Page 45 of Child In Jeopardy
Lana sighed again, and instead of answering her mother’s question, she went with one of her own. “Why’d you leave the apartment earlier today?”
“I told you. I went to the interview with the detective at SAPD.”
“Not then, Mother. Before that. Before the shooting. You left the safe place you had us arrange for you, and you had a gun with you.”
Again, Pamela went silent for several moments. “I didn’t want to tell you about that, but I met with a private investigator.” Another pause, even longer than the others. “I asked the person to dig up any dirt on your father. And I’m sure there’s plenty of that to find.”
Slater couldn’t argue with that, but the timing seemed way off. “You were worried about your safety,” Slater pointed out. “So why not just talk with the PI over the phone?”
“I did speak to her briefly, but I wanted to meet with her in person to make sure our conversation wouldn’t be recorded. Leonard has a lot of important people in his pocket, and I didn’t know if this particular PI was one of them. It’s Julia Munson from Sensor. She works with Lana.”
He and Lana exchanged glances, and Lana immediately fired off a text to Julia. No doubt to confirm there had indeed been a meeting.
“What do you expect Julia to find on Leonard?” Slater asked Pamela.
“Anything I can use. I plan on divorcing him,” Pamela added, and her voice wavered. “And I’ll need any and all ammunition. Before I left the estate, I copied some files from Leonard’s computer, and I wanted Julia to see if there was something in them.”
Slater huffed. “If you copied the files without permission, then you probably won’t be able to use anything incriminating.”
“That’s what Julia told me, but I asked her to look, anyway.” Another pause. “I want proof that he was having sex with Taylor. Taylor!” she repeated, and there was a jab of fury inher tone. “I’ve turned a blind eye to that sort of thing for years, but I’m fed up with it. Taylor flaunted the affair by telling her friends all about it. Leonard should have known the gossip would get back to me.”
Slater wondered if Pamela had just spelled out her motive for the shooting. She could have fired the shots at him and Lana as a diversion with the actual target being Taylor.
“Did the detective who questioned you take your gun?” Slater asked.
“No. I didn’t have it with me when I went to the police station. I took it to the PI’s office because, well, as you said, I was scared. I didn’t know if Leonard was going to use one of his goons to try to silence me.”
And there was Leonard’s motive all spelled out. Again, Taylor could have been the target to stop her from gossiping about their affair. It sickened Slater to think Lana could have been killed in what would have been just collateral damage to Leonard. Or to Pamela. Then again, the same could apply to Marsh.
As far as Slater was concerned, all three were still suspects, and that’s why he sent his own text. This one to Ruston to remind him they needed to get Pamela’s gun.
“Anyway, since I decided I could trust Julia,” Pamela went on, “I asked her to put an entire team together to go through those files and find anything they could. Not just about his affair with Taylor but with others. I know there were others,” she added in a mutter.
Slater thought of the photo Taylor had shown Lana and him. “Did he have an affair with Alicia?” Slater came out and asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Pamela said, and all the anger seemed to have seeped from her. There was a weariness in her voice now. “I didn’t suspect it at the time, but I asked Julia to goback as far as she could. If he carried on with Alicia, there might be some proof of it.”
Maybe, and Slater figured it was practically impossible to keep something like that a total secret. Maybe Julia would be able to find something, and if so, there’d be the link from Alicia to the murder of Slater’s father.
“I’d like to stay here at the apartment awhile longer,” Pamela continued. “Maybe just a day or two, but I plan on getting my own place. Julia said she could set that up for me, too. Where will you go that’s safe, Lana?” she tacked onto that.
“Cameron and I will be fine where we are,” Lana assured her.
Lana obviously didn’t give her mother her location, and Pamela didn’t ask. The woman probably suspected, though, that Lana, the baby and he were somewhere in Saddle Ridge.
“Have a good night,” Pamela said, ending the call.
Before Lana could even put her phone away, she got a text. “It’s Julia,” she relayed. “She confirmed my mother came in to see her today.”
“Does the timing work to give her an alibi for not being near the estate during the shooting?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not really. According to Julia, she had a long conversation with my mother over the phone, but their visit only lasted a couple of minutes, long enough for my mother to give Julia the files and to pay the retainer.”
Pamela definitely hadn’t mentioned that, and if she’d told the detective the truth during the questioning, the San Antonio cops would be looking for any proof that Pamela was in the vicinity of the shooting.
As if Ruston had read his mind, Slater got a text as well, and he was glad to see his brother’s response. He figured it’d please Lana, too, so he read it aloud. “‘Detective O’Malley and I are going to the apartment now to take Pamela’s gun. It’ll be sent for immediate testing.’”
Good. That way, they’d know not only if it’d been recently fired but if it was the weapon that’d been used to kill Taylor.