Chapter Fourteen
Ethan watched as Livvy sat in his kitchen, eating the salad they’d picked up from the town’s diner on the way back to his house. It was obvious from her expression that she wasn’t enjoying the late lunch, that she was merely going through the motions.
He figured she was eating solely for the baby, and he suspected if she hadn’t been pregnant, she would have just gone somewhere alone to try to process what Rory had told them.
Ethan was trying to process it, too, and while they now had an answer as to whose blood was on that knife, it had only fueled more questions.
Who was Livvy’s mother? Was she dead?
And if so, who had killed her?
Yeah, plenty of questions, including how the hell had the knife ended up being delivered to Vernice?
Or maybe it hadn’t been delivered after all.
It was possible that Vernice had had it all this time but had chosen to give it to the cops because she could have known it would incriminate Livvy since her prints were also on it.
He ate some of the burger that had also come from the diner and realized he was going through the motions of eating, too. He wasn’t the least bit hungry. Not with his stomach in knots over what Livvy was going through. But his body needed the fuel so he could continue the investigation.
Unfortunately, his heart wasn’t in doing that either, but he had his laptop open on the counter and was reviewing the list Eden had given them. He definitely wasn’t making much progress and hadn’t found squat that would help them with those answers they desperately needed.
Livvy grunted a little, and she put her hand on her belly. “More kicks,” she muttered, no doubt when she saw the alarm skirt across his face.
Good timing, Ethan thought, because that seemed to snap her back to the moment. A moment where there hopefully wasn’t any images of her nightmare.
But there obviously was.
“It’s likely my mother was the dead woman in the bathtub,” Livvy said, causing him to sigh. He reached for her, but she shook her head. “If you hold me now, I’ll break. And that can’t happen. Because I don’t need to think like a traumatized six-year-old girl. I need to think like a cop.”
He considered that, nodded. Of the two, cop mode was preferable. Because he didn’t want her to break.
“Of our three suspects, Anthony would have been too young to have the motive to kill my mother,” Livvy spelled out. “He would have only been ten at the time.”
“He could have had motive,” Ethan argued. “If he thought your mother had some part in killing his, then Anthony could have perhaps managed it.”
She conceded that with a nod. “But why not just go after Chloe instead? It was obvious during interview that he believed she had murdered his mother because the woman was jealous of the attention her husband was paying her.”
“Anthony might have thought both were involved. Or he could have said that to throw us off his scent if he had killed when he was ten.”
Ethan tried to play that out, and he just couldn’t wrap his head around a kid doing that. Not just the murder but then taking the knife that had Livvy’s prints on it. Most kids, unless they were budding cold-blooded killers, would have dropped the knife.
And maybe Anthony had done just that.
Dropped it, and somehow it’d gotten into Vernice’s hands.
“Franklin could have motive,” Livvy went on several moments later.
“My mother could have found something incriminating about him or New Hope. That could have been why she and I were cowering in the stairwell near Franklin’s office.
She could have run with me, and Franklin could have found us and killed her.
” She paused. “But then why not just kill me, too?”
“Hell,” Ethan spat out.
He hated thinking about this. The nightmare that had actually happened. And heaven knew what Livvy had witnessed that’d caused her mind to shut down.
She reached out, took hold of his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Comforting him. He cursed again because he should’ve been the one comforting her.
“It helps to focus on it like a cop,” she explained.
Maybe. But this didn’t feel like helping. It felt as if they were jabbing at old wounds. Still, it had to be done because this was how the case could end up being solved.
“Anthony could have killed my mother,” Livvy went on. “Franklin could have, too. That leaves us with Vernice.”
Yeah, it did. “Vernice, who’s lied about her connection to New Hope. And she had possession of the knife.” He stopped, considering something. “Has Vernice always been…hostile to you, even when you were a kid?”
Livvy didn’t hesitate. She nodded. “Nothing obvious, but I always had the feeling she didn’t like me. As I got older, I thought maybe that was because you and I were close friends and she didn’t want that to develop into something more since you were with her daughter.”
“That could have played into it,” he admitted. “But what if Vernice was worried your memory would return and you could implicate her in some way?”
She didn’t get a chance to answer because his phone rang, and when he saw Grace’s name on the screen, he answered it right away on speaker.
“How’s Livvy?” Grace asked the moment she was on the line. “And give me the truth and not what you want me to hear.”
“I’m, uh, trying to deal with what I remembered and my mother’s blood being on the knife,” she admitted. “I’m probably not dealing well, but I’ll get there.”
He hoped that was true. Ethan wanted Livvy to be able to get past this and not be in so much emotional torment.
“Did you remember anything else?” Grace pressed.
“No, but Ethan and I were just going over how that piece of memory might fit with our suspects.”
“Good. Keep doing that because we need a break in this case.” Grace sighed, the frustration coming through loud and clear.
“I haven’t done the reports yet for the interviews with Franklin, Anthony and Vernice, but I wanted you to know that nothing else came out that we can use.
As expected, I had to cut them all loose. ”
Ethan felt his own new wave of frustration though he had known this would be the likely outcome. An outcome where a possible killer was loose and maybe ready to strike again.
“How did Franklin address the accusations about him having fathered some of the babies at New Hope?” Livvy asked.
“He dismissed it as a vicious rumor, and his lawyer threatened a slander suit for ruining Franklin’s good name. Blah, blah, blah,” Grace muttered. “And since we don’t have any actual proof that it did happen, I had to drop it.”
“There could possibly be proof,” Livvy said, and there was something in her, some tension, that had him looking at her.
Damn it.
He realized then what Livvy was worried about. Maybe Franklin had fathered her.
“Is Franklin’s DNA in the system?” Ethan came out and asked Grace.
“No,” she answered so quickly that it let Ethan know she’d already considered this possibility. “Not yet anyway. I asked for a DNA sample for elimination purposes. His lawyer said we’d need a court order, so I’m in the process of getting one. And I will get it,” she insisted.
She no doubt would. It was standard procedure in this type of investigation to be able to rule out any DNA and fingerprints present at a crime scene that could have inadvertently been left there by family members or others in the household.
“It could be telling that Franklin didn’t want to cough up his DNA,” Grace went on. “But it’s also possible that he was just being an uncooperative jerk who doesn’t care diddly about his sister’s murder being solved.”
Yes, either of those could be true.
“Moving on,” she continued a moment later.
“I just learned that Anthony possibly knew our dead attacker, Hank Stover. It’s a thin connection, but it’s there.
They lived in the same neighborhood when Anthony was in high school.
Of course, Anthony claims he never met the man, so now we’re digging to find out if that’s a lie. ”
Since Anthony hadn’t been truthful with them so far, that was a strong possibility.
“So, Hank is definitely connected to Franklin and now possibly Anthony,” Ethan remarked.
“Ditto for Vernice. I suspect she visited Chloe a lot more often than she admitted, and that means she could have crossed paths with Hank and his sister.”
“Totally agree,” Grace said. “None of our three suspects get gold stars for being upfront and honest. But lies can be disproved, and that could lead to charges of obstruction and such. If I can arrest one of them, then that could give me some bargaining power. I want the SOB who killed Chloe put away before he or she strikes again.”
Ethan wanted the same thing. So far, the killer hadn’t come after Livvy, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Anyone who saw her at the police station could have guessed that she was stunned and upset, and that could lead to speculation that her memory was returning.
That could make a killer anxious to silence her for good.
“And that brings me to my final update about Sunny,” Grace said, yanking Ethan out of his thoughts.
“Sunny’s still being released, though it won’t be until around six this evening since her doctor is waiting on some test results.
I know the plan was for her to go to your place, but considering everything that’s going on with Livvy and you, I can arrange a safe house for her. ”
“No,” Livvy said. “She can come here.”
Ethan wasn’t so sure that was a good idea because Livvy did indeed have a lot going on, but so did Sunny. It might ease some of the stress for Sunny if she was with people she had already met instead of staying with whomever would be assigned to her at a safe house.
“Yes, bring Sunny here,” he piped in.
“All right. Will do. And I’ll let you know if there are any other updates. In the meantime, keep digging,” Grace added before she said a quick goodbye and ended the call.