“She’s not in the country, that’s all I know. She doesn’t tell me where she goes. She tells me she can’t, so sometimes I worry. She sends emails every week, but doesn’t talk about her job. All I know is that she uses her degree, so I figure something like computer maintenance or maybe coding, something along those lines. At least, thinking that way makes me more comfortable.” He smiled nervously.

“We’re here about Denise Albright,” Lucy said.

He blinked, then frowned. “You found her. It’s about time.”

“We found her remains. She and her family were killed three years ago—at about the same time that she was suspected of leaving the country.”

He stared at her as if he didn’t believe her.

“She’s dead? Glen? Her kids?”

“You may have heard about the bones uncovered after the flood. Yesterday we learned that they belong to the Albright family. They were murdered and buried in a remote area of Kerr County, near the Kendall County line. They may have been there since the day they disappeared.”

Lucy was watching Kiefer closely—she didn’t know what to expect from his reaction, but he seemed mostly confused.

“You’re telling me that Denise has been dead for three years.”

“Yes.”

“And her family.”

Lucy nodded. She kept the information about Ricky Albright to herself, mostly to see how he would react.

“But how?”

“They were killed late September three years ago. We’re scrambling now that we have the bodies identified, and unfortunately, we don’t know much about the missing money or how you came to accuse Albright of embezzling funds.”

Kiefer took a moment to regroup. “I—well, I went over this with the DA here in Kerr County, and again with the FBI a month or two later. I never imagined that Denise would have stolen from me. That week, I told her that I was bringing in an outside auditor. It’s not unheard of, and I do it every couple of years. With all the tax regulations changing constantly, I wanted to make sure everything was accounted for, especially since this was such a big federal project. Well, big for me. The new contract we’d received—it was one of the largest we’d had, and it would have brought hundreds of jobs to the area. Not just my company, but supporting companies, small businesses in the area. The three million she stole was only the initial funding—it would have been a thirty-five-million-dollar project for us.”

“So her work had been audited before.”

“Yes—at least twice since she’s been working for me. So when she didn’t show up to the meeting with the auditor on Monday, I thought she’d forgotten. He went to her office and grabbed the files—they were right where they were supposed to be.”

“When did she leave Friday?”