others. Only Ida and Art seemed unaffected by Sarkisian’s presence. Peggy kept peeking at him and looking away, her shoulders hunched. Even Sue Hinkel looked uncomfortable, which surprised me. Tension was catching.
I rose, dusted off my jeans, and started for the door. “Oh.” I unhooked my keys from where they hung on my purse strap. “Here.” I tossed them to Gerda. “Take That Damned Bird home for lunch. Roast her,” I added as I strode out the door in Sarkisian’s wake.
“Still at war with the turkey?” he asked, all sympathy.
“I suppose I could get used to it, if it would nest somewhere else,” I sighed. “What are we looking for, now?”
“Those inventory sheets. Got to find out if there’s anything screwy about them.”
I groaned. “How far back do we have to check?”
“No idea.” He led me to the Honda, which he’d left on the street. Double parked.
When he started the car, a tape started playing, and we drove to the Still to the accompaniment of the
We parked in the main lot, where only Adam’s pickup stood near the door. Apparently a quiet day at the Still. From the backseat Sarkisian produced a heavy-looking briefcase, a bakery bag and a thermos, and we ran through the rain for the entrance.
Adam answered the bell almost at once and flung the door wide. “Saw the car,” he explained. “What’s up?”
“We need to check a few things we didn’t take away with us.”
Adam shook his head. “What, the bare walls? I thought you cleared every piece of paper out of here.”
“That,” sighed Sarkisian, “would have taken more cars than the sheriff’s office possesses.”
Adam accompanied us to the financial office and unlocked the door. Sarkisian laid out the contents of the bag- chocolate chip cookies and quite a few of them at that-and Adam started the office’s coffeepot. While it brewed, he perched on the edge of the table and munched our snack.
Sarkisian shoved the briefcase under the table, then opened the first filing cabinet. After running a finger along labels, he shut it and went to the next drawer.
“Can I help?” Adam asked.
Sarkisian shook his head. “This is more along the line of eliminating possibilities rather than finding something. Grunt work.”
Obligingly, I grunted.
“Ah.” He pulled out a folder. “Here’s where we start, I guess.”
Adam shook his head. “Better you than me.” He took another cookie, poured a cup of black coffee, and headed toward the door. “Got to do the rounds, though God knows why. Might have been of some use if I’d been here with Dave yesterday.”
“Don’t take blame that isn’t yours.” Owen Sarkisian called the sage advice after him.
“Yeah. We all have enough of our own, I guess.” Adam waved with the hand that held the cookie, then drew the door closed behind him with his boot.
Sarkisian set the folder he’d pulled on the table, then took the chair next to mine. “Production records for January,” he said. “I want to know the volume distilled and the number of bottles filled. And yes, I know that rhymed, so don’t make any nasty cracks.”
“Want to start on the apricot brandy?” The stuff in which Dave had drowned… Well, that seemed appropriate. I sifted through pages, checking dates and notes and figures. At last, I shook my head. “I don’t know anything about distilling. You picked the wrong helper.”
He nodded, glum. He’d been doing the same for the cranberry liqueur. He shoved his folder aside and glared at it. “We’ll have to call in an expert and see if they can figure anything out.”
“Hugh Cartwright will throw a fit. He’ll say you’re giving his secrets to the competition.”
“To hell with Hugh Cartwright.”
I hadn’t seen Sarkisian so annoyed before. I carried both folders back to the filing cabinet and replaced them. “Let’s see what’s in your briefcase, then let’s call it quits for the day.”
He dragged it out from under the table and clicked it open. “Those reports that had Hatter’s prints.”
I took a handful. They contained the same sort of information as the ones in the file folder, except these were the hand-written originals, not the printed copies that came out after Peggy entered the data into the computer. I noted the different handwritings, the different entries, the scribbles and corrections, the-
“Sarkisian?” I studied the page I held. “Look at this, will you?”
He leaned over, frowning as he tried to make out the numbers. “Someone changed the final figures.”
I nodded. “Same color, but different pen.”
He shot me a penetrating look, then checked again. “The number of finished bottles went down by…” he peered more closely. “Twelve, it looks like. Hmmm. Not eleven or thirteen. A neat dozen. One case. Interesting.” He turned to another sheet, another product. “My, my. Same thing happened here, too. Twelve bottles fewer than first recorded.”
“I wonder how many bottles could have been produced from the amount of raw materials,” I mused.
Our gazes met, and he began to grin. “A case of each product, do you think? Selling this stuff-it’s pretty damned pricy, I’ve noticed. Selling it on the side could generate quite a tidy little income.”
“If it’s got the official seal intact,” I agreed. “How many different products, do you think?”
We finished checking the papers and found that same discrepancy for seven products. Seven cases. Sarkisian did some fast math on a scratch sheet and whistled. “That comes to over fifteen hundred, tax-free. Every month, do you think?”
I sighed. “Without the handwritten records, we’ve no way of telling, short of checking the raw materials.”
He nodded, but the light of the chase glittered in his eyes. “What do you want to bet Brody noticed something? Like a drop in the number of cases produced?”
“But wouldn’t Peggy…” I began, then broke off.
“Our thief may have begun in a small way, at first,” Sarkisian suggested. He avoided stating the obvious, that Peggy could have made those alterations herself to cover her tracks, that she could have known perfectly well why production dropped. “Just a bottle or two, increasing by one every month or so? That would make it less obvious.”
I nodded, seeing the potential. Peggy paid attention to the daily details. Brody, as the accountant, probably checked figures from year to year. He would have noticed a drop-off in production from February of one year to February of the next. And he might have gotten suspicious. He might even have wanted to be cut in on the scam. And Dave Hatter? Had he been the thief-or had he caught the culprit carrying out the cases or altering the records?
We held the solution to the deaths of Clifford Brody and Dave Hatter in our hands. And I just couldn’t see what it was.
Chapter Eighteen
My work, at least, at the Still seemed finished. Sarkisian would now turn those papers over to someone who knew about distilling and bottling and whatever else went into the whole process, and confirm our suspicions. But no matter how much I turned it over in my mind, I still couldn’t figure out who was responsible.
It could be anyone, not just someone who worked at the Still. If Dave Hatter had made the alterations on the inventory sheets, he could have passed the bottles to a partner to sell. I had only his wife’s assertions about their financial ruin to explain his depression. It might have been Brody’s death that had him in such a state. He might have only pretended to be glad. If Dave panicked over Brody’s murder, his partner might have killed him to keep him quiet. I shuddered. If Dave trusted his murderer, he wouldn’t have put up a fight. He might have let him-or her- close enough. I felt sick.
Sarkisian drove me back to the school, but no cars remained in the parking lot. Everyone had gone home, which I hoped meant they had finished the decorating. The SCOURGEs really have good hearts, and an amazing capacity
