Free Killer View by Ridley Pearson Page A

if he can’t eat gluten?”
    “Just because he doesn’t eat it doesn’t mean he doesn’t serve it.” But she’d raised his curiosity. He bent down and retrieved the loaf from the drawer. “And it’s moldy, to boot. Probably forgot he even had it.”
    He balanced and bounced the loaf in his hand a couple of times, weighing it. Unusually heavy. “I want a record of this,” he said as he placed the loaf on the cutting board. He didn’t like that he had missed this; liked it even less that she had pointed it out to him. But there was no changing that now; and he wasn’t going to ignore it simply because she had brought it to his attention, though the thought crossed his mind.
    “Pictures of you opening a loaf of bread? Seriously?”
    “Just shoot it, please.”
    She ran off a series of shots, as Walt unfastened the plastic clip and opened the wrapper. His gloved hand reached in and pulled out the first few slices.
    The center of the loaf had been hollowed out. A brick of money wrapped in stretch plastic wrap filled the cavity.
    Click, click . Fiona gasped while running off more shots.
    Walt peeled back the stretch wrap, revealing one-hundred-dollar bills. Three inches high.
    Walt whistled. “There’s got to be thirty or forty thousand dollars here.”
    “Good Lord,” she said. “I’ve never seen that much cash.”
    “His own little in-joke. Bread? Dough? And that’s where he hid it.”
    “Poaching?”
    “It’s got to be dirty,” Walt said. “But he’s a doctor, don’t forget. It could be poaching. It could be drugs. Abortions. Blackmail, I suppose.”
    “And we’ll never know,” she said.
    “What are you talking about?” Walt said irritably. “Of course we’ll know! It’s my job to know. To find out. Don’t say things like that, you’ll jinx it.”
    “You? Superstitious?”
    “Careful, is how I think of it. The weirdest things can squirrel an investigation. Never speak ill of the dead, and never, ever claim you’ve got a suspect until the court case is over and he’s behind bars.”
    “Sage advice for a freshman deputy?”
    “Just take the pictures, Watson , would you please?”
    Walt began counting the money.

13
    WALT LOVED TECHNOLOGY. HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND IT HALF the time, but the beauty of good technology was that he didn’t have to understand it. Just use it.
    His patrolmen were currently taking advantage of a quiet evening by updating the score of Monday Night Football over the police band radio, mistakenly thinking their boss off air, otherwise, they wouldn’t have dared do it. In fact, Walt was a Seahawks fan, so, on the ride home, he listened in guilty pleasure.
    Lisa had been kind enough to stay with the girls while Walt had dropped Fiona back at her car. He’d then spent thirty minutes talking to employees at Mark and Randy Aker’s veterinarian practice.
    Jillian Davis was Mark’s head nurse and sometime bookkeeper. She led Walt into the “family room,” where, for an additional fee, boarding pets were treated to a “home environment” that included two couches, some throw rugs, and a television running all the time. The room’s popularity with customers spoke to the excesses of Sun Valley. Mark had turned wealthy guilt into a profit center for his boarding clinic.
    Jillian worked to keep her composure. A sturdy woman in her early forties, with kind eyes and a severe brow, she wore blue scrubs with a pilled cardigan sweater. He’d caught her at the end of what had to have been a long, difficult day. He cautioned her that, for both their sakes, he was going to speak directly, warning her that anything discussed must not leave the room. She agreed, then turned up the television to cover their voices.
    “I have circumstantial evidence that Randy was involved in poaching,” he said. “High-stakes stuff. Probably mountain goat, cougar, and bear. Any talk around here to that effect?”
    She nodded reluctantly. “Only that: talk. It came up when our inventory was