"In a word," I said with irony. "Wouldn't that have shown up pretty quickly?"

"Absolutely. You think Fife was milking his own accounts?"

"No," I said slowly, "I think Charlie Scorsoni was. That's part of what I need to ask you about. Could he have skimmed money out of the estates he was representing back then?"

"Sure. It can be done and it's not that hard," Garry said appreciatively, "but it might be a bitch to track. It really depends on how he did it. " He thought for a moment, apparently warming to the idea. He shrugged. "For instance, he could have set up some kind of special account or an escrow account for all his estates – maybe two or three phony accounts within this overall account. A large dividend check comes in, he diverts a percentage of the check from the estate it's supposed to be credited to, and he credits it to a phony account instead."

"Could Libby have realized something was wrong?"

"She might have. She had a head for that kind of thing. She'd have had to trace the dividends through Moody's Dividend Book, which gives the amount of each dividend by company. Then if there was some kind of discrepancy, she might have asked for records or documentation – bank statements, canceled checks, stuff like that."

"Yeah, well Lyle told me last week that there were lots of phone calls back and forth, some attorney driving down for dinner. It finally occurred to me that Charlie might have engineered an affair with her in the hopes that she'd cover for him."

"Or maybe he offered her a cut," Garry said.

"Oh God, would she have done that?"

Garry shrugged. "Hey, who knows? Would he?"

I stared down at his desk top. "Yeah, I think so," I said. "You know, everybody kept saying that she was involved with some Santa Teresa attorney and we all assumed it was Fife because, both died the same way. But if I'm right about this embezzlement business then I need proof. Are the files still at your place?"

"No, I've got 'em right here as a matter of fact. I thought I'd take a look at 'em during my lunch hour. I've been having cottage cheese but I don't think that counts as food so I thought I'd do without. I brought 'em in yesterday and then I got tied up. Now that you mention it, I do think she was working on that account when she died, because the cops found her briefcase at her place," he said. He gave me a curious look. "How'd you fix on him?"