“No,” Lance said. His father had hidden that well.
“Do you remember your father being depressed?” the sheriff asked.
“No,” Lance answered.
“Kids don’t always know what’s really going on with their parents.” The sheriff leaned back and crossed his arms.
Discomfort swam around in Lance’s chest. Where was the sheriff going with his questions?
King turned to Sharp. “Your original reports mentioned that Vic was upset, depressed about his wife’s deteriorating mental health.”
Sharp nodded.
“Mary Fox had a prior arrest for soliciting.” The sheriff scrutinized their faces, one at a time. “But I suspect you already knew that.”
Discomfort curled Lance’s fingers into fists. Next to him, Morgan must have felt his tension building. She pressed her leg against his, a silent plea for him to cool it.
“Where are you going with these questions, Sheriff?” she asked.
Sheriff King straightened. “Once we cleared the mud from the vehicle, we found a brick on the floor on the driver’s side, as if someone had used it to jam the gas pedal down so the car would drive into the lake all by itself.”
Lance’s gut twisted. He wanted the sheriff to get to the point, but his mouth would not form words. He felt like King was toying with him, leading him along, like a cow being coaxed into the slaughterhouse. They all knew Mary hadn’t driven the car into the lake.
“Yesterday, the dive team scanned the lake bottom where we found the car. They found no other remains.” The sheriff leaned forward, his elbows hitting the table. “You’re sure you haven’t heard from your father over the years?”
“What?” Shock freed Lance’s voice. “No.”
“How about your mother?” King interlaced his fingers. “Are you sure she hasn’t heard from him?”
“Yes.” Lance’s spine snapped straight.
“I’m giving this to you.” The sheriff pulled a folded paper from his pocket and dropped it on the table. “These are the things I’d like from your mother. Either you get them for me, or I’ll be forced to go to her.” His big hand settled on top of the page. “I’m doing my best to be considerate of her fragility, but I can’t let it undermine the investigation.”
Morgan beat Lance to the paper. He kept his eyes on the sheriff while she unfolded and read it. “He wants the last twelve months of your mother’s e-mail and phone records.”
“My mother is a victim here.” Anger replaced Lance’s unease.
The sheriff held up a hand to cut him off. “Here’s what I think might have happened. Your dad was depressed and lonely. He turned to Mary for comfort, maybe even paid for it. But she was known for being less than kind. Maybe Mary threatened to tell your mother. Maybe Vic strangled her, put her in his trunk, and sent his car into Grey Lake. Maybe that’s why your father left town, never to be seen again. And if Vic is alive, I also have to wonder if he’s contacted your mother over the years.”
Lance surged to his feet. Morgan had him by the arm on one side, Sharp on the other.
Morgan was whispering in his ear. Her tone was calming, but Lance couldn’t hear the words over the roar of fury in his head.
She shoved her way in front of Lance, blocking him with her body. “This interview is over, Sheriff.”
“My father was a victim.” But Lance’s voice was strained. Could the sheriff be right? How much did Lance really remember about his dad? Some of his memories had already been proven false.
“Will you call your mother about these records or should I?” the sheriff asked.
“I’ll do it.” Lance forced the words out of his locked jaws.
The sheriff’s posture eased and his tired eyes gleamed with satisfaction. He didn’t retreat from his position or his statement. “I think your father skipped town because he’d committed murder. Now I need to know if your mother was an accomplice.”
Lance wasn’t sure how he left the sheriff’s station. Suddenly, he was outside. The sun broke through the clouds, blinding him.
Morgan took his arm and led him across the parking lot. “Your mother doesn’t have to comply with the sheriff’s request. He doesn’t have a search warrant, nor does he have the grounds to get one.”
“She’ll give him whatever he wants, and he knows it.” Lance put both his hands on his head. “He’ll tell her not providing the information will slow his investigation. But giving him access to her personal records will upset her.”
His mother wanted nothing more than to find the truth. She’d been waiting more than two decades to move on with her life.
“You can go for a power of attorney and block him from seeing her,” Morgan said.
Lance shook his head. “I’d have to convince her psychiatrist that Mom is incompetent at the same time that she’s been making improvement with her new therapist. It won’t fly. And she would feel that I’d betrayed her.”
And that would hurt her more in the long run than anything the sheriff could do.
“Then let her comply.” Morgan stopped next to his vehicle. “He won’t find anything. He’s just spinning his wheels.”
Lance swallowed a lump of anger the size of a volleyball in his throat. If Morgan hadn’t dragged him out of King’s office, he might have taken a swing at the sheriff and ended up spending the night in jail. Losing control would help no one.
But was he losing his shit because the sheriff’s theory was way off base?
Or because it was all too logical?
Sharp came out of the building and crossed the parking lot. “The sheriff is a dick. You want to get even with the SOB? Let’s find out what happened to your dad before he does. King will never get over it.”
Lance breathed. Angry air hissed out of his chest. “As much as I don’t want to, I can follow the evidence to the sheriff’s theory that my father killed Mary. In fact, if I wasn’t too close to the case, I would have already considered it. But to suggest my mother conspired with him is too much.”
“Your mother did nothing wrong, and she will be fine,” Sharp said. “She’ll send him copies of her e-mail and phone records. Hell, she’s better than any forensic computer tech I’ve ever worked with. Even if she had been in contact with your dad, the sheriff would never find the evidence in her permanent records. All communication would have been routed through some village in Turkey.”
Lance paced a tight circle in front of his Jeep. His mother was in no danger from Sheriff King. Right?
“I might not have been right about my parents’ relationship when I was ten,” Lance said. “But I know that my mother hasn’t been in contact with my dad since that night.”
“Of course she hasn’t.” Sharp waved off his comment. “The whole line of inquiry is ridiculous. Unfortunately, it makes me think the sheriff is desperate, and that he doesn’t have squat in evidence or leads to follow.”
“Did the background checks reveal anything useful?” Sharp asked Lance.
Lance looped a hand around the back of his neck. The hours he’d spent online the previous night had given him a stiff neck. “Brian and Stan both have multiple mortgages on their homes. Stan is the more leveraged of the two by far.”
“Brian had a sports car in his garage,” Morgan said. “Maybe he has other expensive toys. Stan has a big house, a Mercedes, and expensive furnishings. But as a partner in an established accounting firm, I’d think he’d be able to afford those things.”
“Maybe the firm has problems,” Lance said.
“It’s worth a deeper dive,” Sharp agreed.
“Then let’s get to work,” Morgan said. “Lance and I will talk to Crystal Fox’s neighbor.”
Sharp nodded. “I’ll go to PJ’s when it opens this afternoon and see if I can track down anyone who knew Mary. I’ll see what I can dig up on Stan Adams’s accounting firm as well.” He headed for his car.
Morgan held her hand out for Lance’s keys. “I’ll drive. You are too angry to get behind the wheel.”
Lance dropped his keys in her palm. They climbed into the Jeep. Lance called his mother and explained what the sheriff wanted. He didn’t elaborate on the whys of the request. “I’ll stop by later and pick up the documents,” he told her.
She sounded confused but steady as she agreed. He lowered the phone.
“Was she upset?” Morgan glanced at him.
“I don’t even know anymore.” He leaned his head against the seat. He could tell Morgan wanted to talk. She was desperate to help, to share his burden and lend him some of her tremendous strength. But Lance was unable to process any more emotion. So he took the cowardly way out. He closed his eyes and didn’t say another word until they arrived at the farmhouse down the road from Crystal Fox’s house.
Morgan parked on the shoulder of the road.
Lance lifted his head. The farmhouse sagged under the weight of its history. The structure seemed wobbly and precarious, as if the removal of one cinder block from its foundation would bring the whole building crashing down like a giant Jenga tower.
“Looks like the kind of place where the residents cook meth in a shed.” He scanned the tall weeds that surrounded the property. The carcass of a barn, its timbers exposed like the ribcage of a skeleton, lay behind the house. “Maybe this is a mistake.”
A low throb started in Lance’s leg. The memory of approaching another rural house with an abandoned air hovered in the periphery of his mind, the way a predator hides in the shadows. He surveyed the windows, looking for movement but saw nothing.
No shifting of a curtain. No silhouette of a man. No rifle barrel.
No criminal waiting to shoot him in the leg and nearly kill him.
“We’re just going to ask a few questions,” Morgan said.
He rubbed his leg. He’d been shot approaching a front door to ask some simple questions. He shook off the memory of lying on the grass, bleeding out, but his bullet scar continued to ache. “Maybe you should wait in the car.”
“No one answers the door when you knock.” Morgan got out of the vehicle.
Lance followed her to stand in front of the Jeep. “Sure they do.”
She shook her head. “You don’t look casual. You still look like a cop. You intimidate people.”
He glanced down at his clothing. Black cargos, T-shirt, leather jacket. “This is casual.”
“Sure. For a SWAT team. It wouldn’t matter what you wore. You just have that look in your eyes, and your muscles bulge out all over.” Shielding her eyes with one hand, she surveyed the house. “Looks abandoned to me, but tax records say the house belongs to Elijah Jackson. He must be related to Ricky Jackson.”
Which made the meth lab even more likely.
“There’s only one way to find out.” She walked toward the porch.
Lance tamped down his emotional turmoil as he refocused on the house. Ripped screens covered the windows. A gust of wind blew through a set of rusty wind chimes. The high-pitched metallic pings lifted goose bumps on Lance’s arms.
He checked his weapon and tucked Morgan behind him as they walked up the driveway and approached the sagging porch.
“Watch yourself.” He steered her around a hole in the porch step.
Moving away from him, Morgan raised a hand to knock on the door. Lance tugged her to stand behind the doorframe.
He whispered in her ear, “Never stand dead center.”
In case someone shoots through the door.
Despite the cold air, sweat dripped down the center of his back. His senses went on high alert, and his bullet scar itched with the intensity of an electrical current.
Or an instinct.
An early warning system designed for survival.
Standing to one side, Morgan knocked on the door. Something moved inside. A thump and a scrape sounded behind the door. Then another.
Thump. Scrape.
Lance’s hand inched toward the weapon on his hip as the door creaked open.
Chapter Nineteen
Morgan edged in front of Lance, who looked ready to shoot the homeowner. The door opened two inches and hit the end of the chain lock on the other side. The eye that looked through the gap was blue and rheumy. Next to her, Lance removed his hand from the butt of his gun. His body didn’t exactly relax, but he was longer poised to rush the door.
“Mr. Jackson?” She smiled.
“Who are you?” the old man asked.
Morgan introduced herself and Lance and offered her business card through the gap above the door handle.
The old man took it. A few seconds later, he squinted at Lance. “You look like a policeman.”
“No, sir. I’m a private investigator,” Lance said.
“What do you want?” Mr. Jackson asked.
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” Morgan explained.
The old man grunted. The door closed. Metal scraped, and the door opened fully.
“I’m Elijah Jackson.” He was at least seventy-five, likely closer to eighty, and leaned with both hands on a four-pronged cane. A body that had once been tall and strong now bowed under a lifetime of hard work and disappointment. “If you’re defending Ricky and you want money, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Do you know Ricky Jackson?” Morgan asked.
“He’s my grandson.” Mr. Jackson nodded. “The sheriff was here last night.”
“I’m sorry,” Morgan said.
“Me too.” Mr. Jackson shuffled backward a few steps and motioned them to enter the house. “I need to sit down. This damp cold is hard on my arthritis.”
Morgan and Lance wiped their feet on a rag rug and stepped into a wood-floored foyer. The old farmhouse was falling down, but the inside was tidy. There were none of the dust-and-fur bunnies that bred in the corners of Morgan’s house.
Mr. Jackson led the way down a narrow hall to a huge, old kitchen. A fire crackled in the adjoining living room. A picture window overlooked a weedy barnyard. Rickety wire fencing encircled a chicken coop. Inside the enclosure, a dozen hens scratched at the dirt. A second fenced-and-cleared rectangle held neat rows of plants.
He gestured toward a scarred oak table. Morgan and Lance sat at ladder-backed chairs while Mr. Jackson filled a teakettle and set it on the stove.
“I’m out of coffee, but I still have some tea,” Mr. Jackson said.
“We already had our breakfast, but thank you anyway.” Morgan couldn’t take one of this poor old man’s last tea bags.
She rested her forearms on the tabletop. The gray-brown surface was worn smooth from decades of plates and elbows and scrub rags. In the center of the room, a butcher-block island held a basket of brown eggs. Chipped ceramic bowls held carrots, beets, kale, and brussels sprouts. A large stainless-steel pressure canner on the stove and a line of mason jars suggested Mr. Jackson was getting ready to preserve his harvest.
“If you’re looking for bail money for my grandson, I don’t have anything left. He’s bled me dry.” Perched on a stool, Mr. Jackson leaned his cane on the island, picked up a vegetable peeler, and began scraping the skin from a fat carrot. “I took him in when my son got hooked on drugs and disappeared. I fed the boy. I clothed him. I tried to teach him some sense. But he’s just like his daddy. All he can think about is drugs.” He shook his head. “That heroin will be the end of this country. I bailed him out twice. He’s taken every dollar I have. If it weren’t for my chickens and my garden, I’d starve. Before he left last night, he emptied my wallet. I guess it wasn’t enough. Miss Fox wasn’t much of a neighbor, but there isn’t much lower a human can sink than stealing from a dead woman.”
Unless it was stealing from his own elderly grandfather.
“I’m not representing Ricky,” Morgan said.
Mr. Jackson tossed the naked carrot into an empty bowl and started peeling another. “Then why are you here?”
“How well did you know Crystal?” Morgan asked.
“She lived up the road as long as I can remember.” Mr. Jackson shrugged. “We were
neighbors, but I wouldn’t say we were close. Crystal had her problems.”
“Do you remember when her daughter disappeared?” Morgan asked.
“I do. Mary wasn’t any better than her mother.” Mr. Jackson attacked the next carrot. “My Gracie, God rest her soul, was a hell of a woman. A lot of people go to church, but my Gracie, she walked the good walk.” Sadness wrinkled his tanned face. “Anyway, I remember this one time that Gracie heard Crystal had lost her job at the five-and-dime. Knowing Crystal had a teenager to feed, Gracie took her some eggs and a casserole. Crystal told her to mind her own you-know-what business and shut the door in her face.” His wrinkles hardened. “After that, I had no time for Crystal. No one should’ve treated my Gracie that way. She was only trying to help.”
“So you haven’t seen Crystal lately?” Morgan asked.
“I’ve seen her long enough to wave as she drove by. We didn’t talk. Grace would be disappointed in me, but polite distance was all I could muster for Crystal.” He paused. “If you want to know what Crystal was doing lately, you should talk to Abigail Wright. She plays the organ for the church. She also owns the Roadside Motel out on Route 99. Crystal worked there.”
“Do you have Ms. Wright’s phone number or address?” Lance asked.
Something outside the window caught Mr. Jackson’s attention. He dropped his peeler and carrot, grabbed his cane, and moved toward the back door as fast as he could shuffle.
“What is it?” Lance was on his feet, his body shifting back into ready.
“Damned fox is after my chickens.” Mr. Jackson flung open the back door and rushed out. Tripping on a loose floorboard, he nearly fell on his face.
Lance caught him and set him on his feet. “Let me.”
Morgan followed the men onto the back porch. A flash of orange disappeared into the tall weeds around the property.
“I’m down to twelve hens. A hawk took one last week. She was one of my best layers.” Mr. Jackson leaned on his cane. “I trade with some of my other neighbors. Eggs and vegetables for bread and bacon.”
Morgan couldn’t imagine how he managed to tend his garden and care for his chickens when he could barely walk.
Bones Don't Lie (Morgan Dane Book 3) Page 12
