Page 14 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

Chapter Eleven

B he oversaw the work and handled the sales.

“Tim was amazing. Guys in the trades loved him. He would know all the right questions. He knew all the construction people. All the plumbers. I’d get us some sales from my own network, mostly friends and friends of friends, but I’m not a salesperson.

We have a few jobs in the pipeline, but…

” She shook her head. “I don’t love taking out a loan to pay Nancy off, but there’s no chance in hell she can do what Tim did, even if she wanted, though I think she’s pretty happy taking the money. ”

I heard a strain of bitterness in her voice; I wondered whether my guys did.

“Did he have any enemies?” Zeus asked.

Rhonda furrowed her pretty brow. “Tim?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? What are you thinking?”

Zeus tapped his clipboard. “One of the questions on the list.”

“People loved him. His marriage wasn’t so good. That’s not a secret, but I wouldn’t call Nancy his enemy. She just…”

Thor cocked his head, focusing all of his sparkly attention on her. Oh, I knew all about being on the other side of that look, feeling mysteriously eager to tell him anything. “They weren’t getting along?”

“Nancy and him weren’t right for each other. I know she loved him in her own way—she’s a good person, but…they weren’t intellectually compatible, I’d say.”

Sweet Rhonda Broom. She didn’t want to say Nancy Zietlow was stupid.

“Was their marriage actually in trouble?” I asked.

“There was some thought she was having an affair—a rumor. Tim knew about the rumor—some friend of his told him, which was so insensitive. The man was fighting cancer, you know? So that was extremely demoralizing to Tim. It made it hard to focus on his battle. But he didn’t want to stop working.

Honestly, I know pancreatic cancer is nasty, but he was turning the corner.

He’d just gotten a really positive blood report.

He was determined to fight the cancer and get their marriage back on track, and suddenly he gets sick from that cheese?

” She sighed, this time not so silently.

“He just didn’t have the immune system left to fight it. ”

“We know he ate the cheese that made him ill at home, but did you witness him eating cheese here ever?”

“Are you kidding? I would kick it out of his hand if I did. A man in his condition isn’t supposed to be eating soft cheeses.

He showed me the list. I mean, I love the Sunny Sisters, but that cheese—they sold bad cheese.

It’s really sad. Those girls have had a bad time, but they shouldn’t have put people’s lives at risk to make their bottom line.

I’m so off of their shit.” She set down the pen.

“I know you’re investigating this from their side, but they really do need to answer for what they did. ”

“What were the affair rumors?” I asked, trying hard to stifle my anger.

She shrugged. “I’m not the person people gossiped to about it.

I wouldn’t think it was very entertaining or interesting, being that I was his friend.

And his friend who told him didn’t even know who it was.

Just a bunch of accounts of Nancy Zietlow and some guy out at a pub out near Moose Lake. He wasn’t sure whether to believe it.”

“Did you believe it?”

She cast her eyes downward. “Not for me to say. They just shouldn’t have been married, though. That’s the bottom line.”

Zeus set a card on her desk. “Thanks. We just needed the lay of the land. Appreciate it.”

She smiling, looking from Thor to Zeus to Odin and finally to me. “Insurance investigators.”

My face blazed. “Thank you.” I led my guys out the door and away from pretty Rhonda.

“What’s your impression?” Odin asked as we drove away. “You know her.”

“Insurance investigators,” I mimicked. “ So that’s where you’re keeping the hot guys . Three tens and a dorky two—interesting!”

“You think that’s what she meant? ”

“Um, yes.”

“But you don’t think she was hitting on us.”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Odin said.

“Why, because she’s married?”

“No, because she was in love with Tim Zietlow,” Odin said.

I nearly spit out my soda. “What?”

“Now that you mention it, I could see that,” Thor said.

“Um…he’s ten years older than her, and they’re both married.”

“That’s why you didn’t see it, goddess,” Odin said.

“We have a new suspect—her husband,” Zeus said.

“Back up—I’m still on Rhonda being in love with Tim Zietlow.”

“Couldn’t you see how she’d been crying? And she hated Nancy,” Odin said.

“She was nice about Nancy,” I said.

“She doesn’t want people knowing how she felt,” Odin said. “She probably didn’t even want Tim to notice.”

“But maybe her husband noticed,” Zeus added. “Who’s her husband?”

“Wouldn’t I like to know,” I said. “And how would her husband force Tim Zietlow to eat the cheese that Nancy bought?”

“Why would a woman buy a food that could kill her husband in the first place?” Zeus asked. “That’s what confuses me.”

“Wow,” I said. “Nancy Zietlow.”

“Yup.”

Suddenly we had two suspects.

We stopped next at Nancy’s home. She came to the door dressed in black velour sweats and a turtleneck so slim-fitting you could see the entire outline of her bra strap.

Her short blonde hair was sticking up all over, as if she’d been rubbing it a lot.

She apologized for how she looked. She wasn’t expecting visitors today. Hibernation mode, she called it.

Zeus explained our mission to her while Thor was all sparkly and friendly and apologetic, and that got us invited into her kitchen.

“Sorry about the mess. I’m trying to sort things out.

” Her voice went down a notch, and I thought she might cry.

“It’s just a mess.” She shook her head as if to shake out all the mess. “I don’t know what new I can tell you.”

“We’re following the trail of the cheese, so to speak,” Thor said. “Just following it. Protocol.”

She sunk into a chair, looking almost trance-like. “He was sick, but we didn’t expect…” She paused there, because of course that wasn’t our question.

“In your own words, how did it happen?” Zeus asked.

“Well, he got violently ill. He was suddenly going downhill fast after seeming better. I thought it was the chemo drugs. The hospital had me do a food diary for him because he wasn’t that with it—he was really in and out.

I filled it out best I could. He was on a limited diet.

He barely ate anything. He definitely wasn’t supposed to eat soft cheeses.

They asked me about it specifically, and at first I thought he hadn’t eaten any such thing, but then I checked the refrigerator and saw the brie had been unwrapped, and I guess he must’ve nibbled on it.

He loved that brie. He knew better, though. I don’t know…”

“So you kept brie in the house?” Thor asked innocently. “Kind of a guilty pleasure?”