Page 8 of Every Deadly Suspicion

As if reading her mind, Terry said, “Fox could have paid someone.”

Hanna shook her head. “I don’t see it. Calling off the wedding would make more sense than murder. And everyone we talked to said they were crazy about one another. She’ll be here for the memorial. We’ll get a better sense after talking to her then.”

From there they drove up to the airfield and collected Scott’s coffee maker and coffee supply. On the drive back to Dry Oaks, they returned to the Buckley home and retrieved Scott’s laptop in the hopes it would shed some light on the incident. E-mails, online communications could possibly give them leads. They also had a warrant to search the house and outbuildings for cyanide. Hanna dealt with Timmons. Neither Everett nor Chase was on the premises.

“They’re in Corte Madera with Scott’s girlfriend,” Timmons told her. “You won’t find any cyanide here; we have no use for it.”

He was right. Scott’s room was neat and organized. There were no diaries, only the laptop. Hanna was sorry they’d missed Everett and Chase.

“I need to talk to both of them when they get home,” she told Timmons.

“I’ll tell ’em.”

Hanna followed up on leads as soon as she got them. The laptop was no help. There was no indication that Scott had been threatened, worried, or anything but happy about his engagement.

Friday she and Terry caught up with Jeff Smith in Sonora. Hewas the airplane mechanic Scott had fired two weeks prior to the crash for sloppy maintenance work. He now worked at a small garage called Abel’s Automotive. He was underneath a beat-up Toyota Camry when Hanna and Terry walked up.

“Jeff Smith?”

“Yeah?” He slid out to look up at them. Surprise, then annoyance flashed across his face. “Let me guess why you’re here.” He sat up, then stood, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “I had nothing to do with that crash.”

“Scott wasn’t a fan of yours. Want to tell me why he fired you?” Hanna asked.

“That snooty girlfriend of his. The last time he took her for a flight, she got grease on her dress, blamed me.”

“Seriously?” Terry asked.

“Yeah.” Smith spit on the ground and leveled a disgusted look at her. “I haven’t been back to the airfield since I got canned.”

“I need you to account for your whereabouts for the past two weeks.” Hanna’s gut said he was telling the truth, but she had to have something concrete to prove it.

“Here, mostly.” He pointed down at the dirty floor. “I make half of what I made as a plane mechanic. And thanks to Saint Scott, I got no references. I work seven days a week. I didn’t like Scott, but that don’t mean I killed him.”

“I can vouch for him.”

Hanna turned to see an older man leaning on a cane had exited the office. “You are?”

“Abel Martinez. I own the place. I had a stroke, can’t work much. Jeff’s been here every day, mostly all day, helping me keep up with the work.”

“What about at night? You keep track of him then?” Terry asked.

Martinez shook his head. “He’s been a big help to me.”

Smith shrugged. “I live alone. But I have neighbors. Look, there are cameras all over that airfield. If you’d seen me on one of them, I’d probably already be in cuffs.”

Hanna had viewed hours of video from the airfield. The security system where Scott kept his plane was state of the art. Jeff hadn’t shown up on any of the video feeds since he was fired. Still, he would know how to avoid them.

“We’ll follow up with your neighbors, Jeff.” Hanna turned to leave, then stopped. “If you didn’t do it, who do you think did? You worked for Scott for two years, and you didn’t like him. Who else felt that way?”

Smith leaned against the car and sighed. “Look, Scott was hard to work for. He was demanding, a perfectionist. Especially when he took his girlfriend up in the plane. I was too unorganized for him. My mind doesn’t go to murder. I’d like to have punched him out, though...” He gave another half shrug. “The only person I seen him really argue with was that blogger.”

“What blogger?”

“You know, Marcus the Muckraker. They got into it really good a few weeks ago at the airfield.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. Couldn’t hear. There was just a lot of arm waving and Scott poked the guy’s chest.” Smith held his index finger up and jabbed the air by way of example.

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