damn company’s estimated worth is five hundred million.”
Russ raised his eyebrows. “And here I was, thinking you were just a pretty face.”
“I read more’n
“I’m agreeing with you. A million’s small potatoes for him.” He folded his hands. “It’s a hell of a lot for a lieutenant colonel, though.”
“Seelye?”
“The way things played out doesn’t make a lot of sense if she went in there asking questions like we would, right?”
Lyle made a noise of cautious assent.
“What if she never mentioned Wyler McNabb because she had already suborned him? Or because they were already accomplices? She was in Iraq. She told me so herself.”
Lyle sat for a moment, his woolly eyebrows drawn down in thought. “That’s a mighty thin thread to hang her on.”
“What if I told you she left town yesterday? The same day Wyler McNabb did?”
“I’d say it’s likely her investigation petered out here and she went after the next lead. We’re talking cash, stolen overseas by a bookkeeper. It’s probably sitting in an account in the Cayman Islands right now.”
“Which is one of the reasons Seelye wanted to search McNabb’s house so bad. We were just looking for evidence pointing to suicide. She’s a financial crimes specialist. If there’s anything to lead her to an offshore bank or some other money-laundering operation, she’s going to find it at Tally’s house. Or at her place of employment. Or at her family’s or friends’ houses.” He reached for the phone. “Hang on. I want to check something out.” He dialed the courthouse.
“H’lo Washington County Courthouse Lila Greuling speaking may I help you please.”
“Lila, it’s Russ Van Alstyne.” When he had worked for her dad back in high school, he’d always let talkative little Lila follow him around, “helping.” His patience with an eight-year-old paid off when she became a clerk of the court.
“Well, hel-lo, handsome. What can I do you for?”
“I’m looking to find out if Judge Ryswick issued a residence-and-accounts warrant on Wyler McNabb, 16 Musket Way, Millers Kill.”
“Not through me, he didn’t. When would this have been?”
“Sometime in the past week. The investigating officer was an army MP, but it might have come through the DA or the Feds.”
“Lemme check with the other girls.” The line went to music. She was back in less than a minute. “Last thing fitting that description came out of your own department on the thirteenth. Deputy Chief MacAuley got a warrant against Mary McNabb’s Allbanc accounts.”
“Okay. Thanks much, Lila.” He hung up. “Seelye never searched the house.”
“Legally,” Lyle said.
“Or the accounts. A suspect has money hidden away. What’s the first thing you do?”
“Search all the accounts I can find.” Lyle rubbed his lips. “Damn, I wish I’da spread the net wider when we asked Ryswick for that first warrant.”
Russ shook his head. “Not your fault. We didn’t know McNabb had stolen the money at that point.”
“We’ll never get another warrant out of him. The case is in Seelye’s jurisdiction, not ours.” Lyle straightened in his chair. “Wait a minute. If she’s looking for the money for herself, how come she didn’t go ahead and search those accounts?”
“Maybe she already found out where it’s hidden. She might have talked to McNabb. Or like you said, she could’ve searched his place illegally.”
“Or she might have been behind the B and E at Tally McNabb’s mom’s place.”
“Maybe. If she’s dirty, everything’s up for grabs.”
“Your fingers are twitching.”
Russ looked down to where his hands were resting atop paperwork. “Yeah?”
“You do that when you’re trying to figure something out.”
Russ sighed. “Yeah.”
“Army property. Stolen in Iraq. No way it’s our case.” Lyle buffed his nails against his pants. “Officially.”
“It’s definitely not our case.”
“So there’s no call for us to do any investigating.” Lyle looked up at him again. “Officially.”
“Nope.”
“It sure is interesting, though.” Lyle grinned at him.
Russ found himself grinning back at his deputy chief. “It sure is that.”
Russ picked up and put down the telephone three times after Lyle left. He had been an MP for a long time, but he was a civilian cop now, and he knew the kind of runaround he would get if he tried to trace Colonel Seelye through the usual channels. If he was going to ignore his good sense and pursue this, he had to figure a different way in, but it was getting late, and his brain kept stalling out. The mental snapshot of Clare in his truck had become a motion picture, complete with interesting sound effects. He’d have thought after all those years of holding himself in check, he’d be able to do without for a few lousy weeks, but Jesus, he was going cross-eyed from wanting her.
The hell with it. He shelved the problem of the out-of-his-jurisdiction theft in favor of loading the pickup with quilts and driving over to Clare’s place.
Unfortunately, when he got home he discovered a dead furnace, a rapidly cooling house, and a mother who had been waiting for him to play handyman.
“I’m sorry, Russell, but you know the repairman charges sixty dollars just to come out, let alone the cost of fixing up the old beast.” His mom fussed around him as he disassembled the pilot light, looking for the problem. “You didn’t have any plans, did you?”
“No, Mom, it’s fine.” He managed a quick call to Clare between flushing out the draw line and his trip to Tim’s Hardware for new spark plugs. She commiserated with his oil-stained, thwarted lust, told him he was a good son, and then hammered the nail in his coffin when she said she was headed out the door to the Foyers’ dinner, and no, she didn’t expect to be home before ten or eleven.
As a result, he went to bed as frustrated physically as he had been mentally, and he woke up like a man who had been bitten by bedbugs, his involuntary abstinence transformed into an itch to find out the truth about Arlene Seelye.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14
It was an itch he didn’t have a chance to scratch until after he had given the morning briefing and taken an A.M. patrol. He got back to the station at lunchtime, shut the door to his office, and tossed his lunch bag onto his desk.
He needed a favor. Who did he know who could help him? He had been out of the army for a decade now, an eternity in an organization where twenty years meant a career and the unwritten law was up or out-rise in the ranks or leave. He flipped through his ancient Rolodex, passing on one name and discarding another until he came to the card for Major Anthony Usher.
Tony Usher had been a raw WO1 when Russ took him under his wing during the brief, intense days of Desert Storm. Impressed by Usher’s combination of careful attention to detail and sheer smarts, he boosted him into the ranks of the CID. After several years of solid investigative work, Usher decided his true calling was on the other side of the aisle. He applied for and was accepted to OCS and from there went on to law school. He’d been with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps for three years now, and if he didn’t know everyone involved in army law
