An Absence of Motive

by Maggie Wells

  When Ben finished speaking, the older man ran the tips of his interlaced fingers back and forth under his chin. The moment lasted an eternity. He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled a long, weary breath. “Well,” he said, his voice creaking from disuse. He cleared his throat and gripped the arm of his chair, sitting straighter. “I don’t have to point out your complete lack of evidence,” he said meaningfully.

  “No, sir,” Ben and Marlee said in unrehearsed unison.

  They shared a glance, then Ben quickly pinned his attention on the man across the desk. “But you have to admit, there’s something off with all this.”

  Wendell nodded thoughtfully as he stared at Ben, apparently taking the sheriff’s measure in a new light. “Here I thought you’d come to Pine Bluff to get away from all this sort of ugliness.”

  The older man’s words were light, but she picked up the mocking edge. Marlee slid forward in her leather club chair and leaned in, ready to put herself between the two men if necessary. But it wasn’t necessary. Ben was more than capable of handling himself.

  “Masters County has always had its fair share of ugliness, Mr. Wingate.” His voice was deep and steady, carrying a clipped note of command. He wasn’t easily bullied. “You know it and I knew it when I took the job.”

  “So you did,” Wendell conceded with a nod. Yanking his hands apart, he let his arms fall open, palms-up, in an indication of futility. “You have no evidence.”

  “Not a bit,” Ben confirmed, not backing down.

  “What do you propose to do?”

  Ben glanced over at Marlee, and she jumped, startled to realize she’d nearly missed her cue. “Uh...” Looking at Ben, she forged ahead. “I saw the parcel where the house was being built was owned by an Abernathy. I assumed it belonged to Bill and Allison Abernathy.”

  To her surprise, Wendell shook his head. “No, it was young Bo who bought it.”

  Marlee reared back, shocked by the revelation.

  “Bo?” she asked, incredulous. His bushy white brows rose, and she caught the movement of Ben’s head out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from Wendell. Not until he confirmed they were speaking of the same person.

  “Yes, Bo Abernathy. I believe the two of you were an item once, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. I mean—” She huffed, frustrated with her inability to get her thoughts straight, much less her words. “We dated in high school, is all,” she said dismissively. She pushed her point with Wendell. “I saw the sale prices on those parcels. I thought maybe his parents had sold their place in town to move out there or something. Where would Bo get so much money?”

  The attorney blinked twice. “I did not handle the closing on each property. They took care of transfer at the Farmers Bank and Trust, but I assume he procured a loan.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “But...he’s my age. How could he raise the down payment in such a short time? Where does he work?”

  This time Wendell didn’t bother to hide his amusement. “Bo went to work for Georgia Mutual Insurance after he finished school, I believe. They put him through their training program, and he took over Gary Behrend’s agency when he retired. Did you expect he’d dry up into a husk once you left town, Miss Marlee?”

  She opened and shut her mouth, outraged by the shot at her ego. It hit too close to home.

  “I met this guy,” Ben said, breaking the tension of the moment. “Tried to sell me life insurance in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly the first week I moved here.”

  “Sounds about right,” Wendell drawled. “That’s where the money is.” He paused, then chuckled. “In life insurance, I mean. Not the Piggly Wiggly.”

  “He bought into this land deal,” Marlee interrupted. “Who’s the head of this Sportsmen’s Club anyway? Do they have a president or something?”

  “Yes, they have a nominal president who acts as mediator in any disputes,” Wendell said and then pursed his lips enough to give Marlee the impression he didn’t approve of the person holding this position or maybe how they were doing their job.

  “I suppose it’s my father,” she said, eyeing him warily.

  Wingate shook his head. “No. It isn’t. Originally, it was your brother, but after he...passed, Will Thomason took over the job. I suspect he thought it would be too much for your father, given the circumstances and all.”

  “Will Thomason,” Marlee breathed, recoiling in her chair even as she spoke his name.

  Wendell maintained his poker face. “Why? Is there an issue with Will?”

  “I suspect Bo Abernathy had been sending me creepy text messages since I came back to town,” she informed him. If the sudden change of subject threw the older man, he didn’t show it. “The texter was using some kind of computer program to send messages from random numbers. His wife must have discovered the plot and immediately jumped to the conclusion we were sleeping together.”

  “Of course,” Wendell said, barely batting an eyelash.

  “But up until today, I thought it might have been Will Thomason.” She grimaced, shooting Ben a smirk. “We didn’t exactly hit it off.”

  This time, Wendell did raise his bushy eyebrows. “How odd. Most people seem to like Will.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not most people.” Eager to bypass any possibility of having to tell the towel story again, she plowed ahead. “Apparently, he and my father were doing some work into the evening.”

  Mr. Wingate steepled his fingers under his chin again. “Not unusual.”

  Marlee darted a look at Ben. “He was a bit overfamiliar,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

  “How so?” Ben’s voice was a growl.

  She shook her head. “Nothing overt. We’d never met, but his comments were fairly laced with innuendo.” She met Wendell’s eyes because she didn’t dare let Ben get a good read on how much Thomason’s behavior truly bothered her. “It was disconcerting.”

  “But you have met him,” Wendell insisted, clearly puzzled.

  She shook her head. “Not that I recall.”

  Wendell pursed his lips, then expelled a tired sigh. “Well, it’s possible you were never properly introduced, but he was at Jeff’s services. He was at your house after we came back from the cemetery. I recall speaking to him while we were in line to fill our plates.”

  Marlee cast her thoughts back to those horribly muzzy days surrounding her brother’s death and interment, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not conjure the vaguest memory of ever having seen Will Thomason. Shaking her head, she said, “If he was there, we were never introduced. He’s a good-looking man. I think I would have remembered.”

  Beside her, Ben made an inarticulate grunt, and she looked over, her lips curving. “What? It was only an observation.”

  “If you like the type.”

  She snickered. “Sheriff, I assure you there aren’t many women over thirteen or under ninety who’d disagree. The man is empirically handsome. Doesn’t make him attractive.”

  “You said he was, uh, forward with you last night,” Wendell interrupted, yanking them back to the crux of the subject.

  “Not forward,” Marlee said, considering her words carefully. “More along the lines of sly and presumptive.”

  “This led you to presume he is the one sending you these anonymous messages,” he said, tossing her word back at her.

  “I thought he might be the one sending them,” she admitted. “But now we have reason to believe it was another member of the Sawtooth Lake Sportsmen’s Club. We came here because we want to get more information on the sale of the lake property.”

  The lawyer pounced. “You think they may be connected?”

  “I think it’s an odd coincidence we’ve had three apparent suicides in the area in the last year and they have all happened in cabins on Sawtooth Lake,” Ben interjected smoothly.

 
“And all members of this Sportsmen’s Club,” she added.

  “Three suicides,” Wendell corrected. “Rulings were made on two of those deaths, and by your own account, we have no reason to suspect anything different will come from the coroner’s office on poor Bo.” He folded his hands atop his desk and peered at them over the top of his reading glasses. “If you would allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment?”

  Ben inclined his head. “You probably won’t say anything we’re not already thinking, but go ahead.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be a bore,” Wendell drawled. “I can tell you if whoever you wanted to accuse came to me for a defense, I would snap the case up in a heartbeat. Big win, easy money and some sensational press to boot.” He leaned forward, his expression earnest. “I understand you want a reason for what happened with Jeff, darlin’. We all do. Unfortunately, there’s nothing there to justify a formal inquiry.”

  Marlee persisted. “What’s the scoop on the Sportsmen’s Club? How did it come to be?”

  Wingate sighed as he sank back in his chair. “It’s as I told you. Your brother was overseeing the real estate portion of the family business. Things were pretty rough in all the fallout from the DEA operation.” At this, he shot a meaningful look at Ben, who simply met the other man’s stare, unflinching and unapologetic. “The Masters land trust needed an infusion of cash, and your father refused to liquidate any of the company’s direct holdings.”

  “Of course. He’d bankrupt himself before jeopardizing the business itself,” Marlee said with a hint of acid in her tone.

  “Rightly so.” Wendell sat up again. “He could use the business to rebuild the family’s fortune, but it would be nearly impossible to rebuild the business in this day and age. As it is, he’s beating the corporate competition off with a flimsy stick. If word got out we were willing to sell even one inch of Timber Masters acreage, the big boys would have been on him like fire ants.”

  “They want to buy him out,” she concluded.

  “When everything went down with the methamphetamine labs, the company was vulnerable for a number of reasons.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Your daddy wondered if maybe some of those operations might have had some form of ‘corporate’ sponsorship.”

  His openly questioning gaze landed on Ben. “Do they do that?”

  Ben shook his head. “Yes and no. You likely wouldn’t have been able to make a direct connection. Most of the profits flowed into or through Atlanta. Most of it was scrubbed. Laundered. It’s a chicken-and-egg sort of business model.”

  “So his suspicions would not have been completely out of left field?” Wendell pressed.

  “No more so than Marlee’s belief these three deaths may have something more than means and location in common. We need to figure out what the motivation might have been.”

  Rather than conceding the point, Wendell closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and held it. He released it with a long hiss. Marlee would swear she could see the man deflating, though he didn’t alter his posture one bit. “Motivation is never the difficult part. Most crimes boil down to a handful of motivating factors. Money is probably number one, followed by the misplaced pride we call love,” he said with a cynical laugh. “Hell, you can find a list of them in the Bible.” He pinned her with a shrewd gaze. “And don’t bother arguing gluttony only leads to self-inflicted wounds. I can tell you about the day Betsy Lovell shot her husband of thirty-two years because the man had the gall to eat the last Little Debbie in the box.”

  Undeterred by the older man’s dissertation on the seven deadly sins, Marlee steered the conversation back on course. “The land was purchased by a trust set up in the names of White, Pinkman, Schrader and McGill.”

  Wendell nodded. “Yes, but I do not believe the attorneys themselves were aware who was funding the trust. I spoke to Jared Baker on the phone, and he said he was excited to be purchasing his lot. Apparently, a friend of his grew up over in Prescott County and he wanted a place for long weekends, or to loan out to special clients during hunting seasons.”

  He swiveled his chair as he spoke, and the motion seemed to keep the words flowing.

  “The land itself has some conservation provisions your grandfather had put in place. Dwellings could be built along the shoreline but only single-family homes. The sale of parcels had to be approved by the Timber Masters board. No commercial development. And there’s a whole host of voluntary conservation provisions subject to oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency.”

  A burst of laughter escaped Marlee so suddenly, Ben jumped in his seat. His head swiveled and she held up a hand in apology. “Sorry,” she said, then gasped through the fingers clamped over her mouth.

  Wendell chuckled. Finally, he condescended to let Ben in on the joke. “Let’s say the timber industry and the EPA have never been bosom buddies. It’s been particularly contentious in the past ten years or so.” He turned to Marlee. “But your grandpa was a clever one. He tried to hammer out a working relationship with them. Timber Masters survived when so many other companies of comparable size were so twisted up by regulations, they had no choice but to surrender to the conglomerates.”

  “Whoever bought the land had to agree to work within all these provisions,” Ben clarified.

  “Exactly. When they came up with the proposal for the Sportsmen’s Club, it seemed the perfect solution. The land was already approved for hunting and fishing by the Department of Natural Resources, so as long as the members stayed within the guidelines, it was a natural fit, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  Marlee sobered as the pieces fell into place for her. “So, after Jeff died, my father agreed to the plan, and Will Thomason took Jeff’s place as president.”

  Since there was no evidence to suggest foul play found at any of the scenes at Sawtooth Lake, Ben couldn’t make official inquiries. If anyone was going to talk to Will Thomason about the members of the Sportsmen’s Club, it would have to be her. Except she wasn’t looking forward to the task. With her lips thinned into a line, she pushed up from her chair. “Thanks for the background. We’ll let you get back to your work.”

  Ben shot to his feet as well. “Thanks for your time.” He practically chased Marlee from the room.

  * * *

  TO HER RELIEF, Wendell didn’t attempt to prolong the conversation, and Ben didn’t feel the need to say anything more until after they’d left the attorney’s inner sanctum and returned to the conference room where she’d been working. The moment she closed the door behind her, though, he shifted into full-on bossy alpha male.

  “I don’t want you trying to talk to any of these guys.”

  He was so authoritative, she might have obeyed if she weren’t prepared for exactly this sort of order. “I will be talking to them,” she replied calmly. “And I’ll remind you that you have absolutely no business doing so yourself.”

  “How can you say I have no business?” he demanded hotly. “I’m the sheriff in this county.”

  “And as our chief law enforcement officer, you are aware you don’t have one sliver of probable cause to ask anyone anything related to these unfortunate and untimely deaths,” she said, enunciating the last so pointedly, she was surprised the man didn’t start to ooze blood.

  “Marlee—”

  “I, on the other hand, as the bereaved sister of one of the victims, am free to ask anyone anything I want,” she stated officiously.

  “These could be dangerous people,” he argued. “Hell, you think one of them is keeping tabs on your bedroom window. If you think I’m gonna let you—”

  “You don’t ‘let’ me do anything, Sheriff Kinsella,” she said, cutting him off at the knees.

  “Damn it, Marlee, you can’t drag me into this thing then go off like some small-town Olivia Pope, all badass and ready to ‘handle’ things,” he countered.

  She blinked, surprised by the ref
erence to the television show Scandal but not displeased by the comparison. “Olivia Pope. Good one. Who doesn’t want to be a gladiator in a suit?”

  “Stop,” he growled.

  “You started it,” she said, jabbing him in the chest with her index finger.

  He grabbed her finger, the heat of his skin sending tingles up her arm, then took hold of her entire hand. When she looked up into his eyes, she found them dark with worry and frustration.

  “You can’t do anything,” she reminded him. “Not in an official capacity. And unofficially, no one is going to talk to you, Ben.” She gentled the assertion with a wan smile. “They don’t know you.”

  She winced, seeing the moment the simple truth of her statement hit home with him. He was an outsider and always would be. No matter how welcome they said he was. With a rumbling growl of frustration, he yanked on her hand, pulling her up against the solid wall of his chest.

  “Do you always have to be right?”

  She raised a shoulder. “I can’t help it.”

  “And I can’t help this.”

  He pressed his mouth to hers, crushing her lips beneath his. She welcomed the punishing force for the thrill it shot through her. When he softened the caress, his lips still clung to hers as he pulled back. They stared at one another, breathless and wanting but all too aware of their surroundings.

  “Not sorry,” he told her.

  “Me either,” she answered, lifting her free hand to caress his cheek.

  “We’re riding on the razor’s edge here.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Marlee, I don’t want you anywhere near Will Thomason without me around.” He exhaled harshly. “I’m not trying to go all caveman on you. I... I’d be tearing my hair out the whole time.”

  She slid her hand up to massage his nape. “And it’s such nice hair.”

  “Please,” he said, his voice cracking.

  She wasn’t exactly sure what he was asking her for, but it didn’t matter. Marlee was fairly certain they were on the same page. “But I might follow up with Jared Baker, see if maybe he’s up for a job interview.”