River Road(70)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Maybe it would help if we went back to basics and built a family tree,” Lucy said.

Deke snorted. “Which family are we talking about? The Colfaxes? Your family? Our family?”

“None of the above,” Lucy said. “The clan that interests me is the one that Brinker gathered around him that summer thirteen years ago.”

“How the hell do we do that?” Mason asked.

“Leave it to me,” Lucy said. “Building family trees is what I do for a living, remember?”

45

Thank you for agreeing to help me, Teresa.” Lucy put a blank sheet of paper on the table and picked up a pen. “There are software programs that can be used to build family trees, but this tree is a little different.”

“I’m happy to help,” Teresa said. “It sounds like an interesting project.”

They were sitting together at a table in the tree-shaded town square. Two plastic glasses of iced tea from a nearby coffee shop were on the table.

“Why do you want to make a diagram showing all the people who were involved in Brinker’s little cult that summer?” Teresa asked.

“Because I think it will help the police figure out who killed Aunt Sara and Mary. It might also point to the person who shot Nolan Kelly and torched Sara’s house.”

Teresa took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This thing just keeps getting more and more weird. I could wrap my brain around the possibility that Nolan might have wanted to burn down the house in order to destroy any evidence linking him to Brinker and drug dealing in the past. But I can’t fathom why anyone would shoot him.”

“Mason says that when drugs are involved, there is always someone around who is happy to shoot someone else. It’s just part of the business.”

“But that implies that Kelly was still dealing.” Teresa grimaced. “That’s what I can’t quite visualize. I mean, he seemed so normal. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, for heaven’s sake.”

“Let’s start with Brinker and Kelly,” Lucy said. “Everyone seems to agree that Kelly was supplying the drugs that Brinker used to spike those so-called energy drinks that Brinker made available to the kids who hung around him. That means Kelly was close to Brinker.”

She drew a box in the center of the page and put Brinker’s name inside it. Then she drew a short line to another box. She wrote Kelly in the second box.

Teresa watched intently. “I think your chart is going to look a little like Dante’s nine circles of hell by the time we’re done. It sounds like Brinker hurt everyone he touched.”

“And savored every scrap of the pain he caused.”

“Total psycho.”

“Oh, yeah.”

They worked steadily for an hour. Between the two of them, they managed to remember the names of most of the people who had belonged to Brinker’s inner circle thirteen years ago. A couple of times Teresa took out her phone and checked the local listings to refresh her memory. Several of the people who had moved in Brinker’s orbit had left town. One had died.

When they finished with the names of those who had constituted the inner circle, they worked steadily outward. At one point Lucy put her own name into a box and then linked it to Jillian and Sara and Mary.

“This gets complicated, doesn’t it?” Teresa said after a while. “It’s starting to look like everyone in town was linked to someone who was close to Brinker.”

“You know the old saying about everyone on the planet being only six degrees of separation away from everyone else?” Lucy said. “But I think we’ve gone far enough out on the tree. Let’s start chopping off a few of the limbs and see what we’ve got left.”

“How are we going to decide who gets the ax?”

“Let’s focus on the drugs. Kelly was getting those designer pharmaceuticals from someone. It’s not like he was brewing them in his own basement.”

“No, Kelly wasn’t much good at chemistry,” Teresa said. “He was a broker. He scored those drugs from someone else. Probably a dealer in San Francisco.”

“If that’s true, then he may have maintained his business relationship with the connection he used thirteen years ago.”

Teresa looked up, frowning. “Why do you say that?”

Lucy hesitated. Mason had been adamant when he said he did not want her to reveal that he had been drugged.

“Because I’m convinced that someone used a hallucinogenic drug to murder Aunt Sara and Mary,” she said.

Teresa looked first startled and then sympathetic. “Lucy, accidents do happen.”

“I know, but bodies don’t show up in the victims’ fireplaces very often. Trust me. Hallucinogens are a connection here, I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, I’m not going to argue with you about it. Keep going. Let’s see where the drug connection takes us.”

“Nowhere,” Teresa announced later. “The drug connection starts and ends with Kelly, and he’s dead. Now what will you do?”

Lucy studied her diagram. Her forensic genealogist’s intuition was aroused. The answer was somewhere in the family tree she had constructed around Brinker. It had to be there.

“I have no clue what to do next,” she admitted. She got to her feet and gathered up the papers she had spread out on the table. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I’m a genealogist, not a detective. I hope Mason can look at this tree and see some link that I’m missing.”

“That’s a good idea.” Teresa rose and collected the empty cups. “He was three years older than us at the time. He had a different circle of acquaintances.”

“Good point. Thanks for the help on this.”

“No problem. It was an interesting experience. That’s the sort of thing you do for a living?”

“Yes. Usually, I’m looking for lost heirs. This was a different kind of search, which is probably why I didn’t get very far.”

Teresa glanced at her watch. “I’d better get back to the shop. Summer afternoons are always busy. My assistant will be wondering where I am.”

Lucy smiled. “All those tourists looking for wine-country casual outfits.”

“It may be a niche market, but it’s my market. Let me know if you come up with another approach to identifying Nolan Kelly’s drug connection.”

“I will.”

Teresa walked back through the square and disappeared onto Main Street.