All My Exes Live in Texas

by Aimee Gilchrist

Aodhagan's mouth pressed. "You're right. We haven't seen that."

  Her head cocked. "Do you want to?"

  Letting out a slow breath, he leaned forward. "Okay, I'll play. Here's what we've found. Carl left all his money in his will to a cat sanctuary in Houston. As far as we can tell, no one in his family knew this was his plan. We don't know why this was a choice he made, and no one else does either, including the woman who owns the sanctuary. At present, he was considering selling Crowe Appliances to a conglomerate in New York. For the most part, his family did seem aware of that. Except Vi. She seemed surprised when we told her."

  Connie exchanged glances with her henchmen. "Very interesting."

  "The head of security told us that Carl had a propensity for sleeping with his employees. Pretty much all of them, the younger the better, though he seemed to be less particular about gender than he was about age."

  Her eyebrows arched delicately. "I see. We did hear that he could be…aggressive. I didn't realize how wide his interests were. Go on."

  Shaking his head, he crossed his arms over his chest. "We haven't gotten much more that we're inclined to share at the moment. Do you have the reports now?"

  Lips pressed, Connie dug through her bag before producing two reports. She handed them to Aodhagan speechlessly. He handed me one and started flipping through the other. Connie was visibly surprised by that action. She was willing to talk in front of me, even though she knew I didn't work for Aodhagan. That openness clearly didn't translate to me reading reports.

  I ignored her disapproval and turned my attention to Carl's autopsy. As with the others I had seen, the autopsy report was curiously dry. An entire life boiled down to a few words on a paper. This was why I was a true crime author and not a coroner, my complete lack of medical training aside. I didn't particularly care how someone died if I didn't also know how they lived. That kind of information just wasn't available in a document like this one. Carl was a nearly seventy-year-old man with an enlarged liver, spleen, and heart, who had died instantly from a single stab wound between the C3 and C4 vertebrae, which stopped transporting any messages from the brain and the rest of the body. He had bad lungs, likely as a result of a lifetime of smoking. He had skin cancer he probably hadn't been aware of yet. The murder weapon was a small and slender blade, maybe even a pocketknife.

  I couldn't imagine being killed with a pocketknife. It seemed so…ignominious. Hey, I'm a giant of a man who thinks I own the world. Oops, I was just felled by a Boy Scout. Aodhagan glanced at me, and we wordlessly traded reports. I could make less sense of the toxicology report. I didn't understand what most of the shorthand meant. But I could tell that Carl had been drunk. Well past the legal limit. Other than that, the rest was pretty much a mystery. When we were finished, Aodhagan set the results on the table.

  "I'm sure you're aware that every member of the Crowe Appliances team, save Leslie, Jackson, and the children, have a history in the medical field?" Aodhagan asked.

  Connie nodded.

  "So it could have been anyone, if medical training was really a must, but I also think it's possible that this was some kind of a lesser aggression that was accidentally in the right place to kill him. Any one of them could have been responsible for such a relatively minor act of aggression if it had hit anywhere else on his back."

  "I wonder how well he held his liquor," I mused. "He was drunk, but was he drunk enough not to care who was directly behind him? It would take a lot for me to just let someone hang around behind me."

  Connie scooped up the papers. "Good point. It's so dismissive, isn't it? To turn your back on someone? Especially if you had been in the middle of a discussion. I can imagine how angry that might make a person."

  I could too. What I couldn't imagine was stabbing someone over it, but I wasn't being sexually harassed, stolen from, and cheated on by a guy like Carl Crowe. Who knew what I would have been capable of after years of that kind of abuse? Carl seemed like the type who could inspire a little bit of assault.

  Aodhagan's phone rang. He held up a finger and answered, greeting Junior. He listened, eyebrows furrowing. "Yes, I see. I'll be there in ten minutes. Okay, bye." He stood. "I'm going to have to chase you away. We've got Birdwell business."

  It was easy to tell how much Connie wanted to demand to know what the Birdwell business was, but she restrained herself and said goodbye, joining us in leaving the house. They drove away, and I hesitated at the door to his Range Rover. "I didn't ask if you wanted me to go."

  The expression on his face clearly suggested that it wasn't even a question worth asking. "Of course I want you to go. I always want you to go." He said it like it was a given, and it was information I wasn't sure what to do with. Always? If it was truly always, he was the first person, ever, who actually wanted me around all the time. And I was pretty sure that wasn't just because I'd let him touch my boobs earlier.

  They weren't that impressive.

  I got into the car and decided not to bother trying to unravel the enormity of that statement to me, which probably meant little to him. I spent the whole drive thinking about it though. It was probably just the way I was raised, like I was good for nothing but standing there and looking pretty, that made the whole thing a surprise. Whatever it was, Aodhagan always made me feel wanted in a way that had nothing to do with sex. And that made him singular in my book.

  I spent so long thinking about it that I never bothered to ask where we were going. I was surprised to discover we were pulling into a large field surrounded by a chain link fence. The metal sign hanging from the fence told me the name and number of the construction and planning company, as well as the fact this was the future home of a Crowe Appliances factory. There were large pieces of construction equipment moving dirt around the enclosure, and a full crew of strange men was present. I stared for a long time.

  "Boy, they weren't kidding about building this factory as soon as possible."

  Aodhagan shook his head. We parked outside of the gate next to the Crowe's Cadillac SUV and got out, surveying the work area.

  I decided to venture a question. "What are we doing here?"

  "I'm not sure. Junior said he'd heard some serious fighting going on. I don't know who it was or why they were fighting, but frankly, I just wanted out of that conversation with Connie, so I jumped anyway."

  I nodded. "That's legit."

  He eyed the workers again. "Okay, let's go."

  A man in brown overalls stopped us immediately inside the gate, flipping out about how we weren't allowed to be there and then flipping out even more when Aodhagan flashed his favorite new toy, the badge. Just FYI, it would have been mine as well, if the option were available. People were just so obedient when you had one of those.

  "Well, you can't come in here, cops or not, until you suit up."

  I had no idea what suiting up entailed, and I wasn't one hundred percent sure I wanted to. I felt like I was entering Chernobyl.

  Daisy bounded down from the red trailer a few feet to our left, flush with the fence. She was wearing a hard hat and safety glasses and had hard hats in each hand. She greeted us effusively like she wasn't the slightest bit curious why we were there, and it was possible she really wasn't. She knew Birdwell revolved around Aodhagan. He could have been there for any penal or mayoral reason.

  "You'll need these." She handed one to each of us. "Oh, and these." She reached into the pocket of her bright yellow vest and pulled out two pairs of safety glasses, doing the same.

  "We don't plan to, you know, build anything," I objected. Actually, for all I knew, Aodhagan did plan to build something. It sounded like the kind of crap he would do.

  Daisy laughed delightedly. "You just have to honor safety rules to even be on an active property. Come on, we can go into the trailer. You can take them off if you aren't outside."

  We followed her up the unstable steps, which she bounded like they were not, and into the trailer. It was cold inside. We banged our shoes against the doorframe, trying to dis
lodge the clumps of mud left by last night's storm. When I felt I'd done the best I could, I followed the others inside the frigid room. The furniture was serviceable—the carpet was industrial and blue. It looked exactly like I would have pictured a construction trailer would look, had I ever given it any thought, which I certainly never had. There were two unfamiliar women typing at two Swedish desks. The only Crowe inside was James.

  "So, what can we do for you guys?" Daisy chirped, clasping her hands together.

  "We heard from one of my deputies that someone was reporting some major arguing going on up here. Can you identify who it might have been?"

  She seemed completely befuddled by the question. It was possible she didn't know who was fighting or she didn't know why the cops would come just because people were arguing loudly. If it was the latter, she clearly wasn't used to being in Birdwell yet. I'd seen Aodhagan go on the stupidest calls on earth, including, but not restricted to, the time Joe Don Audbergen, possibly Birdwell's dumbest resident, had stolen everyone's dogs to get into a reporter's pants and the time Thelma Sue called him down to complain that Edna Mae Cullen didn't like her haircut. Because that was a worthy use of police time. Of course, that had quickly deteriorated as Edna Mae, who was one of Birdwell's many octogenarians, cut back that she should have called the cops herself to report the murder of her hair by Thelma Sue. And then there were just angry beehives fluttering all over the place while they hopped around each other like they weren't in danger of breaking a hip.

  Daisy shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to. I've only been here twenty minutes."

  An audible sigh drew our eyes in James's direction. "That was me and Robert. Sorry."

  Aodhagan and I exchanged a glance. "Is there a place we can talk?" he asked James.

  Mouth pressed, James nodded and indicated we should follow him. He led us into a small office off the main room. It looked exactly like the main room, except scaled way down. "We can talk in here. Is it normal for the cops to show up when people are fighting?"

  Aodhagan's dimples flashed. "It is in Birdwell. What were you and Robert fighting about?"

  I could tell that James was considering not answering. I took him in carefully. He didn't look good. He was still ridiculously handsome, but he was a mess. His clothes were wrinkled, and his shirt was untucked. There were smudges under his vivid baby blues. It could have been that he was taking his father's death hard. It could be that guilt was a bitch. We couldn't know yet.

  Aodhagan's posture told me that the only reason we were here was he wanted to ask questions. I did too. The call from Junior was just a convenient excuse.

  Finally James shrugged. "We were fighting about what to do now that Dad is dead. He meant for Robert to be in charge, and I'm not denying that. But I'm in favor of selling. I think that's what Dad wanted to do, and frankly, I don't want the company. I'd love to see us sell and split the money and go our separate ways."

  I cocked my head. "So you knew about the sale?"

  He nodded. "Sure, we all do. Except for Vi and the boys. I think he was trying to protect them, which usually just translated to him patronizing them, but there it is."

  "So now Robert doesn't want to sell?" I asked.

  James shrugged. "He never wanted to. He was fighting Dad about it. He wants us to live and die by Crowe Appliances."

  "But you want to be a nurse," Aodhagan said.

  James was clearly startled that we had that information. "A PA, actually. But if you're a Crowe, appliances are what you do. It's been that way since the early nineteen hundreds. Basically since appliances were a thing. It's a wide world out there. If you aren't a Crowe."

  Aodhagan and I exchanged another glance. If Robert didn't want to sell a company that had been in the family over a century and he couldn't change Carl's mind, that was a pretty darn good motive for murder.

  Aodhagan leaned in closer to James. "Were you aware that your father left all his liquid assets to a cat sanctuary in Houston?"

  The expression on his face made it very clear that he had not been. "What? Why would he do that?"

  That was an excellent question we still didn't have an answer to, but I hoped that Connie would come back with that information. As much as I didn't like her, she had resources that we didn't. Those might include figuring out the connection between Carl and Little Beans.

  James was clearly not fronting about not being aware. He looked like he'd been punched in the face. He sat in a chair and ran a hand over his face so hard he dragged his features. "If he'd managed to sell, we would have been left with nothing."

  Aodhagan nodded. "That sounds like a pretty good motive for murder, wouldn't you say?"

  Again, he appeared startled by the question. I was pretty sure he'd mostly checked out. He looked like he'd been on the edge of a breakdown before. Now he looked like a slight breeze could end it all.

  "I guess. But if anyone knew about all this, I am not aware of it. I certainly didn't know. I don't know who in our family would have even been capable of keeping their mouths shut if they knew."

  Actually, that was a statement I believed. I'd met the Crowes before.

  "Why did you think someone killed your dad?" Aodhagan asked gently, and I knew from his behavior, he didn't suspect James.

  James shook his head. "I mean, he was kind of known for his harassment of everyone, male and female, he thought he could force into a compromising position. And he was a jerk, you know. I couldn't stand him, but you know, now I feel bad." He made a noise that sounded like a combination of a laugh and a cry, and I felt for him. "I hated him, and now I miss him."

  "I'm sorry," Aodhagan said, and he sounded truly sorry. It wasn't a put on, I knew. Aodhagan cared about other people. More than he probably should have. It had gotten him where he was now. Which wasn't even where he wanted to be.

  James shook his head as if that could rid him of all his confusion and unexpected grief. "I think Vi killed him, if you're asking me. I think they hated each other. And she certainly would have been motivated to stop him if she somehow got wind of the will and the sale and the fact she was getting ready to lose everything if he didn't die before the sale went through."

  "Did you anticipate getting money?" I asked, because Aodhagan was in sympathetic mode.

  Shrugging, James pushed a hand through his hair. "I guess I thought I would get something, but I never gave it much thought. I just wanted to get away. I'll still go. When I can."

  I believed him. Some people were amazing actors, but I didn't read him for one. He seemed truly destroyed. "Then why are you so upset to discover he planned to leave you with nothing?" I asked almost gently. I did feel bad for James.

  He shook his head. "Because it just means…I mean, why did he hate us so much?" The question was barely whispered. My heart wrenched in my chest.

  I wished I had something to offer him. I still wasn't good at sympathy, but he certainly needed some. I searched my brain for who was best at that, and Cindy Lou was the immediate answer. I wasn't sure what good it would do, but James needed someone to talk to. Someone who wasn't a Crowe. Cindy Lou was a viable option for sure. I would order some food to be sent to them and make sure that Cindy Lou delivered it herself.

  "I'm very sorry for your loss," Aodhagan told him again. "Truly."

  James nodded, still looking like he'd been hit with an emotional Mac truck.

  "Are any other members of your family here today?" I asked.

  He blinked hard. "Robert was here, of course. I don't know if he still is. And I think Leslie is around somewhere too. I thought she was going to start interviews later today."

  "Thanks. Again, sorry for your loss," Aodhagan told him, his sincerity shining through. It didn't matter if James hated his father—he was still his father. That kind of loss hurt.

  James just nodded, still clearly not processing as quickly as he normally would have. We left the office and returned our safety gear to our bodies, heading out to look for Rober
t and Leslie.

  A part of me expected them to be together, being as they were married and all and working on a strange site with people they didn't know, but when we found Leslie, she was alone in a very small trailer on the other side of the large lot. It was like the previous trailer in mini form. It even had the same carpet. She likely needed quiet to do interviews in her position as the head of Human Resources. She seemed unduly startled by our arrival. Clearly she wasn't the kind of person who expected her husband to drop in just because they were in the same place.

  Aodhagan greeted her and reminded her we were the police, of a fashion, because apparently I'd been deputized at some point I wasn't aware of. She seemed completely freaked still, like the startling moment of our arrival wasn't fading for her. It took a minute, because I was not actually a cop, to realize it was probably because we were there in an ostensibly official law enforcement capacity. And that made her a little suspicious in my book. Then again, she probably hadn't previously had the experience of being questioned in a murder. It was starting to be old hat for us.

  Aodhagan asked if we could sit, and I was almost certain it was in an attempt to calm her down. She hesitated and then, without a word, pointed at the two plastic and metal chairs in front of her desk. None of us spoke for a few seconds.

  Finally, Aodhagan took the initiative. "We're so sorry about your father-in-law."

  Again, she seemed shocked by the words. Was she on something? A little Xanax would have explained her dazed behavior, and I certainly would have supported her in that choice, though I was hoping she hadn't driven herself. I was less reliant since moving to Birdwell, but Xanax and I had certainly been best friends before.

  "Are you okay?" Aodhagan asked.

  She paused then shook her head. "Its fine," she said, totally defying the movement of her head, her crisp English accent slightly slurred. "I'm just on some anxiety meds. It's all been…" She waved a hand around. "Overwhelming."

  Ah, so it probably was my buddy Xanax after all. She also was probably taking too much. But again, I couldn't fault her, really. She was married to a Crowe. That alone would have rocketed my anxiety through the roof, not even considering the murder. Then again, it was possible she was anxiety ridden about getting caught.