Page 74 of Death on Gallows Path

“Then you’re more fortunate than other people, including a neighbor of mine.” He snorted. “Did you hear about Swindell’s craft beer deal? I see from your faces you didn’t know about that.”

I didn’t think we’d shown any response.

“Long story short, he was pulling in investors for what was supposed to be an expansion to this area of a craft beer operation from North Carolina. Turns out he had no connection to that operation, was coat-tailing on the name. A neighbor of mine did his due diligence, but it wasn’t until lawyers got involved with discovery and such that he could see all that was going on.

“And then the—” He audibly swallowed whatever word he’d intended to use. “—turned around and started suing my neighbor and a couple others, saying they were spreading falsehoods and injuring his good name. Good name. As if he ever had one. More they dug, more they found out. Bankruptcies, defaults, fraud . . . It was like he thought he could do whatever he wanted, that the law didn’t apply to him.

“And you know what else?”

He didn’t wait to see if we did. “It wasn’t real craft beer. It was cheap stuff he ran through machinery and repackaged.”

“So, you’re not unhappy he’s dead?”

Clara’s wide-eyed innocence didn’t completely work on him. He became more cautious.

“Wouldn’t say that. My neighbor was telling me this morning it’s made things worse. Complicated the legal efforts. They were finally making progress on Swindell’s shifty moves putting money into foreign accounts and layers on layers of LLCs — sophisticated and complicated. Now they’ll have to sort out with the lawyers if the widow has financial vulnerability — another whole level of hell.”

Leaving Clara to continue being the friendlier face, I stepped in with a harder approach.

“As much empathy as you might have for your neighbor, you had other issues with Swindell, didn’t you.” I didn’t make it a question. “Your family’s car wash business and—”

He cut across my words angrily. “That’s no secret. Trying to bring in an out-of-town corporation to undercut us, to drive us into the ground. Typical of his slimy behavior. We’re fighting it and we’re winning.”

“And beyond your family business,” I said, as if he hadn’t interrupted, “a more personal issue.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“Your wife.”

Silence dropped hard on the small office.

“None of your business,” he snapped.

We waited, watching him.

He looked away from us, toward the door. Perhaps unconsciously wanting to escape, but not moving.

“Not saying anything else to you except I’m not going to lie and say I’m sad the bastard got murdered. He was crooked to the core. Deserved whatever he got. But I sure as hell didn’t have anything to do with his dying.”

We weren’t getting more out of him.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Outside, a woman approached from the other direction, heading toward the car wash waiting room we’d just exited.

The woman from the grocery store.

Still wearing the unnerving cat shirt, now under a sweater, which didn’t help much.

“What are you doing here?” the woman demanded.

That snapped me out of my cat-shirt-staring trance. Not that my staring mattered, because she focused on Clara.

And now that I saw Clara’s arrested expression, so was I.

But the cat-shirt woman didn’t seem to notice Clara’s reaction as she said, “I remember now. I’ve seen you on TV. You’re like some sort of detective. Didn’t know you could get on TV doing that until I saw you. I could do that.”

“I’m sure you could—”