handed the phone to Thornville.
“Talk,” Casey said.
Thornville cleared his throat. “Um, hello?”
Casey squeezed his shoulder, just a tad, and he squeaked. And began talking. When he’d given them all the information about who owned the company and how much work had actually been done in the past seventeen years, he looked up at Casey. She was still smiling. He cringed.
Eric took back the phone. “Got all that? Great. We’ll be in touch.” He hung up. “So, are we done here?”
Casey took her hand from Thornville’s shoulder. “I believe we are. Unless you have something else to ask?”
“Nope.”
Casey considered leaving Thornville with a physical reminder of their visit, but decided she wasn’t quite that angry. Instead, she smiled at him again, and walked to the door. As she was leaving, she heard Thornville say, “Doesn’t she scare you?”
Eric replied, “Every single day. But then, we’re friends, so I don’t have to worry. At least, not too much.”
Casey smiled to herself. That was exactly the way she liked it.
Chapter Forty-five
“You’re awfully quiet,” Eric said as they drove back toward Marshland. They had decided they didn’t actually need to track down Randy Pinkerton or his buddies. The cops had the new information, and the connections would hopefully be enough to at least bring the men in for questioning, as well as make it possible to check gun registrations, although alibis for a date several years ago would be impossible to come by. A week ago though, that was more hopeful. It wasn’t like Casey and Eric knew where Randy was, anyway, since he apparently was avoiding all his usual haunts.
Casey shifted in her seat so she could look at Eric. “I’m thinking about timing. Cyrus’ business is supposedly going fine, then all of a sudden he sells out. A few months later he is working for the exact people who bought his company. Soon after that he’s laid off and making the blueprints for the smuggling boat. What exactly happened?”
“Wayne said he was an expert, that people were lucky to get him to make something. I guess Harbor Houseboats wanted the best.”
“So they buy out his company? He goes from being his own boss to just another grunt? It doesn’t make sense. And meanwhile, his wife is ill and dying of cancer.”
“He needed money for her treatment?”
“Insurance would cover that.”
“Assuming he had it. He wasn’t getting benefits from some large company. He would have had to supply it himself.”
“One way to find out.” Eric dug his phone out of his pocket. “Call Betsy.”
Betsy answered almost immediately. “You found something?”
“Did Cyrus have medical insurance?”
She hesitated. “They were living in a car.”
“No, I mean before Vivian died. Were they okay?”
“Oh. I guess so. From what I remember, she was getting the best care, always in a different hospital, trying this or that new treatment. None of it worked, of course. I mean it was pancreatic cancer. Not much you can do for that—especially that far back.”
“Did he ever talk about why he sold his business?”
“All I ever heard was that he ran out of money and had to get a different job.”
“Do you know how he got the one with the houseboats?”
“They came looking for him. It was like Wayne told you—Uncle Cyrus was really, really good when he was thinking straight.”
“But then he got laid off not too long after.”
“I don’t know, Casey. I guess so. Dad always said he must have still been out of his mind a little bit because of Aunt Viv. I don’t think he ever really recovered. He went a little nuts trying to keep her alive with all that medicine, and when it didn’t work…”
“I understand. Thanks, Betsy. We’ll be in touch.”
“Uh-oh,” Eric said when she hung up. “You’re burning brain cells.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. Cyrus’ wife gets sick, but he’s got medical insurance, so he should be okay. He owns his own business, so he can make his own schedule—five months isn’t long enough for a business to go completely down the drain, is it? But halfway through her illness he sells his company and goes to work for somebody else, farther away, who would dictate his schedule, which would probably mean spending less time with his wife during her final months. From what we’re hearing about how her illness affected him and how much he loved her, I just can’t see that.”
“Well, maybe a few months is long enough to drain a business, especially if it was on the rocks before.”
She shook her head. “It’s