Chapter Eight
Despite the sickening worry and dread, Lana smiled when she saw Cameron on the FaceTime call to Joelle. The baby was sleeping, and everything about his precious little face looked so peaceful. Lana was thankful for that. She didn’t want him to sense any of the fear.
But the fear was there.
For Lana, it was bone deep. And it wouldn’t be going away until they had answers about Buck’s accomplice, who might or might not be Taylor. At the moment, they just didn’t know, but Lana was hoping they could soon remedy that since Detective Thayer had already called the woman. Taylor hadn’t answered, but Thayer had left a terse voicemail for Taylor to contact her right away.
Maybe Taylor would do that and admit to any part she’d played in Stephanie’s death. While Lana was hoping, she added that maybe Thayer was getting yet more details in the interviews with Marsh and Lana’s parents. Slater might pick up on something, too, since he was observing them.
Lana had elected to wait in the break room for those interviews to finish and had been trying to get some work done using her phone, but she’d finally admitted her focus was practically nil and had made the call to Joelle.
Thankfully, Joelle had understood how important it was for Lana to see the baby and had quietly slipped into the makeshift nursery. The sight of Cameron had given Lana some peace of mind. So had seeing the nanny in the room with the baby. Ditto for Joelle wearing a shoulder holster and gun. Joelle was an experienced deputy and would protect not only her own baby but Cameron, too, if there was a threat.
“You haven’t seen anyone suspicious?” Lana verified after Joelle had slipped out of the nursery and back into the hall.
“No.” Joelle smiled, but there was a steely resolve in her cop’s eyes. “And if I did, there are armed ranch hands here to back me up. Also, Luca’s downstairs. He’ll be here until Duncan gets home.”
Lana already knew all the security precautions, but it was good to hear them repeated.
“How are things going there?” Joelle asked.
Lana’s mind was whirling with everything they’d learned, and it was hard for her to sort out what Slater had already told Duncan in an update call right before he’d left to observe the interviews.
“I suspect my parents know a lot more than they’re saying about Stephanie and Buck,” Lana admitted.
Joelle’s quick sound of agreement told Lana that the deputy had come to the same conclusion. “Your father won’t make it easy for the cops to investigate any wrongdoing.”
“He won’t. He did speak to Slater and me without his lawyers, but he had two with him when he went in for the official interview with Detective Thayer. I suspect they’ll keep him and my mother from saying something they’d rather keep to themselves.”
And it riled Lana to the core that they would do that instead of leaving no stone unturned to get justice for their murdered daughter. Yes, Buck was dead, but there was no absolute proof that he’d actually killed Stephanie. It was possible his accomplice had done that.
Lana mentally stopped and shook her head.
She couldn’t see Marsh or her parents sneaking into Stephanie’s hospital room to kill her. But maybe one of them did. Or perhaps it’d been Taylor. That’s why it was so important to speak to the woman, but Lana reminded herself that what Marsh had said about Taylor might not even be true. He could be throwing Taylor under a bus to cover up his own guilt. Still, she did recall Stephanie saying that she and Taylor were no longer friends.
The break room door opened, and thankfully this time Lana didn’t reach for her gun. A sign that hopefully her nerves were settling just a little. Her nerves settled even more when she saw Slater.
“Joelle, call me if anything...well, if there’s anything,” Lana told the woman before they ended the call.
“Is everything okay at the ranch?” Slater asked, tipping his head to her phone.
Lana nodded. “I just wanted to see Cameron, so I FaceTimed with your sister.” She went closer, studying his face to see if there were signs that he was about to deliver some devastating news.
But Slater shook his head. “Nothing new came out in the interviews. Your dad admitted on the record that he knew Buck had fathered Stephanie’s child, but he said he got the info from an anonymous call made to one of the PIs he keeps on retainer.”
Lana wanted to roll her eyes. “The PI could have hacked into police records to get it, or my father could have another mole here in Austin PD.” Either, or both, was possible, and it was a reminder for Lana not to trust someone just because they were a cop.
Slater took hold of her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Your mother broke down during her interview. The tears seemed real enough.”
That didn’t surprise Lana. “Stephanie was my mother’s golden child. Well, more golden than me, anyway. She knew she stood no chance of pushing me into an arranged marriage, but I believe she thought she could pressure Stephanie into it.”
“Pressure?” Slater questioned.
“Stephanie’s been arrested twice. Once for DUI and another for possession of a small amount of narcotics. Both times, our parents got her out of it. No parole, no community service. The charges just went away. Stephanie never came out and said it, but I think she was worried they’d hold that over her and use it to keep her in line.” She paused. “Obviously, that didn’t work.”
Slater stayed quiet a moment. “Maybe it did. Have you considered that Stephanie being in hiding was exactly what your parents wanted? No, that doesn’t mean they wanted her dead,” he was quick to add. “It could mean that they’d hoped to sweep the pregnancy under the rug and have her return to marry Marsh.”
Lana thought back through her conversations with Stephanie, and while her sister had never admitted to something like that, it could definitely be true. And that meant she had possibly been used as a dupe in all of this.
Slater’s grip tightened on her hand, and he eased her to him. No kiss this time. He just held her while she tried to process another disturbing possibility in this investigation.
“Do you want me to go ahead and call Sonya so we can start the drive back to Saddle Ridge?” he asked.
Her first instinct was to say yes because she desperately wanted to see the baby. But Lana held back on that response and spelled out her concern. “Be honest. If I’m near Cameron, will that put him in more danger?”
Slater pulled back from her and met her gaze. “I don’t know. If we go with the theory of Buck wanting to eliminate any competition for his family estate, then there shouldn’t be a threat to Cameron and you since Buck’s dead.”
True. But the threat still felt very real. “No other relatives who might take up claim to the money?”
“No. I checked on that while I was in observation for the interviews. With Patrick and Buck both deceased, the inheritance would go to their heirs. Right now, that’s only Cameron, and there isn’t anyone on record who could challenge that claim.”
Lana didn’t want a penny of that estate for Cameron, but she also knew it might not be her decision to make. “What about heirs who might come forward? A secret baby maybe?”
“It’s possible,” he admitted, “but I can’t see Buck working with someone who could inherit something he wanted to keep all for himself.”
“No,” she agreed. “So, maybe not a threat for the money but possibly Buck left orders with his accomplice. Orders to kill me because I helped hide Stephanie from him.”
“Maybe.” He paused, repeated that and then groaned softly. “But this feels bigger than that. Buck could have killed you on the spot, but he didn’t. He stunned you instead and was obviously going to try to escape with you.”
“He could have just wanted a human shield,” Lana muttered, blinking back the flashbacks. “The plan could have been to kill me as soon as he was out of harm’s way.”
If so, that bolstered her revenge theory, that Buck wanted her to pay for helping Stephanie. But would he have been so obsessed with payback that he wanted to strike out at her from beyond the grave?
Or was this about something else?
Something that involved her parents and maybe Marsh, too? If so, she and Slater could dig into that in Saddle Ridge.
“Call Sonya,” Lana said just as her phone rang, and the moment she saw the caller, she answered it on speaker. “Taylor,” she greeted, but she didn’t manage to say more because Taylor spoke right over her.
“Why does an Austin cop want to talk to me?” Taylor demanded. “She left a voicemail telling me to contact her. What does she want?”
Lana ignored the woman and went with a question of her own. “Where are you, Taylor?”
Taylor’s huff was plenty loud. “Why does an Austin cop want to talk to me?” she repeated, enunciating each word as if talking to a child.
Lana debated how to go with this, but then Slater gave her a nod. “The cops want to talk to you about Stephanie’s death.”
“Of course,” she said in the same tone as an annoyance but not anything big. “Well, they’ll waste my time and theirs because I don’t know anything about it. She’s dead, period.” Taylor paused. “She is dead, right? That wasn’t all some kind of stupid hoax, was it?”
“Stephanie’s dead,” Lana verified, speaking around the sudden lump in her throat. Even though she and Stephanie weren’t best pals, it still hurt to hear Taylor’s callous attitude toward her sister.
“Good,” Taylor declared, but then she must have realized who she was talking to. “I’m sorry for your loss and all, but you know I’d be lying if I said I wish Stephanie was alive.”
“Yes,” Lana softly agreed, and then went with another question. “Why did you hate Stephanie so much?”
A burst of air left Taylor’s mouth, not quite laughter but close. “Oh, let me count the ways. I was seeing Marsh when Stephanie horned in on our relationship. She got your parents and Marsh’s to persuade him to dump me so Stephanie and he could go through with what would have basically been a business merger marriage.”
Lana thought back to something Marsh had said. “Marsh called Stephanie the love of his life.”
That brought on a string of raw profanity from Taylor, and she ended it with, “No way in hell. He just said that to keep your precious daddy on his side. Marsh has political aspirations, too, and Leonard Walsh is his ticket. That’s all.”
Lana wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Marsh mention anything about politics, but it was possible he was brownnosing her father to keep in his good graces. But Marsh’s feelings for Stephanie had seemed genuine. Seemed .
“Now that Stephanie’s out of the way, Marsh will come back to me,” Taylor went on. “And I can play nice with your father, too, because that’s how much I want Marsh.”
“Did you want Marsh enough to kill Stephanie?” Lana blurted before she could stop herself.
Taylor made an outraged gasp. “No. Of course not. That man on the news killed her. The same man who tried to murder you.”
It didn’t surprise Lana that the attack had already hit the media, and she wondered just how much detail was already out there. “So you didn’t have any part in Stephanie’s murder? Because that’s what the cops want to question you about.”
“No part whatsoever,” Taylor insisted. “And I’ll tell the detective that, too. There’s no crime in hating a man-stealing ex-friend.” She paused. “I’ve heard some rumors. Did Stephanie have Marsh’s baby?”
Slater pressed his finger to his mouth in a keep quiet about that gesture. Lana hadn’t planned on spilling it, anyway. “Why would you care if the child is Marsh’s?” Lana argued.
“Because a baby would give him a tie to Stephanie. I don’t want any ties.” Her tone was now one of a pouty child. “I want him to see her for what she was. A cheater who didn’t care one bit about him. If Stephanie gave birth to his baby, then he might never get over her.”
Lana couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as if Taylor choked back a sob. She doubted the sadness, or whatever emotion she’d heard, had anything to do with Stephanie, though.
“You should talk to Detective Thayer about this,” Lana finally said. Not that Thayer would answer the question of the baby’s paternity, but the conversation might end up being productive for the investigation.
“I don’t want to talk to her,” Taylor whined. “In fact, I’m not going to talk to any cops. They’ll have to arrest me first, and then I’ll use my lawyers to bury them.”
That was a threat with no teeth because Thayer had cause to interview Taylor. The woman’s hatred for Stephanie was plenty motive to work with Buck to commit murder.
Taylor ended the call, but before Lana could even put her phone away, it rang again, and she saw yet another familiar name.
“It’s Julia Munson,” Lana told Slater. “Someone I work with at Sencor.” She answered it and said, “Julia, I’m putting you on speaker. Deputy Slater McCullough is here with me.”
“Hello, Deputy McCullough,” Julia greeted, and she launched right into the reason for the call. “We found something that probably won’t be a news flash to you, but it confirms something. We interviewed visitors at the hospital where Stephanie died, and a new father, Asa Burkhart, was recording the maternity ward where his daughter had just been born. I’m sending you the footage now.”
Moments later, Lana’s phone dinged again, and she automatically held her breath. Julia had said this wouldn’t be a surprise, so Lana already had an idea of what Slater and she were about to see. Still, it felt as if someone had clamped a vise around her lungs.
The recording loaded, and there were a couple of seconds of the new father panning his phone around while providing a few verbal details like the name of the hospital, the room number and the obstetrician. When the camera shifted toward the other end of the hall, Lana saw the man.
Buck.
He was in a small alcove with the vending machines, and he peered out. Just seeing him gave Lana another slam of the flashbacks of him stunning and grabbing her in the parking lot. But those slams were a drop in the bucket compared to what she felt as she watched him move out of vending and across the hall. He disappeared into Stephanie’s room.
Lana nearly shouted to alert someone to stop him. But the avalanche of dread came when she realized it was too late for that. Buck had already murdered her sister and now he, too, was dead.
That was all of the footage, the blur of motion as Buck went into Stephanie’s room. The new father had obviously finished recording since there was no footage of Buck coming out.
“The hospital security cameras were tampered with,” Julia explained, “but they were working again by the time you came back to the hospital with the baby. There’s about a half-hour lapse between Buck entering the room and your arrival.”
A half hour when Lana hadn’t known that her sister had been murdered. “Yes,” Lana said. “I was driving around, deciding what to do. Stephanie had wanted me to take the baby to Slater, but I decided to go back and talk to her, to make sure she was certain this was the right thing to do. I didn’t see Buck when I left the first time, but I believe I saw him after I came back.”
“You probably did,” Julia provided. “We got footage from a dash camera of a taxi that shows Buck outside the hospital thirty-two minutes after he went into Stephanie’s room. That would have given you time to drive around and return.”
So he had lingered around. Maybe because he’d been trying to find Stephanie’s baby. It sickened Lana to think about what could have happened when she saw Buck outside her sister’s room, how close he had been to Cameron.
“Was anyone with Buck?” Slater asked.
“No,” Julia answered, “but we’re checking for other dashcams and private security equipment to try to track his movements. There are traffic cams around there, but it’s my guess he avoided those since Austin PD hasn’t been able to find any footage of him.”
That was Lana’s guess, too. Clearly, Buck had been concerned about being recorded, and that’s why he, or maybe his accomplice, had tampered with the hospital security cameras.
“There’s more,” Julia added a moment later, and Lana could tell from her coworker’s tone that this was not going to be good news. “I’m guessing you’re both familiar with a woman named Taylor Galway?”
Lana certainly hadn’t expected Julia to bring her up. “Yes. In fact, she called me right before you did.”
“Did she admit to hiring a computer hacker?” Julia asked.
“No,” Slater and Lana answered in unison.
“I thought not. It’s not something you’d admit to a cop,” Julia added. “Anyway, last night Taylor hired BoBo.”
Lana groaned and looked up at Slater to provide an explanation. “BoBo is a well-known hacker with no loyalty whatsoever. His favorite scam is to have a client pay him well for info and then to turn around and find out how he can get even more money by informing someone of the hacking.”
“Bingo,” Julia agreed. “And about an hour ago, BoBo, aka Robbie Jansky, called here asking to speak to you. He said you’d be very interested in some information he came by. I told him you were tied up with some personal stuff and agreed to the thousand bucks he was asking for.”
“I’ll pay you back,” Lana was quick to say.
“I knew you would, and I also figured it’d be worth the price. BoBo usually has something good. And, Deputy McCullough, I know all of this must be setting your cop’s teeth on edge, but please understand, we don’t use any of the hacked info in court cases. We use it as more of a jumping-off point to find our own data and sources to corroborate what he gave us.”
Julia had been right about Slater’s teeth being on edge. There was definitely some disapproval on his face, but that didn’t stop him from pressing Julia for what she’d learned. “And did this hacker give you something good this time?”
“He did.” Julia stopped, sighed. “Well, you might consider it more of a hornet’s nest, but here goes. BoBo hacked into Leonard’s emails and learned that Lana’s father not only knew Stephanie was pregnant, but he also knew her location at least for the last three months she was alive. There’s a flurry of emails about it between him and one of his PIs.”
Lana wanted to curse, and it meant her father had out-and-out lied to her. Of course, she suspected that wasn’t the first time he’d done something like that.
“The PI had Stephanie and Lana under surveillance,” Julia went on. “And Buck, too.”
“Buck?” Slater repeated.
“Buck,” Julia verified. “The emails don’t come out and say that Leonard knew Buck had gotten Stephanie pregnant, but Leonard instructed his PI to keep close tabs on the man to make sure he didn’t go sniffing around Stephanie again.”
“And did he keep close tabs on Buck?” Lana wanted to know. Because if he had, her father might have known that Buck planned to kill Stephanie.
“He did. There’s another flurry of reports about that and even some surveillance-type photos of Buck shopping and eating out.”
“Please tell me Buck was with someone in those photos,” Lana said. “Someone who could have been his accomplice.”
“Nothing, but again, this is a jumping-off point. Using the hacked PI reports, we now have some locations where we know Buck was. You know how this works, Lana. We’ll go to those locations and talk to people. Look for more security footage. We’ll create a digital map of where he was and who he might have encountered.”
Yes, Lana did know this was how it worked. The info from BoBo was essentially tips from a criminal informant, and none of it could be used to make an arrest. However, if the accomplice did turn up on camera or through eyewitness accounts, then the cops could get the pieces to put the person behind bars.
Lana hoped.
She had to believe there’d be justice for her sister and a safe future for Cameron. That she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for a killer.
“Now, to the hornet’s nest,” Julia added a moment later.
Lana shook her head. “I thought that was my father knowing about Stephanie and Buck.”
“No, there’s more. I just don’t know if it’s related to Stephanie or if it means anything at all, but the way it’s worded makes me think there’s something your dad’s trying to cover up.”
“What?” Lana managed to say.
Julia cleared her throat. “Does the name Alicia mean anything to either of you?”
Lana felt as if someone had punched her, and she figured from the way Slater’s jaw tightened, he felt the same way. “Alicia Monroe,” he provided. “My father was investigating her murder when he was killed. And we recently learned that Buck was a person of interest in Alicia’s death.”
“Yes, I pieced that together when I did a search for the name. The email didn’t mention her surname, by the way,” Julia tacked onto that. She stopped, muttered an apology. “Let me start from the beginning. In one of Leonard’s emails to his PI, the PI expressed some concern about Stephanie being a loose cannon. His exact words,” she emphasized.
“Did my father say why?” Lana asked.
“The timing fits for him finding out she was pregnant so maybe that’s it. But it was also around the time your dad first mentioned Buck and that he needed to be monitored. Again, Leonard’s exact word. And now here’s the hornet’s nest. Leonard adds, and I quote, I don’t want another Alicia on my hands .”
“Oh, God,” Lana heard herself mutter.
She looked up at Slater to see his reaction. Every muscle in his face had turned to iron. And Lana knew this was indeed a hornet’s nest.
Lana cursed. Had her own dad played some part in murdering Slater’s father?