“Topossiblyhave resorted to it,” Ethan corrected. “When you were six, you were scrawny. A grown woman could have easily fought you off.”
She wanted to believe that, but why had she had blood on her? And did that blood have anything to do with Ivy?
“There’s also a chance that you were around when Anthony’s mother was murdered, and he might believe you can tell him the identity of the killer,” Ethan reminded her.
Livvy considered that. And she certainly didn’t dismiss it. But it seemed extreme for Anthony to stage Zadie’s body to trigger those memories in Livvy to help him bring his mother’s killer to justice.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Anthony might not have even been responsible for Zadie’s death. Yes, he was a person of interest, but so far, there was no concrete evidence linking him to the crime.
She was mulling that over when their phones both dinged with an incoming message. “It’s the reports on Chloe and Ivy Milbrath,” Ethan relayed to her as he opened the file.
Livvy opened her copy, too, and saw the first report was the information on Ivy. As Anthony had said, she had been run off the road and her car had gone over a bluff. The vehicle had then caught fire, destroying a good portion of Ivy’s body along with any potential evidence.
Her attention froze on the summary from the medical examiner. It appeared that Ivy had stab wounds, so there was the possibility the woman had been dead before the car crash.If so, then someone could have put her in the vehicle and then pushed it over the bluff.
“Stab wounds,” Livvy repeated, and she had to fight the blasted flashbacks again.
“Yeah,” Ethan muttered, and he sent off another text. “I want the ME’s full report to see if Ivy’s wounds could possibly match Zadie’s. And I also want to read what the CSIs wrote about all of this.” He looked at her again. “Because there’s no way you killed Zadie, and you sure as hell couldn’t have killed Ivy and staged her death when you were six.”
No, but it went back to the possibility that she’d seen or heard something. Maybe something her own mother, father or caregiver had done.
Whoever they were.
Because if Livvy had indeed witnessed one of them murdering Ivy, then it could maybe explain why they hadn’t come looking for her. She could have incriminated one of them for murder. And the trauma of her seeing something like that might’ve been the reason she’d blocked it out of her memories.
“Ivy died just a mile and a half from Renegade Canyon and only a little over three miles from New Hope,” Ethan pointed out. “I guess that makes sense since she had a surrogacy connection to New Hope.”
Yes, she did. But had the woman been heading toward New Hope? Or trying to get away from the place? That might be something the ME’s or CSIs’ reports could tell them.
“Chloe and Franklin will need to be reinterviewed,” Ethan said as he continued to read. “And I’m betting Chloe won’t like the past being dug up.”
Livvy had no doubts about that, and she mentally set aside Ivy’s death and moved on to the info in this latest report about Chloe. This one had the basics that Ethan and she already knew about the woman’s position at New Hope and the fact that shehad no criminal record. But there were some details about her marriage and divorce, and that was what Livvy focused on.
“She married Paul Heller when she was twenty-eight,” Livvy read aloud. “Thirty years ago. Paul was a real estate agent at the time of the marriage.”
“And he later failed at that,” Ethan supplied. “He also failed at the investment business he started…with Chloe’s money,” he tacked on.
Livvy pulled up the photos of the man that’d been included in the reports, and she studied his face. Not familiar. And she didn’t get even a trickle of recognition the way she had with Franklin.
Looks could definitely be deceiving, but Livvy could practically see the cockiness oozing from Paul. And he was drop-dead gorgeous, which meant he probably had attracted other women. That could mesh with what Ivy had written about him in her diary.
“Wow,” Livvy went on when she saw the divorce summary. “During the divorce proceedings, Chloe proved infidelity to block Paul from getting any portion of her estate.” Which was sizeable. Well over two million dollars. “No details, though, of anyone she would have named to prove he cheated.”
Ethan made a sound of agreement. “I’ll do some digging on that. We probably can’t get a search warrant for the actual divorce decree, but there could be something about it in Ivy’s diary.”
True, and Grace would either have the diary copied or else take it into evidence since it could point to Anthony’s motive for killing Zadie.
“We’ll need to interview Paul, too,” Livvy commented, and she glanced through the rest of the report to see if there was a current address.
And everything inside her went still.
“Paul’s dead,” she told Ethan, and then she stopped reading and looked up at him. “He died in a car accident the year after Chloe and he divorced.”
Ethan muttered some profanity. “That doesn’t feel like a coincidence.”
No, it didn’t. And Livvy went ahead and pulled up the details that were in the police database. Ethan moved closer to her, shoulder to shoulder, so they could read it together.
Livvy immediately saw that it wasn’t the full report, only a short summary. She also noticed that there weren’t a lot of similarities to Ivy’s fatal car crash. Paul had been killed in downtown San Antonio when his vehicle had smashed into the back of a semi. He had been killed instantly.
