The Missing Dough(45)

“You really are spooked, aren’t you, Eleanor? I’ve never seen you like this before, even when we were tracking down killers.”

“I don’t know what it is. For some reason, this one is just hitting closer to home than the others did. Don’t you get the same feeling?”

She thought about it and then nodded. “I guess that I’ve been fighting it myself, but if I’m being honest with you, I do wonder what’s really going on here. Our suspects and allies seem to change with every passing hour, and I’m beginning to wonder who we can trust.”

“You can trust me, and I can trust you,” I said.

“How about David and Bob? What about Josh, Greg, and Kevin Hurley? Is there any reason we shouldn’t trust any of them?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “Just ignore me. I’m in one of those moods I get in sometimes. I’m sure that all I need is a good night’s sleep.”

“That and catching the killer,” Maddy added.

“Yes, I admit, that would help make things all better as well. Are we too tired to look at the papers we took from Grant’s place? If we are, we could always look at them in the morning.”

“I don’t think so. I’m wired on adrenaline right now,” Maddy said. “Since sleep is out of the question, I say we do a little crime busting.”

“Okay then. I’ll put on a pot of coffee, and we can get started on the kitchen table. I’m glad we don’t own a bakery or a donut shop.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of getting up in a few hours to go to work. I don’t know how Paul does it.”

“Well, for one thing, he’s younger than we are, and for another, he loves to bake, whereas all we really like to do are pizzas.”

“Hey, we do other things, too.”

“Sure we do, but they’re all pizza related. Now, how about that coffee?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Right away, Ma’am.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said with a smile.

As I set up the coffeepot and started brewing the coffee, Maddy grabbed the papers we’d taken from Grant’s from her purse and spread them out on the tabletop.

“What’s left since we tracked down those telephone numbers?” I asked.

“Oh, there is lots of flotsam and jetsam here,” she said as she started pushing the papers around. “There’s got to be at least one clue in all of this.”

“If there is, it would be great if we can find it.”

She drew out the first piece of paper and then said, “Then let’s start digging.”





Chapter 11

Sadly, after an hour of staring at the same pieces of paper over and over and finishing the entire pot of coffee, we were no closer to a real clue than we’d been before. I was about to put it all away when I spotted something on the floor beneath the table. “What’s this?”

I leaned over and picked it up as Maddy explained, “I didn’t realize that was down there.”

It was a piece of paper covered with random numbers and letters in combinations that didn’t make any sense to me at all. Mostly, it looked like an accountant’s worst nightmare on tax day.

“What is this supposed to be?” I asked as I studied the paper.

Maddy stared at it for a second and then said, “Funny, I don’t remember seeing this. Flip it over.”

I did as she asked, and we both saw that this sheet had a list of numbers in an order that at least made some kind of sense.

“The numbers keep increasing as you go along,” Maddy said as she looked at it with me.

“Honestly, they almost look like banking amounts,” I said. “Do you notice something in particular about these numbers? The increases are always less than ten thousand. These have to be bank deposits.”

“That’s quite a leap, given the fact that there aren’t any dollar signs or decimal places on the paper,” Maddy said.

“Maybe so, but if a deposit is over ten thousand dollars, the bank employees have to notify the government. Somebody was trying to fly under the radar here.”

“Do you really think that Grant was hiding deposits of this size?” she asked. “There’s only one reason he’d do that. He wasn’t just trying his best to hide the money from the government. He obviously didn’t want anyone to find out about what he was up to.”

“But where could it all be now?” Maddy asked as she started looking through the rest of the pages we’d taken from his basement apartment. “Eleanor, did you happen to see any checkbooks in his desk, or maybe a stack of deposit slips?”