“The chief has some questions for you, Emily, if you don’t mind,” Hayes added.
“You have questions for me, Chief Davenport?”
“Actually, Dr. Jennings here has a few questions.” Wade thought he might learn almost as much from Jenning’s questions as from Emily McBride’s answers.
Jennings huffed impatiently. “Now, you want me to do the questioning? Just what kind of police chief are you, anyway?”
“The only one you’ve got at the moment,” Wade drawled, then motioned toward Emily McBride. “Go ahead, Jennings. Ask your questions.”
EMILY WONDERED what in the world was going on. What could Sam Jennings possibly want to ask her that involved her boss? Suddenly she found herself getting nervous. What did they want from her, anyway? And why was the chief of police here?
She found it rather surprising that she reacted to the sight of him as intensely this time as she had the day before. She wasn’t sure what it was about him that had immediately appealed to her, but she was definitely intrigued.
Jennings cleared his throat, drawing Emily’s attention to his heavy, florid, scowling face. “I’ve got money missing out of my business account,” he said without preface. “Three thousand dollars.”
She waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, she asked cautiously, “Are you saying that we’ve made an error in your account?”
He pointed to the computer monitor on Marshall Hayes’s desk, and waved a stack of paper in his other hand. “According to your records, the amounts listed on these deposit slips were more than the amounts actually put into my account. It happened on several different deposits during eight weeks, so I find it hard to believe it was a simple error every time.”
Emily frowned. Surely he wasn’t suggesting...?
“Your initials are on all these deposit slips,” he added aggressively.
She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Are you implying that I took money out of your deposits?”
He nodded. “Either that, or you are totally incompetent as a teller. Can’t even write numbers down correctly.”
Emily didn’t get angry very often. In her family, it had been better just to quietly fade into the background when things got tense. Living in the shadow of her mother’s sins and her brother’s reputation, she had become an almost compulsive pleaser in order to be accepted in her town. And it had worked. People liked her. Maybe they used her a bit, but they treated her with courtesy, for the most part. They didn’t humiliate her by making unjustified accusations against her, to her face and in front of witnesses.
At least, no one had before today.
Very aware that her employer and her town’s chief of police were watching her, she tried to rein in her flare of temper and speak calmly and confidently. “Obviously, a mistake has been made somewhere, Dr. Jennings. But I can assure you, I have not deliberately taken any of your money, nor would I have made mistakes in your deposits on four separate occasions without catching and correcting them.”
“I have deposit slips with your initials on them,” he said again, fanning the air with the yellow paper rectangles. “And a statement that shows actual deposit amounts less than those written on the slips.”
“May I see the slips?” Emily asked, still keeping her voice cool, though her anger was growing hotter. Why wasn’t her boss defending her? Was the police chief waiting to arrest her? Why wasn’t he saying anything?
She held out her hand. The heavy gold-link bracelet on her wrist clinked with the movement. Jennings looked at the bracelet and scowled, as if the frivolous sound made him even more annoyed than he already was.
Looking as though he expected her to destroy his “evidence” on the spot, he warily handed the four deposit slips and the bank statement to her. Emily glanced at them, then returned them to him. “Those deposit slips are fakes,” she said without hesitation.
Jennings scowled. “I should have known you’d say something like that.”
“Yes. You should have known I would tell the truth.” She glanced at her boss. “I always stamp deposit slips with a date stamp. These slips aren’t stamped, and I didn’t write the initials on them. It isn’t my handwriting.”
Marshall Hayes smiled at her in a way that suggested he’d known all along that she was innocent of Jenning’s charges. Or was she only seeing what she wanted to find in her employer’s expression?
“Of course it’s your handwriting. E.McB. That’s the way you always initial your work. I checked,” Jennings added a bit smugly.
“Then you should have noticed that I elevate the small c and put a dash beneath it,” she retorted. “It’s the way I’ve always signed my initials. The dash is missing on these. Why would I change my signature only on slips that I’ve supposedly falsified? That wouldn’t make sense.”
“I can bring in dozens of documents with her initials on them to verify her handwriting,” Hayes offered.
The police chief cleared his throat. “Seems to me,” he said, his voice a leisurely drawl, “we need to talk to your former employee, Dr. Jennings. It’s entirely possible that she wrote out two deposit slips on these occasions. One with the correct amount on it for your records, another with the actual amount she deposited.”
Jennings glared at him. “You’re blaming my girl.” “I’m not blaming anyone—including Ms. McBride,” the chief replied. “I’m simply saying we have to consider all the angles.”
“I can produce paperwork proving I deposited the full amounts I was given,” Emily volunteered, grateful that Davenport didn’t seem to be in a hurry to haul her off to jail.