Book 5 - Page 100 (1/2)

Taking a moment to close the door and make the gla.s.s opaque, I followed Angus to the seating area and dropped into a chair.

“You’ve had a busy few days, lad,” he said, his lips twisted wryly.

“Never a dull moment.” I exhaled roughly, fighting off fatigue. “Tell me you have something.”

Angus leaned forward. “Little more than I had to start with: a marriage license with a fict.i.tious hometown and Jackson Tramell’s death certificate, which has Lauren Kittrie listed as his spouse. He was dead less than a year after they wed.”

I homed in on the most important information. “Lauren lied about where she was from?”

He nodded. “Easy enough to do.”

“But why?” Studying him, I saw the tension in his jaw. “There’s something else.”

“Manner of death is listed as undetermined,” he said quietly. “Jackson took a bullet to the right temple.”

My spine stiffened. “They couldn’t decide if it was suicide or homicide?”

“Aye. It couldnae be determined conclusively one way or the other.”

More questions without answers, with the biggest issue being whether Lauren had any relevance at all. Maybe we were chasing our tails.

“f.u.c.k.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I just want a photo, for G.o.d’s sake.”

“It’s been a long time, Gideon. A quarter of a century. Maybe someone from her hometown would remember her, but we dinnae know where that is.”

Dropping my hand, I looked at him. I knew the inflections of his voice and what they signified. “You think someone went through and tidied things up.”

“It’s possible. Also possible that the police report of Jackson’s death was truly misplaced over the years.”

“You don’t believe that.”

He confirmed my statement with a shake of his head. “I brought in a la.s.s to pose as an IRS agent looking for Lauren Kittrie Tramell. She questioned Monica Dieck, who said she hasn’t seen her former sister-in-law in many years and to her knowledge, Lauren is deceased.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all and getting nowhere.