Chapter 11

“What are you saying!”A voice sounded behind me, and I turned around as a young woman slipped through a rear door. She looked so much like Jared that I had to assume it was his sister Holly.

“This doesn’t concern you,” Jared said to her. “I’ll take care of it.”

“If it’s about Lindsay and Ryan, it absolutely concerns me,” she said. “I’m not a child, Jared. And you’re not my father.”

She strode over and stuck her hand out. “I’m Holly Beech. Who are you, and what do you know about my sister?”

Jared looked irritated but didn’t try to dissuade her again. He motioned toward the uncomfortable chairs. “Perhaps you’d like to sit and explain what all this is about.”

So I did. When I got to the part where Kelsey had gotten pregnant from her night with Ryan, Holly jumped up and glared at her brother.

“I told you Ryan didn’t do it. I told you it wasn’t possible, but no one believed me.”

Jared cut his eyes at her, and the tension between them was palpable. But within it was something else—fear. “You were just a child, Holly. You didn’t know anything about their real lives.”

“I did too!” she said. “You just wanted to believe the worst about him because he didn’t have money and status. You’re a snob, just like our father.”

“Yes, I am. And he’s the reason you live in a mansion, wearing designer clothes, and never have to get a job. There are worse things to be. If this woman got pregnant by Ryan, then why didn’t she contact him?”

I continued to explain the situation—Kelsey’s reunion with her then-boyfriend, who she married, and that they’d assumed the boy was his because they looked alike. When I got to the situation with Ben’s medical issues, Holly’s face fell.

“Oh my God!” she said. “That’s awful. He’s just a little boy. And the only person who can save him is Ryan.”

Jared sighed. “Which is a damned good reason for her to lie about being with him that night. Don’t you see that, Holly? She needs access to Ryan to save her son. That’s all this is about.”

Holly bit her lip, obviously not wanting to side with her brother but unable to counter his argument. “She’s sure her son belongs to Ryan?”

“There are only two options, and her husband is not the father. She met Ryan at the hotel while he was tending bar. She’s absolutely certain of his identity.”

“Then she got the date wrong,” Jared said. “And she’s lying, hoping to get her son the help he needs.”

I shook my head. “It was the day before her birthday and her friends agree on the date as well. During the range of time when your sister was killed, Ryan was in a hotel room with her in New Orleans. I have to tell you, I’m a former CIA agent, and one of the first things we learn to do and learn it well is to determine when people are lying. She’s not lying. I would stake my reputation on it, and that’s saying a lot.”

His eyes widened a bit when I mentioned the CIA and then he frowned. “Even if all of this was true, what do you want from us? Lindsay no longer lived at home and mostly tried to avoid all of us. We hadn’t seen her for at least a week before she was killed, and that was here for a family meeting.”

Holly nodded. “Which meant our father told us how disappointed he was in our life choices over an awkward and long dinner.”

Jared gave his sister a look that said he clearly didn’t appreciate her talking about her father that way. “Lindsay left in the middle of dinner. That’s the last time any of us saw her.”

“You didn’t speak to her at all after that night?” I asked.

“By phone, twice, but she refused to do what father wanted, which was for her to break it off with Ryan and take her proper place in this family. I tried to talk some sense into her because father was making noise about cutting her out of the will, but she didn’t care. She said she loved Ryan and intended to stick it out with him.”

“What about you, Holly? Did you see her after that dinner?”

Holly shook her head. “I was only fifteen. Lindsay worked a lot in the city and then she had Ryan. No one really wanted to hang out with me.”

“Did you talk to her on the phone?”

“No. Lindsay was really smart. We didn’t have a lot in common. I was really immature back then.”

Jared smirked and it was clear he thought Holly was still immature.

“There you have it, Ms. Redding,” Jared said. “Neither of us know anything about that night. So I ask again, what is it you expect us to do?”

“Tell me who wanted your sister dead,” I said. “If Ryan didn’t kill her—and I don’t believe he did—then someone else did.”

Jared’s eyes flashed. “Not me, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I simply want to figure out who killed your sister so that a little boy doesn’t die because a man was railroaded into a murder conviction.”

Jared turned his hands up in the air. “I wish I could help. I can certainly sympathize with her situation, but I don’t know anything about what happened. I was here all night, as were Holly and our father. We didn’t know anything about it until the next day when the police showed up. I didn’t even know Lindsay and Ryan had split until the police said something about him living at a motel.”

“You can bet our father didn’t know either, or he would have been gloating about it,” Holly said.

Jared sighed. “All that protesting and angering the man the week before, and Lindsay wasn’t even living with Ryan anymore. Seems a complete waste. If she’d simply admitted the relationship wasn’t working and moved back home, she might still be alive.”

“How did your father take it?” I asked.

“He was devastated, of course,” Jared said. “Lindsay was firstborn and had the business acumen most like our father’s, although that was probably the reason they butted heads. But he had big plans for her.”

“Plans that didn’t include Ryan. Just how angry was he when she stormed out of dinner?”

A blush crept up Jared’s face and he stiffened. “If you’re suggesting our father killed his own daughter over an ill-fated romance, then you don’t know anything about the man. There were a million ways he could have gotten rid of Ryan Comeaux. He was simply hoping that Lindsay would wake up and realize she was throwing her life away and make the right choice. All he had to do was wait and Lindsay would have come around.”

“And if she hadn’t?”

Jared shrugged. “Father would have eventually gotten the outcome he wanted.”

Holly smirked. “He always did.”

“Did Lindsay have any friends that I could speak to?” I asked. “People she might have confided in about her relationship with Ryan?”

“Mandy Reynolds—Amanda—was her bestie,” Holly said. “They were always thick as thieves. But Mandy always had her own drama, so I don’t know how much attention she paid to someone else’s.”

Jared cut his eyes at Holly, clearly giving her the signal to stop talking, and rose from his seat.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Redding,” Jared said. “But I’m going to have to bring this conversation to a close. I have a committee meeting for a charity event we support. I wish you luck with your investigation, but I’m afraid what you’ve told me hasn’t changed my opinion in the slightest. I have always believed Lindsay finally acquiesced to our father’s wishes and broke it off with Ryan, and he killed her. There is no point in searching for a monster under the bed when he’s already in prison. The evidence suggested nothing different. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He left the room without so much as a backward glance. The butler, who must have been standing outside the door, just waiting for the opportunity to show us out, indicated with a single gloved hand and an extremely superior and pleased expression that we were to make our exit.

I pulled out another card and handed it to Holly. “If you think of anything that can help, please let me know.”

She gave the card a wistful look, then looked back at me. “You really don’t think he did it?”

“No. I don’t.”

“I don’t either,” she said quietly, then she whirled around and fled the room through the back door where she’d entered.

We headed out and drove off the estate, the security guard giving us a glare as he opened the gate to let us out.

“Boy, we’re not popular here,” Gertie said.

“I didn’t figure we would be,” Ida Belle said and looked over at me. “So what did you think?”

“Snooty, arrogant, weird—all of which I sort of expected—and their father definitely sounds like a raging narcissist.”

“But?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Jared didn’t appear to be lying about not seeing Lindsay after that dinner, but then he showed almost zero change in expression or emotion over anything except a potential insult to his father. No change when I suggested Ryan hadn’t killed his sister. Not even a flicker when I told him a ten-year-old boy’s life depended on this.”

“If he’s a chip off the old block, then it might be impossible to get a read on him,” Ida Belle said.

“The sister didn’t seem normal, either,” Gertie said. “But she was completely different from Jared. He’s all stiff and formal and she’s clearly a very immature twenty-five. Her behavior is more like an adolescent than an adult.”

“She never grew up,” Ida Belle said. “Was probably told what to do every second of her life and never learned to navigate any of it herself. She’ll live in a permanent state of childhood with a complete lack of responsibility, all her needs and wants met.”

I frowned. “Something about her was off. More than just her maturity level. She was adamant about her belief that Ryan was innocent, even though she admitted she wasn’t close with her sister. And did you see that look Jared gave her when she said she’d never thought he did it?”

Ida Belle nodded. “My guess is Holly had a crush on her sister’s boyfriend. That would explain her supporting Ryan’s innocence as well as her claims that she and her sister weren’t close. She was a lot younger and was probably a pest.”

“Gertie nodded. “Most of us had crushes on inappropriate boys when we were young. And given that Ryan was much older and living with her sister, that would have made things even more tenuous. Holly is very awkward at twenty-five years old. When she was fifteen and her life was still completely controlled by her father, I imagine she was far worse. Pest is probably a charitable description of her back then.”

I pulled out my phone and looked up Amanda Reynolds. “I want to talk to that bestie. If anyone will know what was going on with Lindsay and Ryan, and who else had a vested interest in Lindsay dying, it would be her.”

Mandy’s name came up immediately, and I scrolled through the data, looking for personal information. “She still lives in Magnolia Pass. Married to Sebastian Perkins.”

Gertie sighed. “Guess who the second-oldest family in Magnolia Pass is?”

* * *

It wasn’tdifficult to locate Mandy’s house, or I should say, the other estate in town. It was north of downtown, like the Beeches’ property, but just a bit farther east. I figured we’d encounter another huge gate and a security guard, and I was right. At least this one was a much older man and looked friendlier.

Seventies or better. Five foot ten—probably used to be six foot tall, but now he stooped. Most of his cartilage had been long gone since a previous generation. Zero threat, even with a weapon. By the time he got it out of a holster, aimed, and pulled the trigger, I could have already acquired the weapon and knit a sweater. And I didn’t even know how to knit.

“Hello,” I said and passed a business card over to him. “I’m a private investigator and would like to speak to Ms. Perkins, if she’s available.”

He wrinkled his brow as he read my card. “You’re that gal from Sinful, right? The one that rescued all those women in the swamp?”

“That’s me.”

“What do you want to see Ms. Perkins about? I’m not being nosy. She’s going to want to know in order to decide whether she’ll talk to you, especially with you being an investigator and all.”

“It’s about Lindsay Beech. I have good reason to believe that Ryan Comeaux is innocent.”

He shook his head. “That was a bad, bad time here in Magnolia Pass, and especially for Ms. Perkins. Her and Lindsay had been friends from the crib. It took her a long time to get over Lindsay’s death. I don’t know that she’d want to go back to that place.”

“Even if the real killer is still roaming around free?”

He frowned. “How sure are you that he didn’t do it?”

“Ninety-nine percent.”

“You were CIA, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I was a career Navy man myself before I retired and came to work for the Perkinses. Give me a minute.”

He stepped back in his building and a couple minutes later, popped back out. “Ms. Perkins will talk with you, but you’ll do well to go easy on her. She was in a bad way for a long time. Mr. Perkins won’t take kindly to anyone causing her grief all over again.”

“I’m not here to make trouble. I just want information. If Ryan is innocent, I assume she’d want to know who killed her friend as well.”

“I expect she would. Good luck.”

He stepped back inside and opened the gates. This estate was beautiful but looked a lot more approachable than the Beeches’. It wasn’t as grandiose and ornate. The main house was plantation style, with huge magnolia trees lining the drive and tons of azalea bushes in between. It looked like a place people actually lived and raised a family—granted, a huge place that people lived and raised families in, but it still had a homey feel where the Beeches’ house had screamed pretentious.

I wondered if we would encounter another disapproving butler, but when the door opened, I assumed we were looking at Mandy Perkins.

Early thirties. Five foot six. Trim figure. Excellent muscle tone, but all derived from the gym. I seriously doubted she could fight, but she might be good with a weapon. This was Louisiana. Her anxious expression made her emotional disadvantage clear.

“Mandy?” I asked.

She nodded as she motioned us inside. “You have information about Lindsay’s murder? Is that true?”

“Yes. Can we sit? I’d like to explain everything to you if you have time.”

“Ha. I have nothing but time. No career. Never managed to get pregnant. I spend more time trying to think up things to do to occupy the hours than I do actually doing them.”

We followed her across the foyer to a room that I assumed was their version of a drawing room. But this one was light and airy and contained overstuffed couches and chairs in white with bright, cheerful pillows matching the colors in the floral art on the walls.

“This is really pretty,” Gertie said. “I love the pillows.”

She smiled and looked pleased with the compliment. “I do all the decorating. Even did the embroidery on the pillows and painted the florals on the wall.”

“That’s impressive,” I said. “Do you sell your work?”

The pleased expression fled and was replaced by one of slight annoyance. “My husband doesn’t want me to work.”

Ah. So that’s where the attitude came from. Nothing to do with us and everything to do with a controlling husband.

We all sat, and she perched anxiously on the edge of a chair. “So you think Ryan is innocent? Why?”

I told her everything. She listened intently, never once interrupting, barely blinking. When I got to the part about Ben, she lifted her hand over her mouth, and I could tell she was very troubled. When I was done, she shook her head.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s a lot. And your client is absolutely positive about the day?”

“Without a doubt. It was the day before her birthday, and she’d just had the big breakup.”

Mandy nodded. “Definitely the sort of things a young woman remembers in detail, especially if you end up pregnant.”

“I want to know about Ryan and Lindsay’s relationship,” I said. “Starting with—do you believe he killed her?”

She huffed. “I never wanted to. He never seemed like the type, and their relationship seemed great until her father started pressuring her about it. I never once heard Ryan raise his voice to Lindsay, even about her father, and God knows, I have. He was a horrible man.”

She shook her head. “I guess I finally had to believe it because the police had the evidence, and he was convicted. I didn’t have anything to contribute to the contrary, so what was I supposed to do?”

Gertie nodded. “And your best friend had just been killed. It was a lot to deal with, and you were a young woman yourself.”

She stared down at the floor for a minute and picked at a loose thread on her shirt. Finally, she looked back up at me. “I had a complete breakdown. They hospitalized me for a while. My parents got me into therapy as soon as I got out, but I was so distraught I don’t think I heard a word she said. The drugs they gave me made me feel nothing at all, which I guess I needed at the time, but how can you work through something when you feel nothing? I think I would have been fine after some time passed, but my parents were afraid…”

“That you’d harm yourself?” I asked gently.

She nodded. “Lindsay was more than my best friend. We’d practically been raised together. We were like sisters. I have never loved anyone like I loved her, not even my husband.”

She darted a quick glance at the door, as if to make certain no one was listening, and I had to wonder if Mandy was afraid of her husband.

“Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to harm Lindsay?” I asked.

She leaned forward and locked her gaze on mine. “That’s what it really comes down to, isn’t it? If Ryan didn’t do it, then someone else did. And all this time, he’s thought he got away with it. Have you ever read Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie?”

I shook my head.

“One of my favorites,” Gertie said.

“Mine too,” Mandy said. “There’s a man who tells the woman who is starting to remember a murder she saw when she was a child to ‘let sleeping murder lie.’ The amateur detective—who’s a senior woman with a great understanding of human nature—agrees to help the woman even though she believes the man has given her good advice. Neither take it, of course, or there would be no story, but it makes one think.”

I nodded. “She’s not incorrect. Are you worried that someone will come after you?”

“No. Because I don’t know anything. But what if someone else does? Someone who isn’t capable of protecting themselves like you are? And I’ll admit that bothers me, but not as much as the fate of that poor little boy and his mother.”

She stopped talking and gazed out the window, and I could tell she was rolling something around in her mind, trying to make a decision.

“Lindsay was having problems at her job,” she said finally.

I frowned. “She worked for her father, so that’s not a big surprise.”

She turned back around to look at me. “No! Lindsay refused to work for her father. She worked for an investment firm in New Orleans. She was brilliant with numbers. I mean, really brilliant. Her father tried to play it off with other people, saying that it was better for her to get experience working at an organization where she had to make her own way instead of starting and finishing at a place where everyone knew she’d be in charge one day. But I never bought it. He was mad as hell about it and that was his way of saving face.”

Interesting. When Holly had commented that Lindsay worked in the city, I’d assumed she chose to manage properties and clients there in order to avoid her father and Jared. But this added a whole new layer to things.

“Was her father causing her problems with her job?”

“I think so. She lost a client account—an old one that she’d been entrusted with. Her boss had come down hard on her and she was really upset. The client ended up moving all his investments to her father’s company.”

“Did she make a mistake on something?”

Mandy frowned. “She wouldn’t tell me exactly what happened, but I can’t believe she made a mistake that would have cost them a long-term client. She was so meticulous. I assumed that her father had poached the client—probably offering a big reduction in fees—so that the owners would suspect her of only working there to funnel clients over to Raymond’s firm.”

Ida Belle whistled. “That would definitely be a problem.”

“How much money are we talking about?” I asked.

“I’m not sure exactly, but the hedge fund she worked with doesn’t take on a client with less than ten million to invest. I think Lindsay said nine figures, but I can’t remember exactly. It represented a loss of millions in fees over several years.”

“Not to mention the other clients he might have convinced to leave or never invest with them,” Ida Belle said.

“Good Lord, I can’t even count that high,” Gertie said. “Is that a hundred million?”

Mandy nodded. “At least.”

I shook my head, having trouble not with the incredible numbers, but with a father who would deliberately sabotage his daughter in order to control her life so completely.

“Do you think one of the owners of her firm killed her?” I asked. “That seems extreme, even for millions of dollars. I’m sure they already had plenty.”

She shrugged. “I’ll admit, it doesn’t sound overly plausible, but then, I always assumed it was Ryan. No one ever asked if I knew someone who might be holding a grudge against Lindsay. Not until now.”

I nodded. “Could Raymond have done it? If he felt she was never going to fall in line?”

Her eyes widened. “Lord, I would hope not. He was a nasty human being and a horrible father, but that’s a big leap to killing your kids for not going along with your plans for their lives.”

“Especially if you had the ability to manipulate them back into line,” Gertie said.

“What about Jared?” I asked. “He wasn’t firstborn, but he’s the only son. And he seems to think his father did no wrong. So why wasn’t Raymond’s focus on his son?”

Mandy smirked. “Because Jared doesn’t have even half the ability Lindsay did. Lindsay was that scary kind of smart. Even when we were kids, she’d talk about things that I still wouldn’t understand today, much less when we were six. She’d never met a book she didn’t want to consume, and she remembered everything. She was brilliant all the way around, but when it came to numbers, she was practically a savant.”

“And she was using her superpower to make someone else money,” I said.

She nodded. “The pressure from every side was awful. Her job wanted perfection and to use her for what she could do for their business and their clients. Her father wanted to do the same and was angry that he couldn’t. Jared practically came out of the womb jealous because he would never measure up to her.”

“What about Holly?” I asked.

Mandy shook her head. “She was just a kid when Lindsay died, but I’ve never thought she was quite right. She’s immature for her age, and that makes sense in one way because she’s never had to be an adult, but I’ve always thought there was more to it than that.”

“She claims she never believed Ryan killed Lindsay.”

“That’s true, but Holly also had a crush on Ryan,” she said, confirming Ida Belle’s theory. “Lindsay just ignored it because of Holly’s age, but it was so obvious that Holly wanted to be like her sister. She dressed like her, cut her hair like her, and it was apparent to anyone with vision that she was crushing on Ryan.”

“How did Ryan handle it?” Ida Belle asked.

“He was polite, of course, and respectful, but I doubt he was ever alone with her. I think he was smart enough to know better. Like I said, I think there’s more going on with Holly than just immaturity.”

“Do you think she could have killed Lindsay?”

“No!” Mandy looked shocked at the suggestion. “She was just a kid. She couldn’t even drive a car. And her mind doesn’t work well on complex things. Never did. She’d have never gotten away with it.”

I nodded. I understood why Mandy felt that way, but I’d seen children commit some pretty heinous crimes, and all while convincing everyone around them that they were completely different. Sociopaths were often born, and they were very clever. It could be that Holly was a bit off normal or it could be that she was simply playing a role so that people had zero expectations, giving her unlimited freedom. She wouldn’t be the first to figure that one out.

Mandy glanced at her watch and jumped up from the couch. “It’s almost time for my husband to come home. I don’t want him to find you here.”

I could practically feel the tension coming off her in waves and I rose. “Won’t your security guard mention it?”

“No. He knows how my husband can get. As long as you’re clear before he gets here, he won’t say a word. I wish I could help you. I hate that a little boy’s life is on the line, and I hate that Ryan is in prison when it sounds like he didn’t do it. I always liked him. And he always treated Lindsay right. I hope you figure all of this out.”

“One last thing—what was the name of the firm Lindsay worked for in NOLA?”

“Spalding Financial.”