“Yes, but she didn’t know that. Sorry, but your father played a dirty trick on her. He told her he was being blackmailed but for another reason.”
“You don’t have to tell me for what,” he said. “So Mom got here and was told Dad murdered someone when he was very young?”
“That’s what we think. Derek Oliver said there was a movie and a script involved. We assume that was his proof.”
“No,” Troy said. “Maybe there’s a script but there’s no movie of that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I know all his movies.”
“This happened in the forties when Harry was still a teenager,” Sara said. “It would have taken him years to get where he could make his own movies. If it’s a film you don’t know about, maybe it has a forbidden subject. Do you think it might have been two gay men? If so, would it have been shown in the fifties? Sixties? No. The seventies might have done an art house showing. Cocteau’sBeauty and the Beastwas ridiculed then, because we knew the truth about the Beast.”
Troy leaned back against the booth. “What do you achieve if you prove that my dad murdered someone then turned the whole thing into a movie? You’d learn my mother had a strong motive for killing the man to shut him up?”
Sara wasn’t going to be coy. “We already know that she does. But then, theyallhave motives.”
Their food came and for a while they were silent. “Mind if I take on the job of proving that my parents are innocent?”
“I would love that!”
He smiled. “You’re on. So tell me about this execution.”
“We know next to nothing, but we keep running across it. James Lachlan willed his house and grounds—that used to be worth a lot of money—to his oldest living descendant. The poor man died alone because of the rotten year of 1944. Billy used to light candles and tell it as a ghost story.”
“I don’t have candles, but I’d like to hear it. Know any available storyteller?”
Sara smiled. “I might be able to tell a bit. It’s a very simple story. James’s nephew killed a man and was hanged for the crime. James’s son was so upset that he ran away and was never seen again. In that same hideous year, James’s wife ran her car into a tree and died. Three deaths in one year. I can’t imagine. The poor man never remarried, just spent most of the rest of his life in his Palm Room.” Sara’s head came up. “Although, I just found out that Mr. Lachlan liked Cal a great deal.”
“My grandfather.”
“He was. Oh, but I wish you’d met him! He was the kindest, smartest, most wonderful man who ever lived.”
“You were in love with him?”
“With all my heart,” she said.
“So why didn’t you marry him?”
“Think I could get a refill of iced tea?”
Troy saw her shut-down look and didn’t push further. “That makes three murders. The question is: How are they connected?”
“We have no idea—or even if they are connected. Derek Oliver and Lachlan House. That seems to be where the tie is.”
“Why did Oliver want to meet at Lachlan House?” Troy asked.
“He was hitting up Billy’s brothers for money, and they sent him to the house to spy on Billy. While he was there, he found out about the murder Harry committed.”
“And was never charged with, nor was it spoken about. He got away with it until Oliver found out about it. Somehow. Do I have that right?”
“Yes,” Sara said, smiling at his grasp of it all.
“Dates?” he asked.
“Nephew executed 1944, Harry allegedly murdered a young man—a would-be, nobody actor according to your mother—in ’45.”
“Interesting that the dates are so close together.” He took a drink of water. “I don’t see a connection, but still, James Lachlan amassed a roomful of my dad’s movies. I guess it’s too much to hope he was just a rabid fan.”
