“Except his was considered an accident and mine was determined to be arson.”
Eyes narrowed, she read the article again, then eyes wide open, leveled her gaze with his. “I’m not a detective, and maybeI’ve watched too many crime shows on television that have no basis in reality, but this says he was found on the floor of his garage with the engine running.”
Clint pulled the article back. He had assumed when he saw carbon monoxide that it was a furnace. Scanning as quickly as he could, he said, “The only reason it wasn’t deemed a suicide was because the spring on the door was broken so the investigators determined that it was an accident. That he was most likely trying to manually open the door before he gave up and the fumes overtook him before he could turn off the engine and get some fresh air.”
“What do you know about your neighbor?” she asked.
“Apparently, not enough.” Could there be a connection? Had the clue to his innocence been in the manila folder all this time? Or was he grasping at straws again?
Alice pulled out her phone and began tapping at the screen. Her chin lifted and she glanced at the article before turning back and tapping some more.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking up the guy’s name. Seeing what I can find.” She scrolled through the screen, her finger moving, then pausing as she read, then swiping at it again.
“Find anything relevant?”
“Hard to say.” She squinted and he wished he could read her mind. “Was he divorced?”
Clint shrugged. “I know we would occasionally hear him and his wife arguing if we were both in our kitchens at the same time. I remember thinking maybe married people aren’t supposed to get along. That maybe my parents were the exception to the rule, and not the norm.”
“That’s right. You mentioned your parents balanced each other.”
He nodded, and even smiled. “They were like two peas in a pod.”
“That’s nice.” Alice smiled. “So he was married.”
It wasn’t a question, but he responded anyhow. “Except we hadn’t seen his wife for a while.”
“What’s a while?”
“At least a few weeks, maybe a month or more. We figured she was visiting a relative or something.”
“Hmm.” She returned to scrolling. “Well, well.”
“What?” He inched closer. Close enough to smell the vanilla in her hair. Crazy. He shouldn’t be noticing her shampoo.
“When I type in the address, it comes up that it was bought in foreclosure.”
He shrugged. “Makes sense if the guy died unexpectedly.”
“No.” She shook her head. “It was sold on the courthouse steps only a couple of weeks after he died. That had to be in the works long before he died. Trust me, if anyone knows about the threat of foreclosure, it’s me.”
“Do you think all of this could be connected?”
Her mouth clamped shut, she tapped some more at her phone and nodded. “And I know just the person to help us figure this out.”
Could it be after all this time, something had finally gone right for him?
“Declan, hello. It’s Alice Sweet.” She put the call on speaker.
“Ms. Alice, what a nice surprise.”
“I’m not calling too late, am I?”
“Nope. Only ranchers go to bed with the chickens.”
She laughed. “True. Listen, you’ve got people working on finding Ray, right?”
