Chapter Thirteen

Jack wasn't sure if he'd ever had a more uncomfortable task. From seeing Lea and Randal together, it was quite possible that she might someday be his mother-in-law. It wouldn't be good to start out by asking her if she was a murderer. Of course she'd say no, then he'd have to figure out if she was a liar. Either way, it was bad.

He knew that the guests had figured out that each person had been assigned an interrogator. Jack overheard Barbara say, "We don't get to choose who grills us? Will we be put into a barren little room and told we can't smoke?" Lea answered, "I could stand an afternoon with Randal." Barbara said, "Jack is mine."

With a red face, Jack hurried away. He didn't want to hear any more. So now he'd postponed the interview long enough and he had to face Lea. He had no idea how to begin.

She was sitting in the living room, wearing black pants and a white blouse, her handbag beside her. She looked like she was ready to go somewhere.

"Hi." Even to himself, he sounded cautious.

"Hello," she answered.

"Could I take you to lunch? Whatever you want to eat, we have it in South Florida. How about Cuban?"

"You know what I'd like?" She didn't wait for his answer. "I want to know everything about Randal. He won't talk about himself much, but I want to know."

Jack was pleased at that idea. Telling about Randal was preferable to asking about murder. He'd just segue into what needed to be asked. "I can understand that. He's been through some pretty awful stuff."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"How about we have lunch, then I take you to see the house where he and Sara grew up?"

She looked delighted at that idea. "How about picking up some greasy fried takeout, and we eat it at the house?"

Jack's eyes sparkled. "I see why Randal is in love with you. KFC?"

"Love it!" she said.

"I'm afraid I don't have a car here. Mind riding in my beat-up truck?"

"Are you kidding? For years I drove nothing else. I had a manufacturing company to run, and I had to pick up supplies and deliver crates to be shipped and—" She waved her hand. "All of it. Being a boss is no easy job."

"No, it's not. Tell me about your business." They got into his truck and as she talked of constructing sandals, Jack thought of saws and skulls being cut open. It looked like she had the know-how, along with the strong motive of getting rid of her abusive husband.

At the KFC window, he ordered two three-piece boxes, original recipe. He liked a woman who wasn't afraid of fried chicken. He smiled when he remembered that when he first met Sara when he was a teenager, he took her out for huge, greasy burgers.

"Tell me about the houses," Lea said.

"Built for soldiers returning from World War Two. Plain, sturdy, small."

"And Cal was Sara's next-door neighbor?"

"Yes," he said, but then elaborated. "They were each other's saviors. Cal's father was a bastard, and his stepmother couldn't have cared less."

"And Sara?"

"Her situation was just as bad. Her mother loved Randal but couldn't stand Sara." When Lea gave a laugh, he looked at her in surprise.

"Randal can make anyone like him. It's a talent, like music or art. He was so nice to my husband, he even made him smile a few times. But then Randal passed me in the hall and said, ‘I hate your husband.' It made me laugh hard."

"Sara isn't like that."

"No, she's not. I can see that she is totally honest. If she dislikes you, you know it."

As Jack stopped on the driveway of the Medlar house, he looked at Lea. He was glad she seemed to really know Randal. She wasn't fooled by his elegant manners.

She seemed to understand and they exchanged smiles before turning away to look at the house. "It looks good."

"Thank you. We had plans for a major reno, but we haven't had the heart to do it. I've done a lot of repairs since I bought the house. It's stable and clean, but it hasn't really been changed. I was in Colorado for months, and Sara said they put in some furniture. I haven't seen what they did. You ready?"

She nodded, and they took their food boxes and drinks inside. It was cozy and very much like stepping back in time. Very 1950s decor, even to the flowered wallpaper around the front window.

"Looks like Kate and Sara did more than they said." Jack shook his head. "I have a feeling I'm never going to be allowed to renovate this place."

"I'll bet you Randal had a hand in this."

"Probably so."

They put their food on the skinny-legged coffee table, then Jack followed her around the house. The kitchen had retro appliances and new laminate countertops. No granite allowed. The bathroom was turquoise tile with white fixtures.

"Perfect," Lea said as they went back to the living room and sat down to eat. "I want to hear about Randal."

As succinctly as he could, Jack told her about Randal's life. The story wasn't pretty. Jack elaborated on how Randal had been favored by his mother. "It's not good for a child to be told he's right in whatever he does. That hurts him."

Lea looked at Jack. "Or for a child to always be told he's bad."

He knew she was referring to Roy's relentless belittling of him. He turned away but was glad for her understanding.

Jack spent the most time telling of what happened after Kate was born. When he told who betrayed Randal and why, Lea stared at him in disbelief.

"When Kate was here, she and her father were inseparable. I've never seen a parent and child love each other more. That they were separated—" Lea turned away to blink back tears.

"Yeah," Jack said. "The poor kid was so traumatized she blocked out all memory of him, and of Sara."

"Ah, yes, Sara. How are you attached to her?"

He told how Sara had more or less rescued him, his mother, and his sister when Jack's stepdad died unexpectedly. Sara gave Jack the money to start his construction business, and later, she showed him the world outside Florida. "Come on," he said. "Let me show you where Cal and Sara met from the time they were children."

They closed their empty boxes and went outside. Next door was the Wyatt house, where Cal had grown up. Jack showed her the path covered in old hubcaps. It had almost been buried over the years but Jack had restored it. He explained that Cal's father ran an auto repair shop. "When a car fell on the old man and crippled him, Cal gave up college and stayed in Lachlan to run the shop and support his father and his stepmother."

"Who were horrible to him," Lea said.

"Right."

Jack led them to the end of the path. There was a crumbling concrete floor. "Used to have a wooden frame with vines over it."

"A love nest."

"Probably." He nodded toward a wooden bench. "This is new." They sat down.

They were silent for a while, then Lea smiled. "Cal was a darling. That week we were at Lachlan House, he did all the work Roy was paid to do. Did you know that Cal and James Lachlan were great friends?"

"Sara said something about that, but I didn't think it was a ‘great' friendship."

"Oh yes! One day I made lemonade and brownies and took them out to Cal. He'd been on the roof doing something and he was sweaty. He apologized but..." She grinned. "Lord! But he was a good-looking man. No offense, but he was even better than you and Roy."

Jack was far from offended. "The Magnificent Three. That's what he and his two buddies were called in high school."

"I can believe it. Cal and I sat in the shade and talked. He told me about how much he missed James. He said he'd been like a real father to him. Cal said that when he was little he and his mother visited Lachlan House often. She cooked for him. Poor man. I can understand. James was a childless widower for many years."

"I knew Grandad worked here, but I didn't know they were actual friends," Jack said in wonder.

"James used to play catch with Cal. And football. Not American but soccer. Cal said his mother showed them how to kick the ball around. She was quite good at it."

"Renata?" Jack was astonished.

"If that's your great-grandmother's name, yes. She was from Argentina, I think."

"Brazil," Jack said. "She died long before I was born. I know Grandad always missed her. She was the buffer between him and his father. What else did he say?"

"That's all. Cal saw Roy doing nothing and went after him." She gave Jack a sharp look. "How did you and Cal turn out so good and Roy was so...?" She waved her hand, unable to think of the words.

"Mothers," he said. "Cal had Renata and I had my mom, Heather. Roy's mother was a woman named Donna. She is not a nice person."

"Is that a big understatement?"

"Oh yeah."

"She's still alive?"

"Yes, but I don't see her. She liked her son and no one else on earth."

"Not her beautiful husband, Cal?"

"Especially not him."

"Then why in the world did he—?"

Jack looked at her.

"Oh. Preggers."

"Yes."

"I don't mean to be nosy but why didn't Cal and Sara marry?"

"No one knows, and Sara won't tell. If you ask her, she turns into a statue. Immobile and soundless. She just plain freezes. Sometimes I wonder how different everything would have been if Sara had married him. For one thing, she would have been my grandmother."

"Too bad she isn't," Lea said. "If she were a blood relative, she might have helped you in your business, educated you, and encouraged you in your pursuit of a woman like Kate. It is certainly bad that she's not your real grandmother."

Jack laughed, then leaned over and kissed Lea's cheek. "Thanks." He paused, then said, "Would you like to see the inside of Granddad's house?"

"I think you and I should talk about why we came here."

"I told you about Randal."

She gave him a look that said he knew what she was talking about. "I didn't kill my husband and I don't know who did. None of you have even hinted at how he was killed, but we don't think it was a firearm. Someone would have heard it. As for opportunity, all of us were all over the house. We would have seen a stranger, so it had to be one of us."

"No guesses?"

"That's hard to say. Everyone disliked him so very much. He was rude, sarcastic, and loved to put people down."

"Yet you married him."

"I can assure you that before the wedding, he was the kindest, most thoughtful person in the world. But I do understand why he was murdered."

"It's a matter of who."

"What if you never found out? What if you just left it alone?"

"As Sara has said, ‘No matter how vile a person is, you can't kill them.'" He looked at her. "Is there something you haven't told me?"

She didn't speak for a moment as she seemed to be pondering something. Leaning back, she dug into her trouser pocket, withdrew a ring, and handed it to him.

It was obviously old, with an intricate yellow gold band and three reddish-brown stones.

"I found it. It's not really valuable, and I never saw Mrs. Meyers wear it. Maybe it was sentimental."

"Are you saying that this had something to do with the murder?"

"I have no idea," Lea said. "As you know, Randal and I had to sneak around to see each other, so one night I was hiding in a doorway. It was a full moon and quite bright. I saw Rachel running across the lawn. She had a paper bag in her hand and she dropped it. The lawn had been watered and I guess the paper broke. She went to her knees and I could hear her cursing as she searched for whatever had been in the bag. It took her what seemed like an eternity to find all the items."

"And you were in a hurry to get to Randal."

"Yes. I was afraid he'd leave. He does love punctuality. Anyway, Rachel gathered whatever she'd found in the grass and rolled it into her top. I still don't know how she did that because that girl wore practically nothing. Barbara used to make jokes about her shaving. Oh! Sorry. Just girl talk."

"And this ring was left behind?"

"Yes. The next morning I thought about what I'd seen. It was just barely daylight and I heard Derek in his room. As always, I wanted to avoid seeing him, so I went outside. I looked in the grass about where Rachel had been and I saw the ring."

He waited for her to say more but she was silent. "You didn't give it to Mrs. Meyers?"

"It was a dilemma. Should I give it to her or to Rachel—who I was pretty sure had stolen it? But I'd seen that she had a whole bag of things. If I gave the ring to Mrs. Meyers, she might check what else was missing. Then I'd get Rachel in trouble. And if I gave it to Rachel, she'd know I knew her secret, and I'd make an enemy. And trust me on this, you do not want Rachel for an enemy! In the end, I did nothing. It was cowardly of me, but at the time, I had other things on my mind."

Jack was looking at the ring. "When Rachel dropped all the stuff, you didn't see anything green, did you?"

Lea's eyes widened. "Like that big emerald ring Mrs. Meyers owned? I only saw it once at dinner. It's so big that it has a name and a history. She told us. It belonged to some Indian prince hundreds of years ago. She said her husband gave it to her on their twentieth anniversary. We were all quiet because she looked like she was going to cry. She held her hand to her heart and whispered, ‘I will miss it.'" Lea looked at Jack. "Was Derek going to take it from her?"

"We don't know, but maybe."

Her head came up. "If Rachel hid it somewhere, then her grandmother couldn't give it to him."

She looked so hopeful that Rachel wasn't a thief that Jack said, "Maybe." But he didn't believe that. "When Derek disappeared, did Mrs. Meyers say anything about missing jewels?"

"She was as happy as we all were. Billy was an excellent host and champagne flowed. He said, ‘Drink up, ladies, the bad man paid for it.' So we drank and ate and laughed hysterically. Barbara is a great mimic, and she did a one-woman show for us, and Mrs. Meyers told us raunchy stories from her long life."

"What about Greer and Reid?"

"Greer wasn't allowed to participate. Too young. Actually, I sent her and Kate upstairs. Reid? He couldn't have been there. A male presence tends to make women tone themselves down. But of course Billy added to the fun."

"And Rachel?"

"Now that I think about it, she wasn't there either. She and Reid were probably doing it in the garage or in the guesthouse or at the cottage or on top of the iguanas. We all laughed at how insatiable they were."

"Even Mrs. Meyers laughed about her granddaughter?"

"The hardest of us all. She often said that she was just like Rachel at that age."

"A scantily clad, promiscuous thief with a bad temper?"

Lea laughed. "You've been around Sara for a long time. That's just what she'd say."

"Thank you. That's a compliment." He took out his phone. "Excuse me," he said as he sent a text to Sara:

Lea saw Rachel with a bag full of jewels. And she was hot and heavy with Reid.

"Don't forget to tell her how Rachel dressed," Lea said. "I think maybe she was Derek's next choice for wife."

The look on Jack's face told what he thought of that. "She wouldn't have fallen for him, would she?"

Lea shrugged. "There's something enticing about older men." She said it with a twinkle because Randal was no kid.

Jack tapped on his phone.

Rachel wore little, sulked a lot, and old Oliver may have planned to try to marry her. $$$$

He looked at Lea. "Anything else?"

"That's all I can think of." She looked at her watch. "When's your curfew?"

"I'm to report back at 4:00 p.m."

"Then we better hightail it. We have ten minutes. Want me to drive?"

Jack scoffed, then stood up. "Think you can keep up?"

"Try me."

They ran to the truck, sped out, and arrived at Lachlan House in nine and a half minutes.