He considered that, nodded. Of the two, cop mode was preferable. Because he didn’t want her to break.
“Of our three suspects, Anthony would have been too young to have the motive to kill my mother,” Livvy spelled out. “He would have only been ten at the time.”
“He could have had motive,” Ethan argued. “If he thought your mother had some part in killing his, then Anthony could have perhaps managed it.”
She conceded that with a nod. “But why not just go after Chloe instead? It was obvious during interview that he believed she had murdered his mother because the woman was jealous of the attention her husband was paying her.”
“Anthony might have thought both were involved. Or he could have said that to throw us off his scent if he had killed when he was ten.”
Ethan tried to play that out, and he just couldn’t wrap his head around a kid doing that. Not just the murder but then taking the knife that had Livvy’s prints on it. Most kids, unlessthey were budding cold-blooded killers, would have dropped the knife.
And maybe Anthony had done just that.
Dropped it, and somehow it’d gotten into Vernice’s hands.
“Franklin could have motive,” Livvy went on several moments later. “My mother could have found something incriminating about him or New Hope. That could have been why she and I were cowering in the stairwell near Franklin’s office. She could have run with me, and Franklin could have found us and killed her.” She paused. “But then why not just kill me, too?”
“Hell,” Ethan spat out.
He hated thinking about this. The nightmare that had actually happened. And heaven knew what Livvy had witnessed that’d caused her mind to shut down.
She reached out, took hold of his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Comforting him. He cursed again because he should’ve been the one comforting her.
“It helps to focus on it like a cop,” she explained.
Maybe. But this didn’t feel like helping. It felt as if they were jabbing at old wounds. Still, it had to be done because this was how the case could end up being solved.
“Anthony could have killed my mother,” Livvy went on. “Franklin could have, too. That leaves us with Vernice.”
Yeah, it did. “Vernice, who’s lied about her connection to New Hope. And she had possession of the knife.” He stopped, considering something. “Has Vernice always been…hostile to you, even when you were a kid?”
Livvy didn’t hesitate. She nodded. “Nothing obvious, but I always had the feeling she didn’t like me. As I got older, I thought maybe that was because you and I were close friends and she didn’t want that to develop into something more since you were with her daughter.”
“That could have played into it,” he admitted. “But what if Vernice was worried your memory would return and you could implicate her in some way?”
She didn’t get a chance to answer because his phone rang, and when he saw Grace’s name on the screen, he answered it right away on speaker.
“How’s Livvy?” Grace asked the moment she was on the line. “And give me the truth and not what you want me to hear.”
“I’m, uh, trying to deal with what I remembered and my mother’s blood being on the knife,” she admitted. “I’m probably not dealing well, but I’ll get there.”
He hoped that was true. Ethan wanted Livvy to be able to get past this and not be in so much emotional torment.
“Did you remember anything else?” Grace pressed.
“No, but Ethan and I were just going over how that piece of memory might fit with our suspects.”
“Good. Keep doing that because we need a break in this case.” Grace sighed, the frustration coming through loud and clear. “I haven’t done the reports yet for the interviews with Franklin, Anthony and Vernice, but I wanted you to know that nothing else came out that we can use. As expected, I had to cut them all loose.”
Ethan felt his own new wave of frustration though he had known this would be the likely outcome. An outcome where a possible killer was loose and maybe ready to strike again.
“How did Franklin address the accusations about him having fathered some of the babies at New Hope?” Livvy asked.
“He dismissed it as a vicious rumor, and his lawyer threatened a slander suit for ruining Franklin’s good name. Blah, blah, blah,” Grace muttered. “And since we don’t have any actual proof that it did happen, I had to drop it.”
“There could possibly be proof,” Livvy said, and there was something in her, some tension, that had him looking at her.
Damn it.
