CHAPTER 25

brEE TRIED TO ABSORB what the retired Idaho police detective had just said about the Wheeler twins being adopted twice, at least once on the black market.

Sampson said, “Mr. Oakes? How did you find that out? About there being a black-market deal?”

“Came in as a tip, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty years afterward?” he said. “Near the end of my days on the job. Not much on specifics, other than Patricia could not conceive, they were having trouble adopting in California, and she decided to become an Idaho resident and try. But just as she started that whole rigamarole, she got word about twin boys being born. She heard about it through some lawyer here in Idaho.”

Bree said, “And, what, she bought them?”

“The way the tipster had it, she got around all the years of bureaucracy with a quick signing of a check. I followed the lead a bit but could never prove it. And I really couldn’t figure out what bearing it had on the case, so I let it drop.”

“Did the boys know they were adopted?”

“Hundred percent no. They were told they were born at the cabin on Alice Lake. That’s what the birth records show too.”

After they thanked Oakes, Bree and Sampson hung up, not knowing what to think of the unproven tip about the origins of Ryan Malcomb.

“Let’s let that sit for now,” Sampson said. “Pick up the timeline with Ryan and Sean Wheeler being adopted by their mother’s richer sister.”

Bree tapped a pen on the table. “She raised them, I guess. She didn’t talk much about Sean. It was always Ryan.”

“What happened to Sean?”

Her eyebrows rose. “You know, I honestly have no idea. We talked about Ryan.”

She googled Sean Wheeler, Idaho, and got nothing but the mention in the Boise article about his parents’ murder. She tried the name in Cleveland and then in Jackson Hole. Same result.

Bree tried Sean Malcomb in those areas, with little luck, then Sean Wheeler and Sean Malcomb with Theresa May Alcott . Again nothing.

“This is bizarre,” Bree said. “I know she or someone else—her lawyer, maybe—told me she brought both boys to Cleveland to live with her. But you know, come to think of it, that time I was in her office, I don’t remember seeing pictures of anyone but Ryan. Or at least I think they were all Ryan.”

Sampson said, “Well, sure, if they were identical twins, how would you know? I guess the only person who can answer these questions is Mrs. Alcott.” He got up and poured himself more coffee.

“She struck me as the kind of person who would not like answering a lot of questions about Ryan Malcomb, but I think I have to try,” Bree said. “The problem is, where is she mourning her loss? Millionaires’ Row outside Cleveland? Or the ranch in Jackson Hole?”

Sampson shrugged. “You got me. Where’s the funeral being held?”

“I haven’t seen mention of one yet.”

“Could be they’re keeping it all low-key,” Sampson said.

“I think we can assume that, given the way he and his aunt both …”

“What?”

“Maybe I haven’t been looking at this correctly,” Bree said, typing on her laptop.

Instead of searching for Ryan Malcomb funeral, she assembled a list of all the funeral homes in Jackson Hole and in the greater Cleveland area. Reasoning that this close to Christmas, Theresa May Alcott would be in snowy Wyoming, Bree went on the website for every funeral home in the Jackson Hole area; she looked at the obituaries and the death and service notices as far away as Driggs, Idaho.

She saw no one close to Malcomb in age or gender listed. She started to search around Cleveland, beginning with the two mortuaries closest to Hunting Valley.

The first one was another strikeout. She opened the Carruthers Brothers Funeral Home website, thinking that her clever idea might be a bust. But then she opened the death and service notices, scanned down the list, and smiled.

“Got him.”

“Really?” Sampson said.

“Ryan Wheeler, forty-eight, private services, December twenty-third, one p.m.”

“That’s tomorrow afternoon. Interesting she used the Wheeler name.”

“Uh-huh,” Bree said, jiggling her knee. “We need to go.”

“Private services.”

Bree shrugged. “Doesn’t mean we can’t stand outside and wait for his aunt to come out.”

Sampson knitted his brow. “I can’t see how the chief is going to pay for me to fly to Cleveland on short notice, and after Disney World, there’s not a lot of kale in the old Crock-Pot.”

Bree laughed. “I’ve never heard it put that way.”

“Gets the point across,” John said, grinning.

She paused, then nodded. “I still have a little kale in the old Crock-Pot from my last bonus. I’m going.”