Secure Location - By Beverly Long Page 0,52

decisions never got made. Hated listening to consultants who couldn’t find their butts unless someone put a dollar sign on them.

“Lucky you,” he said. “Hey, I’m headed out of town. I got a lead on Troy Blakely. His parents lived in Haileyville. It’s about two hours west of here.”

Meg knew exactly where Haileyville was. It was thirty miles from her hometown of Maiter, Texas. They’d gone school shopping there and Christmas shopping, too. It was significantly bigger than Maiter, although that wasn’t saying much. Probably had ten thousand residents. Maiter had boasted they’d hit a thousand when the Wyman triplets had been born.

Cruz’s trip shouldn’t make her nervous but it did. Nobody in Haileyville was going to be talking about something that happened twenty years ago, some thirty miles away.

“Will you be back tonight?” Meg asked.

“Yes. I’d really appreciate it if you would either be in your office or in our rooms. Please don’t leave the hotel.”

“I won’t,” she said. She didn’t need to leave the hotel in order to do what needed to be done.

“Thank you,” he said.

She disconnected before she did something stupid like beg him to be careful. Then she pulled out Detective Myers’s card from her purse and dialed his office number.

“Myers,” he answered.

She could just see his stubby, nicotine-stained fingers grabbing his desk phone.

“This is Meg Montoya. I need to tell you something.”

Chapter Fifteen

When Cruz got to Haileyville, he searched for funeral homes on his smart phone. There were four. The first one he tried was closed but the second one had lights on. He rang the bell. A man in his mid-forties, wearing a black suit and shiny black shoes, opened the door.

“May I help you?” the man asked, his tone hopeful. Cruz understood. In a town this size, the four funeral homes would be in fierce competition. “My name is Detective Cruz Montoya. I’m investigating a case and I’m trying to find information on this man.” He flashed Blakely’s picture. “It’s my understanding that his parents died, maybe about a year ago. Do you recognize him?”

The man studied the picture, then shook his head. “Perhaps one of his siblings handled the arrangements. What’s the name?”

“Troy Blakely.”

The man tapped his chin and Cruz saw that his nails were very clean. Probably bad for business to have embalming fluid under the thumbnail. “Now I’ve got it. You’ve got the timing right. It was almost a year ago. If you’ll follow me, we can look it up.” The man led him to a back room, done in tasteful gray and maroon. The man motioned for Cruz to sit and took his own seat in front of an old desktop computer. After a few clicks of the mouse, he stopped. “Here we are. Blakely. Gloria and Ted. Sad situation really. The woman died and the husband arranged the funeral. At the same time, he prepaid for his own services. That’s not all that strange. However, we realized he had something in mind when just three days later, we were advised that he was also deceased. A deliberate overdose on his wife’s medication.”

“Their family?”

“No family. I assisted in the writing of his wife’s death notice for the local paper and specifically asked him about children. He did mention that his wife had lost a daughter from a previous marriage many years ago but he didn’t want us to mention that in the newspaper.”

“No son? You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be. No mention of one and he definitely wasn’t at either funeral.”

Cruz wanted to pound his head on the table. It wasn’t making sense. It had to be the right couple. Same last name. The waitress had the name of the town right.

But no son. Troy Blakely had made it sound like he was very close to his parents.

Something did not smell right.

“What’s their address?”

The funeral director frowned. “I’m not sure I should release that.”

Cruz cocked an eyebrow. “Who’s going to complain? They’re dead and there’s no family.”

The man nodded. “I suppose you’re right. And we, of course, want to cooperate with the police.” He wrote something on a slip of paper and passed it across the desk to Cruz. “Good luck, Detective.”

Cruz plugged the address into his GPS and found the small house in less than ten minutes. It was a modest ranch on a quiet street, with concrete birds and rabbits and even a few frogs in the flower garden.

Had they belonged to the Blakelys? Were they left behind in the garage, no longer a concern