looked better now, with his sun-brown face and crinkly eyes, than he had then. Liz made a mental note to check for mistresses and girlfriends. No way this guy would be celibate for seven years.
“Mr. Slaughter, I’m Liz Gibson.” She showed him her shield, then shoved it back into the pocket of her blazer. “I’d like to talk to you about your wife.”
The start of a smile froze on Slaughter’s face. He sucked in a deep breath. “I wasn’t expecting to have somebody like you show up on my doorstep for a couple of weeks.”
“I beg your pardon? Why would you expect the police after seven years?”
He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “Come on, Miz…Gibson, was it?”
She kept her face carefully blank. “Your wife’s case has never been closed, Mr. Slaughter. We revisit all open, uh, cases from time to time.” She’d nearly said “homicides.” Bad move. She’d have to watch her tongue around this guy.
“So there’s nothing suspicious about the timing? Give me a break.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not with you.”
“Look, Miz Gibson, I’m late for a meeting at the job site. Ride over with me, and we’ll talk.”
No way would she get into a car with this behemoth, be driven God knew where and left there while he met with one of his subcontractors. “This won’t take but a few minutes.”
He closed his eyes, whether in exasperation or acquiescence she couldn’t tell. When he opened them, he reached into his pocket, dialed his cell phone, turned his back on her and spoke quietly to whoever was on the other end, asking to put off the meeting.
He had a pleasant baritone voice. On the surface, he seemed like a nice man. But then most of the people she’d talked down from hostage situations had sounded nice and rational, until they lost it over whatever crime they felt had been perpetrated against them. Then they turned rabid in a nanosecond. This man was as much a wife killer as Bobby Joe Watson. Like Bobby Joe, he had a daughter who needed protection.
This guy wouldn’t get away with it.
He flipped the phone closed, stuck it into his pocket, pointed to an old wooden kitchen chair beside his desk and shucked his jacket.
Oh, definitely no paunch. The front of the guy’s plaid shirt slid straight under the waistband of his chinos, which slid straight down his flat belly until they hit a bulge at the crotch that looked proportional to the size of the man himself. She dragged her eyes back to his face and swallowed hard, then took the chair he offered her. He went around the desk and sat down.
“You can’t tell me this visit isn’t because of my petition to have Sylvia declared dead. I didn’t think the police worked for insurance companies.”
Damn! She’d been blindsided. But maybe Gavigan didn’t know, either. She’d have to find out who had pushed the higher-ups to reopen the case. “After saying for seven years that your wife disappeared, you suddenly want to have her declared dead. What changed your mind? And why now?” No way would she let him know this was the first she’d heard of it.
“Should I call my lawyer?”
Liz smiled her most ingratiating smile. Of course he should call his lawyer before he said another word, but that was the last thing she wanted him to do. “That’s your right, Mr. Slaughter. Do you need one at the moment? We’re just chatting here.”
He narrowed those gray eyes at her. They no longer seemed quite so guileless. In fact, they’d turned cold as glare ice. “Ask your questions. I’ll answer them or not.”
“Absolutely.” She had to remind herself he’d been through hours, days, weeks of interrogation. He knew the way things worked. But he’d been interrogated by a pair of old-line homicide bulls, never by a woman. “So, what did change your mind?”
“The law says that seven years is the legal waiting period to have someone declared dead. I’m sure you hear this a lot, but my family needs closure.”
“That’s the only reason? You have no new information?”
He sighed and rubbed his large tanned hand down his face. “As you know, Sylvia and I both had half-million-dollar whole life policies on one another. In Tennessee, murder kicks in the accidental death double indemnity clause. Meaning, instead of half a million, it pays out a million.”
“You’ve been looking at a million dollars in insurance for seven years?”
“Money I could not in good conscience request, so long as I felt certain Sylvia was alive somewhere. Now that it is legally appropriate to claim it for my family, however, we should be the ones to benefit by investing it. Believe me, the insurance company has been making plenty on it for the last seven years and is no doubt loath to give it up.”
“So you now believe your wife was murdered?”
“Let’s say I’m not certain any longer that she’s alive. None of the homicide investigators ever came up with evidence either way, although they continued to act as though they knew she was dead and I killed her. Sorry to say this, but once you people get an idea in your collective heads, it’s not easy to get it out.”
“Not without evidence to the contrary, it isn’t,” Liz said dryly. “When something bad happens to one spouse, the odds are extremely heavy that the surviving spouse is involved. The statistics would blow your mind.”
“I’m not a statistic and I’m not a murderer. When I started trying to make up my mind whether to petition to have her declared dead, I finally hired my own private detective.”
“Who?” There were a lot of good P.I.s in Memphis, but there were also some bums willing to take a client’s money for precious little labor.
“Frank LaPorte. He’s a retired cop. Handles mostly divorces and insurance claims. My business partner and I have used him to investigate a couple of worker’s comp suits. Both times he’s been able to disprove the disability claim. You shouldn’t be able to mow your lawn or reroof your house when you’re in bed with a bad back.”
“I’ll need to talk to him. What did he find?”
“He didn’t have any better luck. Not surprising after this length of time. He did say it’s not as easy disappearing into a new identity as it used to be before babies were given social security numbers in their first year, and birth certificates were collated with death certificates.”
“Still, it can be done.”
“With long-term planning. There’s no evidence that Sylvia had any intention of leaving when she did, nor that she had created a new identity.”
“Then you truly believe she’s dead?”
“I believe that if she didn’t die at the time she disappeared, she must have died now.”
“And you want that million dollars.”
“Miz Gibson, I build mansions and starter castles for rich folks, but I’m not rich. Contractors live at the whim of the housing market. We have construction loans to service, subcontractors to pay and materials to buy long before a house is built,
