Chapter Fifteen
Later that evening, Ava kissed Colt and Brianna goodnight before joining Logan in the kitchen. Boxes of documents had been delivered during the day and despite her best efforts she had yet to break the seal on even one of them.
He slid the frozen pizza onto the oven rack before turning and giving her a quick kiss on the lips. “Are they asleep?”
“Do you hear that?”
Frowning, he stopped and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
Ah, the blessed quiet. Some days Ava couldn’t even pee without two kids pounding on the bathroom door wanting in.
“Exactly. They’re asleep and they should stay that way.” She picked up the cardboard box on the counter. “Frozen pizza? Did we have this in the freezer? I could have made a homemade pizza if you had a craving.”
The twins had eaten dinner earlier. Chicken nuggets and applesauce. Colt had nibbled a piece of broccoli but Brianna had turned up her nose in disgust.
Plucking the box out of her hand and tossing it into the trash, he gave a mock sigh. “I stopped at the store. Am I the only romantic soul in this marriage? You really don’t remember?”
She really didn’t. What was he talking about?
“Mea culpa. You’re the king of romance. Now will you tell me what frozen pizza has to do with romance? I think I missed it.”
“I fixed us a frozen pizza that first night that we worked together on the case,” he explained. “Just like tonight.”
Smacking her forehead, she groaned. “You’re absolutely right. I’d forgotten. You really are the king of romance. That’s so sweet that you remembered. You’re not going to let me forget this, are you?”
“After you busted my balls about Valentine’s Day? Let’s just say we’re even.”
She’d given him a hard time when he couldn’t get home to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Again. And his over the top flowers and chocolate a few days later hadn’t softened her mood at all. He’d promised to be home and then he wasn’t. It was becoming all too frequent.
He’d been with Kim working on a case.
She didn’t remind him that they’d been planning on going out on Valentine’s Day for weeks. That she’d made reservations at a romantic restaurant and bought a new outfit. She also didn’t remind him that Misty and Jared had volunteered to watch the twins that night. He’d had a good excuse, after all. They needed to catch the bad guy and they had done exactly that the next day.
Sometimes it was simply hard to be apart.
Ava knew that Valentine’s Day was just a made-up holiday designed by corporate America to separate people from their money and guilt men into buying flowers for their wives once a year, but that didn’t stop her from wanting him with her on that day. It didn’t stop her from feeling the loneliness as his business trips seemed to drag on longer and longer with each assignment. Logan was a great lawman and this was part and parcel of his world. But she still missed him. A hell of alot.
It was a good idea to change the subject. “Are we going to look through these papers after dinner?”
“I was hoping,” Logan replied, checking his phone and then plugging it into the charger. “After what Drake and I dug up about your sister and Lyle today, we need to find some evidence that points in another direction.”
After he’d explained what he’d learned, Ava was worried about Mary. Her sister had a temper and although Ava didn’t think she would shoot someone, other people might. Jurors especially.
Starving, they wolfed down the sausage pizza and then settled onto the living room floor. Boxes were stacked around them and Ava wasn’t sure where to begin. Should she continue on with the phone records or make a start on the financials?
Logan answered without her having to ask. He picked up a huge box from the top of the pile and dropped it next to her. “How about you dig into those financial records and I’ll pick up Lyle’s text messages?”
Ava lifted the lid on the box. “Sounds good.”
They were both quiet for the next hour or so, the only sound the soft murmurs from the television set. Ava didn’t even know what was playing but she often kept it on just for the background noise when she was working.
Setting aside the last bank statement, Ava groaned and rubbed at her lower back. It ached from the position she’d been sitting in and her knees were stiff as well. She needed to exercise more but there never seemed to be any time.
Honestly, what she’d found in the stack of papers wasn’t making her day any better. If anything, it was far worse than she’d imagined. She’d kept digging through the documents hoping to find something to mitigate the damage but instead she’d found a life insurance policy.
On Lyle. With Mary as the beneficiary. She didn’t have money problems any longer.
“Find anything?” Logan asked, reaching around to knead her shoulders. Ava sighed with pleasure as his strong fingers worked on a particularly large knot at the base of her skull. “Jesus, woman, your shoulders and neck are like concrete.”
“Writing is hard on the body. I’m way past due for an adjustment and massage.”
“We’ll get the heating pad out.” His hand skated over her neck and lifted her hair out of the way. “Lyle was definitely having an affair. I read the texts.”
“Did he stop like Mary said he did?”
She still couldn’t believe that Mary had chased Lyle out of his own home with a gun.
“No. Well, maybe. The texts seemed to slow down about a month ago but they didn’t stop. At least the sexting ceased, though. That’s shit you don’t want to read, let me tell you.”
She was grateful that Logan had offered to take the phone records. She hadn’t been looking forward to reading private communications between Lyle and her sister. Or his girlfriend. People didn’t seem to realize that they had little privacy on their phones or on the internet.
“He sexted with her? Ick.”
“I’m going to need some brain bleach. There are things I know about his kinks that I didn’t want to know. I mean, more power to him and all but damn…I sure as hell wouldn’t want people knowing what I like in the sack. No eye contact with Mary next time I see her.”
Ava didn’t want to think about her sister’s sex life. At all. Never.
“Stop talking about sex,” Ava groaned again. “I’m going to need brain bleach, too. You need to take whatever you read to the grave.”
“But I want to share everything with you, pumpkin.”
“If I can’t share childbirth then you can’t share this.”
Logan laughed, his fingers digging into an especially sensitive spot that had her sighing in bliss. “If I remember correctly, you pointed to me and ordered the doctor to cut off my balls. I think you shared plenty.”
“I birthed twins, Logan. Twins. With no epidural.”
Not on purpose, though. She’d wanted pain medication but by the time they’d arrived at the hospital the doctor had informed her it was too late. She was too far gone and she was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Then after pushing for what felt like forever, the doctor had ended up doing a c-section.
“How about we change the subject and talk about what I found?” Ava said sweetly, holding up a piece of paper. “Lyle and Mary were basically broke. They lived on credit and were robbing Peter to pay Paul. But this caught my eye.”
Logan took the document and perused it. “Lyle had life insurance and Mary was the beneficiary. A half million is a whole lot of motive.”
“It’s a huge policy for a couple with no children and barely any money,” Ava observed. She and Logan had gone through the ‘how much life insurance do we need’ dance when Colt and Brianna were born. “They could barely pay their car lease but they never missed a payment on the policy.”
Logan rubbed at his eyes and set the document back into the box. “This is bad. Very bad. I’m going to have to tell Drake tomorrow. We need to find that girlfriend and talk to her. If Lyle did actually end their relationship, that might be a motive for murder and we’d finally have another suspect.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“Then your sister better hire a good attorney.”