exactly hurt my reputation to be able to count on this as a good reference – but I liked the idea of helping right some of history’s wrongs.
No one could go back in time and prevent what’d happened to the millions of people who’d been wronged, and the passage of time made it virtually impossible to hold any specific people responsible. If Min could build a case that proved the Traylors not only knew about what their ancestors had done, but had been continuing to cover it up to prevent anyone else from finding out, it’d be a big deal.
Which meant I needed to make sure everything I had was checked and double-checked. Every piece of information was recorded clearly so that Min could put together all the relevant information.
What I’d been doing since I’d left the Huxleys’s house yesterday had been researching the Traylor family, but not focusing on their past. I’d already connected the Calverts to the Huxleys and the Douglasses. Now, I needed to see if I could find any proof that they’d been covering things up.
The problem was, I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for. Finding biological parents meant census records, birth certificates, hospital records, that sort of thing. Hospital records were tricky when it came to legalities, but the others were available to anyone if they knew where to look.
While I’d had a different goal looking into Carmine’s background, it’d been the same type of research needed. A DNA test would tie things up for Kathie once I figured out the best way to get a sample from one of the Traylors.
What I was looking for now wouldn’t be that simple. I had to prove that current members of the Traylor family knew what their ancestors had done and were actively working to keep it a secret. If all they were doing was not talking about what they knew, it’d be impossible to prove, and I wasn’t even sure if silence could be considered a cover-up, anyway.
Maybe they could be held accountable for not offering the information, but I wasn’t a lawyer, so I didn’t know. I needed to find something I could give Min as physical proof, something she could use in court, if it came to that.
I didn’t want to think about what it would do to Bradyn if this came out in a big public way. I had a feeling the Huxleys wouldn’t let him be surprised by it, though. I didn’t think it’d be a good idea to tell him what was going on, but that wasn’t my decision to make. Either way, it wouldn’t be pleasant.
But that wasn’t my business. He wasn’t my business, not anymore. Not ever. I had a job to do.
Dewey Cardinal, the PI I’d trained under, had said to follow the money when it came to relationship cases, so if it’d been a cheating spouse, I’d be going through bank account info and phone records that the person who hired me could get or at least give me permission to get. If it was a divorce case where one spouse wanted proof of infidelity or criminal behavior or that sort of thing, I’d look for hotel charges, money being transferred to offshore accounts or in another person’s name, life insurance policy changes. I’d follow them, see who they met with and talked to, what types of appointments they’d have, like if they’d been preparing for a divorce by speaking to a lawyer…
Yahtzee.
The Traylors might have had a shit ton of character flaws – some big ones if they were holding onto this secret – but they weren’t stupid. They’d created a huge legacy without this ever getting out. Successful politicians and businessmen didn’t stay successful by being dumb. Even if their IQs weren’t that high, they were smart enough to hire the right people. If I was going to try to hide something that could potentially destroy everything that generations of my family had built, I’d want to know as much about all the different consequences as I could.
Which meant I’d need to speak to a lawyer.
Conversations between a lawyer and their client were privileged, and I doubted the Traylors would hire someone who’d easily break that confidence, but it was a place to start. A family like theirs wouldn’t just want any lawyer, especially not for something this delicate, which meant they probably had the same lawyer or, at least, the same firm, for as many generations back as possible.