“How do you know that?”
“Because I can vouch for his whereabouts that evening, as well as the whereabouts of most of the rest of the good, upstanding citizens of Eclipse Bay.”
“Well, shoot and damn.” Disgust replaced the anticipation Mitchell had been savoring. “Don’t tell me you saw him at that reception up at the institute that night?”
“I’m afraid so,” Bev replied. “Still want the name?”
“Sure.” A thought struck Mitchell. “You never can tell. Maybe he ducked out long enough to murder the Sadler woman. In a crowd of that size, he might not have been missed for a while.”
“Trust me, he would have been missed if he had vanished for any period of time longer than what it would take to go to the men’s room,” Bev said. “The name is Trevor Thornley. Soon to become Senator Thornley, if all goes according to plan.”
Mitchell groaned. “Well, shoot and damn.”
Chapter 20
“Trevor Thornley? In lingerie and high heels?” Hannah sank back into the depths of the wicker chair. “There’s an image I could have done without.”
Rafe paced back across the solarium. “But it makes sense. Dell told us that Kaitlin had claimed that she was going to score big. None of the names on Virgil’s list would qualify as big scores. She might have pried a few bucks out of some of them, but not enough to finance a fresh start outside of Eclipse Bay.”
“But a politician with a bright future in front of him might have looked very tempting to her,” Hannah said quietly.
“Sure would be embarrassing as all get out if Kaitlin actually had movies of him running around in ladies’ undies,” Mitchell said. “Thing like that would have cost him the election eight years ago. Seeing as how he was the conservative on the ticket and all.”
Rafe continued his pacing. “Might have been worth murder to Thornley.”
“Never did trust him,” Mitchell said.
Rafe was almost amused. “Big deal. You’ve never trusted any politician in your life.”
“It’s a grand theory, gentlemen.” Hannah picked up her wineglass. “But let’s not get too carried away here. As Bev pointed out to Mitchell, Thornley is the one person who could not have disappeared from the reception without being missed that night.”
Rafe came to a halt and rested a hand on the windowsill as he contemplated the steel-colored waters of the bay. “Remember what Virgil told us. In a blackmail case there are others besides the victim who have a motive to kill. Anyone with an investment in the person being blackmailed might be moved to do something drastic to stop the extortionist.”
Hannah swirled the sauvignon blanc in her glass. “Are you suggesting Thornley’s wife might have murdered Kaitlin?”
Rafe thought about it. “Marilyn Thornley is as dedicated to her husband’s career as he is. A decade ago she had a reputation for getting what she wanted. Doubt that’s changed much in the last few years.”
“I won’t ask how you know that,” Hannah grumbled.
Rafe shrugged. “Don’t give me that look. Marilyn never wanted me. She knew I wasn’t headed for big things.”
Hannah frowned. “So how do you know that she had a way of getting what she went after?”
It was Mitchell who answered. “He knows because for a while Marilyn wanted Gabe.”
“Aha.” Hannah pondered that fact. “Did she, uh, get him for a while?”
“You know, I never came right out and asked him,” Mitchell said laconically. “But to tell you the truth, if they did have a fling, it wouldn’t have meant much to him. The only thing he cared about in those days was reviving Madison Commercial. Still is, come to that. I swear, if that grandson of mine doesn’t figure out that there’s more to life than doing deals and making money, he’s gonna wind up missing all the stuff that really matters.”
Rafe shot him a narrow-eyed look. “Gabe resurrected Madison Commercial for you, Mitchell.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I admit I steered him in that direction. But I never meant for him to make the damn company his entire life.”
Rafe shrugged. “The company’s his passion. What did you expect?”
“We all know what happens with a Madison once he’s fixated on his great passion in life,” Hannah murmured into her wine.
“You make it sound like Gabe doesn’t have time for a wife, but that’s not true,” Mitchell continued. “The only reason he hasn’t married is because he’s got a problem with women.”
Hannah was interested. “What kind of problem?”
“He expects them to work the same way his company works.” Mitchell’s voice dripped with disgust and frustration. “Don’t know where he got the notion that women operate like an accounts receivable department or that you could treat one of ’em like a branch of the head office. Certainly not from me.”
“We’re getting a little off track here,” Rafe said. “Why don’t we get back to the problem at hand?”
Hannah straightened in her chair. “Right. Okay, let’s see what we’ve got so far. We think that Trevor Thornley might have been Kaitlin’s blackmail target. But we also know that he couldn’t have killed her that night because he was the star of the institute reception. That leaves us with the extremely weak possibility that someone who didn’t want Thornley compromised might have gone out to meet Kaitlin and silence her.”
“Makes sense to me,” Mitchell said. “What do we do next?”
Rafe turned the glass in his hands. “We talk to Arizona Snow. See if she’ll let us look at her logbooks for that night.”
“Let’s just hope she wasn’t home sick with the flu that evening,” Hannah said.
“Thank you, Miss Optimism,” Rafe growled.
“Well, to be honest, I keep wondering what we can do even if we do come up with a really terrific scenario for the murder of Kaitlin Sadler. It’s not like we can hope to find any proof after all this time. Say that we’re successful. What are our options?”
Rafe hesitated. It was Mitchell who sat forward, determined and eager.
“I’ll tell you what you do,” he said. “You blow the whole damn story wide open so there are no more secrets to be kept. You go to Jed Steadman down at the Journal and give him the facts. He always wanted to be a real investigative reporter. This is his big chance, and I’m betting he’ll take it. If he runs with it, you can pretty much guarantee that every paper in the state will start digging into the Sadler woman’s death.”
