A Flicker of Doubt - Tim Myers [12]
“Sure, that’s fine.” As Markum left me to retrace my steps, I looked through the small living room. There was a coffee table pulled next to one of the chairs. The table was covered with opened newspapers and a pair of scissors. I started looking through the papers until I found the only cut-out in the pile. An article about the size of an index card was cut from last week’s paper. I folded the sheet and stuck it in my pocket, wondering what she’d thought was important enough to cut out. It meant a trip to the Gunpowder Gazette—a newspaper I detested—but I was willing to put my feelings aside if it meant finding out what had happened to Becka.
I finished up with the living room, straightening the place up as I searched. Markum poked his head out of the bedroom, holding up a folded sheet of paper. “You missed something,” he said, smiling.
“I probably missed more than that. What is it?”
He handed me the note, and I saw someone had written in block letters: STOP
NOSING AROUND OR ELSE. The words OR ELSE were underlined three times in a red marker, though the letters were all written in black. It made for a bold statement, no doubt about that.
“Where did you find that?” I asked.
“It was taped to the back of one of the drawers. I would have missed it myself if I hadn’t pulled it all the way out I found something else, too.” He held up a fan made of money, all hundreds.
“How much is there?” I asked.
“It’s an even grand. It was taped right beside the note.”
“I don’t get it” I said.
“Maybe she was blackmailing somebody and he got tired of paying her off. That might be all there is to this. What do you think? Was Becka capable of doing that?”
“I can’t imagine it”
“Harrison, I know you cared for her. But take a second and consider it. Don’t dismiss the possibility just because she was someone in your life.”
I thought about how brash she always was, how single-minded Becka could be, and realized with some sadness that it could be true. “I guess it’s possible,” I admitted reluctantly. “So what do we do with the money?’
Markum studied the bills, then handed them to me. “You keep them. They might come in handy.”
I refused the money. “Shouldn’t it go to her heirs, whoever they are? The last thing in the world I came here to do was rob the dead.”
Markum shook his head, and there was a sad smile on his face as he admitted, “Harrison, you’re soft in ways that keep surprising me. Don’t you think Becka would want to finance our investigation in searching for what really happened to her? If we use this right, it might buy us information when no other way can. I don’t know about you, but my business isn’t doing well enough at the moment to use my own money for bribes if we need them.”
“No, I don’t have a ton of spare cash just lying around,” I admitted.
He offered me the money again. “Take it If we don’t need any of it, you can pass it on to her next of kin in good conscience; but truthfully, if her heir wasn’t looking for this, there’s no way it would ‘accidentally’ turn up. Chances are, whoever bought the furniture would be in for a surprise the first time they pulled the drawers out, and nobody would be served by that”
I stared at it the wad for a second, then took the money and jammed it into my pocket The last thing I wanted was to be carrying Becka’s money around with me. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if Sheriff Morton showed up at the apartment, but it would surely look a lot worse with a thousand buds stuffed into my pocket
“Are we finished now?” I asked, worried more and more about the money now in my possession than the fact that we were in the apartment illegally.
“I’m nowhere near it,” Markum said. “Have you seen her personal files?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it. She had to pay bills, keep track of things like that, didn’t she? I don’t see a computer around here. Did she have one?”
“No, I can guarantee you that. Becka was a Luddite when it came to computers. She believed the world was too dependent on technology.”