Read Between the Tines (31 page)

Just a few more loads from the far end of the patio and we'd be done. I lowered the bucket and inched toward the location where Lyle pointed. Success. Full of debris, I raised the lever and drove to the dumpster parked at the end of the driveway. Lift, dump, retreat. I'd done it many times today and many times in life.

When I returned to the backyard, I found Lyle, jabbing a pitchfork at something reflective in the soil. He looked at me and shouted words I couldn't make out. An excited look on his face, he motioned for me to join him.

As fast as my strained muscles allowed, I shut down the Bobcat and rushed his way.

"Look!" He pointed at a box that he'd partially uncovered. "You think it's buried treasure?"

I laughed at his excitement but thought that maybe it was treasure of another sort. Treasure that might be the reason
Gary
was killed. "Quick. Dig it out."

Lyle attacked the soil like a dog after a buried bone. In moments, he had freed the box and set it on the grass. "Doesn't look big enough for a lot of treasure." He grinned and dropped to his knees. With a sledgehammer we'd used to pulverize some of the concrete, he pounded the lock until he'd opened it.

Our booty consisted of a ream or so of papers encased in clear plastic.

"Man," Lyle moaned. "So much for getting rich."

"Why don't you take a quick break while I look at this?"

He nodded and went to a drink station I'd set up in the shade of a large
Oregon
white oak. I knelt by the bag and gently opened it. The documents were financial statements and a pile of check stubs from the Texas Pacific Pickles factory. I quickly scanned the documents and was surprised at how much money the pickle business generated. The pages held no glaring abnormality, but I was certain
Gary
had buried this box before pouring the patio. And I was also certain the box contained the identity of the killer. I simply had to study the pages until I figured it out.

But first, I'd complete the last few loads of concrete so I could send Lyle on his way and phone to have the dumpster picked up. Then I'd take the box inside and have a nice long look. I called Lyle back to the job, and we made short work of hefting the final chunks of concrete out of the pit. After depositing the load in the dumpster, I sent him off with a cash payment and huge smile.

Box under my arm, I dug out the key Yolanda gave me and went into the kitchen. So as not to damage the pages, I made a quick trip to the restroom to wash up. On my way back, I grabbed a glass of water and sat at the round oak table. Before I'd opened The Garden Gate, I'd taken a course at PCC on business management. I knew how to read financial statements, but the reason
Gary
kept these reports didn't immediately jump off the pages at me.

The box contained six months of statements and an inch thick stack of check stubs. I spread them across the table by month and painstakingly compared each stub to the journal entries. The entries all had one thing in common and it was time to contact a source who could help me understand what it meant.

I pulled out my cell and dialed. "Hi, Irene, this's Paige. I've got a quick question for you." I didn't wait for a response. "Do you know how to read your company's financial statements?"

"Somewhat, why?"

"I'm looking at reports for the
Texas
plant." I rattled off the specific months and year. "I'm assuming this is the time frame
Gary
worked at the plant."

"Yes. He didn't move here until six months after your last report."

Okay, so we know
Gary
had been at the plant when these reports were generated, but what did he have to do with them? "Behind the journal entries are what look like initials. Some entries have one set, some have two and others have three. What are these for?"

"The first one shows the clerk who recorded the entry. The second one is needed if the payment exceeds a thousand dollars. There's a graduated scale of approval levels. The higher the expenditure the higher the approval level."

I ran my finger down a list of entries associated with the check stubs. "So where I see FAW/GCB/CAL, could the second set of initials be for Gary Buzzy and the third Cara Long?"

"Yes to the
Gary
question and I don't know Cara's middle name."

"Ahh, but you work in personnel. Can you look it up?"

I heard fingers tapping on a keyboard. "Anne. And before you ask, she is the only current employee with those initials. It will take me a while to figure out if there was another person with the same initials when these reports were generated."

"How about Nathan Jacobs?"

More clicking. "Robert."

NRJ. CAL/NRJ appeared occasionally. I still couldn’t understand what all of this meant, but there finally seemed to be a connection between Nathan and Gary. A connection I would sink my teeth into as soon as I found something worth biting into.

"You never told me which department Cara Long was the VP of," I said.

"Didn't I? Sorry. Operations."

"And do you know which departments reported to her?"

"No. I'd have to find an org chart for that period to get specifics."

"Can you do that for me?"

"Where's this going, Paige?" Her tone had grown agitated.

I didn't want her to charge off like a loose cannon so I downplayed my growing excitement. "Honestly I don't know right now, but I'll call you back when I do, or if I have more questions."

"Before you go I wanted to see if you got the email of Cara's itinerary I sent to you."

"I haven't checked my email. Anything you think I need to know about?"

"Just that her assistant said Cara had stuck to the schedule all week but hasn't checked in with her since the funeral. She was supposed to be in a meeting right now, but she's not there. She's scheduled to fly out at eight o'clock tonight."

"Any thoughts on where she might be?"

Irene laughed. "I hate to admit it, but you've turned me into an investigator. When I saw Cara talking to Nathan at the funeral, I got to thinking they seemed awful chummy. So I called Nathan's admin and she told me he didn't come back either."

Ahh, the plot sickens and so does my stomach at the thought of any woman wanting to be with Nathan. "Sounds like they might be involved. Keep me informed if anything else happens." I disconnected and, excited that the two of them may have a personal connection as well as the one glaring off the pages at me, I turned back to my study of the reports.

I turned over a page and jotted down all of the check stubs. Then ran my finger down the pages and noted the approval initials next to the check entry. After many false attempts, I found three ten thousand dollar entries each month with the GRB/NRJ/CAL combination paid to three different vendors.

I sat back and stabbed my finger at redial. "Paige, again. Do you know what month Gary and Cara broke up?"

"I sure do. December."

"You seem positive. How can you remember something like that?"

"Easy. Their break up came at the same time as huge cutbacks at that plant. I remember processing all the paperwork for the severance packages and thinking how horrible it must be to lose your job at Christmas time."

So they broke up a month after the last report sitting before me. Was that a coincidence or was there a connection? A connection like the trio was embezzling money. Maybe their greedy little fingers led to the plant cutbacks and drew attention to their scheme. Maybe that's why Gary and Cara broke up and maybe this was the reason for
Gary
's murder. But why wait to kill him now for something that happened three plus years ago?

"Paige, are you still there?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking. Did Cara ever call
Gary
?"

"Sure, he offered advice on personnel issues at all the plants."

"Nothing more than that, though. Like a sudden surge of calls?"

"Not here at work."

"Can you give me the phone number for the
Texas
plant?"

She rattled it off. I jotted it down.

"What about her cell and home number are they in the records, too?"

"Yes," she answered sounding apprehensive in giving me this personal information.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to call her. I just want to see if she called
Gary
."

"Fine," she said and gave me the numbers.

After scribbling them on the paper, I offered my thanks and disconnected. On my feet, I headed for the Buzzys' office to look for phone records. If I could prove that the two of them had been communicating recently, I might be able to get Cara to talk to me before she left town. I started in the middle drawer where Yolanda said I'd find financial information.

Gary
was as organized as Lisa in his recordkeeping. I flipped through folders with crisp headings generated by a label maker. He'd created folders for each month of the year with paid bills filling the files. I paged through the last six months and found no record of calls from the factory or from Cara's phone. If only I had his computer, I could check for email communication. Another dead end.

While I was in here, I might as well look for payments to Dr. Morris. After finding nothing in the monthly files, I rifled through folders until I found financial records similar in format to the corporate records sitting on the kitchen table.
Gary
used a computer financial program to keep his home finances in order.

Drat. If I hadn't given the flash drive to Mitch, I could have accessed his computer program and searched for information. The old-fashioned paper reports would have to do. I'd start with this month and work backwards.

There they were. Payments to the good doctor for services rendered. She was on the up and up and as a suspect, she was on her way out.

Maybe my theory about embezzling was the clue. If
Gary
had been stealing, there would be record of deposits to his accounts. But did the records go that far back? I eagerly searched through the folder, but came up empty. I pillaged the remaining files, no reports.

Down and discouraged, I went back to the kitchen to pack up the reports and go home. I'd stop by Lisa's house on the way and have her and Perry look at the records to see if they could find whatever I was missing.

I opened the box and started loading up the records. "You were killed over this I know it," I said as if
Gary
hovered above me and could point the way to his killer. "And I'll prove it if it's the last thing I do."

"I don't imagine it'll be the last thing you do, but close enough." The menacing voice came from the corner of the room.

I whipped around spilling pages and stubs onto the tile floor. My eyes widened, and I gasped. The gun pointed at me was very real, and an overwhelming sense of dread crawling up from the pit of my stomach warned me that this just might be the last thing I did.

"Olivia," I said in a whisper as my mind processed the gun in her hand. Her eyes were wild and glazed.

"Surprised?" she asked.

"Yes," I said and tried to wrap my head around this. "You killed,
Gary
?"

She nodded though it was barely perceptible. "I didn't want to, but he didn’t leave me any choice. Just like you're not leaving me any choice."

I ignored her threat and let my mind race over the pages scattered on the floor. What could Olivia have to do with this? "Why would you kill
Gary
?"

"The money, of course," she said as if I only a fool couldn't figure this out.

"The money
Gary
embezzled from Pacific Pickles?" I asked to confirm we were talking about the same thing.

"Gary, Cara and Nathan, you mean." She sneered.

"So why was
Gary
the one who had to die?" I asked, surprised at how calm my voice sounded when my heart was thumping wildly.

"He brought it on himself," she said as if he deserved to die. "Everything was fine until he got all religious. He tried to forget all about the money, but he couldn't." She laughed. "He even thought if he buried the proof under the patio his conscience would rest easy. It didn't. His god nagged and nagged at him until he decided to go to the police and report the theft. I asked Nate to take care of
Gary
so he didn’t wind up in jail, but he was too weak."

What? She wanted to keep Nathan out of jail? "I would think you'd want Nathan to go to jail."

"You ever hear of a little thing called restitution?" Her sarcasm was fitting for the Olivia I was just coming to know. "If he was convicted of embezzlement, he'd have to pay back all the money. Money I deserved for putting up with his infidelity and philandering ways for all these years."

Incredulous, I stared at her. "And the beatings? That didn’t bother you?"