“YOU THINK COLT Benson faked his death and Keenan Powell was in on it?” Moira asked.
Our waitress showed up at that moment to clear our plates and tempt us with dessert. Hester ordered a piece of apple pie and a coffee. Chocolate cream pie for me. Coffee for Moira.
“That’s certainly a possibility, young lady, but’s there’s more to it, isn’t there?”
I doubted Moira liked being called young lady, but she held her tongue. Gathering information came first and Sonny Hester suddenly proved to be a fount of it.
“If Colt Benson faked his death, that meant someone else’s body was in his place.” Moira.
“Bingo, Jessica Fletcher.”
I’d heard of her and Columbo. Longstreet was still a blank.
“Wouldn’t they at least check dental records?” I asked.
“This was Mexico twenty-five years ago.” Sonny. “All things were possible. After stealing eight hundred sixty-one thousand dollars from June Sommers, Benson had enough money to make it happen.”
“Even get away with murder?” Moira.
“May not have been murder. Maybe he paid someone at the morgue or a mortuary. Pull a body out of the cremation chamber before they light the fuse and give the grieving family the leftover remains of somebody else. No one’s the wiser. Could have done it any number of ways, but, you’re right, murder is a possibility. Wouldn’t put anything past Colt Benson.”
“What about Keenan Billy Powell? Is he a chip off his uncle’s old block?” I asked.
“Decide for yourself.” Hester shifted backwards and the booth back groaned like he’d settled in. “June told me Billy visited her every couple of weeks after Benson ran off with her money. Said she’d only met him a couple times before Benson left and all of a sudden, he’s June’s best friend and constantly apologizing for what his uncle did. June moved down here to Twin Falls the summer before the kid was supposed to go off to Boise State for his freshman year of college. He went to the College of Southern Idaho instead. A JC right here in Twin Falls. June and Shay Sommers’ new home.”
“And all of this started after June hired you to find Benson?” Moira.
“Yup.”
“Powell befriended June Sommers to check up on her. Find out if you were making progress in finding him.”
“I can tell she’s the smart one in your partnership.” Hester pointed his cigar at me again. “I guess that makes you the muscle? Although, judging by that swollen nose of yours, maybe you better try something else.”
“I’m the pretty one.” I could take his insults for a while longer. Besides, the cigar-smelling old guy was starting to grow on me. My grandfather smoked a cigar. “Did June figure out Powell was a spy on her own?”
“No. Once she told me Powell started showing up, I did some snooping around. That’s how I found out he had been accepted to Boise State as a freshman. His family could afford the tuition. I knew he was up to no good when he opted out of Boise State and went to the JC here.”
“Did you tell June about your concerns?” Moira.
“Yes. She didn’t believe me at first. So I had her tell Billy that she couldn’t afford me anymore and that I stopped working for her. Part of which was true. She’d stopped paying me months before, but I continued to investigate pro bono. Anyway, sure enough, Billy transferred to Boise State the next year.”
“And you kept looking for Benson for the next two decades pro bono?” Moira.
“On and off. When I could.” The hacking cough. “I’m not about charity cases. Life is hard and I had seven children to feed. But my daddy ran out on my momma and her five kids when I was four. About the same age it happened to little Shay. He didn’t rob my momma dry like Benson did to June Sommers because she didn’t have anything worth stealing, but he stole her youth and the life she deserved. And he left a hole where a father should have been. No child and no woman deserve that. Not my mamma and me and not June and Shay Sommers.”
Yeah, Sonny Hester was definitely growing on me.
“Did you ever get another bead on Benson after his purported death?” I asked.
“Radio silence for twenty-five years.”
“What about Keenan Powell? Anything hinky about him over the years?”
“By all accounts an upstanding citizen. Graduated Boise State with honors. Law degree at University of Idaho. Been an attorney in the financial sector for a number of years. I stopped paying attention to him well before June Sommers died. Maybe he got scared straight.”
Moira didn’t start the car right away when we got in it. She put her hand up to the side of her head. Her phone. She kept it there a full minute or so before she brought it back down.
“Don’t get your hopes too high about everything we learned today.”
“Did we both hear the same things? Keenan Powell helped Colt Benson perpetuate a fraud and possibly a murder. Twenty-five years later he shows up in Shay Sommers’ life and she’s murdered within a month.”
“I just checked my messages.” Deflated. “My inside man at LJPD told me Keenan Powell has a rock-solid alibi for the night Shay was murdered.”
The knot I hadn’t felt in a week returned to my stomach.
“How rock-solid? How does anyone have a rock-solid alibi from two to five in the morning?”
“He was at Scripps Hospital from approximately one a.m. until late that morning. Chuck Baxter, the CEO of Blank Slate Capital, had heart attack symptoms. Powell rushed him to the hospital and stayed with him the whole time he was there.”
My head snapped back like I’d inhaled smelling salts. “Chuck Baxter? I never noticed it before.”
“Noticed what?”
“CB. Colt Benson. Clint Banks, the alias Benson was using in Northern California—”
“Chuck Baxter is Colt Benson!” Moira spat out the name before I could.
“Benson’s not only alive, but he was in La Jolla the night Shay was murdered.”
“But both Benson or Baxter and Keenan Powell had rock-solid alibis.” Her head pointed toward her lap, like she was doing something on her phone.
“Pretty convenient. They could have easily hired someone to kill Shay and then Baxter complains about chest pains for a few hours so they both have an alibi.” I paused, knowing Moira wouldn’t like what I had to say next. “Maybe that’s where the Invisible Man comes in.”
“Not him again.”
“Him or somebody else.”
“It’s possible, but I’m not sold yet.”
“What if it’s Colt Benson who was staying up in the Sky Suite the night Shay went up there? Powell lives twenty minutes away in Scripps Ranch. It doesn’t make sense for him to stay at La Valencia. That’s where a rich out-of-town CEO would stay. Maybe Benson-Baxter came into town and Shay tracked him down through Powell.”
“Maybe.” Moira’s head was still down.
“What are you doing?”
“I just took a screenshot of Chuck Baxter’s picture from the Blank Slate Capital website and texted it to Jimmy Hunter to see if he thought Baxter could be Colt Benson.” Her head rose and turned toward me.
“You two exchanged phone numbers?” My voice rose with my eyebrows.
“He gave me his card.” Dismissive. “Back to Shay. She’d been meeting Powell for at least a month. That much we know about. They could have been talking to each other for the last twenty years. If he had her killed, why now?”
Moira’s phone rang.
“Jimmy? I put you on speaker so Rick can hear. What do you think, could Chuck Baxter be Colt Benson?”
“Maybe. It’s been twenty-five years since I last saw him.” A pause. “I think it’s him. It’s the eyes. Wolf’s eyes. His nose is different like he had some work done and his hair was brown back then, not gray, but, yeah, I think that’s him.”
“Thanks, Jimmy.” Moira, cheery. “Thanks for everything.”
“My pleasure, ma’am. Call any time.” Cowboy charm.
Moira hung up and turned toward me.
“All this is interesting, but it still doesn’t prove anything.” Her voice measured, trying to preemptively tamp down my enthusiasm.
“It’s another brick in the wall.” Moira could stand outside and reason everything out, but my gut told me I was right. The answers were in Idaho and we just found them. “One other thing I forgot to tell you—Fenton got a copy of Shay’s autopsy report and champagne and chocolate cake were in her stomach. She was celebrating something. Maybe she was blackmailing Benson, and he agreed to pay her off that night and then had her killed.”
“This is all speculation. It’s going to come down to the forensics. I don’t want Turk to be guilty either, but the facts will tell. Fenton would be lucky to get any of what Sonny Hester told us admitted in court. It’s mostly hearsay and speculation.”
“Then we need to get one or both of them to admit the truth.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I haven’t figured that out, yet.”