Cut and Run Read Free Page A

said.
    ‘Six kids underfoot could give her every reason for an affair,’ Whit said. ‘We were left to our own devices a lot, Claudia.
     Or left with our grandmother or friends. My mother could have met up with a guy now and then. But it would have been difficult
     to keep it quiet for long.’
    ‘But easier with it being a tourist,’ Harry said. ‘Much less chance he’d be recognized. He could stay at different hotels,
     or stay in Rockport or Port Aransas or Laurel Point, where Ellen would not be recognized or known.’
    ‘This James Powell. No question it was a suicide?’ Claudia didn’t look at Whit.
    ‘That’s a nice suggestion,’ Whit said.
    Harry pulled a photocopy of a faded police report from a file. ‘There was no sign of struggle, and he was drunk according
     to the tox reports. No prints on the gun other than his.’
    ‘Did that half million turn up?’ Claudia asked.
    ‘No. That obviously concerned the investigators.’
    ‘And this woman who was with him was never a suspect?’
    ‘Sure she was. But the trail died. She and Powell weren’t actually living together. They were renting rooms in a dive motel,
     her room down the hall from his. She arrived at the motel a week after he did and, according to the motel maid’s statement
     at the time, they seemed to not know each other and then hit it off. The maid saw them going to each other’s rooms a couple
     of times. But no proof that they had a connection beyond acquaintance. The stickler is this woman – her name was Eve Michaels
     – left the night Powell died.’
    ‘Eve Michaels. Ellen Mosley,’ Whit said.
    ‘Yep. According to the investigator files on Powell’scase, a woman named Eve Michaels bought an airline ticket to Denver from Bozeman. Rented a car in Denver, used a fake credit
     card. The car was found abandoned in Des Moines, Iowa. Then the trail went cold, and the Bozeman police didn’t have luck pursuing
     it further.’
    ‘So my mother, if she’s the same woman, is a killer and a thief,’ Whit said. ‘I think I know enough now.’
    ‘But maybe she isn’t,’ Harry said. ‘Here’s the second part of my theory, and it gets ugly. James Powell cleaned money through
     his bank for a couple of small businesses in Dallas that were fronts for an alleged organized crime family in Detroit. The
     Bellini family. The money he stole was from the accounts he’d set up for them. These guys might have caught up with him in
     Bozeman. But being mob, they would have roughed him up before killing him. No sign the guy had been beaten or tortured.’
    ‘Unless there was no need,’ Claudia said. ‘They found the money, took it, and killed him.’
    ‘A faked suicide’s not their style,’ Harry said. ‘And unlikely they would have left the body in the motel.’
    Whit pulled the old police report across the table and studied the description of the woman. Five-foot-six, around 140 pounds,
     attractive face, green eyes, red hair. No picture attached but a sketch. It sort of looked like his mother. ‘It says she had
     a bartending job at a beer joint. Why would she work if they had a half million in cash to blow?’
    Harry said, ‘She wanted a cover. Not draw attention to herself.’
    ‘And she had red hair. My mother was a brunette.’
    ‘Safe to assume she would change her appearance if she was on the run, and with an embezzler,’ Harry said. ‘Do you remember
     anyone else asking about your mother after she vanished? Strangers?’
    ‘No. My father would know.’
    Harry’s face softened. ‘How’s he doing?’
    ‘The chemo is hard.’ Whit glanced back out at the bay, no longer empty in the winter afternoon. One brave sailboat plied the
     waves, racing along the edge of the bay in a sweeping turn, its wake a slurry of white foam and gray water. ‘So he feels horrible,
     he knows he’s dying, and I tell him my mother ran off with a Dallas embezzler with mob ties who ended up dead?’ Whit shook
     his head. ‘Maybe the