Page 135 of The Woman By the Lake

“One thing I’ve learned in this business,” Cade replied. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“So you think a fifteen and fourteen year old murdered their mother and uncle?” Riggs asked.

“I think it’s a possibility. But I think they’d need help, and it wasn’t the older boy. It could be the grandparents, but they were estranged from them. It could be the aunt, but if it was her, since she’s involved in highly contentious litigation, I would think someone would have turned on somebody by now, or, if I’m correct, at least outed the nature of the marriage. It could be the girl’s boyfriend, who was seventeen.”

“What happened to the boyfriend?” I asked.

Cade shook his head. “Don’t know. He was mentioned in some of Roosevelt’s emails to his parents, and Roosevelt liked him. Thought he was a solid guy. And it was noted in the last email he sent to his folks, which was two days before his death, that the boyfriend was going to be with the other kids when the oldest drove them out for the weekend. After that, I have no clue. Though, she’s unmarried and there’s no mention of her having a current partner, same with the youngest boy. Then again, in this case, they wouldn’t factor.”

“Harry tell you about what we found this morning?” Riggs asked.

Cade took a sip from his own mug while shaking his head.

“Yesterday evening, someone was at the southeast end of my lake, tramping around. Not camping. Not hunting. Just tramping around a big, but not large, though contained location. We think a man and a woman,” Riggs told him.

“The younger brother and sister?” Cade queried.

Whoa!

What?

Why would it be them?

“No clue. But if you’re right, it could be,” Riggs said. “Whoever it was knew of an access road that’s still there, but mostly grown over, and you wouldn’t know it was there unless you knew it was there. It’s my understanding, Roosevelt used that road when he thought it was time to thin out the forest in that area and get some firewood or whatever other shit he got up to in those woods when he didn’t want to hoof it. But it’s been unused since his death.”

“Looking for something?” Cade inquired.

“Was the shotgun found?” Riggs asked.

“Lincoln had it with him when the first responders arrived,” Cade told him.

“Then I don’t know,” Riggs said.

“Is all the money accounted for?” Delphine asked.

“It’s dwindling by the day, because at this juncture, a judge has allowed its use for the children and their schooling, and the oldest boy is now a medical doctor, as well as other living needs, which means they’re also using it for attorneys’ fees, and as you know, this is contentious in the extreme, and motions are filed regularly. But bottom line, yes,” Cade answered.

“So it’s not like there’s buried treasure,” she said.

Cade’s lips twitched in a way I thought this was some kind of private joke before he replied, “Not unless Roosevelt was keeping something from the surviving members of the extended family.”

Which begged a question I hadn’t had the chance to ask yet.

What would someone be out there looking for?

“Did Harry tell you what the Seattle detective said?” Riggs probed.

“Yep,” Cade replied.

“Thoughts on that considering your theory?”

“Yep,” Cade repeated, then launched in. “It was well known that Lincoln was a man who enjoyed the finer things in life. He indulged himself, his wife and his kids. And we’re seeing the results of that last. If I’m correct, and he came home from the fishing trip only to happen onto his two youngest having killed his brother and wife, and he made the split decision to take the fall for them, he had seven very long years to consider that decision. Now, if I’m a kid fucked in the head enough to commit what could only be charged as capital murder against members of my own family, I’d be a little jittery Dad faced the horrors of prison, having time to ruminate on his dead wife and twin brother, doing it with no waterfront view, doing it for me, and knowing what I’d done.”

“So you think they killed him,” I remarked.

Cade nodded. “I think it’s not a coincidence he saw those kids in the days before. And he did not see all his kids together. He visited his oldest son at college, and the younger two together, meeting them wherever they were frittering away his brother’s legacy. And I think whatever happened during that visit scared the absolute fuck out of them, and they moved in. That said, they did that shit by forcing a bottle of arsenic down his throat, so I also believe they were prepared for Dad to get out and see which way it swung.”

Cade took his hand from Delphine’s leg, sat forward and rested his forearms on his desk.

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