All My Exes Live in Texas

by Aimee Gilchrist

  He glanced around. "Let's start upstairs and work our way down. That way if they show up as more time passes, we can get out before they get all the way in or at least find something else we could be doing that looks more innocent, given it's your house and all."

  The top floor was nothing but an office and a loft. The majority of the house was on the first floor. When we entered the loft, I could see the source of the mess downstairs. There was no question who was responsible for the disaster, and they were named after Greek gods. There were clothing and electronics on every available surface. I picked around the chaos, looking for anything that might scream that they had hired a couple of thugs to do their dad in. I dug through one of their suitcases with impunity. There was no chance that these boys would notice if their stuff had been riffled through. There was nothing interesting inside. It smelled like feet and teenage boy in here, and I was glad there were no walls in the loft. I'd probably never get the smell of socks and puberty out.

  Aodhagan sorted through a couple of backpacks looking for anything worth noting while I went through the other suitcases. I found nothing interesting.

  "Helen."

  I turned and looked at Aodhagan, who was holding a large baggie of some drug. I had no clue what it was, but it was definitely in the form of white pills. "What are those?"

  He shook the baggie for a second, looking inside carefully. "Opiates. Painkillers. There's another bag in there, but it's just pot."

  I nodded. "They could have gotten the pills from their own house, or that could be what they were buying from Jerry and Sven." I refused to dwell on how depressing it was to see such young teens abusing painkillers.

  Aodhagan returned the drugs, but I could see his hesitation. I felt the same, but taking things wouldn't stop them from just getting more. It would, however, let people know we'd been there. I grabbed up the nearest device, some kind of tablet, and saw it was locked, so I returned it to the bed. The iPad on the floor, however, was not. I scrolled through the apps, looking for anything interesting. I didn't even know which boy this belonged to. Aodhagan tried several other devices in the room and found them all locked. Finding a journaling app, I beckoned him over. I wasn't sure if the Greek God in question had used it, but if they did, I was most certainly going to read it.

  We stood together, silently reading whichever child it was carry on for pages and pages about how much he hated his father. In fact, it seemed to be the theme of the whole journal. We glanced at each other, and I used my phone to take a picture of some of the pages so I could read them in more depth later. We had to check other rooms. It wasn't a smoking gun, but we knew from their interview at Aodhagan's that Carl wasn't a favorite of his sons.

  We ducked into the office and hurried to complete our business. Glen, unlike the boys, was meticulously clean. To the point he'd actually made the Murphy bed and returned it to the upright position. Everything was in proper order. The blankets were folded and sitting on an armchair. All of Glen's suitcases were carefully sealed and placed upright in the corner. He had two different laptops, the purpose of which I couldn't guess, but both were password locked, and I assumed they held sensitive Crowe Appliances data.

  We opened the suitcases, and I was dismayed to see we'd have to be much more careful here. All of Glen's clothes were cautiously folded and separated into style of clothing. Aodhagan took one suitcase and I took the other, using particular care to search in between white undershirts and gray sweaters. Glen clearly didn't favor variety in his clothing. Aodhagan beckoned for me, and I finished the suitcase and zipped it before heading to his side.

  "Check through these while I finish looking."

  He handed me two small lined notebooks with spirals at the top. I flipped them open, finding the first was simply full of numbers, no matter how many pages I checked. It was clearly how Glen kept his accounting. It probably held useful information, but there was no way I could read it. I handed the notebook back with a shake of my head and went on to the second notebook.

  This book was filled with notes, and I could see that Glen used it for brainstorming. Glen was an accountant, but he was also someone who seemed keenly interested in exploring ways to save other companies besides Crowe money. Or maybe not. I couldn't tell whose money he was trying to save, but it was clear he was looking for ways for someone to cut corners. I knew it wasn't Crowe because Glen had been kind enough to pen it across the top of the page. Not Crowe. In big letters.

  I flipped through endless pages of boring cost benefit analysis before reaching a sheet that made me stop immediately. It wasn't even aimed at me, but it didn't keep the sight from freaking me out. "Uh…"

  I held it out, and Aodhagan took it, spending a long silent moment staring at the three or four pages of Carl Crowe's name written in forceful block letters. Which someone, I could only assume it was Glen, given the circumstances, had then crossed out individually with pen marks so hard and aggressive that the paper was now shredded.

  Aodhagan's eyebrows arched. "Well."

  There didn't seem to be a lot I could add to that, so I just nodded. Even though we found nothing else in Glen's room, that was enough to leave me distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn't a direct threat, but then again, neither was the teen's litany of how much they hated their father. But neither boded well. We took a picture of the notebook just in case.

  We headed downstairs in silence, both of us checking our phones constantly so we could be sure we didn't miss a text from Junior or Marian. On the main floor, we headed for Vi and Carl's room first. It seemed the most reasonable choice for private information about why someone might have killed Carl. Or at least about what Vi and Carl's relationship was like. Vi and Carl kept their room more like normal humans, somewhere between Glen and the boys. Their clothes were in their suitcases, but it was clear that they had gone through them. The bed wasn't made, but there were no dirty clothes on the floor.

  We split up without talking and started sorting through everything the Crowes had brought with them. There was nothing of interest in my suitcase, and I learned nothing except Vi brought a lot of nice lingerie for someone planning to spend a few weeks in the middle of nowhere West Texas. Was she a lady who just enjoyed the finer things in a bra, or had she anticipated trying to hook up with Aodhagan while she was in Birdwell? I could actually believe either. Maybe both.

  There was a single locked laptop in the room and no other devices or notebooks filled with angry scrawling. In fact, there was nothing of interest at all. In the attached bathroom I sorted through Vi's makeup bags while Aodhagan took on Carl's extensive collection of prescription meds. I found Vi's huge wedding ring tucked inside, and that seemed peculiar, given her husband had been dead like twenty-four hours. But it wasn't proof of murder by any means, just a little weird.

  Aodhagan put down the last bottle. "Carl had a heart problem clearly. These are all cholesterol, blood pressure, or heart meds."

  "Which I would assume at least Vi knew, given she was around all these meds every day. I wonder who couldn't wait for nature to take its course? That's a lot of meds. He can't have been healthy. Especially since he was also a smoker."

  Aodhagan nodded. "This is a lot. He was clearly not a well man. I wonder what the hurry was. My educated guess would be less than five years tops, unless he changed all his habits."

  We left Vi and Carl's suite and headed for the spare room that was currently housing Faith and Daisy. They'd made our lives easy by emptying their suitcases and putting everything away in the dressers and empty closet. The room had been staged as a child's room, and the two white sleigh beds had clearly been slept in but then casually made. I spent a second riffling through their clothing in both areas while Aodhagan pulled their suitcases down off the shelf in the closet and checked there. There was nothing interesting in either area. The suitcases were empty, and all I could glean from the women's clothing was that Daisy wore a lot of suits in spring colors like apple green and pale pink and Faith wore mostly sweaters and st
retch pants.

  There were no electronics in the room at all, and if they had brought anything from Dallas with them, they'd also elected to bring it with them to the build site. The only thing in the side table between the beds was a single romance with a shirtless pirate on the cover. It was probably the kind of book Earlene would have appreciated. I couldn't guess if it was Faith's or Daisy's, and it didn't really matter. We left the room without any further knowledge of either woman to show for it.

  Robert and Leslie were in the room next door, and they kept their area extremely nonpersonal. They hadn't unpacked their suitcases or put anything away. The bed didn't even look like it had been slept in. Leslie had no makeup in the bathroom except a single tube of lipstick. The only things in her makeup bag were the lipstick, a brush, hair clips, and birth control pills. Their toothbrushes were neatly lined up with the toothpaste in between in the private bathroom. Robert had a single bottle of medication, which Aodhagan identified as a statin, suggesting that Robert was going to take after his father in the heart situation.

  Their suitcases contained only underwear and shirts, and each one of them had three dark suits hanging in the closet. I assumed they were of those organized sorts who had small, completely interchangeable wardrobes, allowing them to live entirely on five basics. I didn't have that skill. The laptop in one suitcase was again locked.

  The final room housed James and head of marketing Jackson and luckily also had a private bathroom, though it was only a shower, sink, and toilet, nothing fancy. I couldn't imagine the fight to the death those two had over the mirror every morning. The room had only a double bed, not having been staged for children, and it was clear that one man was sleeping in the bed and one was on the chaise lounge. I couldn't figure out how they'd decided who got which sleeping area. They were essentially the same person as far as I could tell. I was just glad neither one of them had decided my absence meant they could sleep in my bed.

  They'd both hung all of their clothing, but everything else was nearly as big a mess as the teens upstairs. It made sense to me, as both were aware of their good looks and seemed to care a lot about capitalizing on that. Nice clothes were part of the package deal. There was nothing of interest in the suitcases, but Aodhagan called me over to look at the computer bag beside the bed.

  "The computer is locked, but there's a ton of paper tucked in here. Here, you take half." He handed me part of the enormous stack of papers, and I sat on the edge of the unmade bed to go through them. Aodhagan joined me, and we read in silence for a couple of minutes.

  "This is Jackson's bag," I said, seeing his name on several documents.

  Aodhagan nodded and kept reading.

  Jackson kept a lot of random papers in his bag. Probably things he should have kept in a file cabinet. Like his work contract. I flipped through it a couple of times, reading it carefully. I handed it to Aodhagan. "What do you think this means? Because I think I know, but I don't want to make assumptions."

  He read it as carefully as I had. "The top employees hold part of the company stock. I wonder who holds the rest. It looks like Jackson and the other department heads have five percent of the company stock as part of their employment package."

  "See, that's what I thought it said. And the person with the most stock gets control of the company?"

  Aodhagan shrugged. "Ostensibly. But five percent isn't a lot. Especially if someone like Carl has controlling shares. They'd now be Vi's I assume, but we'd have to check it. Even if they killed Carl, the employees have no reason to believe they'd have controlling shares over Vi or some other member of the family."

  I nodded, tucking the sheet back into the pile, and continued my search. I read everything carefully, but it didn't tell me anything except that Jackson needed to work on a real home filing system instead of carrying crap around in his bag and that he was under contract to buy a tanning machine. Which was kind of douchey but not a sign of a murderer as far as I was aware.

  Aodhagan's phone beeped, and I jumped. He read the message quickly and indicated toward the front of the house. "They're on their way back. Let's get while the getting is good."

  We tucked everything back into Jackson's bag and headed back to Aodhagan's before we had any chance of getting caught riffling through other people's luggage, which was bad form even if it did happen to be in your house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was another forty minutes before Junior and Marian showed up at our door, suggesting that we could have taken more time in our search. But it wasn't worth the risk, given what we did find and how little it seemed worth. We ushered them in and went straight for the questioning. Aodhagan started with the one that was most pertinent for Birdwell, though not for the investigation.

  "Did they buy the land?"

  Junior nodded. "They even showed us the plans. While I was standing there, they called in a waiting construction crew. They plan to break ground tomorrow. They hope it will only take two months total to build the factory."

  It was so fast. I had to assume they'd signed the papers already and were calling in some kind of favors to move the process along.

  Aodhagan let out a low breath, and I could tell he was both thrilled and unsure what to do with the information. Would they keep going if one of them was arrested for Carl's murder? If Vi was? If we did find she was the one who had killed her husband, would he consider not turning Vi in just to see Birdwell get some much-needed income? I decided he wouldn't. His sense of morality was just way too strong. Though I also knew it would destroy him to hurt Birdwell's chances that way. I couldn't figure out whether I was hoping it didn't come to that or not. Statistics said Carl's killer was most likely Vi. Though the reality was most everyone seemed to hate him and the whole world had access to him while he was in a state of repose in someone else's car.

  For the first time, it occurred to me to question that tidbit. I glanced at Aodhagan. "Why was he in your car?"

  His expression said it was taking a few seconds for him to process the question and the sudden change of gears. "Carl? I don't know. That's a good question."

  "Was it possible he was killed somewhere else and left in your car?" Junior asked, taking off his cowboy hat and running a hand over his head before placing it back down.

  Aodhagan shook his head. "I think that would make even less sense than killing him in my car. I mean, it might make sense to try to make me look like a good suspect by putting him in my car, but he'd have been completely dead weight—pardon my very unintentional pun there—after a single stab. That means unless he was standing directly next to my car in the first place, the killer would have had to drag his body from wherever they were to my convertible. They would have left drag marks, which would be additional evidence. That seems not only unnecessarily complicated, but it seems like a good way to get caught in the middle of a festival."

  I had to admit he was right. None of it made sense. But neither did just parking yourself in a stranger's car in the middle of a parking lot. "Were there any drag marks coming up to the car?" I kicked myself a little for not thinking hard enough to check that at the time.

  Aodhagan and Junior both shook their heads. They had clearly looked when it had mattered, as opposed to me. In a normal parking lot, of course, there would be no way to know, but in Birdwell we were lucky when a road was paved, let alone a field where the masses parked their pickups. The lot near town square had been coated with small gravel, and that was an effort that had been taken for the sake of visitors, I had no doubt. Most parking lots around here were just dirt. If Carl had been dragged to the car, it would have been obvious in the rocks, unless someone had not only dragged a body across a public place in the middle of a festival but had then taken the time to go over their path while the world could be watching them and smoothed out the rocks. It was just absurd. No one, even in Birdwell, was that stupid.

  "So he was just sitting there, in your car, when someone killed him?" I clarified, wondering if I was missing something.

&
nbsp; Aodhagan shrugged. "That's kind of what it looks like, isn't it?"

  "Why?"

  Both he and Junior shrugged this time. I didn't even know why I was asking them. They clearly didn't know. But where I came from, the only reason you sat in another man's car was because you were about to go all "Gone in Sixty Seconds" on that thing. However, in this case it seemed unlikely Carl thought he could get away with stealing Aodhagan's car and living in my house at the same time.

  "Maybe he just liked it," Marian offered, adding another shrug to our growing tally.

  I couldn't imagine just climbing into some other dude's classic car, no matter how much I liked it, but maybe Carl didn't suffer from the same compunctions. "Maybe." I had nothing else to offer. I was looking for logic where there was none.

  I did, however, know that it was going to make Aodhagan look even more guilty. Assuming that Carl was a normal human being, he wouldn't get into someone's car unless invited. By the person who owned it. Who might then have taken the opportunity to do a little stabbing. It wasn't good.

  As if Junior could read my mind, he shook his head. "That doesn't look good for sure, Aodhagan."

  Aodhagan licked his lips. "I know." He glanced at his watch. "I'm going to fly up to Dallas. I can poke around at the headquarters for Crowe Appliances. See what I can find out." He pointed at Junior. "I'm going to need you and the rest of the guys to keep the Crowes and the cops busy until I get back. Can you do that?"

  Both Junior and Marian nodded, even though he was only talking to Junior, who would then get the other members of Aodhagan's volunteer police crew and mobilize them to do whatever it was that they were going to do to keep the others busy. Whatever it was, it would be bizarre, because this was Birdwell we were talking about here.