The Missing Dough(79)

“Like a winner,” the man said. His companion started to protest, so he added, “I’ll watch Morning Glory with you again if we can eat in front of the TV.”

“But you hate chick flicks,” she said, softening slightly.

“Maybe so, but I love you,” he said.

“It’s a deal, then,” she said as she turned to me.

I pulled out the pizza, boxed it, cut it, and then carried it back out. Maddy had already given them their drinks.

“I feel like we’re taking advantage of you,” the man said.

“Honestly, you’re doing us a favor,” I said as I let them out and locked the door behind them.

“That was brilliant,” Maddy said. “Only now what do we do?”

“Something’s been nagging me ever since we first went over those papers we took from Grant’s apartment. Would you mind indulging me so we can go home and look at them again?”

“If you have a hunch, we should go with it,” she said.

It felt odd closing up the pizza place early, but there was a special mood in the air tonight, as though something big was about to happen, and I didn’t want to miss out on it.



We got back to my place, and before we could even take our jackets off, I headed for the bench where Maddy and I had stored the papers we’d found. It just took a second for me to find what I was looking for.

On the back of one of the pages in front of us was the piece of paper covered with a scribble of numbers that were all crossed out with single lines. I’d noticed it before, but I’d been distracted before I’d had a chance to examine it closely. Something Bob had said about a Web site address had stuck in my mind, because it was out of place.

When I looked at the paper again, there it was.

Among the clutter of useless information, I found what had to be a Web site address.

“Maddy, pop out your magic telephone for me, would you?”

“I’d be glad to. Who are we calling?” she asked as she dug her phone out of her purse.

“Nobody. I want to see what this site is all about.”

I handed her the piece of paper, pointed out the Web address, and she nodded as she typed a few keys on her phone pad. After a few seconds, she pulled up the site and then said, “I wonder what this means.”

“What did you find?” I asked.

She showed me her phone, and I saw an image on the screen, something that looked like an aerial view of someone’s house and yard.

“Whose place is this?” I asked as I searched for clues in what we could see.

“Hang on a second and I can tell you.” She went through a few steps, and after more than three hundred of the promised seconds had passed, she finally said, “I’ll be. It’s Sharon Whitmore’s place.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would Grant care about the view of the house where he was living? If anyone would know what it was like there, it would be him.”

She returned to the first screen and then tapped a few buttons on her phone, blowing up the view. “Eleanor, what does that look like to you?”

I stared at the small screen for a moment, and then I finally realized what I was seeing. “It’s a freshly dug hole, if I had to guess. What does it mean, though?”

“Come on. Grab your coat. I want to see what Grant Whitmore buried in the yard.”

“How long ago was this shot taken?” I asked. “What makes you think there’s even anything there now?”

“Look at the date. It was taken sometime last week, so there’s bound to still be signs that he’d been digging.”

“How did he even know that this photograph was there?” I asked.

“He could have checked the website occasionally. I know other folks that do that. It must have given him a heart attack when he saw the image on the screen.”

“Maddy, what are we going to do? Go over there with shovels and try to unearth who knows what after midnight? Besides, he probably moved whatever he buried there the second he saw fresh dirt.”

“Maybe not. There’s a chance that he didn’t have enough time to do anything about it before he was murdered.”

“So, we’re going to go find out for ourselves.”

“What other choice do we have?” Maddy asked me. “If we wait until tomorrow, we might be too late.”

“Okay. Let’s do this before my sanity starts creeping in,” I said. “I have a shovel and a pick in the basement, but my flashlight batteries are just about dead.”





Chapter 18

“I don’t think we’ll need the batteries, anyway,” Maddy said as she pointed outside. “There’s a full moon out tonight.”