Heather Webber - Digging Up Trouble

She nodded and started walking away.

“Wait!”

She turned.

“What about BeBe?”

She said something in German, and BeBe trotted over to me, sat at my feet. Brickhouse bent down, looked in BeBe’s eyes and said something I didn’t understand to her.

“She’ll be fine.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Meredith dart down the steps, dash down the driveway.

“Tell Mr. Cabrera I said hi.”

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Mrs. Krauss patted BeBe’s head and walked away.

I looked down at BeBe, held out my hand. She slobbered it. I smiled. Some things just didn’t change. “You made a mess,” I said to her.

She licked me some more.

I picked up the two pieces of terra cotta, set them aside. I scooped as much soil and plant as I could and carried it down the steps. I set the remnants in the grass and made a mental note to have Deanna find a place for it.

I turned to walk away when something sticking out of the soil caught my eye.

Bending down, I tried to make out what it was. Some sort of plastic. I carefully dug through the soil, trying to do as little damage to the roots of the plant as possible.

It took some doing, but I finally pulled it loose. A sealed plastic sandwich bag.

It held pictures.

A car door slammed, and BeBe went nuts. I slipped the pictures into my back pocket, turned and saw why.

Tam was standing on the sidewalk, one hand on her big belly, the other shading her eyes against the unforgiving summer sun.

“Tam!”

BeBe took off.

“Gesundheit!” I yelled, chasing after her, trying to catch her before she toppled poor Tam.

“Weiner schnitzel! Sauerkraut!”

Where was Brickhouse when I really needed her?

“Run, Tam! Run! Farfegnugen!”

When BeBe got within three feet of her, Tam held up a palm and said, “Stop.”

BeBe stopped.

I huffed and puffed. “How’d you do that?”

“I have a way with animals.”

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She had on a pair of lime green capris and a large white T-shirt. Her hair was a mass of curls, her cheeks rosy.

She looked good.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

BeBe inched closer to Tam until she was practically a pair of drooling slippers. Tam patted her head.

“The doctor said I could resume normal activity. The baby’s lungs are mature enough now so that if I do go into labor again, it will be safe to deliver.”

“Are they sure?” I was a worrier by nature.

“They’re the ones with the degrees. I just thought I’d stop by and see how the yard was doing.”

“Are you going to come back to work?” I asked, hopeful.

Her curls bounced as she shook her head. “Think I’ll rest until the baby’s born. Don’t want to push it. You’re in good hands with Ursula.”

Hmmph.

“Oh,” she said. “I’ve got those books for you.”

She opened her car door, leaned in and pulled out the accounting books. She talked as we walked to my truck, BeBe on our heels.

“At first glance everything seems to be in order.”

“But?”

“It’s really odd. On certain days of the week the store is barely floating by. On others, business is booming.”

I thought about the possibility of Bill skimming from the days’ takes. “Would those barely getting by days be Monday, Wednesday, Friday?”

“Actually, the opposite.” She opened one of the books.

“See here? This week last month, the profits on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday far exceeded Tuesday and Thursday.

The weekends were somewhat of a wash. More was made, but not eye-poppingly so.”

And the numbers were eye-popping. On the days Bill 220

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managed Growl, he took in nearly quadruple what Russ had been pulling in.

“Does it look like someone’s been embezzling?”

“Not that I could see,” she said in that haughty way of hers that told me if she hadn’t found something, no one would find something.

“Do you have any idea why the take would be so much higher on those three days?”

“Nope. Good management only goes so far.”

“Weird.”

“Very.”

I stored the books in my truck, locked the door.

“How come BeBe is here? I thought Ursula was dog-sitting?”

At the sound of her name, BeBe’s head snapped up, her tail thumped, and the drool flowed.

Eww.

I told Tam about Mr. Cabrera.

“Do you think Ursula and Donatelli will get back together now?”

“I don’t know.” But I hoped so. The two belonged together.

Her gaze lingered on BeBe. “Hey, why don’t I take BeBe back to the farm with me? She can visit with her brothers.”

Ian Phillips, Tam’s new love, bred English mastiffs, and had raised BeBe from a pup.

She went to check with Kit, and I took the pictures out of my back pocket, unzipped the Baggie. There were three pho-tos, taken at night. There must have been a full moon because the lighting was great.

I looked up at the Grabinsky house and decided that who-ever took them—and I believed more and more that it had been Greta—had spied from the upstairs bathroom window.

The one that overlooked the Hathaways’ backyard.

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In the pictures, Dale Hathaway was participating in a little nighttime nookie, poolside.

And I had to say, the man not only had amazing cheekbones . . . but cheeks as well. It was hard not to notice. The pictures seemed to be focused on his bare behind. Maybe Greta had a thing for cheeks too.

I flipped through the pictures, calling Dale every sort of bad name for cheating on Kate, until I spotted a shiny anklet on Dale’s partner’s ankle.

I knew that anklet.

Kate was the woman with him.

I silently took back the bad names as I remembered what Dale had said about Kate, about how shy and prim she was.

A good Catholic girl.

If Greta had threatened to spread these pictures around the neighborhood, I could see why Dale would have gone to any lengths to protect her modesty.

My God. A man who loved his wife. Amazing.

I stuck the pictures into my back pocket and told myself I’d hold onto them until Dale was cleared as a murder suspect.

When—and if—that happened, he’d get them back.

As Tam loaded BeBe into her car, my cell rang. It was Kevin. Reluctantly I answered.

“Hypothetically,” he said.

“What’s with you and hypotheticals?”

“Bear with me.”

Tam waved and drove away, BeBe hanging her head out the passenger window.

“I’m bearing.”

“Hypothetically, if there were a search warrant to be served at Growl tonight, is there any possibility the missing accounting books might be found?”

“Hypothetically?”

“Of course.”

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I could drop them off there when I dropped Riley off for work. Hide them, maybe, so Bill wouldn’t find them before the police did.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe yes or maybe no?”

“Hypothetically,” I asked, “if my prints are found on the books, am I going to be charged with anything?”

He groaned.

“Or Tam’s prints?”

“You brought Tam into this?”

“I can wipe the books clean . . .”

“No! Don’t do that. I’ll deal with the fallout of the prints.

Just be sure the books are there before eight tonight.”

“A search, huh? Are you looking for anything else?”

“Good-bye, Nina.”

I flipped my phone closed, noticed I had a message waiting.

“Hey. It’s Bobby. I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon. I was hoping we could meet up tomorrow night . . . to talk.

’Bye.”

I clipped my phone to my pocket and caught my reflection in the window of my truck.