by Dale Mayer
“Then get that first,” he said, “and we’ll come back to this point. However, the account that you do have with your name on it and your grandmother’s is yours free and legally. Over $150,000 is in that account.”
She sat back and just stared at him. “Over $150,000?” She was stunned. She had no idea her grandmother had that type of money.
He nodded. “Exactly $152,742.03.”
“Good Lord,” she whispered. “I thought my grandmother was broke.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Absolutely not,” he said. “The other accounts have substantial amounts of money as well.”
“Wow,” she said. “I had no idea. So what do you need for me to access this safe deposit box?”
“Lawyer and will,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, “that’s next then.” She stood, shook his hand, and said, “Thank you.”
He looked at her and said, “Are you okay for money? The money in that one account is yours legally. If you need us to take some out for you right now, so your emergencies are covered, I can do that.”
She smiled, shook her head, and said, “I’m okay. I have paychecks coming in. So, as much as this is all really rough and emotional,” she said, “thankfully I’m okay on the money issue.”
“Okay. Let us know when you need something else.”
She walked back outside, her mind in a daze. As she stood on the sidewalk, she looked around, already forgetting where she’d parked. When she heard a horn honk, she looked over to see Rowan, standing outside his vehicle. She lifted a hand and walked toward him.
“How did that go?” he asked.
“Well, I did get a death certificate,” she said, handing it over to him. “My grandmother had two other accounts, outside of the one that I have legal access to, and she had a safe deposit box.”
“Right, but let me guess,” he said in a dry tone. “They won’t let you have access to the other accounts or the safe deposit box without a copy of the will?”
“Yeah,” she said in a wry tone. “It sounds like you’ve been here before.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “And, although it’s frustrating, it is supposedly to protect us all.”
“I get that,” she said, “but that means we have to go to the lawyer next.”
Rowan smiled, gave her clipped nod, and said, “Absolutely.” He asked, “How far away is the lawyer?”
“It’s …” She stopped, looked around to get her bearings, and said, “Come. It’s just a few blocks from here.”
“Then let’s deal with that too,” he said. “The sooner we can get some of this accomplished,” he said, “the better off you’ll be.”
“But what if there is a coin collection in that safe deposit box?” she asked.
“Regardless, we’ll tell the cops about the threats that you’ve been getting,” he said. “That you haven’t already amazes me.”
“I have been going through the motions in a numb state,” she said. “Originally I was just too grief-stricken to do anything but sit in shock, and I still eventually had to go to work. So I’ve been doing that as soon as the panic wore down, and I didn’t want to deal with anything else,” she said. “My focus was on trying to find my beautiful Lacey. And now that I’ve found her,” she said, “it’s even more heartbreaking to work out just what happened with my dog.”
“Well, now you also know that your grandmother was murdered,” he said, “and that makes a difference too.”
“Absolutely.”
“So let’s do the lawyer. The sooner we’re done, the better.”
“I know,” she said, “but it’s a Friday, a weekday, which is a good thing, or the bank and the law office wouldn’t even be open.” She frowned at that.
“Good point,” he said. “Give him a call first.”
“I’ll just get a voice message.”
“It might be worth checking out,” he said.
She groaned, pulled out her phone, went into her contacts, found the lawyer, and hit Dial. When the lawyer answered the phone, she was surprised, and she said, “I was hoping to come and see you regarding my grandmother’s estate.”
“I’m busy,” he said.
“You’re her lawyer. You either have a copy of the will or not. It’s been more than five weeks since I last spoke to you,” she snapped.
“Yes, it’s time,” he said. “Be here in a half an hour.” And he hung up.
She stared down at the phone. “Something is really off about that lawyer,” she said. “He’s completely unprofessional, extremely aggravating. And I don’t even know if he’s like a proper lawyer or not,” she muttered. “I’ve never had to deal with him, except now with grandmother’s estate.”
“How did you know to call him?”
“She told me in the past that, if I ever needed a hand with the estate, to contact him.”
“Interesting,” Rowan said. “I suggest we go see him.”
“Well, I don’t have much choice,” she said. She looked at the two vehicles and said, “It’s ridiculous we’re driving both vehicles everywhere.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll follow behind with the dogs.”
It was only a few blocks away, and, as she pulled into the back of the large brick building, he pulled up behind her. They parked, and she got out. He followed, looking around at the area. It was midscale. Midtown. Nothing suspicious about it. It looked like a typical lawyer’s office. What was suspicious was that this man hadn’t contacted her or made any attempt to deal with her grandmother’s estate. And that was something Rowan didn’t like at all.
He again left the pups in the vehicle and told Hershey to watch them. And then Rowan quickly hopped out, caught her hand up in his, noticing that she wasn’t even surprised but maybe even happy to have a little bit of support, and led the way into the building. As soon as they got into the building and up to the second floor, he walked down the hallway and knocked on the lawyer’s door. The door itself wasn’t quite latched and swung open. He swore and tucked her behind him, whispering, “Don’t say a word.” She froze. He pushed the door wider. And, sure enough, the place had been completely trashed. He turned, showing her what they were facing.
Her jaw dropped, her eyes grew wide, and she whispered, “Oh, my God.”
“Stay here,” he said. And he stepped inside around the corner to the private offices. And, just as he expected, a single male, sitting in a chair, had a bullet hole in his forehead. Rowan did a quick sweep of the rest of the office but found nothing suspicious and no one else inside. He quickly made his way back to the hallway and pulled out his phone. He redialed a recent number. When the coroner answered again, he explained who he was. “You probably know which detective is handling Brandi’s case, now that the first one is in the hospital,” he said, “but we don’t. And we just went to the lawyer’s office to get a copy of the will and to talk to him about the grandmother’s estate, and the lawyer’s been shot dead.”
The coroner was shocked. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” he said. “So, we could call 9-1-1, but we thought it might be faster to go to whoever it is who’s dealing with her case because obviously this is connected. We talked to the lawyer not twenty minutes ago.”
“You need to get out of that building,” the coroner said. “The killer could be still in there.”
“I know,” he said. “We left the scene, but we’re just down the hallway and out of sight.”
“Stay right where you are. I’ll call the cops and meet you there.”
“Obviously,” he said to Brandi, as he tucked away his phone, “the cops handling this case are on their way and so is the coroner.”
“Sounds good,” she said. She turned, looked toward the lawyer’s office, then at Rowan and asked, “It was bad, wasn’t it?”
“Single bullet to the forehead,” he said. She gasped. He looked at her, winced, and said, “Sorry. I could have delivered that a little softer.”
She shook her head. “Suicide?”<
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“No,” he said. “Few suicides actually point the gun to their forehead. It’s either to a temple or in their mouth.”
“Murder?” she whispered.
“That would be my guess, yes,” he said.
“Why?” she cried out softly.
“It’s all connected,” he said grimly. “Either he knew something that he shouldn’t have, stopped somebody from trying to do something, or was involved in something that he shouldn’t have been.”
When she stared up at him, and he could see the tears once again forming in the corner of her eyes, he snatched her into his arms and held her close. “It’s not your fault,” he said.
“But, if the lawyer hadn’t answered my phone call today,” she said, “maybe he would still be alive.”
“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe he would have died yesterday,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going on. But the bottom line is, you didn’t pull the trigger.”
“And you didn’t see anybody else in there?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “We just missed them.”
She winced at that. “But I highly suspect maybe the killer was here at the time of my phone call.”
“That’s a very good guess too,” he said. He heard the hall door open. He turned, keeping her nudged behind him and out of sight.
Two detectives walked toward him. Their faces were hard, grim; their eyes as if they’d seen everything already. They stopped at the hallway and frowned.
He reached out a hand. “Rowan Burlow,” he said. “We were the ones who called the coroner.”
They reached out, shook both their hands, and said, “And what’s this all about?”
He quickly gave the rundown about her grandmother’s house and murder, the visit with the coroner, having gone to the bank, and then needing to talk to the lawyer. “So she set up a meeting with the lawyer less than an hour ago, and we arrived here to find him dead.”
“And who else was here at the time?” the first cop asked, as they walked down as a group toward the lawyer’s office.
“We didn’t see anybody,” Brandi jumped in. “Nobody as we came in and nobody inside the hallway since we’ve been here.”
“On the other hand,” Rowan said, “a truck pulled out of the back lot as we parked.”
“I don’t remember that,” she said, frowning.
“A pickup was parked at the far end of the lot,” he said. “The lot’s empty otherwise. We took two spots closest to the door. He was on the far side. He just pulled out and left.”
“Would you recognize the make and model?”
“Ford Ranger. Black. Older model. Maybe 2010, 2012,” he said. “But I can’t be sure. Too far away to see the license plate.”
“Or the driver?”
“Or the driver,” he said with a nod.
The cops asked a few more questions, and then they turned to the door. “Was it open?”
Rowan nodded. “It was closed but not latched, so it was open just that little quarter of an inch.”
They both frowned at that. “And you pushed it open?”
“I pushed it open,” he said, “and I kept her out here when I saw the devastation to the offices.”
After the detectives put on gloves, they pushed open the door, stopping to look. Indeed, some papers, a coat, drawers from the reception desk, and chairs were tossed about. They frowned and said, “Looks like a burglary.”
“Except it’s a lawyer’s office,” she said. “It’s not like they would keep anything valuable here.”
“What they keep,” Rowan said, “is information. And that’s always valuable to somebody.”
One of the cops turned and looked at him with a harsh gaze.
Rowan just gave him a bland smile. “I’ve done enough work in the field to know.”
“Yeah. We’ll need to look into your background a little bit,” the cop said.
“Not a problem,” he said. “I have references I can give you.”
“Sure, but are they the kind that will hold up to scrutiny?” he asked.
“Absolutely. But you don’t have to believe me,” he said. “I’m working here on behalf of the War Dogs department,” he said. “Feel free to contact Titanium Corp to verify what I’m doing here. Or US Navy Commander Cross.”
They quickly wrote down notes and nodded and then tucked away their notebooks and said, “We want you two to stay here.”
Amiable, Rowan nodded, put his arm around her shoulders, tucked her up close, and said, “We’ll be right here.”
The detectives quickly disappeared from sight.
She looked up at him. “You won’t get in trouble, will you?”
“Not a whole lot of trouble to get into over this,” he said. “I didn’t kill the guy.”
“Neither did I,” she said, “but the attorney talked to me on the phone.”
“And that’s one of the questions that I would be asking you myself,” he said.
She looked up at him and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“How do you know you talked to the lawyer?”
Her gaze went huge. “Oh, God, you’re saying I might have talked to the killer?”
“It’s quite possible,” he said, “but I don’t know that. Can you definitely acknowledge that it was your lawyer?”
She slowly shook her head. “I’ve only talked to him once, and that was in the first week after my grandmother’s death,” she said, “and he said he’d handle everything. Then I never heard again from him until I called him today. I was just … honestly, I was happy to push it all off.”
“And because of it being ruled a murder,” he said, “it’s quite possible that they couldn’t do much with the estate right away anyway.”
“I guess,” she said slowly, “but you’d think that they would at least contact me.”
“Maybe. We don’t know what the story is yet. So it’s a little hard to jump to conclusions.”
Just then one of the detectives came back around through the mess to where they stood. He looked at her. “When did you call him?”
“Let me look,” she said and pulled out her phone and under her recent calls was the call to the lawyer. She showed it to him. He wrote down the time and the number. She said, “It just occurred to us while we were waiting here. Rowan asked me if I could ID the lawyer’s voice on the other end of the phone.”
The detective looked up, shot her a hard, piercing gaze, and asked, “Was it?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I only spoke to him once before, and that was in the first week after my grandmother’s house burned to the ground with her in it. I was still caught up in grief, and it was all I could do to talk without crying most of the time myself. I didn’t really have too much awareness as to whether it was him or not on the first call, and I certainly couldn’t then match it to what I heard today. He was abrupt today though.”
“Pissed off,” Rowan said helpfully.
“Any idea why?”
They both shook their heads.
“I’ve never had any contact with him,” Rowan said. “The first I’ve heard about him was from her.”
The detective, his face not giving away anything, just nodded and kept writing down notes. “Okay, I’ll get your statements,” he said, “and I need you to sign them, and also I need contact information for both of you.” They shared the information they had, by way of a statement, then gave their phone numbers to the detective. He nodded and said, “The coroner will be here soon and, of course, the place will get a little chaotic with forensics. So you both need to stay in town, and we’ll be in touch.”
“Good enough,” Rowan said. Then he stopped, looked back at the detective, and said, “We’re looking for a copy of her grandmother’s will. Is there any chance we can get that from the attorney’s office?”
The detective looked at him and then at her. “Everything in there right now will be dusted for prints,” he said. “We need all that for forensics first. When it’s been clear
ed from forensics, I can come back here with you, and we can see about finding it. And you’ll have to sign for it.”
“It should have been registered with the courts too,” Rowan said suddenly, facing Brandi. “We could try that route.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but I don’t know if my grandmother made any changes to the will.”
“And I think it’s time you told them about the coin collection,” he urged her gently. “And the potshots at you when we found Lacey.”
She stared at him in surprise and then went, “Oh.” She pulled her phone back out, turned to the detective, and said, “I’ve been getting these.”
Chapter 9
The detective took her cell phone, read the texts, and frowned. “When did they start?” he asked, as he flicked his fingers on her screen to show more of the earlier texts.
“The first few days after the fire,” she said. “But I’ve deleted all the earlier calls. I didn’t understand what they were to begin with. But this guy has been very persistent.”
“Are you thinking something about the coins will be in the will?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I only just found out today that she’d been murdered,” she said, “and that is a whole different ball game.”
“It is, indeed,” he said, still writing notes. “And presumably ties into the potshots taken at you in the forest too.”
“We went to the bank,” Rowan said and filled him in on what she’d found at that visit. “So we came here to get a copy of the will that allows her to see what’s in the safe deposit box.”
“Right. So, assuming that somebody knew what you were doing, or had an interest in the will of your grandmother and potentially knew that this lawyer had the will and maybe access to the safe deposit box,” he said, “that would give a motive for the lawyer’s death.”
“Is there any chance it’s a suicide?” she asked hopefully.
The detective looked at her and shook his head. Rowan just smiled gently.
She sighed. “This is pretty ugly now that two people are dead,” she said. “Over what? A stupid coin collection?”
“That just means it has value,” the cop said.
