The understatement of the year, at least for a widow. George cocked his head, clearly unsure how to proceed. Usually this was the point where he offered some consolation and tried to get people to calm down enough for further questioning. Since this was moot, he needed a moment to get back on track.
“As I said, we’re very sorry for your loss. We do have some questions for you, if you feel up to it.”
“Thank you. And yes. I can answer some questions.” Sophia McHill sounded distracted now, as if she were already planning her late husband’s funeral or what to do with the money she would surely inherit.
“The coroner said your husband died about three days ago, and we’re wondering why he hasn’t been reported missing.” George kept any and all accusation painstakingly out of his voice, infusing his tone with nothing but genuine curiosity. So far, Sophia McHill was cooperating with them, and the last thing they needed was for her to clam up and call the family lawyer. That would complicate things unnecessarily.
He probably needn’t have bothered, because Sophia McHill didn’t seem to pick up on anything. She was as calm as could be. “That’s because I wasn’t expecting him back until the day after tomorrow. He was supposed to be on a hunting trip with two of his friends, David Portius and Lawrence Miller. They try to meet at least once a month, and around this time of the year, they spend as much time as possible at their cabin at Lake Moultrie. They never bother calling because it’s their ‘free time.’” The air quotes she put around the words “free time” made perfectly clear what she thought of the whole affair.
George briefly looked at Andi. That explained a lot. George turned back to Sophia. “Who else knew about this trip?”
She shrugged. “I’m afraid I can’t say for sure. Tamara and Theodora, for sure. The staff at their houses. I don’t know if they told anybody at work.”
Tamara Portius and Theodora Miller, the wives of the other two victims. And the staff and potential acquaintances at work. So basically everybody who wanted to find out could have done so easily. Andi hated it when the pool of suspects opened up so wide.
“Thank you, Mrs. McHill. If you could give us the address of the cabin, that would be all for now. We’ll contact you as soon as we have news.”
George very carefully avoided mentioning the other two victims, and if Sophia picked up on it or the fact that they hadn’t asked who Tamara and Theodora were, she didn’t ask. Which meant she either didn’t care in the least or knew already.
“I’ll tell Christin to give you the address. Do you have an estimate for when I could plan the funeral? There is a lot to arrange, as you surely are aware.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. McHill, it all depends on how our investigation goes and how quickly we can get to the bottom of it all.”
“Oh. So it wasn’t an accident?”
This was the first time Andi heard something akin to interest in the woman’s voice.
“We’re not sure yet, Mrs. McHill. As I said, investigations are underway. We will keep you informed.” George was smooth as always, blocking her without outright lying. If Sophia became a suspect—and Andi was inclined to put her on that list based on her reactions—she would feel safer believing they weren’t sure about the death yet. Culprits who felt safe were better than panicking ones, at least at this stage of the investigation.
Mrs. McHill called back her butler, bid them farewell a little less frostily than she had welcomed them, and vanished in the depths of the huge house. Christin gave them the address of the cabin and saw them out the door. Back in the car, Andi waited till they were back on the road toward Lawrence Miller’s house before he broke the silence.
“That was interesting.”
“Oh yeah.” George snorted. “Sophia McHill definitely has to work on her grieving-widow part. She didn’t seem too upset about her husband’s demise.”
“She also didn’t see a need to make us believe she was upset.” Andi looked out the window. “If she had something to do with her husband’s death, wouldn’t she try to convince us how dear he was to her? And she didn’t call her lawyer.”
“Normally, I would say yes. But we’re dealing with the upper crust here, and if Jake Castain has taught me one thing, it’s that these people often feel invincible because of their status and money.”
“True. She’s definitely a suspect, though I think we should keep in mind that marriages are not always happy, and her indifference could be simply because she doesn’t have any feelings for the man.”
George nodded. “Let’s see what the other widows have to say.”
As it turned out, Tamara Portius and Theodora Miller were just as indifferent as Sophia McHill. They, too, let them in without calling the family lawyer, understandably at least in Tamara’s case because her deceased husband probablywasthe family lawyer, and confirmed Sophia’s story about the men being on a hunting trip. Theodora Miller was a little more polite than Sophia and Tamara, offering them iced tea and cookies. She also seemed a little more rattled than the other two women, seemingly not as used to masking her feelings as they were—which could be because she hadn’t yet used Botox or other means to freeze her facial expressions—but overall, the stories and reactions of the women matched, perhaps a little too well.
It was already four in the afternoon when they returned to Charleston, but after a brief discussion, they decided to visit the sons of the victims as well, in the hopes of perhaps catching them unaware of their fathers’ deaths. It was unlikely that their mothers—or stepmother in Lester Miller’s case—hadn’t contacted them yet, but even if they had, chances were the sons were rattled enough to slip. If there was slipping for them to do.
4. Estranged Sons
GEORGE DROVEinto the Park Circle area, looking for Sanders Avenue, where David Hector Portius III worked as a lawyer. That he wasn’t in the same firm where his father had been senior partner made George wonder about the nature of the relationship between father and son. David wasn’t part of a firm; he worked alone and advertised on the local TV channels, which put him far beneath the level his father had been on. It could be some twisted game of the son having to earn the merits his father’s status could bestow on him, though George doubted it. When there was proving to do, why wouldn’t David Hector II want it be done where he could see it directly? Perhaps the son simply wanted to make it on his own—unlikely, but not completely impossible. Or, and this was where things would get interesting, there was bad blood between father and son.
The GPS directed George to a building that had seen better days about fifty years ago, too new for the architecture to be considered charming, too old to be seen as desirable. This was also true for the rest of the neighborhood, which was still well out of the range of shabby and run-down but no longer pristine either. Mediocre. Just like David Hector III’s legal services, if the short internet search Andi had conducted while George was driving was accurate.
“This guy looks so boring, I want to yawn just looking at his picture.” Andi’s voice had that aggressive undertone George had learned to associate with his partner trying to get used to the influx of the insects surrounding them. In an area like this, where old age had created prime living conditions for any kind of creepy crawlers, the barrage of images was usually worse than in newer places.
“Anything we need to be aware of?”
Andi shook his head. “Surprisingly, there’s not a single corpse in the vicinity. A few days ago there was an accident close by, at least two, no, three people lost a lot of blood, cars were crashed, it was all quite noisy, and brutal enough to catapult brain tissue far enough for a colony of ants to profit from it. The blood was wasted, though.”
