“But . . .” At forty-four years old, she didn’t need someone to tell her what to do. But then she was also amazed. Her mother had never suggested that she take even a few days off. Was Teresa Truman, president of the Truman Oil Company, getting soft in her old age?
No, Teresa would be hardheaded and -hearted until the day that they crossed her arms over her chest in a coffin. This had nothing to do with Kate’s emotional well-being and everything to do with company image.
“I’ve been running this company since I was thirty years old. The one thing I regret is not taking vacations,” Teresa said. “If it did not involve business, I didn’t see the need for it. Don’t get to be seventy years old with regrets, like I’m doing now.”
“I’ll think about it,” Kate said.
Regrets, my naturally born white ass! The only thing that you might feel sorry about is not buying out Texas Red when it was a small company or maybe letting me buy stock in this company through the years. Now I own thirty percent, which is only slightly less than what you own.
“Good. That’s at least a baby step. See you in the morning. I’m leaving the office now and going home to get a few laps in the pool before dark,” Teresa said.
“’Bye, Mother,” Kate said and hit the “End” button.
She visualized her mother’s smile, the one that made her eyes twinkle, the one that she pasted on her face when she won a big deal.
She eyed her own pool for a minute, then stood up and stripped down to her underwear. The water enveloped her in its coolness when she dived in and started swimming from one end to the other. One hundred laps later, Kate had made up her mind to take a week of her vacation time. Surely it wouldn’t take a day longer than that to get things settled with the cabin.
A cute little lady in a dark suit made a phone call and gave Waylon a visitor’s tag to clip on to his sports jacket that Monday morning. She pointed toward the elevators and told him to go to third floor. As she said, the waiting room would be to the right and Mrs. Steele would send her assistant for him when she could see him.
A wall of glass at the end of the waiting area provided a view of downtown Fort Worth. Current magazines occupied orderly rows on the coffee table in front of the sofa where he’d slumped down. He couldn’t get comfortable—the seat was too short for his tall frame, and the back hit him at a place between his shoulder blades that had been sore for weeks. Finally, he left the sofa behind and watched the traffic down on the street from the third-floor glass wall.
God, he hated the city. Time was when he loved it and everything about the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but lately his heart was back in Mabelle, Texas, on the ranch that his folks had left him. He was tired of chasing the bad guys and doing paperwork. He wanted to sweat in the hay field rather than in a jacket, white shirt, and tie.
He checked the time on his phone every thirty seconds, and finally, at ten minutes past the hour, someone said his name. He turned around to find a short gray-haired lady with a no-nonsense expression motioning for him.
She’d made it with five minutes to spare. He did not wait more than fifteen minutes for an appointment—doctor, dentist, or suspect.
“If you are Detective Waylon Kramer, Mrs. Steele will see you now.”
He followed her into an outer office, through a set of double doors into a bigger room with the same view out the window on one end. Mrs. Steele was sitting behind her desk and did not get up or extend a hand. He removed his cowboy hat and laid it on the edge of her desk.
“Please sit,” she said. “Could we get you something to drink? Coffee? Water?”
“Coffee would be nice. No sugar or cream. Just black,” Waylon said.
“Millie, make that two coffees and two glasses of water,” she told the gray-haired lady. “Now what can I do for you today, Detective?”
“You’ve given me a complete rundown of where you were on the day your husband was killed. Could I have something on paper, like your schedule and who you were meeting with on that day? And I’d like access to your financial records,” he said.
“Okay, I will have Millie run a copy of my schedule that day. I believe you came to the office at three, so I suppose anything prior to that would be enough? And if you want my phone records or my financials, get a warrant.”
“I want you to tell me in your own words, but I would like a copy. I can get a warrant if it’s going to be a problem,” Waylon said.
“You bring the warrant and I’ll grant you access. Am I still a suspect in Conrad’s murder?”
“We always look at the spouse first, especially when there is an insurance policy involved,” he answered.
“And is there an insurance policy? I don’t have a copy of one. Maybe one of the other wives bought the thing.”
“You took it out on him and you pay the premiums,” he countered.
She inhaled deeply and let it out in a whoosh. “I forgot about that.”
Waylon bit the inside of his lip to keep from grinning. So he could fluster the ice queen. That made the ten-minute wait worth every second.
“Which leads me to believe maybe you forgot about something else,” he said.
“It’s only for twenty-five thousand dollars, for God’s sake, and I had the premium set up for automatic payment. I figured if he died out there on the road it would pay for his funeral expenses. It’s damn sure not enough to kill him over,” she protested.
Her tone had gone an octave higher, and her body language said she was even more rattled. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Did you find out about those other two women before he died?”
Millie brought in a tray and set it on the desk. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s all for now,” Mrs. Kate Steele said.
Millie shut both doors behind her as she left. Waylon reached for coffee, and Kate picked up a glass of water, downing a third of it before setting it back down—in his books a sign that she was guilty as hell in some way and her mouth was dry from her lies.
Kate hit a couple of keys on her computer and brought up her calendar. “I told you all this before, but if you want the minute details, here they are. I arrived at work at eight thirty. I came in thirty minutes early to get my files in order for a meeting with the acquisitions department concerning buying out a smaller company. I went from my office to the conference room at nine o’clock. I did not have time in that five-minute ride in the elevator to dash down to the flower shop and kill my husband,” she said. “We were there until noon, hashing out the finer points of a buyout. Millie had lunch delivered, and we took a forty-five-minute break. I didn’t leave except for ten minutes in the ladies’ room, and there were at least two other women in there at the same time I was. We were back at the table at one o’clock and wrapped it all up by two. I went back to my office to make phone calls. I did not kill Conrad or have him assassinated.”
Waylon took out his notebook and wrote down the timeline as she talked. Most of the time folks got real antsy when he made notes in his book. It didn’t seem to affect Kate Steele as much as he wanted. She sat across the desk from him sipping her ice water as if he were no more than a gnat that she would squash with that glass paperweight any minute. He put his pen and notebook into his pocket and finished off his coffee.
“You got anything else you want to say this morning?” he asked.
“Only that if I’d wanted to kill Conrad, I would have done it years ago and I would not have hired someone to do my dirty work,” she said curtly.
“Don’t leave town. I might have more questions. Thanks for the coffee.” He rose up out of the chair slowly and settled his hat back on his head.
“I am leaving town next weekend, but I’ll still be in the state,” she said. “You have my cell phone, and before you accuse me of murder again, why don’t you pull your head out of your butt and do some real detective work? Who was he sending flowers to? They damn sure weren’t for me. And if there are three of us, there might be another wife in the wings. Find them and see if that person has a gun to match the bullets that killed dear old Conrad.”
Waylon nodded. “Good day, Mrs. Steele.”