Dead Secret

promised money if he kept his mouth shut, and it was the Taggart family. Shit. She had followed her instinct and she was right. But proving the connection was going to be a problem unless Randy MacRae or Neil Valentine folded.
    “Well, I suppose I’ll be going now,” said Diane. “When his lawyer comes, I wonder who he’ll be working for, this skinny little twit or the Taggarts.”
    Diane rose and left the room. Garnett followed on her heels.
    “Okay.” Garnett was almost in a frenzy. “You want to tell me what that was about? The Taggarts? The ones who own Taggart Industries? The guy running for senator? The best-known do-gooder in the state?”
    “The same,” said Diane.
    “You have some kind of proof the Taggarts are involved? Because if you don’t, I’m not going to stick my neck out. Why didn’t you tell me ahead of time?”
    “I don’t have proof. We aged a snapshot of a young woman we found with Caver Doe—it looks amazingly like Rosemary Taggart. I saw her at the funeral of Vanessa Van Ross’s grandmother. It all just came together for me.”
    “That’s it?”
    “I was playing a hunch.”
    “That’s what we do,” said Garnett. “We play hunches. You find the evidence.”
    “When the crime scene unit processed Valentine’s and MacRae’s apartments, they found navy wool caps that match the fibers from the lab break-in and from the quarry murders of Jake Stanley and Donnie Martin. They also found a box of surgeon’s gloves containing the same type of powder present at both of those scenes. It’s circumstantial, but put that with their DNA on my clothes and the same powder on the duct tape that bound me, and the evidence is more than coincidental.” Diane let out a breath. “I know—without a confession I have nothing against the Taggarts, but you saw his face.”
    Garnett raked his hands through his hair. “Dammit. Yes, I saw his face.”
    “I don’t know which family member. It’s a large family. And you don’t have to interrogate them until we have substantially more evidence to go on.”
    “And I won’t.” He paused and gave her a long look. “Okay, let’s see what the other one has to say. Go ahead and play your game on him and we’ll see how he reacts.”
    They didn’t get much more information from Neil Valentine. He started out just like MacRae, cocky, calling for a lawyer, and ended up with the same surprised look on his face. He’d done jail time before. Diane was betting he didn’t want to do any more without the payoff he had been promised. She had hoped that putting a wedge of doubt in might get one of them to talk. But the bottom line was, neither said anything.
    The only plus was that they came away with a cup Randy MacRae had drunk from. Now she had a legitimate sample of his DNA the crime lab could compare with the sample they had from her abduction. She had also gotten a good look at their hands. Neither had the badly damaged finger that showed up in the clay from Neva’s break-in.
    As Diane was leaving the Rosewood police station, she heard her name called out.
    It was Police Officer Janice Warrick, with whom Diane had a bumpy history. Officer Warrick was dividing her attention between motioning to Diane and watching the TV monitor. Diane walked across to the TV area.
    “Have you seen this?”
    Janice Warrick was all smiles, without a trace of any unpleasantness between them. Diane looked at the TV screen where Janice was looking, along with eight or ten other police officers.
    “Those are Neva’s drawings, aren’t they?” Janice said. “Look, Bud,” she said to a fellow officer, “Neva did those.”
    All of Neva’s drawings were on the TV screen. The news anchor was basically reading the press release sent to them by David, urging anyone who recognized the people in the drawings to contact the Rosewood Police Department.
    Diane read the lettering printed on the screen below the portraits: ROSEWOOD 1942 COLD CASES. DO YOU KNOW THESE PEOPLE?
    Officer Warrick put her arms around Diane and hugged her. Diane wasn’t sure why. Perhaps celebrity hysteria was sweeping Rosewood.

    Diane drove back to the museum feeling oddly depressed. She believed the museum was safe, the thugs who threatened to burn it down were in jail and she had solid evidence against them. What nagged her was that she was afraid the real orchestrator was beyond her reach—and would stay out of reach. Even with a mountain of evidence against them, the rich and powerful