“Well,” said Lana, “all these suspects could have killed Ricardo. But who had to kill Ricardo? For whom was murder the best alternative to whatever was going on?”
Jack stared at the photographs lined up on the wall. “Martin has an alibi for Ricardo’s murder, but he could have killed his dad so he could sell the ranch for money.”
“Is that his best alternative to getting money another way?”
Jack scrunched up her face. “Seems extreme. I mean, he’s a rich white guy who went to MIT. He could probably get investors in Silicon Valley without having to kill his own family.”
Lana nodded, encouraging Jack to keep going.
“But his sister, Lady Di.” Jack’s voice was more confident now. “If she was hooking up with Ricardo and things got messed up there . . .”
“Exactly,” Lana said.
“Couldn’t she just dump him?” Jack asked. “Why would she have to murder him?”
Lana was glad her granddaughter had not yet been so thoroughly let down by a man that she wanted to kill him.
“Maybe Ricardo made some kind of demand of her,” Lana said. “Or a threat. Maybe the night before he died, he told her about Verdadera Libertad, and he pressed her to support it, to give up her claim to the ranch or else he’d tell her husband. I could see how she could feel trapped, like her best alternative might be to kill him.”
Lana looked back at the corkboard. “The same could be true for Victor Morales,” she said. “He had to have the Rhoads ranch for his vision of the land trust stretching from the marina to the hills. There wasn’t some other property that would accomplish that. If Ricardo and Mr. Rhoads had a project in the works that would stop the land trust from getting it . . .”
“Victor’s best alternative would be to kill them both.” Jack looked at Lana. “But how could he get the property donated if Mr. Rhoads was dead?”
“He’d need to convince Diana and Martin. Keep waving around that letter of intent and try to pressure them into following through.”
“Do you think Victor could do that?”
Lana considered it. Even if Diana and Martin couldn’t agree, they at least seemed aligned in their determination to keep the ranch out of the land trust’s control. Maybe if Victor knew about Diana and Ricardo’s affair, he could lean on her . . . but if he held that trump card, he hadn’t pulled it yet. Lana decided she finally had a reason to return one of his many calls.
“I’ll find out,” Lana said. “Maybe Victor was less driven by his desire for the land than by his anger that Ricardo and Mr. Rhoads betrayed him.”
“But that’s not about BATNA. That’s motive. We’re back to where we started.”
“We’ve come a long way from there, Jack. We just have to piece it together, and it will all make sense.”
It had to.
*
At 7 p.m., Beth was on her way out the back door of Bayshore Oaks for a protein bar break when she was accosted by Miss Gigi.
“Beth! Your mother. She is enchanting. And so young-looking!” Miss Gigi was still in the turquoise evening gown, which she had now accessorized with a flimsy kimono adorned with Disney characters.
“Thank you?” Beth looked uncomfortably at Miss Gigi’s press-on nails, which were carving tiny moons into the sleeve of Beth’s bomber jacket.
“Beth, there is something I must tell you. I was listening to your conversation with your mother.”
“About the sandwiches?”
“About the visitors.”
“I see.”
The two women stared at each other. Beth squeezed the protein bar, feeling it deform under her sweaty hand. Even under a pound of silver eye shadow, Beth knew Miss Gigi was a force to be reckoned with.
“I can explain—”
The smaller woman waved away Beth’s excuses. “You are helping your mother. It is the right thing to do. But what I have done, I am not so sure.”
Now it was Miss Gigi who looked nervous.
“What is it?” Beth asked.
“The team in the mail room, we take our jobs very seriously. We are the connection with people on the outside,” Miss Gigi said.
“Uh-huh . . .”
“And sometimes, on Mondays, there is someone who needs to connect with someone.”
“Like a letter that has to go out?”
Miss Gigi shook her head. “More like someone who wants to come in.”
Beth blinked. “Miss Gigi, did someone come into Bayshore Oaks the day Hal Rhoads died? It would have been”—she counted backward in her head—“three Mondays ago.”
She had never seen Miss Gigi look so contrite. “I am not sure. I can ask my associates. I was not on duty that Monday, but—”
“On duty? You have shifts for this?”
“At the side door. Just from lunch until dinner.” Miss Gigi pulled the kimono tight around her and looked up at Beth anxiously. “Do you think someone came in here to connect with Mr. Rhoads? And murdered him?”
“I . . . don’t know.” After Lana had left earlier, Beth had looked up Mr. Rhoads’s cause of death. All it said was SCD—sudden cardiac death. Without an autopsy or detailed bloodwork, there was no way to get more specific.
“Will we be charged as accessory? Sued for negligée?”
Beth’s mind was still reeling, but she found a smile for the tiny woman. “If anyone is going to get sued around here for their nightwear, it would be you.”
Miss Gigi puffed out her chest. On the front panels of the kimono, Goofy and Minnie Mouse were posing in yellow bikinis and heels, a sequined tropical beach sprawled out behind them. “These are one hundred percent original. My granddaughter designs, her boyfriend prints them, she sews on sparkles. Cesar sells them at our store in Seaside, big sales last summer, completely sold out. This one is a collector’s item.”
“You are a lucky woman.”
“Maybe not so lucky if I am helping murderers.”
“We don’t know that. You ask your mail room associates what they remember. I’ll look into it as well. And as for any future connections, let’s stick to the letters and packages that come in the front door.”
Beth waited until Miss Gigi had closed the door to her room before she walked outside. She took a breath, unwrapped the mangled protein bar, and grimaced. The conversation had made her lose her appetite. She felt an urgent desire to go back inside and pull Mr. Rhoads’s charts again, to contact the medical director about this. Maybe the EMTs who attended the death as well. But there was someone she had to call first.
Chapter Forty-Five
Lana hung up the phone and looked triumphantly at Jack.
“I was right about Hal Rhoads,” she said. “He was murdered.”
“Whoa,” Jack said. “Who were you talking to? Was that Mom?”
Lana nodded. Before she could say more, there was a knock at the door. It was Detectives Nicoletti and Ramirez, looking like sweaty, disheveled versions of the investigators who’d been on television an hour earlier.
“Here to sign autographs?” Lana said.
Nicoletti pulled his shoulders back. “No, ma’am. We need to talk to you.”
Lana looked at Ramirez. “Did you get my message?”
The female detective gave her a brief nod.
“Anything I need to know?” Nicoletti asked his partner.
For a moment, Lana had a wild hope that her voicemail had somehow delivered critical evidence.
“It’s nothing,” Ramirez said. Lana let out a puff of breath, disappointed.
Jack migrated over to the table. “What’s going on?”
“The bike we found at the Kayak Shack,” Nicoletti said. “We’ve confirmed—”
“It belonged to Ricardo Cruz,” Lana said.
“How did you—”
“Moving on.” Ramirez’s tone was smooth and authoritative. “We got a warrant to check out the land Paul Hanley was leasing from that Rhoads family. I went out there. No Paul. Nothing except a bunch of dirt all churned up.”
Lana had a sudden flash of Paul’s loaded-down kayak on the day Jack got stuck in the creek. Whatever he’d been hiding on his leased land, he must have dug it up and brought it to the marina.
“He did a good job clearing out,” Ramirez continued. “But he missed one thing—”
She took out a small plastic bag and laid it on the table. Inside, there was a single button, smeared with mud. Nicoletti was watching Ramirez with a forced smile, as if he wished he were the one who’d found it.
“Have you seen this before?”