Chapter 17
“Nah, nothing weird from Minter’s wife,” Wade said.
“It looks like they spoke on the phone for about five minutes around nine o’clock the night the homicide happened.
And then she messaged him yesterday morning saying she was going to do some Christmas shopping with someone named Marie.
And then at around five o’clock last night, he had a missed call from her.
And that’s about it. Nothing really strikes me as questionable.
But I’ll put in for records with the phone provider either way.
Maybe the phone location details can tell us something when we get them. ”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks for that. I’m about to pull up to her house in a couple minutes, so good to have that known before I talk to her. Anything with the other case?”
“Mehen?” Wade asked.
“Or Sloan, yeah.”
“It’s not looking like it. Mehen’s phone is DOA.
Nothing we can do with it. Just way too damaged.
And the laptop belonging to Sloan doesn’t look like it’s going to do much for us either.
No find-my-phone app, no nothing. Just music and random files.
Internet search history also wasn’t very interesting. Nothing in his emails to note.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s it with that, then. I got what I need for now. Appreciate it, again.”
“Yup. I’ll catch you later.”
I ended the call with Wade and continued to the Minters’ Miami Springs home.
When I pulled up to the tan 1960s-looking ranch, I saw a pair of Ford pickup trucks and a pair of sedans in the U-shaped redbrick driveway that wrapped around a large oak tree.
I parked where the grass met the street, killed the engine, and left the Explorer.
I gave the front door a knock and waited, hearing multiple voices talking inside.
The door pulled open, and a forty-or-so-year-old man wearing a flannel shirt and jeans stood before me. His eyes were pink, and his crackly voice indicated that he’d been grieving.
“Lieutenant Nash Harrington,” I said. “Here to meet with Alice Minter.”
“Yeah, she’s expecting you,” he said with a sniff. “Brian Minter. Son of Grant Minter.”
He held his hand out for a handshake, which I reciprocated.
“My mom is waiting for you out back on the lanai. Come on in.”
I stepped into the house and gave a nod to a thirty-year-old woman and another man, who looked strikingly similar to the one who’d opened the door for me, who were standing in the kitchen. They wore the same telltale look of grief.
“My brother, Steven, and sister, Marie,” Brian Minter said.
“Lieutenant Nash Harrington,” I said to them. I’d possibly found the Marie that Wade had mentioned being named in the text exchange with Alice Minter on Grant Minter’s phone.
I got a quiet hello out of Marie and a nod from Steven.
Brian Minter led me through a pair of French doors. I found Alice Minter sitting on a chair overlooking the pool. She had a blanket over her lap and a box of tissues on the table beside her.
“Mom,” Brian said. “This is the lieutenant here to talk to you.”
She hadn’t looked at me at that point, but as her son introduced me, she looked up and held out a trembling hand.
“Ma’am,” I said.
“I’ll let you guys talk,” Brian said. “We’ll be inside if you need to ask us anything.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He walked into the house, and I asked Alice Minter if it was okay to grab the chair next to the table beside her.
“Please,” she said.
I took a seat, leaned forward, and told her how I broached most interviews of that sort.
I said that I couldn’t imagine what she and her family were going through, that I was heading up the investigation, and that I would do everything I could to catch whoever had killed her husband.
I told her that I knew it would be difficult for her to answer my questions, but the sooner I got information, the better our chances of getting the person or persons responsible in custody.
With the initial points covered, she seemed about as ready as she was going to be.
“Mrs. Minter, I know that you told me that you didn’t know why your husband would be out at the storage unit, but since we spoke, has anything come to mind?”
She brushed at her nose and nodded. “I know why he was out there. I just couldn’t tell you this morning.
” She looked over her shoulder through the window that gave her a view into the kitchen then turned back around.
“Grant was out there looking for a box of Brian’s baby things. Please don’t say anything to Brian.”
I could see her eyes welling up.
“It would crush Brian if he knew that was the reason his dad was out there,” she added.
“Baby things?” I asked.
She dabbed at her eyes and nodded. “Brian’s wife, Janet, is pregnant.
We have boxes and boxes of stuff from when the kids were little.
But Grant had mentioned a few months back that he was going to get the box of Brian’s baby things from storage so we could give it to them while they were here for Christmas.
Brian’s baby blankets and some stuffed animals and those kinds of things.
When I last talked to him, he mentioned running over there to grab that stuff.
” She again looked over her shoulder. “Brian was sitting at the kitchen table this morning with me when you called. I couldn’t say it in front of him. ”
While it wasn’t necessarily helpful to the investigation, it at least gave us the reason that Grant Minter was out at the storage unit.
“Did Grant have any enemies?” I asked. “Anyone who would want to do him harm?”
She shook her head and pulled another tissue from the box. “No. Nobody. He’s been retired for ten years.”
“What about anything strange that might have happened to him in the last few months? Had he mentioned seeing the same people or vehicles? Notice anyone around the house that seemed off? Anything like that?”
I received another answer claiming there’d been nothing of the sort. Next, I figured I’d get the questions of “Where were you?” and “Why were you out of town when the homicide happened?” out of the way.
“You mentioned being out of town the night this happened to Grant,” I said. “Was that a planned trip or…?”
“I was up north in Celebration at Marie’s house.
Our daughter that’s inside,” Mrs. Minter said.
“She and her husband, Adam, went to Adam’s Christmas party for his work, so I went up to watch the grandkids for the night.
I stayed up there overnight, and then we spent most of yesterday together before I came back.
We did a little last-minute Christmas shopping. ”
The alibi would be easy enough to confirm with her daughter being in the house, but what she’d said also matched what Wade had told me was on her husband’s cell phone.
“I got the call about Grant when I was almost home.” She choked up. “I had a weird feeling that something was wrong when he didn’t message back or answer the phone.”
I gave her a moment to compose herself as the tears started to roll.
We continued, and she answered every question that I asked, some answers taking longer than others.
Everything she said struck me as truthful and believable, and nothing gave me any reason to think she’d been involved in her husband’s murder.
We spent about twenty minutes going over things, but not much of what she said would advance the investigation.
Thinking that the children could possibly give me more, I asked if it would be okay if they came outside to talk with us—and I told her I wouldn’t mention anything about Grant’s reason for being at the storage unit. She agreed, and I asked the three to join us.
We talked for almost an hour, and her daughter corroborated the babysitting-and-Christmas-shopping story. While I left knowing quite a bit more about our victim as a husband and father, I didn’t leave with anything that would lead me to his killer.