My eyes narrowed. First thing in the morning I would start my own investigation, and I would get this whole thing figured out—no thanks to Tuney Sluggs.
Chapter 9
Idid not sleep well that night. Heck, I didn’t sleep at all. A bout of crying came over me and never let go. Tears streamed down my face every time I thought about Sadie and what had happened.
Then anger would fill me when I thought about how incompetent Tuney was. How could he honestly have ruled Sadie’s death an accident? He and his deputies hadn’t even been at the scene long enough to determine that. Shouldn’t there have been an autopsy—something? Thirty-year-old women do not just up and die in wet foundation.
By midnight I’d made the decision that I would head to the police station and talk to someone—Earl Granger maybe. He had a head of smarts on him, or at least he appeared to. I’d discuss my concerns with him and see if at least someone would listen.
But then there was Rufus. What was I going to do with him? Obviously it was impossible to watch him 24-7, not with the barn to renovate and Sadie being gone.
Clutching my pillow, I buried my face in it, hoping that would dissolve some of the pain that riddled my body, but no luck.
By three a.m. I realized that sleep wouldn’t come, so I got up and made a pot of coffee. There was no point in lying in bed, so I started scanning the Internet for knickknacks that might look good in the barn when it was finished.
It soothed me to shop, even if the idea of butting heads with Dooley Hutto made me want to punch him in the face.
Scanning websites, I came across an old milk jug that only needed some sanding and a little paint. It would be perfect in the kitchen. It took me a minute to locate my purse, but I found it and my wallet, then punched in the numbers on my business credit card and waited for the sale to go through.
It was declined.
I sucked my teeth. There should be plenty of credit on the card—plenty. Sadie always kept great track of our spending, and she would let me know when we got close to our limit and would pay it off. That’s how we did things.
Suddenly her being gone hit me again, and fresh tears pearled in my eyes. After a draining cry that lasted a good ten minutes and left me with a throbbing head, I returned to my computer and pulled up my bank account to see what had happened.
When I logged into the credit card part of the site, my jaw dropped. The card was maxed out. I stared at the transactions and saw lots of purchases at a store called Frank’s. What the heck was Frank’s? There wasn’t a store in town with the name, not that I knew of. I jotted it on a notepad and decided to pay down the card with money from the account.
No problem. Even though finances were Sadie’s department, it wasn’t like I was incapable of paying a few bills.
When I logged back into the business account, I searched for our balance and did a double take. The number staring at me on the screen couldn’t be right, it just couldn’t. There was no way that we only had one hundred dollars to the business’s name.
What transactions had taken place? It took a moment to find the right tab to search (note to self—learn how to maneuver the bank’s website), but I eventually did and clicked it.
Three large checks had been written, checks that I hadn’t authorized. There was one for five thousand dollars, another for three thousand, and the last was for a whopping eight grand.
Fiddlesticks. No wonder the account was empty—that was all we had in the bank total. Who the heck could Sadie have paid? Liam and his crew weren’t scheduled for paychecks until…well, until today.
I took a deep breath and calmed the panic working its way up my chest. I was sure it was no big deal. Sadie probably went ahead and gave Liam a check so that he could pay his workers. After all, we partnered with Liam. He always got a percentage of the total job once it was finished, but we also wrote him a check so that he could pay his guys. Sadie and I agreed on that because we needed his men, too.
Surely that’s what had happened. Sadie had simply written Liam a check ahead of time, which meant that I didn’t have to worry about it today. She should have told me, but clearly that was the last thing on my mind right now.
My finger hovered over the touch pad. For some reason I was afraid to look at the digital check that would pop up when I clicked the pad. But I had to make sure that Sadie had written it to Liam.
I swallowed a gargantuan egg in the back of my throat and pressed my finger to the pad, all the while chewing on the index finger of my opposite hand.
“This is stupid, Clem, just tap it.”
Yep, that was how I gave myself pep talks.
Finally I clicked the digital image and my worst fears shot to life. Sadie had penned an eight-thousand-dollar check to herself.
My hands fell to my sides. My face heated with dread. That couldn’t be right. Sadie wouldn’t have done that.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Maybe one of the other two checks had been written to Liam.
But a quick investigation of those revealed what I already knew. All three of the last checks written, the ones that had drained our business bank account, had been written to Sadie, who was now dead.
