Deeper Evil (The Evil Secrets Trilogy Book 2)

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Why were the installments so erratic?” Dylan asked as he tried to follow the diagram Quinn had drawn on the whiteboard.

  Reese explained, “The settlement sent the construction company into bankruptcy. They had a little trouble meeting the payment schedule. They had to liquidate a few of their assets along the way. The court made sure that the schedule was met, even at one point refusing a motion from the company’s attorneys to prevent them from filing for bankruptcy until the final payment had been delivered. I can only speculate as to who might have put pressure on the court.”

  For clarification, Baylee added, “And by pressure what you’re really suggesting is some judge took a bribe?”

  Before Reese could answer, Quinn piped up, “Let’s not ask the lawyer to speculate about something we can’t prove. After all, we wouldn’t want to put him on the spot and actually have him offer an unqualified opinion in favor of our side.”

  Noting tension beginning to build between Reese and Quinn, Kit quickly concluded, “And the Boyd lawyers were particularly greedy. They weren’t content with getting their cut of say, thirty percent from the lawsuit. No, they wanted all of it, the entire fifteen million. So they devised a plan of action.”

  Reese ignored Quinn’s dig and suggested, “Let’s back up to when this whole thing started with the Parker lawsuit. At some point during trial, the Boyd Boyd Geller & Gatz team realized they were in over their heads. They weren’t winning; the situation looked grim. They needed a new plan.”

  Quinn handed out several more pages of documents. “A good plan, Counselor Brennan. In order to get a better idea of the conversation Jake had with Will Forrester, Alana’s first husband, and an obvious pawn in the whole scam at trial, I needed the gist of their conversation. With Jake’s help I transcribed what was said. According to Forrester’s own words, there were no documents left to show up at trial to prove McKetrick Construction was guilty of anything because he’d personally shredded them all at the behest of management. What’s a smart lawyer to do without documentation? If you’re the clever little shysters at BBG&G, you pony up some fast even when they don’t exist.

  “With Alana having the inside track because she married Forrester, the environmental engineer, she got close enough to him on a 24/7 basis, knowing he holds all the key phrases they needed to make duplicates look real, like the toxicology lingo. Smitten with the sex kitten Alana, Will Forrester admitted to providing the key phrases, the key words. Alana passed the info on to good old Jess and Sumner. And before you know it they had documents that looked good enough to fool even Forrester.

  “In fact, the lingo was so convincing they produced documents good enough to fake out McKetrick in court. They bluffed their way past the other side to victory. Score points for their side. It’s as simple as that.

  “My guess is those cashier’s checks the guys found in the attic were Alana’s payment for her role as Forrester’s wife.” She held up a staying hand as Reese started to object and said, “Speculation. Sure. But at some point you have to concede the fact that Forrester said there were no other documents. Who gets close to Forrester and finds out there are no papers proving the dumping, even goes so far as to marry the guy? Alana.

  “If you read what Forrester says, one day the documents just show up on his desk.” She cast a sneer Reese’s way and added, “Unless, of course, you believe they were delivered by the document fairy. I suspect they had to test the waters, find out whether or not the forged docs looked real enough to pass muster in court. So they forged a few, left them on Forrester’s desk for verification. When he panicked, they knew their documents looked good enough and started applying some pressure on the engineer.

  “Then they forced the guy into testifying at trial, and dropped the bomb that he shredded what he thought were the only documents. Defense panicked, called for a recess, settled out of court, again victory for their side.

  “Who dumps him as soon as the trial ends in their favor? Alana. And Forrester was there, caught up in the trial, our only living witness that we know of. That’s his theory as well, and I’m buying into it right along with him.” Quinn turned to stare at Reese. “The Parkers won fifteen million. BBG&G got thirty percent of the take. Somewhere down the road they got greedy. When they realized this old couple’s only son is missing in Vietnam, they saw an opening. They hatched the murder idea and used the Manson killing spree to cover their tracks. Fortuitous creatures to be sure. For forty years it worked. So Counselor Brennan, who are you going to side with, those bloodsuckers at BBG&G and the deadly Alana, or Will Forrester, a guy caught up in the whole thing, a guy who loses the woman he thinks loves him and his career all in one fell swoop?” She had him there, Reese thought. “Did you ever consider a career in law, Dr. Tyler?”

  She grinned in spite of the dislike for the man.

  “Okay, I’ll concede the fact you make a plausible argument. But we need something concrete.”

  “That would be the gun,” Baylee pointed out.

  “For safekeeping and to get it out of the trunk of Jake’s car, I turned it over to Donovan, who’s prepared to take it to the sheriff’s department just as soon as we can get someone over there in the cold case department to return our calls. It hasn’t been easy.” In his courtroom voice, Reese warned, “But guys, just because…”

  Quinn didn’t let him get any farther before she lost her temper, glaring at Reese in disgust. Cutting him off, she pointed out, “You know, I’m getting kind of tired of your gloom and doom attitude. It’s one thing to be the voice of reason, but to be a constant horse’s ass, against all reason, against everything we’re trying to do here, that’s getting old.”

  Reese eyed the fireball that was Quinn. Those exotic almond eyes burned a hole through him. He was determined to get past the fact that the good doctor didn’t like him very much. And he hadn’t become the best criminal attorney in L.A. without storing up plenty of drive and determination along the way, with a steady supply of stubbornness thrown in for good measure.

  So he gave her a patient look. “The point I was about to make is simple. We need the actual police report from forty years ago. We don’t even know if the gun that killed the Parkers was a .357 without the police report. That means we’ll need to get them to sit down with us at some point, persuade them to dig through their evidence room.”

  When Quinn started to speak, he quickly added, “At this point we don’t even know that the evidence still exists. Like I said, Jordan Donovan and I have called a number of times and left messages. Getting the sheriff’s department to take another look at a forty-year-old double murder case is tougher than you might think. And remember, if we think Jessica Boyd and Alana killed the Parkers, the suspects are dead and buried at this point. What motivation do the police have to care about this case now? It’s just us, or rather, Kit that has the greatest interest in this, so we need to do some fancy convincing to get them moving. Baylee’s right, the gun is it. The Parkers have no family to prod the police along. After all this time, it’s forgotten. If the evidence is still sitting there gathering dust in a box, it’s still just us. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, just that we may have to go the extra mile to make it happen.”

  The expression on Quinn’s face said she was mollified with his response, but her demeanor remained stoic. “I guess that’s as close as I’ll get to getting you to admit I did my homework on this.”

  Looking through the papers, Dylan admitted, “I’m impressed with the work, Quinn. But if we get them to reopen this thing and it points to Alana and Jessica… ” His voice trailed off as he sent Kit a sympathetic look.

  Kit picked up on what he was thinking. “For me, knowing for certain would close that chapter of my life for good. I know what kind of person Alana was. Knowing what happened to the Parkers and believing in my heart Alana was responsible, if that gun ties her to the crime, then the money, that money she got from the sale of the ranch and the land was just wrong. She lived very well on her portion of the
Parker money. Let’s face it; they all did, Jessica and Sumner, Frank Geller, and Eva Gatz. They founded a legal empire with that money, not to mention developed a sprawling estate on the shores of Malibu. Knowing that, do you think I could live with myself if I took a dime from Alana’s estate? Before I knew about the murders, I didn’t want the house or anything she owned, but now, knowing she might have benefited…from the murders of that old couple, there isn’t anything that’ll stop me from getting to the truth when we’re this close…”

  But Jake reminded her, “I have a feeling the Boyds will give it one helluva try. And we have to be ready for whatever they bring.” He didn’t throw out his belief that Collin would do anything to prevent both of them from testifying, but then he was pretty sure she had already lost sleep over that.

  “At the risk of being labeled the voice of gloom and doom again,” Reese gave Quinn a look of pure lawyer-like scorn before going on, “I have to caution all of you that just because Alana hid the gun in the attic doesn’t mean she used it in the commission of a crime. She could have been holding it for someone or…”

  Again, Quinn interrupted like a volcano. “Spoken like a true criminal defense attorney. Look, we aren’t stupid. We know all that, Reese. We aren’t here to send Jessica Boyd and Alana Stevens to jail.” She leaned toward him and said emphatically, “You yourself just admitted they’re dead. They aren’t going anywhere. But for Kit’s sake, and Gloria’s, since they are the ones who’ve been living with these nightmares about the Parker murders for weeks now, I think we need to find out what really happened to them. And it would be nice to solve a forty-year-old murder mystery. I know in a way this is all based on speculation, but I think to do this we need to be able to step outside the box from time to time. If you can’t do that…”

  Like two sparring boxers exchanging blows in the ring, it was Reese’s turn to cut her short. “I can think outside the box. I can come up with a reasonable explanation as to what really happened to the Parkers. I can buy into the theory. I don’t have a problem with that, but keep in mind we’ve done a lot of assuming here. You can’t solve this thing based on assumptions only. At some point you have to have hard evidence. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Agreed,” Quinn said without a trace of hard feelings.

  Reese turned to stare at her. “I must have misunderstood.”

  “Not at all. We’re all trying to come up with something concrete. And you just keep knocking it down. Of course I know that at some point we will have to find hard evidence pointing to Jessica and Alana connecting them to the murders. But can we agree if the gun turns out to be significant that has to count in the grand scheme even if we can’t put it in the hands of Alana or Jessica or Sumner Boyd for that matter.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, now that we have that out of the way,” Dylan said a little too cheerfully as he pushed back from the table and stood up. “Let’s have some of Kit’s chocolate cheesecake.”

  Later, after Reese and Quinn had left and it was just the four of them tidying up Dylan’s dining room, Baylee was putting all the papers back into the boxes when she picked up Kit’s birth certificate, examining it line by line.

  “You were a skinny little thing. Look at this, you only weighed five pounds when you were born. How can someone who weighed so little at birth grow up to be such an Amazon woman now?”

  She waved the paper in the air at Kit and added, “As hard as this thing was to find, don’t you think you should keep it in a better place?”

  “Let me see that. I haven’t seen my birth certificate since that day at the hospital. I was pretty out of it.”

  “Let’s face it, you were blitzed,” Jake teased, thinking back to the day they’d all found out Kit’s mother was really Gloria Chambers Gandis.

  But Baylee wasn’t listening to the chatter. She’d only thought to pick up the paper and hand it off to Kit. But now what she read had her jumping back. “Oh, my God. Kit, did you look at your birth certificate? I mean really look. Did you see this? We were so focused on looking at what it said about your mother we completely overlooked Box 3 and 3A.” Kit peered over Baylee’s shoulder. When Baylee pointed to the box in question, and Kit saw what it said, she snatched the paper out of Baylee’s hand.

  Now it was Baylee nudging Kit to show her where to look. “It says you were a twin. Skip over to the right of the box where it asks, if twin, what was the order of birth? See the 3A box is marked 2ND. According to that, you were a twin, Kit, born second.”

  “Could that be right? Could they have made a mistake?” Kit blinked, and kept trying to focus on the paper, including every box until she got down to Box Number 3 and 3A.

  Everyone gathered around Kit, who stood there, speechless, trying to determine if Baylee was kidding or not.

  When her eyes found the box in question, she dropped into one of the dining room chairs. Over her shoulder Jake studied the birth certificate line by line. “Alana and Jessica didn’t just steal Kit, but apparently there were two babies. What happened to the other baby?”

  Kit finally found her speech. “Jake, could that be Ben, the one you found living in Galway, the one you’ve been looking for on the Internet, the same one Quinn remembered my father mentioning that day when we were kids at the beach? Did you look at his date of birth? Could it be him, or is there yet another brother out there somewhere I’ve never seen?”

  “It didn’t occur to me to look at his birth date. But I will.” Jake turned to Dylan. “I need your laptop.”

  “No problem.” The two computer geeks headed out into the living room where Dylan had set up his makeshift office area after giving up his personal space to Sarah.

  After booting up, and logging on, Jake furiously tapped keys, searching, hitting database after database until he found what he was looking for.

  “I’ll be damned. He’s twenty-four years old just like Kit, and won’t turn twenty-five until the eleventh of October. They’re twins, Dylan. I should have spotted that before now.”

  “So this brother, this Ben Griffin, was taken to Ireland? Jake, that’s crazy. Let’s say Alana and Jessica just decided to ship the kid to Ireland. Why would they do that?”

  But Kit had already formed her own theory. Standing off to the side with Baylee, she concluded, “My father had to be in on it from the beginning. He didn’t just show up after the fact and take the baby out of the country. He did it so Gloria would never know she had a son. How despicable can two people be?”

  Baylee pointed out, “But you were born second. When Jake and I confronted Gloria that morning, I’m positive she didn’t say a thing about another baby. She was pretty convincing, Kit. Gloria only knew that she’d had a little girl. She said nothing about another baby.” She turned to Jake for confirmation.

  Jake nodded. “She didn’t say a word about giving birth to twins, that’s for sure.” He kept staring at Baylee. “We would have remembered something like that.”

  “I haven’t been through childbirth. But you have,” Kit said turning to Baylee. “Could she have lost consciousness at some point, passed out during delivery and only heard them talk about the baby girl, not the boy.”

  “It’s possible, I guess.”

  “She told me that at one point she kicked up quite a fuss because they wouldn’t let her see me. Maybe shipping Gloria three thousand miles away was to prevent some nurse from slipping up and mentioning twins.”

  “So you’re set to give Gloria the benefit of the doubt on this?”

  “I am. This needs to come from me. And I don’t think it’s something she should hear over the phone.” Kit turned to Jake. “I’ll give Gloria a call. Tell her we’re stopping by with some news. Tell her we’ve set a date for the wedding. Somehow I’ll work this latest bomb into the conversation, sort of like good news bad news. Good news is we’re getting married. Bad news is you’ve got a long lost son, my twin, who’s living in Ireland, a baby boy you’ve never set eyes on.

  “For God�
�s sakes, is there anything else those people have done that we should know about? What kind of person does this sort of thing?” She looked at Baylee. “I trusted my father, loved him, and the fact that he could be a party to something like this just makes me ill. And if it makes me sick, think how Gloria will take this latest news. This is going to hit her hard.”

  Dylan exchanged looks with Jake, who acted perplexed by her calmness. “I’ll say one thing for you, Kit, having all the chaos going on in your life makes you one helluva woman in a crisis situation, a woman who without a doubt thinks on her feet.”

  And that was an understatement, thought Dylan as he walked both of them to the car. All three women were unlike any he’d ever met before. According to them, they’d all had difficult, abusive childhoods, and yet, all of them were incredibly strong. Baylee joined him on the driveway with a wide awake Sarah just in time to wave them off, wondering how Gloria would take the news.

  “I can’t believe those two would steal Gloria’s babies like that.” She thumped her head with a free hand. “Duh. What’s wrong with me, they were cold-blooded killers who murdered an old couple in their sleep for the land and the money and I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around them stealing babies. Those two were capable of just about anything, weren’t they?”

  “You’re a mother. It’s hard to understand how women could be so…”

  “Heartless?”

  “Cold.”

  “Same thing.” She thought of her own mother, who’d left her without so much as a goodbye, and decided that maybe women back then were all cut from the same callous, merciless mold. Certainly not fit to be mothers.

  As they watched Jake’s car back out of the driveway, Dylan thought of something. “How about we go out for dinner? I know a great French bistro a couple of miles from here that looks out over the water.”