by Liliana Hart
“I was just thinking that you could see it every day from my house.”
“You suggesting something?” Agatha asked, her brows raising.
His color brightened more and a sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead. “I was just thinking I’d love to see you more, but I know how busy you are.”
“You are so bad at talking about feelings,” she said, shaking her head, but there was a smile on her lips. And then she chuckled.
“I don’t want to say the wrong thing. This is new territory for me. It’s been a really long time since I even thought about…” he made a motion with his hands back and forth to encompass both of them.
He took a deep breath and blurted out the words. “I’m just saying, if you want to hang out at my place, you’re always welcome.”
“Hang out or move in?” she asked, cocking a hand on her hip.
He swallowed hard, and he seemed to pale. “Is that what you want?”
“Oh, no. Don’t deflect this. You started this so you’ve got to have the guts to finish it.”
He gaped at her a few seconds with his mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. She smiled and patted him on the chest and then moved to open the door. Hank was still standing in the house like a fish out of water when she turned back to look at him.
“Let’s go,” she said, feeling much lighter of heart. “I want churros.”
Chapter Ten
Hank felt like he was holding a grenade without the pin in it. He had no idea what had happened or how things had spiraled out of control. In his mind, he knew exactly what he wanted. It was just his mouth that didn’t know how to get the words out.
He’d thought at the very least Agatha would be upset or offended in some way, but she’d just smiled at him and they’d gone on to Taco and Waffles like nothing had happened. He knew how her mind worked, and he knew if he wanted the end results he kept seeing in his mind, then his mouth was going to have to start talking sooner rather than later.
Despite his stumbling, they had a nice time out, and both of them were more relaxed when they got back to Agatha’s house.
“Nick left a message while we were driving,” Hank said once they’d gotten out of the heat. “Let me give him a call, and I’ll get things set up in the war room so we can get back to business.”
The war room inside of Agatha’s home was Hank’s favorite space to work. She’d set it up as a place where she buried herself beneath the mountains of investigations she used to write her bestselling crime novels. The technology and in-house resources she had were more efficient than most police departments.
“Sounds good, roomie,” Agatha said. “I’m going to change back into my comfy clothes.”
“Roomie?” Hank said, watching her disappear down the hallway.
When she came back, she was dressed in her habitual work uniform of leggings, a t-shirt, and socks. Agatha was definitely a creature of habit.
“Nick’s texts said he’d call the mayor, and he asked for a status on whether Heather had representation. I let him know that she’d have someone there today.”
“Nick’s calling the mayor on a Sunday?” Agatha asked.
“They’re very good friends.”
“Thanks. I guess we’re going to owe him one,” she said. “Why’s it so hard getting answers from people? Kraken and Ritzo aren’t autonomous. This is Dallas PD for Pete’s sake, not Podunk nowhere.”
“It’s common in high-profile deaths,” Hank said. “The best way to appease all the bankers, lawyers, and media asking questions is to investigate and yank in a suspect. Politics sucks.”
“No kidding,” she agreed.
Agatha turned on her wall screen and went to work on her computer. They worked in silence for more than an hour before her head came up and her eyes focused on him.
“I’ve been digging into the clerk of courts office, and I’ve managed to find insurance records and divorce decrees. Wives are an expensive business.”
“Not really,” Hank said. “It’s when they become ex-wives that things get expensive. Longevity is key.”
“I’ll remember that,” she said. “Maybe you should look over these. There’s a lot of legalese you might be more familiar with.”
“Okay.”
“Just take my seat,” she said. “I want to look at the scene again anyway.”
He grabbed a legal pad and pen and started wading through the muck, making notes and matching up names and settlements. He connected companies, mergers, stocks, bonds, and properties hidden in different LLCs. There were properties and accounts he’d opened in his children’s names, two of which were still minors.
He’d traced multiple filings on behalf of Grace, Strong, Olivia, Sanderson and Saul, which appeared to be a very exclusive law firm. They’d filed wills, trusts, estate plans and insurance proclamations on behalf of Buck Hazard for almost fifty years, and they’d also dealt with numerous lawsuits that had come during the course of his business.
Hank refocused his efforts on the law firm. There was a loose thread somewhere that he could use to unravel the past, and hopefully protect Heather’s future. He started with the easiest searches in social media. Other than the firm’s presence on a few sites and a very stoic website, there wasn’t much to be gained. Everyone in the firm was close to, if not the same age, as Buck, and there were no red flags from the Texas Bar Association’s records. All looked to be in legitimate working order.
Hank did notice that the firm was incorporated about the same time that Buck’s company, Texas Hazard, Co began to launch. It was possible that one of the law partners was a friend or classmate to Buck. Maybe their relationship grew from friends to professional and Buck trusted that one person. But which one?
“How’s it going?”
“Very interesting,” Hank said. “You?”
“I don’t know,” she said, thoughtfully. “But something about the scene is bothering me. I figure my brain will put it together at some point, but for now it’s like a bunch of puzzle pieces are floating around in my brain and not fitting together.”
Hank understood her frustration. There were so many times he’d stood over a dead body and allowed distractions to vacate his mind. Then he’d allow the scene to speak to him. He didn’t want anyone else’s opinion or report at that moment. Some of the detectives called him the death whisperer, but he accepted it as a compliment. He had a calling to learn the victims, to understand them, empathize with them, and ultimately, bring them justice.
The law firm was definitely making his Spidey-senses tingle. Sometimes it wasn’t as much about what was in the file as much as it was who prepared it. Hank was so close to finding out the who and knew that would satisfy his why. He clicked back on the law firm’s website. There was an old picture of the five partners sitting around a massive table. It wasn’t the warmest or most welcoming photo he’d ever seen, but he assumed they were good at what they did. Men like Buck didn’t become successful because they surrounded themselves with stupid people.
Hank kept the page’s URL open in a separate tab before he returned to the clerk of court’s website to dig deeper. But his gaze kept veering back to the four men and one woman in the picture.
“That’s it,” he said, his palms slapping the desktop.
Agatha jumped a foot and put her hand over her heart. “What’s it?” she asked.
“I think I figured out what thread to pull.”
“Want to share?” she asked.
“Not yet. Let me put some things together and make it organized first.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “When you take a break, I think I might need to talk some of these photos out loud. Though I really did enjoy the video of you sneezing all over the camera. Remind me to Clorox my phone.”
Hank felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “Sorry about that. There was one of those scent vapor machines going strong, but it was worse because it was covering up some strong perfume. My sinuses were getting an overload.”
He arched a brow in that way he thought was cute, and he felt his heart turn over in his chest. He had it bad. And he really needed to get his mouth in tune with his brain so he could tell her how he felt.
“Give me a few more minutes with this, and then you can talk out the scene,” he said.
He refocused on the picture. It couldn’t have been easy to become a partner in a law firm like this one, and by the looks of them, he wouldn’t want to come across any of them in a courtroom unless they were on his side.
By the age of the picture, he assumed it would’ve been almost impossible for the lone woman to have broken the ranks a few decades ago. What sealed the deal for Hank was the positioning of everyone in the picture. Either they wanted to highlight that a female was a partner, or they wanted nothing to do with her. Hank guessed the latter. Now he had to figure out who she was and why she was the outcast.
“Ava Sanderson,” he said. She would lead him to answers. His gut stirred every time he looked at her. He did a Google and social media search on her and came up with nothing. Not even one hit. But there she was, in the good old Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. Ava Sanderson was actually Ava Hazard Sanderson. It wasn’t long before social security and birth records showed him that Ava was not another one of Buck’s ex-wives. She was his sister.
Seems Ava was a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law and passed the bar on her first take. He figured she, like most new lawyers, would’ve served as a clerk for a judge until she was able to secure a job as an associate with a firm. She got her feet wet for a year, and was named senior partner with Grace, Strong, Olivia, Sanderson and Saul. Of course, she was the Sanderson.
“Nothing fishy there,” he muttered.
Hank continued to make notes of the timeline, and he could make a very educated guess that she used her brother and his millions of dollars as leverage to up her position in the firm. Up until that time, their client list was steady, but hardly of the caliber that Buck would bring them. And as luck would have it, Ava lived exactly halfway between Rusty Gun and Dallas. It was Sunday, and a good time to do a cold call on a hot lead.
“I think we need to make a trip,” he said.
“I can’t eat anymore churros,” she said. “Besides, my stomach is in a knot right now.”
Hank removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. They’d been at it for a while. He looked at the online news source she had on the projection screen and he winced. Heather’s face was the image for the leading story—Texas Socialite Dragged In For Murder Of Local Philanthropist.”
Hank whistled and put his arm around her waist. “I’m sorry, Aggie.”
“Why couldn’t they use her mugshot for the front page?”
“Huh?” Hank was thoroughly confused.
“Look,” she said, pointing to the screen. “They used a picture from when Heather fell into the fountain. See, I’m trying to pull her out.”
“It’s not a terrible picture,” Hank said, squinting his eyes. “It looks kind of…frolicking. Was Heather drunk?”
“Yes.” She stared at him long and hard. “Put your glasses on and tell me what you see.”
He did as she asked and then gasped. Heather looked like she was on the cover of a magazine, her drunken smile infectious, and her bright green dress eye-catching as she kicked water at Agatha.
Agatha, on the other hand, looked like a drowned rat, and her dress was up over her backside so her very nice black underwear was exposed to the picture taker.
“Oh,” he said. “Nice panties.”
“Shut up.”
Chapter Eleven
“I think I’ve nailed down what’s been rattling around my brain,” Agatha said.
“I thought I smelled something burning,” he said, chuckling.
“You’re just a laugh riot today,” she said.
“I think you’re a bad influence on me.”
She grinned and turned back to the pictures she’d put back up on the screen. “I want to talk this through, but tell me if you’ve already thought of any of these things.”
“Will do.”
Agatha had switched to water because she could feel her system start to jolt with all the tea in her system.
“Buck was found resting on his right side as though he’d been sleeping,” she said. “But look what’s noticeable once I blew up the photos and lightened them a bit.”
Hank nodded, proud of her for seeing what he’d noticed earlier. He’d said it before, but she would’ve made a dang good cop.
“There are signs of lividity in his left calf, hamstring, triceps and neck.” She moved to the next enhanced photo and grinned. “But look at the right arm. There are signs of lividity in the arm, but not in the triceps. The coloring is on the outside of the arm, which means he didn’t die laying on his right side like the picture shows. You can also see the lividity on the bottom of his feet.”
“The body always tells a story,” Hank said.
Agatha nodded. “So, when Buck died, he was sitting up on the side of the bed, feet on the floor. He dies and falls back onto the bed.” She demonstrated on the chaise. “His left arm was next to his body, but the right arm was extended. Almost as if it were reaching for something.”
Hank rocked back on his heels and stuck his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts. She was good. Very good.
“The drawer is open on the nightstand,” he said. “Maybe that’s what he was reaching for.”
“A gun?” she asked. “I didn’t see any pictures of what was inside the drawer.”
“Our time was limited, and I didn’t notice the drawer was open until I started examining the photos.”
“Could be anything in there,” she said. “And maybe he wasn’t reaching for anything at all. It takes about half an hour for lividity to set in, but to get that level of deep purple you’re looking between an hour or two that he was in that position after death. So, he was definitely moved a while after he died.”
“Do you think Heather touched him when she went in to meet him?” Hank asked.
Agatha shrugged. “She said no, but you never know.”
“Nice work, Sherlock. So how does this line up with time of death, and who had access to him?”
“Heather and I went into check the room just after nine o’clock. It was still light outside, but it would’ve been full dark in another half hour. From the time Heather disappeared from the conversation we were having to when she came out screaming was between five and ten minutes. I sent you a text when she ditched me.”
Agatha got out her cell phone and checked the text log. “So, Heather went off at eight-fifty. Then if you work backward from that, based on the color of lividity, you’re looking at a TOD between six-fifty and seven forty-five. I added a few minutes in both directions.”
“What time did guests start arriving?” Hank asked.
“The invitation said guests could arrive at noon for horseback rides, skeet shooting, or swimming. Box lunches would be provided. The open bar started serving at three, so my guess is that most of the guests began arriving after that time. Heather and I arrived around six because it took her two hours to pick just the right outfit and get her hair and makeup done, so it made us late.”
“You saw Buck when you arrived?” Hank asked.
“Yeah, he was there to greet us. He kissed Heather on the cheek and whispered something in her ear that had her giggling. I’d already seen the margarita machines, so I headed in that direction while she was getting reacquainted.”
“You said Heather got a text from Buck telling her to meet him in the bedroom?”
“Oh,” she said, the light dawning. “She got that text right before she found him. Buck would’ve already been dead.”
“Bingo,” he said. “So somewhere between seven forty-five and the time Heather found him an hour later, someone came in and moved the body.”
“The killer? Why would they do that?”
“Either the killer or someone else who happened to
stumble upon him. Maybe they thought he was asleep and tried to wake him up, and then once they realized he was dead they were too afraid to speak up.”
Agatha went to her white board and started writing down the timeline, from when guests started arriving to when she and Heather walked in on the body. She always did better with visuals.
“That sure doesn’t leave a lot of time for the killer,” Agatha said, tapping the end of the marker against her chin.
“The good thing about a tight time for opportunity is that it eliminates so many other possibilities.,” Hank said.
“All we need to do is find out who arrived at what time, and that’s our suspect pool,” she said.
“According to Lorraine,” Hank said, and then added, “She’s ex-wife number two.”
“Right.”
“She said Hank sent a car for her to the airport and she arrived right at five o’clock.”
“Okay,” she said, adding Lorraine’s name to the timeline. “Of course, there’s still the possibility this wasn’t murder, and this is a complete waste of our time. But I’m not willing to bet Heather’s future against that. You’d think the M.E. would make an exception and get started early considering Buck is practically considered a state treasure. He was friends with Ross Perot for Pete’s sake.”
“It’s a long holiday weekend,” Hank reminded her, “We’ll be lucky if it’s not some intern catching corpses until everyone gets back from vacation.”
Agatha pressed her lips together. It wasn’t often she thought about where she might be now if she’d been able to continue with her original dream of forensics. Dr. Salt had changed the whole course of her future. But if he hadn’t, she never would’ve met Hank. And she probably wouldn’t be a writer.
She shook herself out of it and said, “One of his shoes was kicked under the bed.”
“Yeah, I noticed that right off. It seemed off to me then, and it still does now.” He scratched his head a bit. Agatha grinned as she wondered how many times he’d done just that while working high-risk investigations with the FBI. She knew he wasn’t looking at what was on the screen as much as he was exploring what wasn’t on there.