“Mr. Roberts, I think perhaps it would be a good idea to talk to us in private, in your office,” I said. “Obviously, we still have questions.”
“I’d rather not,” he said. “We already spoke, and I told you where I was.”
“Mr. Roberts, you need to listen to the ranger. This is one of those we-can-do-it-the-easy-way-or-the-hard-way things,” David
explained, focusing a cold, dry stare on the man. Instinctively, Roberts shuffled back a step, putting more floor space between them. His brow knotted, as if angry, David cocked his head to the side and let Roberts sweat a moment, before adding, “You can talk to us now, or, and this is a promise, in the very near future the lieutenant will escort you to her office.”
Furious, Roberts glared at both of us, but blandly asked the pretty blond office manager, “Is the conference room free?”
“No,” she said. “Missy has a client in there. Use my office.”
“Thanks,” he said, and David and I followed him down a hallway, toward a back corner office with a window overlooking a parking lot.
“I told you where I was,” Roberts said. “I wasn’t with anyone. I was alone, in my car, driving from house to house all that afternoon, figuring out what to show an out-of-town client who came in that Sunday. There’s no more to tell you than that.”
“Is there any way to prove your whereabouts?” David asked. “Any records kept that show what houses you saw when?”
“No, why would there be records?” Roberts said. “Like I said, I was alone. But that’s exactly what I did that afternoon. You’ll have to trust me.”
“Mr. Roberts, when there’s been a murder, trust isn’t on the table,” I said. “Can you tell me, who inherits your sister-in-law’s estate?”
“Faith is Billie’s only living relative, as, I’m sure, she told you. But why are you asking that? You don’t think she or I could be responsible?”
“I’m not implying anything,” I said, coolly. “I’m asking basic questions that have to be answered in any investigation. Who has motive? Who profits?”
“I think you’d better leave,” Roberts said, looking more agitated with each passing moment. “Now, before I do something I’ll be sorry about later.”
The man was squirming like a worm pulled out of the earth and exposed to the sun. “Are you sure you haven’t done that already?” I asked. Roberts fumed but said nothing, as David and I turned and left.
On the drive back to the office, David said, “You know, when I moved to Houston, the Realtor who took me house-hunting used a computerized device of some sort, to open the lockboxes holding the keys.”
“That’s interesting, but is this headed somewhere?” I asked.
“Maybe. If those devices are monitored, there’s probably a central tracking office. If so, they have records of what houses a particular Realtor enters and when,” he explained. “If Grant Roberts was previewing houses at the time Billie Cox was murdered, those records would prove it.”
“That’s good. I’m impressed,” I said, and looked over to see David grinning, quite pleased with himself. “When we partnered last year, did I ever tell you about my Dr. Watson fantasy?”
He laughed. “No, I don’t remember talking about fantasies, but if we did, I think that’s one you left out.”
David was on his way back to his office, when I tracked down Houston’s central booking office, responsible for making appointments for Realtors to see houses. They had no such records, but I was told that the security company that monitored the computerized lock-box system might. I called that number, and the woman I spoke with verified that the company kept records on which homes an individual Realtor entered, and at what time. I gave her information on Grant Roberts, including the name of his real estate company,
and we agreed that with a subpoena, I could have the information the following morning. As soon as I got off the telephone, I asked Janet to draw up the paperwork. By then, it was nearly three. My agreement with the captain had been for half-days at the office, but I hadn’t made it home by one once since I’d returned.
An hour later, after sending the subpoena to the Houston D.A.’s intake division, to get it signed by a judge, I left the office for home, then, I had another thought. I reached for my cell phone.
“Mom, everything okay at the ranch?”
“Yup,” she said. “Bobby finished up at the office early, so he’s here helping me make desserts for his barbecue cook-off party tomorrow night.”
With Emma Lou and work, I’d been so busy, I’d forgotten about the cook-off. On the weekend before the rodeo opens, the parking lot outside Reliant Stadium fills with smoke-belching barbecues. Teams of folks, many whom routinely man desks and computers, slow-cook briskets, ribs, chickens, shrimp, even buffalo and alligator, over smoldering hickory and pecan. In the end, the best efforts win trophies. Like everything else, Bobby takes the event seriously. The Barker Oil tent is as big as most folks’ homes with a smoker the size of a restaurant kitchen, a bar, a catered buffet, and a twanging, strumming country western band.
“How’s Maggie?” I asked.
“She’s up at the shed with Strings, tending to Emma Lou. The horse had a good day. That antibiotic has kicked in, I think. She’s looking healthier all the time. Doc stopped in around noon, drew more blood, and said he thinks we’ve got a chance of coming out of this with both horses.”
“Good news,” I said, feeling relieved. “Mom, if you don’t need me at home, I’d like to work a couple more hours. I’ve got one more stop to make.”
“That’s fine, Sarah,” she said. “You do what you need to do. We’ll all be here when you get home.”
Century Oil officed on the eighth floor of a mirror-skinned office building on the I-10 energy corridor, home to oil companies big and small, west of downtown Houston, just off the Sam Houston Toll-way. I prowled around for an hour or so after I arrived, interviewing Billie’s employees, including her assistant. Her coworkers told me how Billie had worked her way up in the business and been personally chosen as president by one of the two founders, Carlton Wagner, a wildcatter who’d started out speculating in the fields sixty years earlier. The old man treated Billie like a daughter, they said, and was so devastated by her death that it led him to put the place up for sale.
No one I questioned at Century admitted knowing anyone angry with Billie or any reason someone would take her life, and all said she meticulously kept her personal life out of the office. None knew the identity of the man she dated in the months before her death. I needed an official to sign a consent-to-search form for Bil-lie’s office and tracked down one of the vice presidents. When I told the man that Billie’s death was now classified a homicide, he appeared shaken but had no more answers for me than the other employees I’d questioned. He did, however, sign my paperwork and unlock Billie’s office.
Billie lived well. Like her home, her large corner office was decorated with antique furniture, a heavily carved desk and credenza, and ornate Oriental rugs. I thought about how she must have swelled with pride every time she walked into the place. Cox was a young woman who’d risen quickly to a place of prestige in Houston’s powerful energy circle. How heady that must have felt. How quickly and sadly it ended.
There were no family photos or personal items, but then Faith had already told me about her trip to claim them. I went through the files on Billie’s desk, wishing a forensics team had searched the office immediately after the murder. How many others had been in that office during the previous week? What had they taken with them? Evidence leading to the murderer could have walked out the door.
I shuffled through the drawers and found nothing that jumped out at me, until I spotted a folder marked prospectus: stanhope field. On a Post-it note, white with her initials and the outline of an oil well in red, Billie had written: “Withdraw offer. Call B. Barker on Monday to explain details and tell him to do same.” That struck me as odd. I wondered if this could be the East Texas oil field Bobby mentioned, the one he and Billie were working the deal to buy. Yet Bobby talked as if he and Cox were ready to make the offer. Perhaps, he didn’t know she was backing out, since she hadn’t lived until that Monday to call him?
I opened the file and saw lists of numbers. They could have been in Russian for all the figures meant to me. In the back of the file, I paged through brightly colored charts, with layers of different colors, but no explanation of their meaning. So I put the file on the corner of the desk to take with me.
The desktop computer screen was dark and none of the indicators were lit, so I turned it on. A log-on screen came up asking for a password. I hacked around for a while trying Faith’s and Grant’s names, Billie’s birth date and her Texas driver’s license number, but couldn’t get in. Giving up, I turned the computer off, watched the screen go black, and then concentrated on the credenza, finding only more files, nothing that caught my attention. Finally, I sat in Billie’s desk chair for a full fifteen minutes, simply letting my eyes randomly scan the office, looking for something, anything that looked out of place. Nothing. I looked at my watch. It was going on six, and Mom and Maggie would be waiting.
I grabbed my purse and took two steps toward the closed office door, when I heard the computer click on. Startled, I looked around for someone else in the room. But there was only the one door, still shut, and I was alone. Feeling more tentative than entering a crime scene with my .45 drawn, I walked back to the computer.
“This some kind of a joke?” I muttered.
To my astonishment, Billie’s log-in screen booted with the Century Oil logo. I didn’t touch the computer, but watched mesmerized as this time six black dots appeared in the password slot. In an instant, Billie’s opening screen flashed on and then off, replaced by a photograph.
I again looked around the office, convinced someone had to be orchestrating the events. I thought about Faith’s six-o’clock experiences, including the one with this same computer that had offered up the suicide note.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I murmured. I thought about turning and leaving but couldn’t. No matter how it was happening, I figured it was best to pay attention, so I surveyed the photograph on the computer screen. The image was dark, of a field at night. In the photo, three men stood near the shadowy silhouette of an oil well. One had his back to the photographer, but the two whose faces were visible looked up in years. The stars were shining in the night sky, and across the bottom of the photo, someone had handwritten: “Stanhope Field, East Texas.”
“Okay,” I whispered, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I gather this is important.”
I printed the screen, picked the copy up, and slid it in the file with Bobby’s phone number on the Post-it note on top. I tucked all of it under my arm. Now I really had to leave.
But I hesitated, thought for a minute, and whispered, “Anything else?”
I waited, but only silence. The place was starting to give me the chills.
Back in the reception area, I told Billie’s assistant, “I need thick tape, and the key to Miss Cox’s office door.”
The meticulously dressed young man, who appeared young enough to be right out of college, searched through his desk, took out a roll of clear strapping tape, and handed it to me along with the key. I pulled Billie’s door shut, locked it, and then slipped the key into the top front pocket of my black Wranglers. Then I peeled off long strips of tape and slapped them down, crisscrossing the door. When I finished, I said, “Now I need a black marker.”
He handed me a Sharpie, then stood back, watching as I printed police line, do not cross, over and over again on the strips of tape. I left him there, staring at the makeshift crime-scene tape, and stepped out in the hallway, near the elevators, most importantly out of earshot, and called Janet. I was lucky to find her working late.
“I need a search warrant for Billie Cox’s office at Century Oil,” I said. “When can you get a judge to sign it?”
“Not until morning, by the time I round up a prosecutor to draft it and get everything in order,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got a signed consent, but I’d like a warrant, just to be sure we’re covered. I’ll pick it up first thing. Schedule a couple of forensic guys to meet me at Century Oil around nine, including a computer specialist. Get a search warrant for her house, too. We’ll go there second.”
Finally, I ducked back inside Century Oil’s offices for one last piece of business. I returned the Sharpie to Billie’s assistant and shot him one of those looks, the kind that says, “Don’t mess with me.”
“Are you here until lockup tonight and back first thing in the morning?” I asked.
“I can be,” he said, his voice faint. He cleared his throat. I figured
the stare I had focused on him was making it tight. “Almost everyone’s already gone for the night, but I can wait until the last ones leave.”
“No one, and I mean
no one
goes in Billie’s office,” I said. “I hold you personally accountable.”
He nodded, and I turned and walked back toward the elevators with the file on the East Texas oil field tucked under my arm.
I
was puzzled to see Doc Larson’s old green Chevy pickup blocking the driveway, when I pulled up to the ranch. He’d already dropped in once that day.
“So, what do you think?” Mom asked Doc as I walked into the shed. Maggie and Strings held on tight to the mare, expressions of utter worry crowding their young faces. They’d braided the horse’s white mane, and I wondered if that made Emma Lou feel any better or only the kids. Bobby stood nearby, more than a bit somber.
“I’m glad you called. You’re right, Nora. It’s looking more and more like we haven’t got much time,” Doc said, inspecting the horse’s bulging girth. Just since morning, Emma Lou’s belly appeared sunken around the base of her tail, a common sign that foaling is near. “Could be tonight.”
“Too soon?” I asked.
“I hoped for at least another day or two. This is right on the edge,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Sarah. Could be a rough one. Someone needs to sleep within earshot of the horse tonight and call me if her contractions start.”