Cut and Run (Lucy Kincaid #16) - Allison Brennan Page 0,7
the Albright property, as well as any other digital photos he might have.”
“Sure. You know, you should talk to the owner of the construction company. Henry Kiefer. His contact information is right there on the inside of the first folder. He’s bitter and angry about the whole thing, but sharp as a tack. Figured out exactly how she’d stolen the money, but he lost everything in the process.”
Which could be motive for murder.
“We will,” she said. “When will Detective Douglas be back?”
“Whenever he’s done with his case. Look, I have work to do. We might not be as busy as San Antonio or the FBI, but we don’t have the resources that y’all do, so I do double duty here. So if that’s it?”
“For now.” Lucy gathered up the file and walked out.
* * *
Carl Chavez followed the feds to the door. There was no reason Kerr couldn’t run with this case, and he was not going to just roll over and let them do whatever the hell they wanted.
Garrett walked in a minute later. “Those the two feds?”
“Yep. Pricks.”
“Even the looker?”
“Ball-breaker,” Carl said.
Garrett shook his head. “I tried to get back in time.”
“I told them you had an important case, but what do they care?”
“So they’re really taking it over.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know that they’re going to learn anything we didn’t.”
“They have the bodies. Forensics.”
“Skeletons. I left a copy of the forensics report on your desk, there’s nothing there. They just want to flex their muscle and pretend they know more than we do.”
“Not going to go over well here. It would have benefited them to let us handle it.” Garrett walked over to his desk. Carl followed him, sat down, and looked at his partner while Garrett glanced at the forensics report. “So what did they say they’re going to do?”
“Not in so many words, but it looks like they’re going to retrace our steps. Do everything we did—and learn everything we learned.”
“Fucking waste of time.”
“Their time to waste.”
“Still … the family has been dead for three years. Except for the kid.”
“Kid’s probably dead, too. They just haven’t found his body.”
Garrett frowned.
“Call them,” Carl said. “They want to talk to you anyway. Said the file is incomplete or some such thing.”
“Pricks,” Garrett mumbled. “They can stew for today, I’ll call them in the morning. It’s not like I don’t have a hundred other things to do more important than jumping through federal hoops.”
“Don’t I know it,” Carl said. “I have to go follow up on that robbery at the school. Back in a few.”
* * *
On the way to Henry Kiefer’s business, Lucy fielded an irate call from Ash.
“The fucking sheriff’s office never called the family!”
Lucy had never, in the two years she’d known Ash, heard him swear.
“When we were done at the gravesite, I called Denise Albright’s parents because they’ve been paying the mortgage. They co-signed for the family twenty years ago and were still on the deed. I just talked to them as if they knew what was going on … and they didn’t. No one called them. I feel like shit.”
“I’m so sorry, Ash. If I’d known, I would have called—”
“The sheriff’s department promised me they were on top of it. Hours ago. This is what happens when you have a multi-jurisdictional clusterfuck.”
“How did they take it?”
“I didn’t tell them. The ME’s office is going to call them—probably talking to them now. I backtracked, said we had a lead and were investigating the family’s disappearance and wanted access to the grounds. They were more than happy, said we could go in the house as well, that they’ll call the tenants.”
“They’re renting out the place?”
“Yeah, though I doubt there’s any need to go inside. All the belongings are in storage. Personal property paid for by the family, Kerr County has papers, books, computers, that stuff, in their evidence locker. But here’s the thing: The parents—Betty and Martin Graham—said they never believed that their daughter fled the country.”
“Parents sometimes have a hard time believing ill of their children.”
“They didn’t comment on the embezzlement charges, just that they wouldn’t have taken their kids to Mexico. None of them spoke Spanish. They don’t have property or friends who live down there, and they never even vacationed there. The only reason they had passports is because they went to England for a cousin’s wedding a couple years before they disappeared.”
“And now that we know they are buried close to home, you think they never left at all.” Like