Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

“Police chaplain?”

Russ snorted. “Only unofficially.” He crumpled his paper napkin. “For our purposes, it doesn’t matter why McNabb ran. He’s obviously in it up to his neck. The thing to figure out is-”

Clare pointed her fork at him. “Why did John Opperman tell us he’d been assigned to leave?”

“Who’s John Opperman?” Nichols asked.

“Opperman saw a chance to dick me over at no cost to himself and he took it,” Russ said.

Clare turned to Nichols. “The CEO of BWI Opperman, where Tally worked. They run the resort, which you’ve seen, and the construction company where McNabb works.”

Russ made a noise. “As I was saying-”

A sharp rap on the door interrupted him. “Millers Kill police,” a voice called. “Please open the door and identify yourself.”

Russ raised his eyebrows. He held his hands up, indicating Clare and Nichols should stay put. He rose and crossed the kitchen.

“I’m opening the door. I’m unarmed.” Which wasn’t strictly true. There were two 9 mm automatics on the counter next to the sink. Russ swung the door open to reveal Kevin Flynn.

“Chief?” His gaze swept the kitchen. “Reverend? Wait a minute, isn’t that-”

“Quentan Nichols, yeah. Come on in, Kevin.”

“Um…” Kevin stepped past Russ, his eyes still on Nichols. “We got a report from the old lady next door that the place was lit up like Christmas. I figured maybe Mrs. Walters was here going through her daughter’s things…” His voice faded as he took in the three plates and the remains of a scrambled egg dinner. “What’s going on, Chief?”

“Quentan Nichols, this is Officer Kevin Flynn.” Kevin nodded warily toward Nichols, who still sat, seemingly relaxed. Clare suspected she was the only one who could see the pale crescents beneath his fingernails from pressing hard into the table.

“So… I guess he’s no longer on our BOLO list?” Kevin’s voice had a pinch-me quality.

Russ crossed his arms and looked at Nichols. “I think Mr. Nichols is willing to cooperate with us.”

Nichols nodded slowly. “I get the credit if we find the money. From the army, I mean.”

“Still hoping to avoid a court-martial?”

Nichols dropped his gaze, but his voice was steady. “I got twelve years invested. Eight more to go. I’m not gonna flush it all down the toilet because of one stupid mistake. Not if I can fix it.”

It was the weirdest case briefing Kevin had ever been to. Him and the chief, in his civvies, sitting around the table in a dead woman’s home with Reverend Clare and the guy they’d all been looking for as a POI.

“Report in your break,” the chief said. “Keep your radio on in case you get a squawk.”

Nichols got up and made coffee while Kevin signed out with dispatch. The chief let the guy have his run of the kitchen, so Kevin guessed that was all right. When they had all taken a seat, he ventured a question.

“Uh, Chief? What exactly are we doing here?”

The chief took a deep whiff of his coffee, a gesture so familiar Kevin could see an image of him, uniformed, sitting on the squad room table, superimposed over this flannel-shirted man in a pine-paneled kitchen.

“We’re going to find the money Tally McNabb stole. Then we’re going to use it to prove Colonel Arlene Seelye is dirty.”

Nichols paused from getting the milk out of the fridge. “How the hell will finding the money get you to Seelye?”

“We’ll let her think she’s the one finding it.”

“Set it up as bait?” Nichols thunked the carton onto the table. “That might work.”

“You really think their army investigator is after it?” Kevin couldn’t keep the doubt from his voice.

“Let’s just say I’d like to see how she reacts to the opportunity to make off with the money undetected. What’s that saying you told me, Clare?”

“Honi soit qui mal y pense.”

“Evil be to him who evil thinks,” Kevin translated. The chief raised his eyebrows.

Reverend Clare smiled. “Someone knows his English history.” Kevin felt the color rise to his cheeks.

The chief spooned sugar into his cup. “I have a contact in the JAG Corps who looked into her alleged investigation. There’s no file on the case. No log of Mr. Nichols contacting her office, nothing. My contact thinks she may have stumbled over the theft while she was overseeing the financial office in Camp Anaconda. I think Mr. Nichols’s investigation tipped her off. Either way, she’s in prime position to collect that million for herself.”

“But she left town,” Kevin said. “If a financial crimes expert thought she’d have better luck finding the loot elsewhere, why do you think it’s here?”

The chief blew across his coffee. His gaze slid sideways toward Nichols. “Because Mr. Nichols is still here. The colonel may know all about money laundering and bank fraud, but Mr. Nichols knows Tally McNabb.” He rested his arm on the table and turned toward the MP. “You told Clare you had talked to Tally a couple times since this summer. That’s how you knew they were in counseling together.” He glanced at Reverend Clare, then back to Nichols. “What do you know that we don’t?”

Nichols was silent for a long moment. Finally, he pulled out his chair and sat down. “She never told me where it was. She just said that they had brought it back home.”

“They?”

Nichols nodded. “She didn’t say much about it. She never admitted right out that she’d stolen the money.” He made a noise that resembled a laugh. “I guess she still didn’t trust me. She talked around it. Talked about her feelings, you know.”

“What were her feelings, Quentan?” The reverend’s voice was quiet.

“She said money didn’t make you happy. She said she didn’t think it was worth it.”

“ It presumably being the theft?” The chief’s voice was dry. “Yet somehow, she forced herself to hang on to the loot.”

Kevin couldn’t help it. “No, Chief, it tracks.” Everyone looked at him. “The dep said most of the stuff here was new-within the last year or so. You know, the pool and the ATV and the pimped-up SUVs. She was spending money on him . Her mom said they’d been together since high school, and Tally was still head-over-heels for him.”

He happened to be looking at Nichols, which is why he saw the expression flash over the man’s face and disappear. Poor bastard, he thought, and on its heels came another, just like me. Only in his case, the woman he loved wasn’t crazy about anyone else. She just didn’t want him. Kevin tightened his grip on his mug of coffee and forced himself to continue. “Her mom’s house in Cossayuharie looks like it’s been renovated from the ground up. Inside and out. Now compare that to this house. They’ve got a giant flat-screen hanging in the living room, but everything else is kind of old and basic. So it’s not that Tally had to have the best of everything herself. She just wanted the people she loved to have whatever they wanted.”

“I think Kevin’s right.” Reverend Clare glanced around the room. “I can’t imagine anyone with unlimited funds not updating this kitchen.”

“That’s ’cause it’s the first thing you’d do.” The chief smiled a little. “But I agree. Kevin has a point.”

“There’s your motivation for murder.” The reverend thunked her mug on the table hard enough to slosh her coffee. “She held the purse strings and was feeling remorseful. Maybe she was going to give back everything she hadn’t spent. So Wyler killed her.”

The chief shook his head. “There’s no evidence to support a homicide, Clare.”

“Besides, McNabb made good money himself, working construction for BWI Opperman.” Kevin leaned forward, addressing the reverend. “The guys who go overseas really rake it in.”