Barry thanked Jolene, and he and Lucy went down the hall to Debbie Alexander’s office. She was on the phone, so they waited.
A minute later she hung up. “Agent Kincaid, I was just going to call you. That was my husband.” She tore off the top sheet of a note pad. “This is the street where he saw Harper’s car parked. There were only three businesses on that side of the street—a bar, a tattoo place, and an auto body shop. It’s not a great area. Across the street is low-income housing.”
Lucy asked, “Could he have been meeting someone at the apartments?”
“Doubtful, but then I wouldn’t think he’d drive out there in his Lincoln.”
*
“Call Beth Holloway,” Barry said as he drove toward Adeline’s house west of the city.
Lucy called the HWI Dallas number and identified herself, and shortly Beth Holloway came on the line.
“Ms. Holloway, I’m Special Agent Lucy Kincaid from the San Antonio FBI. Jolene Hayden suggested you might have some information pertinent to our investigation into Harper Worthington’s death.”
“Anything I can do to help. Jolene is just heartbroken, bless her heart. I saw her right after she found out, poor thing. She loved her daddy, they were very close. He raised her, you know, after his wife died.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “I’m calling specifically about a change in Mr. Worthington’s schedule on May eighth. He wasn’t planning on being in Dallas then, but flew from D.C. to Dallas on the eighth and stayed for three days. His San Antonio office doesn’t know what he was doing there, he had no scheduled meetings, and he didn’t usually work out of the Dallas office.”
“I remember, but let me just pull up my own calendar.” She clicked on the keyboard. “That was a weekend. Then on that Monday, he came into the office in the morning. I was surprised, it was the first I’d known he was in town. He said he was just taking a bit of time to himself.”
“Did he do that often?”
“No. But he was the boss, and he looked tired. His favorite golf course is in Dallas, and when he comes here for work—maybe once a month—he always takes at least half a day to golf.”
“How long was he in the office?”
“Not long at all. He left by ten, told me he already had booked a flight back to San Antonio. I didn’t see him again, not until he came back to Dallas last week.”
“Did you know about his spontaneous trip to San Antonio on Friday night?”
“No, I would have told Jolene immediately after I heard what happened. I was certain it wasn’t him, but then he didn’t answer his phone, he wasn’t in his hotel room—Jolene was frantic looking for him.”
“Thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch if we have any other questions.”
“Anything I can do to help, anything at all, please call me. I love Jolene like a daughter, and Harper like a brother. They are a wonderful family, and this is at its heart a family business.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After dropping Lucy off at work, Sean went back to their house. He’d told Lucy he was running errands, mostly because he didn’t want her driving when she was still so emotionally and physically worn out after last night. The entire drive he wondered if he should have pushed her into staying home. She would have, if he’d pressured her hard enough. But she was fragile, and he didn’t want her to resent him later. The last thing he wanted to do was bully her into taking care of herself.
Plus, working would clear her head. Give her something to focus on other than reliving last night.
That didn’t mean he was going to sit back and do nothing about Mona Hill.
He sat down at his desk and booted up his computer. He’d been thinking all night about how he wanted to handle this. He couldn’t exactly turn over the information about Mona Hill that he’d uncovered because he hadn’t obtained all of it legally.
He considered calling Lucy’s sister-in-law, Kate Donovan. Though Kate was a fed, she was one of the few people Sean trusted when it came to Lucy—outside of Lucy’s brothers. But Jack would come down and kill Mona Hill, Patrick would want plan a sting operation, and Dillon would reprimand Sean for breaking the law and jeopardizing Lucy’s career. Kate, however, had a history of breaking the rules for justice. Plus, as a fed, she could find a way for the FBI to obtain the information Sean had obtained, but through legal channels.
And while Sean kept the idea of working with Kate in the back of his mind, he got to work doing what he did best.
First, he had to put aside his emotions. His overwhelming love for Lucy, and the protective instinct that came with that love, meant he might miss something or misinterpret information. He couldn’t afford to screw this up.