MURDER on the ROCKS (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 2) (10 page)

              "This will cost you dessert and coffee, in a public place."

              She stared at Jimmy Welles. "A public place?"

              "Uh huh."

              "You mean a date."

              "Well I didn’t say that."

              "Yeah, but that's what you meant. You meant you'll do this for me if I go out on a date with you."

              Allie thought,
This is what you get when you consort with persons of questionable moral conscience.

              "Ok," she said reluctantly.

              "No funny stuff," said Jimmy. "I promise."

              "Oh, there'll be no funny stuff whatsoever. No kissing. Understand?"

              He appeared to be mulling it over.

              "Jimmy!"

              "Alright, alright. So you want to look at this guy's timesheet?"

              "I just want to see if he was at work when he said he was, that's all. Nothing else."

              "What's his name again?"              "Reilly. First name, Bennett."

              A few minutes of clicking, and then, "Bennett
R.
Reilly?"

              "I guess, if that's the only one."

              "Here it is. What day you looking at?"

              "The night of the 7th."

              "Ok." The boy scrolled and clicked. "Looks like he worked that night. Got off work at 2:30. Went back at 4 and stayed till 8."

              Allie said the word she was trying to condition herself out of saying. Jimmy looked up.

              "I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse."

              "I'm sorry. I just thought I was onto something."

              "Can I ask you a question? What exactly are you trying to find?"

              "He said he was at work when his wife was murdered. The police said they had his timesheet and that his story checked out, but I wanted to see for myself."

              "Well I'm glad the police are taking the word of a printout."

              "What are you saying?"

              "Well, I'm just saying...wait. Watch." Jimmy clicked around for a moment, and then pointed at the screen. "Ah, you see? I thought so. See these numbers?"

              "Yeah."

              "That's an IP address. Look. It's different from the IP address of the previous entry."             

              "What does that mean?"

              "Well it means he punched in and out of work from two separate locations."

              "You can tell that?"

              "You want to see exactly where from? I'll show you."

              More clicking.

              "It doesn't give specifics, but it looks like it's in the Wayne's Creek area. I can dig a little further if you want."

              "No way!" She gave the boy a good-natured slap on the shoulder.

              "I guess you're ok with what we got then. And now, check this out here. It looks like he entered his punch in and out times after the fact, like way after he supposedly worked. That stuff probably didn't appear on the printout the police have. And honestly, I don't think any of them know to check. They obviously don’t."

              Allie paced the room while myriad thoughts swirled through her head, beginning to coalesce into one frightening picture.

              She turned to him. "Jimmy, do you remember the last time I was here, we looked at that dummy employee account? Would you be able to tell if—"

              "If this IP address here is the same one that set up the account? Yes." He reached over and grabbed a post-it off a Darth Vader statuette on his desk. "Here. I'd logged it just in case."

              "You're incredible."

              "Not really, just experienced. It's a given to note stuff like IP addresses. Identity theft thrives on it."

              "Please tell me you're not involved in anything like that."

              "I'm not stupid. I'm a hacker, nothing more. Give me a lock and I'll tell you how to pick it."

              Allie closed her eyes and thought. This
was
breaking the law. But if it helped her catch a murderer...

              There didn’t seem to be any question. She would atone, somehow. Community service. Something to give back to the public. She'd work it all out once this mess was taken care of. Then she'd swear off this kind of activity once and for all.

              "Jimmy," she said with a dry mouth.

              "Whose bank account is it? Glad you asked."

              He clicked a few times. The screen flickered with a bunch of characters and nonsensical blather, the crazed jabberwocky of computer code.

              "Bingo," said Jimmy. "The account is under the name Tracy Tupman. Doesn’t list her address or anything."

              Allie let out a breath she realized she'd been holding for at least a minute. "It's not a woman. It's a man. It's another character from
Pickwick
. I knew it! Del owes me big time for doubting me. Why do people doubt me, Jimmy?"

              "Because they’re all losers." 

              She slapped him on the shoulder. "Because they’re all losers, exactly."

              "Need anything else?"

              "I need to go for a walk," she said.

              "Ms. Griffin?"

              She knew that voice. It set off an alarm inside her that made her want to run. She turned around and beheld the short, balding form of Detective Harry Tomlin coming toward her across the track.

              "You got a minute?"

              "I'm trying to get in a little exercise here."

              It was a half-truth. A brisk walk on the high school track was good exercise, yes, but it was also a good place to get some fast, deep thinking done. There was something about the movement, the pumping blood, the rhythmic breathing, that got the brain juices going at maximum speed.

              "It'll only take a moment. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. It's about your husband's death."

              "Go on," she said, doing absolutely nothing to mask her impatience.

              "I was just wondering about the inquiry into his death. Sudden heart attack, in the middle of an operation. Tragic."

              "Yes, a lot of people cried."

              He opened his mouth and no words came. And then, "Yes, well I know there was an inquiry, because he had been on heart medication."

              "People have heart attacks even when on medication."

              "Oh, absolutely. Hey, listen, we're all mortal, right? And when it's your time, it's your time."

              "That's very good, Detective. You should make an e-card out of that."

              He twisted his face slightly. "Yes, well, I was just wondering, if there was any slight oddity surrounding his death, why there wasn't an autopsy performed. Would you know the answer to that?"

              "No, I wouldn’t. But if I had to guess, I'd say it would be because, maybe, and I'm just taking a wild one here, just grasping at straws, maybe there wasn't any oddity surrounding his death at all. That's all I'm saying. Call me kooky. The guy was surrounded by doctors when it happened."

              The detective gave a perfunctory smile. "Alright. Thanks. Oh hey, how's the cat?"

              "The cat? My cat? She's lovely. How's yours?"

              "The missus and me don’t have any animals. I don’t like them. Except on my plate, if you know what I mean." He gave a slimy, open-mouthed chuckle.

              "You eat cats?"

              His chuckle disappeared. "Uh, no. No, that was just a joke. Your cat still have diabetes?"

              "Still has it."

              "Still giving her those injections, right?"

              "Still jabbin' away." She mimed the action with her right hand.

              "You, uh, your husband, what kind of heart medicine was he on again?"

              "What kind of medicine?" She looked the detective dead in the eye. "Love."

              Tomlin screwed up his face.

              She slapped his arm. "Just kidding! Avapro."

              He rolled his eyes. "Any of it leftover, by any chance?"

              "Nope. Gave it all out last Halloween."

              "Alright, Ms. Griffin—"

              "Oh, are we through? I'm so glad. This way I can get in my exercise without you asking me any more ridiculous questions insinuating that I somehow had a hand in my husband's death. If you want my help solving this one, detective, as you so desperately needed during the Tori Cardinal case, you can just ask. Otherwise, get yourself probable cause and a warrant. Oh, and a magnifying glass. I hear that helps if you don’t have a clue."

              The detective's face had turned a shade of candy apple red that classic car owners would kill to achieve. He breathed heavily through his nose as she walked away, her heart pounding, her temples about to explode.

              Getting rid of her anger was her main focus now. So much for problem solving.

              She took out her phone and shot Beauchenne a text:

              "
Did you know swordfish swim alone?
"

              He texted back: "
I'm sorry to hear that. See you later.
"

              "I need your help. Like, I really need your help here."

              Sara's Bridge never seemed so desolate as it did now, with not even a breeze blowing through its rafters, and the dark, cloudy sky muting any light that would have illuminated Beauchenne's chiseled features.

              "What is it?"

              "Promise me you won’t freak out."

              "Oh God..."

              "Promise?"

              "I promise."

              "Ok." She paused to let the butterflies settle. "I have a bank account number. I even have an ATM location where this bank account number was accessed."

              "Oh God..."

              "Now, you promised you wouldn't freak out."

              "Go on."

              "I need to know if you can help me get a picture of the guy who used it." She handed him a slip of paper with a printout of the info.

              "Oh, Allie."

              "Freaking out again."

              "No, no. I'm just... I can’t believe you got this. This is illegally obtained, isn’t it?"

              "Ok, we also agreed you wouldn't ask things like that."

              "Never mind, I don’t want to know."

              "Please. I need this."

              Beauchenne appeared to be staring off into space. It was hard to tell, for all she saw was a vague outline of his face.

              "I'll make you a deal," he said, finally. "If I get you this, and if this somehow leads to your identifying a suspect, you're going to have to find a way to make it legal. Y
ou're
going to have to back it up legally. Understand? In such a way that it can’t be questioned. You hear me?"

              "I hear you, Frank."

              "I'm serious. Honestly, I don’t know how you'll manage to do such a thing. But I guess if anyone can do it, you can."

              "Well," she said flirtatiously, "there may actually be a genuine compliment in there somewhere."

              "Allie, I'm serious."

              "Back it up legally. Ok. Done."

              He folded the piece of paper she and Jimmy had printed out and tucked it into his breast pocket. "Meet me back here tomorrow night," he said solemnly.

              The bartender was at his station, a rag tossed over his shoulder, his elbows on the bar, chatting it up with a patron. The afterhours rush had begun, and the place was in the midst of filling up with thirsty quarrymen. The smell of rock dust in the room was like so much cologne spattered over a thousand heated necks.

              "Hey, look who it is. How are you, beautiful?"

              Allie put her bag on the bar. "I need something to calm my nerves and I left my yoga mat at home."

              "How 'bout a Rock Hammer?"

              "Sounds good. Do me a favor and hold the stone."

              Dougie motioned to the man at her left. "Biggie here's a quarry rat. He was telling me the news."

              "What news?"

              The bartender looked over his shoulder. "You didn’t hear? They arrested a guy today."

              "
What
?" Even with the country music blaring on the jukebox, she'd screamed loud enough to turn a few heads.

              "Earlier today," said the man called Biggie, an older man, five-foot-five, with a barrel chest and arms as thick as smokestacks. "Came down to the quarry and led 'im out in cuffs."

              "Who?"

              "The cops."

              "No, who'd they get?"
Please
, she thought,
please don’t let it be Matson.

              "Guy called Matson. Walter Matson."

              Allie slapped her hand on the bar. "Damn it!"

              "Friend o' yours?"

              "No, well, sort of. But I can tell you he didn’t do it."

              Dougie placed a tumbler on a napkin in front of her. "They found a murder weapon." He looked at Biggie. "A leg from a chair?"

              "Table," Biggie corrected.

              "Table leg. Had his prints all over it."

              "No way," Allie said, her gaze shifting between the two men. "There's something seriously wrong here."

              She whipped out her phone and texted Beauchenne's number.

              "
swordfish swordfish swordfish swordfish!!!!!"

             
She bit her lip and said, "I'm no longer thirsty. Here. Keep the change."

              "Come again," called Dougie as she walked out into the early evening, a dagger shooting straight toward home, and then to Sara's Bridge.