“What are you talking about?” he snapped. “Don’t start talking around in circles again.”
“I’m not. You are.”
“Stop it,” he said.
“What if they wanted to go to law school and couldn’t afford it, and maybe the parents wouldn’t help them?”
“You think they murdered the parents so they could go to law school?”
“I don’t know. We’ve certainly seen worse motives.”
He stopped and thought about it. “Well, I’ll give you that. I mean, people do the stupidest things for the darndest reasons sometimes.”
“Exactly, and, of course, they can’t turn each other in because then they would incriminate themselves.”
“I wouldn’t have thought they would have gotten divorced at that point.”
“No, I think they’re both climbers. Who knows? They might even have still been involved with each other, but the bottom line is that they’re climbers.”
“Meaning?”
“I think any relationship they had would be to move themselves up the ladder.”
“Like with your ex?”
“Exactly. Maybe she was getting information or wanted to be one of his many lawyers. Maybe she was after information, or perhaps she just wanted to feather her nest a little bit.”
“Or all of the above? he asked.
“Precisely. But I don’t know anything about her husband.”
“And he hasn’t been on the scene for a long time.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but, while I was going through online images, I did find her with quite a few different men,” she said. “I saved what I found. I think I’ve got thirty-six various men here. If we had a picture of her ex, it would be interesting to see if they’ve spent time together in the last decade since they split up.”
“Well, of course they have. They were married for three years.”
“Sure, but what about in the last ten years, the last five years even?”
“Not all the divorces are nasty,” he said. “Lots of people have relationships with their ex-spouses, you know.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, “still, it’s a pathway to follow-up.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Do you have anything else?” she challenged.
“Well, I certainly don’t have to go back ten years to a cold case to find any suspects.”
“Right,” she said in a dry tone. “The one you looked at first is likely the one you’ll follow, right? I have better things to do than be your suspect, Mack.”
“I told you before that you’re not a suspect. I just had to make sure you were clear.”
“Well, now make sure that these two are clear,” she said.
“No. I don’t have time to deal with this,” he said.
“Which is why I asked for the cold files,” she said. “Just let me take a look. I’ll know pretty quick if anything is there or not.”
He stopped at that.
“Mack, come on. You know I’ve got a talent for this,” she wheedled.
“Well, you might have that,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean you have the jurisdiction.”
“But you do,” she said cheerfully. “So I’ll just go through the file to see if anything’s there, give you anything I find, and you can get the credit.”
“I don’t care about getting the credit,” he snapped. “You know better than that.”
“I know,” she said. “I have just one more little notch on that motive line that I was hoping to twist to get you to do it. But you’re right. You don’t do things like this to make yourself look good. But it doesn’t mean that these people didn’t kill his parents so that they could have a better life.” She paced around as she spoke, trying to reel Mack in and to get his interest in the case.
Getting no response from him, she continued, “And then it seems weird that they’d go to school. Because I don’t think there was a ton of money in the entire inheritance. For all you know, when they actually robbed the place, maybe they got the jewels assessed, and maybe they found out they were fake. Maybe what they thought was a fortune waiting for them wasn’t. Maybe it was just enough for them to do something serious to improve their lives, and so, becoming lawyers, they could keep themselves out of trouble.”
“Well, that makes a twisted kind of sense,” he said, “but who would kill their parents for just enough money to go to school?”
“We don’t know if that was the first implication or reasoning behind it or if something else was involved,” she muttered. “But I’m not terribly comfortable walking away from this thread until we know for sure.”
“And how will you know that, when Robin is dead?”
“Which is why you need to get into that laptop, her bag, her pockets, and everything else and see if anything there matches any of this jewelry that was taken because she probably would have kept one piece, even if just for sentimental or some trophy value. And it’d be easy for her to toss it off and say that her mother-in-law had given it to her and that somehow it accidentally got onto the stolen property list.”
“You know that is almost something doable,” he said, muttering to himself.
“See? You know how bad paperwork is. How easy it is to lose a piece of jewelry, how easy it is for insurance to, oh, let me think, pay for it? But what if there wasn’t a whole lot behind it? What if there was no insurance involved? Maybe Robin and her husband just thought there was, and, when they found out there wasn’t, it just upset them even more?”
“Again, conjecture,” he said automatically.
“Noted, Counselor,” she said simply.
He started to laugh. “You’re getting very good on those one-line comebacks,” he said.
“Good,” she said cheerfully. “I don’t think your brother appreciates me though.”
“No, but that’s because he doesn’t know you,” he said affectionately. “What are you doing about dinner?”
“Is it dinnertime already?” she asked. At that, her stomach growled. “Oh, my God, food. Now that you brought it up …” She groaned. “I’m not even sure what time it is, but I did just put coffee on.”
“Good on the coffee,” he said. “Maybe I’ll come over.”
“Ha,” she said, “unless it’s dinnertime.”
“It is dinnertime,” he said. “We could do a quick pasta dish, maybe with pesto.”
“Sure, I’m up for anything,” she said. “Especially if you bring the cold case files.”
And, with that, she hung up on him.
Chapter 14
Monday Dinnertime …
Once Doreen ended the call, she poured herself a coffee and walked out to the deck. She sat down, with her notes, and started working out any and all possible alibis and motives that she could come up with. Obviously there was the potential for insurance money; there was money from the house and goods; there was the ability to do something with their lives, the possibility to take on the world and to change it. It all started with money; the absence of which, people often found to be the biggest hindrance. She worked out what she could, and, when nothing else popped to mind, she got up, refilled her coffee. As she returned to the deck table, the doorbell rang.