Chapter 83

EIGHTY-THREE

CROOKED CREEK POLICE STATION

Thacker gaped at the detective and her deputy, his eyes hot with anger. "How did you find that out?"

"So you knew?" Ellie asked.

He tugged at the neck of his shirt as if it was choking him. But he gave a nod.

"Tell us what happened," Ellie said. "Did you kill Taylor and Heidi Woodston?"

Thacker lurched to his feet. "No, hell no."

"Sit down, sir," Deputy Landrum ordered.

Thomas looked back and forth between them as if he wanted to bolt, but wheezed out a breath and sank into the chair. "Look, I'll talk but you aren't going to pin some kids' murder on me. I didn't even know those girls or any of the women in that group she joined."

"What exactly was the connection between your ex and the twins and Claire Woodston?" Ellie asked.

He scrubbed his hand over his face, then sighed heavily. "That's complicated. And I don't want my girlfriend to know any of this."

"Why not?" Ellie asked.

"Because of her daddy. He barely approves of me now."

Ellie let that slide for a minute. "Then explain what happened."

He clasped his beefy hands together. "Years ago, when Barb and I were first married, we tried to get pregnant but had a difficult time conceiving. Barb insisted on doing IVF which killed our marriage and our finances. After she had a stillborn, she sank into a major depression."

"That's understandable," Ellie said with sympathy.

"Is that when you embezzled money from the company you were working with?" Deputy Landrum asked.

Thacker looked completely taken off guard.

Ellie raised a brow, grateful Landrum had found some dirt on Thacker.

"Did Barb tell you that?" Thacker asked, his face reddening.

"No," Ellie said. "We still haven't been able to find her."

Thacker cursed. "I can't believe all this is coming out now. That bitch promised not to tell about the money thing if I agreed to sign over our embryos to those other women."

Ellie narrowed her eyes. "What are you saying? That each of those women in the group used one of yours and Barbara's embryos? But why?"

He fisted his hands on the table. "Apparently they'd all frozen their eggs. But there was some kind of problem with one of the storage units and theirs were destroyed."

Ellie put two and two together. "So they could carry a baby to term?"

He shrugged. "Somethin' like that. After the stillborn, Barb found out she couldn't ever have another child and was devastated all over again."

"But she had embryos and decided to allow her friends to use them?" Ellie asked. "Why not use a surrogate?"

He worked his mouth from side to side. "A few months after the stillborn she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her father abandoned her when she was just a baby, then her mother died when she was fifteen and she talked about how traumatic it was. That she felt abandoned. I think she was terrified of having a child and dying and leaving the kid alone."

"So she struck a deal with the other women," Ellie said. At least Thacker was filling in some of the blanks. "Did their husbands know about the embryos?"

"I don't think so, but it's been almost ten years so who knows?"

That was true.

Thacker slapped his hands on the chair arms. "Now, that's all I know. I didn't meet them or take names. Barb and I were done and I moved on."

Ellie studied the nuances in his tone, his flat expression. "So you didn't want to know your own children?"

He flexed his hands and looked down at them but shrugged again. "I guess you think that makes me sound bad," he muttered. "But all that IVF stuff turned me off. It was Barb who wanted children in the first place."

Ellie's mind raced. "That's the reason you don't want your girlfriend and her father to know," she said.

He gave a quick nod. "You're not going to tell them, are you?"

Ellie sighed. "Not unless we have to. But if I learn you're lying, I won't hesitate to make it public."