by J. T. Lewis
After he said amen, we dug into the food with gusto, all of us seeming to be hungrier than we had thought. We talked of general things during the meal, the weather mostly. He also had some questions about where he could find this or that in town. Abby took point during this part of the conversation, being the expert in the family about finding anything.
After we had finished clearing the table and I had set out some fresh mugs of coffee, we got down to business. Abby had a multitude of questions as she sized up the potential of our visitor. Never coming across as mean, her questions were nonetheless pointed and detailed. As I listened to my daughter cross-examine him, I noticed again the hot feeling on the back of my neck. Rubbing it with my hand, I determined that I would need to get someone to look at it after this case was over.
During the whole interview, Preacher never backed away from anything Abby asked. The only things he couldn’t discuss were things he claimed he wasn’t allowed to discuss, which I had already warned her about.
Seeming finally satisfied, she looked at me as I nodded my head, and then turned back to him with outstretched hand.
“Welcome to our little company,” she said with a smile.
Taking her hand into his with a smile on his lips, he thanked her and then me in turn.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Abby said standing, “I think I’ll head down to the sheriff’s computer…see what I can dig up on these guys.”
Coming around the table, she gave me a hug before leaving. I looked over at Preacher, “Got time to get up to speed on this case?”
“I’ve got nothing but time,” Preacher beamed, “And I’d love to get into the case as soon as possible!”
We spent the rest of the evening going over details and getting to know each other.
I was really starting to like this guy!
Chapter 17
September 16, 1999
The flames rolled off the log, curling their way to the chimney before disappearing into a whiff of smoke. I took another sip of coffee as I relaxed in my dream chair, luxuriating in the warm comfort of the room.
My eyes suddenly felt very heavy, and it was an easy decision to give in to the lure of the next level. Setting down my mug, I closed my eyes as the room blanketed me in its embrace.
I found myself walking up to a familiar door on a cold fall night. Trying to discern the timeframe I was in, I could only recognize that it was May’s parent’s house from the old days.
May opened the door before I even knocked, reaching out and pulling me in by the lapel of my coat. She then kissed me soundly on the lips.
What the hell?
Pushing me away and looking me in the eyes, the bangs of her soft brown hair swayed as she shook her head, “I’m sorry, but I always wondered…”
She said it with determination, but there was the hint of softness around the eyes that made me want to melt. “If I’m dying or something…well, I just thought I’d like to know…sorry.”
I instantly remembered the night. We were 19, and had just come home for Thanksgiving break. May and I had arranged a meeting of our old school friends to discuss a very important and possibly dangerous phenomenon that we had all been experiencing. (3)
As I raised my arm to reach for her, to tell her that I wasn’t sorry, that it was all I thought of some nights…there was a knock at the door. Glancing at the door, then back at me… she let go of my coat, hesitated, then proceeded to answer the door. The moment was gone.
“No!” I thought to myself. Another door had just been opened, and I wasn’t willing to let it close again! At least…I wasn’t going to let it close if I could help it!
***
I awoke with a start, the evil neon-green numbers of the clock telling me it was 5:30…again.
I leaned back into my pillow and once more thought about the strange message of the dream…another dream about May.
“What the hell was going on?” I wondered again. That I had suddenly started having dreams about May was disturbing enough…that they had commenced even before I had even heard from her was utterly uncanny to say the least.
I thought back to that night…the unexpected kiss…the missed opportunity. My relationship with May had always been such. Although we were always best friends, we had both been hesitant when it came to taking it to the next level.
Or maybe it was more like scared?
I had always put it down to being worried about screwing up our friendship, assuming in my head that she had the same reasoning.
I jumped out of bed and got dressed, feeling ridiculous at my thoughts and wanting to get them out of my head.
I had plenty to think about without dwelling on my distant past. Besides, we had both found the love of our lives in others.
I made my way downstairs and started the coffee. As I was pouring the water into the coffee maker, I heard the padding of bare feet behind me.
“Want some coffee sunshine?”
A grumpy sounding male voice answered, “Couldn’t hurt.”
I jumped at the noise, not expecting anyone else to be in the house. Nate Stafford stood before me in my kitchen, wrapped in a blanket…and nothing else.
Not knowing immediately what to say, I turned back to the cupboard and took out two mugs. Filling them up, I carried them over to the table and set them down while Nate sat at the chair in front of his cup.
He looked like he had been through hell, and after a few more moments of silence, I told him so.
“Yeah…Abby kicked me out.”
“And your clothes?” I asked innocently.
“Still in the bedroom…man, was she pissed!”
Sipping on his coffee thoughtfully, the boy was definitely in misery. I was having a hard time holding back laughing at him…until I just couldn’t anymore.
It came rolling out like a tsunami…wave after wave of destructive force…at least to his psyche.
“Oh come on Gabe,” he moaned as I tried to catch my breath, “This isn’t funny!”
I was winding up my bout of laughter as he continued.
“Your daughter is a hard headed…well, that’s all I can say. All I was doing was trying to make a point…and she kicked me out! I couldn’t go anywhere! I finally found this blanket and tried to sleep on the couch…which isn’t very comfortable by the way!”
I was wiping the tears off of my face with a napkin by then. I felt sorry for the guy. Having to expose himself…literally to me could not have been comfortable for him. And here I was laughing in his face. Abby could indeed be hardheaded, a trait I could probably assume some responsibility for. She was however, not taken to random acts of craziness. I was relatively certain that if she had kicked him out of their bedroom, he had probably deserved it.
“I can probably come up with something for you to wear home if you’d like, if you don’t mind a couple words of advice.”
He gloomily nodded his head.
“First, there is a time and a place to stand your ground on an issue. In bed at night is never the right time…with any woman.”
He mulled this over, nodding his head in agreement. “Believe me, it will never happen again. What’s the second thing?”
“If you ever have the urge to do it again anyway,” I started with a serious look on my face, “just make sure your clothes are within reach before you open your mouth.”
His face was blank for a few moments before he too busted out in laughter at his situation.
Catching his breath finally, “You are the Yoda of women Gabe!”
“Hardly!” I exclaimed, remembering many a sleepless night during various spats with Betty. “I’m just older than you and have already been through it. No one gives us manuals on how to handle these situations; we are all destined to go through it personally.”
Taking our cups, I walked across the kitchen to refill them with coffee. “It’s how we go on afterwards that helps determine if we will make it as a couple,” I finished with a smile.
“Now…you wa
nt some breakfast?”
***
The smell of breakfast cooking brought Abby out of the bedroom, also looking like she hadn’t slept. Motioning for Nate to join her in the other room, I could hear a hushed conversation going on as I finished making breakfast. By the time I was setting the plates on the table, they were both back and grinning. Nate even had his clothes on.
I shook my head at young love. It could be confusing for anybody.
After we ate and Nate had left for work, I asked Abby if she had found anything last night with her computer search.
“Not really, one of the victims had a record: white collar stuff. He spent a couple of years at a Country Club prison in Kentucky. The rest were all clean.”
I mulled over this information as I loaded the dishwasher.
“You know, with everything that I have dug up so far on our victims,” Abby stated distractedly as she ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup, “I have found nothing to indicate that these men even knew of each other.”
She was silent for a few moments as she seemed to be studying her coffee cup.
“It’s almost as if,” Abby continued as she stood and brought me over the empty coffee mugs, “These men were chosen because they didn’t know one another. Except for your friends, the others were total strangers.”
It was an interesting thought.
“They didn’t really know each other,” I said as I poured another cup of coffee.
“But you said…they both hired us… their widows I mean.”
“May and Raven both went to high school together, but they were never really friends…until lately. They weren’t even sure if their husbands had ever met, except maybe for a moment at a class reunion or something. No, I think your observation still holds; maybe they were targeted because they were strangers to one another.”
She smiled at that. She loved coming up with theories…and she was right more times than she was wrong.
“Who was the one with a record?” I asked.
“Barry Hamilton,” she said as she went to her latest stack of papers and pulled out the printout. “Convicted of embezzling funds from his company, at the time he was the controller of a small insurance company. Skimmed off $1.5 million before they caught him, says they only got about half of that back when he was discovered.”
“Another interesting thing about him,” Abby continued after picking up a sheaf of papers, “Is that he is the only one of the whole lot that didn’t go overseas on a regular basis. Seems he won a trip to Bolivia…they found him dead on the tour bus.
She had dug up some interesting facts about one of the victims, especially the part about him winning a trip. Could our killer have arranged such a thing by himself to get the victim out of the country?
It was certainly worth considering, and I made a mental note to look into the contest the man had won.
I had made arrangements yesterday to meet Raven at her house this morning. My plan was to go over her husband’s papers and office, then do the same at May’s tomorrow. If there were any common factors in their lives, I was optimistic that I would find it somewhere in the remnants of their business life. I was also hoping I would not have to go to their actual business office, as that would be difficult without the backing of someone in the prosecutor’s office.
We weren’t even sure if we had a crime yet.
Chapter 18
September 16, 1999
I brought Abby up to speed as to the plans for my day. Although my day was planned out, I had been mulling over in my mind what Abby and Preacher should be doing while I was busy.
Abby, it seemed, already had this covered.
“I’m going to take Preacher to the courthouse,” she said nonchalantly.
“The courthouse?”
I was confused, and told her so.
“Yep!” she said brightly, “Spent half the night working on a hypothesis. Wanna hear it?”
The sparkle in her eye was contagious, and I anxiously took a seat across from her at the table to hear her premise.
“Ok, here goes,” she said with excitement. “I had a lot of time to think last night, and I started wondering about why someone would kill these men. There are all of the usual reasons of course; an ax to grind, religious fervor like the Monk last year (1), or the murderer could be just crazy. But something struck me about four this morning, and now I can’t get it out of my head.”
I gave her a questioning look as she paused momentarily.
“Who benefits from their death?” she finally asked, revealing her thoughts.
I sipped my coffee quietly, waiting patiently as she gathered more of her thoughts before continuing.
“So I started eliminating different groups. If we assume it’s not another religious nut for now, the plan seems too structured for anyone that just enjoys killing. Although all of the victims live within a day’s drive, they are being killed all over the world.”
“Thinking that through,” she continued, “I started thinking about what that would entail. Tracking the victims to different remote parts of the world, and either killing them there, or arranging to have them killed. That would take a lot of planning to make all of that come together smoothly. But then it hit me, it would also take a lot of money!”
“Ok,” I said thoughtfully, “I see where you are going. It would take some financing to either travel the world or hire someone they trusted to kill these people.”
“Exactly!” she exclaimed, “So I went back to my original question. Who benefits from their death?”
“You think the killer could be monetarily benefitting from these peoples’ deaths?” I questioned. I thought through her developing theory in my mind. “But how could one person benefit from this seemingly random group of people, with no apparent ties to one another?”
“I don’t know,” Abby admitted with a frown. “But I realized one other thing last night. Estates are settled through the court system, and the details are public record. If we start researching the estates of the victims, any connections could show up there.”
It was a good theory, and I told her so. She beamed.
“I’m kinda liking it myself,” she exclaimed with pride.
“Don’t get your hopes up yet kid,” I said with caution, “It’s a good idea, but it may not be as easy to track down as it sounds.”
“I know, one step at a time,” she said with a smile, “Like you always say.”
I smiled at that. Although she seemed to be learning things from me, I found that I was continually learning things from her also. While she was great to have around as a daughter, she was also turning into a topnotch investigator. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t miss Betty and Frank, both on a personal and professional level. But I couldn’t ask for a better partner than I had in Abby.
“Ok,” I said as I stood, “Sounds like a plan.”
Abby beamed again as she also stood and gathered her stack of papers up. “I’ll call Preacher and have him meet me at the courthouse. We’ll start at ours today, but there will need to be some traveling from here on out you know.”
I nodded, having not given any thought until that moment to that aspect of her premise.
“You have a plan worked out as to how to handle that?” I asked.
“Preacher and I will work out the details of what we need to look for today. Then I was thinking we would split up. We can cover a lot of ground that way.”
“I guess I should draw out some cash to cover his expenses,” I said absentmindedly as Abby started toward the door.
“Good idea!” she called from the doorway. “Have fun at your girlfriend’s!”
I heard her giggling before I realized what she had actually said.
“Hey!”
Chapter 19
September 16, 1999
The huge iron knocker on the door seemed to resound throughout the house as I tapped it three times. Once again, James answered the door as straight faced as on my last visit.<
br />
Reminding him of my name, he again nodded imperceptibly as he turned and walked away, leaving me standing in the foyer. Not in the mood for games, I closed the door behind me and made my way slowly along the marble floor. I took more time to investigate some of the framed paintings in the long hallway this time around. Not being much of an art critic, I nonetheless recognized that these were of a quality that one would not find at the mall.
Looking down the hall, I saw James with his back toward me and his hand on the knob of the same room as last time. Relishing that it probably annoyed the hell out of him, I slowly walked to his location.
When he sensed I was near, he opened the door and announced me before stepping out of the way. If I had succeeded in irritating him, it did not show on the mask that was his face at that moment. Thanking him anyway, I walked past him and shut the door behind me as Raven glided toward me with a smile.
“It’s so nice to see you again Gabe!” she exclaimed as she extended her hand. Reaching out to her in turn with my hand, she gently moved it aside and gave me a hug instead. Surprised, I took a few seconds before wrapping my arms loosely around her in return.
As she lingered in the embrace for a few seconds longer than I felt comfortable with, I was inundated with the heavenly scent of her perfume. It was intoxicating!
Finally pulling away, she stood in front of me with a warm smile on her lips.
“Have you had any luck with the investigation?” she asked
As I was starting to formulate an answer for her, my eyes were drawn down to her necklace. The silver and turquoise pendant that caught my attention soon lost focus as it drew my eyes to her slightly shadowed cleavage. Wearing a low-cut southwestern style blouse revealed rounded mounds of pearl white flesh that were peeking…no glaring at me from her top. I found it suddenly hard to swallow as I tried to remember what the hell we had been talking about.
