The Trouble with Turkeys (Zoe Donovan Mystery Book 2) by Kathi Daley Read Free Book Online

that afternoon, so everyone would be gone for at least another hour.
    “What you really need is coveralls to protect your clothes, and shoes you can burn after your time here is over,” Zak suggested. “Any idea where the office is?”
    “Yeah, I was there yesterday. Follow me.” I led Zak to the office where I had signed the paperwork the previous day. Zak set his laptop on the coffee table while I began looking around.  “What are we looking for?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” Zak admitted. “Maybe a will or some other type of legal document. Correspondence could provide useful information as well. After I got home last night, I whittled down our list from fourteen to eight.”
    “ Eight is better.” I was impressed. “What did you find out?”
    “Leroy is a lifelong bachelor, so we can eliminate his wife as a suspect. Penelope moved to Florida after divorcing Charles, remarried, and still lives there.”
    “That brings us to twelve,” I subtracted.
    “Peggy’s husband was killed in an automobile accident six years ago, and Bertram’s ex-wife and Brent’s mother is the reason Bertram is in jail for manslaughter.”
    “He killed her?”
    “He forced her into a vehicle while under the influence of drugs and alcohol and then ran his car off the road. It was undetermined whether the accident was intentional, but she died, and Bertram was charged with manslaughter and is currently serving his sentence.”
    “Wow, poor Brent. Okay, so now there are ten.”
    “Lola moved to Los Angeles after divorcing Charles, and I’ve confirmed that she was at work on the day of Charles’ s murder. Holly lives in Portland and just arrived here yesterday after hearing about Charles’s death from her mother, Dolly, who apparently keeps her own apartment. Holly is staying there rather than at the house during this process.”
    “And Dolly’s alibi?”
    “I haven’t been able to contact her. I eliminated Holly from the list, but not Dolly.”
    “So where does that leave us?”
    “Mason Perot has been Charles’s attorney for more than ten years. He lives in the area and I haven’t yet been able to confirm an alibi for him. We know he’s either lying or misleading people as to the cause of death, so in my mind he stays at the top of the list.”
    “And Oliver and Olivia? Do we know where they live?”
    “Bryton Lake. And Leroy, Peggy, Margaret, and Brent are still on the list as well,” Zak confirmed.
    I pried open the top drawer of the desk and began sorting through mail, which looked to have been delivered over the past month. Mostly bills, many unpaid, but there was one envelope that caught my attention. I pulled the legal-size document from the envelope and began to read.
    “I noticed you had a long discussion with Mason while Jeremy and I were working with the birds. Did you discover anything relevant?” I asked.
    “As a prospective buyer, I asked to see financial statements and employee files. I did some digging and found out that Charles Tisdale is worth upward of fifty million dollars.”
    “Did you say fifty?” I gasped. “Why in the hell is someone with fifty million dollars working a turkey farm?”
    “Apparently he liked turkeys,” Zak informed me. “I spoke to Margaret earlier, and she said her grandfather hadn’t always been rich. In fact, he grew up quite poor. He took out a loan to buy the land where the farm now sits. Charles inherited a load of money from a grandfather he barely knew before Margaret was born. Although Margaret never met her grandfather, she shared that according to her mother, Charles clawed his way from poverty and developed a stringent work ethic as a young man. It was very important to him that people work for and earn what they have. He hadn’t felt he’d earned the money he inherited, so he didn’t really want it. He hasn’t touched a single penny of it in all the years he’s had it. Never spent it; never invested it. It’s just sitting in a bank collecting