Chapter Thirteen
Does Muriel think it’s odd that Anders and I immediately escort her—after dark—to retrieve her backpack?
While we’re on lockdown? She doesn’t seem to.
She’s broken one of our few laws, and she seems to think it’s perfectly reasonable that we want to get her things, giving her no excuse to go back alone for them.
What I really want to do is make sure she’s telling the truth about this “forest bathing” spot. And I can’t wait until morning and run the risk she’ll sneak out and seed it with a backpack.
She leads us straight to the spot. It’s maybe a half kilometer from town, a small clearing with a log and a backpack shoved inside that log. The backpack contains a novel and knitting supplies.
“No food,” she says. “I know that would attract animals. And when I eat my breakfast here, I bring everything back with me.”
I glance at Anders, who’s prowling about. His shrug says he sees nothing to contradict her story.
“I really am sorry,” Muriel says as I shine my flashlight beam around the clearing. “I knew it was against the rules. I just needed the time away, and I was embarrassed to admit it.”
“We’ll work something out.” I look her way. “Also, for the lockdown, we need to make some changes to your shift. We can discuss that on the walk back.”
“Am I in trouble?”
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?”
“Long couple of 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 salary she 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-jerk reaction 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…”
“They threw her to the wolves. She met a guy, and he must have convinced her to steal from them and then he double-crossed her.”
“Yes. She was painted as a lonely spinster, rather than a savvy business executive. When the police didn’t press charges, she became the lonely spinster who got catfished.
She thought the trouble would end when the police cleared her name.
It did not. She had still lost charitable donations, money that should have gone to helping the less fortunate, and so some people believed she deserved to be punished. ”
“You said death threats?” I say.
“People thought she should be punished by dying?” Dalton says. “What the hell kind of bullshit is that?”
“The bullshit of very angry people who need something to be angry about. Most of them seemed like idle threats, but one person in particular became obsessive. When Muriel went looking for help, I found her.”
I consider this, and then say, “If she was followed here by her stalker, she’d speak up. She’s a former finance officer, not a seasoned spy who could murder two people and bury the bodies.”
“What about the guy who conned her?” Dalton says. “Any chance it was Blake?”
I describe the dead man to émilie. Then I hold while she pulls up her information.
“No,” she says. “I have a photo here of him, and he’s standing beside Muriel. He’s maybe five foot six.”
“Okay, well, height’s one thing he couldn’t fake,” I say. “Her ex isn’t our dead guy, then. Blake and Gretchen could be working for him, though I’m not sure why he’d come after Muriel. He wasn’t caught, right? It’s not a matter of stopping her from testifying.”
“It’s not. He escaped justice, and I agree that there’s no valid reason for him to send anyone to find her.
Now, if he came himself, begging forgiveness, and she killed him in a rage, I could understand that.
However, all of these scenarios presume someone bypasses all our procedures and finds one of our residents.
That only happened a couple of times in Rockton.
Once decades ago, and once with that US marshal a few years back.
Haven’s Rock is even more airtight. I’ll never say never, but I cannot imagine anyone following a resident there. ”
“So we’re back to the spy theory. Any chance Muriel isn’t Muriel?”
A short, humorless laugh. “That hole has been plugged. I have the newspaper photos here, and you have her photo on file, which you confirmed was the woman who arrived.”
“Plus DNA,” Dalton murmurs.
“Yes. We now take DNA at the initial meeting and test it against the person who shows up. It was a match. You have the correct woman.”
I think it through, poking at possibilities. “Okay, one more. You said she went looking for help, right? If the Rockton council wanted to spy on us, could they find an actual potential case and set it up from that angle?”
Dalton nods. “Present us with a legitimate resident … whom they’ve bought as a spy.”