Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

for premiums on a policy in the amount of one million dollars on the life of Lawrence Kirk. She raised an eyebrow. A million dollars? The invoices were addressed to Harmon Insurance in Pecan Springs and were both stamped PAID. Clipped to them was a handwritten note on lined yellow paper, dated October 15.
    Hey, Larry—
    Here are the papers I told you about—I found them in your old file, which was way at the back of the cabinet behind all the employee folders. I’ve looked in all the usual places, like I said I would, but I haven’t been able to find the policy or any other invoices on it. I think maybe Ms. Harmon is keeping all that stuff separate and just overlooked these or forgot about them or something. If you want me to try to dig up any more information, just let me know. My home phone (please don’t call me at work): 512-2496
    Your friend
,
Tina Simpson
    P.S. I happened to mention this to my sister, who gave me an article she found in a magazine. It says that in Texas, this kind of insurance wasn’t legal until 1999, when the legislature put through a bill saying that an employer could do it if the employee signed a form. I guess you did that, huh, maybe? Anyway, I have the article, if you want to read it
.
    Larry Kirk must not have wanted to read the article, Sheila thought, because it wasn’t in the file. Or maybe he had read it and put it somewhere else.
    She looked back at the premium notices, then opened her notebook and flipped a couple of pages until she found what she thought she remembered. Yes, Harmon Insurance was the place where Dana Kirk had been working when she and her husband first met. She looked again at the signature on the note. Tina Simpson. The same Tina who had called to make a Dutch treat date for the weekend? None of this seemed related to Kirk’s death, but Sheila had learned to be thorough. She liked to tie up the loose ends as she went along.
    She opened the telephone directory again. There was a T. Simpson whose phone number matched the number in the message. She copied the address into her notebook, thinking that she wanted to find out more about the insurance policy. While she was at it, she copied the address for Harmon Insurance from the premium notices, and looked up that phone number as well. Then she filled out two evidence cards with the case number, date, and time, attaching one to the unlabeled file and the other to the email from Jackie that she had printed out. She bagged both, separately, and put them into her briefcase.
    She glanced at her watch. If she was going to make Bartlett’s nine a.m. briefing, she’d need to get moving. She made a careful tour of the living room, noticing nothing out of the ordinary. In the downstairs bedroom, the bed was unmade and there was a litter of dirty jeans, shirts, and briefs on the floor, under a large poster of a rock climber spidered on a cliff.
    The adjacent bathroom was even more messy than the bedroom, with damp towels and washcloths on the floor and a clutter of toothpaste and shaving gear on the counter. Amid the general disorder on the floor, shespotted a woman’s lipstick tube. Dana Kirk’s, left behind in the rubble of her departure? But the lipstick was labeled “Firehouse Red,” and through the transparent cap, she could see that the color was fiery—nothing like the softly muted lipstick the wife had been wearing when Sheila interviewed her the day before. “Firehouse Red” didn’t seem to fit Dana’s personality, either. On a hunch, she bagged and tagged the lipstick and put it into her briefcase.
    Upstairs, she found two empty bedrooms and another bath, as well as a linen closet full of stacked sheets and towels and nothing else of interest. She came back downstairs and went out to the detached garage, which housed a five-year-old green Ford with one battered fender, the usual lawnmower and yard equipment, and miscellaneous rock-climbing equipment hanging on the garage walls. There was one large coil of new rope.
    She went back through the house, locked the kitchen door, then picked up her briefcase and went out the front. She was inserting the key into the Impala’s ignition when her cell phone chirped. She flipped it open. It was China. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 8:35.
    “I’m here at Timms’ place on Paint Horse Creek,” China said, in a taut, strained voice. “I’ve just phoned in a nine-one-one to the sheriff’s office, Sheila. It’s Timms. He’s dead.”
    Sheila