Scoop to Kill: A Mystery a La Mode - By Wendy Lyn Watson Page 0,75

saw a shadow move across it. If someone were out in the hallway, if I could just make a little noise . . . something to draw that unknown somebody’s attention without startling George.

“I took the money, and then I had to find a way to give it back. Eventually, those accounts would be audited. The researchers would wonder where their money went. That was when I got the idea to pad the budgets up front. I only planned to fiddle with the percentages until I’d paid back the money I borrowed. But once I started, it was just so easy to keep doing it. And it meant I could take better care of Rosemary. We could afford help around the house, and I could take her on trips.”

And to eat regularly at the Hickory Tavern. I kept my lips shut. My mama didn’t raise any fools, and I wasn’t going to poke back at the man with the gun.

“I know it was wrong, Ms. Jones. If it were only my life on the line, I would have turned myself in when Bryan Campbell discovered what I’d been doing. I never would have paid him any blackmail money, and I certainly wouldn’t have killed him when he threatened to expose me anyway.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of movement. Someone at the door?

“But it isn’t just my life,” George continued. “It’s Rosemary’s. She’s strong, stronger than I, and she could withstand the scandal. But I would have to pay back the money. They would take everything to get their pound of flesh: our house, Rosemary’s jewelry, our savings, everything. She’d be left with nothing. What if the cancer came back? How would she fight it, alone, without any money?”

I heard a faint scraping sound. Someone was definitely right outside the door. I didn’t dare look to see who it was, though.

Another sound, a squeak of rubber on linoleum, faint but clear. George twitched, and started to turn, as though he, too, had heard the noise.

Quickly, I tried to distract him.

“I see how it happened, Professor Gunderson. One small lapse in judgment, and then years covering it up.” In my peripheral vision, I saw the door behind Gunderson inch open. “The problem growing bigger and bigger,” I rushed on. “You didn’t mean to, but once you started, there was no stopping it.”

Something flared in his eyes—joy, relief, excitement? “Exactly,” he exclaimed. “One small lapse in judgment . . .” He laughed softly. “The poet was correct. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!’ ” His gaze sharpened on me. “Do you know who said that?”

Really? This hardly seemed the time for a quiz. I went with the old standby. “Shakespeare?”

“Sir Walter Scott.”

Gunderson and I both jumped nearly out of our skins and spun around to find Bree standing at the back of the room. She stood perfectly still, her hands open and spread away from her body to show that she wasn’t armed.

Her eyes met mine briefly, and she must have seen the shock in my face. She arched a brow and drawled, “What? I can read, you know?”

I don’t know whether it was Bree’s sudden appearance or her startling command of British literature that knocked George off guard, but I took full advantage of his momentary confusion. I grabbed the first thing I encountered—Emily Clowper’s flea market foam rooster—and threw it at Gunderson with all my might.

The rooster bounced off him, doing no real damage, but he threw up his arms in a defensive reflex.

Bree, too, snatched the nearest object, a much more weapon-worthy book from on top of Emily’s filing cabinet. She threw it overhand, and it struck Gunderson squarely in the forehead.

He stumbled and the gun went flying.

Alice scrambled over the desk, lunging for the gun, while Bree and I both tackled Gunderson.

We had him pinned to the ground, groaning, and Alice was standing on top of Emily’s desk with the gun trained on Gunderson’s head, when Cal and Finn came rushing into the office.

Cal, his weapon drawn and a look of panic on his face, surveyed the scene.

“Lord-a-mighty, I’ve had nightmares like this.”

Beside him, Finn laughed. “Me too. But in mine, a couple people were naked and the rooster was very much alive.”

chapter 29

I didn’t see Cal or Finn during the week between Gunderson’s arrest and Crystal and Jason’s wedding. Finn’s articles about ivory-tower corruption—Jonas Landry’s fabricated interviews and George Gunderson’s massive embezzlement—made national news, and