Clare O’Donohue - The Lover’s Knot

I shook my head. "Maybe he wanted to leave something here."

Jesse looked at me as if he were taking it all in. "You think the fifteen grand is here?"

I jumped up. "Oh, God. Do you think it could be?"

"I went through all the stuff taken from the shop when I was looking for his key."

"So it wasn't hidden with that stuff. It's somewhere else."

"You don't think Eleanor would have found it?" Jesse was whispering now and I started to lower my voice in response.

"No. She can barely get around. And if she had…"

"Yeah, she would have said something."

"Okay," I said, my heart beating louder than my voice. "It can't be upstairs because I would have heard someone coming up the steps."

"It isn't in the dining room, because I've searched that." Jesse was looking around. "Plus, he didn't have that much time. You said you got up and started to come downstairs."

"I did-I listened for a minute or so, then I got up."

"So, maybe the kitchen." Jesse got up and started walking around the room. He opened cabinets and starting emptying shelves. "Look in the jars," he said.

I opened the flour and sugar canisters. I went through the tea bags, the coffee beans, the baking soda-anything that was open. There was no money.

Eventually most of the kitchen cabinets were on the counter. Jesse had spent an hour looking through the entryway and came up equally empty-handed.

"Well, it was an idea," he said as he came back to find me putting things away in the kitchen.

"You don't think he would have hid anything in the living room?"

"That would be something. Right under Eleanor's nose." He smiled. "I'll talk to her tomorrow about going through the living room."

"I can look," I said, but Jesse was already shaking his head.

"I've got all the deputies I need, thanks."

When Jesse left, I sat in the kitchen and listened to the silence. He was right. The house did feel spooky. The idea that Marc had- possibly-come into the house to hide something left me a little unnerved. But if he had, there was a bigger question. Why hide it here? Was Marc afraid of someone, someone who knew he had come into a large amount of money? That thought was comforting to me because it meant that the killer could have been one of Marc's gambling buddies. The other, more frightening, thought sat at the back of my mind. Susanne's theory that someone had killed Marc to protect a loved one. A loved one like Natalie and baby Jeremy. Or a loved one like me.

The next morning Eleanor was up early and hobbling around in the kitchen, so I figured it was safe to search her room. I tried to get Barney to be my watchdog and sit at the door to the I tried to get Barney to be my watchdog and sit at the door to the living room, but he interpreted my hand gestures as an invitation to play, so I wasted five valuable minutes roughhousing with him in the hallway.

When he was finally tired he plopped down in the doorway. I just looked at him for a moment. Poor old thing. It must be tough to have the enthusiasm of a puppy in the body of a deaf old dog. But he seemed happy enough, savoring the joys of a few pats on the head or a few minutes of play. Maybe Barney knew what I was only beginning to see. That you have to make a little happiness for yourself wherever you can, rather than dream about what may be down the road.

As I stood in the doorway changing my life philosophy once again, I heard noises from the kitchen. I could either stand there or do what I came to do. I moved slowly into the room.

Where to start? When Marc broke into the house the night Eleanor was in the hospital-if Marc broke into the house-then none of the bedroom furniture or television would have been here. There weren't a lot of hiding places. The room, like all of Eleanor's rooms, was sparsely furnished. I looked behind the curtains. Nothing. Under the rug. Nothing. I stuck my hand up the fireplace. Eleanor never used the fireplace. "Waste of good wood and good central heating," she said at least a hundred times. I felt around. There was… something. A piece of tape. I inched my fingers up a little higher and felt a bulge against the wall of the fireplace. It was paper, taped to the wall. But I could only touch the corner of it.

"Nell," Eleanor was calling from the other room. I ignored her. "Nell, are you awake?"

"I'll be right there," I yelled back. "Are you okay?"

"Coffee's ready. And it's hot."

I strained my arm as high as it could go and felt a slight cramping in my shoulder. I had promised myself a dozen times that I was going to spend twenty minutes every day stretching. If I had known it would have such a practical use I would have done it. Oh, well, tomorrow, I thought in another likely to be broken promise.

I reached in and pulled. As I did I fell against the fireplace. "Damn it."

"What did you say?" I heard Eleanor. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing." I glanced at the envelope in my hand. My fingers were trembling slightly as I opened it. It was filled with cash.

"Nell, what are you up to?"

"I'm coming," I said as I left the living room, nearly tripping over Barney as I did. My coat was hanging in the hall closet, so I stuffed the envelope into a pocket and headed into the kitchen for coffee.

"Well, you were slow to start your day this morning." Eleanor greeted me with a suspicious eye.

"I know. I'm sorry," I said as I gulped down the piping hot coffee and nearly burned off my tongue. "I have to head into town and check on the shop."

"That's a good idea. And when you go to the police station ask Jesse to see the quilt Marc had in his hands. See how damaged it is."

"What makes you think I'm going…," I started, but what was the point of protesting? The woman had spies everywhere. "I'll ask to see the quilt."

"I told you I was going to search the living room," Jesse said as I handed him the envelope.

"I was cleaning."

"The fireplace?"

"Yes." I stubbornly stuck to a story that he clearly he didn't believe. "Besides, you said that I could bring you anything I found, any clues, any hunches, just as any concerned citizen would."

Jesse grunted but put on a pair of gloves, opened the envelope and began counting the cash.

"How much is it?" I sat impatiently. I knew he would probably prefer I left the office, but I was going nowhere, and since, technically, the cash was not part of any crime, at least not yet, he didn't throw me out.

"Just over six thousand," he said. He spread the dollars over his desk.

"So Marc was hiding the cash at my grandmother's."

"Maybe. Half the cash, anyway."

"Well, the other half was for the doctor."

"But he never gave it to the doctor." Jesse looked at me. "So that money is somewhere."

"You said he might have gambled it away. So maybe he didn't have time to get back to Eleanor's to get the rest."

"How do you know it's not Eleanor's?" he asked.

"We just put her books on computer. I saw. She's got every penny accounted for. Besides, my grandmother doesn't like leaving twenty bucks in the register overnight. There's no way she'd store this kind of cash in her house."

"Okay. If someone knew Marc had this money, then they may have come to the shop looking for it. When Marc didn't have it, he was killed so the killer could look for it."

"If Marc told the doctor he had money, he could have told other people. He could have flashed it around." I could hear the excitement in my voice as it felt like we were getting close to the answer. "Have you gone through his phone records, seen who his friends are?"

Jesse leaned back in his chair and hesitated. Then he leaned forward. "I'm only telling you this to stop you from running around town interviewing suspects. There's nothing unusual." He reached into a file and took out a list of numbers from Marc's cell phone.