I shake my head. “Just don’t do it again, please.”
“Tell us when you’re having difficulties,” Anders says. “We’ll come up with a solution, and it’ll all be confidential.”
“Thank you.”
I get back in time to tell Dalton what I found before our call with Émilie. I do that while giving Rory her bedtime feeding. Once she’s down, I come into the living room to find Dalton on the sofa, with his arms out. I drop into them and give an exhausted sigh.
“Long day, huh?”
“Longcoupleof days.” I check my watch.
“We have five minutes. I’ve set a timer.”
I exhale and cuddle against him, basking in every second of those five minutes. Then it’s time to make the call.
After we first met up with Gretchen and Blake, I’d texted Émilie that we had a possible exposure threat… and possible spies. She’d asked me to keep her posted.
I’d messaged her again last night, saying we were following up on complications, but I hadn’t said that the complication was a dead body. Mentioning that we found one of the possible spies being eaten by a grizzly wasn’t something I could pop off in a quick text. She’d have expected all the details immediately, and I’d been too busy for that.
I need to remember that Émilie isn’t our boss. She’d be the first to remind me of that. I’m just so accustomed to having one—on the police force and in Rockton. When I update her now, I’m braced for annoyance that I didn’t tell her sooner. I get none of that. She needed to know about the threat initially, to be ready to take action, but otherwise, this is our town and she’s there as a mentor and a resource only.
When I finish the update, she says only, “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do we. We’re torn between feeling as if we aren’t reacting strongly enough and feeling like we’re already overreacting with the lockdown.”
“Neither. This doesn’t seem like an immediate breach, but it is cause for concern. As you’ve said, there are multiple explanations, and the most likely being that this is spousal homicide. Alarming, but not our problem.”
“I agree. The business with Muriel seemed concerning at first, but she has an explanation and the evidence to support it. Will was there for the interview, and he believes her story.”
“You don’t?”
“I should, logically, and if there’s a whisper of doubt, it makes me feel paranoid. So I need to ask whether there’s anything concerning in her background. Whatever drove her here, could it have brought people after her?”
“I’m going to give you her story, Casey. I know you don’t like that, but we really need to take that step in any situation where you have questions. Otherwise, I’m being asked to assess risk.”
I wince. “Right. Sorry. I shouldn’t put that on you.”
“I understand.” A pause as if she’s pulling up a file. “Muriel worked for a nonprofit. A major one. She was the CFO.”
I say to Dalton, “That’s the executive in charge of finances.”
“Yes,” Émilie says. “She wasn’t bringing in the sort of salaryshe would have received in the private sector, but she was well compensated. She won that position while still in her twenties, and it was her life. After years of not taking a vacation, her family wrangled her onto a girls-only trip—Muriel, her mom, and her two sisters. They went to a fancy resort for a midwinter tropical vacation. There, Muriel met a recent widower, whose wife had died of cancer, very fast, very unexpected. They’d planned this trip together, and she insisted he still take it. So he did.”
“Then he fell for Muriel?”
“It wasn’t like that. He was still far too deep in the grief process, but he needed a friend, and so did she… particularly the long-distance sort who didn’t demand much of her time. Fast-forward two years, and the relationship becomes romantic. Still long-distance, which suits Muriel. Six months later, he’s gone, and so is her money and a half million from her employer.”
“Damn,” I say. “Let me guess. There was no dead wife.”
“There was not. Just a guy playing a very long game, with the patience to reel in a huge fish. Muriel was fired from her job and the police presumed she was in on the theft. She wasn’t. During a visit, her lover had accessed her laptop, captured her keystrokes and got into her banking accounts. There was nothing to suggest she was anything except a victim. No charges were laid. The suit was dropped. She did not, however, recover her job or her life savings.” She pauses. “Or her reputation.”
I frown at Dalton, and then I say, carefully, “That’s a terrible story. Too common, sadly. The scams seem endless, and no matter how savvy a woman is, after knowing the guy for a few years, she’s not going to expect that. But how did it bring her to us?”
“That would be the death threats. From a business perspective, what the nonprofit did was an unacceptable knee-jerkreaction that I suspect originated in the PR department. When the money was stolen, they not only fired her, but they went into full-scale ass-covering by taking their accusation public.”
“Ouch.”
“Muriel had been with them for fifteen years. Exemplary employee. Flawless bookkeeping. Every audit passed with flying colors. She’d even argued for stricter banking controls, so that no one—herself included—could access significant funds without multiple levels of sign-off. That would be standard procedure elsewhere, but management here was lax, and her request for stricter controls had been sitting on the board’s agenda for two years. Yet when something went wrong…”
