The Missing Dough(77)

“Aren’t you going to take some heat because of it?”

“Don’t worry about me. He needs to hear about what’s going on before it’s too late to do anything about it,” I said.

“If you’re sure that’s what you want me to do,” Josh said as he pulled out his phone.

“You’d better call him right now before I change my mind.”

Josh made the call, and after a minute of conversation, he handed me the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

I wasn’t thrilled to take the phone, but I didn’t have much choice. “Chief, I didn’t mean to get your son involved, but I thought that it was important.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” he said. “For now, I just wanted to let you know that we’re pretty sure we know who killed Grant, and it wasn’t Samantha Stout.”

“So, you’re fine if she leaves the country? Are you that sure?”

“Why? Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

“You know what I know. Hey, I should get a little credit for having Josh call you with new information, even though I knew you were going to chew me out because of it.”

“Okay, I’ll take it easy on you. Listen, I’ve got to go. Try not to get him involved in any more murder cases, no matter how wrong you might be about who you suspect, okay? I’ve got only one kid, and I’d kind of like to keep him around.”

“Understood,” I said, and then he hung up on me.

“That went better than I thought it would,” Josh said as he took his phone back from me.

“Why do you say that?”

“I didn’t hear him yell at you even once,” he answered with the whisper of a grin.

“Well, he wasn’t happy with me,” I said, “but I think we’re okay.”

“He probably thinks he’s already got the bad guy in his sights. Did I do all of that for nothing?”

“Josh, we never know what’s going to be useful and what’s not. I stand by what I said before. You did good. Now, get to work,” I said with a smile.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied.

After he left, I started cleaning up a little, since I was still waiting for two pizzas to make it through the conveyor oven. Was Chief Hurley right? Could Samantha be a dead end? And who did he believe was the killer? Was it Maine, an obvious choice, or maybe even Kenny? I wasn’t ready to name the killer myself, no matter how confident the police chief had sounded on the telephone.



Greg came in less than half an hour later. Maddy walked in with him, and I asked, “Where’s Josh? I thought he’d want to hear this, too.”

“He’s manning the front,” she said.

“And he agreed to that?” I asked, knowing his high level of curiosity.

“Well, let’s just say that I pulled rank on him and leave it at that, okay?”

“Okay,” I said as I turned to Greg. “Did you have any luck?”

“I wasn’t sure at first, but it ended up with a bang. It was a good idea to follow him, Eleanor.”

“He didn’t go back to Samantha’s place, did he?” I had a sudden sense of dread that Josh had left her alone at exactly the wrong time. She wouldn’t be safe until she was on that plane.

“No, but that doesn’t mean he won’t,” Greg said.

“Tell us what happened,” I said.

“Well, at first he went to the garden center and bought some flowers, some fertilizer, and some bagged mulch. It looked as though he was going to use that shovel and pick for exactly what most folks would, and I was about to give up, but you said to follow him, so I did. The next place he stopped was at Parker’s Furniture, and I thought I was really wasting my time. At least I did until he came out.”

“Why? What was he doing?”

“He had a huge footlocker with him,” Greg said. “It took him twenty minutes to tie it to the roof of his car, and at one point I was about to help him secure it myself just to get things moving along again.”

“You didn’t, though, did you?” I asked.

“No, as tempting as it was, I sat in the car and waited. After he got it latched down securely, he drove to his place in Cow Spots, but he didn’t unload the footlocker. In fact, everything stayed right there in his station wagon.”

“Why is that significant?” Maddy asked.

“He’s renting a place on the outskirts of town,” Greg said. “The yard’s not much bigger than a postage stamp, but there are enough woods behind his place to get lost in.”

“What do you think he’s going to do?”