Free The Trouble With Murder by Catherine Nelson Page B

lifestyle.”
    “Twenty thousand? Are you kidding?
Let me hit the highlights for you. The last year I was in Denver, I made a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which you already know. Twenty grand is a
drop in the bucket when you’re pulling down almost eight times that. So, if my
end goal were to go back to that lifestyle, and I chose theft as my means of
doing so, twenty grand wouldn’t make a dent. More importantly, I have
absolutely no interest in going back to that lifestyle. Mark White begged me to
take Barry Paige’s job. The salary he offered me would have been a hell of a
lot more than twenty grand, but I turned him down.” I reached for my glass.
“Have any more theories?”
    “From what I hear, you don’t think
much of Mr. Paige. Maybe stealing the money was your way of flipping him the
bird. Or maybe you have some kind of problem with Mr. White.”
    “It’s no secret I think Paige is a
waste of space and a tool to boot. But this money was stolen from White Real
Estate, not Paige, and I have no problems with Mark White or the company.
Furthermore, embezzling from White Real Estate would have played right into Paige’s
hands because he’s been looking for a reason to fire me since we met. I
wouldn’t make it so easy for him. And, if I were truly guilty, I never would
have left my fingerprints, so to speak, all over everything. Whoever is
responsible drew big, red arrows pointing right to me. Why would I do that to
myself? Why would I not even try to cover my tracks?”
    “Embezzling money can be tricky. Or
maybe you never believed you’d be discovered and didn’t bother to be sneaky.”
    I snorted. “That’s the mark of a
novice. Anyone with a criminal history is thinking one thing when they break
the law: don’t get caught. The only way I would have stolen that money would
have been if I was positive it wouldn’t lead back to me.”
    “But you didn’t steal it?”
    “No. I’ve learned a few things so
far in life. One of them is you have to earn your way. Stealing is not earning.”
    It was a hard-learned lesson, but
it’d finally sunk in.
    Hensley was scribbling notes, and I
thought I could almost see the wheels turning. With anyone else that would be a
relief, but with cops it always gives me a sense of unease. Their minds are
trained to pick apart everything, turn everything around, suspect everyone. I
don’t like when I’m the suspect.
    “So you have a moral problem with
stealing?”
    “All I’m saying is I have principles.”
I sighed. “You said you looked at my financials. Did you find twenty thousand
dollars?”
    Of course not.
    “Yes,” Hensley said.
    I felt the bottom fall out of my
world. The blood drained from my face, and I gripped the counter as a wave of
dizziness washed over me. I prayed I’d misheard.
    “Excuse me?”
    “I did check your bank accounts.
There are deposits totaling twenty thousand dollars from Wednesday and
Thursday. Fifteen thousand was transferred out to accounts we’ve traced back to
the Cayman Islands. The other five is still in your account.”
    My brain scrambled to keep up.
    “No, that can’t be right,” I said.
    “Did you make the deposits into the
wrong account? Like you said, you would have intended them never to be
discovered.”
    “No, I didn’t make any deposits.
Oh, shit,” I said as realization struck. “You seriously think I did this.”
    “Yes, I do. So far, everything I
dig up points straight to you.”
    I suddenly felt sick.
    “But what about the books?” I asked,
grasping at straws now. “Won’t you go over the accounting records? There is no
way twenty thousand dollars was stolen from the company in two days. That’s too
obvious. More likely, it was siphoned off in small amounts over a period of
time. If the records show that to be true, can’t you trace where that money
went, find who really stole it?”
    “We’re looking at the books now. Is
that what you did: siphoned the money off slowly, in small