The Widow and the Will (24 page)

Chapter 43

Sitting on her patio with a glass of iced tea, Tess had more time on her hands than she knew what to do with, not having a steady job to work. She took Hudson’s calls on the first ring so she could help in any way, but other than remembering the brownies, she wasn’t doing much good in that department. She tried to keep living like a normal person, even though a huge pile of cash was sitting in her checking account. She hadn’t even bothered to make an appointment with the finance guy because she was pretty sure it was all going to be taken away when she got arrested for murder. She talked to her parents and sister multiple times a day, but beyond cleaning the apartment and answering the phone, Tess spent her time bored to the teeth or filled with anxiety as she fantasized about prison life.

In a small way, she knew the time away from most of the world was doing her a little bit of good. As she sipped her tea and watched the cats roam around the grass, firmly harnessed and leashed, she thought about writing in her journal but didn’t feel like it right then. She usually did write in it a few times a day, though. She kept making lists and notes about things to do. She wrote about Jack constantly. The day after her hookup with Ford, Tess wrote a five-page entry apologizing to him. She knew technically that she hadn’t cheated, but her conscience bothered her just the same. When she read the pages a couple of days later, it made her cry for both Jack and herself. She tore them out of the book and sealed them in an envelope, calling it the last love letter she would write to Jack. Then she put the envelope in the bottom of her jewelry box.

In the days while she prayed and waited for Hudson to find a way out of the mess, Tess talked out loud to Jack, like he was really still there. She never did it in front of anyone, or else everyone would really think she was off her nut, but the sound of her own voice in the empty apartment was comforting. She wasn’t crazy enough to believe he would answer, but sometimes she got a sense of what she knew he would say. Not only had he been her boyfriend, fiancé and briefly her husband, he’d been her very best friend in life. Thinking she could still bounce her ideas off of him made her feel better. Those conversations also made her feel less guilty about Ford.

And she did think about Ford. A lot. Probably more than she should. She talked to Lilly about him, too, but her sister was being more of a pain in the ass where that subject was concerned. Lilly kept insisting that she should go for it with Ford, but Tess insisted he had too much of a backstory. She had kind of admitted that she wished it wasn’t the case, but she wanted to be realistic about it all. Like her sister. Lilly always looked at things honestly and Tess wanted to be more like that. Ford had walls built up around him to keep people out. It was pretty obvious that his crappy childhood had really messed him up where women were concerned and Tess didn’t want to fall into the trap of thinking she could fix him. She had enough shit to deal with, she didn’t need a project guy. Sure, he had come clean and told her about his background and that was a point in his favor, but what else was he not telling her, how much more to the story was there?

Tess contented herself with the rolling movie in her head of their passionate night together and nothing more. But every once in a while, Lilly’s voice would pop into her head. “Go for more,” it would say. “Take a chance.” Tess kept pushing those thoughts away. Ford had been a buoy in her ocean of grief. She reached for him and he pulled her in. He had mountains of baggage in his past and she was in no position to help anyone sort through their suitcases. She had her own to unpack.

The cats were finished with the explorations and were now winding themselves around the legs of her chair. Tess finished the last of her tea and went to the door to slide it open. Timothy and Spencer tried to race inside, but scared the hell out of themselves when the patio chair tried to follow them. Tess laughed and set the glass on the table. “Come here, you goofuses.” She grabbed Timmy and hooked her fingers into one of the loops of his harness and unclasped the leash, then did the same to Spencer. She carried them inside and set them down. Off they went to bathe the outdoors off themselves.

From the kitchen, she heard her phone begin to ring.
Law & Order strikes again
. “Hello, good lawyer,” she said, after swiping to accept the call.

“Good afternoon. You sound chipper.”

“Doing my best. What’s up?”

“Ford thinks he’s onto something.”

Tess’s heart skipped a beat. “Really? What?”

“The male nurse at Dr. Guildford’s office seemed suspicious. What can you tell me about him?”

Gnawing on her thumbnail, Tess thought for a moment. “Not much. I never really saw him. Whenever I’d bring work into the office or come to pick up my check, he was with patients or at lunch or sometimes not there at all. I saw him at office parties or meetings and he seemed fine. You don’t think he put the poison in the brownies do you?”

“We don’t know,” Hudson admitted. “But Ford thought he was off and I trust my brother’s instincts.”

“Me too.”

“Do you think he might have had a secret thing for you? A crush maybe? If he was the one who did the poisoning, could it have been because he wanted Jack out of the way?”

“No!” Tess shook her head and frowned. “Not at all. Like I said, we never had that much contact. Plus, he would talk about his girlfriend all the time to the other girls in the office. I only know that because they would tell me. He doted on her and all the other girls always wished their spouses would fawn over them that way.”

“Damn,” Hudson muttered. “That would have been a good path to take. Well, Ford is going to try and catch him outside the office to question him because Dr. Guildford had a sudden change of heart. Apparently, he’s worried and he won’t let us talk to anyone else on the premises.”

Tess frowned. “That’s weird. Doc’s known me for years. That seems more suspicious to me than anything else.”

“I’ll make a note of it for Ford. Unfortunately, he’s left for some medical conference this morning and won’t be back for a week.”

“Let me guess. Tahiti, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“He goes there every year right about this time. Calls it a medical conference so he can write it off. He takes a couple of classes online so he can sorta make it legit.” Tess snorted.

Hudson chuckled. “Well, I know lawyers who do the same thing, so I won’t judge. But if he does this every year, I’m not sure we have anything to worry about with him. He’s only freaked out because he thinks he might get sued by one of his employees. Don’t let your fear get the best of you, okay?”

“All right.” Tess sighed. “Is Ford there?”

“No, he’s out following Mike.”

“Okay. Tell him I said thanks when you see him again.”

“I will.”

Hudson was silent for a moment and Tess asked if he was still there.

“Yeah, I’m still here. Look, I need to ask you something.”

Tess tensed up. The tone of Hudson’s voice changed and he no longer sounded… lawyerly to her. “Yes?”

“I think something’s going on with Ford. He’s been different lately and I’m worried about him. He hasn’t said anything to you has he? I mean, not that he would, but he’s funny like that.”

Tess was scared to answer too quickly or not fast enough. “No, he hasn’t spoken to me about anything except the case.”

“Okay. It’s just me then. The whole brother thing, I guess.”

“Yeah, it must be. I don’t know him very well…” Tess trailed off, hoping the conversation would come to an end. The last thing she wanted to discuss with Hudson was his brother.
Ugh, please be the end of the call
!

“I’ll give you a call when I know more.”

“I’ll be here.”

Tess ended the call and put her phone back on the charger. She retrieved her glass from outside and refilled it, all the time racking her brain for any information about Mike. Everything she’d told Hudson was true. She hardly ever saw him and he wouldn’t have been on her radar, anyway. The first time they met, he’d shaken her hand and been polite. Tess had thought he was okay. Not too tall, not too short. Plain brown hair and eyes. He was unremarkable then and left no real imprint on her memories now.

She sure was thinking about Mike Andrews now, though. Ford was out following him around and that worried her. What if Mike was the one who put the poison in the brownies? What if he went after Ford?

Chapter 44

Ford sat in Hudson’s truck about a block away from Dr. Guildford’s office, waiting for the staff to close up shop for the day. Closing in on six o’clock, he counted heads as employees emptied out of the building like rats off a sinking ship. He was lying in wait for one particular rodent.

Mike Andrews was the second to last person to exit, followed by Daphne Moore. He stood beside the office manager as she locked the door and set the alarm. They walked side by side to cars in the parking lot. He waved goodbye to several others and then got into a red Prius. Ford watched as he pulled out his cell phone and called someone. The conversation seemed animated and from his vantage point, Ford thought Mike looked irritated. There was a lot of talking with his hands, a couple of smacks to the steering wheel and then one massive fist slam on the dashboard.

When he finally began to pull out of the lot, Ford put the truck in gear, preparing to follow him. Mike putted his way through St. Clair Shores, then into Roseville, ending up in the south end of Warren. He parked in the driveway of a fairly run down house and got out. He unlocked the door and went inside.

Once he was gone, Ford pulled the tuck up in front of the house, leaving the tinted windows up to hide his face. Using his phone, he took pictures of the Prius and the front of the house, including the address. He waited a while before getting out of the truck and sneaking up to the Prius, where he placed a sensor underneath the driver’s side back wheel well so he could track the car if necessary. Then he drove back to the office.

As Ford downloaded the photos to the computer and texted the license plate information to his contact at the police department to research, he closed his eyes and rubbed his face. He was exhausted from running constantly and not sleeping at night. Never having been much of a dreamer in the past, he sure was having nightmares now. Some involved Tess in prison. Some were about his brother and Tess in bed together. But the worst of them involved Jack’s killer going after her. It was driving him crazy to the point where he was beginning to regret ever having spent the night with Tess. Ford hated the idea of regretting it because he had needed a release just as much as she had. But the aftermath was draining him emotionally and mentally. He was struggling to keep focus. He found himself losing his patience and control when people didn’t give him what he wanted, all because he was feeling more concern for his client than he should.

When all the photos were uploaded, Ford scrolled through them. The folder contained all of the photos he had taken since the case began. A splash of yellow caught his eye from one photo to another. Clicking to look at the previous shot, it was Roger and Emily’s home. In the front of the house, the flowerbeds were in full bloom with some kind of exotic looking yellow plants. That was nothing out of the ordinary. What was unusual was that Mike Andrews’s house had the exact same blooms surrounding the front of his home.

Ford grabbed his helmet and ran out of the office to his motorcycle. It was now well after eight o’clock and he raced through the streets toward the Kingston house. Leaving his bike in the parking lot of a sandwich shop at the corner, Ford walked the half a block to stand in front of the house next to the Kingston’s. There were no lights on and the driveway was empty of cars. Walking slowly and quietly, Ford crept across the lawn to the flowerbeds. Grabbing a handful of the yellow plants, he yanked them out by the roots, and hid them inside his jacket as he jogged back to his bike.

Ford stored the flowers in his saddlebag and fifteen minutes later he was on the street and idling as quietly as he could until he was in front of Mike Andrews’s house. Frowning, Ford noticed that there were lights on inside. It was going to be tricky to get up close enough to the house to grab some of the flowers without being noticed or tipping off a neighbor. Two doors down, one of the houses was boarded up, so Ford took a chance parking in front of it. Scanning the area, he noticed that most houses were dark. Taking a chance, he sprinted to the front yard of Mike’s house and grabbed a couple of plants then raced back to his bike. No dogs barked and no one noticed him.

Back at the office, he carefully placed the flowers from Mike’s house into a Ziploc bag and labeled it, then did the same with the blossoms from the Kingston house. First thing in the morning, he would take the bags to the best chemistry buddy he had so he could determine if they were exactly the same. They sure looked identical to his untrained eye. But if his suspicions were correct, and he had no doubt they were, Ford felt confident he had the murder weapon in his hands.

Chapter 45

Ford pushed the motorcycle up to ninety miles per hour as he raced along I-696 on his way back to the office from his buddy Boyle’s place. He hadn’t understood a quarter of what Boyle said, but the way he explained it, Ford felt more hopeful than he had in days. The plants were a perfect match and Boyle was convinced that they could have been the flowers responsible for creating the poison that killed Jack. He was going to do some more tests, but when Ford got jumpy and wanted to go back to the office, Boyle had turned him loose.

Ford hated obeying the speed limits in the city proper, but did so. The last thing he wanted was to catch a ticket and further delay his arrival. As he pulled into the lot, he squealed the tires in his haste. Walking through the door, Hudson was sitting on the outer couch looking like he hadn’t slept in days.

“Where have you been?” he asked, his voice tired and surly. Ford thought it was probably how his own voice sounded much of the time, sealing their kinship yet again.

“I have been out solving the case.”

Hudson’s eyes bugged out. “What?”

“Well, sort of.”

Ford explained what had happened when he was looking through his surveillance photos. He couldn’t help but feel proud of himself that he’d finally been able to find something to make the case turn a corner.

Instead of getting a high five or words of praise, Hudson groaned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, this could be great news, except that you used a known drug dealer to do your dirty work. There’s no way this will stand up in court. We need to get the plants to a reputable lab as soon as possible. Did you bring them back?”

“No,” Ford growled. “I left them with Boyle. It doesn’t matter at this stage if it stands up in court because Tess hasn’t been charged. All we need to do is give the police somewhere else to look.”

“I see your point.” Hudson sighed and hauled himself up off the couch. “But it’s another added step if they don’t believe us. Just tell Boyle not to destroy those plants entirely in case we need to send more samples somewhere else.”

“Fine.”

Ford wanted to grumble some more but decided against it. Hudson was right, although he still could have given up an atta boy or thank you. He sat down behind the secretary desk and pulled out his phone to send a text to Boyle.

Looking up, Hudson stood over him. “Thanks, brother. You did good.”

Ford shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

While Hudson worked in his office, Ford remained at the front desk looking through Tess’s file again. While they most certainly had the murder weapon and a solid suspect in Mike Andrews, they still had to zero in on a motive. Why would Mike the nurse want to put poison into the brownies? Could Molly Kincaid have been a part of it all, since she baked the brownies? If it wasn’t some secret crush on Tess and a plot to get Jack out of the way, then what? Did he know Jack before he died? Did he somehow have anything to do with the adoption and inheritance? Since the flowers were at the Kingston house too, there had to be a connection. Did Mike know Roger or David and, if so, how?

Ford grabbed a pencil and began doodling on a legal pad. He drew circles all over the page and put the names of the players inside. Tess, David and Roger Kingston, Mike Andrews, Jack. He drew arrows back and forth between them all, jotting notes about connections between each person and every other person. The logical conclusion pointed to David or Roger. Or both. They could have done research on the plants to figure out a way to create the poison. Then, they could have looked for a connection to Tess. Maybe Andrews didn’t have a crush on Tess, maybe they paid him off to do it. If they hadn’t known about Jack’s will, poisoning him would have been the easiest way to keep his money in the family.

Hudson broke his concentration, as he came back into the room. “What are you doing?”

“Not sure.” Ford kept underlining and drawing lines. “It’s a good thing we got the weapon or poison, but things still don’t make sense. Jack’s money is the only motive anyone has. The only people to benefit from Jack’s death, had he not made a will, were the Kingstons. It has to be them.”

“But why are the flowers at Mike’s house too? Coincidence?” Hudson leaned in closer to read the notes and scribbles on the page.

“I don’t know. My gut’s all over the place.”

Ford tossed the pencil down and rubbed his forehead with his hand. “David and Roger are both huge assholes, but I can’t believe they would actually kill their brother and son. You saw them that day at David’s office. They looked as sick as anyone who’s lost a loved one. I don’t think either of them is that good of an actor.”

Hudson sat down on the corner of the desk and laced his fingers together behind his head. “Maybe we’re underestimating them.”

Ford shrugged, but then shook his head. “Think about it. They adopted that kid and raised him as their own. You can’t just turn that off, can you?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. Money does crazy shit to people.”

Ford nodded. “Yes, it does.”

“We have to talk to Andrews.”

“I can’t get near him at work. And he knows what I look like.”

Hudson pursed his lips. “Maybe we could have Tess reach out–”

“No!” The shout that erupted from Ford surprised even him.

Hudson frowned. “Easy there, brother.”

Ford willed himself to calm down. “It’s too dangerous. If he
is
involved, it might spook him to see her.”

“But that’s exactly what we need!”

“No, if we let on that we know anything, he might bolt. Then we’re screwed. Besides, I don’t think Tess would agree to it, anyway.”

“Agree to what?” Tess asked.