Operation Reunion (20 page)

Chapter 35

I
t was almost over.

Dane rubbed at his stubbled jaw. He knew he was pacing, wandering the anteroom of the small holding cell, but he was afraid if he stopped moving he’d fall asleep; it had been a couple of rough nights in succession. And by the time they’d arrived here at the small police station, it had been close to dawn. Besides, it kept him from looking at Kayla, where she sat huddled on one of the hard, plastic chairs along the back wall.

He supposed the sun was up now. He couldn’t tell, down here in the back of the lower level of the building with no windows. They didn’t have a jail of their own, and prisoners were transported to the county facility after being booked and processed here.

It was only luck—and Detective Dunbar—who had kept him out of this place himself, Dane thought. He could easily have been sitting in there, ink on his fingertips, awaiting transport to county jail. Silently he again thanked the man’s instincts or whatever it had been that had made him decide Dane wasn’t, after all, the fire bomber he was looking for.

Or maybe it had been Kayla.

Her defense of you was what they call spirited,
Quinn had said.

She had never doubted him. Not for a minute. It was he who had fallen down on that particular job. Maybe he was the one who needed to make that up to her. Maybe he was the one who needed to give some reassurance.

Or maybe he was just looking for a way to still make this work, to keep this woman he’d loved for so long in his life.

A door opened, and Dane stopped midstride and turned. Kayla’s head came up. Quinn stepped out of the secured area, the heavy, steel door closing behind him with a solid thud. He nodded to Dane, but it was Kayla he went to, crouching beside her chair.

“Chad’s talking now. Detective Dunbar made him see the wisdom of coming clean, for his own sake.”

“His own sake. All he cares about.”

She sounded hollow and, worse, broken. Just the bitterness in her voice made Dane’s chest tighten. He hated that she could sound like that, that after ten years of searching, of never giving up, it seemed she finally had.

He hated that she could still make him feel that way. That she could make him feel that strongly.

That she could make him feel.

“What about Troy?” Dane asked.

“He’s a tougher nut,” Quinn said. “But he took those shots at us, so he’ll be on his way to county on attempted murder charges when Dunbar is done questioning him. That should soften him up a little.”

“I still can’t believe it was Troy. He was always the quintessential charmer.”

“I’m no expert,” Quinn said, “but I think that man’s been a puppet master for a long time.”

“So you think he manipulated Chad?”

“I think he’s gone beyond that to controlling,” Quinn said.

“Chad was easy prey for that,” Kayla said, the bitter edge back in her voice. She’d come a long way in the past few hours, now seeing the truth about her brother for the first time.

“Do you want to talk to him?” Quinn asked her.

Kayla hesitated, then stood up. She seemed to sway slightly, and Quinn steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. Something sparked through Dane, something hot and unsettling. Not jealousy because he’d never seen a man more in love with his woman than Quinn was with Hayley. But that was his place. Kayla was his—

He broke off the automatic thought. No, she wasn’t. Not anymore, no matter what his automatic, long-ingrained reaction to another man touching her might be.

“I want to hear his explanation,” she said, sounding a bit stronger now. She looked up at Quinn. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

“Probably not all of it,” Quinn said, “but what he is telling is true, I think. He’s too shaken not to. Dunbar is good.”

Quinn glanced at Dane, one eyebrow lifted in query. Dane nodded; he wanted to hear this, too. Chad had cost him everything; he had the right to know what had really gone down that night and why.

Shaken, he thought after a few minutes on the other side of that steel door, wasn’t a strong enough word. Chad looked like he’d shrunk to child size.

He wasn’t behind bars per se—the small room was screened, not barred. But it was clearly a cell, and Chad clearly knew it. He was willing to talk to his sister, although Dane suspected it was an effort to regain her sympathy and enlist her help in saving him from the consequences of what he’d done.

From the consequences of who he was, Dane amended silently as Chad again gave them the same version of that night’s events that he had back at the abandoned arcade. Kayla listened, expressionless, although Dane knew that hearing about it all again had to be excruciating. It was hard enough for him to listen to Chad’s repeated excuses, his declaration that he’d had no idea, that he’d only wanted the money.

“Why?” Kayla finally said, asking again the ultimate question.

“I told you, they walked in on us. Startled us.”

“Please,” Dane said. He’d stayed quiet throughout the long, rambling discourse, but now he was unable to stop himself. “Troy could talk squirrels out of trees, and you expect us to believe he murdered two people because he was startled?”

“But he had the money in his hand and was reading Dad’s papers. He was caught red-handed.”

“Papers?” Dane asked, brows furrowing. “Even after he had the money? What papers?”

Chad looked blank. “I don’t know.”

“I think I do.”

Detective Dunbar’s voice came from the doorway behind them. The detective walked into the room, wearing the expression of a man who’d figured out a puzzle.

“I went back through the old evidence files. There was a list of the papers from the desk that were booked as evidence because of blood spatter.” He glanced at Kayla, as if to see if she was okay with the blunt description. She gave the slightest nod of her head, so he continued. “The investigators at the time thought it was just a result of the fight. And because the killer wore gloves, there were no prints, even if we did go back and look with better technology now.”

“I already told you Troy had gloves on,” Chad said, that whiny note that had always irritated Dane creeping back into his voice. Dunbar ignored him, which made Dane like him even more.

“One set of those papers had more blood than the rest, indicating they were on top of the desk. Or closest to the attack.”

“Meaning they were what Troy was holding?” Kayla asked, getting there quickly.

Dunbar nodded. “There was a void in the pattern, indicating perhaps a thumb holding them and that they were on top.”

“What were they?” Dane asked.

“Insurance,” Dunbar said. “Life insurance.”

Kayla frowned. “I remember that. It took a long time for the insurance claim to come through because the police had the papers. Dad’s attorney had to step in.”

Dane remembered that, too, but he was focused now on something else. “Wait, are you saying there’s a connection? Between the insurance and the murders? That makes no sense—Kayla got the money.”

He didn’t mention that she’d spent a goodly chunk of it hunting down her brother. Or the painful fact that she’d accused him of being after it himself. But he saw her wince and suspected she was thinking just that.

Detective Dunbar looked at Kayla. “According to those papers, you and your brother were equal beneficiaries.”

“Yes,” she answered.

“What did you do with the money?”

“Wasted too much of it looking for him.” She confirmed Dane’s suspicion about her thoughts, indicating Chad with a jerk of her head, not even looking at him.

“Including his half?”

She looked startled. “No. Of course not. I never touched his.”

Dane saw Chad perk up at this. He was thankful they were separated by that metal screen, or he likely would have punched him again. As if he’d sensed it, Dunbar moved them over to the far side of the room, where Chad couldn’t listen to every word.

“Chad’s half is still sitting in a beneficiary account,” Kayla explained.

Dunbar looked as if the number-one thing on his list had just been checked off. “Okay,” Dane said, still baffled, “I get that there’s a tempting pile of money there, but—”

Dunbar held up a hand. “Here’s what I think went down. Troy—and if that guy’s not a pure sociopath I’ll be surprised—sees the insurance papers in the desk. Realizes that with their folks dead, Chad comes into a hundred times what he had in his hand. And knows he’s got Chad under his thumb.”

Kayla gaped at him. “You think he killed my parents so that Chad would get that money and he could manipulate him out of it?”

“So when Troy called Chad a tool, he meant it literally—is that it?” Dane asked.

“If I’m right, yes.”

“I always wondered why Troy stayed friends with Chad.” It made perfect, if twisted, sense, Dane thought. Except for one thing. “But Chad ran and never collected. And if he had contact with Chad all this time, why did he wait so long? And why was he sending him money, which helped him stay away?”

“Yeah, that hung me up, too. I figured at most he’d give it a cooling-off period, until things settled, before he brought Chad back.”

“But Chad was the only suspect you were looking for,” Kayla said. “He couldn’t have collected the money, could he?”

“Not likely while he was the suspect, and especially not if he was convicted. This state has a pretty solid Slayer Statute. But that would mean it would go to the next likely beneficiary. If Troy convinced Chad to make that him, gave him power of attorney on that account or something...”

Dunbar let it hang with a shrug.

“And he could,” Kayla said. “Chad’s that weak-minded.”

Something in her voice, something steely and solid, told Dane she truly had reached the end when it came to her brother. He was a little puzzled; he should be glad, but he was feeling a bit numb. Had the love that had guided his life for a decade truly died, or was he just afraid to believe after having been burned so many times?

He made himself get back to the matter at hand. “So why the wait?”

“I did a bit more digging. You knew Troy’s dad died shortly after the murders?”

Dane nodded. “Cancer. Troy was—or seemed—pretty devastated.”

“So was his mother,” Kayla said. “She just wasted away afterward. He even moved back home to take care of her. Everybody thought that was so noble of him.”

“A million dollars buys a lot of nobility,” Dunbar said.

Dane blinked. “What?”

“His father had a million dollar life insurance policy, too.”

Kayla’s eyes widened. “And taking care of his mother likely meant taking care of the money, too.”

Dane’s mind leaped ahead. It was crazy, but so was this whole thing. “So you think it was just coincidence that Troy’s dad died during the...cooling-off period after the murders, as you called it?”

“Had to be. It’s the only explanation for why they never went ahead with it. Troy didn’t need the money by then.”

Kayla’s eyes widened. “I remember once, when his father was still alive, Troy saying how his dad’s illness was sucking up everything. He said it as if he were worried about his mother doing without, but it was probably just himself he was worried about.”

“Makes sense. Things must have been tight, and anything extra would have gone to his father’s care. Time, attention, money, everything. A guy like Troy wouldn’t take to that very well. He’s got that entitlement mentality to the bone.”

“So that triggered the theft of Kayla’s dad’s stash?”

“I’m betting if we dig deep enough, we might find some other thefts, too. Buddy burgs, we call them—stealing from friends’ homes.”

“And then when his dad died and the insurance came through, he didn’t need that anymore,” Dane said.

“Or Chad’s,” Kayla said.

“He has been living pretty high,” Dane said.

“And,” Dunbar added, “sending money to Chad. To keep him on the string, if my theory is right. I’ll put the financial guy on it in the morning, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s run through most of that money in the last ten years.”

Kayla shuddered visibly. “So now he needed Chad’s.”

“Did Troy know you hadn’t touched it?”

She nodded, her expression grim. “The subject came up a time or two when we would run into each other. It seemed casual at the time, but now I see he was checking to make sure it was still there.”

“So there were two options,” Dunbar said. “Chad comes back, somehow proves his innocence and collects and Troy manipulates the money out of him. Or...”

He hesitated, looking at Kayla as if not sure he wanted to finish. Dane did it for him.

“Or he tells Chad to come back knowing he’d be arrested and convicted.” Kayla sucked in an audible breath. She had to be reeling from all this, Dane thought, but he made himself finish. “Much easier to just be the secondary beneficiary.”

“Unless Kayla fought it,” Dunbar said as Dane had just gotten there himself. “He did it, didn’t he?” he asked, staring at Dunbar.

The detective looked at Dane. Then, slowly, he nodded. “That’s my guess.”

Kayla glanced from Dane to the detective and back, looking a little shell-shocked. “What?”

“I’m betting the insurance policy or your folks’ will said that if one of you died, the other got what was left of that money. Troy would have to fight that, as long as you were still alive.”

Dane saw the realization dawn. Her voice shook as she spoke it. “Troy threw that fire bomb. He brought Chad back to collect one way or another and tried to kill me. He planned it all along.”

Dane would have done worse than kill Troy if he’d been able to get at him just because of the look on her face. She’d been betrayed by her brother and a man who was supposedly a friend.

And by he himself?

He shoved aside that thought as another occurred to him. “Why was Troy there at all tonight?”

Dunbar studied him for moment. “I think you already know.”

“To clean up the other lose end,” Dane said slowly. “Chad.”

Dunbar nodded as Kayla gasped yet again. “I think he knew things were falling apart. Once he realized Foxworth was never going to stop, he decided to cut his losses. And the only person who could throw suspicion on him for the murders was Chad.”