Chapter Forty Margo Angelhart
Chapter Forty
Margo Angelhart
I’d only been a tiny bit surprised when Jack asked Cal if he would go to Flagstaff with me. I looked at him quizzically, and
he said, “If you aren’t back tomorrow, someone needs to sit on Mom, especially if this situation gets any more volatile.”
Jack was probably one of the few people who could get Mom to do something she didn’t want to do. In this case, we would probably
urge her to join our grandparents at Logan’s resort.
We took my mom’s Escalade up to Flagstaff. I even let Cal drive because, to be honest, I was beat.
But I couldn’t sleep. I was too wired, too worried. I felt in my gut that we had solved Devin Klein’s murder, but I didn’t
know how we could prove it to the satisfaction of the court. Did Stockman pull the trigger himself? Or did he hire someone
to do it? Where was this key card that Tim mentioned? A way for Stockman to get in and out without anyone seeing? Or was it
for someone unknown to us?
I’d seen Peter Stockman’s picture. He was a pleasant-looking fortysomething. An average, generic businessman type. He didn’t look like a killer. But most people didn’t.
“Talk,” Cal said.
“Is this enough to get my dad out of prison?”
“I would love to tell you yes, but I don’t know. There are a lot of steps in the process. His lawyer will have to petition
the court stating that there is new evidence. The court would then need to decide whether to grant a hearing. Then, I don’t
know if the judge can release him, or if there would need to be a trial. Or if the county attorney would need to agree or
not. I think in the end? If we have the evidence, and your dad explains about the threats, there’s a better than even chance
he gets out. It won’t be tomorrow.”
Cal reached out and took my hand. “All we can do is collect the evidence,” he said. “If Tim Miller has something solid, especially
something tangible to back up his statement, that will go a long way.”
“Everything else is just circumstantial,” I muttered. “But at least we can destroy these people and make their lives miserable,
even if they don’t go to jail.”
But would that help my dad? Why would Stockman confess to killing Devin, or having him killed, when that would most assuredly
get him locked up?
“If Miller has evidence of conspiracy to commit murder, I don’t think they walk.”
“But they won’t go to prison for falsifying drug trials.”
“Probably not.”
“Has anyone?”
“There have been a few cases,” Cal said, “but I believe everyone who was convicted were investigators or worked at the trial
site, not those in the company that ultimately benefited. I’d have to do research if it was important for the case.”
“So Willa Blankenship might go to prison if we can prove she directly changed data.”
“Yes, she would be the one.”
“And she’s sitting in Australia,” I muttered.
“We can extradite from the land down under,” he said. “Trust me on that one.”
“You’ve done it?”
“Twice. Usually criminals try to go south, to Mexico or South America. We can get them there, but it’s harder for a whole
host of reasons, mostly because money is more powerful down there and in some areas, it’s dangerous to go in and grab wanted
criminals. But Australia? We have a good working relationship with their government and law enforcement. We would need hard
evidence, but a witness statement from Tim Miller may do it, if the AUSA feels it’s sufficient enough to indict her. Again,
it won’t be overnight.”
I pondered all that, and it was going to have to be enough.
“And Stockman would also go away for murder even if he hired someone to kill Liz Swanson, correct?”
“That, most certainly. Hiring a hit man is as much first-degree murder as pulling the trigger. But he could have done it himself.”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “He looks too much like a weasel. Though, it would explain why she rolled down her window for
the killer. She may have known Stockman.”
Justice would make me feel better, but I still mourned the loss of an innocent woman and her husband who probably didn’t even
know why they had been killed.
Just outside Flagstaff, I started seeing snow along the side of the highway, and that was when I realized I was not dressed
for the cold. Cal had already turned on the heat to low about thirty minutes back. I’d left beautiful 75-degree Phoenix for—I
glanced at the dashboard—42 degrees. And falling.
I looked at Cal. He was in jeans and a T-shirt. He wasn’t dressed for the weather either. That made me feel less unprepared.
“Yeah,” he said as if reading my mind. “I didn’t think to stop and grab a jacket. We might need to pull over at a gas station
and buy overpriced Grand Canyon souvenir sweatshirts.”
But we didn’t take the time to stop now. I looked at Tim’s location again. He had chosen a cabin pretty much isolated from
his neighbors, north of the city off Fort Valley Road. There were other cabins, but by the looks of things, nothing within
shouting distance.
“I don’t know about you,” I mumbled to Cal as he navigated through the city streets, “but if I had a killer after me, I wouldn’t
hide out in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t this guy ever watch teen horror movies?”
I texted Tim when we were ten minutes out. He didn’t respond.
The only vehicle we saw at the cabin was Tim’s truck. Even though it wasn’t snowing and the skies and roads were clear, the
ground was covered in white, telling me that it was cold. The dashboard now said 33 degrees. We’d dropped nearly 10 degrees
going up this damn mountain.
Tim Miller had better be grateful that we’d come to save his ass, because I did not like the cold. Give me two months of 100-degree
days over two days of freezing temperatures anytime.
Cal drove past the cabin, turned around, and slowly drove back. We didn’t see any vehicles on the road, but that didn’t mean
the killer hadn’t parked down a driveway or even hiked in through the trees. Cal backed in behind Tim’s truck. “Has he responded?”
“No.”
“Then we check out the perimeter first. Good?”
“Yep.”
We each pulled our guns and kept them low as we exited the Escalade. The cold air slapped me in the face. Fortunately, I wore
good boots and didn’t slip on the icy ground, but I was reminded yet again why I hated coming up to Flagstaff in the winter.
The snow was mostly crunchy ice as we traversed the property. I went first, Cal walked behind me and slightly to the side,
keeping a lookout among the trees.
We saw no one around the property, and we didn’t see any footprints other than those from Tim’s truck to the side door, which
had a lock box on it.
I pounded on the door. “Tim! Open up, it’s Margo Angelhart.”
Silence.
“Shit,” I muttered and tried the door. Locked.
“I’ll go look through the windows,” Cal said. “Wait here.”
A minute later Cal returned, looking disgusted. “He’s passed out on the couch, a half-empty bottle of bourbon on the table.”
“That idiot!” I said. I pounded louder on the door, then called his cell phone. I heard it ringing inside. I could break a
window. I just might.
He answered the second call. “Hey, I fell asleep,” he muttered.
“Open the door now.”
I was freezing, and Cal didn’t look all that happy either. If a killer was watching, we might as well have a target on our
backs.
Tim opened the door a moment later, and we both burst into a too-warm house that made my skin tingle. Cal closed and locked
the door behind him. He smelled the air and frowned.
I smelled it too. Tim was drunk and stoned. Double idiot.
“I’m going to put on some coffee,” Cal said.
“What?” Tim said as I pushed him back into the living room.
I pointed to the booze and the bong that sat on the table and said, “You dumbass. You said you feared for your life and you
get wasted?”
“I’m scared!”
“Then by all means, pass out and make it easier for the killer to shoot you in the head.”
He paled and was unsteady on his feet as he went back to the couch and reached for his bong.
I grabbed it before he could and put it beyond his reach.
“Hey,” he protested.
“If I didn’t need you, I’d leave right now and wish you good luck against a killer.”
His expression was an unusual combination of scared and angry and perplexed.
I frisked him.
“Hey!” he said again.
“Just making sure you don’t have a weapon on you.” I also looked under the couch cushions. Nothing. He didn’t even have a
Swiss Army knife. Clearly, he hadn’t come prepared.
“Talk,” I said.
“No,” he said. “If I tell you everything, you’ll leave me here to be murdered.”
“I’m not going to let you die. I need you to tell the police everything you tell me. But so help me God, I will punch you
in the face if you don’t start talking.”
Cal came in with a mug of coffee and handed it to Tim.
Tim frowned. “It’s black.”
Cal stared at him. I had never seen him look so angry before.
“Drink the coffee now,” he said, his voice low and gruff.
Tim sipped. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, but when he saw Cal’s expression, he took another sip.
“Running was stupid,” I said. “If you had gone to the police, or the FBI like I told you, or even called me from a hotel in Phoenix, this would be over by now.”
“You don’t know these people!”
“Tell me what you know about the night Devin Klein was murdered.”
He hesitated.
“I swear, if you lie to me I will hog-tie you, throw you in the back of my car, and take you straight to Phoenix PD over the
bumpiest roads I can find.”
“Okay. Okay. I made a key card like I told you. Gave it to Peter. Then, like, a couple days later, Dr. Klein is shot. Peter
said your dad killed him, that they were corrupt and, like, um, involved in something shady and there’s no honor among thieves.”
“And you believed that,” I said flatly.
“I had no reason not to. Then, um, he asked me to make this website, told me it had to go down shortly after it was viewed.
It was, um, of pictures.”
“Of me? My family?”
He had the good sense to stare into his mug. Cal hit him on the back of the head.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “He told me it was to protect the medical center, that if Dr. Angelhart told the police about the fraud