Joy to the Wolves (Red Wolf #1) - Terry Spear Page 0,30
at the estate sale. And then Mr. Lee spoke with the guy manning the cash register. I paid for the wolf statues. Mr. Lee gave me the five boxes of stuff free. If he wasn’t in charge or didn’t have some authority there, why would the cashier have taken orders from him? Mr. Gulliver’s daughter undoubtedly knew Mr. Lee, or she wouldn’t have been berating him the way she was. He came over and spoke to me afterward, so it wasn’t like she’d told a trespasser to leave the auction site. Unless the woman wasn’t Gulliver’s daughter.”
“Maybe the man you spoke to worked for Mr. Gulliver in some other capacity and so the cashier knew him. Maybe he pretended to be Mr. Lee, and everyone thought he was the same man because he looked similar. Mr. Lee’s body was discovered in his home the day after the auction, but he’d died the day before, according to forensics.” Ethan drank some of his coffee.
“What if Mr. Lee, being a wolf, had a twin brother?” Not for one second did Brooke believe Mr. Lee wasn’t who he said he was. She was as wary a wolf as any other, and she would have smelled the deception.
“I checked to see if there was another Mr. Lee working for the estate. There was not.” Ethan ate the rest of his cinnamon roll. “Your Mr. Lee lied about being Mr. Gulliver’s assistant.”
“It’s in all the news stories. That’s how I knew Mr. Lee was Mr. Gulliver’s assistant. Mr. Lee didn’t tell me that.”
Ethan nodded. “So the son took over once the real Mr. Lee was murdered.”
“Mr. Gulliver was already dead, so why would the son suddenly be his assistant?” she asked.
“You have a point. Did your Mr. Lee lie about his name? About buying things from your family, knowing of your wolf heritage, and sending you the invitation to attend the auction because of the friendship he had with your family? Do you have the invitation, by the way? We could try to lift fingerprints off the document,” Ethan said.
She didn’t know what to think. “No. I threw the invitation out. I never thought I’d need to save it as evidence and turn it over to the DEA. Did your friend talk to the man who was cashiering?”
“Yeah, but he said he didn’t know anything about you.”
“What?” No way. Unless there were so many customers at the auction he forgot. “I bought the wolf sculptures from him.” Then she wondered about the five boxes of mystery stuff that hadn’t arrived yet. What if they never arrived? What if they were never meant to arrive? At least she had the wolf statues. That was what was really worth something to her. “He was a blond guy? Midforties? Brown eyes.”
“No. The man in charge of taking the money was dark-haired, wore glasses, and had blue eyes. Late fifties. My friend took a picture of him to show you.” Ethan pulled out his phone and found the picture and showed it to her.
She frowned. “That’s not him.” She could envision the whole scene before her. Mr. Lee talking to the blond guy and him glancing back at her, smiling and nodding. “Did the man you spoke with say the wolf statues were stolen, if I didn’t pay the right man for them? Mr. Lee said they weren’t part of the estate. What if they really had been?” She couldn’t believe the man called Mr. Lee had cheated the estate out of the money.
“The man serving as the cashier didn’t say anything about it, and my friend didn’t mention it. I didn’t want you to get in trouble for something that might have been illegal.”
“If he wasn’t Mr. Gulliver’s assistant, and he wasn’t Mr. Lee, and the guy who took my money wasn’t the cashier, then wouldn’t someone have been suspicious?” She didn’t believe some unknown person could do that without arousing suspicion. Plus, the woman who had been berating him had known him. Unless…the woman wasn’t Gulliver’s daughter. “Did you talk to Gulliver’s daughter?”
“She’s in Paris and hadn’t been at the auction,” Ethan said.
Brooke’s jaw dropped. “So all of it was a lie.”
“How did you pay for the merchandise?” Josh took hold of her hand and squeezed, reassuring her none of this was her fault.
“I used a credit card. I hadn’t planned to buy anything. I was just curious why I would get a special invite to the auction.”
“Did the charge come up on your account?” Ethan asked.