The Missing Dough (A Pizza Lovers Mystery) Page 6

  “I’m not counting on it,” she said with a wry smile as she laid the envelope on top of the desk. “I’ll be amazed if I get anything better than Sharon’s slides, and maybe that teacup collection we saw on the way in.”

  “You never know,” I said.

  I tried to pull out the last and biggest lower drawer in the desk, and when it wouldn’t budge, I saw that it was locked. There were more fresh scratch marks on the wood, and after fiddling with it a little, I was able to open it.

  Whatever had been there when the police had started their search was now gone. I stared at the bottom of the drawer for a minute, though. Something was wrong. It took a little time, but then I got it. The bottom of the drawer should have been deeper than it was. Not by much, but enough to allow a few things to be hidden there. Once I pulled it all the way out, I searched the back of the drawer with my fingers and felt a small wire button hidden there. As I pressed it, the wooden bottom shifted upward, releasing some kind of catch inside the drawer. Lifting the false bottom out, I eagerly looked inside the drawer to see what had been hidden away. I had a hunch that the police had missed this in their search.

  Inside, there were two stacks of hundred-dollar bills, and I quickly counted them as I removed them. One stack had five thousand dollars in it, and the other was five hundred short of that total. It appeared that I’d found a secret money stash, but that wasn’t what interested me the most. The drawer also had a handful of letters in it, carefully banded together, as well.

  I was about to pick them up when I heard someone fumbling with a key in the lock upstairs.

  Someone was trying to get in!

  It was clear by the false starts that they were having trouble finding the right key, but I suspected it was just a matter of seconds before we had company.

  “Maddy, we need to get out of here. Is there a back way out of here?”

  “There’s a door to the outside, but why should we leave?”

  She’d had her head buried in the closet, so she must not have heard the first few keys in the lock. At that moment, there was another false start, and she scooped up her pile of finds, along with a few other things, and headed for the door. “Come on. Let’s go. There’s a basement access door over this way,” she said.

  I considered taking the money for one brief second, but on second thought, I grabbed the letters instead, as well as the documents I’d gathered myself. Taking more time than I really had, I jammed the cash, including the five hundred bucks Maddy had found, into the drawer and put the false bottom in place. Upstairs, it sounded as though whoever was trying to get in was getting closer. There was a loud click as the right key hit home, and I hurried to catch up with Maddy.

  She was standing by the basement door, waving me on. “Hurry up,” she whispered.

  I raced for the back door as I heard footsteps upstairs, and I was sorry that I hadn’t at least closed the door from the first floor to the basement. As the footsteps neared, I nearly dove out the basement door, and Maddy eased it shut just as we heard someone on the steps coming down to where we’d just been.

  “They’re going to see the mess we left,” Maddy said as we hurried away.

  “We can’t do anything about that now. Maybe they’ll think the cops did it. Nobody’s going to suspect us.”

  As we hurried around the house and down the street, Maddy finally eased her pace and said, “That was good thinking, parking away from the place.”

  “Thanks. I get a good idea every now and then,” I said as I glanced at my watch. “We need to get to the Slice. I still have time to make fresh dough, so we don’t have to rely on our frozen stash. We can look at what we managed to get out of there after we finish our prep work for the day.”

  “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 s
he’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.

  “Or it could be something really important,” Maddy said. “Did you see what was written on the envelope?”

  I hadn’t, so I turned it over and saw that there was an odd series of numbers written on it. There were too many digits, and they were not spaced properly for it to be a telephone number. “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think there’s a chance it’s just innocent dry cleaning, do you?”

  “We’ll look into it, I promise,” I said as I started driving again.

  We were almost at the Slice, and I was suddenly in a hurry to get back to my safe haven, the pizzeria. It was a refuge for me, something Joe and I had created out of our sweat and tears. Though Maddy and I often discussed murder there, the place still managed to hold me in its warmth, as the joyous memories I’d had there far outweighed everything else.

  We pulled up in back of the Slice, and Maddy grabbed our finds as we got out of the car. We walked through the shortcut, and I glanced over at the mural painted there. Timber Ridge had done all in its power to draw folks to the promenade, and as a business owner there, I was mighty grateful for all they’d done. We were through the passageway and on our way to the blue section of buildings where the Slice was when I heard a pounding on a window nearby. Paul, our dear friend and the best baker in our part of North Carolina, was waving frantically to us from inside his shop.

  “What do you suppose is going on with him?” I asked Maddy as we hurried to meet him at his front door.

  “I don’t know, but I’ve got a hunch that we’re about to find out.”

  Chapter 6

  “Paul, what’s wrong?” I asked when he met us outside. “I’m so glad that I caught you. Somebody came by here looking for you not too long ago, and I wanted to give you a heads-up before you got to the Slice,” he said.

  “Was it Rebecca Whitmore?” Maddy asked.

  “I don’t know who that is, but no, it wasn’t her,” Paul said.

  He was about to continue when Maddy interrupted. “Believe me, you can’t miss her if you ever see her. She’s slim, nearly six feet tall, kind of pretty, if you like that type, and the last time I saw her, she had long brown hair.”

  “No, I haven’t seen her,” Paul said. “I’m talking about Art Young.”

  “Art came by?” I asked, more startled than I meant to show. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything about why he was hunting for you. He just asked me to tell you when I saw you that the two of you need to talk, and he left this envelope for me to give to you in case I ran into you first. He was pretty insistent about it.”

  I took the envelope from Paul as he added, “Eleanor, I know that you two are acquaintances, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to watch your step around him. From what I’ve heard, he’s connected. Listen, if you need a little cash to get through a rough spot, I’d be glad to loan you everything that’s in my account, and it’s interest free.”

  I had to laugh. “Art is more than a passing acquaintance to me. He’s my friend, Paul.” I waved the envelope in the air. “There’s no way this has cash in it. I’m curious, though. Why do you think I might need money?”

  He just shrugged. “Hey, don’t forget I run a small business, too. I know how tight things can get sometimes.” He took a step backward as he added, “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds. You and Maddy are two of the best friends I have in Timber Ridge. I can’t help it if I’m a little overprotective of you both.”

  Maddy and I laughed, and we each found one of his cheeks to kiss. Paul smiled, but it was clear he wasn’t all that comfortable with our public display of affection. That was just too bad, though. He was like a part of our family, a big brother who just happened to be younger than either one of us. That didn’t mean that he still couldn’t look out for the two of us, though.

  “Just for the record,” I said, “we’re fine, financially and otherwise. I have no idea what’s in this envelope, but it has nothing to do with money, I can guarantee that to you. By the way, how’s your love life these days?”

  Paul managed to look uncomfortable yet again. I knew that he was still seeing Gina Sizemore, the young woman who ran Tree-Line. It was an elegant resort hotel and conference center on the edge of town, and they were still dating, at least as of the festival last night. I’d seen them together there, walking around the promenade, holding hands and looking as though the rest of the world wasn’t even there. “It’s fine,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s bound to be better than just fine,” Maddy said with a wicked gleam in her eye. “We’ve seen the two of you in public.”

  His face was beginning to turn crimson red. “Maddy, let’s stop picking on him,” I said as I waved the envelope in the air. “Thanks for delivering this, Paul.”

  “I was happy to do it,” he said.

  “Even with Art’s reputation around town?” I asked.

  “Hey, any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” he said.

  I had the envelope open by the time my sister and I got to the Slice’s front door.

  “What does it say?” Maddy asked.

  “Hang on a second. We can look at it once we’re inside.”

  I let us into the pizzeria and then locked the door behind us once we were inside. I looked in the envelope, honestly not sure what I was going to find.

  There was a single business card in there, with no name and no other indication of who it might belong to. On the front was a telephone number, and on the back, in block letters, someone had printed Call me ASAP.

  I showed it to Maddy.

  “That’s odd,” she said after she studied it for a few seconds. “I wonder what this is all about.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said.

  I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the number on the card.

  It took twelve rings for whoever was on the other end to answer.

  “I’ll be outside in seven minutes,” Art said and then hung up.

  I was still frowning at the phone in my hand when Maddy asked, “What did he say?”

  “Art wants to see me. He’s coming by soon, but I still think I have time to mix the dough, if you’ll help me.”

  “You shouldn’t make him wait, Eleanor,” Maddy said.

  “He’ll understand,” I said, hoping that he would. Art knew how much my restaurant meant to me, and even if I was a minute or two late, I was pretty sure that he’d forgive me.

  “I hope you’re right, but we’d still better get on it,” Maddy said.

  We measured out flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and water and got the large mixer started.

  I handed a spatula to Maddy. “Stop it in two minutes and scrape the sides, okay?”

  “I’ve done this a few times myself,” Maddy reminded me. “Go on. You’re going to be late.”

  I took my apron off and grabbed my light jacket on the way out the door.

  Art’s car was already parked in the promenade parking lot.

  It appeared that I hadn’t made my deadline, after all.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I said as Art’s chauffeur held the door open for me. “Did you have to wait long?”

  “Not enough to matter,” Art said.

  After I slid in beside him, the chauffeur closed the door, and soon after, the car started moving.

  “I hate to tell you this, but I really don’t have time to go anywhere right now,” I said.

  “This is important,” Art said. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.”

  “Okay, I get that. You’ve got my attention. Let me ca
ll Maddy and tell her that I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

  Art put a hand on mine. He was a man of slight stature, and his carefully styled blond hair was beginning to thin, but there was an air of importance to him that was undeniable. “There’s no need for that. We won’t be that long.”

  I shrugged and moved my hand away from the phone. “Okay, if your goal was to intrigue me, you’ve certainly managed it. What’s going on?”

  He took a deep breath, as if buying time to word his next statement carefully. “The inquiry I made this morning about the dry cleaner has aroused more interest than it should have. I asked a favor from a friend, but apparently, it was noticed by others.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I said. “I’m sorry if I got you into trouble.”

  He shook his head. “Whatever is happening right now has been brewing for some time,” he explained. “I’m afraid that this was just the catalyst that is bringing things to a head. I have to ask you not to approach the woman who runs the cleaner again until you’ve heard directly from me. Will you promise me that you’ll do that, Eleanor?”

  What was going on with him? I didn’t think Art was afraid of anyone or anything, but I was getting some odd vibes from him at the moment. “Art, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Eleanor. It’s you I’m concerned about, though. Will you do as I ask? It’s important, to both of us.”

  “I need to talk to her again sometime. Vivian told me her alibi, but I still have a hard time believing it.” I took a deep breath and then decided to tell him what I’d found at Grant’s basement apartment. “I found an envelope with a string of numbers written on it in Grant Whitmore’s desk. Inside the envelope, there was a stub from Clean Break. Does this have anything to do with what’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but to be safe, you need to forget about it, at least for the moment. Eleanor, there are some elements that might try to use my friends against me, and you’re high up on their list.”