CHAPTER 4
Sunday afternoon Brandand Carly were getting ready to have dinner when she called Harley to see if she wanted to come over and eat with them, but she didn’t get an answer.
“I’m worried about her,” Carly said.
“Text her. Maybe she has her ringer turned off,” Brand suggested.
Carly did but still didn’t a response. “I don’t like this. “It can’t be easily losing your last family member as well as your twin.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“A boyfriend that her brother didn’t like,” Carly said.
“What?”
Carly nodded.
“When did you find this out?”
“At the arena the day of the accident,” Carly explained. “Harley admitted to us that she was seeing someone that Reilly couldn’t’ stand and they were seeing one another in secret.”
“That’s not good,” Brand said.
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do,” Brand said. “What if Reilly’s accident wasn’t an accident, Carly?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s go ahead and eat and I’ll tell you about what we learned from the Medical Examiner,” Brand said. They served themselves and after they were seated, Brand explained what he had learned.
“So Reilly’s labs showed he was on a blood thinner which caused him to bleed freely,” Carly said. “But the doctor says he didn’t prescribe him the medication Warfarin which is typically given to thin the blood.”
“Correct,” Brand said. “We believe that’s why the paramedics were unable to stop the bleeding, and he was dead by the time they reached the hospital. And if Harley were seeing someone that Reilly couldn’t stand what if that person was responsible for this?”
“But we don’t know who that is,” Carly said. “And we saw the fight at the arena between Reilly and Scottie where his neck guard was cut off…”
“True, but the Warfarin could have been administered ahead of time somehow,” Brand said. “It would have had to have been for him to have bled out that way.”
Carly put down her fork and sat back. “I’m kinda glad I couldn’t get a hold of Harley to come to dinner now.”
Brand reached for her hand. “Honey, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if she had come.”
Carly nodded and began to eat again but stopped after a few bites. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to talk to Harley and see if I can get her to tell me about this boyfriend. We need to know if and how much he might be involved. Could Reilly have found out about him without her being the wiser?”
“What a tangled web if he did.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Will you be okay cleaning up alone? I’d like to go see her before it gets any later.”
“Sure. And let me send a plate of food with you. I have a feeling she isn’t eating.”
“Of course,” he said.
Brand left their Brownstone and headed across town to the address Hawkeye gave him yesterday when they were discussing the case in the event he needed to search the Flynn property for evidence. It hadn’t come to that yet, but Brand wondered why Harley hadn’t told him or Hawkeye that she was seeing someone that her brother didn’t like. That was a big red flag in his book.
Traffic was heavy for a Sunday afternoon in December, but it was holiday shopping season. It took him at least fifteen minutes of circling the block before he found a spot on the street a block and a half from Harley’s Brownstone. In spite of the wind slicing through his coat, he didn’t mind the walk. It gave him a chance to enjoy the decorations that were hung along the eaves of the doors and windows. And time to think of just what and how he was going to say what he came to Harley. Talk about being on thin ice.
