Now it was Beth who spoke out in surprise. She pulled her hand away from Martin’s. “I gave you those papers,” she said. “From the architect.”
“So you looked at them? Was it before you gave them to me, or were you snooping over my shoulder?” He shook his head in disgust. “And here I was thinking you didn’t play your mother’s games. Di, these women have been meddling in our business. In Dad’s business.”
“Not meddling,” Lana said. “Finding the truth.”
Lana kept her eyes locked on Diana. If she couldn’t get them out, she had to reel them in.
“I told you about it at lunch,” Lana said. Her voice was calm and clear. “Your father and Ricardo Cruz had a project together. A vision to turn the ranch into a farm incubator for women and disadvantaged entrepreneurs. Maybe Ricardo talked about it. Your daddy and his big dream.”
“That dream is dead,” Martin said.
“Dead?” Lana fixed her gaze on Martin. “Because you killed them?”
Martin barked out a laugh. He turned to his sister, a twisted smile on his face. “Is this your negotiating strategy, Di? Get her to make wild threats so I’ll let you have the ranch?”
Lana looked squarely at Diana. “Your brother killed Ricardo. Right here at the ranch. He bludgeoned him and dumped his body in the creek. And then he killed your father.”
“I don’t believe this,” Martin scoffed.
“The sheriffs are on their way, Martin,” Lana said. “To collect the evidence.”
“Evidence?” Diana asked.
“It’s here,” Lana said, gesturing around the barn. She wasn’t sure what was there. But maybe something that could buy time. Something that could keep him away from his car.
Diana’s eyes scanned the barn, straining to take in the piles of junk in the dim light. She was questioning. Drawn in.
Martin sneered. “Di, Ricardo Cruz was killed miles from here. And I was in San Francisco day and night. This woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s nothing but a washed-up snoop.”
“You were in San Francisco, Martin,” Lana agreed. “But not all day. Not all night.”
She absorbed his furious gaze, staring back with what she hoped looked like compassion.
“I know how it feels, Martin.” Lana turned her voice into a silk thread, casting out, tugging gently on his name. “When your family doesn’t appreciate you. Doesn’t respect you.” She took a step toward him. “It must have been awful, seeing Ricardo wrap them around his finger again. He disappears for twenty years and now all of a sudden he’s swooping in to take over the ranch?”
She saw the slightest flicker of his eyelid, a tiny, involuntary twitch. “You were the only one who saw through him,” she said. “The only one willing to protect your family. Your legacy.”
Martin said nothing. But his eyes were shining, his head tilting toward her. Lana took another step.
“He was going to steal everything,” Lana said. “You had to do something.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” But Martin’s words came out fainter this time.
Lana stepped even closer to him. “And then you ran into him here. At the house. Ricardo was staying here, wasn’t he? With you, Diana? On Wednesday nights?”
Diana crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice wobbled between uncertainty and defiance. “Ricardo was like my nephew. He slept in his old room, where he and his mom had stayed after . . . It wasn’t tawdry. We were just reconnecting about old times.”
“Old times. The best ones, right?” Lana said. “When Ricardo was a toddler and you were a young woman with a broken heart. A woman who needed to heal.”
“Ricardo was the only good thing at that time.” There was a tremble in Diana’s voice. “Our little angel. Our little boy.”
Lana nodded. Then she took a guess. “That last week, you both stayed Thursday night as well. To talk about the future.”
Diana looked back, into the night, as if Ricardo were standing on the other side of the barn door. “I wanted to ask him to join me in developing the wellness center. I thought it could be a way for us both to honor our parents, to build something beautiful together.” Diana’s face flushed, and her voice sharpened. “Then I discovered he and Daddy had other plans.”
“You argued.”
“Thursday night, yes. We had words. I left early Friday morning, before Ricardo was up. To go to Bayshore Oaks to talk to Daddy. To work things out. I would never have hurt Ricardo.”
Lana nodded. “You would never have hurt him. But you did keep him a secret.”
“I had to protect myself,” Diana said stiffly. “Once I heard about his death, I realized I might have been the last person to see him alive. He stayed over with me at the ranch, and then he died. It was horrible. I’ve lived that nightmare before, in England. The authorities would pounce, the rumors would spread. Even if I didn’t get charged with killing him, my reputation would have been ruined.”
Lana felt a sudden shot of compassion for Diana, who had loved Ricardo and lost him. But she had to keep the focus on Martin. “What about before then, all those times you met up with him? I understand keeping it from your husband, but your own brother? Didn’t you want to invite Martin to catch up on old times with Ricardo? To dream together about the future?”
Diana cast a nervous glance toward Martin. “I didn’t think he would be interested.”
Lana caught a flinch from Martin’s direction. A small wound, one she could pry open. Lana looked up at Martin with wide eyes. “You see what I mean? Your own sister, lying to you for months. Protecting her little angel Ricardo.”
Lana held up a hand to quell a flutter of protest from Diana’s direction and took one last step toward Martin. She didn’t have all the details, but he knew what he’d done. She just had to speak to his heart.
“I know what it’s like to be pushed outside your family, Martin. The inside jokes, their little secrets. It started when you were a teenager, didn’t it? When they began leaving you out of things. Your mother died. You were mourning. But everyone only had eyes for Ricardo. It must have been quite a shock, seeing him in the house after all those years.”
“You’re wrong. I didn’t care about Ricardo,” Martin said. His voice was flat, unconvincing. “He was just a baby who grew up. So he was back at the house again, having pajama parties with Di. So what? I couldn’t have cared less.”
“Like your dad did, Martin? Like he cared less about you than he did about Ricardo?” Lana was just an arm’s length away from Martin now.
“You don’t know what you’re—”
Lana remembered something Beth had told her, way back when Mr. Rhoads had died. It felt like a lifetime ago. “Even at the nursing home, they knew. Your father talked about him to the nurses. You were his son. But Ricardo was his boy, his golden boy who returned.”
Martin turned to Beth, his eyes full of hurt and questions. She stared back at him with a steady gaze.
“It’s not your fault, Martin,” Lana said, pulling his attention toward her again. “He shouldn’t have abandoned you like that.” She reached out a hand to him. He wavered.
“You’re making something out of nothing,” he mumbled.
“Giving Ricardo your old baseball glove? Giving him the ranch? It wasn’t nothing, Martin. You deserved more.” Lana clasped his left hand in both of hers. He didn’t pull away.
She had him. She knew she did. “You deserved your father’s love. You deserved to know what he was planning. As a mother, I know what you were due.”
His hand went stiff between her fingers. She hauled him in with one last tug on the line.
“If your mother were here, she would have stood by you. She would have protected you. If only she hadn’t—”
A deafening smack cut off Lana’s speech.