“Plus several others earlier, I believe, but then she also had an affair with my ex,” she said. “So, what if some disgruntlement is there?”
“Then we lay the names and places in Mack’s lap, and he can find out.”
“I suppose,” she muttered, “but I’d really rather find out myself.”
“It is a current case. Remember that,” he said.
“Right, in which case Mack will be mad at me.” She sighed. “Is there anything suspicious about her and her ex?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if there was a cold case involving her and her ex-husband, then I could look into it.”
He started to laugh. “I have no idea,” he said. “How would we possibly find out? We both did some initial looking without any luck. So what do you suggest?”
“If only their names came up in connection to something,” she muttered.
“Well, his parents were murdered, but I don’t know that it’s a cold case.”
Her ears perked up, and she sat up straight, a big grin on her face. “Seriously? We’ll need to find out,” she said urgently. “That would be huge.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You’re not getting me hooked into this. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of my brother.”
She snorted. “Are you scared of him?”
“Absolutely, and you should be too,” he warned. “We definitely do not want him upset at us.”
“Nope,” she said, “I don’t. I’ve mostly avoided that, so far. But, if it’s a cold case, then I would be fully justified in going down that pathway.”
“I’m not sure how the justification works,” he muttered, “but I can give you the names of the parents.”
“Perfect,” she said. “That’ll work.”
“In what way?”
“I have my ways and means,” she said. “What are their names?”
“Ralph and Jennifer Waldorf,” he said. “And their deaths were over a decade ago.”
“Oh boy,” she muttered. Hmm.
“What does that mean?”
“As cold cases go, a decade isn’t too bad, but it can be hard to get accurate information. Twenty years ago, we had that switch from paper to digital, and then after 2010 and beyond,” she said, “we would have social media to mine.”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
After the call, it took quite a bit of digging, but finally she found what she was looking for. It was apparently a breaking-and-entering case gone wrong. The parents were supposed to be at the symphony for the evening, but Jennifer hadn’t been feeling well, so she’d stayed home, and so did Ralph. The intruders snuck into the basement. The father went down to investigate; there was a tussle, and he fell down the basement stairs, broke his neck, and died almost instantly. The wife heard the fight and called the police but then panicked and raced down the stairs after her husband, where they knocked her out. But they broke her nose and ended up killing her instantly, as a bone pierced her brain. So the burglary ended up being two murders.
Doreen stared at the information on the page and shook her head. “What a waste,” she said. As she continued, she realized it was, indeed, a cold case. The murderer had never been caught, and the local authorities had very few suspects. Doreen knew that the son would be a suspect by default, since he was the one who inherited.
And he was married at the time, to her lovely ex-lawyer.
“Interesting,” she muttered. “Law school is expensive. Is that how she funded it?” And that, of course, led to Doreen wondering if both Robin and her husband had funded college that way deliberately. Doreen hated to think that anybody would kill their parents in order to get the money to go to school, but she had seen murders for less. And she knew Mack had seen murder cases with much less motive. She frowned as she sat back.
What motive would there be, besides money? The burglars apparently got away with handfuls of jewelry and a painting, all of which had yet to show up later. And just like that, she was fascinated. She got up and paced her kitchen and then the living room. In a comedic array, Mugs matched her, step by step by step. Goliath, in true fashion, settled himself on the bottom step of the stairway, and she watched his tail twitching, as she went past him again and again and again. Thaddeus was on the kitchen table, doing a stiff-legged march along the tabletop, keeping time with her. She laughed. “I don’t think any of this is helping us, guys.”
“Helping Thaddeus. Helping Thaddeus.”
“Are you helping, Thaddeus? Well, in that case, do you want to go find something shiny for us?” she asked. “I feel like we need a break in the case.”
“Break in the case. Break in the case.”
“Well, I said we needed a break, and, being a cold case, the details are quite sketchy.”
She wondered if she dared ask Mack to take a look at the file. She did as much research as she could and found various snippets of information, including an obituary on the parents, but, as far as actual forensic information, it was pretty skimpy. Nick might help too. Delighted to have another resource, she quickly forwarded the information she had gathered on the case and sent it to him. Is there any way to track what happened to the money they received?
Nick called her right away and said, “Not really. That was a long time ago, and, once the inheritance is paid, and no further investigation involves them, nothing much anybody can do about it.”
“And it wasn’t insurance money, right? It was just that they got the house and personal belongings, correct?”
“Again, I haven’t seen the will, and I don’t know what the estate looked like, but, in a case like that, if they’re not considered suspects, they have every right to inherit.”
“What if they are considered suspects?”
“Which they aren’t,” he reiterated. “Nothing in any of the files indicates that. The authorities had no evidence to move in that direction.”
“Well, what I find interesting,” she said, “and maybe you can help with this, is that both of them went to law school.”
“Well, that makes a lot of sense,” he muttered. “Most people have a defining moment in their life that changes the course of what they were planning on doing, and, in this case, the murder of his parents probably sent them both looking for justice.”
“Oh,” she said, then sat back and thought about it.
“What were you thinking?” he asked curiously.
“I was thinking they were looking for money for school.”
He gasped in shock.
“I know it sounds bad,” she said, “but you know that people have committed murder for a lot worse reasons. Surely we can find out if they had student loans, can’t we?”
“And you’re thinking, if they didn’t have student loans, that would support the theory that they murdered her in-laws?”
“Well, I mean obviously, if they got the money free and clear on the inheritance, they would have used that for law school, depending on how much it actually was, and both of them got an education. Still paying cash seems suspicious.”