Deadly Touch - Heather Graham Page 0,86

need, since the person responsible knows Raina Hamish has become involved in this search.”

“Raina is the key. Listen, you guys keep at this,” Axel said. “I’m going to head out to the stables. I want to use Kylie to guide Raina.”

“She’ll be good,” Jon said.

“I’ve gotten ahold of Vinnie Magruder, retired,” Nigel said. “He’ll be out here tonight and we’ll see if he remembers anything at all.”

“I’m not sure he can help us—unless it’s with old cases we don’t know anything about,” Andrew said. “Still, anything that might help.”

“That first young lady, Fran Castle. From what we have—and what we remember, though memory could be faulty—she must have been at the casino. Her car was found just a little farther west on the trail. That suggests to me she’d been playing...and maybe then she was headed over to Naples. Someway or somehow, she stopped there and was picked up. And killed.”

“No one seemed to protest when they were taken—though, of course, we don’t really know. But we do know that with Jennifer Lowry, there was no sign she’d fought, that she’d been knocked on the head or given a concussion. She was just taken. That suggests someone powerful,” Nigel said.

“Or someone who might have had a strange hold like a bribe, blackmail, something like that,” Axel suggested.

“They were all blackmailed?” Andrew asked. “If you’re blackmailing someone, don’t you want them alive so you keep getting those blackmail payments?”

“Maybe. But maybe that’s the answer when you haven’t made your blackmail payments. There’s got to be something that ties them together. And I think we’re looking at more than one killer. More like a team. Maybe it’s more than two people, or two people always, but a different two people, somehow involved with one another—and a plan to get rid of someone. However, when you have a quiet neighborhood, it would be easy enough to stalk someone—know their schedule—and wait to seize them quickly and in the darkness. You do risk being seen by a neighbor, but if you’ve observed someone’s habits long enough, it’s certainly possible and likely. The Fran Castle case, though...right on the Tamiami Trail.”

“Someone had balls,” Nigel noted. “Or, if she was the first, they were just learning. Maybe taking risks because they didn’t really know what they were doing yet.”

Axel’s phone rang and he answered quickly.

Angela Hawkins.

“I found something,” she told him.

“You did? Great! What?”

“Not sure how great, but Jennifer Lowry had an aunt who died about forty-eight hours after the medical examiner determined Jennifer had died. The aunt—Elizabeth Lowry—left behind a considerable fortune. Jennifer died before her aunt, so according to the will, none of it would come her way or go into any of the charities she embraced. It would go to the other nieces and nephews—there were three more of them. Now that might mean nothing, but—”

“It might mean everything. She needed to die before the aunt, and unlike the others, the killers needed for her body to be found immediately.”

“That could suggest a couple of things. Copycat killers, or killers who had been hired to make sure her body was found quickly. Which may be why she was found in a more obvious, well travelled part of the Everglades.”

“Murder for hire,” Axel mused.

“I’m digging into other finances, other family members,” Angela said. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Thank you.”

Axel told Jon, Nigel and Andrew what Angela had discovered.

“Executions. You said it from the beginning,” Andrew said.

“A business machine that’s been running for years, and God knows just who it might employ,” Axel noted.

“Let’s see what we get from Angela on the others. The finances on Jennifer Lowry didn’t pop up because she was never involved with the money. She would have been out of the aunt’s will before the aunt died because she was dead already,” Jon said. “I think we’re on to something now, but the who and why is still missing.”

“We need Raina and Kylie,” Axel said.

“We need anything we can get,” Jon agreed.

Axel started out and the others followed him. Maybe, Axel thought, they all needed a break from staring at data and trying to figure out what it could all possibly mean.

Their timing was good. Raina and Kylie seemed to be coming from the stables for him.

“We didn’t want to start without you,” Kylie said. “We need to figure out a way to own horses in Alexandria!” she called to Jon as he headed back toward the house with Andrew and Nigel.

“Sure! Everyone has a few on the beltway!” Jon