“Lauren did made a crack to Tish Teague about her daughters not being family, so I can see her taunting Lyle. But he told us he and Jane had tried to have other kids, but all they could squeeze out was Lauren. So it was obviously Jane’s problem. Still, if Lauren did take a dig at his manhood, it could’ve led to something else. Lyle’s an angry guy who likes to drink and surrounds himself with firearms. He could’ve just lost it. Gone after Lauren, then Jane. Revenge for the lies. And now he hopes to profit.”
“An alternative scenario,” he muttered. Five steps later: “Nah, I don’t like it. If Jane suspected Lyle had killed Lauren, that’s something she would’ve been happy to spill. And Lyle doesn’t connect to Michelle and Lance—he’d have no way to know them. No, the way Lauren was dispatched wasn’t a crime of passion. Lyle’s just a circling vulture who never gave a shit about Lauren—this girl had some life.”
“Short life,” I said, and my eyes began to hurt.
We reached the car.
“Lauren sitting at her computer,” he said. “Researching her family tree.”
“Discovering Ben Dugger. Learning about his experiment. She applied to be a paid subject—not for the money, for the connection. Got a confederate job instead, because she was beautiful and poised. Used her looks and her charms to wangle her way into Dugger’s confidence. He sweated, got irate, when you pushed him about having a personal relationship with Lauren. Maybe she turned him on sexually, took advantage of that because that was her specialty. But eventually she sprang the truth on him.”
“Guess what, I’m your sister.”
I nodded. “As family reunions went, it was a bust. The money, but maybe also something else. I’ve always thought Dugger had some kind of sexual hang-up—at the very least he’s sexually unconventional. If Lauren aroused him, discovering she was his sister could have ignited some serious incestuous panic. And rage. Toss in Lauren trying to horn in on his inheritance, and she was finished. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to surface.”
Rig tips. Lauren deluding herself that she was the dancer, knew the steps. But her life had been choreographed for her.
He opened the car door and got in. “Inheritance makes me wonder about something else, Alex. That story Cheryl Duke told you about the gas leak. What if that was no accident but an attempt to eliminate another couple of slices?”
My throat got tight, and my breath caught. “Baxter and Sage. The dead dog tipped Cheryl off—she and the kids got lucky. But they also ended up back at the Duke estate. Under the control of the Duke family. It puts a whole new flavor on Kent Irving’s remark about Cheryl being a neglectful mother: setting the stage so no one’s shocked when the kids fall in the pool or tumble over the cliff or have a grisly mishap on that funicular or drown in the ocean.”
“Cheryl fell asleep on the beach, so she’s giving them more to work with.”
“True,” I said. “She’s no genius. But why should she suspect? People without the capacity for evil can’t imagine the worst of intentions.”
“People who can’t imagine become sweet targets.”
“Those kids.” I pictured high walls, metal gates, closed-circuit TV. Riptides.
He shook his head.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said.
“Look, Alex, these people are bad, but they’re not stupid. Bumping off the kids is gonna be messy, period. Doing it so soon after Lauren’s death would be foolish—on the chance that anyone ever connects them to Lauren.”
“But there might be some time pressure here. Tony Duke dying, wanting to tie up loose ends before the will’s read. Isn’t there some way in— just enough to scare them off?”
“What I can do right now is call Ruiz and Gallardo and ask for a look at Jane’s finances. If some sort of money link between her and Duke can be verified—if she made copies of those letters she wrote him—that’ll go a ways toward establishing a motive and justifying another visit to Dr. Dugger and hinting around. The risk, of course, is that Dugger and Anita and Brother-in-Law pull up their tents, get rid of evidence, hide behind lawyers, do whatever they have to do.”