Page 28 of Sinful Fantasy

* * *

“She hadn’t heard from him in days, but she wasn’t concerned?!” Aubree flops onto the couch in Minka’s office after we’ve seen Mrs. Wilson safely out of the building. “Sure, he was out of town, but they don’t talk on the phone while he’s gone? Like,at all?” She watches us expectantly, as Minka moves to her desk, and I follow to sit in the single visitor chair. Fletch heads to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looks out at the city, his hands on his hips, and his brows furrowed tight in a frown.

“I just don’t get it,” Aubs pushes when no one answers. “I speak to my frickin’ boss on the phone eleven times a day.Every single day. How’s a woman married, and not even texting her spouse good morning or goodnight?”

“First of all,” Minka gingerly sits in her chair, taking care not to knock her arm. I know the pain meds she so happily inhaled this morning have worn off, and she feels each bump. Each bruise and stitch and detail in her reconstruction. “You call me entirely too often. It’s a codependent behavior, bordering on obsessive.”

Aubree scoffs. “Says the chick who called me at four this morning.”

I slide my gaze around to my wife and lift a brow when our eyes meet.She called Aubree before she came to me?

“Second, they’re slightly older,” Minka posits. “Lori confirmed Roger was forty-nine. That’s not the same as our age; it’sourgeneration who relies on phones and instant access. So maybe texting just isn’t part of their relationship.”

“And the fingerprint story?” Fletch turns from the window and faces us. “Science accident way back in high school? That’s a reasonable explanation?”

“Sure.” Minka settles back in her chair and breathes out so I almost feel her in the air. “Stupid kid playing with sulfuric acid in fourth-period science spills the stuff. Burns his fingers. Loses his prints and makes it impossible for them to reform. It’s completely plausible.”

“So, Kyle is just…” I set my elbows on my knees, and prop my chin on my closed fists. “Kyle is Roger, and Roger sells property for a living. His marriage was happy. Somewhat mundane, but happy. They had the three-kiss tradition, a couple of teens and dogs, and a mortgage to pay. Roger is completely and utterly normal, and yet…”

“And yet, someone tortured him to death,” Minka finishes. She chews through her thoughts, just like I do. “Could be a property deal gone wrong. You should find out if his business was built on residential homes or development. The two markets are wildly different, and money pisses people off, so if he bungled a multi-million-dollar development deal, I can see why someone might hurt him.”

“But the eyes?” I question. “The lacerations? If it’s about money, this would have been a revenge beating. That’s not the same as taking a man’s eyes and pulling his teeth. This is colder than revenge.”

“So our perps had a different motive,” Fletch inserts. “Money might be involved, but Kyle—”

“Roger,” Minka cuts in. “His name is Roger.”

“Right.” He pushes a hand through his hair and scratches his scalp, like it alleviates stress. “Rogerfinds out Tuesday morning he’s in trouble. Probably doesn’t realize yet how much, but he knows something is going down, so he tells the wife he’s going out of town. Shouts at the kids a little. Maybe even kicks his dog on the way out.”

“Projection,” Aubree teases. “You’re painting a picture that isn’t there, Detective Fletcher.”

Humored, finally, he sniggers in the back of his throat. “Only gives the wife one kiss instead of three. That says shit’s getting rough. He leaves the house, she thinks he’s at a conference in Florida, and goes on with her life, not expecting him back until next week. Now it’s Sunday, three days before he’s supposed to be back from Florida, and she catches his face on the local news.”

“I told you his name wasn’t Kyle,” Aubree grumbles. Turning her head on the back of the couch so it lolls this way, she lifts a brow and purses her lips. “Itoldyou ‘Kyle’ doesn’t fit.”

“It’s not Arthur, either,” Minka retorts. “So you were wrong too.”

“Has anyone mentioned that you two bicker like children?” Fletch perches on the arm of the couch and sets his feet on the cushions. “We’re gonna have to dig deeper. See who he was dealing with at work. Follow the money, and find our perps through the paperwork. They’ll pop up eventually.”

* * *

“‘Wilco Developments promises quality, efficiency, and value for money.’” Fletch sits back in his chair in the war room, his feet propped up on the table, beside his steaming cup of coffee. While I stand at the whiteboard and write notes, he reads from his phone. “Wilco was first established by Roger Wilson in the fall of two-thousand and three. But after a decade of working alone, he brought in a partner: Alan Renkin. Alan began as a junior associate, but quickly proved his worth and was offered the chance to buy in, about twelve months after being hired. He accepted.”

Capping the whiteboard marker, I grab the stack of new printouts now that we have a name, and stick each one to the board. The first is Roger’s face, while alive; others include his family, his wife and their seventeen-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter. I tack up a picture of his home. Another of his office, which is only ten blocks from here. Finally, I add Alan’s face, after Fletch prints it out.

“How much to buy in?” I ask.

“Two hundred and fifty grand for fifty percent of the shares in the company. Profits are divided equally between the two partners, as are liabilities. Business loans are taken out jointly, and whatever’s left over at the end of each financial year is split and paid out via franked dividends. Both men are married, have purchased property individually, and have a mortgage to pay. They have two children apiece, though Alan’s are younger—eight and ten, to Roger’s fourteen and seventeen.”

“Okay.” Taking up the marker once more, I jot down each important piece of information, and fill the board that was, prior to Roger’s identification, sad and empty. “Let’s speak to Alan next. He’d know about this convention his partner was supposed to be attending.”

“Or lack thereof,” Fletch inserts. “Dude wasn’t going to a conference, Arch. He was running from whoever eventually killed him. We just have to figure out who that was and why they had it in for him.”

* * *

“Mr. Renkin will see you now.” Annaliese—perky, blonde, bosom-tastic, and wearing a handy-dandy name badge right above her left breast—stands from her tall desk at the front of Wilco Developments and strides around to show us the way to his office.

As we walk, I catalog her features. Her Fifi-esque pencil skirt and sky-high heels. Her long hair, though it’s the fake kind of length, earned by extensions and a lot of money spent at the salon. Her nails follow the same trend.

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