Murder in the Marigolds by Dale Mayer (best young adult book series .txt) 📕

leaned forward to study the screen. “I mean, look at that landscaping billing.” She shrugged. “How complicated could that be?”

“Yeah,” he said, “and that’s four years ago. Did you have anything major done on the house?”

She shook her head. “No, we haven’t done anything major to the house in a long time.”

“Well, here it says that he spent $175,000 in landscaping.”

She looked at him in shock. “That much?”

He nodded. “For just one year. If nothing else, this looks like tax stuff.”

“I don’t know how many properties he has, so, if it is the combined total of his landscaping bills, that might make more sense.”

“Right, another good point,” he said. “I think I need to get somebody who knows what they’re talking about to look at these.”

“Okay, well, let’s take a look at the other thumb drives.” The next one had similar accounts, although an awful lot more of them was here. And it went back for a few years. One of the files he opened up because it was labeled BM.

“Why would you open anything that says BM,” she said, shaking her head at him. “To me, that would be like the last thing I’d want to open up.”

“Because, instead of what you were thinking,” he said, “my mind immediately went to blackmail.”

She gasped. “You don’t think he was blackmailing people, do you?”

“Blackmailing or being blackmailed. People in power are often involved.”

“That’s just wrong,” she said in shock. “If they got the money honestly, they should be allowed to keep it.”

He burst out laughing. “Oh, I agree with you,” he said, still chuckling, as he leaned forward to look at the listings. “It doesn’t mean that is the way of it.” And then he stopped and frowned. “What was the name of your lawyer’s ex-husband?”

“James, I think. Why?”

“Because he is listed here.”

“Oh, interesting. Why would that be?” She studied the screen again. “It doesn’t really say anything, does it?”

“No, it sure doesn’t. But we have regular payments here of five thousand a month.”

“But five thousand to my ex is nothing,” she cried out. “To me, it’s the world, but, to him, it’s not.”

“But five thousand a month for every month for”—and he scrolled back—“a lot of years adds up.”

“I can’t see him getting involved with her, if he knew that she was involved with somebody that he was blackmailing,” Doreen said.

“Or being blackmailed by,” Mack said. “I can’t tell from this if it’s money in or money out.”

“Some code is being used,” Doreen noted. “I wonder if that’s why they had the falling out. Maybe the lawyer found out about it.”

“Or maybe James found out about Robin’s part in something else,” Mack suggested, “because why would Mathew be paying James? For that matter, why would James be paying Mathew?”

“Well, the reason that comes to my mind, off the top of my head,” she said, “would be the murder of his parents.”

Mack groaned, sat back, and looked at her. “You’re a pain sometimes. You know that?”

She beamed. “Thank you.” She hopped up and poured herself another cup of coffee; as she walked back, he held out his cup.

She moaned. “You do know that I’d have coffee to drink every day, if you didn’t keep stealing it all.”

“Are you that short?” he asked, looking at her under furrowed brows.

She shrugged. “No, not really. It’s just something to bug you about.”

He chuckled. “Well, you better find another topic then,” he said, “because I won’t give up on my coffee any more than you are.”

“Right,” she muttered. “I’m definitely not giving up on my coffee.”

“Exactly.” He flicked through more and more accounts. “I am not sure what’s going on here,” he said, “but this is fairly in-depth.” He went back to the BM file, taking pictures of her screen.

She waited until he was done and then asked, “What about the other two?”

“I’m getting there.” And he opened up the next one, which was full of accounts too, and then the last one was photos. He whistled at that. “Well, this explains a lot.”

“What does it explain?”

“He was blackmailing others.” She looked at Mack in surprise; he pointed out various people in the photos. “All of them were engaged in something that looked very shady.”

“Interesting,” she muttered. “Well, that would be why he was always hiring the private investigators. I never could understand what his involvement was.”

“What investigators?”

“He told me that he kept a team of them on staff, just in case.”

“Nobody keeps a team of investigators on staff, unless you’re actively investigating,” he said, staring at her.

“Remember that part about I didn’t have anything to do with his business?”

“Of course,” he said, “unless you knew that you couldn’t be arrested to testify against him.”

“I’ve got nothing to say,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I really don’t know anything.”

“And that was a safe way to keep it,” he said, with the nod. “The less you knew, the less you could talk.”

“And now he’s what? Decided that I’m disposable?”

“I think you were always disposable, my dear,” he said. “The issue has only come up now that the lawyer was murdered. And that brings us back to whether Mathew did it or not.”

“So, in that case, I really need to go out for dinner with him.”

“You really don’t,” he muttered, staring at her. “It’s even more important now that you have nothing to do with him.”

“Yet that’s not possible,” she said quietly. “And it also isn’t very smart to not utilize something there to be utilized.”

He stared at her, not comprehending. He shook his head. “And that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I want to keep you safe, not have you attacked by this guy. He is still looking for something.”

“Why don’t we set a trap?”

“What kind of a trap?”

“I’ll mention that there’s still a bunch of stuff I haven’t even gone through and how I found some USB keys that might be his. I mean, in the spirit of being a nice wife and maybe getting back together again, of course.”

“And what? Leave yourself wide