"Uh-huh. Close enough for her to march over there and shoot Weston, yet far enough for her to want to buy herself time to walk back-which would explain Weston's truck being parked in the woods."

Nick thought for a second. "You don't think Weston might have parked it there himself? I mean, Weston was working at our house alone and just a half mile away from a crazy woman who obviously had it in for him."

"Maggie told us that despite all her sneaking around, Weston never once called the cops on her. It's obvious that he didn't see her as a serious threat. If Weston himself parked the truck in the woods, it was because he didn't want to be bothered by her, not because he was afraid."

"Really? Because, personally, the woman scares the h.e.l.l out of me."

"Me too, but it seems as though he was far too arrogant to be afraid of someone like Maggie Lawson. Anyone who steals a painting from someone's home in broad daylight while that person is at home has nerves of steel," Stella remarked.

"You don't honestly believe the painting is real, do you?"

"I don't know. Maggie seems to be convinced that it is, and she knew Mack better than anyone."

"Yeah, but Maggie also threatened to shoot us, remember?"

"Technically, she never really threatened. She just brandished."

"Good enough for me."

"So you don't think there's a painting?"

"Nope. I think Maggie and Mack were perfectly and crazily matched. Whatever one said, the other swore was true."

"Just like you and me," Stella teased.

"Oh yeah, I know I can always count on you to have my back. Just like this morning, when I said Betsy Brunelle hit on me."

"I believed you. I just thought you might have embellished the story a bit."

"Uh-huh. Anyway, my theory? Weston wasn't afraid of Maggie because he didn't steal the painting. Why? Because it never existed in the first place."

"I suppose you could be right. That would also explain why the police never responded to Maggie's call. But either way, I can't help but laugh at the irony."

Nick's face registered confusion. "What irony?"

"That I left my job as a museum curator only to wind up looking for the head of John the Baptist in modern-day Vermont."

After a stop at Alma's doublewide to shower and change into clean clothes, Stella and Nick arrived at Vermont Valley Real Estate a few minutes before noon.

Alice Broadman, dressed in the weekend mom uniform of baggy jeans and oversized sweatshirt, was hunched over her desk, poring over pages of spreadsheets. A pair of red reading gla.s.ses, strikingly bright against her pale complexion, perched precariously on the tip of her nose.

"Alone, I see?" Stella noted as she stepped into the unlit office.

Alice looked up and, in an uncharacteristic indication of vanity, removed her gla.s.ses and stuffed them into a desk drawer. "Oh, hey. Yeah. Hard to believe, but during the housing boom I actually had to hire a weekend staff to answer the phones and handle walk-ins. Now? Bunny has weekends off and I"-she stood up to model her casual attire-"I've given up hope of anyone walking in off the street looking for anything but directions."

"Even during fall foliage?"

"Even during fall foliage. Gone are the days when tourists would come up here for a weekend, fall in love with the scenery, and immediately rush to find a vacation home. People are more cautious with their money now. They check the listings on the Internet, research the area, approximate taxes, look into caretaking fees ... the only thing they need me for is to tour the property and finish the deal. But most of them break off their Vermont romance before they even reach that point."

"Is that what happened with the property in New Jersey?" Nick spoke up. "Did someone break off the romance?"

Alice's peaches-and-cream complexion turned an unhealthy shade of gray. "I-I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you do. Search your memory. Little place in Hackensack. Allen Weston put you up to the deal."

"How do you know all this?"

He eased into one of the two metal-framed chairs facing Alice's desk. "Doesn't matter how we know. What matters is that you lied yesterday."

"I didn't! I didn't tell you about the New Jersey property, but I didn't lie!"

"That sounds like an excuse your kids would use."

Stella sat beside her husband and, as they had discussed during the ride from Alma's, a.s.sumed the role of good cop. "Now, Nick," she said gently, "let's cut Alice some slack. She never actually denied doing business with Weston. What she said is that she never signed anything with Weston's name on it. Considering how the deal turned out, I believe that's probably quite true."

"Hmph. Care to tell us about it?"

Alice sat down slowly. "It's a condo building. Weston came to me last year, right around the time that the economy was at its worst. He wanted to buy the condo on short sale, fix it up, and then sell the units at a profit."

"What's a short sale?"

"It's the step prior to foreclosure. Buyers make their best offer to the seller, who, in turn, picks the highest offer and submits it to the mortgage-holding bank for approval. The bank decides whether or not they'll accept. If they do, the seller's debt is wiped clean and both he and the bank have avoided foreclosing costs and bankruptcy hearings."

"And the buyer gets a great deal without a lot of red tape."

"That's the idea, but it's not a sure thing. I certainly wouldn't suggest it to anyone who needs to close by a certain date, since the bank can always refuse your offer. The condo in Hackensack, however, was a business deal, so there was no rush. And the whole plan was incredible ... or at least that's how Weston presented it."

"What happened?"

"Weston had a sizeable down payment to buy the building in Hackensack, but he couldn't get a loan because his most recent business acquisitions had overextended his credit. His partner in New Jersey, a man named Walker, ran a construction company that could fix the units at cost, but, like Weston, the economic downturn had made it impossible for him to secure a loan."

"So you have two partners with plenty of cash but zero credit."

"Exactly. So Weston came to me with an offer. He would make the down payment and pay me a $10,000 cash incentive if I would take the mortgage out in my name, with Walker as a cosigner. Once the sale was complete, I would then quitclaim the t.i.tle to Walker so that he could get all the necessary permits and other items needed for the renovations without having to ask for my signature, and, in the end, we'd all split the profits from the sale of the units."

"In other words, he asked you to be a straw buyer," Stella interpreted.

Nick added, "I'm starting to think I need a real-estate license for this conversation. What's a straw buyer?"

"It's someone who uses their credit to get a mortgage for someone else," Stella replied. "I don't understand why would you agree to such a thing, Alice. Didn't you realize you were committing mortgage fraud?"

"Of course I realized that. But Weston had come to me right after the first layoff and, I'll admit it, his offer seemed like the miracle I had been praying for. The $10,000 was exactly what I needed to help the business stay afloat a little while longer, but the true temptation was the resale once the construction was finished. Naturally, I had my doubts about getting involved, but everything presented to me seemed to be on the up-and-up. Weston was fronting his own money for the down payment, and his friend in New Jersey sent me drawings, plans, and artists' renderings depicting what the units would look like after construction. The guy even sent me a copy of an invoice for an architect."

"So what went wrong?"

"Nothing-at first. The bank accepted our first offer even though it was unbelievably low. I got the loan, Weston's friend got the t.i.tle, and work on the first few units was to be completed in three months so that we could start selling."

"Who was responsible for the mortgage payments during those first three months?"

"Weston put up the first month at closing. I paid the next two, but when the three months stretched into four, five, and six, I started to wonder what was going on. So I went to Weston to find out if he had heard from Walker. He said he hadn't but that he'd try to track him down."

Alice drew a deep breath. "Another month went by, and Weston still hadn't been able to reach Walker, so I decided to search for him myself."

"A private investigator?" Nick posited.

"No, I had a mortgage-broker friend of mine do a check on the t.i.tle. The building had been resold ninety days after I had signed the quitclaim, at a price $300,000 more than what we had paid. The entire thing, the whole blasted plan, was a flopping scheme."

"Okay, again, in English."

"Flopping is like flipping, except you're ripping off the bank and your investors by buying below market value and then reselling for way more. And Weston was in on the flop from the beginning. He and Walker probably split the proceeds of the sale."

"Do you have proof Weston was in on it?"

"No, and I couldn't think of a way to get any either. But it's the only way the whole thing makes sense. Why else would he have been so willing to front his own money? And why was he so reluctant to track down Walker?" Alice blinked back the tears. "Weston had me as their mark from the beginning."

"Did you contact the police about your suspicions?"

"How can I?" Alice's tears broke free and streamed down her round, pink face. "Not only don't I have proof, but I'm guilty of mortgage fraud. Aside from losing my business and my broker's license, I could ... I could go to jail. Weston knew it. He knew that even with the proper evidence, I couldn't blow the whistle."

"Did he tell you that when you asked him for money?"

Alice's tears dried and her pink face grew bright red with rage. "How did you-? That b.i.t.c.h Bunny told you, didn't she? She listened in during my meeting. I knew it! That nosy old bag! Why, I could-"

"It wasn't Bunny," Stella lied to diffuse the situation. "Weston wrote the meeting on his calendar."

Alice quieted down but was still highly skeptical. "And you just a.s.sumed I asked for money?"

"Given the circ.u.mstances you described, why else would you meet with him?"

"Okay, you're right: I did ask him for money. He refused. He said he didn't owe me anything and then started crying poverty because he had lost his down payment. When I told him I thought that he had been in on the scheme, he smiled. Can you believe it? The son of a b.i.t.c.h smiled and said that I was a businesswoman who should have known the risks."

"How did you react?" Nick asked.

"How do you think I reacted? I lost it. I started screaming, crying ... I may even have hit Weston. I don't remember. All I know is that if Bunny weren't already listening at the door, she would have heard me, along with half the town."

"And Weston? What did he do when you starting yelling?"

"He was smooth, cool, as usual. He didn't lose his temper or shout back, he just laughed." Alice began to cry again. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d laughed, asked me if my husband knew about our business arrangement, and then left."

"Did your husband know about the condo deal?"

"No, he would have talked me out of it, and I was ... I was desperate to keep my agents working. I probably should have told him, but at the time I didn't think he needed to know. I hadn't used any of the household money, and I hadn't gambled our home. I figured if things went well, I could tell him when the money came rolling in. G.o.d, what a fool I was."

"And if Weston were to have told him about you committing mortgage fraud?"

"I don't know what he'd do. Him finding out was my worst fear. It still is. To have lost most of my business and my self-respect is one thing, but to lose him, the kids ..."Alice ran a hand over her face. "When Weston left here that day, I was in a panic. I was so afraid he'd tell my husband what happened, I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep."

"Did you talk to Weston when he was working at our house?"

"Yes, I did. How did-?"

"Your timeline doesn't quite work out," Stella explained. "If you had left our house when you claim, you would have had plenty of time to make our closing. But instead you were late, out of breath, and more than a little bit frazzled."

"When I learned that Weston would be working on your well, I saw my chance to talk to him again. I begged him not to tell my husband, Tim, about the flop scheme, and then I asked him what it would take for him to keep his mouth shut."

"Is that why our appointment was rescheduled?" Nick asked. "So that you could meet up with him?"

"No, that was Weston's doing. If anything, I had more time to talk to him on Wednesday than on the day of your closing."

"But you still managed to find some time to talk to him, didn't you?"

"Yes. I had to."

"And how did it go?"

"How do you think? Weston didn't care that I could lose everything. He just didn't care. I was so mad, I could have-" Alice's testimony was interrupted by the loud ring of a telephone.

"Vermont Valley Real Estate," she answered in a perfect telephone voice. "Oh, yes ... yes ... no, I'm not busy. Just let me finish up with my secretary, will you? Thanks. Hold a moment, and I'll be right back."

Alice pushed a red b.u.t.ton and covered the receiver. "This is an important call. I have to take it."

Nick looked at Stella and then rose from his chair. "We understand. I think we're pretty much done anyway."

"I suppose you're going to tell Mills everything I told you."

"I'm afraid we have to, Alice," Stella frowned.

"I didn't kill him. I swear I didn't."

"That's up to the sheriff's office to decide."

Alice nodded somberly. "I'll be here waiting for them. It's funny-as hard as I tried to keep Tim from finding out what happened, now that I'm here, on the verge of everyone finding out the truth, I'm relieved."

Nick smiled weakly. "I guess, deep down, part of you is tired of lying."

"I guess so. But that doesn't mean all is forgiven."

"What ... ?"

"If you see Bunny this weekend, let her know she's fired." Alice, her eyes an icy blue color, let her finger hover over the red hold b.u.t.ton. "Oh, and tell her to watch her back."

CHAPTER.

13.