“Because, I don’t want to involve you until we have to, once we’ve gotten a better feel for the events. Remember, you’re not supposed to be here.” Walter heaved out a sigh. “Besides, this is your family, you’re too close.”
Yeah. The doctor put him out of work for six weeks, contingent on his checkups. He’d been cut open two weeks ago. Still hurt, but he’d been through worse. Lucky left the rookies and parked himself by Walter.
Walter said nothing, but didn’t truly try to hide his reading material. Lucky lifted a sheet and read. Nothing out of the ordinary. Their suspect—best not to acknowledge him as “brother” right now—paid his bills, made a decent living, but didn’t manage to save a dime.
Damn. He sure paid for a lot of insurance. Lucky jabbed a finger at the page. “What’s this?”
“We already have someone chasing down leads.” Walter snatched the paper back.
Bo glanced at Lucky and turned his attention to Walter. “I believe we might have found something. I’m e-mailing.”
Walter opened his laptop, pushed a few buttons, and read the message. “I see. Keep looking.”
Like hell would they exclude Lucky from his own attempted murder case. “What are you looking for?”
Did Walter growl?
“Okay, okay, I’m going!” Lucky stepped out into the hallway. More than one way to skin a cat. He ambled down to his cube and opened the laptop someone brought back home. The insurance records weren’t hard to find. Hard to explain, but not hard to find. Why pay so much to insure a car? The man hadn’t even owned a house at the time.
Lucky pecked away on the keyboard, sifting through data for something relevant. Interesting, not so interesting.What have we here?
Lucky’d nearly put his findings together when Bo stepped into the cube. “Thought I’d find you here. Boss wants you.”
Maybe he’d found something, maybe he planned to make good on his threat to toss Lucky out of the building.
Bo stopped before the closed conference room door. He said nothing, merely took Lucky into his arms and held him close.
Spending a week in Bo’s arms would make one hellacious vacation, but Lucky had questions, and the answers might be on the other side of the door. He’d take a raincheck on the holding.
He pushed open the door to his doom, heart skipping a beat. “You sent for me.”
“Sit down.” Walter shoved his fingers under his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
Lucky took a seat next to his boss.
“How much do you know about your brother in recent years?” Dark circles underscored the boss’s eyes.
“He’s a no-account asshole.”
“From what I’ve seen,” Walter waved at the pile of papers, “I’m inclined to agree. What else?”
“He liked to live high on the hog, as my grandparents might say. Why?”
Walter traded a look with Bo, who moved behind Lucky’s chair and massaged Lucky’s shoulders. Oh shit. Must be awful.
“Lucky, it seems Bristol Lucklighter loved his family very much,” Walter began.
“What? Bristol? Bristol never cared about anyone but Bristol.” Maybe Walter had the wrong Bristol Lucklighter.
“He did. He cared so much, in fact, that he carried a life insurance policy on each of you.”
“He did what?” Lucky sprung out of his chair. Oh fuck! Ouch! He held his incision.
“It seems he even carried a policy on you, as sole beneficiary. When you died, he collected a half million dollars.” The document on Walter’s computer screen showed one hell of a lot of zeros.
“Sonofabitch.” Lucky clutched his head to keep a sudden brilliant flash of the obvious from exploding his brain. “And he had one on Dad, too, didn’t he?”
Walter punched a few keys and another form appeared. “Yes.”
