The Missing Dough(21)

“Or I could start digging into it right now while you drive us to Timber Ridge,” Maddy suggested.

There was no way that I could make her wait, nor did I really want to. “Go on, then. Let’s see what we were able to come up with.”

As she looked through the stack of papers we’d retrieved, she said, “You left the money, I see.”

“I told you I was going to,” I said.

I was about to tell her about the other cash I had found when she added, “How much do you want to bet that dear, sweet Rebecca takes it all and fails to disclose it to anyone else?”

“That might be kind of hard for her to do,” I said with a grin.

“Why’s that?”

I told her about the other cash I’d found and what I’d done with it, all on a whim.

Maddy laughed as she applauded. “That’s brilliant. What do you suppose was valuable enough to hide with the cash?”

“I don’t know. I never really got the chance to check it out, but it’s sitting right there in your lap.”

“Then let’s check it out right now.”

Maddy took off the bands holding the letters in place and then started going through them.

“Hey, the least you could do is read them aloud as you go through them.”

“Sorry. I got caught up in what I was doing.” She started flipping through the letters and then looked up at me. “I don’t get it. Eleanor, they aren’t anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently, he really was fond of Vivian. These are all letters she wrote him over the past year.”

I shook my head. “Seriously? That’s kind of odd, isn’t it? Grant never struck me as being all that sentimental when the two of you were together.”

“He could be when he wanted to be,” she said. “Not that he kept any letters I ever wrote him, I’m sure.”

“In all fairness, did you ever write him any?” I asked.

She laughed slightly. “Now that you mention it, not that I can remember. I did leave him a few notes over the years, but there wasn’t anything newsworthy in any of them.”

“So the hidden drawer was a bust,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say that. There’s ten grand still in there. I wouldn’t exactly call that a dead end.”

“Maybe not, but why would he keep that kind of cash on hand, especially if Vivian had drained him?”

“I can think of some reasons,” Maddy said. “He could have been hiding it from her, paying off a debt, or maybe he just won a bet. Then again, he might have planned on using it to get out of town in a hurry.”

“Why would he do that?” Maddy was my expert on the topic of her ex, so I had to rely on her gut feeling about Grant’s reasoning for doing anything.

“He was always up to something shady,” she said. “Who knows? Maybe he was blackmailing somebody, and that was his ill-gotten gains.”

“If that’s true, where’s the evidence he was holding over them? It’s got to be there somewhere, too.”

“Maybe they paid him off, he gave the evidence back, and the victim stabbed him and tried to retrieve the money, too.”

“Hang on. That sounds kind of like a leap to me. Has he ever done anything like that before that you know of?”

“I had my suspicions, but I could never prove anything. Grant liked to keep things close to the vest, but he did act oddly from time to time. We’d be broke one minute, and then the next we’d be flush, with absolutely no explanation from him about what had changed things. Add to it a few whispered conversations I caught him having just before we had money again, and it all makes sense.”

“Okay, we’ll keep that possibility in mind,” I said.

We were nearly back in Timber Ridge when my sister said, “Wow. Will you look at this.”

“I’m trying to, but I can’t tell what it is from the way you’re holding it,” I said.

“Sorry. Pull over for one second.”

“We’re going to be late if we take any breaks,” I explained.

“It’s worth it. Trust me on that.”

I did as she asked, and once I was safely parked on the side of the road, Maddy handed something to me.

“What’s this supposed to be?” I asked as I opened the envelope she’d given me and studied what was there. I found just one thing; there was a laundry ticket inside, and the name printed on it was Clean Break.

Did it mean that Grant had clothes ready to be picked up at Vivian’s cleaning store, or was there another, darker reason he’d tucked it into an envelope?

“You know, there’s a chance that this might not mean anything at all,” I said as I put the ticket back in its place.