AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rhea’s hands gestured an arc around her. “Generally speaking, everyone. Even our janitor has submitted reimbursement requests for cleaning supplies, and all our disbursements are processed the same way.”
“And,” Jo said, “everyone knows Janelle is new to the job?”
Rhea nodded. “You see how small we are. It’s impossible for everyone tonotknow when we have a change in staff.”
Jo gestured toward the paperwork. “If you had to guess, who do you think is responsible for this?”
Rhea stiffened. “I don’t like to speculate about things like that. Reputations are hard to repair once they’re damaged.”
Jo leaned forward. “I sympathize with that position. But we need to know who’s responsible for this, and so do you.”
Rhea shook her head at the ceiling. “I honestly can’t see any of our employees doing this. But by process of elimination… Janelle seemed genuinely horrified about the error, and if Naomie were responsible, she wouldn’t have ended up dead. To my mind, that leaves Sandra. But I’ve only ever known her to be a kind, honorable person.”
“Sandra’s the one who brought the problem to Naomie,” Jo said.
“You insisted I pick someone. Maybe Sandra realized she was going to get caught and brought the issue to Naomie to make herself look innocent. I wouldn’t have believed that yesterday, but I also wouldn’t have believed someone was embezzling under my nose.”
Jo braced herself for the response to her next question. “We need to know where everyone was after five-twenty last night.”
Rhea looked affronted, but kept the reaction under control. “I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday at three-thirty. I came back here after to finish the work that still needed to be done. I believe I got back around five-forty-five, and worked until about seven. There should be security footage of me coming and going.”
“Was anyone else here in the building with you?”
“Sandra left shortly after I arrived. She should be able to confirm.”
Jo stood up, Arnett right behind, and handed Rhea her card. “Thank you very much for your help. If you think of anything else, please let us know.”
Once closed back into the conference room, Jo turned to Arnett. “At an operation this small, any admin responsible for reimbursements would be able to remember what monies they’d paid out without checking—at the very least, it would be a huge risk to assume theywouldn’tremember. My guess is someone took advantage of Janelle’s new-hire status to perpetrate whatever this scheme is.”
“My money’s on Rhea. She’d have trained Janelle, and it’s easy enough to ‘forget’ to tell her to double-check the log,” Arnett said.
“That would explain the preemptive show of anger,” Jo agreed. “But we’ll need to hope for some physical evidence.”
They continued on with the rest of the interviews. Everybody had alibis for the time after five-thirty, and nobody could remember seeing anything suspicious.
Arnett checked his watch with a sigh. “If we hurry, we can go grab something to eat before the memorial service.”
“I’m starving. And a quick trip to Sal’s will give us a chance to be gone and off everyone’s mind as they head into the memorial. Then we can slip back in and see what we see.”
On their way to Sal’s, a call from Lieutenant Hayes rang through on Jo’s phone.
“Two pregnant women,” Hayes stated without preamble. “Why is the first I’m hearing about this an ass-chewing from DA Barbieri?”
“We weren’t certain until late last night,” Jo said.
“You should have woken me.”
Jo shot a look at Arnett, who rolled his eyes. If a detective woke her every time an ugly homicide came in after dark, Hayes would never sleep. But this wasn’t about consistency or proper procedure, it was about any opportunity to slam Jo.
“I’ll make sure to do that next time,” Jo responded.
“Both the DA and the press are all over me. I need something I can give them that makes us look at least partially competent. Do you have a name for me?”
Jo gave her an abbreviated version of what they knew and how they were addressing it all. “We’re hoping the memorial service will give us some insight.”
“Update me when it’s over.” Hayes hung up.
Jo shook her head as Arnett parked and they made their way into the restaurant. Once they’d put in the order for their medium Sal’s special, they compared notes on the day’s interviews and checked in with the other officers and detectives helping with canvassing and the tip line.
