“I used Wendy. Well, actually, the plan came from Wendy, although she didn’t realize it. After she told me what she’d discovered, all I had to do was get rid of anyone with a connection to the Highsmith name. And when J.J.’s gone, they’re all gone.”
“Debbie, you went to the convention center and helped kidnap Wendy and J.J. How did you know they were going to be there?”
“Oh, Wendy confided in me, of course! She told me everything she’d researched and found out—and she told me she was going to see Richard and give it all to him. They’d been talking over the past few months. She’d been in New York and she’d run into him on the street and he told her he’d been thinking about her and...well, there’s nothing as nauseating as rekindled love.”
“How did you get into the greenroom at the conference center?”
“Through the back, of course. Tommy had arranged to make some food deliveries—for friends of his in the business. He didn’t have a contract to supply food himself. That could’ve been traced. We both know the center well enough, and it’s actually pretty easy to get in if you’re doing food delivery. All that security didn’t make a bit of difference,” she gloated. “But that’s the thing. People think they’re secure—and as soon as they trust in the technology of a place like that, they forget that other people might know about codes and security, too. Or be able to figure them out...” She chuckled. “I dropped by to see Bari Macaby a few weeks ago and went out for a smoke with her—and I don’t even smoke!”
“Even if you planned this to the nth degree, you’re not getting away with it. The cops are going to find you here,” Mo said.
“I’m planning on it. Remember? After Jimmy killed you and J.J., and I had to kill him? Oh, and I guess your dumb mutt will be collateral damage. I heard some screeching a while ago—sounded like a dying dog to me,” Debbie taunted.
The words were like a sucker punch, but Mo knew she was being baited and she refused to fall for it. Debbie had a hatchet within easy reach, and she already had the knife. But Mo had her flashlight—and a desperate will to survive.
“I still don’t understand. Why?” Mo asked.
“Why? Because of Lizzie’s grave, of course. And the fact that if there’s a living descendant, what’s inside the grave would go to him or her.”
“It’s the Continental currency, isn’t it?” Mo asked, the certainty rushing in. “You’re not psychotic or jealous or in any way mentally impaired, are you, Debbie? It was about money. By the way, Aidan knows all this.”
“About the Continental currency? No one does. At least not as much as I know.”
“Yes, they do,” Mo said. Except that she wasn’t sure exactly what Debbie knew.
“You’re lying!”
“I’m telling you the truth. Sondra Burke was researching the story.”
“Yes, she was, wasn’t she? I heard her speaking once—and she was telling her audience about the currency disappearing. I didn’t know she’d mentioned it to you.”
Mo laughed. “She was going to give you a job, to help her work on the story. But you’d already guessed some of it, hadn’t you? When Lizzie—the daughter—was buried, someone buried the money with her. The family had it all along, and it was buried with Lizzie for safekeeping until the war was over. But it was never dug back up. I’m presuming that a family member—killed in the Civil War—put it in Lizzie’s grave. And afterward, only rumors of it existed. I think, however, that reading soldiers’ letters and memoirs, Sondra figured it out.”
“Well, well, how ironic. But not only did Sondra know about the currency, she would’ve had a claim on it. Yes, I’d heard about the Highsmith connection, distant though it was, because she was quite proud of it. I heard her discuss her revered great-great-grandfather, the colonel, in an interview, and eventually I put two and two together—with Wendy’s help.”
Debbie shook her head. “You look skeptical, Mo, but I suppose you thought you knew everything about local history. According to Sondra, the currency was buried with Lizzie. We’re all about Sleepy Hollow and the Revolution here—seems like we forget that the years went on and there was more history.” She shook her head in mock dismay. “I first read about it when I found an article in some obscure journal about a Bakker who’d been killed during the fighting at Gettysburg. It was said that he told his friends about a ‘buried treasure’ for his family back home. Do enough research, and you just never know what you’ll discover. Too bad I can’t dig up the whole place, really.”
“News flash, Debbie. Continental currency isn’t good these days.”
“I can tell you what it’s worth on the collectors’ market,” Debbie said. “I looked into it.”