Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

I started to stand. “Then you’re here to get some more. I have just the—” But she was shaking her head. I sat down and saw the tension around her mouth. Noted the rigidity of her thin shoulders. “What’s the matter, Irene?”

She swallowed. “I’m scared,” she whispered.

My heart went out to her. Of course she was scared. Her husband had just had emergency heart surgery and then had almost been killed. Who wouldn’t be scared? “It’ll be okay,” I said softly. “Adam will get better; he’s young and strong and will come out of this fine. And the police will figure out who—”

She was shaking her head again. “It’s not that. Well, it is, but I’m scared it’s all my fault.”

The idea sounded ridiculous, but I didn’t laugh. “How could that be?” I asked.

There was no one within earshot, but she looked left and right and then edged up to the very front of the desk. “Adam’s an accountant.” She was talking to the countertop, but I nodded anyway. “He’s a very good accountant and he was making a lot of money in Chicago working for a big firm. Now that he’s on his own he doesn’t have many clients, but he’s getting there and someday everything will be fine.”

“Okay,” I said, drawing out the word a little, and not having any idea where this was going.

She blew out a breath. “One of the things Adam does really well is find bookkeeping anomalies. It’s what made his reputation. Companies came to the firm he worked for just to get his opinion.”

I waited for her to go on, because this was clearly leading up to something.

“Anyway,” she said, “a few years ago, Adam turned someone in to the IRS. He’d found evidence of fraud and was obligated by law to report this guy, Seth Wartella, who was ultimately convicted of tax fraud and sent to jail.”

I wanted to ask a question, but I could tell that Irene had started the real part of the story and I didn’t want to interrupt before it was over.

“For a long time I barely thought about it,” she said in a crowded rush. “It was years ago. It was history. It was over and done with and Wartella had never really been in our life; he’d just been a client’s employee that, by law, Adam had to report. Adam testified and I went to watch, but that was it. Wartella had committed tax fraud and embezzled, and went to jail because of it, and none of that was Adam’s fault,” she said in a fierce whisper.

“Of course it wasn’t,” I said. “It would be ridiculous to think otherwise.”

“The only thing is . . .” Irene’s voice was strained. “A couple of Saturdays back, I could swear I saw Seth Wartella.”

“A couple of weeks ago?” I asked, trying to summon a mental calendar.

She nodded. “The same weekend Henry died.”

• • •

Detective Inwood’s pen wrote for a long time before he looked up again. When he did, his gaze settled on me for a brief moment before he went back to Irene. “All right, Mrs. Deering. Please continue.”

Right after Irene had told me about Seth Wartella, I’d called the sheriff’s office and made an appointment with Inwood. “Is this urgent?” he’d asked tiredly. Which wasn’t a good thing, since it was still morning.

“On a scale of one to ten,” I’d said, “with ten being a falling rock about to hit my head, I’d say this is a seven.”

“Come down at noon,” he’d said, sighing. “I’ll fit you in.”

So here we were, in that old familiar interview room. I’d made the strategic error of letting Irene enter first and I ended up in my regular seat. While we’d waited for the detective, I’d craned my head around, trying to see the ceiling dragon from the point of view of the table’s other side without moving over there, but all I got was a crick in my neck and an odd look from Irene.

Now Irene was sitting up close to the table, staring at her folded hands. “I called the arresting officers,” she said, “and they told me Seth Wartella had been released from prison in January. I didn’t want to tell Adam, because it was right after his heart surgery and I wanted him to focus on getting better, and not worry about Seth.”

The detective eyed her. “Have you told him?”

She nodded. “Last night.”

Inwood wrote, then asked, “Do you have any reason to believe that Mr. Wartella would want to injure your husband?”

She hesitated. “At the trial Wartella denied everything, but the evidence was obvious. He was angry when the verdict came in and I’ll never forget the look he gave Adam.” She hunched her shoulders.

“He never verbally threatened or accosted your husband?” the detective asked.

“Not as far as I know.”

Inwood wrote some more. “All right, Mrs. Deering. Thank you for the information. It’s a pity you didn’t come to us earlier, though.”

“I . . .” Irene’s shoulders hunched a little more. “I was scared,” she said in a small voice. “I just wanted him to go away. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t him that I saw. Maybe it was someone who looked like him.”

This seemed unlikely, since she’d told us Seth Wartella was about five foot five and had bright red hair and ears that stuck out, but I supposed it was possible.

“Possible,” Inwood said, “but unlikely.” He slid his notebook into his shirt pocket. “We’ll be in touch. Ms. Hamilton, I assume you can find your way out?” He nodded to us and left.

“You’ve been here before?” Irene asked.

“Never in handcuffs,” I said, and was rewarded with a glimmer of a smile.

Outside, the April sun was doing its meager best and I shied away from wondering how cold it would get that night. Irene got her car keys out of her purse. “Thanks for all your help, Minnie. I didn’t know who to talk to about Seth, that day a couple of weeks ago. I guess I just tried not to think about it. But now that someone might be trying to . . . trying to . . .”

I took the keys from her fumbling hand, beeped the car doors unlocked for her, and handed back the keys. “I understand why you didn’t want to tell Adam about Seth.”

She looked at me ruefully. “That detective didn’t.”

“Mr. Sympathy? No. He didn’t. But then he’s not a wife who’s stretching herself thin to hold her husband and their life together. You were trying to protect Adam and I don’t blame you a bit.”

Her shoulders released some of their tension. “Thanks, Minnie. That means a lot.”

A brilliant idea sparked into my brain. Hooray! I’d been wondering how to tell her that I’d promised her husband I’d do a little Minnie-type investigating, and here was the perfect opportunity. “Tell you what,” I said. “I can do a little research on that Seth guy. See what I can find out.”

“Minnie, you’ve already done so much for us.” She shook her head. “I can’t let you do that.”

She and her husband were definitely two of a kind. “Ha!” I said. “Try to stop me. I’m a librarian, remember? Research is one of the things I do best.” That and collect Eddie hair upon my person. “From safe and sound inside my snug office, I’ll do a little digging. If I can find out that Seth was in, say, Australia last weekend, we’ll know he had nothing to do with that car.” And likely not with Henry’s death, either.

Irene reached out and gave me a hard hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.

I watched her get into the car and drive away, glad to given her a little peace of mind.

Then I walked back to the library and went to work.

• • •

After leaving the library the next day, I walked back to the marina, wondering how private investigators did their investigating. I’d spent part of the previous evening with my laptop, browsing the Internet for information about Seth Wartella, and had found essentially nothing. I’d found an eighty-two-year-old Seth Wartella in Phoenix and an eighteen-year-old version in the greater Washington, D.C., area, both of whom were interested in dating active women who enjoyed long walks and sunsets, but I’d found nothing about a forty-something Seth. Admittedly I didn’t spend too much time online, because the marina’s Wi-Fi connection was abysmally slow, but to not find anything seemed strange.