Page 23 of You Can Leave Your Hat On
“You at the office?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll be there in five.” Maisey took off toward the sheriff’s office. She could barely wait to see what he’d found.
Cup of coffee in hand, she followed Aaron down the hallway and into the conference room. There were papers everywhere, and it was obvious he’d been hard at work all morning. “Got an awful lot of stuff here,” she said, looking around.
“Have a seat. You won’t believe this. So the house she was living in?” Maisey nodded. “It belonged to the father of one of her students.”
“A middle school student?”
Aaron gave a quick nod. “Yep. AlanVanderboegh.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“Data mining.”
Maisey was unsure about that. “You mean like bitcoins?”
“Exactly.”
“In KnoxCounty?” That seemed incredible.
“No. Here. In the old Howard Brothers Plumbing warehouse.”
“Oh, yeah! I remember. They were trying to get more electricity into the building.”
“Yeah, the city was all excited about it. Said it would be a great opportunity. But it never really got off the ground.”
“Then I don’t understand. How did he make money?”
Aaron grinned. “The city doesn’t want anybody to know that they bought a pig in a poke. I should say, boughtintoa pig in a poke.” Maisey squinted at him. “He borrowed a bunch of money to start this thing.”
“How much is a bunch of money?”
“About thirty million dollars.”
Okay, I heard that wrong, Maisey told herself. “You didn’t just say thirty million.”
“Oh, but I did. He borrowed it?from banks, from investment firms, from the city. And then made off with it.”
“Holy shit,” Maisey whispered under her breath.
“Exactly. That means when the murderer kept asking where ‘he’ was, he meant Vanderboegh.”
“So does that mean she was seeing Vanderboegh?”
Aaron nodded. “I would think so. That could explain where the car, the house, and her cash flow came from. And if he disappeared, that could be why she would panic and try to list the house.”
“Right. But who would be looking for him?”
Aaron reached over and rested his hand on top of a huge stack of papers. “Behold, the list of suspects.”
Maisey could feel her brow wrinkling. “What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, this is paperwork from all the people he owed, people he borrowed money from for the business.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
