Tacked to Death (23 page)

"Your hormones knew him."

Camden shrugged. "You're right. What do
we do now?"

"I don't know. I need to talk to Joe.
He seems to know how to dig and get direct answers."

"What are you looking for exactly with
this Rebecca Woodson thing?"

She frowned. "I can't pinpoint it, but
I think Sterling's murder goes back to his past. There are people
here who didn't like him and aren't sad to see him gone, but I
can't help feeling like either he was killed because someone here
was afraid of his past, or of him directly. I wish I could find out
more about Rebecca Woodson. Or Carolyn Taber."

"Oh yeah, her. I wanted to tell you
this, too. She's a manipulative one. She wormed her way into
Charles's life. I guess she doesn't come from big money and she's
been the one dark spot for Charles. The parents weren't keen on
her, and she had to become Miss Perfect to get her hooks into
him."

"She also got her hooks into Sterling.
I guess he wanted to cement her situation all the way around. But
it looked like it backfired on her."

Camden nodded. "I hate to run, Mick,
but I've got to get back to the store. By the way, that necklace
you wanted to give Joe's daughter for her birthday came
in."

"Oh good. I'll be by to get it. Thanks
for helping me with all of this."

"No problem. See you at
home."

Michaela paid the bill and looked at
her watch. She needed to go and work horses for a while. If she was
going to get any further with finding out who'd done Sterling in,
she knew she'd need some help. There were tons of loose ends; she
just wasn't sure how to tie them up.

The fresh air, and working with her
animals, might help clear her mind, but when she pulled onto the
ranch, she knew that wasn't going to happen. To her dismay, another
visitor had shown up. Detective Peters leaned against his car,
waiting for her.

Thirty-Four

“
Hello detective. I’m surprised
to see you.” Michaela hoped he wasn't here to arrest her for
breaking into Sterling's place. What if Jude had told him the truth
about how he had come into possession of the tapes? Would he do
that to her? Especially after yesterday? She didn't think so, but
she also didn't like the mere fact that she was questioning
it.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Bancroft." He
crossed his arms and shifted from leaning against his
car.

Oh no. What was this all
about?

"Some new evidence has come to light in
our investigation regarding Mr. Taber."

"New evidence?" she asked. He was here
about the tapes then.

He nodded. "I'm here to let you know
that Carolyn Taber, Sterling's sister-in-law, committed suicide
this afternoon and left behind a set of incriminating tapes, along
with a letter that has led us to believe she was involved in her
brother-in-law's murder. I'm afraid that you were a victim of
circumstance. My apologies."

"Suicide?" She shook her head. No, that
didn't add up at all. Carolyn Taber was off—that much was a
given—but she hadn't appeared suicidal. Michaela could buy into the
possibility that she'd murdered Sterling, but not that she'd kill
herself. The tapes. She rubbed her forehead. "Um, you said tapes?
What do you mean?"

"Ms. Bancroft, this is an ongoing
investigation and I'm not permitted to discuss it with you." He
leaned back against his cruiser.

Rage suddenly boiled under the surface,
overtaking her sense of shock. "You can't discuss this with me?
After all the grief you've caused me in the past week, going after
me like a pit bull, and you can't at least let me in on what you've
found?"

"That is correct. The case against you
was shaping up to be circumstantial, and it would appear after our
forensics team went over the polo mallet again that there is
another set of partial prints on there. I do apologize for any
inconvenience this has caused you."

"Inconvenience? All I have to say,
Detective, is that if I were a vengeful person, I'd have a lawsuit
smacked down on the police department and you personally so fast
that you wouldn't have time to shove another donut down your
throat! This has been the most poorly conducted investigation." She
shook her head. "I think it would be best for you to leave
now."

She stormed off toward the barn as
Peters drove away. Now they found partial prints other than hers on
her mallet? Of course: Because she'd handed over the tapes, the
investigation took a different turn. She kicked the dirt with her
foot. "Damn!" She went into her office, grabbed a bottle of water
out of the fridge, and sat down at her desk. The tapes. Peters had
said that Carolyn had a set of tapes with her when she killed
herself. But she'd pleaded with Michaela for her tapes. Sterling
had told Carolyn that he'd destroy the tapes, or at least that had
been her story. He hadn't destroyed his set, that much was for
certain. Michaela had turned that set over to Jude. And Carolyn had
presumably destroyed the set that Sterling had sent her. He told
her on the tape not to bother destroying her set because there were
others. Someone had another set of those videos. But who? Had
Carolyn killed herself because she felt there was no hope? Maybe
she thought that if her husband found out, things would be over
between them and the gravy train would stop running. Again, though,
how had she acquired a set of the tapes? Where was she when she'd
supposedly taken her life?

Michaela wanted answers, because she
wasn't buying the idea that Carolyn had killed herself. Women like
Carolyn Taber bounced back, even after ugly divorces and
scandal.

She needed to talk to Jude. Would he
give her the information she wanted? Or would he tell her to go and
do what she was best at—train horses and teach kids? Wasn't that
what he'd told her? She hit her desk. Here she should be thrilled.
She was off the hook. No one suspected her of any wrongdoing and
she was free to get her life back on track. But still, what good
would it do if she felt in her gut that Sterling Taber's killer
wasn't dead but still out there? Sure, Sterling and even Carolyn
weren't exactly pillars of society, but they were people, and they
didn't deserve to be murdered. And Michaela knew that Carolyn Taber
had been murdered. She just knew it.

She got up from her desk and headed
into the house. She had withheld one of the tapes from Jude, the
one with another woman in it—which she'd assumed was a one-night
stand. She hadn't thought it mattered the other night when she'd
seen it, and then she really didn't think it mattered when she
connected Carolyn to the other tapes. But did it matter, though?
Could the mystery woman have had a set of the tapes,
too?

As much as she hated to do it, Michaela
put in the other tape. She watched all forty minutes of it and was
thoroughly sick to her stomach when it was over. She saw nothing.
Well, she saw something all right, but she couldn't find anything
odd. The sound effects consisted of some grunts and moans and
Sterling finally yelling out the woman's name—Sheila!
Yuck.

Nothing there. Michaela paced inside
the family room—usually a place of comfort and warmth, it now felt
like four walls closing in on her. There were holes in all of this,
and she was going to take them one by one and plug them up. She
called Jude but he was out of the office, so she left a message.
She was determined to learn what he knew about Carolyn Taber's
apparent suicide. Since she couldn't start with Carolyn, she'd
begin with Rebecca Woodson's fall from the pier in Santa Barbara
last summer and her subsequent death. Everything about what had
happened last summer smelled foul to her. She didn't believe the
story that Rebecca had fallen by accident. She'd seen Sterling in
action. The man had an anger management problem, plus he was a
narcissist and complete egomaniac. He'd do anything to cover his
ass. Both Zach and Tommy had witnessed Sterling and Rebecca
drinking, then arguing, and that was all they knew until the next
morning when the police questioned Sterling. Then, Rebecca's
brother came by to beat the truth out of Sterling about what had
happened to his sister. Then, the Woodsons filed a wrongful death
suit that Charles Taber quietly made go away with a large sum of
cash to the Woodsons. After that he'd cut down his brother's share
of the family fortune and suggested that he leave for good; thus,
Carolyn Taber and Sterling's desire to get back into his wealthy
family's deep pockets.

Michaela got on the Internet, hoping to
see if she could find out any more information about Rebecca
Woodson. After about an hour of skimming articles and scouring
phone information pages, she found the man she believed to be
Rebecca's brother. She had to speak with him and find out what the
family thought happened that fateful night. She picked up the phone
and hit pay dirt.

Rebecca's brother, Ryan, hesitated to
say anything at first. "Who is this? What do you want? You from the
paper?"

"No. I'm not from the paper." Michaela
explained who she was. She told him about Sterling's murder, the
investigation over the past week, and why she felt the need to talk
to him. Amazingly, the man didn't hang up on her.

"I'm not surprised that bastard is
dead. You know, Becky was my baby sister. A good kid. Sure, she was
a little wild sometimes. She liked to party, and if she hadn't
gotten all caught up in that rich-kid crowd, she'd still be here.
But that Sterling dude, he was no good, you know? Strung Becky
along like he was dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit. Creep. I
hear he done that with lots of girls. Liked to give them jewelry
and things, you know, make sure they believe he was into them.
Crazy, too, 'cause a guy like that didn't need to do no convincing
girls to be with him, you know? A guy like that only needed to snap
his fingers and there you go, the girls come runnin'."

"He liked to give women
jewelry?"

"Oh yeah. Gave Becky a diamond ring,
like he was gonna marry her or sumthin'. Please. That ring, she had
it on when they found her." He started to choke up. "I know this is
gonna sound real awful of me, but I needed money to investigate
those people. Them Tabers are loaded and when Becky was killed—and
she was killed, I know—it broke my mother's heart. I made a vow to
get those people. I took that ring to hock it and get some cash to
pay this guy I know who's a private eye, and the ring was a fake.
Fake fucking diamond."

"Fake?"

"Huh. Yep, fake. Just like that guy
was."

Michaela asked him about what he
thought happened the night his sister died.

"I think Becky and what's his name,
can't even say it, got into it. My sister was feisty and I think
she figured out what he was all about, and they started in and he
pushed her off the pier. He ran home and hid behind his family's
dough. Money talks."

"I hate to ask you this, but what about
the rumor that Becky had a sugar daddy?"

"That's bull! I never heard that. She
wouldn't do that."

"What about the wrongful death suit
your family filed?"

"I can't talk about that. The Tabers
did pay my mother some cash and we decided to leave the situation
alone. Too painful."

"Did you ever talk with Sterling again?
After your sister's death?"

"Once. Dude actually called me three
weeks ago. He had the gall to call me and tell me that he wanted to
talk to me about Becky and what happened that night. I told him
that unless he planned to admit that he murdered my sister, we had
nothing to talk about."

"What did he say?"

"I didn't let him say nothing. I hung
up on him. He came into my work a few days later but I wasn't
there. I don't know what the hell he wanted. It's probably a good
thing for him I wasn't here. But looks like I won't need to be
worrying about Sterling Taber dropping in on me ever
again."

Michaela talked a few minutes more with
Ryan, thanked him, and hung up. Tommy was pretty certain that
Rebecca had a wealthy older man keeping her in diamonds and pearls
and that she played him on the side, but her brother claimed he had
no knowledge of it. Was it pure rumor started by a group of
wealthy, spoiled young people, or was there a secret life to
Rebecca that her brother either didn't know about or denied? Either
way, as far as she was concerned, she'd acquired two interesting
pieces of information from Ryan Woodson. The first tidbit was that
Sterling had gone to see Ryan when he was in Santa Barbara. Why?
What was it that he wanted to tell Ryan about his sister's death?
He surely wasn't going to admit any wrongdoing. The visit itself
was a mystery, but could it be tied into Sterling's own
demise?

The other fascinating thing she'd
learned was about the ring that Sterling had given to Rebecca—a
fake. It caused Michaela to think about the tennis bracelet she'd
found, and Sterling's juvie stint for stealing an expensive
jewel.

Before she had time to explore that
train of thought, her doorbell rang—repeatedly. Oh God, don't let
it be Peters with a change of heart about things.

"Okay, I'm coming!" she yelled. Whoever
was on the other side of the door certainly wanted her to open
it.

She was surprised when she opened the
door and came face-to-face with Ethan's wife, Summer, holding Josh.
It took Michaela a moment to even register who it was. She
immediately recognized little Joshy, but—hold the horses—Summer was
not in her usual state of yuppydom with carefully applied makeup
and perfect outfit. "Summer?"