by Aaron, Celia
He groaned. “That’s not a thing.”
“Millie Lagner says it’s a thing, so it’s a thing.”
“No one is sneaking into her garden at night and taking her okra. They’re also not stockpiling alien goods in her garage. It’s not happening. None of it. And it’s definitely not worth the time of the great City of Azalea’s second-best detective.”
My computer finally flickered to life, and I entered my password, then began the five-minute wait for it to wake the rest of the way up.
“It doesn’t matter what you think. It’s our job to investigate any and all crimes in the city limits.”
“This is just stupid.” He rubbed his face, the scratchy sound of his stubble reminding me of the last time I had seen Dale. He’d been haggard, in need of a shave, and strung out like a clothesline.
“It’s not like you have anything better to do.” My computer finally began to function, and I logged into the case filing system.
“Fine.” He stood. “If I’m not back in an hour, call in the SWAT team.”
“We don’t have a SWAT team.”
“The National Guard, then.” He clipped his badge to the waistband of his jeans.
“If you don’t get your ass out of here, I’ll call the chief. How about that?” I cut my eyes at him as he glowered at me.
“You always were a tattletale.” He walked to my desk, his heavy boots thunking on the tile floor.
“You always were a crybaby.” I tried and failed to stifle my smile. Our insult routine was familiar and comfortable, like a favorite pair of jeans.
He shrugged, a grin tugging at his lips. “Okra is itchy as all hell. You’d cry too.”
I hated okra and anything to do with gardening, so I couldn’t argue too much with his point. Luckily, I didn’t have to, because the phone rang.
I swiped up the receiver before he could. “Yeah?”
“Benton King is on the phone. He says his father’s been shot and killed at the law firm.” Helen, our dispatcher, spoke with an uncharacteristically shaky voice. “The chief isn’t in his office right now. I called his cell phone, but he didn’t answer that either.”
“He must be busy with Lina.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But someone needs to get out there, and I wasn’t sure if I should send Trevor since he’s—”
“Too green,” I finished for her.
“Right.”
“I’m out.” Logan strode away from me, almost to the door.
“Hang on,” I called. He turned and gave me a curious look as I spoke into the receiver.
“Tell Benton King that Logan and I are on our way.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I hung up and stood, then grabbed my service weapon from my side drawer and looped the lanyard with my badge around my neck.
Logan’s eyebrows rose. “Something must be really wrong.”
“Randall King has been killed.” I tried to keep my tone nonchalant despite the surge of adrenaline firing through my veins. We hadn’t had a murder investigation in over a year. I should have been proud of our stats, glad that we lived in a community without a measurable homicide rate. And I was, but I couldn’t deny my excitement at the thought of a new case, especially one involving the larger-than-life Randall King.
Logan whistled. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Does Garvey know?”
“No. Helen hasn’t been able to get him on the phone.”
“Lina?”
I closed the desk drawer and grabbed my keys. “Probably.”
Logan held the door for me as we hustled out to my unmarked car. He hesitated at the passenger door. “Look, I don’t want to hold up the investigation or anything, but I have an okra theft case that is very important. Millie Lagner is going to get mighty upset if we don’t take her complaints serious—”
“Get in the car, smart ass.”
* * *
The familiar gray brick building of King and Morris, ferns hanging along the front porch and flowers pouring from planters along the walk, looked particularly pale in the morning light. I parked next to the sheriff’s SUV in the small lot to the side of the building.
“What’s the dipshit sheriff doing here?” Logan was opening his door as I threw it into park.
“He’s a King. I assume his brother must’ve called him in when they found the body.” I gave up the crisp air conditioning of the car and strode into the muggy late summer air. Fresh cut grass and the scent of distant honeysuckle tickled my nose as we strode up the front stairs.
Logan pushed through the ancient wood door, and we stepped into the reception area, the wooden boards creaking beneath us.
An older woman with iron-gray hair sat at the front desk. “Where’s Garvey?”
“He’s busy on another matter.” I took the lead and approached the desk, noting the two business card holders displayed with the names Randall and Benton King in bold print. “I’m Detective Matthews and this is Detective Dearborn.”
She gave me a withering stare, her no-nonsense demeanor verging on hostile. “It’s a sad state of affairs when the chief of police is too busy to have any care for poor Mr. King.”
I took her name from the small placard on the edge of her desk. “Margaret, I can assure you that Chief Garvey will be here as soon as he can.” If I hadn’t been looking right at her, I would’ve missed the slight tremble in her chin and the watering of her eyes. Despite the stone façade, she was shaken. I softened my tone. “I’m going to need you to close the office. Lock the front door, and keep people out of here so that we can establish a secure perimeter.”
“Mr. King would never allow us to close the office.” Her eyes watered even more. “He-he prided himself on working hard every day.”
“I understand, but we need to—”
“Where’s Garvey?” A taller man, mid 30s with light brown hair and dark blue eyes strode into the reception area from the hallway behind the desk.
“He sent these detectives.” Margaret wrinkled her nose.
“I’m Detective Matthews and this is Detective Dearborn. You are?”
“Benton King.” He looked down his nose at both of us. His dark gray suit was pressed to perfection, and he gave us a glare reminiscent of his father.
Randall King was the closest thing that Azalea had to a celebrity. His face covered both billboards in town, he always headlined at the Christmas parade, and he’d been a staple of the community for as long as I could remember. Now I supposed he could add “deceased” to his résumé.
“Arabella.” Porter King strode out behind his older brother, his usual jovial manner conspicuously absent. He took the phone off the hook and gently patted Margaret’s shoulder. “Sweetheart, the firm is closed until further notice.”
At his tone, the matron finally crumpled. “All right.”
“I expect Arabella and Logan will have some questions for the staff. If you could show everyone into the front conference room, that would be great.” Porter pushed his hat back on his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.
I added, “tell the staff not to touch anything. This entire building is a crime scene until I decide differently. Logan, go around back and make sure everything is locked up tight. I don’t want anyone walking out of here until I’ve had a chance to go over everything.”
“Got it.” He headed out the front door.
“You’re in charge?” Benton’s scowl deepened as he studied me.
I didn’t drop my gaze. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“My father has been murdered, and Chief Garvey sends the B-team to investigate it? I most certainly have a problem with that.”
“Benton, take it down a notch.” Porter stepped back as Margaret lumbered up from her chair. “Arabella is the lead detective for the city. She’s got a lot more experience than I do.”
“That’s not saying much.” Disapproval laced his words.
I took a step toward him and enjoyed it when his eyes widened the slightest bit. “
The fact is, it doesn’t matter what you think, Mr. King. I’m here to do my job. If you get in my way, I will have you escorted out of the building. And if you have a problem with my methods, I suggest you take it up with Chief Garvey. Otherwise I don’t need anything from you except a statement of what happened. Now, show me the body.” I stepped around the desk and walked down the back hallway.
The long hallway was lined with paintings of stern men, each of whom had ruled the city during their tenure as a King or a Morris. The sort of men who smoked pipes, sipped brandy or an equally snobby drink, and discussed their tiny kingdom of Azalea.
“Take it easy, Arabella.” Porter caught up to my elbow and pointed to a set of closed double doors. “We just lost our father, and Benton is a stuck-up ass even on his best day.”
“I can hear you. I’m standing right here.” Benton crossed his arms.
I halted. “Both of you need to hang back.”
Benton stopped a few paces behind. “Not a problem.”
“Who found the body?”
“I did.” Benton’s gaze never left the doors.
“Has anyone else touched these door handles afterward?”
“No. I opened them and found him.” He swallowed hard. “And I’m pretty sure I was the only one who touched them, since I closed the doors soon after.”
I pulled a pair of gloves from my inner pocket and worked them on. “Did you go into the room?”
“Not really, no. I could tell…” He clamped his mouth shut, as if finishing the sentence was abhorrent to him.
I moved on, keeping him talking. “Anyone else go in the room?”
“I took a step or two inside, but when I saw that he was—” Porter paused, his eyes watering, before continuing, “gone, I backed out.” He cleared his throat.
“All right. We called in a forensics expert from Tupelo, but she won’t be here for another couple of hours. I’m going to go in and take a look.”
Logan strode toward us from the end of the hallway. “The place is secure.”
“Keep it that way.” I took a deep breath and gripped the door handles. They opened with a slight creak to reveal a bloody tableau.
A body lay slumped over on the desk. The gray hair on the back of his head was matted with blood and gore. Crimson drops stained the off-white curtains behind the credenza, and the unmistakable smell of death tinged the air. With a gloved finger, I switched on the lights. The rest of the office was untouched, the chairs neatly arranged in front of the desk, and the bookcases on either side stoically looking on.
I glanced back at Benton. He met my gaze, his eyes stark. For all his snobby bluster, I could sense him falling apart on the inside. Maybe his act in the reception area was the only thing that was holding him together. Maybe being haughty and distant was what kept the horror of what happened to his father at bay. Pity filtered through my lens, and I saw him a touch differently. Even so, in a case like this, I couldn’t rule out anyone as a suspect just yet. That included Benton and Porter.
“If you’d like to wait with the others in the conference room, that might be best.” I said it as mildly as I could.
Benton gave a sharp shake of his head. “I’m fine here. Besides, I want to keep an eye on things and make sure you don’t contaminate any evidence.”
Logan’s dark eyes flashed. “Look, asshole—”
“It’s fine.” I turned back to the office and stepped inside. No good could come of sparring with Benton King at this point. He was one of two things: a killer or a victim. Given the way he blanched at the sight of the room, I guessed the latter.
Moving farther inward, I took stock of the details—the banker’s light with the green shade on the edge of the desk, the liquor decanter with crystal glasses on a neat side table, the worn but well-kept Persian rug beneath my feet. Other than the body and the blood, nothing else seemed amiss.
Continuing around the desk, I cut a wide berth so as not to trample through any of the blood or possible evidence.
A long, low wooden piece of furniture sat nestled under the back windows, one of the cabinets on the side ajar. A metal door hung open, the shiny edge catching the light. “What’s in this credenza back here? It looks like maybe a safe? Hard to tell from this angle, and I can’t get closer.”
“He’s had a safe in there for as long as I can remember. But he never kept anything in it except when certain clients used to pay with cash.” Porter walked into the room but hovered near the door. “That was a long time ago.”
“Porter’s correct. We don’t use that safe for anything anymore.” Benton kept to the doorway and didn’t look in my direction. I couldn’t blame him. The mess almost turned my stomach, and I didn’t even know the man. Not personally.
“No gun here.” I knelt and peered at the floor beneath the desk.
“Suicide’s out.” Logan edged around to the other side of the desk, his back to a bookcase.
“Not necessarily.” I glanced at Porter. Would one of the sons have been ashamed of a suicide to the point they’d take the weapon? Or maybe there was more to it. It wouldn’t be the first time a suicide was staged to look like a murder so an insurance policy would pay out. My mind hopped from one possibility to the next, never settling on one for too long.
Based on the scene, the most obvious guess at this point was a robbery gone bad. But the fact that the safe hadn’t been used as far as either of the King sons knew, was troublesome. On top of that, the front door showed no signs of forced entry, and Logan hadn’t mentioned any issues with the back door or any windows, either. We’d need to do a thorough check.
I shuffled farther around the desk and paused when I saw something sticking out of the victim’s back. Silver and glinting in the overhead light, a letter opener held a yellow piece of legal paper against Mr. King’s bloodied suit coat.
“See anything?” Logan drifted closer.
“Yeah.” I put a knee on the edge of the credenza and leaned over to get a better look. “It looks like someone pinned a note to his back.”
“Pinned?” Benton’s sharp voice cut through the too-thick air.
“Letter opener, I’m afraid.”
“Jesus.” Benton coughed into his palm.
“What does it say?” Logan couldn’t get any nearer, there was too much spatter.
I maneuvered closer, putting both knees on the edge of the credenza and tilting back toward the bloodstained curtains.
In neat blue cursive, the note said, “You’re next.”
4
Benton
“I already told Detective Matthews.” I clasped my hands together on top of the conference table. “I said goodbye to my father Friday night as we left the firm together. I didn’t see him again until this morning when I found…”
Detective Dearborn nodded. “Are you sure you can’t think of anyone who would’ve wanted to harm your father?”
I itched to run my fingers through my hair and yank on the strands, a habit I thought I had outgrown. Clearly not. As my irritation grew, so did the need to make the movement. “No one wanted to hurt my father. He dealt mainly with real estate and business disputes, none of which involved him personally. He didn’t do criminal law. He never prosecuted anyone. None of this makes sense. This town loved him. I mean, he won the Azalea Dancing With the Stars competition for the past three years running. He knows—knew—everyone, and had more friends than he knew what to do with.” Talking about him in past tense made my chest hurt.
“And you’re sure there was nothing in the safe?” The detective chewed on the end of the King and Morris pen between his fingers as he balanced on the back legs of his chair. I made a mental note that if he left the pen behind, to have Margaret trash it immediately.
“I hadn’t seen the inside of that safe in years. And the last time I did see it, it was empty. If my father put something else in there, I wouldn’t have known it. But I can tell you that none of the firm funds were stored on the premises. I manage our bank account, and with Marg
aret’s help, keep all of our books in order. There was simply nothing of value in there.”
Detective Matthews walked into the conference room with Porter at her elbow.
Though she was dressed casually in jeans and a button-up white shirt, open at the top, she wore her clothes well. The shirt had been ironed, and her simple set of diamond stud earrings added to her femininity. I realized that Porter must’ve been in shock; otherwise, he would’ve been hitting on her. Maybe I was in shock too. When I saw my father’s body, I just shut off. I was still shut off. It didn’t make sense, and I needed time to sort it out and put the puzzle pieces together. But first I had to get the detectives out of my way.
She sank down at the head of the table, completely at ease with taking the lead chair in the room. “We’ve gone through everyone in the office. No one came in over the weekend. I’m not a forensics analyst, but given the state of the blood and the condition of the body, I would hazard a guess that he was killed sometime last night.” She swept her dark hair behind one shoulder and made a few notes as she spoke.
I’d never met her before, but Porter was somewhat familiar with her. They’d known each other in school. I was older and already at college by the time they’d made it to Azalea High. Porter spoke well of her in the few moments we’d had before our separate interviews. I didn’t take his assessment to heart, especially given that he had a tendency to make allowances for women who looked like Arabella Matthews.
She finished scribbling her notes, drummed her pen on the pad, and met my gaze, her green eyes sparkling with an intelligence I didn’t trust. “I’m going to need to get a look at all the files Mr. King was working on. I’ll also need to visit his home and get a list of known associates from you.”
“Files? Absolutely not.” I leaned back in my chair. “All files are protected by attorney-client privilege. I can’t hand them over to you.”
“Ben.” Porter gave me a confused stare. “She needs to investigate and find out who killed our father. Of course you’ll give her the files.”
“I will do no such thing. Those files are confidential. Our clients expect us to safeguard their secrets and to uphold the attorney-client privilege. I don’t intend to violate my professional ethics the moment our father is gone. He would never allow this.”