Silenced (Alaskan Courage Book #4) (14 page)

“It’ll be fun,” Reef said, trying desperately to coax Anna into hiking with him. “We can take Rori. It’ll be a blast.”

How could he return home and not do anything active for his entire stay? He was itching to get out in the fresh air and move around. The only time they’d spent outside thus far was in his sisters’ backyard and sightseeing downtown.

“Why don’t we do some more sightseeing?”

He smiled. “There’s only so much downtown in Yancey. You’ve seen it all. The rest of Tariuk is the outdoors. Believe me, it’s gorgeous.”

She ran her hand along the edge of the book she’d been reading.

Maybe Piper was right. Maybe he needed to be with someone who enjoyed adventure. Sitting around the house and shopping were not his idea of fun. But he genuinely liked Anna. She was so kind and sweet. If he could just get her a little bit active. It still baffled him how she could live surrounded by the beauty of Tahoe and couldn’t care less about spending time in the outdoors.

“What do you say?” he asked, still hopeful.

She looked up at him with a smile. “We won’t go for long?”

He sank down on the couch beside her. “Just a couple hours. I’d love to show you more of Tariuk. We’ll take an easy hike. The views are amazing.”

“Okay.” She sat her book aside. “I’ll give it a try.”

“Great.” He knew she’d love it once they were out there surrounded by lavender and fuchsia fields of fireweed, fresh air blowing through her hair, exertion warming her limbs. It’d be perfect.

Jake eyed the weathered wooden building that served as Patty Tate’s workshop, a light emanating from inside.

Shane sat outside, working on his longboard—replacing the wheels. He eyed them but remained silent, sullen.

“Your mom in her workshop?” Kayden asked.

Shane nodded.

Jake looked at Kayden before rapping on the door, wondering what they were about to find.

“Come on in,” Patty hollered. She stood with her back to them at a long, narrow wooden bench. Her shoulders were hunched as she stirred a creamy white liquid in a large steel bowl. One of her lotions, perhaps. She glanced over her shoulder and grimaced. “What do you want now?”

Jake scanned the countertops, Kayden doing the same, both looking for the murder weapon—a bottle of Dodecanol.

Kayden spotted it first, on a small shelf to Patty’s right. Her eyes lit as she turned to Jake.

So this was it. He stepped forward. “Patty, I’m afraid I’m going to need you to come with me.”

She looked up at them confused. “What? Why?”

“I think we just found the murder weapon.” Jake slipped on his gloves and placed the Dodecanol in an evidence bag, sealing it.

“What are you talking about?”

“Conrad’s killer mixed Dodecanol in with his chalk.”

“But that would make his hands slippery rather than providing the friction he needed,” she sputtered.

“Correct,” Jake said, stepping toward her.

Patty stepped back, wiping her hands on a towel. “You got this all wrong. I didn’t kill Conrad. I use the Dodecanol in my soaps—it’s a dry moisturizer.”

Which is why it had worked in the chalk so well. Being a
dry
moisturizer hid the properties until it was too late.

“Come on, Patty. Game’s up. We know Conrad added you and Shane to his life insurance policy last week. We know you had access to his chalk because he stopped over that night. And the murder weapon was sitting on your shelf.”

Patty’s brows pinched. “Conrad added us to his life insurance policy?” She looked genuinely perplexed.

“You’re saying you didn’t know?”

“No.” Patty shook her head. “I had no idea. I can’t believe he added us.”

“So he added us to some dumb policy. Big whoop.” They all turned to see Shane standing in the doorway.

Jake wondered how long the young man had been standing there and how much he’d overheard.

“He still treated you like a prostitute,” Shane sputtered vehemently.

“Shane!” Patty’s face turned bright red.

“What?” He shrugged. “It’s true. He was never going to leave his prissy wife for you.”

Patty walked to her son, smoothing his rumpled hair. “Where is this coming from?”

“Come on, Mom. You know it’s true. You were always going to get his leftovers.”

“You don’t understand. Conrad loved us in his own way.”

“Please,” Shane huffed, and then turned to face Jake. “I’m the one that mixed Dodecanol in Conrad’s chalk. Mom had nothing to do with it.”

“Shane?” Patty stepped between Jake and her son. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry, Mom, but Dad was never going to come back when you were another man’s whore.”

She swatted him. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why? Everyone else in town does. Did you really think no one else in town noticed? I heard the gossip. All the juicy details. I saw you and Mrs. Humphries going at it in the square, and you know what, I’d had enough. When I heard Conrad say he loved you later that night, that he would take care of us but would never leave his precious Vivienne, I knew exactly where you stood with him, and I had to put an end to it.”

“Shane, you don’t understand.”

“I understand plenty. I heard Conrad bragging about his upcoming climb, and I knew my opportunity had finally come. I did a little research, borrowed some of your stuff, and mixed it in with his chalk.”

Jake pulled out his handcuffs, his heart heavy. “Shane Tate, you are under arrest for the murder of Conrad Humphries.”

“No.” Patty lunged for Jake. “Stop. You’ve got this all wrong.”

Patty raged against Jake as he steered Shane toward his and Kayden’s rental car. He opened the door and guided Shane into the backseat. Patty pushed past Kayden as she tried running interference.

“Get out of my way,” Patty hollered, tossing in a few expletives at Kayden that curdled Jake’s blood.

Shutting the car door, he turned to Patty. “Never speak to her that way again.”

Patty got right in his face, belligerent. “I’ll speak to your girlfriend any way I please.”

“She’s not my—”

“Let it be,” Kayden said. “Our relationship is none of her business.”

Our relationship?
Had she . . . ? Was she . . . ? He tried not to stagger back.

“My son is very much my business, and you two are making a
huge
mistake.” Patty dodged around them to the car window, rapping on the glass. “Shane, tell them you didn’t do this. Now!”

Shane turned his head the other way.

She whirled around on Jake. “You can’t take him. I won’t allow it.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice. He’s now in my custody, and I’m taking him back to the sheriff station in Yancey.”

“Not without me, you aren’t. You think you’re so superior. Acting all cocky. Well, Shane’s a minor, and I know our rights.”

“You have the full right to get yourself to the station. I am under no obligation to allow you to accompany us there. If you have a lawyer, I’d give him or her a call.”

“You’re going to wish you were only dealing with my lawyer when I get through with you both.”

“If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to lock you up,” Thoreau said, dealing with the still-belligerent Patty Tate as Jake joined Landon in the interrogation room at Yancey’s sheriff station. Kayden would be watching from the adjacent room, behind the two-way glass. It was hard to believe seven months earlier Reef had sat in the same interrogation room opposite Landon.

“Who are you?” Shane asked Landon.

“I’m Sheriff Grainger. I’d like you to tell me what you told Deputy Cavanagh.”

“I killed Conrad Humphries.”

He said it so coolly, so matter-of-factly, Jake wondered if he wasn’t covering for his mom. No mother would let her son take the rap for her, but if Shane believed his mom had killed Conrad, he could very well be acting on that even if she didn’t do it.

Patty had insisted they wait to question her son until their
lawyer arrived, but Shane waived his right to have a lawyer present. He was ready and eager to talk, but Jake and Landon decided not to question him until the lawyer arrived, just to make sure they did everything by the book.

“I don’t want to make this any harder on my mom than it already is. There’s no need to drag it out.”

“Your mom has called Daniel Waters.”

“And he is . . . ?”

“He
was
Conrad’s lawyer.”

“Great.” Shane rolled his eyes. “She’s still depending on him.”

“Here.” Landon slid a legal pad and pen to Shane. “Feel free to write down what you told Deputy Cavanagh while we wait for Mr. Waters to arrive.”

Jake stepped with Landon into the hall, where Kayden met them.

“He’s so cold, so detached,” she said.

“He was too far removed from the actual crime,” Jake explained.

She gaped at him. “He murdered a man. How can he possibly be removed from it?”

“All he did was compromise the chalk. He wasn’t present for the results of his actions. Wasn’t there to see Conrad die. It makes it easier to detach, to be more clinical.” It didn’t make it any less wrong. He’d still killed a man, but not being present left out a lot of the raw emotion he’d expect to see under different circumstances.

“Why do you think Conrad added Shane to his life insurance policy too?” Landon asked.

“If you love a woman, you love her child,” Jake said. “He probably promised Patty that even though he’d never leave Vivienne, he’d still make sure she and Shane were taken care of.”

“I wonder how Vivienne’s going to react when she finds out—if she hasn’t already.”

“She won’t react well. Not if her character holds true.”

“How much money does Vivienne stand to lose because of the changes?”

“A lot,” a man said behind them.

They all turned to find Daniel Waters standing there.

“How’s it going, Daniel?” Jake asked. Daniel had taken several Last Frontier Adventure fly-fishing trips Jake had led.

“I’d be better if you hadn’t talked to my underage client without legal representation.”

Landon stepped forward. “Shane confessed to the murder of his own accord, with his mother present—and we haven’t questioned him here at the station.”

The cockiness faded from Daniel’s scowl. “Where is he now?”

“Alone in the interrogation room. I’ve got a deputy posted on the other side of the two-way glass to make certain he doesn’t try anything rash.”

Daniel sighed. “All right. I’ll need a few minutes to confer with my client in private.”

“Of course. I’ll pull the deputy from the observation room and cut the mic feed.”

Daniel nodded as Landon reentered the observation room.

“Wait a sec,” Kayden said. “What did you mean when you said Mrs. Humphries stood to lose a lot by Conrad changing his life insurance policy?”

Daniel frowned. “Life insurance policy? I was referring to Conrad’s will. Are you saying he added Ms. Tate and her son to the life insurance policy as well?”

“Yes.”

“Conrad didn’t say anything about that to me the other night, but I suppose it makes sense.”

“The other night?” Jake watched a spark ignite in Kayden’s eyes. She was on the trail of something, and he was going to let her run with it.

“Yes. Conrad insisted he needed to change his will as soon as possible. My office hours are booked for weeks, but Conrad’s an old friend, so I met him after hours the other night.”

“Which night?”

Daniel sighed. “The night before he died.”

“Around nine?” Kayden asked.

“Yes.” He frowned. “How’d you know?”

She turned to Jake. “The missing hour.”

He nodded and looked back at Daniel. “You said changing his life insurance policy makes sense. Makes sense, how?”

“Because of the circumstances. If you’re going to change one, you might as well make the change on all estate assets. Though, if Shane is convicted of murder—and I’m not saying he will be; nor is that any indication of his guilt—but if murder is involved, that voids his share of the life insurance policy.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to talk to his money manager or insurance agent for that, but I know that when he altered the will he left Vivienne and her boys fifty percent and Patty and Shane the other fifty percent.”

“Wow,” Kayden said. “That’s really generous to Patty and her son.”

Daniel adjusted his belt and looked around. “That’s just it.” He pushed his hand through his thinning hair. “Shane wasn’t only Patty’s son.”

“What are you saying?”

“Shane was Patty and
Conrad’s
son.”

“How’s that possible?” Kayden asked. “Patty said she’d just met Conrad a few years ago.”

“Actually,” Jake said, replaying the conversation back in his mind, “what she said was ‘when Conrad first came
into the gym
a few years ago.’”

“So you think that wasn’t the first time they met? That the two had a relationship years ago resulting in Shane’s birth and then decided to pick it back up years later?”

“Conrad first met Patty when they were both living in Anchorage,” Daniel said. “He was an up-and-coming hedge-fund manager, and Patty was a student at U of A, Anchorage. They came from two different worlds, and Conrad was already engaged to Vivienne at the time. But he said he fell head over heels for Patty. He was going to break it off with Vivienne, but his father said if he didn’t follow through on his commitment to Vivienne—whose parents were close personal friends—he’d cut him completely out of the family business, not to mention his will.”

“So he left Patty pregnant?”

“According to Conrad, he never knew Patty was pregnant. She didn’t find out until a month after they split, and by then Conrad and Vivienne were married, so Patty decided to raise Shane on her own.”

Kayden frowned. “Then how . . . ?”

“Patty moved to Imnek to live with an aunt while pregnant, to have family near as she was adjusting to life as a single mom. Conrad and Vivienne had two boys of their own, and Patty married a guy named Steve Tate when Shane was still
a baby. He raised Shane as his own, though he proved to be a lousy husband, according to Patty.”

“Okay, so how did Conrad and his family end up in Imnek? And, how did he discover Shane was his son?” Jake asked.

“Conrad saw an article in
Alaska
magazine about a climbing championship Patty had just won. There was a picture of Patty and Shane in the article.”

“And that was enough?”

“Enough to make him curious. Shane has his eyes. He made a trip down to Imnek and confronted Patty. She told him Shane was his, but that she didn’t want him in their lives.”

“But Conrad didn’t listen?” Kayden said.

“He made up some business excuse for why he and Vivienne had to relocate to Imnek and then started pursuing Patty.”

“That’s why he joined the gym and learned to climb.”

Daniel nodded. “It got him time with Patty and the boy.”

Kayden linked her arms across her chest. “I’ll say he was determined if nothing else.”

“Conrad was a bulldog when he set his mind to something.”

The realization of the full depth of the situation kicked Jake in the gut. “Does Shane know?”

“As far as I know, Patty hasn’t told him,” Daniel said. “But you’d have to ask her.”

Kayden looked to Jake. “Shane killed his own father. How do you live with something like that?”