Carolyn Arnold - McKinley 02 - Vacation is Murder by Carolyn Arnold Page A

know, but I promise to make it worth your trouble.”
    A rush of air blew into the receiver. Sean knew that reaction. Voigt would be pointing the tip of his pen toward the wall across from him, a stern look of concentration in his eyes, as if fixed on a target. It gave Sean the random idea that he might appreciate a dartboard for Christmas.
    “How are things with the chief?” Sean asked. Call it intuition.
    “Like they always are. Run like a dictatorship. Wish I had someone to give me their billions.”
    “I’d like to say it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but I’d be ly—”
    “Yeah, yeah. So this lady, Amelia Wolfe, you think she’s in on this?”
    “If you’d asked me a few hours back I wouldn’t have been too sure. With Mr. Spencer’s letter, combined with his disappearance, now hers, I can’t help but feel she is at the source of all this.”
    “All right. I’ll do it for you.”
    “A full background?”
    “Yes.”
    “Thank you. Thank you.”
    “Before you get to thanking me, you did say you’d make it worth my while.”
    Sean smiled. “Yes, Jimmy, I did. Do you still have my cell number?” He glanced to where he had set it on the nightstand.
    “Of course. Just remember—”
    “I know. Nobody dies today.”
    “Make good on that promise, my boy.”
    With that, Voigt hung up.
    Sean gathered up his cell and turned to Sara. “He’s going to help us out. Sara?”
    Her attention was on the piece of glass she held in her hand. “We’ve got a match.”

 
     

     
    On The Trail
     
    SEAN SAT BESIDE SARA ON the bed, angling the glass and comparing the lipstick shades. “I agree. They are a match.”
    “So now we know that Amelia Wolfe was in the Spencers’ hotel room,” Sara said, straightening her legs out and letting them dangle over the edge of the bed.
    “There’s no way a woman Amelia’s size could forcibly make Earl leave the room.”
    “Maybe the wine was drugged, but then again, only her glass was missing any.”
    “This man in the beer t-shirt, I think he’s more the culprit than Amelia Wolfe. Maybe she was warning Earl about this guy?”
    “Could be, but it’s pretty brazen of Earl to have her in his hotel room. Catherine could have come up at any time. And it still doesn’t explain Amelia’s intention for following him to Mexico.”
    “Yeah, good points. As for Catherine, he could have dismissed it by explaining that he ran into an employee.”
    “Do you think their rendezvous was planned with Catherine just downstairs?” The way Sara was peering into his eyes, she was deep in thought.
    “My gut tells me no. Maybe she came to warn him about this Bud guy.”
    “She wrote Dar in her book, do you think it’s the first three letters of his name?”
    Sean bobbed his head side to side. “Could be, but a few come to mind. Darrel, Darrick, Daren.”
    “True, and that doesn’t get us any closer right now. Amelia could have poured the wine to calm her nerves. Maybe she knew Bud was going to come after Earl.”
    “But there was no evidence of a struggle.”
    Sara bit her lip. “So she convinced him to go along. Or, if he was drugged and hoisted on the shoulder of another man, it would just appear to others that he’d had too much to drink. No one would look twice.”
    “True, darling, and it doesn’t mean the wine was drugged. Maybe she drank because of what this man was making her do. He needed her to get to Earl.”
    “Or we’re thinking of this the wrong way. Earl could have been threatened and forced to leave peacefully.”
    “And I think Amelia left her things for us to find. She’s not in control of what’s going on. She either came all the way to Mexico to warn Earl or this guy was a surprise.”
    “I tend to agree with you, Sean. I’d also wager that Earl told her about us—Catherine knew we were cops, and Earl could have told Amelia too. She knew we were on our honeymoon, remember?”
    “Ah, yes, and the cop thing would explain the clue she left