Playing Dead in Dixie (15 page)

"You've been a real trooper, too.  Thanks."

Though pleased by the grudging admiration she saw in his eyes, Carly felt a growing tightness in her throat as she realized she'd once again stepped into a trap that would hold here in Bangor longer than she'd originally planned.

Shannon would need her help until she gave birth, which might not be for another two or three weeks.  She couldn't possibly leave town until Shannon had her baby and was able to take care of both of her children on her own.

She was in so much trouble.  How could she have let herself be sucked into these people's lives so quickly, so thoroughly?

And then there was Wes.  Wes, who still smelled good, even after a night in a hospital waiting room in crumpled clothes.  Wes, whose soft, warm laughter made little bubbles of happiness burst in her stomach and spill their fizzy contents into every cell of her body.

Wes, who'd just asked her to come to his house after work.

Where they'd be alone.

She was halfway in love with Wes Hollingsworth already, and that was after a week of trying to fly under his radar.

What would three more weeks do to her?

AGENT JIM PHILLIPS OPENED the packet that had arrived overnight from the National Transportation Safety Board.  Preliminary findings on the casino tour bus crash in Virginia.  He took a deep breath and opened the envelope.

Inside he found several technical reports that he set aside to read later.  His gut told him that foul play hadn't been involved in the bus crash.  Even a man as connected as Dominick Manning couldn't have arranged that accident.

But the list of injured and dead—that could be interesting.  Why had Lottie hopped that particular tour bus?  Had she known someone on board?

He scanned the list of passenger names until he found Lottie.  She hadn't been on the original manifest generated by the tour bus operator in Richmond, but one of the agents who'd been staking out the Palais Royale had confirmed that Lottie had boarded the bus in Atlantic City, and they'd found her identification near the crash site, so Phillips had submitted her name to the NTSB to be added to the list.

Hmm.  This was interesting.  He looked over the list a second time, just to confirm what he was seeing.

Thirty-eight passengers on the bus.  Thirty-seven accounted for—fifteen dead, twenty-two injured.  And one missing.

Lottie Sandano.

Searchers had found all of the other bodies that had spilled into the river after the accident, thanks to a beaver dam that had created a logjam about a mile downriver from the crash site.  If Lottie had been in the river, odds were that she'd have been found as well.

Maybe his case against Dominick Manning still had a little life left in it after all.

He reached across his desk and picked up another file.  Opening it, he flipped through the papers until he found the color photo of Lottie.  It had been taken by one of his surveillance men, early in their investigation of Dominick Manning.  Lottie had just started working at the casino, and one of his agents had taken extra care snapping her photo.

Phillips had given the guy grief for playing games with Bureau equipment, but he could hardly blame the man for wanting to get a good shot of Lottie's legs  She was a looker, their Lottie.  Built like a Vegas showgirl and a whole lot prettier than most.  The camera loved her.

"You're hiding from me, aren't you, Lottie Marie?" he murmured to the photo.

Her green eyes gazed back at him, full of secrets.

But not for long.

Not if he had anything to say about it.

He hit the speaker button.  "Marcy, can you get me the Richmond field office on the phone?"

CARLY RANG UP THE SALE.  "One seventy-two thirty-eight."

As the customer pulled his wallet out and started counting out bills, Carly glanced over her shoulder toward the back of the store.  The door to Floyd's office was still closed.  Sherry had been back there alone for—Carly glanced at the clock on the wall—an hour and forty-five minutes.

What if she was getting rid of evidence?

As soon as Carly gave the customer his change, she waved Josh Scarborough over.  "Josh, can you run the register?  I'm going to take lunch."

As Josh took her place at the register, she walked back to the break room and shed her uniform vest, hanging it on a hook in her cubbyhole.  Crossing to Floyd's office, she leaned toward the door, listening.

She heard what sounded like a drawer opening, the mechanical rat-a-tat of an electronic adding machine.  All reasonable sounds for a bookkeeper at work in an office that didn't keep its books on computer.

She'd been surprised when she realized Floyd didn't have his books backed up on a computer.  It was an outdated and potentially dangerous way to do business, and any bookkeeper worth her salt would have talked to Floyd about buying bookkeeping software a long time ago.

The fact that Sherry apparently hadn't was a bit dismaying, but it wasn't a crime.  If Sherry was bilking the hardware store out of hard-earned profits, living in the bookkeeping dark ages wasn't proof of it.

Still, Carly made a mental note to talk to Floyd about transferring his files onto computer.  There were dozens of inexpensive bookkeeping software programs available, and it wouldn't take much of a computer system to run them.  Floyd could invest less than two-thousand dollars and have everything he needed to computerize his bookkeeping.

Sadly, computerizing wasn't going to stop fraud, however, if fraud was the culprit behind the hardware store's recent downturn.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Carly pushed open the office door and stepped inside without warning.

Sherry sat at Floyd's desk, ledger books spread out in front of her.  She jerked back in surprise as Carly entered.  "Sheesh, Carly, you scared me."

"Sorry, I just wanted to see if you were going to be in here through lunch.  I'm about to head out for something.  I could bring something back for you."

Sherry's eyes narrowed slightly, but she flashed Carly her best Miss Bangor pageant smile. "That's sweet, but I'm skipping lunch.  Gotta watch my figure."

Carly hid a sigh.  So much for sneaking a look around while Sherry was at lunch.  "Okay, I'll be back in thirty."

She left the store and headed south down Main Street, toward Charlie's Diner on the corner.  She stopped just outside at a payphone, digging coins out of her pocket with one hand and running her finger down a posted list of municipal numbers until she found the Police Department.  Depositing the coins, she punched in the number.  She gave her name to the man who answered, asking for Wes.

A moment later, Wes was on the phone.  "Something wrong?"

"Sherry's been holed up in Floyd's office for almost two hours.  What if she's getting rid of evidence?"

"Did you see any sign that she might be doing that?"

"No," Carly admitted, leaning against the diner's warm brick facade.  "But that doesn't mean she won't.  I know you wanted to wait until Floyd's and Bonnie's anniversary . . ."

"Where are you now?"

"Charlie's Diner."

"Order me a turkey and Swiss and a sweet tea.  I'll be there in five minutes."  He hung up.

Well, great.  One panicked phone call and now she was having lunch with Wes.

She was supposed to be seeing less of him, not more.

The bell over the door jangled as she entered Charlie's, drawing the gazes of the dozen or so customers scattered around the diner's interior.  They gave her a look she was getting used to, the "there's that Yankee stayin' with the Stricklands" look.  Several smiled and nodded, as acquaintances would, except Carly had never met most of them.

Pasting a smile on her face, she spotted a booth near the back and headed for it.

A pretty blonde wearing jeans and a dark red server's apron spotted her and grabbed a menu from the front counter.  Carly recognized her as Katie, Charlie's daughter.  She had been Carly's waitress the other handful of times she'd eaten at Charlie's during her lunch break.  "Hey, Carly.  I hear you had yourself quite a night last night.  How's Shannon doin'?"

Amazing how news got around a small town, Carly thought. "Much better."

"Mama had bad sciatica when she was pregnant with Cody—that's my little brother.  He's seven now.  Mama suffered with it something awful."  Katie started to hand Carly a menu.  "What can I get you?"

Waving off the menu, Carly ordered a grilled chicken salad and water with lemon for herself, and the turkey sandwich and sweet tea for Wes.

"Oh, Wes's joinin' you for lunch."  Katie tucked the order pad in her apron pocket and flashed Carly a grin.  "He'll be wantin' a piece of peanut butter pie, although he'll pretend to debate about it for a few minutes.  Want me to go ahead and put it on the tab?"

"No, I'll let him handle that."  Carly shook her head as Katie headed back to the kitchen to give the orders to the cook.

She had to get out of this town before it started growing on her.  "Like a fungus," she muttered aloud.

The bell on the door rang again, and Carly looked up to see Wes enter.  Almost everyone in the diner called out a greeting, and he took a moment to speak to several of them as he made his way toward the booth where Carly sat.  He settled in across from her finally, greeting her with a nod as Katie arrived with a glass of water with lemon and Wes's sweet tea.  Katie stopped for a moment to rerun the conversation about Shannon with Wes, then headed off to another table.

"Small town grapevine.  Someone in the intelligence community should study it," Wes murmured.

"What makes you think they haven't?"  Carly squeezed lemon into her water.  "Look, I'm sorry for panicking on the phone.  I'm sure the last thing you wanted to do with your lunch hour was talk me down off my ledge."

"Well, look at the bright side.  Now you don't have to drag yourself to my house after work when I'm sure you'd much rather go home and go to bed."

She picked up her straw and poked at the slice of lemon floating in her water.  Great, he'd just used "my house" and "go to bed" in the same sentence.  As if her imagination wasn't active enough already.

Wes cleared his throat.  "Because, uh, you know, you didn't get much sleep last night, thanks to me."

She looked up at him, quirking one eyebrow.  His mouth twitched.

"Thanks to you and Shannon," she corrected.

He grinned.  "That really didn't make it any better."

She grabbed a packet of sugar and threw it at him.  "Shut up."

"Okay, business."  Wes straightened his face and lowered his voice, although his eyes still glinted with amusement.  "Today's Friday.  How much evidence could someone cover up between now and Monday?"

"A lot, if she had plenty of time alone with the books."  Carly kept her voice low as well.  No need for the whole town to know about what she and Wes were planning to do.  "Probably not everything, though.  Sherry doesn't have an accounting degree, does she?"

Wes shook his head.  "As far as I know, she's had only a couple of years at community college.  I think she did take some bookkeeping courses."

"She may not know how to cover up all her tracks.  Assuming it's her, of course.  But I still wish I could think of some way to keep everyone away from Floyd's office as much as possible."

Wes sat back, head cocked to one side and his brow furrowed.  "Well, you're still new at the job.  You probably need help out on the sales floor from an experienced employee now and then, right?  And who's more experienced and dedicated than Sherry?"

"That could work.  If it's Sherry who's cooking the books."

"Even if it's not.  Sherry's really the only one you have to worry about.  She's the one with a valid reason to be in the office for any length of time, besides Floyd.  If you can keep her out of the office as much as possible, you're fine.  Anyone else lurking around the office can be warned off by threatening to tell Floyd."

""And either way, the evidence will still be there Monday night."  Carly nodded.  "Okay, I can do that."

Wes reached across the table and touched her hand.  "Relax, okay?  Think of it this way.  If Sherry is the one committing fraud, your being all twitchy and nervous around her is only going to make her suspect you're on to her."

"And more likely to try to cover her tracks before Monday," Carly agreed.  "You're right."  She took a deep, calming breath.

Katie approached with their lunches.  Wes waited until she left before speaking again.  "Do you think you're up to staying at work today until six?  That will cover today.   She's off Saturday, I know.  She and her mother always watch Georgia football games together, and Saturday's the season opener.  The hardware store is closed on Sundays—"

"So all I'd have to worry about is the rest of today and Monday," Carly finished.

"I'll figure out a way to make sure you close on Monday night."  Wes took a bite of his turkey sandwich.

"Oh, wait, we forgot about Shannon." Carly dropped her fork and looked up at Wes. "Floyd and Bonnie are never going to agree to go to the bed and breakfast and leave Shannon and me alone at the house."

"You're right."  Wes frowned.  "Well, I'll offer to stay at the house with y'all overnight, but that means I can't be at the office with you Monday night."

"Are you okay with that?"

He looked at her for an uncomfortably long moment.  "Yeah, I'm okay with it.  Because you know that if you do anything to hurt my aunt and uncle, I'll hunt you down.  No matter how far you run.  Right?

His obvious distrust put a painful dent in her heart, but she forced herself to nod.  "Right."

Wes's gaze intensified.  "You'd be better off telling me what I want to know about you.  Because I'm going to do everything I can, within the law, to find out who you really are and what you're really doing here in Bangor."

Dread skittered down her spine.  She didn't doubt him for a moment.  Given enough time, he'd put together the clues she accidentally dropped here and there until he followed her bread crumb trail back to the Palais Royale Casino and Dom Manning.