Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

Clare rose to her feet. A hundred questions were screaming in her head, but she smiled and nodded at the soldiers. “Colonel. Private.”

“Ma’am,” the young man said.

Seelye shot him an icy look. She steepled her fingers again. “This isn’t over, Chief. If you try to play hardball with the United States Army, I will have your ass hanging from my company flagpole. That’s a promise.”

Russ flattened his hands against the table and leaned forward. “I was playing hardball with the army back when you were still buffing up your butter bars and trying to memorize the ten-code.” He straightened. “Get a warrant, and we’ll talk. Until then…” He flipped his hand open.

He gestured Clare ahead of him. She felt as if she had a gun sighted between her shoulder blades as she walked to the kitchen door. As soon as the door had swung shut behind them, she opened her mouth.

Russ held a finger to his lips and dragged her around the industrial-sized center island toward Ron and Stephen, who immediately stopped talking. Ron twisted around and moved a stovetop percolator off the enormous gas range. “What was that all about?” Stephen asked.

“Police business,” Russ said.

Ron rolled his eyes.

Russ ignored him. “How long have they been here?”

“They checked in late Wednesday night,” Stephen said. “They were complaining about not being able to get a room at any of the motels.”

“They were damn lucky we had a party cancel. The Adirondacks during peak foliage?” Ron blew a raspberry.

Stephen frowned at his partner.

“Don’t give me that Mrs. Grundy look,” Ron said. “I told you they weren’t here for antiques and cider.” He pointed to Russ. “Is there anything we need to worry about? Seeing as they’re involved in police business ?”

“No. They’re cops. Military police.” He turned to Clare. “I’ve got to get back to the station. Do you mind handling the rest of the wedding hoopla without me?”

“No-o-o. I would mind the walk back to town, though.”

Russ made a frustrated sound. “Sorry. I forgot. Okay, let’s go.” He took off toward the hallway.

“Uh-” She looked helplessly at Stephen and Ron.

“Go, go.” Stephen flapped his hands at her. “Call us when you’re free. We can set up another time. Just don’t leave it too long!”

“Unless you want to think twice about the whole thing.” Ron indicated the door Russ had disappeared behind. “As I recall, Prince Charming is supposed to chase after Cinderella, not the other way around.”

Russ had already backed the truck onto the drive when she caught up to him. She swung the door open and jumped in. He started down the road before she had finished buckling her seat belt.

He unhooked the mic from its mount. “Dispatch, this is Van Alstyne, IOV.”

The radio cracked. “Chief, this is Dispatch, go ahead.”

“Is Lyle or Eric in?”

“Eric’s out interviewing friends and family. Lyle just headed to the courthouse with a warrant request. He’s fixing to get into McNabb’s bank account. The rest of ’em are in the seat.”

“Anybody not on patrol yet?”

“Hadley. She got in late.”

“Good. Have her contact McNabb’s telephone carriers. Landline and cell. I want a record of all incoming calls for the week up to her death. She’s looking for out-of-state numbers, especially ones originating from a Missouri or an Illinois area code.”

“Roger that.”

“And Harlene? Do we still have the hard copy of the intake file for Quentan Nichols? It would have been late June.”

“Probably.”

“Find it and put it on my desk. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Van Alstyne out.”

He hung up the mic.

“You think she and Nichols stole the money together.”

“If she took it, she didn’t do it alone. Do you know anything about how you draw pay during deployment?”

“Um… I showed up at the quartermaster’s and signed for it. At the bigger camps, like Liberty or Anaconda, you could use a card at the CX or to get cash.”

“Where’s the cash come from?”

She blinked. “I never thought about it.”

“It’s just like a civilian bank. The army flies it in, shrink-wrapped on pallets. The cash is transferred under guard to a secure location, where it’s locked into a vault and disbursed as necessary.”

“Huh. So when Seelye said upwards of a million, she meant one million actual dollars ?” Clare shook her head. “That’s gotta be a big amount. Physically, I mean.”

Russ flicked on his signal and turned onto River Road. “Yeah. McNabb was a finance company specialist. That means she only intersected with the cash at the end, when it was in a vault, under tight control. Or maybe not even then. It sounded as if she was in accounts management, not dispersal.”

“A bookkeeper, not a teller.” Clare scarcely noticed when they crossed the bridge. “She can cover up the loss, but not remove the actual loot from where it’s supposed to be.”

“That’s right. She would have needed an accomplice who had access to the money earlier. One of the ground crew. Or a truck driver. Or one of the MPs assigned to guard the cash.”

“Quentan Nichols. Do you think he gave Tally advance warning that the investigators were after her?”

“That’s why I’m having Knox pull the phone records.”

She stared out the side window. The sun made the autumn leaves look like they had been lit from inside. Almost too bright to look at against the white clapboard farmhouses and the October blue sky. She turned back toward Russ. “Maybe it wasn’t love that kept him coming back trying to talk with her. Maybe it was one million dollars.”

“Well, you know what they say. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a cool million in the bank.” His mouth quirked. “Either Nichols had already gotten his cut, and he called to warn her in order to save his own skin, or she still owed him money, and he called to warn her in order to keep the cash flowing.”

“Or he showed up in person to collect.” She watched as he swung onto Church Street. The gazebo in the center of the park was still hung with red-white-and-blue bunting. Maybe one more concert this weekend before the town boarded it up for the winter. “Where does her husband fit in?”

“I’m sure he was happy to accept whatever money she gave him, no questions asked.” He braked to let a handful of shoppers cross the street. “I still want to question him, but unless there’s some evidence of domestic abuse we haven’t turned up yet, he’s dropped down several notches on my list.”

Clare could think of other reasons Wyler McNabb night have killed his wife. A million of them. Maybe she was going to break it off and take the money with her. Maybe he was going to break it off and he wanted it all for himself. Maybe only she knew where it was hidden, and his attempts to wring the location out of her went south. “Where do you suppose she stashed it?”

“That’s not my problem, thank God.” He drove past the church, past the boxwood hedge, and turned into her drive.

“What do you mean? A million in untraceable cash? If that’s not motive for murder, what is?”

He engaged the parking brake but kept the engine running. He turned, slinging his arm across the seat back. “You’re not seeing the whole picture. The McNabbs spent money like water in the past couple of years, buying cars, a boat, a swimming pool, and God knows how much in useless crap and rounds of drinks at the Dew Drop. Their relationship, by all accounts, was rocky. She was stressed by two tours of duty in Iraq, one of which included grand larceny. One of the guys in her group just tried to kill himself. Then she finds out the CID is about to show up. She’s looking at fifteen years’ hard time in Leavenworth and complete financial ruin from the restitution order.” He laid his hand over Clare’s. His voice gentled. “I know it’s hard to accept-but her.38 must have looked like her only friend in the world at that point.”