At the airport, we got a lot more information than we’d initially thought; or I’d thought at least. For the first ten minutes of the meeting, I was in a whole other dimension. I was angry at Lucas, and my brain couldn’t pinpoint why. I wanted to talk about the trauma of losing my sister. And yet, a large fragment of me thought talking about it made it more real and less of a nightmarish dream I was having.
The man they guided us to as the person to talk to because he was the only one who could answer our questions was called Guy… Something. I forgot because I wasn’t fully with them when they introduced him. He was a tall, handsome man. He was very respectful and called me ‘ma’am’ and he called Lucas ‘sir’. That was completely disregarding the fact that we were of the same age. When i thought about it, he could have been older than both of us by three to five years.
Lucas wasted no time and got to the point. He had Guy looking through the airport’s reports from the previous two weeks in less than three minutes of our introduction. At which point, I was still very much distracted.
‘Okay, Angela. You’re an adult who should be independent and full of sense.’ I scolded myself. ’Use some of that sense now and put your anger aside. Concentrate on the job.’
“I know the name, sure,” Guy’s groggy voice was saying after I was scolding myself. “He’s flown here many times before already and this town is a small town, as you know, but he wasn’t here on that day. He hasn’t been here since his last flight three months ago.”
He had a groggy voice, half bored, half exhausted. And pretty much half awake. I liked him. He seemed like quite the character, almost like he could be funny if he was put in the right conditions.
“So, you mean that Mr Hedgepeth didn’t book a flight a week ago?” Detective Lawrance asked. He wanted to be sure.
“Yes, sir. That’s what I’m sayin’.” Guy replied. That’s when it fully sunk in. It hit me that Mr Hedgepeth hadn’t booked a flight in the past three months, and neither had his wife Tanya. That meant that she’d lied to me. She had something to hide, something enormous, and her plans weren’t well thought out either.
“What about his wife?” Lucas was inquiring. I was quite intrigued. This meant that we now had a proper suspect since she’d lied to everyone; the police and me.
“Tanya? Not seen her too.” So none of them had been here for at least three months, or that’s what Guy said. “I checked the records like you said I should, but nothing came up.”
“Thank you, Guy,” Lucas said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
We left the place and went to drive away. We were both absorbed in our own thoughts; with the extra information taking to the forefront of our minds. Why had Tanya lied to us? She was the only person with a plausible reason to lie to us. Guy had no motive for which he could tell the lie. We both looked at this from the perspective that Guy was being truthful. Mr Hedgepeth hadn’t gone on some innocent cruise which his wife had to keep as a secret. Tanya was the only one, along with her husband, who could benefit something from telling such a lie. So why had she lied? What did she gain from it? Where was her husband then? Why had he left in the first place?
“Can’t you check the obituary and see if his father’s dead?”
“Mr Hedgepeth’s father died two years ago. He had no other fathers or stepdads,” Lucas responded. “I had one of my guys look into that piece of information yesterday evening.”
I gawked at him. He had said all that in a monotone voice, like he hadn’t dropped the biggest bombshell ever. He didn’t respond to my now glare. “And you were planning to tell me this when?” I asked.
" Right now. That’s what made me want to look into this more.”
If he was only going to look into evidence when he wanted to, then we had an enormous problem. Not only was this town equipped with nonsensical homicide detectives; but idiotic ones too. Such a shame because it was a pretty little town that deserved every good thing in the world, including good detectives.
“So, if you hadn’t wanted to, you wouldn’t have looked into it?” I was pissed, and I hoped he could see it. I loathed such selfish behaviour.
“No, I was going to look into it already, but that made me even more sure that there was something for me to find out.” Yeah right. He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself more than me. How atrocious!
“Where are we going now?” I gave a quick nod and asked. Maybe not talking about it would help me calm down and not slap him.
“Back to the station, I need to…” He trailed off.
“What?”
“Alison.” He said. “We know next to nothing about her, but I have a feeling she’s important to the case.” Me too! That’s why I told him about her. Why on earth would I tell him about someone totally useless to the case of a dead woman? Why would I waste his time like that? And mine too.
We got to the station, and he made me sit for a very long time describing Alison to him and telling him of every minute detail I could think of.
“When last did you see her?”
“Maybe two days ago?” I said. “Are we done? My brain’s starting to hurt.”
“Oh, so you have one.” He whispered. I heard him and glared. He didn’t seem fazed at all. And I decided he was an irritating person.
It was later in the afternoon when Lucas sent me home and made me promise that I’d stay in the house with my aunt. My aunt welcomed me with a small smile;
“Who was that?”
“Um… Lucas? I told you I was heading out with him in the morning.” She made a grunting noise. “What?”
Aunt Poppy shook her head no, gave me a curious look, and said nothing else. I figured she was done talking, and I went to make myself some lunch. She followed me into the kitchen, took her book and sat at the counter. All the while maintaining her curious gaze on me.
“Okay, Aunty. Spit it out.” I said, slapping my hands on the countertop.
“What?” She gave me a fake innocent face. I groaned.
“Yeah, okay, whatever.” I reheated a frozen pizza and had some orange juice on the side. It was a great orange juice, but my mind wasn’t concentrating on the flavour. I was busy thinking about the information we’d received that day at work.
Halfway through my pizza, Aunt Poppy made her presence known by asking a question that I knew she had. I had the patience to wait for her to ask it herself.
“Is Lucas a great company? What did you guys do the whole day?”
“Oh, Aunt poppy. Matchmaker isn’t your job. He was nice, we… talked and stuff.” I didn’t think saying that we were investigating a murder together was a great way to tell her about the nice day id had.
“Did you solve it?”
“Solve what?” The pizza slice stopped halfway to my mouth.
“The murder, obviously. Do you think I’m stupid?”
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