For Love of Money by Cathy Perkins

but she didn’t talk much about herself.”
    “I feel bad about it now. Did anybody really know her?”
    “Her sister?”
    “I guess.” Holly measured the distance to the cushions. “Okay, on three.”
    Brea nodded. “One, two, three .”
    With a heaving jerk, they lifted Tim’s limp body and swung it onto the sofa.
    Holly’s stocking-clad feet slid as his weight shifted. She took a staggering step and dropped his legs. Arms waving, she fought for balance and lost. Her face landed in Tim’s soft belly, perilously close to his belt.
    Her disgusted, “Oh, yuck,” was muffled by fabric and flab.
    “What is going on?” demanded an outraged female voice.
    Trying to find somewhere that didn’t include Tim to put her hands, Holly wallowed off the couch and her client.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Tim’s wife arranged her baby blue eyes and pink lips into something that looked like a scowl.
    Brea silently sidled out of the room.
    Damn. No good deed went unpunished.
    “We all know this isn’t what it looks like,” Holly scrambled to her feet. “The man is passed out.”
    Nicole crossed her arms and tapped her foot.
    “Brea and I didn’t want to leave him on the floor.” Holly closed her mouth to stop herself from saying any more.
    Nicole’s nose went up. “When you blew off your office, I didn’t realize it was a literal concept.”
    Holly recoiled, as if the woman had physically slapped her. “I beg your pardon?”
    “Stick to massaging the numbers. You don’t have the assets”—Nicole raked a disparaging look down Holly’s underdeveloped chest—“for anything else.”
    “Now, wait a minute.”
    But Nicole stalked right past her and touched Tim’s arm. “You can leave now.”
    Anger churned Holly’s stomach. Anything she said would make things worse. Gritting her teeth, she retrieved her shoes and briefcase. At the door, she made one more attempt. “Hope he’s okay.”
    “He has me to take care of him.” Nicole repositioned Tim’s arms.
    Poor slob.

Chapter Nine
    Monday afternoon
    Holly left the 70s-era concrete building that housed Tri-Ag’s business office. She managed not to strut or high-five herself on the way to her car. She’d rocked the meeting. It had taken a few minutes to get past the newspaper article which implied she was a murder suspect, but everybody had settled down and discussed ways to make use of the latest agriculture tax incentives.
    She picked up Highway 240 and headed toward her office. Within minutes she entered the commercial district surrounding Columbia Mall. Traffic piled up around Costco and stopped for the traffic light at Grandridge. The Tom-Tom Casino was visible on a side street, behind a strip mall. The scene in Tim’s office ran through her mind, along with what Brea had said.
    Tim was a gambler?
    His drunken night at the Crazy Horse could’ve been a one-off, but according to Brea, he gambled a lot.
    Win or lose, gambling wasn’t showing up in his financial statements.
    Holly idled at the intersection and studied the casino’s sunbaked building. Brea had no reason to lie about Tim’s gambling. Even if she thought gambling was a waste of time and money, it wouldn’t bother her—if his financial records reflected it.
    If he was only dropping a few hundred here and there, no big deal.
    If it was more than a few hundred, and he was deliberately hiding it… That could wreck his credit rating.
    Not to mention what would it mean if Desert Accounting had signed off on his finances.
    She eyed the casino. Everyone connected gambling with money laundering, loan sharks, and the mob. But this was Richland, not Las Vegas. She didn’t see any way Tim’s gambling could be connected to Marcy’s murder. But if he was hiding things from his accountant, she needed to know about it, if only to protect Desert Accounting.
    Impulsively, she turned into the casino’s parking lot. She did need to talk with the Tom-Tom’s manager, she rationalized. After