Charles blinked back more tears. “She wanted me out so I left. How is that harassing her? Anyway, she was my wife. I had a right to talk to her.”
Turner arched a brow. “By talking to her, do you also mean texting her upwards of seventeen times in a single day and calling her an ‘ungrateful bitch,’ a ‘horrible mother,’ and— Oh yeah, my favorite: ‘an annoying, ugly, frigid hag who couldn’t get another man if her life depended on it’?”
Charles’s face paled, his eyes flickering to Josie as if for confirmation that they had, in fact, read the text messages between him and his wife.
Josie said, “This is a murder investigation. We look at everything.”
“Listen,” he said. “It wasn’t as bad as you’re making it sound.”
“I don’t know about that,” Josie said. “It seems like Haven took issue with the way you treated her mother. Just last week she texted you, I quote, ‘leave Mom alone and stop acting insane or I’m blocking you.’”
Josie couldn’t figure out if Charles had a shred of humanity or simply that he understood acting human would be in his best interest, because the lines of his face slackened and his eyes flashed with regret. Softening his voice, he said, “Okay, okay. Maybe I got carried away. If you read our texts then you know I promised I would leave Maxine alone and that I apologized.”
“Sure,” Josie said. “But you sent Maxine a pretty strong message the day they left for the festival. What did it say, Turner? Do you remember?”
He didn’t take his eyes off Charles. “About as well as I remember that statute we talked about earlier. You told your wife that you drove past the house and the roof over the garagewas sagging. Then you told her that if she wasn’t going to keep the house in good repair, you were taking it and she could find some hovel to live in and take her ungrateful kid with her.”
Maxine hadn’t responded. There had been no texts between Haven and her father for the two days the Barnes women were at the festival. Josie was certain that Maxine hadn’t shared Charles’s latest message with her daughter.
“Okay, so maybe that was a little harsh, but Maxine couldn’t afford to stay there anyway. She quit her job a few months ago and never even told me.”
“Why did she quit?” asked Josie.
Charles lifted his hands and let them fall back to his knees. “Don’t know. I didn’t realize it right away. Not until her direct deposits stopped coming into our account.”
Turner said, “Was she still working at that doctor’s office? Over on Quesenberry Court?”
Charles nodded. Josie knew the area. A lot of medical office buildings were crowded into a two-block radius.
“Listen, I didn’t want to bring this up,” Charles said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “But Maxine was acting real weird the last few months. I think she was on drugs. I could never prove it but she lost a lot of weight. She was all twitchy and paranoid. An office manager for a medical office? I think she was getting drugs from work or something and got fired, but didn’t want to tell me that. I didn’t want her to think that I was going to pay for this habit she developed after we split, pay for her to live in the house when she wasn’t going to work, and if she was on drugs, Haven shouldn’t have been around her.”
“Did Haven ever mention anything that might lead you to believe Maxine was on drugs?” asked Josie.
Charles blinked twice. More tears glistened in his eyes. “She wouldn’t have told me even if she knew something. I told you, my wife poisoned her against me.”
“Right,” Turner said. “We’ve talked a lot about your wife. Why don’t we discuss your daughter? Was there anyone in her life who might have wanted to harm her? Anyone she might have been having trouble with?”
“How the hell would I know?” Charles said.
“You don’t know the names of any of her friends?” Turner asked. “Teachers at school? Coworkers? People she saw regularly?”
“Why would I know those things?”
“Why wouldn’t you know those things?” Turner asked calmly.
He and Josie both knew why—his daughter didn’t trust him, didn’t seem to like him much either. From where they sat, the father–daughter dynamic was obvious, but Josie knew that Turner was trying to make a point. To get him to admit to their strained relationship in a formal interview.
Charles said, “Maxine turned her against me.”
Turner chuckled darkly. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“What I’m going with?” Charles asked. “What does that mean?”
“Did you raise Haven?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“The kind I’m asking a man whose kid was just murdered who seems more focused on every sin he thinks his wife committed than that his child was killed. Did you raise Haven?”
