by Jill Sanders
“Part of me wants to deny it right away, but another voice somewhere in my head says there’s a possibility.” She sighed slowly. “What do I know? I had been with Isaac for years and never would have thought that he would cheat on me.”
He nodded. “It’s a hit below the belt.” He sat next to her. “When I found out about Ann, it was as if my entire world, everything I’d believed in, was turned upside down.”
She turned slightly so they were facing each other on the sofa. “Right. I mean, somehow, him dying wasn’t as bad as finding out that he’d cheated on me and lied to me. How is that even possible?” She shook her head.
He took her hand in his. “Deceit is harder to deal with. It’s the fact that you put your trust in someone, only to find out after the fact that they swindled it from you. When I think back on all the times there was a question in my mind about Ann, and how she soothed those fears of mine away…” He turned and looked into the fire, remembering some of those moments and still feeling the hurt and pain of it even after almost three years. “That’s what’s hardest. It took me a while after the divorce to start trusting people again. I still struggle with it at times.”
“I wouldn’t even know how to begin to lie to someone.” She leaned back. “My mother always told me you can read my lies in my eyes.” She smiled. “Jenny and Hunter always agreed with her. I suppose Jenny always knew when I was lying because she was older, but Hunter…” She chuckled. “He has never fallen for anything I tried to put past him.”
“It must be nice to have siblings.”
“Sometimes.” She smiled. “It was just me and Jenny for a long time. After our father died, Mom had to work two jobs, so Jenny was more of a babysitter than a sister. Our mother met and married Hunter’s father, Bill, when Hunter and I were nine years old. Because we’re the same age, we just sort of grew closer than Jenny and I ever were.” She smiled as the memory of finding out she was getting a brother surfaced.
“You’re still close now.” It was a statement instead of a question since he’d witnessed firsthand how they acted around one another. Almost like twins instead of stepsiblings.
“Yes.” She smiled and propped her feet up on the sofa. He picked them up and started rubbing her toes, which caused her to moan softly with pleasure. “Sometimes I wish he lived closer, like he used to. Moving to Buffalo was a smart move for him, though.”
“He went to the same school that Isaac had?” he asked, trying to remember the details in the file Deter had given him about Rose.
“Yes.” She frowned slightly. “It was a big campus though, and Hunter told me that he only ran into Isaac a few times in the years they were both there. Hunter was a year behind. It took him a few tries to pass the bar.” He could tell she was remembering the night they had celebrated Hunter’s accomplishment, the same night Isaac had disappeared.
He decided to switch gears. “So, what happens now that your agent has taken away the paintings?”
She blinked and smiled again. “Most likely, she’ll put them in a show in New York City.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Will you travel there?”
She nodded, then frowned. “Isaac used to fly me up there. I haven’t been back to the city since...” She dropped off and sighed.
“Did he used to fly you to other places?” he asked.
“Yes.” She shifted, moving the sleeping dog to a different spot on her lap. “One of the first trips we took in the new plane was to wine country.”
“Isaac had a thing for wine?” he asked, and she nodded quickly.
“Yes, everywhere we went, he’d buy up a case or two and have it shipped back here.” She looked into the fire as if she was remembering. “We went to New York City a few times for shows or events.” Her eyes moved back to his.
“Did you ever stay at the apartment he rented?” he asked, curious.
“No.” She frowned. “Both times, we stayed at hotels instead. The first time, the apartment was getting fumigated. Isaac had said there was a bed bug outbreak on his floor. The second time he said that the hotel was close to where my showing was, so we could walk back afterward.”
“Did you question it?” he asked, remembering the times he’d questioned Ann’s excuses.
“No, I didn’t. I was too trusting, I guess.”
“What about Hunter or your father-in-law? Did they ever fly you anywhere?”
“Hunter, yes,” She smiled again. “We took a trip to Canada once. He borrowed Isaac’s plane since Isaac had flown on a business trip with his father to the UK. Now Hunter has his own plane. Not as new or as nice as Isaac’s was. He needed it for trips to the city for court dates.”
Sawyer nodded. “Is he a good flyer?”
Her eyes moved to his and narrowed slightly. “Why?”
He shrugged and covered quickly. “Maybe he can fly you up for your showing in New York.”
“You’re like me.” She laughed. “You suck at lying.”
He chuckled. “Okay, I was just thinking of the list the chief gave me of their suspects. The people who could have flown Isaac’s plane into the ocean and survived.”
Her chin went up. “And your first thoughts were of Hunter?”
“No. But he was the first I could figure out a way to ask you about.”
She nodded. “Okay, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it right.” She nudged the dogs aside and got up, then quickly disappeared down the hallway. A minute later, she was back with a binder. “I started this shortly after… we found Isaac. It’s everything I know.” She sat next to him and laid the binder between their laps.
He was impressed with her organization. Everything in the binder was clear and precise.
There were pictures of each potential suspect, an explanation of their whereabouts the night in question, and even a list of motives. The only thing missing was a full chart of the timelines.
They spent an hour scouring over every detail she had written down and added a few new things Sawyer knew about.
“Where does this leave us?” she asked. They had moved into the dining room and had laid out each suspect’s information. They had written all the motives on a separate piece of paper and had stacked them next to that person’s information.
“The person with the most motives…” He glanced at the stacks. “It’s a tie between Kristy Owens and Sean Clayton. Kristy’s motives are in question. Why would she kill Isaac and wait a full year to present herself, framing you for Isaac’s death? Sure, she has financial motives now, if she can successfully sue and win back any of Isaac’s money for child support. But that’s not a motive to kill him. Besides, so far, she hasn’t lawyered up. Sean’s motives, well… I think there are even more than we have written down.” He nodded to the stack of papers.
“What about Boone Schneller? Maybe we aren’t giving my neighbor’s temper enough weight? Isaac could have been leaving that morning and found Mr. Schneller on our land. Maybe they argued.”
He nodded, agreeing. “I think we can rule out Ray Gardezi, Isaac’s coworker.”
“Wasn’t there a statement…” She flipped through her binder and pulled out a piece of paper with her handwriting on it. “Yes, from the news report. Cara Stephens, Isaac’s secretary, claimed that Isaac and Gardezi had a huge fight the week before.”
“Yes, but Gardezi’s alibi is strong. He was in New York, actually, in the courtroom, when Isaac’s plane disappeared.”
“He could have flown…” She stopped herself. “It is a little farfetched to think that he jumped from the plane and made it back to the city in time to go to court.”
“So, who isn’t accounted for when the plane disappeared? We’ve been looking at Isaac’s time of death. What we should also be looking at is the time of the last ping from Isaac’s plane. After all, the chances of the murderer hiring…” He stopped talking when a new thought jumped into his head. Without saying anything, he reached for his phone.
He punched Carson’s number and cringed when his partne
r answered with a yawn.
Glancing at his watch, he winced. “Sorry,” he said instantly.
“This better be important. I’ve got an early morning.” Carson groaned.
“Nat Willis, have you checked his finances?” he asked. Rose’s eyebrows shot up.
“Yeah, sure, why?” Carson answered.
“Any big deposits shortly before or after Isaac Clayton went MIA?” Sawyer asked.
Carson was silent for a while and Sawyer grew concerned the man had fallen back asleep.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “How did you—”
“Deduction. Do we have any idea where the money came from?”
“Not yet. We picked up on the lead shortly after you were attacked. We’re still trying to track down the cash deposits into his accounts.”
“How much?” he asked.
“Close to ten thousand, each time,” Carson answered quickly.
“Each…?”
“The day after Isaac’s death, and the day before you were attacked. But, until we clear them, those payments could have been for other jobs he was doing, or, hell, I don’t know, an inheritance. We have to dot every “I” at this point,” Carson added.
Sawyer felt some sense of justice, knowing the man who’d attacked him wasn’t around to harm anyone else. But still, he’d been murdered… Sawyer didn’t finish his train of thought.
“Hired muscle?” he asked his partner.
“That’s the angle. Which means that whoever was behind him is doing a little house cleaning.”
Sawyer sighed and nodded. “Why didn’t the chief…”
“He didn’t want it leaked. Only the three of us know about it.” Carson shuffled around. “Someone in the station is calling the press with every move we make.”
Sawyer nodded again and quickly ran over who had been working on the case. Most of the station had touched a part of the investigation at some point. “Have you looked at Anderson?”
“Yup, clean so far,” Carson answered.
“How about… Madsen and Brown?”
Carson was silent for a while. “I know you don’t like them, but they’ve been on the force—”
“Just check. We’ll chat again in the morning.”
“I’ll swing by and fill you in further if you can convince Rose to make some more of those muffins.”
He smiled. “I’m sure she’d be happy to.” Rose’s eyebrows shot up in question. “See you around…?”
“Ten. I’ve got to have some time to look into all this,” Carson answered.
“Ten,” he agreed. He hung up and filled Rose in on the new angle.
Rose pulled out a stack of sticky notes and wrote a big question mark on one, then stuck it on the table and moved Willis’s picture from the newspaper clipping about his murder to a pile underneath it. “If we assume Willis is a pawn, who here has enough money to pay ten grand twice and doesn’t have an alibi for the night Willis was shot?” She glanced around the table. “You don’t think someone would hire someone else to kill a killer, do you?” She frowned and shook her head. “Even I’m confused at that.”
He sighed and stood up. “It’s past midnight.” He pulled her out of the chair and held her in his arms. “We’re both foggy brained. Let’s head upstairs and get some rest, then we can look at this with a clear mind in the morning.”
She nodded and smiled up at him. “My mind may not be working, but other parts of me are…”
He chuckled and bent down to kiss her softly. “I think we can come to some sort of arrangement.” He picked her up easily, only noticing a slight twinge in his kidney and back this time as he moved towards the stairs with Rose in his arms.
Eighteen
Your move…
The next morning, Sawyer sat at the table moving pieces of paper and sticky notes around like he was playing a board game. Rose was making a batch of blueberry muffins in the kitchen for them and, he was sure, for the entire station.
As he looked down at the mess on the table, Sawyer couldn’t see an answer in the papers. Even though he’d had several good hours of sleep, his mind refused to see any sort of pattern. He rolled his shoulders. His body felt relaxed, and he was pretty sure he would be back to one hundred percent by the end of the week. He had thought briefly about seeing the doctor early to get cleared for active duty, but he didn’t like the thought of leaving Rose here in the house all by herself again. He decided to keep his mouth shut about his speedy recovery.
Even though Willis was gone, he doubted that whoever was pulling the strings was going to stop anytime soon. At least until all of the murderer’s tracks had been erased.
Instead of finding answers, Sawyer just kept thinking of new questions. Did Rose know something more about her husband’s murder? Why had Willis attacked him?
He thought back to what he’d been doing that day, what questions he’d been asking. The fact that Willis hadn’t attacked Carson or any of the other officers weighed heavy on his mind. He had been the only one getting close to Rose. Did that mean something?
After all, he’d spent most of the day he was attacked with Rose. She had even eaten over at his place just before the attack. Could that mean that someone was stalking her?
He thought about the destruction of her back deck. He was still convinced that it was Boone Schneller who’d torn up her deck and had punctured his tires. The sneakiness fit the man’s MO.
Taking sticky notes out, he wrote down each event as it had happened to create a timeline that he could move around.
“What’s this?” Rose asked, looking over his shoulder.
“A timeline of events.” He moved a sticky note with ‘Ozzy’s attack,’ written on it into place.
“What does Ozzy getting attacked have to do with Isaac’s murder?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, but it’s an event and…” He shrugged. “Something tells me to put it down here.”
She nodded and then sat next to him.
“Do you really think that the destruction of my deck has something to do with the murders? I thought you said it was just Schneller getting back at me…” She fell silent.
“If Schneller had anything to do with all these… murders”—he motioned to the timeline— “then, yes. We won’t know until we find the murderer.”
Just then the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it. It’s probably Carson.” She moved a few notes around as he made his way towards the door.
Instead of letting his partner in, he stepped outside to have a private chat with him.
“Well?” Sawyer asked.
“The cash could have come from anyone on the list. We’re looking into it… But, from the news I heard this morning, I’d move one name up on the list.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Kristy Owens. Apparently, she has just talked with her lawyer and they are ready to—” They both turned as a black sedan drove up the driveway. Carson sighed. “I’d hoped to beat him here by a few more minutes.”
“Who?” Sawyer asked, but when the man stepped out of the car, Sawyer had a feeling he knew what was happening. “Damn it.” He looked back inside and wished he’d prepared Rose for the possibility of what was about to take place.
“Morning.” The lawyer stepped up onto the front porch. “Is Rose Clayton home?”
“And you would be?” Carson asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
The man’s eyebrows rose slightly. “This isn’t an issue where the police should be concerned.” He handed a card to Carson and another one to Sawyer.
The card read ‘Jeffrey Taylor, Attorney at Law.’
Just then, Rose opened the door. Her smile fell away the moment she noticed the lawyer on her doorstep.
“Can I help you?” she said sweetly.
“Mrs. Rose Clayton?” the man asked, stepping past Sawyer and Carson.
“Yes.” She leaned against the door and Sawyer noticed that her knuckles were turning a little white.
The lawyer pull
ed out a large manila envelope and handed it to her. “You’ve been served. Have a nice day.” He nodded, then moved quickly back to his car.
“Damn it,” Sawyer said under his breath as he turned to Carson. “Tell me this isn’t Owens.”
Carson shrugged. “I guess we’d better call that brother of yours back down here,” his partner said as he stepped inside the house.
Sawyer reached over and took the envelope from Rose. She’d just been staring down at it like it was a snake. “Let’s see if we can figure out just what Isaac’s mistress is trying to get from you.”
Before Hunter arrived, Rose stashed all the sticky notes and stacks of paper from the dining room table in her binder and hid the entire thing on a shelf in the library. Hunter walked into the house two hours later and sat down with Rose to go over the lawsuit Kristy Owens had filed against her.
“Wrongful death?” Rose shook her head as she frowned. “Why is she suing me for all this? I didn’t have any control over Isaac’s death.”
“That’s not the way she sees it,” Sawyer said, earning him a glance from Hunter. He shrugged quickly. “You have to have seen some of her TV interviews.”
Hunter sighed and nodded. He turned back to Rose. “Most likely this will all be thrown out, since she technically wasn’t related to Isaac, but…”
“What about her son?” Rose asked, her voice sounding small and weak.
“Unless she can prove, with DNA, that the boy is Isaac’s…”
“She can,” Sawyer jumped in. “She filed the paperwork less than a week after Isaac’s body was found.” Again, Hunter gave him a look. “Sorry. Police information isn’t always on the news or available to suspects or their stepbrother lawyers at the time.”
“Okay.” Hunter sighed. “Still, you haven’t been arrested for Isaac’s death. At this point, they still aren’t sure who murdered him.”
Hunter had watched Sawyer and Rose closely and Sawyer knew the man had questions about why he was staying at the house. Still, Rose hadn’t said anything to her brother about them or their new relationship yet, and he wasn’t going to either. His private life was just that, private. What was between them should remain so for as long as possible.
