Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Diana began to dissect her salad, exiling the croutons to the edge of the plate. She cut a single leaf of lettuce, raised it to her mouth, and took a dainty nibble, like a rabbit with a square-cut diamond ring.

“The last time we talked, you mentioned you’d said only a little to your father about this project. Is it possible he heard more than he let on? That he was supporting your project, even before he had the details?”

Diana’s fork froze over her salad.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I found the letter of intent you mentioned, at the land trust.” Lana pulled from her purse a printed photograph of the LOI and placed it on the table facing Diana. She held one finger to it, pinning it between them. Then she kept talking. “I spoke with an expert about it. This letter is suggestive, but it isn’t binding. Your father might have changed his mind. Look at this.”

Lana put the handwritten note on the table next to the legal document, the one addressed to Victor about a project moving forward without the land trust. She watched Diana’s eyes shift back and forth across the block printing, taking it in.

“Do you think this note is from your father?” Lana asked. “Is it possible he abandoned his conservation plans to support you instead?”

Diana leaned closer to the scrap of paper, reading aloud the words scrawled there. “‘Someone close to my heart has approached me with a bold vision for a project too big to live at the land trust.’”

Lana could see the hunger in her eyes.

Then Diana sat up again, very straight. “I wish I could say yes. But it’s not Daddy’s handwriting. That kind of flowery language, the idea that he would describe me as someone close to his heart . . . that wasn’t him.”

“Could it be Ricardo Cruz?”

Diana looked at Lana sharply. “How would I know what his writing looks like?”

“My mistake.” Lana folded the papers carefully and slid them back into her purse. “I’m just trying to understand what you might be up against in pursuing your wellness ranch. What we might be up against.” Lana took a sip of water. “As I understand it, five years ago, your father promised to donate the development rights to the land trust via a conservation easement. But in the last six months, when Victor assigned Ricardo Cruz to finalize the deal, something changed. Your father and Ricardo were spending a lot of time together. If your father had new intentions for the ranch—”

“I’m not asking you to determine my father’s intentions. I’m asking you to help me carry on his legacy.” Diana threw back her shoulders and started cutting another small, fussy bite of lettuce. “Look, I know Victor Morales hired the boy and sent him out to the ranch to talk to Daddy about that easement. But clearly nothing came of it.”

Or perhaps something different came of it, something Diana didn’t know about or didn’t want to admit. “Did you ever see him with your father?”

“Ricardo? Only once.” Diana looked out the window with a hopeful expression, as if the young man might be outside tending the garden. “Daddy would talk about him sometimes, at the nursing home. It brought him back to old times. I can just imagine them mucking out the stalls together, checking on the swallow boxes.”

“What do you mean, old times?”

“Surely you know the story by now,” Diana said.

Lana lifted her eyebrows in invitation.

“I was twenty-two when my mother died,” Diana said. “There was a terrible fire in the old barn. An accident, of course. My mother was trapped. Alejandro Cruz, Ricardo’s father, died as well. But Ricardo’s mother, Sofia, she was pregnant at the time—she made it out. Alejandro had just moved her up to the ranch with him from Fresno. When Ricardo was born, everyone called him the miracle baby. Daddy said he was the only good thing to come out of the fire.”

“Did you agree?”

Diana’s eyes shot to the window again. “I was overseas when Ricardo was born. But when my fiancé . . . when I came home . . . Ricardo was there. He and Sofia lived in the house. With Daddy and Martin.”

“That must have been a surprise,” Lana ventured.

“Daddy and Sofia weren’t”—Diana laced her fingers together—“but of course people talked. It wasn’t right having her in my mother’s house. Complicated. But Ricardo was just a toddler, and he had a sweet, rascally way about him. It took a year after Martin left for college for me to convince Daddy they needed to go. Too many whispers. Too many ghosts. Ricardo would have been four when he and his mother moved away. I didn’t see him again until that one time last year at the ranch. All grown up, like someone else entirely. A beautiful man.”

Lana couldn’t decide how much of Diana’s story was true. She could sense there were holes. She just didn’t know which ones were worth poking.

“When we first met, you gave me the impression you hardly knew Ricardo.”

“Surely you’re a woman who appreciates the value of keeping some things to yourself.”

Lana resisted the urge to adjust her wig.

“And you were meeting with Victor,” Diana continued. “I don’t believe he knows about Ricardo’s history with my family. I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

Lana considered what Diana was saying. Was she so uncomfortable about the past rumors about her father and Ricardo’s mother that she didn’t want them to come to light again? Or was there something else, something more recent, that she was trying to hide?

Lana decided to take a gamble. “I don’t believe Ricardo was working for Victor when he died.”

“How’s that?”

“What if I told you Ricardo and your father had their own plans for the ranch’s future? A project that didn’t involve the land trust. Or you and your brother.”

“I’d tell you you were wrong. Which you are.” If Diana’s jaw were clenched any tighter, it could double as a vise.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he told me.”

“Your father told you, or Ricardo told you?”

“I . . .” Diana impaled a piece of lettuce with her fork. “As I said. I’ve barely seen Ricardo in decades.”

“But he mattered to you.”

“He mattered to my father,” Diana snapped. She chewed in silence, her lips pressed tightly together.

Lana tried a different approach. “Let’s suppose for a moment the note I showed you was from Ricardo. That he was leaving the land trust to do something different. Something big. Maybe with your father, or maybe with someone else. How do you think Victor Morales would react if he found out Ricardo was working on a project behind his back?”

“Victor?” Diana looked relieved at the change in subject. Her face resettled into a buffed, placid surface. “Are you asking if I think he is capable of murder?”

It wasn’t what Lana had asked, but it was interesting that Diana interpreted it that way.

Diana rotated her fork slowly, hovering above her salad. “I don’t know. Victor is a slippery man. He plays in the sandbox of the fortunate, and he thinks he deserves their toys. But he is a man of words. Not one of action.”

“What do you think Victor would do with his words if he thought Ricardo betrayed him?”

“He would find a way to play it to his advantage. As would anyone, I imagine.”

“A situation you’ve found yourself in?” Lana asked.

There was a long pause.

“I have, at times, been disappointed by men,” Diana said carefully. “But betrayed? The men I involve myself with are far too intelligent to make that mistake.”





Chapter Thirty-Eight


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