The Valentine's Day Murder Read Online Free PDF

She’s looking forward to it.”
    I walked into the windowed breakfast room as she made her call. This was a bright, sunny house, one I would enjoy living in. Jack and I had decided to build a huge addition onto our house which would give us a family room for the first time, and a wonderful bedroom above it. Without meaning to, I had become interested in other people’s houses, how they arranged furniture, how they added on rooms. When I had moved into Aunt Meg’s house, I thought it would remain the way it was forever, but I had never imagined my life would change as much as it had. When my baby was born, we would have a bigger, more comfortable house, another fireplace, an extra bathroom. I had come a long way from my small cell at St. Stephen’s, my brown Franciscanhabit, my shorn hair, and my simple life shared with a group of women.
    “She’d rather have you go over there,” Carlotta said, bringing me back to the case at hand. “She can’t get a sitter.”
    “That’s fine. You can point me in the right direction.”
    “You were right about relationships going sour. Annie’s not very anxious to spend time with Bambi. Bambi’s been giving her a hard time since the bodies surfaced.”
    “I can understand that.”
    “Those men didn’t hate each other, Chris. They were friends. I know you have to be suspicious of everyone and everything that happened, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. They loved each other.”
    “Did the wives?”
    She didn’t answer right away. “No, the wives didn’t. We didn’t dislike each other, but we weren’t best friends. We got along. We spent a lot of time with each other because of our husbands, but I think each of us has a best friend outside the group. I know I do.”
    “What time am I expected there?”
    “I rescheduled for four since Bambi backed out. That gives you more than an hour. It’s a ten-minute drive.”
    “I’d like to look at Val’s desk.”
    “Come with me.”

4
    It turned out that Val had a home office complete with the expected computer, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled mostly with books on his professional interest, a small radio, a telephone with buttons that automatically dialed a host of locations both personal and business-related, and more packages of software than I had ever seen outside a store.
    I know very little about computers and if Val had life secrets stored on his, I would have to get an expert in to help me. But for a first look I had other things in mind, and I sat down at the desk and began to open drawers. The bankbooks were in the first drawer I opened, and I took them out. There were three, each book a different color, each account at a different bank. I slid the first one out of the plastic envelope and opened it. It had pages of entries, both deposits and withdrawals, but many more of the former than the latter. I flipped to the last page and saw that the final balance was over ninety-seven thousand dollars. I took a breath. Rather a lot of cash, I thought, considering that interest rates were low. The last transaction was a withdrawal on February twelfth, two days before Val’s disappearance. He had taken over three thousand dollars out of the bank, probably, I thought, forCarlotta’s ruby ring, a pricey gift but one he could obviously afford.
    I went backwards through the pages and noticed that whenever the balance approached one hundred thousand, he would remove funds to bring the amount below that figure. From somewhere I recalled that bank accounts were insured up to that crucial number, so perhaps he took the funds and invested them elsewhere to keep the whole amount insured. It would seem to be a good idea.
    I slipped the book back in its case and took out the second one. This account was handled very differently from the first. Here there were periodic withdrawals in even amounts, one hundred, two hundred, seven hundred. I flipped to the last page and saw that the last withdrawal had been made on