I grinned, savoring the moment. “Only ask. But I wish I could have witnesses.”
“For?” He sounded suspicious, and well he should.
“For the next time you ask the world in general if anyone heard you asking me to help with the investigation.”
He grinned. “All right, you win. Please, An…Ms. McKinley, will you help with the investigation?”
My own grin of triumph faded as I turned to regard the pile of ledgers and printouts that sprawled in untidy heaps across the desks and table. I’d had a really long day, what with fighting with pies, before, during and after the event. I was going to have another long day tomorrow. I sighed. “Let me call Gerda to tell her I’ll be a little later than planned.”
I was going to be a whole lot later. We had no idea where, if, or how any discrepancy might have occurred. I determined to prove to Sarkisian that Peggy had to be innocent of any wrong doing, but that required going back to the beginning of the year and checking every entry against every receipt and every invoice. And if we didn’t find anything we’d have to do the same thing for the previous year, and maybe all the many long years she had worked for the Still.
Sarkisian went to get us coffee and returned bearing snacks from the machine and with Adam and Dave trailing after him. The clock read twelve-twenty. I yawned, downed a cup of barely palatable caffeine, sank my teeth into the bliss of pure chocolate, and checked more entries.
“Did you look to see if Brody left any notes in his office?” Adam asked as I finished another page of the daily journal.
“Nothing pertaining to anything amiss, here.” Sarkisian sounded bored. I had set him to work unearthing paid bills and receipts from file folders for me, but the delights of that occupation had worn off for him within a very few minutes. “Why?” he added.
Dave peered over my shoulder. “He’s been here an awful lot, lately,” he said. “Turning up at odd times, wanting me to let him in at night, poring over the books. You know, definitely above and beyond what you’d think was normal duty.”
“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “For about a month, now, wouldn’t you say?”
“Six weeks?” suggested Dave.
Sarkisian picked up a handful of reports from the table, then glanced at the bound journals and ledgers that surrounded me. “The books or some of the rest of this stuff?”
Dave shrugged.
“The books,” Adam said after a moment of thought. “At least, they’re what he was studying whenever I looked in on him.”
I finished my last bite of chocolate. Paper rustled, and Sarkisian handed me a fresh bar. I really could begin to like this man, I decided. I bit into it, savoring that miraculous blend of caffeine and chemical nirvana, and set to work on the next page of entries. Brody’s intense interest implied he suspected Peggy of being up to something. Sarkisian suspected the same thing. I was determined to find some other reason for Brody’s preoccupation with the books.
“Time to quit for the night.” Sarkisian’s hand rested on my shoulder, shaking slightly.
I looked up, bleary-eyed.
“You were nodding off to sleep,” he explained.
I peered at the clock. Either it was ten after midnight, or—
“It’s two in the morning. Come on.” He took my elbow and helped me to my feet. “I’ve already called Adam and Dave.”
The two men appeared a few minutes later, both armed with boxes stacked on handcarts. In a little over half an hour we had carefully packed away every financial record, whether bound or filed, the place boasted. Dave and Adam transported them to the parking lot where they began stacking them into the Jeep.
Sarkisian turned to me. “You be all right?” Then, “Where’s your car?”
“Around back. I came for…” I broke off to yawn. “Decorations,” I finished.
“Tomorrow,” he decided. “Want a lift home?”
I yawned again. “I’ll be fine. Besides, you don’t have room.” I nodded toward his front seat where Dave stacked more of the boxes. I waved at them, then reentered the building, staggered down the stairs and made my way out to my car. And to that damned bird.
At least the rain had let up a little. I climbed in, started the engine and headed up the hill. The Jeep stood near the entrance to the parking lot, waiting. I slowed as I neared it, but Sarkisian stuck out an arm, thereby getting it wet, and waved me ahead. A touch of chivalry? I considered the source and decided that yes, it probably was. He wanted to make sure I got home safely. I accelerated past him, slowed for the turn, eased onto the road and sped up a little along the straight.
The next curve came almost at once. I let up on the gas, felt the bump of twigs and branches beneath my tires, then abruptly my car spun out of control, pivoting around the right front wheel, throwing me against the side window. A screech of panic reverberated around the car, and part of me registered that it was the turkey, not me. Other tires squealed and protested, and the Jeep spun past me, swerving to avoid a collision. It slammed through the frail metal barrier, hovered on the brink for a terrifying moment, then to the horrific racket of snapping branches and metal grinding against stone, it lurched down the gorge.
Chapter Fifteen
I must have blacked out, because the next thing I remembered was a nightmarish jumble of impressions, the worst being that damned bird peering at me, its beak a scant three inches from my face. I may have groaned, I’m not sure, but it scuttled to the other bucket seat and attacked the window. Rain beat down on my head, drenching me, running in rivulets down my face, drumming a violent tattoo on the soft roof of my car—at least, the portion that was still up. Those damned latches, I thought, that damned mechanism…
I became aware of men’s voices yelling in the distance. Then I remembered Sarkisian’s Jeep plunging over the embankment and I was struggling with my seat belt, trying to pull myself free. The buckle felt sticky, and my fingers kept sliding.
“I’m all right,” Sarkisian’s voice, muffled, a bit shaken, reached me.
All right. I stopped my struggles, leaned my head against the headrest and lost consciousness again.
This time when I roused, it was to the sensation of someone gripping one of my hands. I opened my eyes and focused on Sarkisian’s face. “Much better than the beak,” I said.
“I’ve got a beak of my own.” The sheriff touched his aquiline nose. Mud streaked his face, mingled with blood from a number of scratches and cuts. An odd puffiness altered the line of one cheek bone. He’d be covered in bruises in the morning, but he was alive and apparently not badly hurt.
“The Jeep…” I began.
“Stuck in the rocks, only about three feet down. You can see the top of it from here, just behind that tree.”
So it hadn’t gone all the way down, it hadn’t crashed into the rocky river. He hadn’t drowned, or been bashed to death. I closed my eyes again, relieved. Everything felt fuzzy, and I feared I was either going to be sick or pass out again.
“I’ve called a tow truck. What do you think, Annike? Think a tow truck can drag out the Jeep?”
“What?” I tried to look through the trees, but everything seemed blurry.
“Come on, Annike, talk to me. Just say a few words. The ambulance will be here real soon, but I want you to talk to me.”
“Thought you wanted me to keep quiet.”
“Not now. Go ahead and tell me what a rotten sheriff I am.”
“Not,” I mouthed, realized I hadn’t made any sound and tried again. “Just shouldn’t suspect Gerda.”
“That’s right.” He smiled, a not altogether felicitous effort considering the state of his face. He didn’t look like he really meant it, either.
“Sheriff!” Dave Hatter looked in through the passenger window, rain dripping down his yellow slicker hat.
I realized Sarkisian sat in the car, on the front seat where the turkey had squatted last time I looked. I supposed it would be too much to hope that Sarkisian had thrown it out. A rustling of feathers from the backseat answered that thought. Sarkisian and Dave were exchanging a few words, but my mind had drifted, missing them.
The sheriff released my hand which he’d held all this time. “Got to check on something. Be right back. Talk to the turkey.”
“Turkey talk,” I agreed with the affability of the seriously concussed. “Hi, turkey. You need a name.”
Sarkisian threw me a worried look, then climbed out into the downpour. Someone appeared at the driver’s window. “You okay, Annike?”
I looked hazily up into Adam Fairfield’s worried face. He looked unnaturally pale. And very wet.
“God,” he said, “when we heard the crash…”
“I crashed?” The edges of my vision seemed black, as if everything were tunneling.
“Not you,” he assured me. “You spun out, but hit your head on the side window. It was Sarkisian, swerving to avoid hitting you, who slammed into the rocks and bounced over the edge. It was a miracle he didn’t go all the way down into the gulch.” He sounded shaken.
I didn’t blame him. The thought of it left me pretty shaken, too. Sarkisian could have been killed, and all because I’d skidded in the rain.
“Your front left tire blew,” he explained.
I realized I’d said my last thought aloud. “Blew?”
“Ripped apart is a better description. Dave just found bolts and screws scattered across the roadway. It’s a miracle you didn’t go over the edge.”
“Good driving,” I muttered, not that I really believed that. “Or maybe it was that damned bird flapping her wings that kept us up.” I was tired, and talking was too much trouble. I closed my eyes.
The passenger door opened, and Sarkisian slid back onto the seat. The turkey gobbled some protest. “Oh, shut up,” sighed the sheriff, endearing himself to me even more. “That had to be deliberate,” he declared. “That many large sharp objects…”
“If they’d been there when you arrived,” Adam said, “you’d have run over them then. No way you could have missed them, even if the road wasn’t so dark and wet. They’re everywhere.”
“So someone scattered them while we were going over the books.”
A very pregnant silence fell. “Deliberate,” said Dave. “Aimed at the sheriff?”
“I was inside,” I said, not bothering to open my eyes. “Best alibi in the world. Had the sheriff with me almost the whole time.”
“You could have done it on your way here,” Sarkisian pointed out with an attempt—I hoped—at humor.
“Maggie—the lab tech—left after Annike arrived,” Adam stuck in. “So that leaves Annike in the clear.”
“Why would someone do this?” Dave persisted. “Did you find something in all those ledger books?”
“Not yet,” Sarkisian’s voice sounded like steel, of the pointed, sharpened and honed variety.
“But you must be getting too close for someone’s comfort,” mused Adam. “Damn, who knew you were out here with a warrant tonight?”
“Anyone could have figured it out. Especially if they came by to hide evidence or correct the books and saw my car here.”
“You must be coming close to solving Brody’s murder, then.” Dave sounded almost regretful.
“Not Peggy,” I said. “She couldn’t.”
“She’d never do anything that might hurt Annike,” Adam agreed.
“Even if she was desperate?” Dave sounded skeptical, like one who knew the depths to which desperation might drive a person.
“Annike’s car was down at shipping and receiving,” Sarkisian pointed out. “Whoever did this might not have known she was here.”
“Except Gerda,” I stuck in. “I called her, remember?”
Sarkisian let out a deep breath.
“And don’t you go thinking Peggy and Gerda are in on this together, and Gerda killed Brody, and Peggy was trying to cover up by killing you and destroying the records, and…” I stopped, having lost the thread of what I was saying. In the ensuing silence, the rain pounded with renewed vigor, the river roared a few feet below the wedged Jeep, and in the distance a siren sounded. “They’re coming to take me away, ha ha,” I muttered, from the vague memory of an old song.
“The sooner, the better,” agreed Sarkisian.
I shot him a suspicious glance. The song referred to a mental hospital. “What about That Damned Bird?” I asked. The phrase was taking on all the power of a name in my mind. “Think they’ll take her away, too?”
“I’ll do that,” the sheriff assured me. “I’ll take your car back to your aunt’s house and tell her what happened. Lucky thing you have a spare tire in the trunk.”
I blinked. “It was raining in here.”
“Your top had popped open and been thrown back a bit,” Sarkisian told me. “I closed it.”
I nodded. “Flip-top.”
The siren screamed now with that odd rise and fall of volume as it wound around the hairpin curves. Dave produced a flare from somewhere in the depths of his rain parka and broke it open. He strode off into the middle of the road and disappeared around the bend, waving the sputtering light over his head. I leaned back, knowing that once you had paramedics on the scene, everything was taken out of your hands. I could relax, I could sink into that peaceful oblivion that waited for me with open arms…
Aside from a bit of rough and ready handling getting me out of the car and strapped onto a stretcher, the next few hours passed with less trouble than I would have imagined. Sarkisian refused transport to the hospital for himself, so the paramedics cleaned him up on the spot. They hauled me off to where I, too, was tended and mended, which involved a half dozen stitches to my forehead. By the time they were done, there was nothing left of the night for me to bed down in comfort in, so I called Aunt Gerda to come and rescue me.