“Then let’s get to work,” Morgan said. “Lance and I will talk to Crystal Fox’s neighbor.”
Sharp nodded. “I’ll go to PJ’s when it opens this afternoon and see if I can track down anyone who knew Mary. I’ll see what I can dig up on Stan Adams’s accounting firm as well.” He headed for his car.
Morgan held her hand out for Lance’s keys. “I’ll drive. You are too angry to get behind the wheel.”
Lance dropped his keys in her palm. They climbed into the Jeep. Lance called his mother and explained what the sheriff wanted. He didn’t elaborate on the whys of the request. “I’ll stop by later and pick up the documents,” he told her.
She sounded confused but steady as she agreed. He lowered the phone.
“Was she upset?” Morgan glanced at him.
“I don’t even know anymore.” He leaned his head against the seat. He could tell Morgan wanted to talk. She was desperate to help, to share his burden and lend him some of her tremendous strength. But Lance was unable to process any more emotion. So he took the cowardly way out. He closed his eyes and didn’t say another word until they arrived at the farmhouse down the road from Crystal Fox’s house.
Morgan parked on the shoulder of the road.
Lance lifted his head. The farmhouse sagged under the weight of its history. The structure seemed wobbly and precarious, as if the removal of one cinder block from its foundation would bring the whole building crashing down like a giant Jenga tower.
“Looks like the kind of place where the residents cook meth in a shed.” He scanned the tall weeds that surrounded the property. The carcass of a barn, its timbers exposed like the ribcage of a skeleton, lay behind the house. “Maybe this is a mistake.”
A low throb started in Lance’s leg. The memory of approaching another rural house with an abandoned air hovered in the periphery of his mind, the way a predator hides in the shadows. He surveyed the windows, looking for movement but saw nothing.
No shifting of a curtain. No silhouette of a man. No rifle barrel.
No criminal waiting to shoot him in the leg and nearly kill him.
“We’re just going to ask a few questions,” Morgan said.
He rubbed his leg. He’d been shot approaching a front door to ask some simple questions. He shook off the memory of lying on the grass, bleeding out, but his bullet scar continued to ache. “Maybe you should wait in the car.”
“No one answers the door when you knock.” Morgan got out of the vehicle.
Lance followed her to stand in front of the Jeep. “Sure they do.”
She shook her head. “You don’t look casual. You still look like a cop. You intimidate people.”
He glanced down at his clothing. Black cargos, T-shirt, leather jacket. “This is casual.”
“Sure. For a SWAT team. It wouldn’t matter what you wore. You just have that look in your eyes, and your muscles bulge out all over.” Shielding her eyes with one hand, she surveyed the house. “Looks abandoned to me, but tax records say the house belongs to Elijah Jackson. He must be related to Ricky Jackson.”
Which made the meth lab even more likely.
“There’s only one way to find out.” She walked toward the porch.
Lance tamped down his emotional turmoil as he refocused on the house. Ripped screens covered the windows. A gust of wind blew through a set of rusty wind chimes. The high-pitched metallic pings lifted goose bumps on Lance’s arms.
He checked his weapon and tucked Morgan behind him as they walked up the driveway and approached the sagging porch.
“Watch yourself.” He steered her around a hole in the porch step.
Moving away from him, Morgan raised a hand to knock on the door. Lance tugged her to stand behind the doorframe.
He whispered in her ear, “Never stand dead center.”
In case someone shoots through the door.
Despite the cold air, sweat dripped down the center of his back. His senses went on high alert, and his bullet scar itched with the intensity of an electrical current.
Or an instinct.
An early warning system designed for survival.
Standing to one side, Morgan knocked on the door. Something moved inside. A thump and a scrape sounded behind the door. Then another.
Thump. Scrape.
Lance’s hand inched toward the weapon on his hip as the door creaked open.
Chapter Nineteen
Morgan edged in front of Lance, who looked ready to shoot the homeowner. The door opened two inches and hit the end of the chain lock on the other side. The eye that looked through the gap was blue and rheumy. Next to her, Lance removed his hand from the butt of his gun. His body didn’t exactly relax, but he was longer poised to rush the door.
“Mr. Jackson?” She smiled.
“Who are you?” the old man asked.
Morgan introduced herself and Lance and offered her business card through the gap above the door handle.
The old man took it. A few seconds later, he squinted at Lance. “You look like a policeman.”
“No, sir. I’m a private investigator,” Lance said.
“What do you want?” Mr. Jackson asked.
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” Morgan explained.
The old man grunted. The door closed. Metal scraped, and the door opened fully.
“I’m Elijah Jackson.” He was at least seventy-five, likely closer to eighty, and leaned with both hands on a four-pronged cane. A body that had once been tall and strong now bowed under a lifetime of hard work and disappointment. “If you’re defending Ricky and you want money, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Do you know Ricky Jackson?” Morgan asked.
“He’s my grandson.” Mr. Jackson nodded. “The sheriff was here last night.”
“I’m sorry,” Morgan said.
“Me too.” Mr. Jackson shuffled backward a few steps and motioned them to enter the house. “I need to sit down. This damp cold is hard on my arthritis.”
Morgan and Lance wiped their feet on a rag rug and stepped into a wood-floored foyer. The old farmhouse was falling down, but the inside was tidy. There were none of the dust-and-fur bunnies that bred in the corners of Morgan’s house.
Mr. Jackson led the way down a narrow hall to a huge, old kitchen. A fire crackled in the adjoining living room. A picture window overlooked a weedy barnyard. Rickety wire fencing encircled a chicken coop. Inside the enclosure, a dozen hens scratched at the dirt. A second fenced-and-cleared rectangle held neat rows of plants.
He gestured toward a scarred oak table. Morgan and Lance sat at ladder-backed chairs while Mr. Jackson filled a teakettle and set it on the stove.
“I’m out of coffee, but I still have some tea,” Mr. Jackson said.
“We already had our breakfast, but thank you anyway.” Morgan couldn’t take one of this poor old man’s last tea bags.
She rested her forearms on the tabletop. The gray-brown surface was worn smooth from decades of plates and elbows and scrub rags. In the center of the room, a butcher-block island held a basket of brown eggs. Chipped ceramic bowls held carrots, beets, kale, and brussels sprouts. A large stainless-steel pressure canner on the stove and a line of mason jars suggested Mr. Jackson was getting ready to preserve his harvest.
“If you’re looking for bail money for my grandson, I don’t have anything left. He’s bled me dry.” Perched on a stool, Mr. Jackson leaned his cane on the island, picked up a vegetable peeler, and began scraping the skin from a fat carrot. “I took him in when my son got hooked on drugs and disappeared. I fed the boy. I clothed him. I tried to teach him some sense. But he’s just like his daddy. All he can think about is drugs.” He shook his head. “That heroin will be the end of this country. I bailed him out twice. He’s taken every dollar I have. If it weren’t for my chickens and my garden, I’d starve. Before he left last night, he emptied my wallet. I guess it wasn’t enough. Miss Fox wasn’t much of a neighbor, but there isn’t much lower a human can sink than stealing from a dead woman.”
Unless it was stealing from his own elderly grandfather.
“I’m not representing Ricky,” Morgan said.
Mr. Jackson tossed the naked carrot into an empty bowl and started peeling another. “Then why are you here?”