Page 88 of Last Seen Alive
“Before all that she worked at the gallery in Washington I mentioned, where it seems her love for art and the finer things might have gotten her into trouble.” Trent did his best to present the facts as they saw them without shoveling a ton of blame on the man’s dead wife. If he did, Austin would shut the conversation down fast. Call it a hunch.
“Did she have other friends at the gallery? Anyone she brought over for dinner maybe?” Amanda asked after several seconds of silence.
“By the time we got together, the gallery was behind her, so no one… well, except for Claire. You said she worked at the gallery. She was still around from time to time.”
Had Rita kept herself involved with the ring after leaving the gallery? Or was there more depth to the relationship between Claire and Rita than Brianna had known about? Rita had been Claire’s first stop. Did it show that Claire had a soft spot for her, wanted to give her time to get things in order before Claire turned her in for her role in the robberies?
Austin went on. “Rita rarely talked about her time there. But it doesn’t mean anything nefarious was going on—then or after.” Pain saturated Austin’s voice like he was battling with accepting his wife may have been a criminal.
Trent glanced at Amanda, and she nodded. Their knack for silent communication was growing stronger by the minute. “Claire was in a heist ring. She targeted wealthy collectors, many of them through the gallery, but she wasn’t working alone.”
“Rita.” Let out on a hitched breath.
“We believe so, and others,” Trent said. “At least one person besides Claire. A man.”
“And we think their relationship might have continued after Rita got a job at the university,” Amanda inserted.
“Now you’re telling me Rita was cheating on me?”
Amanda shook her head. “Not at all. We don’t have reason to suspect things between them were more than platonic.”
“There was a robbery that resulted in a murder.” Trent figured that was the best way of putting it, even if he and Amanda toyed with the murder being premeditated. “His name was Martin Lawson.”
Austin shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Amanda leaned forward. “You know the name?”
“Of course, I do. Martin was Rita’s stepfather.”
“He was…” Trent couldn’t finish. Just when they thought they had things figured out, there was another twist. “How did she take his murder?”
“I don’t honestly know. We weren’t together then, but any time he came up over the years, she shut the conversation down quick.”
“Because it hurt?” Amanda asked.
Austin shook his head. “Honestly, I never got the impression she was that broken up about it. Rita and her stepdad weren’t close.” He paused, chewed his bottom lip. “It was worse than that, and she had every reason to hate him.”
Had Rita been the one to pull the trigger on her own stepfather? But how did that explain Rita’s death, Claire’s murder the following day, the man in the silver Camry, the threat left on Amanda’s doorstep…? “What reason?”
Austin let out a deep breath. “Lawson sexually abused her.”
That right there could be motive to want Martin dead, but why wait so long after leaving the family home to exact revenge? Rita would have been twenty-seven at the time of her stepfather’s murder. Had resentment built up over the years only to be finally triggered somehow? “Where was Rita the night Martin Lawson was murdered?”
“I don’t know… Again, we weren’t together then. Are you suggesting that she killed her own stepfather now?”
Amanda shot Trent a brief look. “We’re not saying that was the case. Did your wife ever talk to anyone about what happened when she was younger? To her mother?”
“Her mother died a few years after marrying Lawson when Rita was just young. He continued to raise her. Martin ended up marrying a woman named Mona, but by that time, Rita was already out of the house. She and Mona still built a relationship, though, which continued after Martin’s murder. Mona’s who got Rita the teaching job at the university.”
Rita had lived alone with her abusive stepfather until she became an adult. That was a lot of years for hatred to build. Trent got to his feet. “Thank you for your time, Mr.Flynn. We’ll be back if we have any more questions or information about your wife’s accident.”
“Wait, you can’t go now. Do you think one of the people you say Rita was mixed up with came back and killed her after all these years? That it wasn’t an accident?”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t say with any certainty at this time.” Amanda rose, and the two of them left Austin.
Trent got them headed to Central. “Never saw that coming,” he eventually said. “Martin Lawson was Rita’s stepfather.”
“And Mona her stepmother…”
