Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

Clare blinked. “She’s the one who’s here, investigating the missing funds.”

“She asks me to turn over everything I have on the case, which was weird, because I hadn’t put any other info on my request form. Then she says she’s taking over the investigation. I’m thinking I’m screwed, that somehow she’s been able to figure out I was the guy who looked the other way and let it happen. So I handed over my stuff and sat down to wait for the arrest. The next day-two weeks ago-I was reassigned to Fort Gillem. Courtesy of Colonel Arlene Seelye.”

Clare frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what I thought. I went back and forth, trying to figure out the right thing to do. About telling Tally or not.” He propped his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor. “Up to that point, I guess I was still hoping there was going to be some way I could have my cake and eat it, too. Get the money back without Tally taking the fall. At the end, I called her. Told her I’d been working on an investigation. Told her what I found.” He glanced up at Clare. “I warned her that there was a CID finance investigator on her trail. The next thing I heard…”

“She was dead.”

“Yeah.”

They both sat with that in silence for a while. Finally, Clare said, “I still don’t understand Colonel Seelye’s actions. If she knew you were involved, why not place you in custody? And if she didn’t know, why didn’t she ask you to back her up, since you knew about the investigation? The only other guy she’s got here is a buck-green private.”

“Huh.” He sat up again. “I figured at first she wanted the cred for the discovery all to herself. Policing in the army isn’t all that different than policing on the outside when it comes to being judged on the number of collars you make or the cases you clear. Then I got to thinking. Nobody else in my chain of command knew what I was doing, and if she’s the one who fielded my request for information, nobody else in her unit knows about the missing money, either.”

“That sounds consistent with not wanting to give anyone else credit for the arrest.”

“Yeah-but I think she’s after more than a nice write-up from her superiors. I think she’s after the money.”

“You mean… for herself. To keep.” Clare sat back in her pew. She stared at the reredos behind the high altar, at the dozens of saints and angels carved into the fine-grained mahogany. “Tally died last Wednesday.”

“Yeah?”

“Stephen Obrowski, the innkeeper at the Stuyvesant Inn, said Colonel Seelye checked in Wednesday evening. He said she was upset there hadn’t been any other accommodations available.” If she had thought about it before, she would have passed it off as the normal annoyance of someone who was going to have to explain blowing her travel budget to the quartermaster. She would have missed the other implication. “Her trip was so spur-of-the-moment, she didn’t take time to make any reservations.” She turned to Nichols. “What if she came here to confront Tally? To see if she could force the location of the money out of her? Maybe she went too far. Or maybe she scared Tally into telling her and then decided to get rid of her.” She stood up. “You stay here.”

Nichols got up from his pew, frowning. “Where are you going?”

“To tell the chief of police that he can’t rule Tally’s death a suicide just yet.”

Entering the Kreemy Kakes diner, Russ spotted Clare in what he thought of as her usual spot, the red vinyl banquette against the wall, the wide window behind her showing the granite-and-marble facade of Allbanc and an unusual number of pedestrians on Main Street. Tourists, enjoying the last week of prime fall foliage.

She was in her clericals, of course, rosy-cheeked in the heat from the crowd. She was finally putting on some weight again, and it looked good on her. Real good. Down, boy. Russ dropped his jacket over the back of a chair and sat.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

He reached across the red-tiled table. “I’m sorry.”

“I am, too.” She took his hand. “Friends?”

He grinned. “Among other things.”

Erla Davis appeared at his side, menus in one hand and a pot of coffee in the other. “Well, howdy, strangers!” She beamed at Clare, then at Russ. “It does my heart good to see you two back in the old spot. Reverend, you still partial to a cup?”

Clare turned her mug over. “Erla, I’ll be partial to your coffee three days after I’m dead.”

The waitress eyed Russ as she filled Clare’s cup. “I heard you two are getting married the end of this month. Never saw that one coming.”

Russ laughed.

Erla served up his coffee and then tapped the large plastic sheets against the table. “You need to look at the menu?”

“I’ll have the chili, please,” Clare said.

“Reuben with fries.”

“That’s what I like,” Erla said. “Folks that know what they want without shilly-shallying.” She winked like a burlesque performer and whisked away, menus in hand.

Clare leaned forward, but instead of making a joke, she said, “Quentan Nichols is here. In town.”

The clatter and conversation in the Kreemy Kakes diner created a kind of homey white noise, loud enough to keep a private discussion private, soft enough to hear the person across the table. “Huh,” he said. “Okay. It looks like I really do owe you an apology.” He rubbed his lips. “I’d better tell Seelye.” Then the meaning of her statement caught up with his brain. “Wait. How do you know he’s in Millers Kill?”

“He’s at St. Alban’s, right now.”

“Oh, for chrissakes, Clare-” Erla appeared again with their order. “’Scuse my French,” he said as she unloaded the thick china dishes. He waved away the waitress’s offer to bring them anything else. “Nichols may not have killed Tally, but he sure as hell has his hands dirty.” He shoved against the table and stood up. “I’m going to take him into custody for questioning.”

“Sit down.”

The steel in Clare’s command voice dropped his ass back into his chair before he could think about it. “Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

“Oh, cut it out. I just want you to hear me out before you run off half-cocked.”

“Right. Wouldn’t want to do anything without assessing all the information and thinking it through carefully.”

She gave him a look. “Listen. Nichols admits he enabled the theft by steering his patrols away from the transit warehouse where the money was stored.” She dug her spoon into her chili. “He says he didn’t know what she was doing and he didn’t want to know. He thought it was all love’s sweet bliss until she got back stateside and dropped him like a hot rock.”

“More like a hot million,” he said around a bite of his sandwich.

“After he came here to try to see her-that was the night I got home, you remember?”

He smiled slowly. She pinked up. “Yes, well. Anyway, after that, he decided to figure out what it was, exactly, that he had done for her back at Balad Air Base. He spent a month or two digging around and figured out she must have altered the invoices coming from the States to hide the theft. So he sent a request in to USAFINCOM’s attached investigators, asking them for copies of the original invoices. Guess who shows up in person?”

“Colonel Arlene Seelye?”

She frowned. “Yes, Arlene Seelye. She confiscates all the stuff he’s amassed in the course of his investigation, tells him she’s taking over, and then-get this!-has him transferred to Fort Gillem.”

He had a good idea where this was going, but he let her spin it out.

“ She’s after the money. For herself.” Clare emphasized her point with her spoon, dropping a blob of chili on her paper place mat.