of the kitchen, and just prayed that
nasty man hadn't hurt you in the meantime."

"Slow down, slow down," I soothed. "It's all
right now. Ralph, could you bring two cups of tea?"

He nodded and headed back toward the
kitchen.

I guided Sharon toward the chair Murray had
recently left. She clasped her hands together and stuck them
between her knees to make them quit shaking. I pulled the other
chair closer, and faced her. Ralph was back with the tea, and I
handed Sharon's cup to her.

"Now, what brought him here, anyway?" I
asked.

"Well, he said it was because he hadn't been
paid. He wanted a check today. But, Charlie, his bill only arrived
on Friday."

"He was just looking for an excuse to get in
here," I told her. "Did you leave him alone at all?"

"No, I was here the whole time."

"So, then he said he wanted to take over
paying the bills for you, handling the restaurant's finances?"

"Yes. And on the surface, I guess that seems
reasonable. I mean, he was our CPA."

"But you don't like the man, or trust him,
and you hesitated to say yes."

"That's when he really started to get
hostile. Charlie, I guess I just don't do well with conflict, but I
didn't know what to say next. That's when you got here." She smiled
at me, finally beginning to unwind a little.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "If you'd
like, I'll stay awhile and balance your checkbook. Then we can see
how many of these creditors we can get out of the way. We'll pay
off Ben Murray, and send him a certified letter informing him that
he is no longer the company's CPA, and demanding that he relinquish
all files and records pertinent to this business. Would that make
you feel better?"

The relief was visible on her face.

Now for the hard part. "Sharon, before I
begin painting a rosy picture for you here, there's something more
you should know."

I pulled my briefcase toward me and snapped
the catches open. My pages of notes lay on top. I handed them to
her without comment.

"I'm not sure I understand," she said after
scanning the figures quickly.

Scooting my chair around, I sat beside her
and held the pages where we could both read them. "This column
shows the restaurant's profit. This one shows expenses. Here are
yours and David's salaries. The first few weeks you were in
business, notice the profit figures. After awhile, you can see that
sales dwindled slightly, but expenses really jumped, leaving a much
lower profit."

"That doesn't make sense. Expenses were
highest in the first few weeks. They should have leveled off
later."

"Exactly. And look at which expense category
really jumped." I flipped through the pages until I found the
breakdown. "Miscellaneous. A person who isn't being very cautious
can dump anything he wants into 'miscellaneous', hoping no one will
try to pin it down."

"So, you're saying that David showed a lot of
miscellaneous expenses that might have been something else?"

"Sharon, I don't know an easy way to say
this." I showed her the copies of David's bank statements.

She stared at them, seeing but not
comprehending.

"Each month he had several deposits that
correspond pretty closely with the 'miscellaneous' expenses he was
showing for the business. I think David was writing himself
checks."

"Stealing from our business?" Her face had
gone pale, her eyes wide.

"It looks that way, Sharon." My voice came
out little more than a whisper.

"But, why?" she said, more to the room at
large than to me.

"David probably just got in over his head," I
said gently. "He liked the fast car, the nice apartment, the
expensive suits. Women were attracted to him and to his lifestyle,
and that made it almost impossible for him to stop."

"And those phone calls from the IRS? Had they
started to figure it out?"

"I think so. David's personal return was
being audited. I'm sure when they saw all this unexplained money
coming into his account, they decided they better look at the
business, too."

"So, maybe David really did kill himself.
Maybe it got to be too much for him." Large liquid pools were
forming in her eyes.

"I don't think so, Sharon." I told her
briefly, and without too much detail, my theory about the angle of
the bullet. "Homicide Detective Kent Taylor has agreed to reopen
the case. Now, we just have to figure out who would have had a
reason to kill David. Perhaps someone else knew what David was
doing with the books. Maybe they tried to blackmail him, he
wouldn't submit, an argument broke out..."

"Ben Murray might be a good bet," she
suggested.

"I'd thought of that. If he was on record as
the company's CPA and it was discovered that dirty dealings were
going on... Although I don't see Ben Murray as being quite that
scrupulously honest, myself. Still, I think I'll check him out a
little further. It could be that he was afraid David would turn him
over to the IRS as the mastermind. Murray probably has a few other
little secrets he'd rather keep from the IRS as well."

"Charlie, what does this mean to me?"

"Well, you just keep running your restaurant
for now. Try to keep as much money coming in as possible. I'll go
over these bills, and try to give you a better picture by this
afternoon."

Some of her color had come back, although she
still slumped in her chair. She understood that it wasn't going to
be an easy mess to clean up. Even if we could get the insurance
money for her, much of the settlement might have to go toward
clearing up her tax obligations. But I didn't want to tell her that
just yet.

I hadn't planned on spending the morning at
Nouvelle Mexicano, but it was turning out that way. Somehow, I just
couldn't leave Sharon to face the entire mess herself. After she
went back into the dining room, I sat in the swivel chair and began
to sort through everything on the desk.

Aside from a few new pieces of mail, I was
already fairly familiar with it. I quickly sorted everything into
stacks: bills, letters, and filing—urgent and 'can wait'. The check
register hadn't been balanced in almost a month, but David's
entries were neat and readable, so it didn't take long to get a
total. Next, I totaled the bills. They were more than the cash
balance, so I resorted them by due dates and totaled them again. I
could pay everything that was over thirty days old, and pay Ben
Murray in full, although Sharon wouldn't get a salary this month. I
wondered if she could handle that. If not, we might have to let
some of the thirty day bills slip into the sixty day category. I
might have to do some rejuggling.

By two o'clock I had written the checks,
Sharon had signed them, and I had filed away much of the extraneous
clutter that had littered the office. I took an extra fifteen
minutes to dust all the furniture and neaten up the bookshelves.
The difference was remarkable. I told Sharon she would have to
handle the correspondence, but seeing the organized office
brightened her spirits enough that she didn't seem to mind.

She thanked me several times and had Ralph
make me a chicken salad. I insisted on paying for it, telling her
she needed all the cash she could get at this point. Feeling full
and somewhat accomplished, I headed back to my own office.

Chapter 23

Sally was finishing a letter when I walked
in. Her shaggy blond hair had been freshly trimmed and she seemed
perkier than in recent days. Flexible Sally had probably already
counted her cycle days and bought another home pregnancy test
kit.

Rusty had heard my car, and came bounding
down the stairs with such force that he almost knocked me over.
After getting a pat on the head and finding that I didn’t bring
anything edible, the red-brown whirlwind settled at my feet.

"Ron's not here," Sally said, "but he left
you a note. Wants you to set up an appointment with Lorraine Boyd
to show her the pictures." She handed me a brown nine-by-twelve
envelope.

The wife whose husband was cheating. I really
didn't want to do it, but I guess Ron just couldn't handle that
kind of thing quite yet.

"I told him we shouldn't take these kinds of
cases," I told Sally.

She nodded understanding. "I guess it's your
baby now."

My upper lip curled. "Anything else?"

"Nope."

Rusty followed closely as I went upstairs. My
office felt warm and stuffy, and smelled of sleeping dog. I opened
a couple of windows. I tried to think of a way out of calling
Lorraine Boyd. Maybe I could just mail the pictures to her. Decided
it wouldn't be cool though, if her husband were to get the mail
first.

As luck would have it, she answered on the
first ring. I had only met the lady once, and tried to remember the
face I was speaking to. The voice was soft and cultured, with
perhaps a trace of a British accent. She suggested that we meet at
four o'clock at a little coffee shop near the university.

Mail was stacked in the center of my desk. I
spent the next hour opening and sorting it. I wondered what kind of
woman would spend perfectly good money to have someone take
pictures of her husband with a lover. Since she knew he was
cheating, why not just kick him out? These were prominent people,
though. Maybe she felt she'd get a better settlement if she could
threaten exposure.
Maybe
she wanted to keep the jerk.
Threatening to expose him publicly might make him drop the lover
and become an attentive husband again. Who could say?

Ron had charged her for two days time, plus
expenses. He'd had to drive to Santa Fe to catch the wayward
husband going at it in a friend's condominium. All in all, I
supposed it was fair compensation for what she'd gotten out of the
deal.

By a quarter to four, Sally had left and Ron
still wasn't back. Not much way I was going to get out of the
appointment, so I gathered my stuff and my dog, closed the office,
and headed for the Jeep.