It didn’t make sense to me. Why not just go to the police?
That way Bill would be out of the picture for good, and Growl would be all his.
The accounting books slid on the seat. Suddenly I remembered something Lindsey had said.
That Greta had been a bookkeeper when she’d met Russ.
Was she still? For Growl?
That would explain the old-fashioned accounting books, rather than a computer program.
Who to ask? Who to ask?
I could call Bill, but after the heebie-jeebies I’d gotten from him the other day, I didn’t think he’d be too open to any of my questions.
Lindsey? I doubted she knew much of what happened at Growl.
Noreen. She’d know, what with working at Growl and being Greta’s sister and all. I called her house before I realized she was still at the Grabinskys’. I dialed 411 for the number there, but learned it had already been disconnected.
I called her house again, this time leaving a message asking her to call me back when she got in.
As I drove toward the office, I played with what ifs.
What if Greta was Growl’s bookkeeper and had found an accounting error? Would she tell Russ about it? Or use it to her advantage?
197
Maybe blackmailing Bill was her way of getting out from under his control. A way to get what she wanted without having to deal with Russ at all.
In each case of blackmail, both Bill’s and Dale’s, Greta was the person getting something out of the deal.
And what if she knew having a backyard makeover would send Russ into cardiac arrest? Had that just been icing?
It was a lot of supposition and speculation and not enough facts. And it left wide open the biggest question of all.
What happened to Greta?
I turned a corner too fast, and the accounting books slid my way. I caught them before they went over the edge of the seat.
One of the books opened, and as I stopped at a red light, I scanned the numbers and columns, all of it jibberish to me.
My inner voice nagged that I should hand them over to the police. They might be evidence.
Might.
There was one way to know for sure.
Tam.
She’d done my accounting before business skyrocketed and I’d hired out. She’d probably be able to decipher the books, let me know if there was anything hinky in them.
I called her immediately.
She didn’t bother with niceties. “It’s on the news. The death of Greta Grabinsky. They mentioned TBS.”
I groaned.
“Maybe you’re jinxed. Just like your neighbor.”
Oh my God. She was right. I was jinxed like Mr. Cabrera.
People kept dying around me, left and right.
“Maybe you need to move. Get away from him.”
And leave Aunt Chi-Chi’s house? The Mill? I couldn’t. I loved it there.
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Heather Webber
“It’s all a coincidence, that’s all.”
Oh no. I’d gone and broken a commandment.
“Jinxed.”
“Tam!”
“Oh, all right. It’s a coincidence,” she said, clearly not believing it.
Time to change the subject, before Tam had a real estate agent at my door and my house on the market. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m bored to death,” she said. “I’m missing TBS. Someone is keeping your desk orderly and stocking the fridge,
