Jack said, “She and my father really seemed to like each other.” It was so unusual for him to speak of his father in a tone that wasn’t angry that they looked at him.
“If Roy had divorced his awful wife,” Sara said, “and married an elegant woman like Barbara, it would have changed many lives. Especially yours.”
“You could have had a singing career,” Randal said.
“Or been a movie star,” Sara added, teasing him.
Jack gave a snort of derision.
“Do you remember seeing Greer and me in the cabinet?” Kate asked.
“I remember Grandad teaching me about window frames.” His eyes sparkled. “Did you really want to ‘play’ with me?” The air between them seemed to sizzle.
“Stop it!” Sara said. “You two can’t disappear again. Not yet. We have work to do and little time to do it. We have to find a killer. We have lots of motive, but who did the deed? Which one of these lovely people is actually a psychopathic killer?”
“Barbara’s motive for murder was strong.” Randal looked at Jack. “Barbara Adair appears to be a sweetie but she’s a very ambitious woman. She married a gay man because he could help her career. She gave up on love in order to keep her rich life—and Roy knew that.”
“Do you think my dad committed a murder for her?” Jack sounded calm, but the look on his face was the beginning of the infamous Wyatt rage.
“I doubt it,” Randal said in a dismissive tone, then turned to his sister. “As I said, you need to research and find out about Harry and what happened when he was eighteen.”
Sara didn’t react to her little brother’s orders. “In other circumstances, I would love doing that, but Rachel puzzles me. I’d like to find out what’s going on with her.”
Jack was calming down. “So you can use her as a character in a new book? The one you’ve been writing about in that notebook you never put down?”
“I both love and hate that someone knows me so well,” Sara said. “But honestly, I don’t have time to dig into the entire life of some old movie producer. I’d be watching movies until—” Her eyes widened.
“What is it?” Kate asked.
“Billy and his army of bored old people. They spend their days watching reruns ofBonanzaand drooling over Little Joe.” Only Randal knew what she meant. She waved her hand. “If Kate can remember what happened when she was four, Billy can probably remember more about what happened both times Oliver was here.”
“Like the fact that he didn’t tell us that the man had been here months before the party?” Jack asked.
“Exactly. I wish I knew a tech guy to run all this. We’ll need a couple of VHS machines to be hooked up. I wonder if the young man with the antique mower could do it. He obviously knows about old-timey machines.”
Everyone gave her blank looks.
Sara glared at them. “Six a.m.? Silent mowing? You didn’t see him?”
They were still blank.
“I’ll ask Lenny. He’ll know.”
Jack and Kate started to get up, but Randal sat there. “You think Rachel is the murderer, don’t you?”
Sara tried to suppress a smile, but the corners of her mouth turned up. “She is acting very oddly—and don’t forget that she had the hedgehog. Did she raid the nursery to get it? Why?”
“Oh!” Kate said. “I forgot to tell you that someone searched the nursery. They tried to put things back, but they were rearranged.”
“Did you try to find out what they were looking for?” Sara asked.
“Well... We, I mean Jack and I... We were...” Kate stumbled.
“Occupied.” Jack was grinning broadly. “That’s a nice rug on the floor.”
Randal, studiously ignoring the two young people, said to his sister, “You were speaking of Rachel.”
Jack and Kate were silent, waiting for her to explain.
