“I, for one, am exhausted, but I want to make sure that we are looking into this thing with Charles.” His mom yawned for the second time in as many minutes. “Why don’t we meet in the office—”
Curtis came back in and cleared his throat. “That was a guy I have looking into some things. Charles Benton was admitted to the hospital for smoke inhalation. He’s on life support. It doesn’t look that bad, but they don’t want to take any chances.”
Royce looked over at his mom when she started crying. “I never meant for him to go to such extremes. I…his daughter didn’t deserve what he did to her, but I never meant for him to kill himself over some sort of revenge over this.”
She finally lay down on the couch and covered up. Royce and his brothers cleaned up the kitchen without saying much more. They agreed to meet at the office tomorrow, go over the recordings from the fire, and turn them over to the inspector. After another hour they left and Royce went up to his own bed.
His plans to talk to Kasey were going to have to wait until tomorrow. He had to figure this out with Benton and see what they could do about the building. He was a little worried about this house and whether or not he’d set up someone to torch this one, but he’d also had a nice security system installed before he’d moved in. Royce was just drifting off to sleep when he remembered that he’d left his mom on the couch. She’d be fine, he knew, and fell into an exhausted sleep.
He’d slept around the clock he realized the next morning. When his alarm went off at six the next morning, he knew he’d never slept better. The quick shower and getting dressed for the office made him realize that he’d not felt this good about going to work in a long while. He was pulling up out front when he got his first of many calls for the day.
“The recordings are being delivered by courier this morning. There is some news on CNN about the fire that implicates Benton. And before you ask, no, I didn’t let it leak.” Royce laughed at Jesse. “Also there are four meetings today with some of the guys from the Maple Committee. They want some updates on whether or not you’ve decided to let investors come in or not.”
“Why are you giving me updates and not Bobbie? I could have sworn that she did this every morning.” He pulled into the parking place just as he asked. “Don’t tell me you’re my new secretary.”
“Christ, no, but she called in. She said that there was a death and she needed to be there for them. She said something about it being a long time friend and if you wanted to dock her, she’d tell everyone where the bodies were.” Jesse laughed. “I told her I might just do it to find out where you stuff them.”
“I’m nearly in the building now. I’ll see you when I get up there. I suppose you’ve got someone coming up to cover for her, right?”
“Yeah, two ladies are on their way up. I know you have just Bobbie, but this is going to be a hell of a day and I don’t want anyone quitting on us right now. Oh and by the way, you have like forty messages on your machine.”
Royce pulled out his badge and swiped it over the machine. The man at the desk didn’t look familiar, but that wasn’t anything new. The security team was expanding every day, it seemed, and they needed even more people. When the new buildings they had opening by the beginning of fall opened they’d be short staffed again. With a nod, he went to the private elevator and went to his office.
The messages were from the investors that Jesse had mentioned. Three of the men wanted in to “broaden their portfolio,” another wanted to see about expanding his bottom line. They both meant the same thing, just one more honest than the other. He was fielding question about the Benton building when Curtis walked in with two other men. One he recognized from the fire, the other he didn’t know.
“Let me get back with you on that. We’re still checking the area out.” He hung up on the man as he was sputtering about timelines. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“This is Inspector Gordon from last night and this is Fire Marshal Will Swanson. They have a few questions on the insurance we had in place. I tried to tell them it’s a common practice for us, but Swanson here seems to think otherwise.”
Royce simply got up and walked to the file cabinet against the wall. After a quick search, he came back with a handful of files. “There are the insurance policies that we have on each building we purchase. If you’ll notice that on the day we sign the papers, we open a policy on the place. It’s mostly for peace of mind, but also for the workers when they are on site. There are also attachments to each policy that we cancel. The reason, the date, and who did the closing. While I understand why you’re asking, it doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”