That was when, he proudly told them, the salesman in him took over.
“Have you seen the view from there?” he asked. “You have to go see it,” he urged. “It’s absolutely breathtaking. Homes here are selling at a premium right now—faster than you can blink,” he stressed. “These proposed homes will be scooped up before the builder even has the land fully graded and mapped out to start work.”
“Is that why you urged the council to put a bid on the hotel?” Brianna asked. “Because of the view?”
The man bobbed his head up and down, sun-bleached hair falling into his eyes. “I have an eye for things like that,” he told them and then couldn’t help confiding, “I really can’t wait for the ground-breaking ceremony.”
Seeing the man’s eagerness, she almost hated bursting his bubble. Unlike Aurora’s lawyer, this man actually seemed genuine to her.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a little longer than you’ve anticipated,” Brianna told him.
Confusion entered the man’s gray eyes. “I don’t understand,” Harris said, his wide smile fading a little around the edges. “Why’s that? The demolition crew started early this morning.”
Brianna was surprised that word about the stoppage hadn’t reached the council yet. She was about to tell him when Jackson spared her the ordeal.
“That’s just the problem,” Jackson told the councilman matter-of-factly. “As soon as the walls started coming down, bodies began falling out.” He knew he was stating it rather simplistically, but that was the general gist of it.
Harris stared at him as if the detective had suddenly lapsed into some strange foreign language.
“You’re joking,” he practically choked out.
“I only wish we were, Mr. Harris,” Brianna said, stepping in. “And until the investigation yields some concrete—no pun intended—answers, I’m afraid that all work on the site will have to be on hold.”
Harris turned pale. “Is there any way around that?” he asked, distressed.
“Not unless you can tell us who killed these people and how they wound up being part of the architecture,” Jackson said.
“I ca-can’t,” Harris stuttered, his eyes moving like tennis balls from Brianna to Jackson, then back again. “How would I possibly know that?”
“If I could answer that, Mr. Harris, this whole conversation would be moot,” Brianna told him kindly.
But rather than go away, Harris’s panic only intensified. “You don’t understand. I talked the council into this. Every day that the project isn’t started, we’re hemorrhaging money.”
She really did feel sorry for the man. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible,” she assured the councilman, who was now visibly perspiring.
Her assurance didn’t help. The man continued looking ghostly white.
“Try harder,” he implored. As Brianna and Jackson rose to their feet, Harris said, “You’ll keep me posted about this and tell me the minute we can begin work?”
“You’ll be our first call,” Brianna promised just before they left.
“Why did you lie to him?” Jackson asked, curious. Of the two of them, he would have said that she was the do-gooder while he was the one who didn’t give a damn about public relations, and yet she had clearly lied to the councilman. He was definitely not going to be the first one they notified, or even the fifth person. There was protocol to follow.
They were outside now, and as Brianna glanced up, she saw clouds gathering.
“Because I hate to see a grown man cry and he was about as close to that as I’ve seen in a long time,” she told Jackson. “Besides, it gives him something to hang on to, and he looked like he really needed that.”
Jackson drew his own conclusions from her ostensibly charitable actions. “So you don’t think he had anything to do with this creative cemetery?”
“Other than being greedy and somehow making money on the deal, no, I don’t think he’s mixed up in this—at least for now, anyway,” she amended. “I’m willing to be shown the error of my ways if it turns out that I’m wrong,” she added. “But for now, I think we need to look elsewhere for our answers—and the killer. Or killers, as the case may be.” She looked at Jackson over the roof of his sedan, one hand on the passenger door handle. “This really is a mess, isn’t it?”
He laughed shortly. “Yeah. To quote Oliver Hardy talking to Stan Laurel, ‘Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.’”
Brianna’s eyebrows drew together in a delicately sculpted furrow of confusion. “Who?”
Jackson shook his head. “Never mind.” He opened the door on his side. “Just get in the car.”
But she remained where she was, trying to get to the bottom of the quotation he’d just carelessly tossed at her. “No, really, am I supposed to know who those people are? Is that a reference to something out of your past?”
He thought back to a childhood with a black-and-white TV set rescued out of a Dumpster and used to entertain his brother to keep Jimmy from crying for the mother who had abandoned them. He and Jimmy had watched classic films on some now-defunct channel. Laurel and Hardy had been prominently featured—but he wasn’t about to tell O’Bannon any of that. No telling when she’d bring it up.
“Just get in the car, or run alongside it while I drive. I don’t care. Take your pick,” he said, getting in behind the steering wheel.
“Getting in,” she announced as he turned on the ignition.
“Good choice.”
Chapter 6
Walking into the squad room, Brianna saw that her regular partner, Francisco Del Campo, was back at his desk. He appeared to be working on something on his computer.
“Hopefully, that’s a good sign,” she commented to Jackson.
When he made no response, she glanced over
