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Jamie and Aidan chuckled, Cam no doubt filling them in on his former partner’s aversion to the military flyovers that had eventually chased him out of town and up the coast to the LA field office.
Levi sipped his tea and considered Marsh’s theories. “The latter is certainly possible. A flipper is possible too, but those improvements at Press’s place, while nice, didn’t look less than a year old.” He set his tea aside and turned his attention back to Jamie. “I’m guessing there’s more to the story. Cousins sold the house three hundred and sixty-six days after he bought it, one day past the required holding time for a residential loan.”
Smiling, Jamie passed a yellow folder across the table next. “Settlement statements from both transactions.”
Marsh whistled from over Levi’s shoulder. “Cousins came out of pocket for that delta?”
Aidan nodded. “Tapped his 401K. Penalty is on his tax return.”
“Why didn’t he just sell it sooner?”
“The lender’s penalty was even more exorbitant.”
“So he wanted out of that house, bad.” Levi spread the papers in front of him and reclaimed his mug, reframing the situation around this latest evidence. “Any issues while he was the owner?”
“Nothing reported,” Jamie said. “Checked FBI and the county sheriff’s records.”
“We need to talk to him,” Levi said. “And to the neighbors. There must have been something that chased him out of there.”
Marsh made a high-pitched, eerie ghostly noise.
And got a balled-up piece of paper to his face for it, Jamie hitting him square between the eyes. That drew more laughs... and tripped something in the back of Levi’s mind.
Ghosts.
Dead people.
Ward.
That prior owner’s name.
“Tell us about the Ward who lived there before Cousins. Lance Ward, if I remember the news stories correctly?”
Marsh dropped the spooky act, snapping back to professional attention. “News stories?”
“Good memory.” Jamie pushed a red folder across the table to them. “Lance Ward was found dead in the San Elijo Lagoon fifteen months ago.”
Levi opened the folder to crime scene photos and was immediately glad he’d gone easy on the sausage gravy and biscuits that morning. Bodies found in water were some of his least favorites. Beside him, Marsh, who’d not gone easy, took one look, then angled his chair away.
“Cause of death was suicide?” Levi asked, closing the folder on the pictures. “I think I remember that too.”
Aidan nodded. “Sheriff’s department ruled it a suicide officially, but the autopsy was technically inconclusive from the body being in the water too long.”
“No one noticed him gone?” Marsh asked.
“Ward was a restauranteur with investments in SoCal and Vegas,” Jamie said, as he handed over the last remaining folder, a bulging blue one. “List of restaurants plus his travel and credit card records for the last year of his life are in there. It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone long stretches.”
“So why did local rule it a suicide?”
Jamie’s tone was more somber when he spoke next, the latent investigator’s glee taking a back seat to sympathy. “Because he’d tried before. Check the last page in there.”
Levi flipped the folder over, then drew out the last sheet, an editorial written by Ward and published in a prominent food magazine. He read the first few paragraphs and was jarred by the contrast between this piece and Ward’s ultimate fate. “This reads like he came out the other side.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t slide back into darkness,” Marsh said, and the darkness, the touch of fear in his own voice, had Levi reaching out and laying a hand on his husband’s thigh. He’d witnessed Marsh’s nightmares over the past year. Infrequent, but there had been enough to know they stayed with Marsh for days after.
“Let’s dig into him too,” Levi said. “But less about his death and more about his life.” He gave Marsh’s thigh another squeeze. “Want to show them what we found this morning?”
The thin line of Marsh’s mouth curved into a devious smirk, and judging by Aidan’s pained “I don’t wanna know,” he’d noticed this time and made the deduction Levi had expected earlier.
