“Enemies?”
Her father finished her thought for her when it seemed she couldn’t. “Yes, we’re no longer enemies.”
“Oh? And what are you?”
This was her dad, so she couldn’t come right out and say that they were lovers, that Dalton was the man she went to when she needed to get laid, the man whose body she could do all kinds of naughty stuff with. “Friends.”
Ben nodded. “I see.”
In a way, she was sure that he did. “We watched a video together last night.”
“So he’s the reason you gave up my grilled pork chops?”
Jules smiled. “Not really. I needed to watch those videos. Both were work-related and part of the Sylvia Granger investigation. One was of Shana’s dinner party, and the other was the grand opening of Caden’s wife’s wine boutique.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Yes. But first, I need to share something with you. When Dalton was about ten or eleven, he discovered his mother was having an affair. He didn’t fully understand what all that meant at the time, and she swore him to secrecy. He thought it was cool that he and his mom had a secret. After she died and he got older, he realized just what sort of secret she’d made him keep.”
“That was cruel for her to do that to a child.”
“Yes, it was. For years, he’d felt guilty and believed that by keeping his mother’s secret, he had betrayed his father.”
Ben nodded. “I can understand him thinking that way. But again, he was just a child at the time.”
“Well, last night while watching the video, he recognized the man his mother had been with years ago, and it affected him in a bad way.”
“The man was at Shana’s dinner party?”
“No, he attended Shiloh’s open house, but Dalton wasn’t there that night which is why he didn’t make the connection until he reviewed the videotape.”
Ben took a sip of his coffee. “I hope Dalton isn’t thinking about confronting the man.”
Dalton had suggested that very thing last night, but luckily, she’d been able to talk him out of it. “He did at first, but now I don’t think he will.”
“So what’s next?” her father asked.
Finishing off her apple pie, Jules placed her fork down by her plate. “Now I add the man’s name to my list of people I want to talk to.”
*
Back at her office, Jules stood in front of her investigation wall. A picture of Vance Clayburn was now pinned up along with the others she needed to interview. As her father had reminded her, just because the man and Sylvia Granger had been lovers did not mean he had a reason to kill her. But what if Sylvia had wanted more from the relationship and had threatened to tell the man’s wife? Jules’s research indicated that Clayburn had been married at the time of the affair.
So far, she knew that Clayburn was a sixty-one-year-old divorcé, which suggested a thirty-year difference in his and Nannette Gaither’s ages. He’d made his billions years ago in Silicon Valley. He later branched out and acquired a number of small industrial companies and began growing them into multimillion-dollar corporations. It was announced a couple of years ago that he would be expanding one of those companies to Charlottesville, thereby boosting the local economy and employment rate.
The man lived in a gated community in one of the wealthiest areas of Charlottesville. Jules wasn’t surprised by that because, despite his wealth and influence, he had always kept a low profile and avoided the spotlight like the plague. It had been very difficult to get the one photo she did have. She wouldn’t be able to surprise him and just drop by. He would need to know she was coming and give her clearance to enter his property.