Death Changes Everything

by Linda Crowder

  “And did they come back out?”

  “And drove right past me.”

  “Did you see who was in the car?”

  “Lady driving. She was talking a blue streak to the guy in the passenger seat. Didn’t see him except for a minute.”

  “Did you recognize them?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know that Steven was shot to death?”

  “I read it in the paper.”

  “Did you hear shots?”

  “You are a nosy thing. I’ll tell you what I told the police. I hear a lotta noise when I’m out here.” She gestured toward the busy street that crossed the one in front of his house. “Lotta traffic.”

  “I understand,” said Emma. “Thank you for taking time to talk to me. You’ve been a lot of help.”

  “You don’t think them two shot him, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma answered truthfully. “Do you think so?”

  “I saw her pull in, maybe ten minutes after they left and I didn’t see nobody else.”

  “How long was it between when Maddie came home and when you heard her screaming?”

  “You sure you ain’t no cop?”

  “I’m sure. I’m just curious.”

  “Don’t know how long it was. Long enough for me to go inside and make a cuppa tea. Just cooled off enough to drink when I heard her. By the time I got back inside, a course, it was cold.”

  Emma could hardly contain her excitement when she met up with Kristy. She’d waited for her at the entrance to the alley, making sure she was out of sight of the old woman on the porch.

  “Nothing,” said Kristy. “Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything.”

  “I’m sorry. I have news though.” She filled Kristy in on what she’d learned from the two neighbors as they walked to the first house on the next block.

  “Then Valerie might’ve have killed Steven,” said Kristy. “Rose bush guy said she came running out all upset.”

  “But now we know there was someone else there after Valerie left.”

  “Two somebodies, who stayed longer than I would have if I’d walked into a home with a dead body. How are we going to find them?”

  “Hopefully Matt will think of something. What I think is stunning is that, if we believe porch lady, as you call her, Maddie might be lying.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “How long does it take to make a cup of tea? At least five minutes for the kettle to whistle? Then a minute or two to cool enough to drink. That’s a long time for Maddie to wander around the house before she found Steven’s body and ran out screaming?”

  “Do we still need to hit this block?” asked Kristy, looking at the long row of houses with dismay. “Porch lady says they came and went through by the road, not the alley.”

  “I know, but we have to walk past these houses to get back to the car anyway, so we may as well be thorough.”

  They went from house to house, skipping Pam’s, which was the second one in, about three houses down from where Steven lived. They got lucky and found most residents at home. Only the family that lived directly behind the Hills was out. No one admitted seeing anyone walking or driving down the alley the morning of Steven’s murder.

  They sat in Emma’s SUV, grateful for the warmth of the heater, and speculated about the identity of the mystery couple. “Not Valerie,” said Kristy.

  “And not Pam because she wouldn’t need to drive.”

  “Not Maddie.”

  “Unless she hired someone to kill Steven.”

  “Do hit men usually bring a date?”

  Emma laughed, “Dinner and a murder, huh? Wonder how well that would go over.”

  “Not exactly first date material.”

  “Depends on who you’re dating, I suppose.” They were still laughing when they reached Della Hill’s neighborhood.

  17

  Jake and Detective Brugnick arrived at the Young house as Emma and Kristy were trudging from house to house at the far end of the block. Pam’s husband answered the door and showed them in. He disappeared up the stairs, returning shortly with his wife. Jake noticed the gap between the two as they took seats on the sofa across from him.

  “Yes?” asked Pam. “How can I help you?”

  “Mrs. Young, I appreciate you speaking with us today.”

  “Of course, Detective. I’m hoping the police will have some answers for us soon.”

  “We’re trying to clear up a few minor issues that have come up during the investigation. First, could you tell me about the morning your brother died?”

  “There’s nothing to tell, Detective. I heard the sirens, but I never imagined they were for Steven.”

  “Did your sister-in-law call you? I was wondering why one of her neighbors took her in. It seems more natural for her to have come here.”

  Pam’s expression tightened and Jake saw the whites of her knuckles appear. “I assure you, Detective, there would have been nothing natural about Maddie coming here. I learned about Steven’s death when one of your policemen came to my door. He didn’t even know Steven was my brother until I told him.”

  “My apologies, Mrs. Young.”

  “None necessary, Detective.”

  “I take it you and Steven didn’t socialize?” asked Jake.

  Pam turned a steely gaze on him. “May I ask you, Mr. Rand, why it is you are here?”

  “Your father asked me to assist the police in any way I could to help find your brother’s killer.”

  “My father is dead. Whatever my father agreed to pay you, just submit an invoice to the estate. As his heir, I am releasing you from your obligation. You may go now.”

  “Actually, Mrs. Young, Jake is working under contract with the police department.”

  Pam glared at Brugnick, then turned back to Jake. “Very well, but not one penny comes out of the estate after today, Mr. Rand. You’ll find I’m quite a different employer than my father.”

  Jake studied Pam, who had turned her attention back to Brugnick, leaving his question unanswered. Her features were so much like her mother’s, yet Pam’s were set in harsh lines while Della’s fell more softly. It was a disconcerting change from the woman he remembered as bright and eager to please, but it had been fifteen years.

  “Mrs. Young, are you aware that the day before his death, your brother reported a breakin at your parents’ home?” Brugnick asked, sticking to the plan he and Jake had agreed upon on the drive over.

  “I am.”

  “After your father’s funeral, you accused your brother of orchestrating the breakin. Why is that?”

  “No one broke into the house, Detective. My son went there several times on my instructions, to retrieve items I wished to borrow while my parents were out of the country. I had no idea Steven called the police about it since he was aware of it.”

  “You’ve spoken with Ryan today, I take it?”

  “I speak with my son every day, Detective.”

  “He told us you were going to hang onto the items, then return them all at once. Did you do that, ma’am?”

  Pam hesitated, “Yes, of course.”

  “Are you planning to step into Steven’s shoes at Hill Energy, Pam?” Jake asked.

  “Of course. I’d have been there already if it weren’t for my father’s old-fashioned ideas about women.”

  “Aren’t you concerned about how the company will fare if oil prices don’t rebound soon?”

  “Oil prices always rebound, Mr. Rand, sooner or later. Hill Energy will be well positioned when that day arrives.”

  “Because of the rainy day fund?” asked Jake, watching Pam’s face closely. “The one that’s keeping the doors open right now? You authorized the formation of the fund fifteen years ago.”

  “What of it? It was the right thing to do, both for our employees and for the company. It’s had a wonderful impact on employee loyalty. This is a far deeper trough than we’ve seen in the past, so we will likely end up laying people off after a
ll, but our people will appreciate how hard we worked for them. They’ll be back as soon as we’re hiring again.”

  “Did Roger know?”

  “I pitched it to him, before he fired me. He hated the idea. He thought it took away the men’s incentive to manage their own money wisely.”

  “Did Steven know?”

  There was another pause. “I don’t know when Steven found out.”

  “Recently?”

  Pam shot a desperate look at her husband, who finally joined the conversation. “That’s enough questions. If you need to speak to my wife again, contact our attorney. I’m sure you gentlemen can see yourselves out.”

  He took Pam’s hand and led her out of the room. Jake heard their footsteps heading up the stairs and turned to look at Brugnick. “Hit a nerve there.”

  ***

  “I say we bring them all in and see who cracks,” said Brugnick. He and Jake had stopped to pick up sandwiches and were eating them in the truck so they could speak freely.

  “I don’t think anyone will crack. Pam and Ryan will lawyer up. Even Valerie will have a lawyer by now.”

  “Darn lawyers,” joked the detective. “I feel like we’re forgetting someone.”

  Jake’s cell phone rang. “We have news for you,” said Emma.

  “Let me put you on speaker,” said Jake, punching a button on the phone. “Okay, go.”

  “We found two neighbors who saw Valerie at Steven’s house. Both agree she was alone and one was close enough to see that she was very upset when she left.”

  “Interesting,” said Jake.

  “But there’s more.” Emma told them what the elderly woman had told them and her description of the car.

  “I’ll call it in,” said Brugnick. “We have a small pool of suspects. Maybe we’ll get a match.”

  “Porch lady also said she made tea and it had cooled enough to take the first sip between the time Maddie got home and the time she ran into the street.”

  “So?” asked Brugnick.

  “Morty, don’t you ever make tea? That’s got to be at least five minutes, maybe ten.”

  “Which means Maddie could be lying,” said Jake. “But she doesn’t have a motive. What makes a woman who has been turning a blind eye to her husband’s affairs suddenly want to kill him? Either porch lady, is that what you’re calling her? Either porch lady is wrong or she makes tea faster than you do.”

  “We have news for you, too, but we have one more stop to make. Morty and I are going to go see Lewiston and see what he has to say. Pam let it slip that Steven found out and I want to see if it was because he confronted Lewiston with it.”

  “If you don’t need us, I’m gonna drop Kristy off and head home. I called Jeb before I called you. Grace still has a fever and has been sleeping most of the time since he got there.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. Keep me posted. I’ll be home as soon as I can.” Jake hung and looked at Brugnick. “You have Lewiston’s home address?”

  The detective flipped through his notebook until he found the address and Jake headed for the east side of town. Brugnick called in the information about the mystery car into the police dispatcher, who promised to pull vehicle registrations from the names on the suspect list as she had time.

  Lewiston lived in a modest ranch-style house in a neighborhood that looked slightly past its prime. He stepped out of the truck and looked up at the colorful decorations that covered Lewiston’s front yard. It was the kind of neighborhood where parents still took their children trick-or-treating. He followed Brugnick up the brick path and waited while the detective mounted the cement steps and rang the bell.

  A familiar face opened the door to them. “Kathy, isn’t it?” Jake asked, recognizing Lewiston’s secretary.

  She flushed deeply and started to say something, then stood back and invited them in. She shut the door and stood with her back against it. “Are you here to see Bruce?”

  “Tell me Bruce Lewiston doesn’t have you working on a Sunday.”

  She looked away, then back at Jake. “You might as well know. Bruce and I are married. We got married late last year.”

  “Does anyone at the office know?”

  “Of course not. It’s company policy. A wife can’t work for her husband. We thought I could just transfer but when the bottom fell out of the oil market, there wasn’t anywhere to go. I would have had to quit and we couldn’t afford for me to do that.”

  “Surely Bruce makes enough money that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Kathy pulled away from the door, her eyes flashing. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? That family is so cheap. You wouldn’t believe what they pay Bruce. Even now, with him running the company, you’d think they’d have given him a raise.”

  “They haven’t?”

  “Not a penny. Roger was going to, but he died before he could sign off on it. Bruce asked that…woman about it…”

  “Della?”

  “Pam. I’d say what I think of her but I’m a Christian woman. Anyway, she just laughed in his face and told him she’d be running the company and he’d take whatever she gave him or he’d be out on his ear.”

  “Kathy, darling, that’s enough.” Jake turned to see Bruce Lewiston standing in the doorway that led out into the back yard. His voice was soothing and between that and the cardigan he was wearing, Jake was having a hard time reconciling him to the officious man he’d tangled with at Hill Energy.

  His wife subsided. She slipped on a jacket and gave him a kiss, then went out the door he’d just come in. “Mr. Rand,” said Lewiston, coming into the living room and extending his hand. Turning to Brugnick, he said, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Detective Brugnick, sir. May we ask you a few questions?”

  “Of course, of course. Please, sit down. Can I get you anything?” Both men declined. “Forgive my wife. She doesn’t have much patience for the Hills.”

  “We won’t take much of your time today. I wanted to let you know we have the final report from the audit.”

  “I assumed so, since the judge took the freeze off of our accounts.”

  “Bruce,” said Jake, “why didn’t you tell us Pam authorized the fund? Why the big secret?”

  “At the time you asked, Roger was still alive. He could easily have stepped in and dissolved the fund. I didn’t want to take that chance.”

  “Because you could have lost your job?” asked Brugnick.

  Lewiston looked surprised. “Because our employees would have been hurt.”

  “What about Steven? Did he know about the fund?”

  Lewiston’s face clouded. “Steven only cared about himself. If there was a spare dime in the sofa cushion in the break room, he sucked it out of that company. It was all I could do to find a way to show a profit on the books even before oil prices fell. Steven made a good living while Roger was there, but once he was gone, he found ways to line his pockets. I imagine Maddie is a wealthy woman today.”

  “And he eventually sniffed out the money in the worker’s fund,” said Jake.

  Lewiston closed his eyes. “Even Steven knew enough about the oil business to wonder why we weren’t laying off. I was in a panic to protect our workers.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went to the only person I knew who could stand up to Steven.”

  “Roger?”

  Lewiston shook his head. “Roger was old school. He’d been through booms and busts and thought anybody who spent all the money they made during the boom deserved what he got during the bust. If he’d known about the fund, he would have put the money back into the company and started laying people off, like he’d always done. I needed someone who would go to bat for the workers.”

  “Pam.”

  “Yes. I approached Pam years ago, while she was serving as her father’s second in command. She liked the idea not only for the workers, but because it meant Hill would gear up more quickly than any other company whenever oil came back. We’d make a killing while the o
thers were still hunting for people.

  “She took it to her father, but he wouldn’t do it. I don’t know exactly why she left the company, but she was red hot about it. She authorized the fund on her way out the door and together we settled on a strategy to hide it from Roger and Steven. We reported it accurately outside of the company or we would have been breaking the law, but neither of them ever really understood the financials, so it wasn’t that hard.”

  “And for her trouble, Pam’s been skimming a little off the top all these years,” added Brugnick.

  “The management fee?” asked Lewiston. “That was my idea. I knew she would need the money for her family and it seemed only fair.”

  “What did Pam say when you came to her for help?” asked Jake.

  “She was livid. She said she’d make sure he didn’t touch a dime of that money.”

  “When did you have this conversation?”

  Lewiston looked at the floor. “I’d rather not say.”

  “When did you have this conversation, Mr. Lewiston?” Brugnick echoed Jake’s question.

  “The day before Steven Hill was murdered.”

  18

  “Now can we bring them all in and see who cracks?” asked Brugnick. Jeb had gone home, too worn out from worry to want to stay. The rest were gathered at Jake and Emma’s. Matt was feeling better after sleeping most of the day, but Grace was still struggling and Emma hadn’t wanted to leave her alone.

  Emma had put her foot down and called the local oncologist. After speaking with Grace at length, he’d prescribed something to control her symptoms. Grace agreed to take the medication and the nausea had ebbed, but she was still very tired and had gone to bed early. Every few minutes, Emma slipped away to check on her.

  “Tempting,” agreed Matt. “Valerie Smith. While she could have shot Steven, I still can’t think of any reason why she would have. According to the story her lawyer tells, her husband told her he borrowed the car from a friend. She claims to have had no idea it was stolen. Since she has no record and her husband has a rap sheet a mile long, I tend to believe her. California authorities have already offered her a deal if she agrees to testify against him.”