Hank nudged Agatha with his elbow. She was frowning, and he could feel the tension in her. Jakes had been casual for the most part, but the arrival of extra agents had him upping the formality.
“Since Dr. Lawrence isn’t here, take a moment to look over the report, and I’ll answer questions or relay them to Dr. Lawrence.”
“No need,” Lawrence said, pushing into the room like a hurricane. “I’m here.”
Hank and Coil shared a look, and Coil just shook his head. For all his brilliance, Dr. Lawrence was a real dummy.
“What are you doing here?” Jakes demanded.
“Aren’t I part of the team?” Lawrence asked with a dejected look on his face. “I created the document, so it’s only fair that I explain it. Besides, I caught my second wind. Or maybe my third. I lost count.”
“In the meantime,” Jakes said. “Don’t stand downwind, because I’ve smelled corpses that have a better odor than you right now.”
“Well,” Lawrence huffed. “That was rude.”
“Run it down,” Jakes barked. “Then I order you to go shower and sleep. In that order.”
“I’m not sure you can order me,” Lawrence said, looking perplexed, but when Jakes growled and took a step forward, Lawrence waved the comment away. “I’ve confirmed the identity of each of the four victims recovered, but finding cause of death is going to take considerably more time. I need to clean the bones and then study them, but there are interesting markings on victim two that could have come from a bullet. I’ll swab and test the area.
“I’ve also spent a great deal of time looking at the documents. They’re really in quite good shape. The ink is faded some, but technology will help us with that. What we initially thought were bank journals are actually gaming ledgers.”
“Ahh,” Hank said. “Now that makes sense.”
“The ledgers ended not long after Prohibition did in December nineteen thirty-three,” Lawrence replied. “I guess they saw their enterprise going down the drain, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t amassed a lot of cash in the years prior. Whoever was holding onto the illegal earnings needed a place to hide the money before Elliot Ness and his infamous Untouchables seized it all. They were rounding people up left and right toward the end of Prohibition.”
“Wasn’t Elliot Ness busy chasing Al Capone?” Agatha asked.
“Capone was just one of many targets,” Lawrence explained, “but the Bureau of Prohibition continued investigating and making arrests and seizures until nineteen forty-four.”
Hank jumped a bit when Agatha pinched his triceps. She leaned into him and covered her mouth with a hand.
“I think this blows your theory that the Rattlers are involved in this,” she said. “You’re going to have to pay up.”
It ain’t over till it’s over,” Hank said.
“Are you whispering about me?” Lawrence asked, his look seething. “Everyone is being quite rude today. I’ll not stand for it any longer.”
“Despite what you might think,” Hank said. “You are not the center of everyone’s universe. So, feel free to keep going.”
“Oh, then clearly you have a theory since the two of you are huddled together whispering.” Lawrence took an aggressive step forward. “Please, delight us all with your brilliance.”
“I actually do have a theory,” Hank said. “But sharing it with you is not on my list of priorities, since the last time I checked, you weren’t in charge of the case.”
A crazy look came into Lawrence’s eyes and he let out an earsplitting shriek as he launched himself at Hank. Agatha just stared in wide-eyed horror as Lawrence’s face ran right into Hank’s fist. Lawrence dropped to the floor cold.
“Maybe he’ll finally get some sleep,” Hank said, rolling him over with the tip of his foot. “Best thing I could’ve done for him.”
“Would’ve been nice if you could’ve sprayed him with the hose first,” Coil said. “My carpet is going to smell terrible.”
Chapter Fourteen
Agatha settled back in the passenger’s seat as Hank steered them toward Fredericksburg. She enjoyed the ride. Lately, they hadn’t had much time alone to just talk. Hank always seemed to be more open to sharing how he felt when they drove. It was something about not having the eye to eye that allowed him to talk freely.
“You sure the Gurtz’s are going to meet with us?” Agatha asked.
“That’s what Coil said. Apparently, they’re as curious about their family history as we are, especially now that Emma’s remains have been recovered.”
“I’m sure it’s hard to find closure when there’s no body,” Hank said. “But I wonder how receptive they’re going to be when we start asking questions about the family fortune?”
“We’ll play that one by ear,” she said, and then closed her eyes to listen to the rest of her audiobook.
“What are you listening to?” Hank asked.
“A book.”
“What book?” he asked.
She sighed and took out her earbuds. “No book, because you won’t stop interrupting me.”
“Must be good,” Hank said, his mouth quirking at the growl in her throat.
“It is. Or it would be if you’d be quiet. Addison is just about to get into trouble.”
“Addison Holmes?” he asked. “By Liliana Hart?”
“You read her, too?” she asked.
“I love her J.J. Graves Mystery Series. It’s on the money, and you know how hard I am about my police procedural novels. I’ve read all her books.”
“Must be nice,” she said pointedly, and put her earbuds back in.
It wasn’t long before Hank slowed and turned into Golden Vistas Winery. The stone pillars and ornate iron gates were reminiscent of Tuscany, and the looming bed and breakfast was inviting.
“Beautiful,” Agatha said. “I can only imagine what it looks like when the vineyards are green and ripe with grapes. We’re past the season.”
They were met by an attendant who directed them to the south side of the property where there was a well-kept villa that was much smaller than the main house. An elderly woman waited outside to greet them. Her smile looked strained, but it wasn’t unfriendly.
“Ms. Gurtz?” Agatha asked as they got out of the car.
“It’s Gurtz-Shepherd now,” she said. “I’m guessing y’all are from the sheriff’s office?” She looked to be in her mid to late sixties. Her hair was white and hung in soft curls to her shoulders, her face was unashamedly weathered from her time spent in the sun, and she wore bright red lipstick.
“Yes, ma’am,” Agatha said. “I’m Agatha Harley, and this is my partner, Hank Davidson.”
Hank nodded. “Thank you for seeing us, ma’am.”
“Oh, you don’t have to ma’am me to death,” she said, smiling. “Just call me Emmy. Everyone does. I was named after her, you know.”
“No, ma’am,” Agatha said. “I mean, Emmy.”
“Y’all come on inside. There’s a chill in the air today.”
The office interior was purposefully rustic—exposed beams, square-head nails, and hand-scraped wooden floors.
“We’d given up hope of ever knowing what really happened to Emma,” Emmy said, taking a seat in a comfortable looking leather chair. She directed them to the matching couch across from her and they sat.
“Why’s that?” Agatha asked.
“You know how families are?” Emmy said. “Emma was the talk of the town back in the day, and even after the day if you know what I mean. Until she wasn’t. There was always talk about her. A woman as colorful as Emma was bound to cause talk, good and bad. But she was ours, and we’re grateful to her. Everything we have is because of her.”
“I understand,” Hank said. “We don’t have a cause of death, but extenuating circumstances surrounding how her body was discovered lead us to believe she didn’t die of natural causes.”
“Of course not,” Emmy said. “Girl disappears in her early twenties, never to be heard from again.
She’s either living the high life or she’s dead. No bones about it. I’m just glad we can put her to rest and give her a proper burial.”
“You said everything you have is because of her,” Agatha said. “She gave you this property?”
Emmy nodded. “It wasn’t always a vineyard. It started out as a field of oil derricks, but oil derricks don’t bring in tourism. It turns out the soil here is good for growing grapes, so here we are.”
“But Texas is oil country,” Agatha said.
“You still have oil being drilled,” Hank said.
“You bet,” she said. “And it’s going to keep drilling until the ground runs dry. It’s hard to see unless you look, and most of the tourist only see the acres of vineyards.”
“So how did Emma contribute to the legacy?” Agatha asked.
“All I know is what was passed down in our family, but you know how things get distorted, so who knows. We were always told she came here from San Antonio with a stack of property deeds that had all been transferred into her name. It was nothing to get your drilling permits stamped back then. No EPA breathing down your neck. Emma signed all the deeds to a family trust she had some lawyer friend create and named her parents as the executors. When she disappeared and there was no sign of her for several years, she was declared legally dead and her parents took control.”
“How did Emma get the deeds?” Hank asked.
“Said she won them in a card game,” Emmy said, shrugging. “Made sense to me, considering the kind of life she lived and the people she hung out with.”
“We did a little research on this land, and that’s the part we can’t figure out,” Hank said. Before she ended up with the deeds, this stretch of land was owned by seven different land owners, and they all signed their property over to Emma without any bill of sale.”
Emmy’s mouth pursed tightly, and Agatha could tell she didn’t like the direction this was going. But the reality was, all of the Gurtz property had been stolen, and the original owners had been put out on their cans after Emma ended up with their property.
Emma stood and walked to the door, holding it open for them. “I have no idea why people would gamble everything they have away, but they do it every day. Nothing much has changed there. I appreciate y’all coming out. Please let me know when her remains can be taken for burial.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Agatha said.
“May I ask you one question before we start back on our long drive?” Hank asked.
“You can, but I can’t promise I’ll answer.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Where is Mr. Shepherd? You did say your name was Gurtz-Shepherd?”
“We’re divorced,” she said, and closed the door in their faces.
They were in the car driving away before Agatha asked why he’d wanted to know that.
“This is a small community,” he said. “Even smaller back in the twenties and thirties, and the families who got their land stolen would have had to go somewhere. But chances are they didn’t go far. People just didn’t live outside of what was familiar to them back then. So, you have to imagine the people around here would be a bit resentful that one family has owned all of this for all this time, when the seven other families know it should’ve been theirs. Emmy has stories passed down from her family, you’d better believe the other seven have stories that have been passed down too.”
“I guess you’re right, but what does Shepherd have to do with this, and why now?”
“She said her name was Gurtz-Shepherd,” Hank said. “The hyphen wasn’t used back then, so why would she continue to use her ex-husband’s name?”
“How’d you know she was divorced?” Agatha asked.
He shrugged. “Traditional woman, but she wore no ring on her left hand. There was a small ring on her right hand that looked like a family heirloom, so she wasn’t averse to wearing jewelry. There wasn’t even a tan line or an indentation to show she’d worn a wedding band anytime recently.
“If you noticed, the pictures in her office were only her and two adult daughters. There was no husband in any of them.”
“Good point,” Agatha said.
“It was mostly just to rile her up,” Hank said with a chuckle. “I do not appreciate being kicked out like that. Especially when you could see she knew exactly what Emma had done to those people.”
“Now what?” she asked
“Now we go visit Mr. Shepherd. Because I bet he’s willing to tell the whole story.”
“Very impressive,” she said. “How about I track him down?”
“How about it,” Hank said.
A few minutes passed before Agatha said, “He’s not but a couple of miles from us.” And then she gave him the address.
Hank turned into the long driveway of a modest ranch called Circle S. A young man shot baskets in front of the garage. Hank parked the car and then introduced himself to the young man, showing him his badge. The young man ran inside, and it wasn’t too long before a man in his sixties came out the front door. He was beanpole thin and as tall as Hank, and his silver hair was full and luxurious. His belt buckle was so big, Agatha wondered how he was able to stand upright.
“Mr. Shepherd?” Hank asked.
“That’s me. You the police?”
“Yes, sir,” Hank said, showing his badge again.
Mr. Shepherd nodded. “Young William told me you were here to ask questions about the Gurtz winery.” And then he broke out into a grin. “Boy, have I got a story for you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Friday
Agatha made sure to wrap up before she left the house to head to the café. The days were getting cold enough that she’d dug out the North Face jacket she’d bought to go snow skiing several years before. The jacket was the only good thing to come out of that adventure.
A realtor was coming by later to look at her home. It was time. She still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about selling it, but she’d never know for sure unless she dipped her toe in the water. Maybe November wasn’t even a good month for listing a house, but who knew?
She hadn’t talked to Hank about it, but she didn’t want to say anything until she was completely sure she was going to sell it. Hank had talked about her moving in with him, but it hadn’t been brought up since the month before. And to be honest, she really wasn’t in favor of shacking up. She was still very much an old-fashioned girl, and living together wasn’t something she saw in her future.
She got to the café first and thought about her choices as she drank her first cup of coffee. She flipped through the emails that cluttered her inbox until she came upon one from her literary agent. Agatha had only been answering things that had been time sensitive or absolutely necessary, and she felt guilty about it because her agent was a good woman. The email headline read, Hollywood here we come! She just wasn’t as excited about things as her agent was.
“Mind if I sit?”
The voice startled her, and Agatha looked up. It was Jakes.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was lost in work emails. Please, sit.”
She looked to see if the others were behind him, but he was alone. He was so tall he had trouble wedging himself in the booth across from her, and he ended up sitting at an angle with his long legs propped up so he could see her and the door.
“I want to apologize to you,” Jakes said.
“For what?” she asked, surprised.
“He’s coming back,” Jakes said somberly.
Her heart stuttered in her chest, and she felt the air leave the room as fear took over. “Salt?” she asked, her voice weak.
“Who?” Jakes asked, confused, and then the lightbulb clicked. “Oh, no,” he assured her. “You made sure he’s never coming back. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She let out a shuddering breath as her lungs started working again.
“I meant Lawrence,” he said. “I know he’s been bothering you. Hank told me y’all have a history.”
“We were engaged,” Agatha sa
id. “And Lawrence is at best an annoyance. But he’s brilliant at his job. Besides, I’ve got Hank, and Hank has a mean right hook.”
Jakes laughed. “Yes, he does. He clocked him cold. We got Lawrence settled in at the motel and let him sleep it off for about twenty hours. So, he’s fresh and back on duty. I just wanted to give you the heads up.”
“I appreciate it,” she said. “But I’m good.”
“Hank’s a great guy,” Jakes said. “A good cop and a good friend. He looks happy around you. I’m glad for it.”
Agatha knew Jakes connection to Hank’s wife being murdered, and she could appreciate the emotional past they had together.
“I’m glad for it too,” she said.
“There room for two more?” Hank asked, coming up to the table.
“No, but we could move to a table,” Jakes said, pointing toward the front of the café.
They all shuffled to the new table and the waitress brought their drinks and menus.
“I hear the two of you had a very interesting conversation last night,” Coil said once they’d ordered.
“That we did,” she said. “Mr. Shepherd had been waiting to unload for years, but there was never anyone willing to listen to him.”
“Think it was legit?” Jakes asked.
“As accurate as memory can be,” Agatha said. “But fortunately, he had the written records. In a nutshell, Fredericksburg in the twenties was nothing more than hard land to farm. The area wasn’t optimum for plowing, and although the Great Depression was still a few years away, the town lived in a state of economic turmoil.”
“Shepherd said they were so poor that no one in the town knew there was a depression going on in the rest of the world,” Hank added.
“Apparently the Gurtz family—that would be Emma’s parents—had oil men sent by the church scouting everyone’s property on the sly. They discovered oil across that huge swatch of land, and that’s when the plan started to form. Emma Gurtz began to swindle everyone into signing over their mineral rights.”
Gone With The Sin (Book 8) (A Harley and Davidson Mystery) Page 6
