I opened the envelope to find a check made out to me from the Banner Life & Casualty Company. When I saw the amount, my heart leaped into my throat. The tears returned. I pressed my fingers to my lips.
“I know money won’t ease your pain,” he said again. “But you were Brent’s beneficiary. He wanted to make sure you were taken care of in case anything ever happened to him.”
“I don’t know what to say… I mean… shouldn’t this go to his parents…”
“He named you his sole beneficiary,” he said.
I stared at the check, not fully convinced that it was real.
I blinked at him and he gave me a soft smile, then shook my hand and wished me well.
He left me alone, staring at a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
SANDY
Things happened very quickly after that. I quit my job and moved back into the apartment I had shared with Brent. I loved April and my parents, but I needed to be alone to do what I planned to do. I didn’t need anyone telling me revenge was wrong or worried about me getting hurt. I was going to do this, regardless of the consequences.
The landlord hadn’t touched the place because the rent was paid a month in advance. All our things were still there. Brent’s clothes and shoes, his cap collection, his shaving cream and razor, toothbrush, and cologne.
His guns were still there, too. He had kept a .9mm Beretta in the nightstand for home protection. Under the bed in a lockbox was stored a Bulldog .357 revolver, a .45 ACP Colt, and a small Ruger .380. I remembered Brent carrying the Ruger in a concealed holster on his belt. I wondered what might have happened if he had been carrying the gun the night he was killed.
I packed Brent’s belongings and sent them to his mom.
I kept his guns.
I called the female detective who had interviewed me after the shooting to ask if they had any leads. She was polite but curt. They were looking at a number of leads, but there was nothing that she could share with me.
I went online and found a private detective named Gerald Beamon. His website said he was a former city cop, retired after thirty-five years of service. I made an appointment to see him. We met at a coffee shop downtown.
Beamon was his sixties and dressed casually in a white polo shirt and beige khakis. He wore a pistol holstered on his belt and showed me his PI badge as we sat down. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was still on the force.
“So basically, you want me to find out what the police know about the men who killed your fiancé,” he said, scratching his chin. “Have you asked them yourself?”
“Yes,” I said. “They won’t tell me anything.”
He narrowed his eyes to study my face as if he were trying to assess my motives for wanting the information. When he discovered that he couldn’t read my mind, he asked, “Miss Duval, may I ask what you intend to do with this information?”
I slowly blinked at him. My expression was blank because that’s how I felt; blank, cold, empty.
I said, “That’s none of your business.” I reached into my purse and brought out five one-hundred-dollar bills. I set two of them on the table between us. “I’m asking you to make a phone call, Mr. Beamon. If you get the information I need, you get the rest.”
He eyed the crisp bills for a moment, then picked them up and folded them into his shirt pocket. He picked up his phone from the table and got out of his chair. “Give me five minutes.”
He walked outside and paced the sidewalk to make the call.
He was back in less than five minutes.
He sat down and spoke quietly. “Okay, I talked to a buddy in Robbery/Homicide. They’re pretty sure it wasn’t really a robbery. They think it was a hit.”
“A hit? Like a mafia hit? A hit on who?”
“The guy working behind the counter,” he said. He set his elbows on the table and leaned over them. “Name was Turner Smith. Turns out he was a confidential informant for the local PD. They had nabbed him as part of a stolen goods ring and he was ratting out his buddies in exchange for immunity. The cops think the guys that hit him were part of a criminal organization they call The Wright Brothers.”
I frowned at him. I didn’t smile. Nothing made me smile anymore. “You mean, like the airplane Wright brothers?”
He scratched at a spot next to his bulbous nose and gave me a little smile. “Same name, different outfit. This one is a local gang of thugs who the authorities believe has been involved in a number of high-dollar heists over the last few years. Richard Wright is their leader. He goes by Rick. His younger brother, a hothead piece of shit named Eddie, is his second. I’d peg him as the shooter. Far as I know, Rick’s not violent, just a criminal. Eddie, well, let’s just say he doesn’t have much respect for anything, not even a human life. There are three or four others in the gang at any given time. They’ll steal anything they can sell for big money on the black market. Truckloads of cigarettes or booze, a shipping container full of flat panel TVs. Word is they’ve even hit a couple of armored cars recently. They seem to be ratcheting up their game, going for higher scores. You name it, these guys have probably stolen it.”
I listened quietly, taking mental notes. I wondered if Rick or Eddie Wright had a silver tooth in the front.