“Dad took care of it. I’m the trustee. It’s up to me to decide when to turn it over to Michael. I wanted to make sure he was...you know...okay.”
“Clean and sober, you mean. Michael’s doing great. I don’t think we have to worry about that anymore.”
“Good. As soon as all of this gets sorted, we’ll talk to him about it.”
Chase smiled. “Believe it or not, I think he’ll be pleased. He and Knox were always viciously at odds. Like you said, DNA’s a funny thing.”
“What about Harper?” Reese asked. “You going to tell her?”
He’d promised her the truth. He wasn’t going back on his word. “When the time is right.”
Leaning over the table, Reese held up his bottle of beer. “Here’s to family.”
Chase clinked his bottle with Reese’s. “To family.”
He couldn’t help wondering how all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle would eventually fit together—and where it would leave him and Harper once they did.
Chapter Thirty-One
Late in the afternoon, Chase took a call from Harper telling him she had to work late that night.
“No problem,” he said. “I’ve got plenty to do here for a while.”
“I should be done by seven...if that works for you.”
“Fine. I’ll see you then.” He phoned the security guard, an ex-cop named Rich Mooney who’d been injured in the line of duty and now worked for Maximum Security part-time. He gave Mooney a heads-up, told him to end his shift at four instead of five, then call Pete Caruthers, another retired cop, to work the next three hours.
Better a shorter shift, followed by a guard who came in fresh, than one who was half-asleep on the job.
“I’ll take care of it,” Mooney said.
“No trouble so far?” Chase asked. “No sign of the blue Buick?”
“Not a trace.”
Chase figured the guy had been scared off when the cops showed up at The Max. He would probably lie low for a while, which might turn into an even bigger problem. If that happened, they’d have no idea where or when he might pop up. Since there was nothing Chase could do about it, he ended the call and went back to work.
At five o’clock, Tabby called. “Got something for you, boss.”
He’d been hoping to hear from her. He’d held off phoning Dickerson until he had something more concrete than an affair between his son’s wife and the doctor who’d pronounced him dead. “Bad news or good?”
“Bad news for Errol Dickerson. Looks like his son was murdered.”
“What have you got?”
“Betsy Dickerson had a credit card in her name only. Three weeks before he died, Betsy bought a can of rat poison over the internet and had it shipped to her at the bank. I checked it out. This particular poison contains thallium.”
Anger filtered through him. “Banned in this country because it’s so lethal.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s tasteless and odorless. James wouldn’t have even suspected.”
“That’s right. I did some digging. I found a case where a man killed his wife by adding rat poison to her tea. The woman went into a coma. Two days later, she suffered a cardiac arrest and died. The police were suspicious. They got an order for the body to be exhumed and found traces of thallium in her blood.”
Chase’s jaw felt tight. “Since we can’t exhume James’s body, we’ll have to find another way to prove it. Thanks, Tabby.”
“I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else.” Tabby hung up the phone.
