Page 39 of Out of the Shadows
“There was a time not too far back where Margo was estranged from the family.” He paused, considered what to tell Laura and how to tell her. Nothing was a secret, but he didn’t like talking about his dad’s imprisonment. “A little over three years ago, our dad pled guilty to, um, to killing his colleague. It came as a shock to all of us—he’s a doctor, he saves lives. None of us believed it. There was no trial because he turned himself in, took a plea agreement, and is now in prison for twelve more years. At first, we fought him on it, but he didn’t want us to, my mom didn’t want us to, and so we all backed down and accepted his decision. Except for Margo.”
“That must have been awful for all of you. Did he ever say why?”
“No. He pled guilty to second degree, unpremeditated homicide. He told the police that they had an argument and he shot Dr. Klein without thinking about it. It doesn’t sound like my dad, but he wouldn’t change his story and refused to talk about it. There was nothing we could do.”
“And Margo? She didn’t accept that?”
“She started looking into Dr. Klein’s murder on her own, and our mom was furious. They got into a huge fight—nothing like I’ve ever seen before, to be honest—and Margo walked away. I saw her—we all did—at family gatherings, at our grandparents’, things like that, but she really stood fast that unless we came around to her way of thinking, she wouldn’t work with us.”
“What changed? Because from what I’ve seen, you work well together.”
Jack thought on that. “It was a couple of things. First, Margo was stuck. She couldn’t find any alternative theory about what happened to Dr. Klein, and no one was talking about it. Family as well—my mom is a Morales, one of seven kids, and we have a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles, plus our grandparents keep us together. Margo would never have turned her back on them. And Margo’s beef was mostly with Mom and Dad, not us. I made a point to keep in regular communication, and she was my rock during my divorce. Then a couple months ago, one of Margo’s cases collided with one of our cases—that’s how we met Logan—and we ended up working together.”
“And Margo and your mom resolved everything?”
Jack shrugged. “I wouldn’t go that far. They have a truce. Margo isn’t promising not to investigate Dr. Klein’s death, but she’s stuck, and I think Mom doesn’t believe she’ll find anything that will dredge it all up.” He sighed. “I see my dad at least once a month, but it’s hard. His spirits seem good, and he has a lot of faith—faith that I’ve struggled with since my divorce and my dad’s incarceration. He shouldn’t be there, but he confessed, and while I didn’t believe his guilt before, now? Maybe. Maybe he really did do it, it was an accident, he didn’t mean to, whatever, but he deserves to be in prison if he intentionally took the life of another person.”
Laura rested her hand on his. “I can imagine how difficult this had been on you and your family.”
He nodded, because suddenly he was choked up and couldn’t speak. He’d thought he’d gotten out all his anger, his frustration, his sorrow years ago. He hadn’t realized it was still there, buried deep but always present.
“You and Margo clearly have a good relationship,” Laura said. “I like that—I love both of my brothers. I have much more in common with Henry and our love of ranch life and animals, but I’m closer to Logan. He’s so smart and kind and generous, but he’s also a little naive and innocent about things that sometimes stun me. He gets hyper-focused on his projects and can forget you’re in the room, he can be blunt and undiplomatic with people, and he expects a lot from the people who work for him, yet he’ll never forget your birthday and will drop everything if you need help, no questions.”
“He’s a good guy,” Jack agreed.
“Have you cleared him as a target? Meaning, you don’t think someone he’s doing business with—or someone he angered and didn’t realize it, which has happened more than once—is behind this?”
She was grasping at straws and knew it, Jack thought.
“Tess, my brilliant sister who specializes in research, has looked at the people Logan and his admin gave us as possible threats. There’s nothing there, and honestly, I don’t think this has anything to do with Logan, not directly at any rate. This is about what Charlie found in that storage unit.”
“Why would he even bid on a storage unit?” Laura asked, exasperated. “And spend over five thousand dollars?”
“I was thinking about that this morning. You’d told me Charlie was trying to come up with business ideas, partly because Logan has been successful and Charlie both envied and admired him.”
“Did I say that?”
“Implied.”
She nodded. “But that still doesn’t explain the storage unit. He has no experience buying and selling.”
“There are people who make a living or a second income buying secondhand goods and fixing them up for resale. Or looking for the diamond in the rough. Could Charlie have thought this was a viable business choice? Maybe he had an idea of starting something?”
Laura opened her mouth, closed it, thought. “I was going to say no because that’s a lot of start-up capital—five thousand for one locker, and the items aren’t even worth that? But he doesn’t think these things through. He might have thought if those other people wanted what was in the locker, then it was worth something so he had to win the bid.Thatwould be Charlie. Yet to do this successfully, he would need a business plan and some idea of what income he could make, how much outlay, where he would store the items. He didn’t even think about any of that.”
Laura sighed, rubbed her eyes. “It’s just like him. Jump first. Excuses later. Dammit.”
“I’ve been wondering if someone may have told him about the locker. Maybe a third party gave him the money to bid, or suggested there was something valuable inside.”
“At this point, I’d believe just about anything.”
It was then that Laura noticed her hand was still on Jack’s. She pulled it away, surprised, and Jack wished she hadn’t. He liked this connection with Laura; he liked the way she looked and smelled and her faint Texas accent.
“I’m going to shower. We should leave by six thirty for the clinic,” Laura said as she got up.
“I’ll make some breakfast,” he said.
“You don’t have to—”
