" I told your father you were milking his account with McKendry. What was Sparks holding over you?" Beall asked, and then suddenly he was sure. "Did h... know about the Clagetts?"Brookes shifted his chair around so he faced away from Beall and into the fireplace. The poker stopped moving in his hands."Why'd you kill those people, James?" That was a mistake, an accident. Sparks and I, well you know, I visited Beth, and he, well, she, no, I..." Brookes said toward the banked fire, his head. He left the room, and Shari sat on the edge of her bed, thinking about what she would say to her father when he finally confronted her.But he didn't say anything about it for days. Maybe he's just going to let it drop, she thought. After all, her father wasn't an old fart. He was only about forty, very trim and good- looking himself, with dashing grey temples and a square jaw. Women found him wildly attractive.He would understand how Shari and John had simply been unable to stop themselves.. At night she would sleep in her hopefully warm sleeping bag right on my doorstep. Thus went Sunday. Monday morning I called into work to leave a message that I wouldn’t be coming into work that day, or probably the next, but was told by my Admin Assistant that ‘Mr. Edwards had already called the President of my company asking to ‘borrow me for a critical project for a week or two’ and he had faxed an offer for our company to handle a couple of ‘minor subcontracts’ that would nearly double our. Thompson, there is a small problem with your account. Your credit card has been declined.”“That isn’t possible.”“I’m sure it is a simple mistake. You may use my office to call the credit card company and resolve it.”I called the credit card company and learned that there had been a number of charges on my account over the last 5 days. I insisted that they were fraudulent charges, but the bank informed me that since the charges were “overseas” they would take 10 to 15 business days to resolve..