No River Too Wide (49 page)

“This is good news, right? You have proof now that he was having an affair.”

He wished it were that easy, but all he really had so far was proof of an additional link between Rex and Liz. Unfortunately the affair might actually hurt Jan, who could be portrayed as a jealous wife who had taken matters into her own hands.

“I’ve learned a lot about Liz Major,” he said. “I don’t have access to Midwest Modern’s database since I’m no longer on their payroll, but the internet turned up plenty of useful information. She was born here, went to school here, and that means she potentially has hundreds of good contacts in the area. She’s in several organizations, although she doesn’t appear to take leadership roles. She was married and divorced after about five years and hasn’t married again in the subsequent fifteen. I have several reports on people she may be associated with, and I’ve started following up on them.”

“You can find all that on the internet?”

“It’s the modern-day equivalent of hanging your underwear on the clothesline. Only the neighborhood is the world.”

“Does any of it look useful?”

Adam didn’t want to get her hopes up. He’d learned a lot, and not much of it was going to matter to Jan or this case. But he had one potentially promising lead.

He played it down. “Her former brother-in-law lives about five miles down the road from here. He’s single, no kids, and he’s still one of Liz’s Facebook friends. I thought I would check around his place.”

“Because Rex was buried nearby?”

“Exactly. If she friended him on Facebook, it’s possible they still spend time together. Who knows what else they do?”

“He doesn’t work in insurance, does he?”

“He’s the assistant manager at a hardware store down the road from the little hobby farm where he lives.”

“Nobody ever found the missing adjuster?”

“Apparently he’s a pro at disappearing.”

“Do you think Liz has disappeared, too?”

“She claims she’s having car problems, but she’s been calling in every morning.”

“I know you’re doing this because you feel it’s important, but please know I intend to pay you for all your time and expenses.”

“This one’s on me.”

She didn’t argue, as if she knew how futile it would be. “I wish you luck, Adam.”

He knew she did. Lots and lots of luck. It wasn’t just a turn of phrase.

He ended the conversation and decisively slid the phone into his pocket before he slipped up and asked about Taylor. Then, on second thought, he took it out again and went to his map application to pinpoint the location of Gary Major’s little farm.

Liz’s brother-in-law lived on what was probably a dirt road, and Adam zoomed in on the immediate area looking for a back way to his property. He was in luck. The acreage bordered a small farm road that looked passable and was at the opposite end of the property from a house that looked just big enough for a couple. There was a sizable pond, along with several structures, a barn that was at least twice the size of the house, something that looked like a shed and another shed close to the house but near enough to a creek that Adam thought it might be a springhouse.

Lots to see, but no guarantee any of it would be useful.

There was nothing else to do here, and he wanted to get to the Major Farm before Gary arrived home from work. The hardware store closed in about three hours, and thanks to Gary’s Facebook photo and a quick stop to buy nails, Adam also knew that Gary was working today.

He had rented another SUV in Kansas City because he hadn’t been sure what kind of roads he would face. Half an hour later he was parked behind the barn on Gary Major’s property. He was pleased to see that the only animals in sight were half a dozen goats, penned in a smallish field and eating everything in sight.

The goats were far enough behind him that he suspected their nighttime shelter was the shed he had passed on the way to the barn. Now he wondered what the barn was used for. Before he explored he sat quietly and listened. There was noise from the paved road. The occasional car was just audible. Goats bleating. Crows in a cornfield that now held stalks bleached and withered by the sun.

Satisfied, he got out, but he didn’t close his door all the way. He went to the side of the barn and cautiously peered around it. He waited long minutes, watching, but nothing moved except the goats in the field beyond. There was very little foliage here, two clusters of young trees, a row of lilacs that looked as if they had once flanked a building that hadn’t lasted as long as the shrubs. Nothing surrounded the barn. He stayed close to the side and edged around the building. He paused at the corner nearest the house but still a hundred yards away, and waited.

Again, no movement and no new noises.

This time he didn’t move slowly. As quickly as he could without making noise he strode toward the barn doors in the front, noted the smaller one to one side that probably led into an equipment room and stopped to try it. It was locked, and the glass panels were so scratched and dirty he couldn’t see inside.

The larger double doors were fastened in place with a padlock, as well. Adam wondered if theft was really a problem in a place like this. Or was there something else in the barn that Gary Major was trying to protect?

He hurried around the other side and saw a window, placed there for light and not viewing, because it was just high enough that he couldn’t see inside. Hay bales were stacked not far away, rectangular ones, about fifteen inches high, maybe twenty inches wide. He dragged two closer and piled them under the window so he could climb on top. This window, too, was scratched and filthy, and one pane was badly cracked.

He whistled softly. “A little gust of wind and...” He pushed. Hard. The pane fell into the barn in several pieces, and Adam’s view was no longer obstructed.

It took a long moment for his eyes to adjust. The sun was bright above him, and the barn was twilight-dark.

Not dark enough, though, that he couldn’t make out the shape of a car parked about fifteen feet away. A car that somebody had been repainting.

A car that looked, not surprisingly, like a Toyota Camry, a green one, like the one that had belonged to Rex Stoddard, that was well on its way to becoming a nice midnight-blue.

He had already made a call to the sheriff’s office, already moved the hay bales back into place, when a woman in jeans came around the barn and stopped, her hand covering her mouth when she saw him.

He knew who she was, of course. Early that morning he had shown another woman her photograph.

“The sheriff is on his way,” Adam told Liz Major, “so it won’t do you any good to run or try to shoot me the way you shot Rex Stoddard. Besides, if you try, you’re going to end up on the ground in cuffs.” He watched to see her reaction and wondered if she would accuse Gary instead.

“I don’t know what you mean.” But of course, she did, and already her shoulders were drooping and her eyes filling with tears.

Adam smiled a little. “You know, we have time before the sheriff gets here, and I’m a good listener. Why don’t you just start at the beginning?”

Chapter 39

In the interest of trying to keep Jan’s mind off Adam’s imminent arrival, Harmony was sharing the latest in her personal life.

“And Kieran’s genuinely interested in other people, which is at least half of what I like about him. He banded together with other local artists, and they’re all making space to sell work from their Latin American counterparts in their studios. All fair-trade stuff. They take turns going down to work with the artists there, to learn from each other, and then they bring back whatever they think they can sell here. He was in the peace corps in Nicaragua right after college, so he speaks fluent Spanish.”

Jan put her hand on Harmony’s knee. “What’s the other half?”

Harmony looked confused.

“You said that was half of what you liked about him.”

“You don’t want to know the other half.”

“You’re probably right.” Jan managed a smile, even though her future seemed to hang in the balance until Adam arrived. “I’m just glad you’ve met somebody you really like.”

“Adam should be here by now.”

“It’s not a short drive from Charlotte.”

Rilla passed by the doorway, then turned and came back. “Lottie’s asleep. Landon told her a bedtime story about robots and marshmallows. Pretty hard to follow, but it put her right out.”

“Thanks for letting us camp out in your living room,” Jan said.

“You’re kidding, right? This way I’ll get to hear the good news quicker.”

Jan hoped it would be news worth sharing. When he’d called in the late afternoon, Adam had apologized for not being able to tell her more, but he had just snagged the last seat on a flight to Charlotte and he’d been told to turn off his phone. He had promised he would call on the drive to Asheville, but she had asked him to tell her in person so Harmony could be with her to hear the news, too. He
had
managed to tell her she and Harmony would be happy, and she was holding on to that.

“Please stay when he gets here,” she told Rilla.

“Oh, I don’t think so. I’ll let you two absorb it first.”

Jan was grateful Rilla had offered her house, but she was sorry the meeting wasn’t taking place at Taylor’s. She hadn’t asked, but she was certain Taylor wouldn’t have stayed to hear what Adam had to say.

Rilla went to find her sons, and Harmony got up to peer out the window, as she had done half a dozen times. This time after a minute she whirled. “Headlights. I bet that’s him.”

Jan struggled to look calm, a skill in which she should be an expert after years of trying not to show her feelings. “Let’s just remember to let him talk before we barrage him with questions.”

Harmony left to open the front door, and in a minute she was back, ushering Adam into the living room. He hadn’t shaved that day, and his clothes were wrinkled, but he was smiling.

“You must be beat,” Jan said. “Was your flight okay?”

“You’re worried about me? When are you going to start taking care of yourself?”

“If I’m lucky, you’ve been doing that for me.”

He flopped into a comfortable easy chair—nothing in the Reynolds house was for show. “I promised you would be happy, but when I said it even I didn’t have the best news. Liz Major is in custody of the sheriff, and right after I got off the plane I got a message saying she’s made a full confession to the fraud and your husband’s murder. All they had to do was show her your husband’s laptop and the files he had been carrying around in that hidden locker. Then they told her things would go easier if she confessed. The story takes a while to tell. Do you want to hear the basics or the details?”

“Details, even if we have to wring them out of you,” Harmony said, but her voice wasn’t quite steady.

“I don’t suppose there’s a cup of coffee in the house somewhere?”

Harmony left for the kitchen, and Adam sat forward. “I don’t think there’s anything you’ll have to go back to Topeka to take care of, Jan. You should be able to handle everything from here, but if I’m wrong, you can go without worrying. It’s over. The whole thing’s over.”

She couldn’t speak through the lump in her throat. Sometimes life changed in the blink of an eye, but it took longer to believe it.

Harmony brought coffee for all of them and handed Jan and Adam theirs. Then she sat beside her mother and waited until Adam had a few sips.

He began. “About two years ago Liz met a guy named Ray Seagrave who worked as an independent adjuster. Seagrave handled claims for a couple of different firms, so he and Liz worked together. She says they fell in love. Anyway, by then she was sick of working at Stoddard Insurance, and especially sick of—”

As he took another sip of coffee, his eyes flicked to Harmony.

“You don’t have to whitewash my father,” she said.

“Fair enough. She really didn’t like working with your husband,” he continued, directing his words at Jan. “And eventually she decided she deserved to get even with him for the way she’d been treated through the years. She and Seagrave worked out a plan, and as these things usually go, it was a pretty good one. Policies for rigs that didn’t exist. Damage from accidents that never occurred. Payments sent to empty houses in the country where mailboxes could be easily accessed. Liz and Seagrave were smart enough not to collect huge amounts, and to vary what they did and the companies they got payments from. But eventually, as you already know, Midwest Modern got suspicious.”

“She was in love with this Seagrave person, but she was having an affair with my father?” Harmony sounded as though that was the hardest thing to believe.

“As part of their strategy she made a point of being nicer to your father, so he wouldn’t be as determined to look over her shoulder. She started making coffee in the mornings, asking his advice, just small things, but about six months into their plan, Liz realized your father was treating her differently.” He paused. “Jan, I think that might have been about the time you started acting more depressed at home, in preparation to leave him.”

“Interesting that maybe I influenced this.” Jan wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but she
was
sure she didn’t feel guilty.

“Rex began taking Liz out to lunch to discuss agency business. On her birthday he sent her flowers. At first she thought maybe he was trying to disarm her, that maybe he’d begun to figure out something was up. But eventually she realized he was flirting. And Liz, not being the most moral kid on the block, decided to use it to her advantage. She figured that the closer they got, the less likely Rex would be to pay attention to what she was doing.”

He paused for a couple more sips; then he set the cup on a side table. “So the affair began, and she was right. Rex treated her like a fragile blossom, the way he treated you at the beginning of your relationship, and Liz played along. Then, after a while, things began to go sour, and this will be familiar, too. He started trying to control where she went, what she did, how she looked. He got physical, too. Grabbed her by the wrist and left bruises when she disagreed with him or didn’t consult him. By then she realized she’d unleashed something scary, but she and Seagrave were hoping for a bigger nest egg before they vanished, and they thought she could control the situation until they got everything they wanted.”