Bones Don't Lie (Morgan Dane #3)(34)

“Spoken like a person who doesn’t have three kids under the age of seven.” Morgan drank, grateful to the first human who’d decided to crush and boil coffee beans.

Sharp checked his phone.

“Any word from the vet?” Morgan asked.

“Not yet.” Sharp had dropped the little dog at a twenty-four-hour veterinary clinic. “You can go home to your kids.”

“I called and let them know I’d be late.” Again. She hated missing dinner and bedtime with her girls, but her family would take care of the kids and Grandpa. “Lance needs me, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.”

“You’re right,” Sharp said. “And don’t listen to him when he tells you differently.”

“I won’t.”

The front door opened and closed. Footsteps sounded in the hall. Lance walked through her office doorway. Like Sharp, he’d felt the need to shower after being in close quarters with the body. Lance had stopped at his house six blocks away from the office to shower and change his clothes.

In Morgan’s office, he made himself a cup of coffee.

“I can’t believe you’re going to drink that.” Sharp’s face wrinkled with disgust.

“Not now, Sharp.” Lance drank deeply. “It’s been a crappy day. I need some sustenance.”

“Go ahead. Poison yourself.” Sharp flipped a hand in the air. “Let’s get down to business.” Sharp tapped the open lid of his laptop on Morgan’s desk. “I’m downloading the photos I took of Crystal Fox’s body. We can view them when I’m done.”

“I’m adding Crystal and Mary Fox to the list for background checks. I’ll work on those tonight from my mother’s house,” Lance said.

“We all know the sheriff won’t share beans with us,” Sharp said. “What do we know about Crystal Fox?”

Morgan began, “Crystal Fox was sixty-two years old. She lived at her current address for the last thirty years. She married Warren Fox in 1983. There’s no divorce on record.”

Sharp made notes on the board. “What do we know about Mary?”

“She was twenty-one years old when she died in 1994. She dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen. She’d been arrested once at eighteen for shoplifting, and again at twenty for solicitation of prostitution. She plead guilty to both charges, paid a fine for the shoplifting offense, and received probation for soliciting.” Morgan scrolled. “She worked as a waitress at PJ’s and supplemented her income with prostitution.”

“We need to talk to someone who knew Crystal.” Sharp studied what was now their murder board.

“There was one house down the road, but it would be best to wait until tomorrow to knock on the door,” Morgan said. “The sheriff has had quite enough of us tonight. We’ll be seeing him again early tomorrow morning. At that time, I’d rather be able to honestly say that we haven’t tampered with his case.”

Sharp glanced at the clock. “After we’re done with the sheriff, then.”

Lance set down his cup. His face was drawn, and dark circles lay like bruises under his eyes. He needed a good meal and a full night’s sleep. But he wouldn’t allow himself either. “We need to know how Mary was connected to my father.”

“They knew each other from PJ’s,” Sharp said. “But you’re right. That isn’t enough. Your father wasn’t at PJ’s that night. Both your mother and the responding patrol officer verified that.”

“We need to know if Mary worked that night.” Morgan tapped her pen on her blotter. In the back of her mind, a much darker possibility had formed. If Vic had had a sexual relationship with Mary, could he have killed her?

“Putting a visit to PJ’s on the list, though I can’t imagine anyone on the current staff was working there all those years ago.” Sharp made a note on the board. He checked his laptop. “The pictures are downloaded.”

He and Lance shifted their chairs, and he angled the computer so they could all see the screen. Morgan flinched at the images.

“At first glance, this appears to be a suicide.” Sharp clicked through to the pictures of the knot. “The chair had been knocked over. She struggled a little, maybe her feet kicked.”

Sharp squinted at the screen. “In the few suicide hangings I’ve seen, the knot was on the side of the neck, typically rising behind the ear due to the weight of the body in suspension. This one is at the back of the neck. It’s atypical, but doesn’t necessarily imply anything sinister.”

“The rope looks like a common nylon type,” Morgan said. “I have some in my shed.”

The woman wore sweatpants and a worn sweater. Her feet were bare.

“What’s smeared around her eyes?” Lance straightened. He leaned closer to the computer. “Sharp, do we have a close-up?”

“We do.” Sharp tapped the touch pad mouse.

“It’s mascara. She’d been crying,” Morgan said in a soft voice. “That morning the sheriff had told her her daughter was dead. Let’s see the whole room.”

Sharp switched pictures.

“She went back to bed after the sheriff left. She drank, and she cried.” Morgan pointed at a box of tissues on the nightstand, next to a glass and a bottle of gin.