Danger in a Red Dress by Christina Dodd Page A

fall, we’ve got my cell phone. Now give me your arm!”
    Hannah did, hefting her out of the chair and pushing the walker under her hands.
    Mrs. Manly leaned against it, and not until she said, “All right. I’ve got it,” did Hannah step away.
    The path was flat here, and Mrs. Manly headed for the pile of boulders twenty feet away. Once there, she carefully leaned against the broadest one and shut her eyes as if the exertion had exhausted her. But when Hannah hurried toward her in concern, she opened them again and said, irritably, “Stop looking so worried. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. But I thought we’d take it in smaller steps.”
    Mrs. Manly smiled, a painful grimace that faded as she looked out over the ocean. “I don’t think we can. Push the wheelchair away. Then come back here.”
    Hannah did as she was instructed, returning to sit beside Mrs. Manly on the warm granite.
    “This really is the prettiest spot in the world,” Mrs. Manly said. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it would be, so I suppose for that, I should be grateful. But . . . the burden of the house has dragged me down for so long. Too long.”
    The breeze whistled around them, blowing the scents of sea and salt and adventure.
    “You don’t have to stay here.” Hannah gestured across the sea, across the land, and over the thin strip of beach. “You can sell it, give it to the state as a park, run away—”
    Mrs. Manly laughed, a long maniacal cackle. “I can’t. I’m stuck here until the day I die.” She leaned forward in the chair. “Because I know where Nathan deposited his fortune.”
    “Oh, no.” Hannah slid back until she rested flat on her back on the rock, staring up at the blue sky, trying not to hear, trying not to comprehend. “Don’t tell me this.”
    “Who else can I tell?” Mrs. Manly’s face inserted itself into Hannah’s view of scattered and swiftly moving clouds. “You’re the only one I can trust.”
    Hannah stared into the old woman’s insistent eyes. “Who did you trust before?”
    “Torres.”
    “Damn.” Hannah covered her eyes with her hand, trying to shut herself off from the terrible truth.
    Mrs. Manly yanked Hannah’s hand away. “Torres was supposed to outlive me. Instead he keeled over from a heart attack at sixty.”
    “That son of a bitch.”
    “You just can’t find dependable help these days.” Mrs. Manly’s mouth crooked cynically.
    “You sure can’t.” Hannah lifted her head. “How did you know where . . . where he put the money?”
    “I observed. I analyzed. I pried into the records. I found Nathan’s offshore account. I was never as dumb as he believed.”
    No. No, Mrs. Manly was not dumb.
    Mrs. Manly looked down at the mansion, crumbling into decay. “From the day Nathan left me, it was always my intention to funnel the money out of the account and back to the people who had worked for and invested in the company. After I died, I mean. I have no intention of being around for that ruckus.”
    “Of course not,” Hannah said ironically.
    “So first I fixed it so no one could tap that account. I’m a Balfour. I understand finance.”
    Hannah was in awe. “How did you find out who should receive the money? There must have been thousands of people he cheated.”
    “I am his wife. I had access to the financials. And yes, there were thousands, and yes, the computer program to return the money took two years to write.” Mrs. Manly smirked. “That’s why I hired Torres. Carrick always thought he was a lousy butler. Actually, he was a hacker from Argentina, in the country illegally. He acted as my butler, and kept the program current. I paid him very well for his services, and kept him away from the border patrol.”
    “Did you trust him that much?”
    “I don’t trust anybody with that kind of money, so I learned enough about computer programming to keep him honest.”
    “So you are giving the money back to the people Nathan robbed, because they were