For Sale in Palm Springs: The Henry Wright Mystery Series Read Online Free Page B

phone, then he bled to death as he
laid unconscious on the kitchen floor.” Wayne finished.

    “ Hmmm, so we’re looking for
someone strong – able to rip a phone out of the wall – and you said
there was no indication of a struggle?” “Nope, none whatsoever,”
Wayne replied, “Although it would have been hard to tell, the house
was one of Thorbird’s listings for sale, there was no furniture in
the place, nothing at all – it would have been hard to see signs of
struggle since there was nothing to upset and no lamps to knock
over.”

    “ Jealous wife, jilted
girlfriend, upset lover?” Henry asked as he pushed his plate off to
the side, and motioned Millie over for more coffee. “Not sure,”
Wayne said, “He was divorced two years ago, according to his office
manager, it wasn’t very amicable, and the ex took him to the
cleaners, to the point of asking for and getting half of his
American Express card points.”
    “ Hmmm, so was he broke as a
result, did he have money troubles? Credit cards maxed
out?”
    “ Everything ok fellas?”
Millie refilled Henry’s cup.“Everything is just as good as on
Thursdays.” Henry answered.

    Wayne held his coffee cup up
for a refill as well and said, “No, in fact, after the divorce, he
put in a lot more hours sold even more houses and earned even more
money than before, and paid for most of his toys and things in
cash.” Henry carefully sipped the now hot coffee and said
pensively, “Hmmm, so did the ex want even more than she already
got, have you talked to her yet?” Wayne put his cup down and said,
“No, I don’t think it was her, she is dating a chiropractor who was
in Las Vegas for a convention at the time, she says she was with
him – we haven’t yet had the time to verify her alibi.” “But you
will, right?” asked Henry. “Yeah, of course, we’ll check it out –
but I doubt that she’s lying – she took Thornbird for everything
she could, besides, her new guy seems to have a lot more money than
Thornbird ever did – he’s working with the Nabisco Golf
Championship here in town – seems all those golfers pay top dollar
for their back adjustments.” Wayne finished as he wiped his mouth
on his paper napkin.

    “ Hank, I’m afraid that we’re
at a dead end.” Wayne said disgustedly as he put his cup down and
leaned back in the booth. “No prints, no one with an apparent
motive, no DNA evidence, nothing suspicious on his cell phone
calls, if you could look into this in your spare time – it would
certainly help me out. I eh… I need your profiling skills, if I
call in the FBI right now; they’re just as likely to contact you. I
figure I’m saving myself a lot of time and trouble by buying you
breakfast instead.”

    Henry smiled; it was true
that he’d been doing a bit of freelance profiling for the Feds. He
didn’t set out to do that after he retired, but years earlier he’d
scored a perfect score in the FBI profiling class he took at the
Quantico Academy. About a year after his retirement, one of the
instructors at the academy emailed him and asked for his assistance
in a difficult case in Florida. Henry had done all the work from
his home on his computer, and since then he had helped the Feds on
several more cases.

    Henry approached the problem
differently than the other profilers that the FBI had on staff, he
put himself into the victim’s shoes to try to figure who would want
to kill him. That didn’t always work, so he would revert to
profiling the killer, just like the others, which wasn’t as
interesting as far as he was concerned. This case sounded
interesting, he wasn’t working on anything else at the moment,
besides it was Wayne that was asking.

    “ The FBI doesn’t call me in
on every case you know, I think they throw the easy ones my way.
The ones that can be solved from behind a computer terminal anyway,
I’ve told them I don’t want to travel all over the country. Sure,
I’ll help you out, I like these