“I left Rod’s things on the couch with his laptop and cell phone. If you want to go through them, I’ll do the dishes and give Amy her bath before putting her down.”
“Thank you for dinner. I didn’t stop for lunch. You have no idea how happy I was to smell your food cooking.”
She laughed. “As long as I’m staying home, plan on eating any or all of your meals here. It’s nice to have someone to cook for.” Natalie could have bitten her tongue off for saying that, but it was too late.
An hour later she walked into the living room having put Amy to bed for the night. She found Kit searching through the files on Rod’s computer.
“Have you discovered anything that could help you?”
“No. He was too savvy to leave clues behind. I’ve been through his clothes, but they’re several years old and nothing stands out. If you’ll notice, he removed the labels so it would be difficult to trace where they’d been purchased.” Kit stood. “Do you mind if I bring in the step ladder from the garage? I want to look for prints on the attic lid and climb inside to take a look around.”
The attic? “Go right ahead.” She’d almost forgotten the house had one.
“I’ll be as quiet as I can.”
Natalie didn’t doubt it. So far he seemed to be an expert at everything he did. While he put on plastic gloves and got busy, she went to the kitchen for a garbage bag to put Rod’s old clothes in to take to Goodwill.
To her shock Kit came down the ladder carrying a medium-size suitcase. His gaze flicked to hers. “Have you ever been up in the attic?”
“Never.”
“Have you ever seen this suitcase?”
She shook her head.
“Let’s see what’s inside.” Natalie followed him into the kitchen and he put the case on the table. “It’s locked, but I have tools.” He went to the guest bathroom for his bag. She marveled that within seconds he’d opened the lock.
When he lifted the lid, she gasped.
“Well, well. Two firearms. Both .45-caliber Colt automatics,” he muttered and picked them up one at a time. “They’re loaded, ready to go.”
Natalie’s hand covered her mouth. The police had been to her house but they hadn’t been in the attic.
“Now we know at least one item the intruder was looking for. It’s clear your husband knew this person and gave him a key to get into the house. Since Rod was killed before this person could find out where the guns were hidden, it makes me think there was a third party involved in all this.”
“Anyone that desperate should have realized the attic was the perfect place to hide them,” Natalie commented. Certainly she hadn’t thought of it. But Kit wasn’t like other people. He had the instincts only a few men were blessed with. That’s why he was a Texas Ranger.
“Maybe he was afraid you’d get back from the funeral before he could search the attic and be found in the act.” He shot her a piercing glance. “Thank God, you didn’t go in the house when you saw the state of the garage. If that person had still been in there, he could have taken you hostage.”
Or worse.
Natalie weaved in place and grabbed the back of a chair for support.
Kit closed the suitcase. “I’ll take this to Forensics in the morning. Excuse me while I put the ladder away.”
When he came back into the kitchen, he removed the gloves and tossed them in the trash. “Let’s go sit in the living room.” He motioned for her to lead the way and she settled into an armchair. He went to the den for his laptop before sitting on the couch.
“I spent most of the afternoon at LifeSpan and discovered how your husband was cheating the company. Right around the time he started working for them seven years ago, he set up a dummy corporation that looked like any of the dozens of companies LifeSpan pays for their services. But, of course, it didn’t perform a service.
“The money went straight to a bank where it was deposited into a falsified account. He made constant withdrawals and pocketed the money under another of his assumed names.”
Natalie was scandalized. “What did he do with it?”
“It’s my guess he invested it in various ventures—real estate, maybe—under yet another alias to hide what he was doing. The point is, the auditor who worked under your husband couldn’t understand why the offsite, independent auditor hadn’t caught the problem years ago.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Agreed. He stole millions from the company. It seems likely to me your husband bribed an independent auditor to go into business with him and paid him a percentage for looking the other way. Or that person was a criminal like Rod. Your husband was fired a month ago when the independent auditor couldn’t be found to substantiate Rod’s claims that he’d done nothing wrong. The FBI is staging a full investigation.”