Page 15 of Child In Jeopardy
She shook her head. “It’s Taylor Galway, someone who used to be friends with Stephanie, but I know they had some kind of falling-out. Taylor wants to know if it’s true, if Stephanie is really dead. I suspect now that word of her death is out, I’ll be getting more calls and texts,” she added in a mutter.
“That might not be a bad thing,” Slater said. “Did Stephanie have contact with these friends while she was hiding out?”
Lana’s first instinct was to say no, that Stephanie had been too scared for that, but she simply didn’t know. “Maybe.”
That would have been his guess, too, and if Stephanie had spoken to anyone, she might have doled out some info that could help with the investigation. Lana clearly picked up on that, too, because she fired off a response to Taylor.
It’s true, Lana texted as Slater looked over her shoulder. She waited a few moments but got no response back from the woman. “I really don’t think Stephanie had contact with Taylor, though, because the couple of times the woman’s name recently came up, Stephanie didn’t have anything kind to say about her. Just the opposite.”
“Do you know why?” he asked. It wasn’t an idle question. Sometimes, bad blood led to bad stuff happening.
“I’m not sure. I recall Stephanie calling her a backstabber, and she added some choice words of profanity to that.” She paused a moment. “It’s possible their falling-out was over Marsh.”
“Marsh?” Slater certainly hadn’t expected that.
Lana nodded. “Our parents were pressuring Stephanie to marry Marsh, but I know that Marsh was once involved with Taylor, so maybe Taylor wasn’t over him. Or maybe she just didn’t want Stephanie hooking up with her ex.”
Ironic since it appeared that Stephanie hadn’t wanted Marsh. At least she hadn’t wanted to marry him, anyway. It was possible, though, she would have changed her mind about that had she lived.
Even though Lana yawned for the third time, she went to the window and looked out. Despite this being a residential neighborhood, the city lights were right there, only a few blocks away, and there were even more lights beyond that. In the distance, there were the sounds of traffic and even the howl of a police siren. He wasn’t sure how people slept with that kind of noise going on, but he’d have to give it a try. He needed at least a little sleep to stand a chance of having a clear head.
“A fish out of water,” he muttered. That’s what he felt like right now.
The corner of Lana’s mouth lifted. “I felt that way after we moved from Saddle Ridge. Stephanie was in her element in the city, but I never was.”
That was a reminder of the things he and Lana had in common, and if there hadn’t been a two-year age difference between them, Slater figured he would have dated Lana in high school, not Stephanie.
Maybe sensing that the moment was turning too personal, Lana turned from the window. “I’ll be in the room right across from here.”
She started in that direction, only to stop when Slater’s phone rang. “Is it Joelle?” she immediately asked, and he knew the concern in her voice was because she was afraid something had happened to the baby.
He shook his head. “It’s Duncan.”
Lana didn’t relax one bit, so Slater quickly answered the call and put it on speaker. “Lana’s in the room with me,” he informed Duncan just in case he needed to soften any bad news he might have. “Is the baby all right?”
“He’s fine,” Duncan assured him. “And there’s been no sign of any kind of trouble here. What about there?”
“Nothing,” he said, and then waited for Duncan to get into why he’d called. Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait long.
“Two things. I just got back two reports. The first is for Stephanie’s cell phone records. The person who called her in the hospital used a blocked number. No way to trace it.”
That surprised exactly no one. Of course a killer planning a murder wouldn’t have left something that could be linked back to him. But it did make Slater wonder why the person had called Stephanie. Or maybe the call wasn’t from the killer at all but from someone else.
“The other report I got back was from the Rapid DNA test,” Duncan added a moment later. Slater heard him drag in a long breath. “Cameron’s father isn’t Patrick. It’s Buck.”
Chapter Six
With Slater right by her side and Detective Lisa Thayer across the table, Lana sat in the interview room of Austin PD and read through the now-typed statement she’d just given about her sister’s murder. It was all there. All spelled out.
Details that twisted and ate away at her like acid.
In hindsight, she could see so much potential for an outcome like this. Stephanie’s secrecy. The fear she’d seen in her sister’s eyes. Lana hadn’t gotten to the source of that fear, hadn’t managed to fix it in time, and now Stephanie had paid the ultimate price.
“Buck,” Lana muttered under her breath when her gaze landed on his name in the statement. She was well aware she’d spoken it like profanity, and it wasn’t the first time. It was something she’d been doing most of the night and now into the morning.
She couldn’t wrap her mind around Stephanie hooking up with a man like Buck, especially since according to those photos on social media, she had been involved with Buck’s brother, Patrick. Knowing Cameron’s bio-father didn’t lessen Lana’s love for her nephew, not one bit, but she knew it made their situation even more complicated.
If Patrick had been the dad, he could have petitioned for custody of Cameron. Had Patrick not been murdered, that is. But Buck was very much alive. And possibly a killer. Lana didn’t want someone like that to try to stake a claim on the baby.