A Dime a Dozen by Mindy Starns Clark Page A

the Webbers—and the impact that all of this had had on MORE. Though Luisa no longer worked there, the “black eye” that Natalie had spoken of still remained with the county—and would until a full understanding of the situation was reached.
    The sequence of events was a bit confusing, and so I asked them to go back and clarify it for me. Natalie reiterated the whole story. According to her, Luisa and Enrique Morales had come to Greenbriar last July with their two children, moving into the migrant family dorms as they did every year during harvest. Enrique had gone to work picking apples for Tinsdale Orchards, and Luisa had taken a job at MORE. Things were fine until November, near the end of harvest, when the husband disappeared, seemingly without a trace. Subsequently, Luisa had the two big mess-ups at work where she left confidential papers in the Laundromat and then wiped out portions of the database. She lost her job, and then she and the kids moved from the seasonal migrant dormitories into the trailer where they lived now. Soon after they moved in, they found the words “GO AWAY” spray painted on the driveway. Since then, several times Luisa had found herself the target of some menacing act—a slashed tire, last night’s stink bombs, today’s fire—all apparently meant to harass her into leaving town. Luisa took in laundry to provide for her family, but last week she had lost one of her best clients when their neatly washed-and-folded clothes were stolen from the back seat of her car.
    My eyes widened.
    “A criminal act,” I said, “that led to the loss of employment? You understand, don’t you, what this means?”
    They both looked at me blankly.
    “All of the things that have happened to her—but particularly the stolen laundry—actually support her claim that she wasn’t responsible for the problems at your agency. I mean, think about it. What better way is there to get a person to leave town than to make them lose their job?”
    Dean and Natalie looked at each other and then back at me.
    “You think someone really did those things intentionally so that Luisa would get fired?”
    “It fits the pattern. I haven’t got a clue why someone would want her to leave town so badly, but I think it started back then, and now I feel strongly that she was telling you the truth about what happened. I think it wasn’t her own carelessness, but some sort of deliberate, malicious act by someone else.”
    “What about the murder?” Dean asked. “Surely that was something more serious than simply trying to get her to leave town.”
    “True,” I said. I still wasn’t sure what to think about the murder. But, as a part of my own J.O.S.H.U.A. grant investigation, I knew I would have to find out if there was a connection between it and MORE.
    As Dean and Natalie talked, it soon became obvious that there was an additional issue here. For someone to steal files or tinker with the computer, they would need actual, physical access to those things. And who had access, I asked, except the employees of MORE?
    “Oh, Callie,” Natalie said, sitting back in her seat. “I had never considered that before.”
    “The last thing we need,” Dean said, frowning, “is someone inside the company who’s willing to sabotage our work and our reputation simply to get at one particular person. Perhaps you’re right, Callie. Perhaps the situation needs to be revisited in a new light.”
    “If I were you,” I agreed, “I would make a list of every person who was working for you when that all happened. Then you need to go through the list together, maybe ask some discreet questions, and see if you can’t narrow things down a bit. At some point, I think you need to produce a list of suspects, and you need to bring that information to the police.”
    Their faces seemed to register many emotions, but primarily disappointment. I had been involved in many corporate investigations where a trusted employee turned out to be a bad