Playing Dead in Dixie Page 9

  But it could also be a sign of fraud.

  She held out the keys to Bonnie and glanced down at her black slacks and burgundy blouse. "Should we stop by the house and change clothes?"

  Bonnie took the keys. "What you're wearing is fine for the place I have in mind. It's a little place near the river called Lulabelle's. The food is wonderful but the atmosphere is casual. You ever had soft-shelled crab?" She waited for Carly to catch up and turned off the lights in the office.

  "I love soft-shelled crab!" Carly followed Bonnie out of the office, sparing a glance back at the file cabinet to make sure she'd shut it completely. It was hard to see in the dark, but she thought she'd managed to close the drawer completely.

  She hoped so, anyway. She couldn't know for sure whether someone was defrauding the hardware store without spending more time looking through the books.

  And she wouldn't get that chance if she did anything to make the Stricklands, or their hawk-eyed nephew, any more suspicious.

  "Hey there, Miss Sherry." The sound of Neely Boyd's voice carried from the bullpen into Wes's office, giving him just enough time to minimize the search window of the National Crime Information Center database before Sherry Clayton floated into the office on a cloud of Chanel No. 5.

  "I need to talk to you about something, Wes. D'you have a minute?" Sherry didn't wait for an affirmative, settling herself prettily in the chair across from Wes's desk.

  He swallowed a sigh. "What can I do for you?"

  "I've come across a dilemma, and I was hoping you could help me figure out how to proceed." Sherry's voice lowered to a half-whisper. "I don't actually have any proof . . ."

  "Proof of what?" Wes tried to keep the impatience from his voice. It wasn't like Sherry Clayton was the only person in Bangor who liked to take her own sweet time telling a story, but Wes had other things to do.

  Like figure out who Carly Devlin really was.

  "I was supposed to close up the hardware store last night, but I had to take Mama to the doctor."

  "Yeah, I was there when Floyd asked Carly to close up for him last night."

  "That's what I heard." Sherry shook her head, her rosebud-pink lips pressed together and her brow furrowed. "I don't like to accuse—I mean, I can't say it was necessarily her . . ."

  Wes's gut tightened with apprehension. "What happened?"

  "I think someone went through the books last night."

  Tension coiled at the base of Wes's spine. Carly had mentioned that Floyd had turned down her offer to take a look at the books.

  Had she done it anyway?

  "How could you tell?" he asked.

  "I noticed that one of the file cabinet drawers wasn't completely closed when I got into the office this morning. I checked inside the drawer and found this." Sherry handed Wes a piece of notepaper. "This was stuck between a couple of ledger books."

  Wes took the paper. It was a standard piece of notepaper, cream-colored, with "Strickland Hardware" printed at the top. "What makes you think this means anything?"

  "It was sticking up, like a marker."

  Wes frowned. "I still don't see why that's alarming."

  "It means someone marked that place in the books. She must have taken one or more of the ledger books out and marked her place so she'd know where to put them back."

  Wes still wasn't convinced, even though he had his own suspicions about Carly. "What did Floyd say when you told him?"

  Sherry was quiet a moment.

  "You did tell him?"

  Sherry made a face. "He thinks she can do no wrong. He wouldn't believe me."

  Wes almost laughed at the sulky tone of her voice. Poor little Sherry Sheffield Clayton. So used to being the prettiest girl in town for all these years, wrapping men around her finger whenever she liked. But time didn't stop. At thirty-five, Sherry wasn't head cheerleader and homecoming queen anymore. Just like he wasn't Bangor High's star quarterback anymore.

  Things changed, whether you wanted them to or not.

  "Okay, let's say she was looking at the books." Wes still didn't think Sherry's accusation was supported by facts, but he also knew Carly well enough by now to know that if she really wanted to look at the books, she'd figure out a way to do it. "Is there anything particularly wrong with that? Could she mess them up in some way?"

  "I don't know. Maybe." Sherry's forehead accordioned. "She's not supposed to be nosing around in the books, Wes. Why would she even want to?"

  "She has an accounting degree. Maybe she was curious."

  "She has an accounting degree?" Sherry looked at him as if he was insane. "Did she tell you that?"

  "Yes."

  "And you actually believed her?"

  He had believed it, without any evidence at all. She could be a high school drop out for all he really knew about her.

  His stomach coiled in a knot.

  "What do you really know about her? What do any of us know?" Sherry leaned forward. "Or are you as taken in by a pretty face as everybody else?"

  He didn't even want to think about the answer to that question. "Look, Carly locked up last night, which means she had access to probably hundreds of dollars from the cash register. Right?"

  "Yes . . ."

  "Did she take any of it?"

  "I don't think so. Floyd checked over the receipts and the money and didn't see anything strange. No strange gaps in the register receipts."

  "Well, if Carly were really up to no good, don't you think she'd have taken money? What could she gain from looking at the books?"

  Sherry sat back. "I don't know."

  "Were any ledger books missing?"

  "No," she admitted.

  "Then I don't really know what you think I can do."

  "You could talk to Floyd. I don't think he should let her close up anymore."

  Not a bad idea, Wes conceded silently. There was really no need for Carly to be left alone in the store, was there?

  But when he brought the subject up with Floyd later that day as his uncle was closing up, Floyd looked at him as if he was crazy.

  "She did a real good job of closing up. She matched up all the receipts perfectly, even made a note for me that she'd had to add in six cents from the penny jar to make up a cash discrepancy." Floyd zipped the bank pouch and laid it on the desk in front of him. "She does it a heck of a lot better than Josh Scarborough. He never writes down when he dips into the jar, and half the time when I check the receipts in the morning, he's two or three dollars off."

  "Sherry seems to think Carly was nosing around in here."

  "Well, she couldn't have had a whole lot of time to do much nosin'. Bonnie came to get her right at closing and they went to Savannah for dinner last night."

  Wes told himself the little quiver in his belly most certainly was not relief. He didn't have any sort of stake in whether or not Carly turned out to be trustworthy. None at all.

  Floyd locked his desk drawer and stood up, picking up the bank pouch. "How's J.B. likin' his new floor?"

  "You know J.B." Wes waved off the question, not wanting to tell his uncle that J.B. was already complaining that the new floor was ugly as hell and felt funny under his bare feet.

  Floyd grinned. "That bad?"

  Wes smiled back. "You know J.B."

  "Why don't you come by the house for a minute? If I know Bonnie she's made enough food that you could take some to your daddy. Maybe that'll make him like the floor a little better."

  Wes was tempted, less by the offer of food than by the chance to get Carly alone for a minute to ask her about the ledger books. A least, he told himself that was the reason he wanted to see Carly. "Okay, only for a minute," he agreed.

  Just long enough to find out if Carly really was doing some extra-curricular nosing around in his uncle's store.

  "WELL?" SHANNON BURGESS looked up at Carly, her eyes glowing with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.

  Carly took one more look in the full length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. Shannon had br
ought over the first of the five outfits she was making for Carly, a linen pantsuit in a lovely shade of deep plum. The fitted jacket tucked in to emphasize her waist and flared slightly at the hips to flatter her curves. The pants were flat-fronted and slightly flared at the bottom, making her legs look five miles long.

  She'd bought expensive suits in boutiques in Philadelphia that hadn't looked anywhere near this good. She turned to Shannon and smiled. "I love it. It's amazing."

  Shannon clapped. "Oh, good! I thought it looked fantastic, if I do say so myself, but you never know."

  "It's really beautiful. You did a terrific job, Shannon." Carly modeled for herself in the mirror again, finding new things to like about the outfit, from the perfect cut of the pants to the unusual mother-of pearl buttons on the jacket.

  "I have a blouse and pant set in celery and eggplant almost finished. I can have that to you day after tomorrow, and I should have that cute flare-bottomed skirt ready by Saturday." Shannon stood up, wincing a little as she staggered under the weight of her round belly. "It's the gray tweed; it'll go perfect with your burgundy blouse."

  In the mirror, Carly saw Shannon wince again, putting her hand against the small of her back. She turned around quickly, hurrying to Shannon's side. "Are you okay? You're not going into labor are you?"

  "I don't think so . . ." Shannon sat down on the foot of the bed again. "Just had a back spasm."

  Carly sat next to her, relieved. "Good, because I don't know nothin' about birthin' babies."

  Shannon grinned. "Don't worry, I've done it before. This one's going to be bigger than Jackson was, I'm afraid."

  "How big was Jackson?"

  "Eight pounds, nine ounces."

  "Ouch." Carly made a face. "Are you scared?"

  "Not really scared." Shannon patted her belly. "I'm just hoping everything's okay with her, you know? She and Jackson are all I have left of Jimmy Wayne."

  Her heart squeezing with sympathy, Carly put her arm around Shannon's shoulder. "I'm sure she's going to be perfect."

  Shannon rested her head briefly against Carly's. "Yeah. I know." She pulled away and stood up, dashing away her tears and gracing Carly with a plucky grin. "Let's go show Miss Bonnie your new outfit, how about it?"

  Carly stood up. "Okay, let me get in a runway mindset." She struck a dramatic, sulky model pose. "What do you think?"

  "You're scary good at that."

  "I had a brief addiction to one of those model reality shows. I don't like to talk about it." Carly opened the bedroom door and slinked out into the hallway, sucking in her cheeks for full effect. "Bonnie, ready for a fashion show?"

  Making a sassy half-turn when she reached the kitchen, she turned to gaze moodily over her shoulder.

  And found herself looking into Wes Hollingsworth's dark brown eyes.

  She whirled around quickly, straightening up. Heat washed up her neck. "Hi."

  "Hi." Wes's lazy smile only compounded her sense of foolishness. "Nice suit."

  She patted down the jacket, self-conscious. "Thanks. Tell Shannon, it's her genius. I'm just the mannequin."

  "Hey, Wes." Shannon moved past Carly and sat at the kitchen table across from him. "Where's Bonnie? We wanted to let her see Carly's new suit."

  "She and Floyd took Jackson out to pick some tomatoes. Last batch of the season. She thought J.B. might like to have some. They'll be back in a minute." Wes frowned slightly. "You okay? You're looking a little tired."

  Shannon chuckled and rubbed her stomach. "I've got a cute little parasite suckin' me dry. I just need a good night's sleep and I'll be right as rain." She pushed up from the chair. "I'll go fetch Jackson and head home so I can wrangle him into the tub before he falls to sleep."

  She crossed to Carly and gave her a quick hug. "Thanks for being such a sweetie and holding my hand," she said softly. "I needed that."

  "Any time," Carly assured her, surprised to realize she meant it. She'd never been one to make friends. Growing up the way she did, relationships had a shelf life. Evictions, brushes with the law, brushes with criminals; a hard scrabble life was hell on long-term friendships. Carly had learned young that your best friend one day might have packed up and sneaked out in the night by the next. Better not let people get too close.

  Better not let Shannon get too close, she reminded herself, tears pricking her eyes as she watched the other woman head out the back door in search of her son. In a couple of weeks, Carly would be gone herself. It wasn't really fair to let Shannon think they'd be lifelong friends.

  "Getting pretty cozy with Shannon, aren't you, Jersey? Think that's wise?" The taunting tone of Wes's voice rasped up her spine.

  She turned to glare at him, more than happy to take out her frustrations on him if he was going to be such a pain in the butt. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm family. Being here whenever I want is one of the perks." He made a point of looking her up and down, his dark gaze sending little shudders of helpless awareness from head to toe. "You do look nice in that outfit. Shannon's good at what she does. You have enough money to pay her?"

  Carly crossed her arms. "I should have it by my next paycheck. So you can relax. I won't be needing to borrow any money from you."

  Wes's only response was a slight narrowing of his eyes as he picked up a small folded piece of paper lying on the table in front of him. He began flipping the paper between his fingers, tapping the corner on the table in front of him, his eyes never leaving her.

  Unnerved by the intensity of his gaze, she swallowed hard. "I should probably go take this off."

  Wes's eyes narrowed a little more, and she realized how her words could be taken. Another flush moved up her neck, annoying her almost as much as the amused glitter in Wes's eyes. She wasn't the blushing type, damn it. She'd held her own in some blatantly sexual conversations over the years without embarrassment—another result of growing up the way she had. There weren't any barriers to protect children from the seamy side of life when you grew up in a tenement house in Vineland. The walls were thin, and the adults were loud, especially when they were drunk.

  "Wait and let Bonnie see the outfit." Wes motioned toward the chair across from him at the kitchen table. "Besides, I need to ask you something."

  Warily, Carly crossed and sat at the table. "What?"

  Wes turned to face her, his head cocked slightly to one side. He continued playing with the folded paper, tapping it in a slow, steady rhythm against the scuffed pine table top. "How'd you like closing up the store last night?"

  On the surface, the question was innocent enough. But Carly sensed a dark thread of suspicion underlying the even tone of his voice.

  Did he know what she'd done?

  Mind racing, she tried to think what clue she might have left behind that would tell someone she'd been looking through the ledgers. She'd put the books back, both in the drawer and the file cabinet. She knew she'd put the ledgers back in the right place in the cabinet because she'd put a marker—

  Her gaze flew to his hands. He'd stopped tapping the folded square of paper on the table and was slowly unfolding it.

  She saw the imprint at the top. "Strickland Hardware."

  The piece of notepaper she'd used to mark her place in the files. Her heart plummeted.

  He knew.

  Chapter Seven

  Wes had to hand it to Carly, she had a good poker face. Probably no one else in Bangor would have noticed her quick glance down at the notepaper in his hands or the faint pinkness creeping into her cheeks. He wondered what kind of life she'd led to be able to hide her thoughts with such skill.

  "Closing was fine. I've worked retail before." Carly lifted her gaze to meet his, her voice calm and inflection-free. "Did you guys finish up the floor?"

  "You went through Floyd's books."

  Her face went a shade paler. "Excuse me?"

  "You almost got away with it. But you didn't shut the file cabinet drawer completely." He flicked the piece of paper toward her. "Sherry found this no
tepaper in the ledgers. You used it as a placeholder. Right?"

  For a moment, she looked as if she were going to deny the charge. But her poker face started to show cracks, and she slumped in her chair. Her green eyes flickered down to her hands, then back up to meet his gaze. "I didn't take anything from the office."

  "I didn't think you did." Wes leaned forward. "But that's not the point, is it?"

  Her eyes filled with a sheen of moisture. When she spoke, her voice shook. "I didn't do it to hurt the Stricklands."

  "Then why'd you do it?"

  She dashed away her tears in a quick, angry wipe. "I wanted to know why the store was having trouble. I can't understand why it would. Business is great. When I put the bank pouch in Floyd's desk drawer after checking the money against the register receipts, I found the ledgers in the drawer."

  "You just found them?" he asked, skeptical.

  "Yes." She looked down. "But I was planning to look for them anyway."

  "For Floyd's sake."

  She looked up sharply. "Yes."

  "Did you just 'find' the ones in the file cabinet, too?"

  The sound of the back door opening drew Carly's gaze before she could answer. Bonnie's voice filtered in from the mud room.

  Carly's lower lip began to tremble again.

  Wes touched her hand. "Don't say anything to Floyd yet."

  Carly's eyes met his and she gave a brief nod.

  Wes released her hand just as Floyd and Bonnie came through the door from the mudroom.

  "Oh, Carly, is that the new outfit? Let me see!" Bonnie gestured for her to stand.

  Carly lifted her chin and stood up, plastering on a smile that Wes knew she didn't feel. She modeled the new pantsuit for Bonnie and accepted her compliments and a big bear hug with admirable calm, considering the troubled thoughts he could still see roiling around behind her green eyes.

  "I thought I'd take her to show off her new outfit in town," Wes said, seeing cracks forming in Carly's veneer of calm. She looked at him, her expression mingling surprise and relief. When he held out his hand, she took it, squeezing hard.