0aeaa1e36e6f2e625b6ba8d48f773062

“I think it was an intruder,” said the other person. “Probably some disgruntled client at the bank. Or maybe one of those botched home invasions. Where they take the banker hostage and he has to accompany them to the bank early in the morning to open the vault. Only he didn’t want to play ball so they killed him.”

“A home invasion while the daughter was asleep upstairs? How do you figure that?”

“She probably was taken hostage along with the dad and saw him get killed and blocked the whole thing out of her memory. It happens!”

“Oh, for crying out loud. You’ve been watching too many movies, Jim.”

“Well, Sheryl, so have you. The daughter killing her own father and making it look like a suicide. That’s so unrealistic.”

But then the guy on the screen miscalculated his next jump and was sent plummeting off the roof. So he hadn’t been the good guy after all. Go figure.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Odelia saw that Cole was exceedingly ill at ease. His leg was jumping, and he was chewing his fingernails.

“So Rose hired you, huh?”

“She didn’t exactly hire me. I’m not a detective, Cole. But she did ask me to look into her father’s death.”

“She thinks he was murdered,” said the kid. He displayed a nervous smile. “Murdered, if you please.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think she’s grieving, and this is all part of the process. Denial,” he added for good measure. “So no, I don’t think he was murdered. I think the guy was in trouble. Big trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Financial trouble, of course. What else. He probably bet on the wrong horse and now his entire business was going down the tubes and when he realized that any day now the cops would come knocking on his door and ask what happened to the money his clients entrusted him with, he decided to bail out.”

“You think his bank was in trouble?”

“Sure. Aren’t banks always going belly up? It’s nothing but a glorified poker game, Miss Poole. They shuffle money around like nobody’s business, and at the end of the day they’re in the hole for billions of dollars and it’s game over.”

“Did you tell Rose about your theory?”

“Sure.” He’d finished chewing all the fingers of his left hand and now started on his right hand. “She got mad. Like, real mad. Said I was an idiot. That her dad was much too clever to get in trouble. That his bank was in great shape, and that he was murdered. Murdered!” He grinned. “She almost convinced me. But from what she told me, the guy swallowed an entire box of pills. That ain’t murder, Miss Poole. That’s finding yourself at the end of your rope and bailing out.”

Odelia nodded.“I understand that Rose’s dad wasn’t entirely happy with your relationship with his daughter?”

“The guy blew his top when she first introduced us. He was nice enough during dinner, though there was this weird silence, you know. This heavy kind of atmosphere—that you can almost cut with a knife? And the moment I left the guy started screaming and shouting. Crazy stuff. Rose called me later that night, crying on the phone. She’d locked herself in her room and said she wanted me to come and get her. Said she was running away from home. That she never wanted to see her dad again—ever.”

“And what did you do?”

“I told her she was nuts. Imagine us running away together. And then what? I’d probably end up in jail for abduction, and she’d be hauled back to her folks, who’d be even madder than before. No way I was gonna pull a crazy stunt like that. But we talked all night, and finally she agreed that if we were going to be together, we needed to do this the proper way. Wait until she graduated, and then find a place and move in together. You know, like regular people. Smart people.”

“That was a very grown-up thing to do,” said Odelia with a smile.

“Her dad got me all wrong, Miss Poole. And I would have told him if I’d been given a chance. As it was, Rose felt I probably shouldn’t drop by the house again until things had cooled off, and so I didn’t. And now he’s gone.” He shrugged. “Bailed out. Like a coward. Taken the easy way out.”

Suddenly an alarm started blaring, and Cole looked up in alarm.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “Looks like we’ve got fire in the hole.”

Chapter 16

“What were you thinking, Dooley?” asked Odelia as we sat in the car on our way home.

“I was thinking that the little girl wanted to push that button and needed help,” said Dooley.

We’d hurriedly left the Seabreeze Music Center after ascertaining that no fire had actually been started, and that Dooley had simply tripped the fire alarm for some reason.

“She was reaching for the little red button,” Dooley went on to explain, looking a little sheepish as he did, “and she looked so sad that she couldn’t reach it, so I decided to give her a paw and do my good deed for the day and make her happy.”

“I don’t believe this,” said Odelia, shaking her head as she steered the car through evening traffic. “Please don’t ever pull a stunt like that again, Dooley.”

“How was I to know that button was connected to the fire alarm?” said my friend.