Free Final Call by Terri Reid

would just smile and take it.”
    “Did you have any money of your own?”
he asked.
    “Yeah, even though Mom didn’t get that
much money when she divorced my dad, we were comfortable,” he said. “And then,
when I turned twenty-one, I got my inheritance.”
    “When your aunt finally died, what did
you plan to do?” Bradley asked.
    “I was going to show them all that I
could run the business,” he said. “I was going to make millions.”
    “So, were you anxious to start your new
position?”
    He moved forward in his seat and put
his hands on the desk.
    “No, Auntie Faye put me in as a junior
executive,” he explained. “She told me I needed to learn the ropes.”
    “And how was that going?” Bradley
asked.
    “Great,” he said, his voice lifting
with excitement. “I’m doing really well. I’m ready to be in charge now.”
    “Tell me about Carl White.”
    Rodney froze and his face lost its
animation. “I don’t really know Carl,” he said.
    Bradley leaned forward. “That’s funny,”
he said. “It seemed that you knew him last night when you first entered the
room.”
    Rodney sat back in his chair and
crossed his arms. “We’re not really friends,” he said. “He’s not what everyone
thinks he is.”
    “He’s not?”
    Shaking his head, Rodney lowered his
voice. “He thinks people don’t know, but word’s getting out that he has some
big secrets.”
    “And what are those secrets?”
    “I heard him arguing with Auntie Faye,”
he said. “She was telling him that as long as he did what she wanted, she would
keep his secret safe.”
    “What secret?”
    “I don’t know, but it must have been
pretty bad.”
    “Why would you say that?” Bradley
asked.
    “Because Auntie Faye said that he was a
bastard.”

Chapter Thirteen

 
    “Listen, Sean,” Mary growled into her
cell phone. “Just because you’re the head of the Special Victims Unit, does not mean you can tell me what to
do. You’re my brother, not my father.”
    She turned the volume down on her
Bluetooth ear piece as she listened to her brother’s tirade. “What the hell do
you think you’re doing?” he yelled. “Now that you know definitively this was
not just a break-in, but a murder, you need to turn the information over to the
police.”
    She changed lanes, passing a
particularly slow moving vehicle on I-39, going south towards DeKalb and then
moved back into the right lane. “I’m not trying to solve a murder,” she
insisted. “And the information I just shared with you is privileged and I
expect you to treat it as such. Even Bradley doesn’t know that Jeannine is
dead.”
    There was momentary silence on the
other end of the line. “You mean you haven’t told him his wife is dead?”
    She could hear the astonishment and the
judgment in his voice. “Do you think I didn’t want to?” she snapped. “Do you
think I didn’t argue with Jeannine, telling her that he had a right to know?”
    “He does have a right to know, Mary,”
Sean said. “Dammit, Mary, she’s his wife.”
    She sighed. “I know that,” she said.
“But she’s also my client and she asked me...no, she told me not to tell him. And
then she disappeared. So, I’m not waiting any more, I’m looking for her. Then I
can tell her that I can’t wait any longer.”
    “So, you’re not trying to solve this
one on your own?”
    “Bradley would never forgive me for
working on this case without him,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that to him.”
    Another moment of silence on the line,
but this time Mary could hear him shuffling through paperwork. “Okay, I’ll text
you the address,” he said. “But be careful.”
    Mary rolled her eyes. “Sean, this case
is over eight years old. Do you think the murderer is hanging around the house
waiting for someone to solve it?”
    Mary exited on Hwy 64 and traveled east
to Sycamore. She found it sadly ironic that the subdivision entrance for
Bradley’s former home was off Peace Road. She drove along