A Flicker of Doubt (Book 4 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) (5 page)

“
I probably missed more than
that. What is it?”

He handed me the note, and I saw someone had
written in block letters: STOP

NOSING AROUND OR ELSE. The words OR ELSE
were underlined three times in a red marker, though the letters
were all written in black. It made for a bold statement, no doubt
about that.

“
Where did you find that?” I
asked.

“
It was taped to the back of
one of the drawers. I would have missed it myself if I hadn’t
pulled it all the way out I found something else, too.” He held up
a fan made of money, all hundreds.

“
How much is there?” I
asked.

“
It’s an even grand. It was
taped right beside the note.”

“
I don’t get it” I
said.

“
Maybe she was blackmailing
somebody and he got tired of paying her off. That might be all
there is to this. What do you think? Was Becka capable of doing
that?”

“
I can’t imagine
it”

“
Harrison, I know you cared
for her. But take a second and consider it. Don’t dismiss the
possibility just because she was someone in your life.”

I thought about how brash she always was,
how single-minded Becka could be, and realized with some sadness
that it could be true. “I guess it’s possible,” I admitted
reluctantly. “So what do we do with the money?’

Markum studied the bills, then handed them
to me. “You keep them. They might come in handy.”

I refused the money. “Shouldn’t it go to her
heirs, whoever they are? The last thing in the world I came here to
do was rob the dead.”

Markum shook his head, and there was a sad
smile on his face as he admitted, “Harrison, you’re soft in ways
that keep surprising me. Don’t you think Becka would want to
finance our investigation in searching for what really happened to
her? If we use this right, it might buy us information when no
other way can. I don’t know about you, but my business isn’t doing
well enough at the moment to use my own money for bribes if we need
them.”

“
No, I don’t have a ton of
spare cash just lying around,” I admitted.

He offered me the money again. “Take it If
we don’t need any of it, you can pass it on to her next of kin in
good conscience; but truthfully, if her heir wasn’t looking for
this, there’s no way it would ‘accidentally’ turn up. Chances are,
whoever bought the furniture would be in for a surprise the first
time they pulled the drawers out, and nobody would be served by
that”

I stared at it the wad for a second, then
took the money and jammed it into my pocket The last thing I wanted
was to be carrying Becka’s money around with me. I couldn’t imagine
what I would do if Sheriff Morton showed up at the apartment, but
it would surely look a lot worse with a thousand buds stuffed into
my pocket

“
Are we finished now?” I
asked, worried more and more about the money now in my possession
than the fact that we were in the apartment illegally.

“
I’m nowhere near it,”
Markum said. “Have you seen her personal files?”

“
What are you talking
about?”

“
Think about it. She had to
pay bills, keep track of things like that, didn’t she? I don’t see
a computer around here. Did she have one?”

“
No, I can guarantee you
that. Becka was a Luddite when it came to computers. She believed
the world was too dependent on technology.”

He shrugged. “That’s easy enough to say, but a lot
harder to live by. So how did she keep track of her
life?”

I scratched my nose, then said, “She had a
personal organizer in her purse. Did you see that, by the way?”

“
It hasn’t been anywhere
I’ve looked so far. Maybe it was near the point where she went into
the water.”

I shuddered at the thought. “The sheriff
thinks she went in near the overlook. I guess we could look around
there.”

Markum put a hand on my shoulder. “That I
won’t put you through, my friend. After we leave here, I’ll - drop
you off at the candleshop and I’ll go look myself”

I didn’t put up much of a fight, mainly
because I couldn’t stand the thought of going to the place where
Becka had spent the last seconds of her life. I said, “I just
remembered something. Becka kept her bills in one of those
accordion files. It should be around here somewhere. There’s surely
no reason she would have taken that with her.” We both finished
searching the living room and found the folder together. It was
pushed into ‘ the corner of the room under a chair, almost as if
she’d been working on her accounts the night before and hadn’t
returned it to its proper place.

Markum picked the file up and said, ‘There’s
too much here to go through right now. I guess we’ll have to take
this with us, too. Let’s get going. We’ve got a lot more ground to
cover before we can go.”

I was about to reply when I saw Becka’s
front door handle start to turn.

Chapter 4

What should we do?” I whispered fiercely to
H Markum.

“
You locked the door behind
us, didn’t you?”

I thought back to the moment after I closed
the door. “Yes, I’m positive.”

“
Then we’re all
right”

“
Unless they have a key,” I
whispered, but at that moment I realized they would have already
been inside if they’d had one. .

I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when
I heard a stranger’s voice outside the door say, “I knew it was too
easy. We should have paid off the super for the key first, just
like I said.”

More words were spoken that I couldn’t make
out, then the nearer voice said, “Give him a hundred, he won’t
argue. If he does, just take it from him.” A pause, then he
replied, “Because somebody’s got to stay here and watch the
door.”

Markum grabbed my arm, held a finger to his
lips, then he whispered, “We go out the back way.”

He unlocked the sliding patio door and I
followed him outside. At least we’d be out of the line of sight of
whoever was trying to get in. I started around the side of the
apartment away from Becka’s door when Markum said, “Those aren’t
cops. I want to get a look at who’s trying to get in.”

I nodded reluctantly and followed him around
the building the other way. A man in a nice suit was coming out of
one of the apartments, and I wondered if it was our guy. After a
minute, Markum followed him, with me close on his heels.

We were almost to the door when there was a
police siren in the distance, coming closer by the second. I didn’t
know what to do, but Markum didn’t hesitate. He raced for my truck,
and I was half a step behind. I had the key in the ignition and was
ready to start it when he said, “Don’t”

“
Are you crazy? They’ll
catch us.”

“
We want them to. You might
want to take off your gloves before they get here,
though.”

I hadn’t realized I was still wearing them.
“Sorry,” I said as I shoved them under the truck seat as he stashed
the accordion folder under his.

“
Markum, why are we hanging
around here?”

“
Our story is that we just
got here ourselves,” he explained. “Let those guys come up with a
reason why they’re inside. If Morton sees your track flying out of
this apartment complex, he’s going to know what we’ve been up
to.”

“
So tell me, what are we
going to tell him when he asks why we’re here?” I asked as the
sheriff’s car raced up.

“
It’s simple. We came to
find the super to tell him about Becka so we could get the phone
number for her next of kin, but the door to her apartment was
already open when we got here.”

I couldn’t believe his audacity. “And you
think there’s a chance he’ll actually buy that?”

Markum grinned. “Why shouldn’t he? We just
happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Morton got out of his car, glanced casually
in our direction, then did a double take and approached us. Don’t
tell me this is about you two snooping around where you don’t
belong.”

I pointed to the open door. “We just got
here. There must be somebody else inside.”

Morton said, “Don’t go anywhere,” then
pulled out his revolver and started for the door.

After two minutes, he came around the back
way and walked over to us. “Surprise, surprise, nobody was
there.”

“
They were there. We saw
them go in.”

The sheriff was doing his best to ignore
Markum, a hard thing to do given the man’s physical presence. “You.
What did they look like?’

Markum said, “One of them was already
inside, so we didn’t see him, but we did hear his voice. The one
still outside wore an expensive black suit He was average, that’s
all I can give you.”

“
Come on, you can do better
than that. Try.”

Markum tilted his chin to one side, then
finally said, “His hair was dark, but I didn’t see his eyes. He
stood a little undo’ six feet tall and weighed about
one-eighty-five.”

“
That’s better,” the sheriff
snapped. “What else did you see?”

“
Hey, all I got was a quick
look. So who called you?’

The sheriff said, “A concerned neighbor
called nine- one-one. Do you two really believe I’m buying your
story?”

I stared at him as I said, “Frankly, it
really doesn’t matter to me what you believe. You still think Becka
killed herself.”

“
Harrison, don’t start with
me.”

I shrugged, but didn’t say a word, though
I’m certain he noticed the insolence in my expression.

Morton shook his head, then said, “What a
waste of my time. Both of you stay here.”

He took off on foot in the direction of the
super’s apartment, and after he was in deep conversation with the
man who answered his knock, I asked, “What are we supposed to do
now, just sit here and wait?”

“
We don’t have much choice,”
Markum said. “Give me a second. I’m trying to read the super’s
lips.”

“
Where did you learn to do
that?” I asked.

‘
It comes in handy in my
line of work.” I saw him studying the man’s face, and finally,
Markum said, “He’s not admitting to anything.”

“
Why am I not
surprised?”

The super pointed to a nearby apartment, and
Morton walked over there. An older woman in a bathrobe and curlers
answered the door, and as Morton spoke to her, she looked squarely
at us both. After a few moments, she shook her head and went back
inside.

“
Is that good or
bad?”

Markum said, “I think we’re in good shape,
but don’t say anything that might make the sheriff suspicious.”

“
You mean more than he
already is?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if there was anything short of
a full confession that would make him surer that we were up to
something.

Twenty seconds later, Morton was back. He
said, “I’m pretty sure your mystery men bribed the super to get in,
but he won’t admit it, and without that, what can I do about
it?”

“
What did that woman have to
say?” I asked. “And why was she looking right at us?”

Morton huffed out a breath. “I wanted to see
if you two were the ones she saw going into Becka’s apartment. She
cleared you both. Funny, she gave me the same description you did,
Markum. It was almost like she’d been coached.”

Markum said softly, “Or it could have been
that we were both telling the truth. Did you consider that
possibility?”

“
Briefly,” the sheriff
said.

I felt the weight of the money in my pocket.
“So, can we go?”

Morton looked like he wanted to spit. “Go?
You shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”

As I drove off, I felt the relief of our
escape. ‘That was close.”

“
Not by a mile,
Harrison.”

“
You’re not the one with
somebody else’s grand in your front pocket”

“
No, but that can be
explained easier than the files under my seat and Becka’s answering
machine tape in my possession, Harrison, how would you like a
drink?”

“
A drink’s the last thing I
need in the world right now. Markum, what about those men we saw?
What were they after? Should we just leave? What if they
comeback?”

“
Morton’s probably going to
have somebody watching the place, and I doubt they’d invite us to
their stakeout

I don’t know what those two were up to, but
hopefully there will be something in what we found to point us in
the right direction. Shall we meet up tonight in my office after
everyone else is out of River’s Edge? In the meantime, I can check
around at the overlook, then paw through those papers and see what
I can come up with.”

“
So what am I supposed to
do?”

He laughed. “What you do best, my friend.
Sell candles.”

It was a relief getting back to the
candleshop and a world I was familiar with. Though I’d been forced
through circumstances in the past to investigate a murder on my
own, I’d never taken such an active role in things, and I was
feeling shaky on new ground. I wondered yet again about my friend
Markum and how little I knew about his life and his business. He’d
been asking me for months to accompany him on one of his salvage
and recovery jobs, but I wasn’t at all sure it was something I
wanted to do.

As I walked in the door of At Wick’s End,
Eve said, “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back.
Gary Cragg’s been looking for you. He says it’s urgent” She was in
a snippy mood, and oddly enough, that just made me feel more
welcome in my shop. I didn’t want anyone tiptoeing around me. I’d
had a shock, but there was nothing I could do about it except try
to deal with it