Aodhagan offered the woman a short glance at his badge, which she clearly had no idea how to process. She glanced at us quizzically, still trying to balance the massive pile of files and get hair from her face. Aodhagan leaned forward and smiled, holding out his hands and offering to take the folders. Clearly relieved, she offered, and then with empty hands she pushed up her glasses and tucked her hair behind her ears. "You can put them over here," she directed, leading us down the long hallways. The receptionist evinced no reaction or even the slightest bit of curiosity while we wandered away with the other woman.
The woman we were following finally indicated a table at the end of the row of filing cabinets. "You can put those here. Now how can I help you? You're cops?"
"Sure," I said with a shrug. Neither of us were actually cops. But Aodhagan did have a badge.
She cocked one eyebrow, suggesting that I should have probably put a little more effort into it. "What is this about?"
"I'm sure you heard that your boss, Carl Crowe, was murdered."
The woman nodded, her expression not indicating that she had any particular relationship with Carl Crowe outside of being aware he existed and was responsible for her paychecks.
"Well, the town where he was murdered is called Birdwell. I'm the sheriff there. Can we go somewhere to talk?"
She seemed still slightly unsure what we wanted, but she agreed, leading us back up the hallway in the opposite direction until we reached another door, this one with a tiny gold plate listing her name—or at least what was very likely to be her name anyway. Lisa Lignon.
Once we were inside, we all took seats in the gray tweed chairs around the desk.
"I'm Lisa," the woman told us after Aodhagan gave our names. It was clear she wasn't understanding exactly what his name was, but I couldn't really blame her for that. She had that blank look after he told her that suggested she wanted to ask again but was either too polite or she couldn't see the point, considering it was clearly something she wouldn't recognize, even if he told her again.
"What exactly do you do here in legal?" I asked her.
"Oh, I'm a law clerk. So, like, I'm an assistant, I guess."
"Do you need a law degree for that?" I asked.
She nodded. "It's what we usually do for experience early on. I should be in line to move up in a year or two."
I did a little math. "Oh, so you must be around the same age as Faith and Jackson."
Her nose wrinkled. "I guess so, if you mean Faith Crowe and Jackson Spenser."
"We do," Aodhagan agreed smoothly, waiting for her to take up some kind of narrative.
She shifted nervously and then finally did. "I don't know them well. I mean, we all know the big-time is on the seventh floor, and sometimes we see them around. Jackson is in charge of marketing, you know. And Faith does…something. And, I mean, you know, we hear the gossip."
I leaned forward. Gossip was exactly my speed. "Gossip?"
She seemed slightly alarmed by my interest, but then she glanced at Aodhagan, as if suddenly remembering he was a cop, in a manner of speaking anyway. "Everyone says they're going to get married. But everyone also says he…you know, gets around." She leaned forward and whispered the last two words.
"They're engaged?" Aodhagan asked, clearly annoyed no one had mentioned it.
Lisa bit her bottom lip. "Not really. I mean, they're dating I think, but he's dating the entire secretarial pool, so I'm not sure how much that's worth. I do get the feeling that Faith, at least, expects him to marry her."
"Do you think he will?" I asked curiously.
"I don't know." She leaned forward, some of her shyness disappearing. "But I do know Faith holds a lot of stock in the company. Maybe he thinks if he marries her, they can get a controlling share somehow. I think he'd do pretty much anything to get in there."
I gripped the table and whispered in Aodhagan's ear. "He can. Remember the contract, Aodhagan? He's got five percent. He just has to have a bit more than all the other Crowes. Which he would if he marries Faith and she agrees to allow him to have her shares."
"Anything?" Aodhagan asked, leaning in Lisa's direction. "Do you think he'd kill Carl Crowe to get there?"
She seemed truly startled by the question, as if she'd somehow failed to connect Carl's murder with the fact someone might actually want him dead. "I don't know. I mean, you know." She bit her bottom lip for a long moment. Then she blurted out, "Carl Crowe didn't like Jackson. I think that's why they weren't already engaged. I mean, everyone said he thought Jackson was an idiot. I always felt like Faith wasn't his favorite child, but I also felt like he didn't want Jackson to be part of the family and legacy."
Aodhagan and I exchanged glances. Now that was interesting information. "Why didn't he like Jackson? Just because he thought he was dumb?"
Lisa bit her bottom lip. "I can't say for one hundred percent sure, but I think he thought that Jackson hadn't worked for his high position in the company. I mean, he just got in because he rode on Faith's coattails. She's been friends with Jackson since, like, forever. And Jackson has shares in the company—all the group managers do. If he marries Faith and she lets him have hers, he'll have controlling shares."
I wasn't the only one who smelled a motive. I cocked my head. "Is that what everyone believed?"
She shrugged self-consciously. "All he does is hang around Faith's office and hit on other women." She flushed as though she'd said something highly inappropriate. "I don't know. I've only been here six months. I spoke out of turn. I'm sure he does plenty and I just don't realize it."
Aodhagan gave her a comforting smile, and she brightened. He was excessively hot and excessively nice. It wasn't hard to get people to talk to him. "You're such a big help, Lisa. We can't thank you enough. Was Carl liked around here?"
She flushed again, looking vaguely guilty. She was about to speak ill of the dead and wasn't terribly comfortable about it. "He…well, he liked to…visit with the staff."
It took me a long moment to sort through that oddly loaded sounding, otherwise innocuous statement. Visiting with staff was probably a good thing in an owner. Unless the visits were unappreciated and inappropriate. Daisy's comment about Carl being improper with her came back.
"Do you mean he was sexually harassing people?" I asked point blank.
Lisa's face got redder, and I started to get the impression this wasn't all secondhand knowledge for her. "He was just…very friendly."
Aodhagan scowled. "Mr. Rogers was very friendly. Judging from what we heard from Daisy and now you, Carl Crowe was a predator."
Lisa suddenly giggled, much of the tension draining from her. "Yeah, he was kind of gross. Sometimes he'd smack us on the butt in the hallways or invite us to go with him somewhere that clearly wasn't work related. Most of us would just kind of run when we saw him coming."
"But what about Vi?" I asked. "Didn't she hang around during work hours? I thought she was on the payroll."
Lisa shook her head. "Vi came and went. And Carl clearly didn't care if she found out about his behavior or he didn't think his kids were going to tell her since he was a lecher in front of Robert, Faith, and James as well. He didn't seem to care who was around."
I leaned forward. "Did Vi have life insurance on Carl? I mean, you guys are the law department, right?"
Lisa seemed momentarily confused by the question. "I don't know. That's Human Resources. You know, Leslie's department. Leslie is Robert's wife, if you didn't know. She isn't here, though. But I'm sure someone is."
"I know. She's in the town where Carl died," Aodhagan told her. "Do you know who the beneficiary of his will is?"
She bit her bottom lip. "I probably can't show you that without a warrant."
Aodhagan flashed her another set of lethal dimples. "Then don't show it to us. Just tell us. It will be our little secret."
Sighing, she slumped slightly in her chair. "I shouldn't. How about I just say the rumor is that most of the family, including his wife, are barely getting anything. Most of the money is going to some cat sanctuary in Houston."
"Cat. Sanctuary."
She nodded at me. "It's called Little Beans. I mean, you know, the rumor says." She gave us an exaggerated wink, in case we didn't know that she was giving us information that she clearly knew to be true.
"Did…" Aodhagan shook his head, seemingly confused by the whole thing. "Did Carl even like cats?"
That was a very valid question. He'd only been at my house for like twelve hours before getting dead, but he'd barely glanced at Lucky with complete indifference. Lucky was a particularly special brand of demon cat, but Carl had no way of knowing that. If he was a cat lover, he at least surely would have smiled when he saw Lucky or given him a second look. We needed to do some research on Little Beans. I didn't know what Carl's motivations were, but I could only assume they weren't pure.
"Are Robert and James good employees?" Aodhagan asked. "Or do they just think being the boss's sons lets them get away with anything?"
"James seems okay." Lisa's pale skin flushed again, and I had the feeling that we had a little James fan club in the room with us. That was fair. James was seriously attractive, and comparatively he seemed like an okay guy.
"Does he work hard?"
Her nostrils flared. "He spends a lot of time going from department to department. You know, just checking up on things. He isn't the second in command. That's Robert, you know. But he likes to talk to the employees. He's…he's a good manager."
"That's nice," Aodhagan said, clearly honing in on Lisa's tender feelings for James. "Has he worked here for a long time? Do you think he likes it here?"
She bit her bottom lip again. "He wants to be a nurse," she blurted out after a long moment.
Aodhagan and I met eyes.
"A nurse? Wow. Does he even know anything about the medical field?" I asked.
She nodded eagerly. "Sure. He went to nursing school, but Carl pressured him into coming to work here. I mean, it's not like practically everyone on the seventh floor doesn't have some medical experience. You'd think he'd appreciate James having a desire to branch out that way."
We exchanged another glance over Lisa's head. "Really? All of them?" I tried to keep the giddy eagerness out of my voice. It probably wouldn't be helpful to let Lisa know how interesting this particular tidbit was to us. She'd probably back off instinctively, which was something we certainly didn't want.
"Well, Vi and James went to nursing school. Glen Mattson, you know, the accountant, used to be an emergency room doctor. I guess he got burned out."
"I guess that explains how stressed out he always seems," I said, and Lisa nodded.
"That's how Glen and Daisy met. She used to an EMT. They worked together in the emergency room a long time ago. Robert was a first responder in the military. Faith spent so much time at the hospital that she went to college to become a Child Life Specialist. The only one who didn't do anything with medical was Leslie. You'd think Carl would have just let James go be a nurse if that's what he wanted."
"What about Jackson?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't think so."
Aodhagan cocked his head. "What exactly is wrong with Faith?"
"Myasthenia Gravis," Lisa said, leaning forward earnestly. "It's just awful. She was just born that way."
I didn't know what Myasthenia Gravis was, but it was clear Aodhagan did and he seemed disappointed. "Probably Congenital Myasthenic Syndrome, then. So she's too weak to even come to work some days?"
Lisa nodded. "She shakes a lot too. I think she's too weak to work full time, but Carl just always insisted she come in. Even when she's in the hospital, he's always just riding her about getting back to work."
While I didn't know what Myasthenia Gravis was, I did know when someone was a douchebag, and making your chronically ill daughter come to work constantly was a definite sign of that particular disorder.
"And no one sticks up for her, up there on the seventh floor?" Aodhagan asked.
"Oh, Daisy always does. She's just super to Faith. She would do anything Faith needed, but I think Faith would do anything to please Carl. She just…you know how it is. Sometimes girls just want their dads to notice them. She comes every time he calls, even if she's just been in the hospital."
Abruptly, Aodhagan stood and offered Lisa a hand, which she shook, seeming slightly taken aback that the interview was so suddenly over. "Thanks so much, Lisa. You've been such a big help."
Aodhagan would have told her as much either way, but she really had been helpful. I had all sorts of things buzzing around in my head now, including the fact that sans Leslie and Jackson, anyone who was currently living in my house could have easily known how to kill Carl and they all seemed like they had pretty good reasons. Of course, that didn't narrow the field among the people we already knew were suspects—except for Leslie and Jackson, who didn't have the knowledge but could have just gotten lucky—but it was good information to have.
Once we left Lisa and were in the elevator headed for the next floor, Aodhagan looked at me. "Myasthenia Gravis would make Faith so weak that I'm not sure she could have killed Carl even if she wanted, but the thing about the place he was stabbed is that it would require almost no force, so we can't be absolutely sure."
"What do you think about this whole Little Beans thing?" I asked him. "He displayed no interest in Lucky."
"Lucky is a monster."
I laughed. "I know, but he didn't know when he first came, and he still exhibited zero interest in him. I mean, Marian loves cats, and the first thing she does when she sees one is practically yell 'kitty!' Even one she's seen before but certainly one she wasn't expecting. Carl didn't even blink. Just no interest at all."
"It's strange for sure. I feel like there's something else he was trying to accomplish leaving his money that way. Maybe he just wanted to screw over his family so badly he didn't care where it went and he just picked the cat sanctuary out of a hat. But we definitely need to research the sanctuary and see what we can find out."
The elevator opened onto the third floor, and we stepped out, still unsure what we'd be getting. It didn't take very long to peer into a couple of windows and see that we were in research and development. We didn't have any luck there, as all the doors were key card accessible and there were no employees in the hallways. We didn't have any jurisdiction to demand people open up for us, so it was on to the next floor.
The fourth floor was thus far the only one clearly marked, and that seemed to be because there were two things on that floor. Human Resources to the left and Public Relations to the right. Other than tiny gold signs indicating which department was in which direction, there were no signs or pictures on any of the walls. We decided to hit Human Resources first, and I was hoping the people working there were a bit friendlier than Leslie was. We caught a man alone in the hallway, just the way we liked them. Unprotected and not expecting us. We got much better answers that way. He was in his midtwenties, red haired, wearing ridiculously slim suit pants made of some shiny material and shoes so shined they could have been used to land a plane.
Aodhagan showed him the badge and explained that he was the sheriff of the town where Carl Crowe had recently been murdered and we had a few questions. "What's your name, son?"
Son was a strange thing to call a guy who was maybe fifteen years younger than you, max, but I got the impression that Aodhagan was just trying to drive home the fact he was in control, even though we really weren't. All we needed was the impression anyway.
The man swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. As we stepped closer, I could see he was covered in freckles over his hands and face, the only visible parts of his skin. He was so pale it was kind of alarming to see him get whiter still. I guessed he was up to something mildly illegal. Like a dime bag of pot was currently in his office desk or something. "Eric Kenney. What do you need? I'm just Human Resources. I barely knew Carl Crowe."
Disavowing your knowledge of the victim right from the start was a bit suspect to me.
"Can you tell us a bit about Carl? What kind of boss was he?" Aodhagan asked, ignoring the weirdness of Eric Kenney's statement.
Kenney shrugged his slim shoulders. "I don't think I ever spoke to him up close. He was always on the top floor. I think people were afraid of him, but I never talked to him."
He was laying this didn't-know-him business on thick. Either he very much wasn't acquainted with Carl Crowe or he very much didn't want us to suspect that he was. "What about Leslie Cooper-Crowe? Do you know her?"
His mouth pinched slightly. "I am familiar with her. She's my direct boss."
I cocked my head, enjoying the undisguised vibes of disapproval rolling off him. They allowed me to see how Eric Kenney was when he showed his emotions. It would all help me judge whether or not he was telling the truth. "How is she as a boss?"
His mouth almost disappeared—his lips were pressed so tight. "Leslie is a witch." He slapped his hand over his mouth and laughed in something that was almost a hysterical giggle. "Leslie is a difficult boss," he said, rephrasing his original statement.
"Do you think she'd be capable of being violent?" Aodhagan requested.
Eric shrugged again. "I don't think so. That would be too messy. Leslie would never get messy. If she were going to kill someone, she'd hire someone else to do it. I mean, not that I'm saying she would ever do that."
Aodhagan smiled slightly. "Of course you aren't. What about Robert Crowe? I bet he probably spends a lot of time down here with Leslie?"
Eric nodded. "Sure, yeah. Robert takes his job as the oldest son really seriously. I mean, he might as well, I guess. James and Faith are never going to be in charge. Someone will have to."
Aodhagan and I glanced at each other. "Why wouldn't James and Faith take over?" I asked.
"James doesn't even want to be here. I mean, he wants to be a doctor or some crap. All he does is hit on other people's girlfriends and drink too much coffee. He just wanders around the building all day aimlessly."
"What about Vi? Do you think he would have left his company to her?"
Eric exhaled loudly. "Vi is so glamorous. I envy everything about that skinny witch. If only we could all look so good. But no, Vi doesn't work. She just…glides. I don't think she's worked a day in her life."
"What about Faith? Doesn't she take it seriously?" Aodhagan asked.
One of Eric's eyebrows cocked. "Maybe, but she's so sick that I'm not sure why she's ever here. I mean, she may be so ill that she's going to die before she would ever have a chance to lead. I'm not sure what's wrong with her, but man, she's not okay. Plus, Carl hates her. I mean hated. He would never leave the company to her."
"Why did he dislike Faith?" Aodhagan asked, and I could see the keen interest on his face.
Eric shrugged again. "Who knows? All Faith ever does is try to please him. I don't get it. I mean, Faith's biggest crime is being unwell. Maybe that's why he didn't like her. Some people are like that."
Some people were. I could easily see my mother being the kind of person who would treat a child with any kind of disability with disdain. She treated me like crap because I was too unusual. Heaven forbid if anything curious about me happened to be physical. If Carl was the same kind of man, it might be possible that Eric was right. An imperfect child might not be a worthy child in his eyes.
Now we were getting down to reality. This conversation told me that Eric knew more about Carl than he'd originally indicated. Which I'd already guessed, as I was sure Aodhagan had. "How did Carl treat Leslie? Did he seem to like her? Did it seem like he would support Robert taking over with Leslie by his side? Someone told us that Jackson might marry Faith and that would potentially put him up for the position."
Eric shook his head. "Honey, Carl would have killed himself, to heck with being murdered, before he let Jackson run his company. He hated Jackson. He only tolerated him because everyone else loves him. Jackson is the god of this company, Carl himself aside. He's hot, but he's not that hot. I think he believes he can take over if he's married to Faith, even if Carl didn't want him there. I don't know if he could actually accomplish that. I handle health plans. That kind of interoffice politics is way above my pay grade."
"Can you think of anyone who would have wanted Carl dead?" Aodhagan asked.
This elicited a laugh from Eric. "Only everyone who ever met him. Carl was the worst. That whole family is the worst. I wouldn't be surprised if they all killed him, a la some Agatha Christie novel. Next they'll start stabbing each other in the back at board meetings to see who gets to reign supreme."
I snorted, and Aodhagan glanced my way, reminding me that I was supposed to be pretending to be professional. He picked up the conversation. "Did you know Carl was literally stabbed in the back?"
Eric paled again, pressing a hand to his chest. "Lord have mercy. Who would just stab an old man in the back?"
I shrugged. "Maybe someone who was afraid to stab him in the front?"