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Brogan swung her legs around and propped her feet onto the empty chair. “Here’s a thought. I say her property, every inch of the place, should be searched from top to bottom. There’s no way this Lockhart woman didn’t keep a piece of her past and bring it with her.”
“The crime scene techs are tearing up the place as we speak,” Beckett relayed. “Brent’s standing by to supervise.”
“And I say once they’ve finished, we go in behind them and look again, even dig up the yard.”
Lucien’s brow creased into deep frown lines. “I like the idea of that. But we’d need Brent on board for it.”
Beckett took a swig of his beer. “If we approach this the right way, he might give us a free hand to dig because I agree with Brogan. I think this woman probably kept something from her former life. They just haven’t found it yet.”
“Not that we would recognize it,” Brogan lamented. “But the key here is the location of where we find something. If it’s hidden away in a cubby hole, there’s a reason.”
“Or, if we find something buried in the yard,” Lucien added. “Let’s not get carried away, though. We don’t want to come off as vigilante neighbors.”
“She kept a body in a box in her bedroom,” Beckett emphasized. “She’s already crossed the norm and drawn a line in the sand. That’s on her.”
“You’re not wrong,” Lucien replied. “I’d like to get Brent’s blessing before we go tearing through her place again.”
“Then let’s hope the crime scene team finds answers about who she was,” Brogan said, trying to sound optimistic. “I won’t lie. I’m dying to know Vera’s story. Because it must be a doozy.”
Beckett eased back in his chair. “It’s the topic on everyone’s mind. Vera has eclipsed Gidget Jane Doe. In a short twenty-four-hour span, the town went from talking about reopening the Gidget murder to Vera Lockhart.”
“Glad to know I’m not the only one. But our focus still has to remain on Gidget, circling back to Vera when necessary,” Brogan pointed out. “It’s interesting, though, that we don’t know who Gidget was, and we don’t know the truth about Vera. Weird, huh?”
“It’s that one thing I can’t get past,” Lucien admitted as he fidgeted with his wineglass. “Could the two have somehow known each other? Could they be related? The questions begin the day Gidget gets off that train. Vera spotted her right away. Vera recognized her and freaked out for some reason. The two argued about her showing up here, and Vera killed her.”
Beckett scrubbed the side of his jaw. “That’s a helluva theory. We’d need to find proof that they knew each other. I’m assuming the exhumations will reveal if the two were related.”
Brogan took another sip of wine. “That could take months. I didn’t realize how impatient I am until I became a websleuth.”
“One thing about SEAL training,” Beckett began, “it gives you the patience of a priest. Sometimes you begin a mission where you’re repeatedly requested to hold, lie low, or take a detour of one kind or another. You learn early on the value of keeping a cool head. It doesn’t do much good to get all knotted up over stuff you have no control over. The same is true for playing detective. Results take time. Even Sam Spade had to wade through BS. Answers don’t come easy. The lab won’t give you special treatment where DNA is concerned just because you need the result fast.”
“We took DNA tests,” Brogan revealed. “We thought it’d be a good way for us to try our hand at genealogy, maybe even phenotyping. Why not treat the process like an experiment? Right? We thought it might come in handy in identifying Gidget.”
“And now it might help with IDing Vera,” Lucien added.
“Plus, the guy in the box,” Brogan tossed back.
Beckett’s brows knitted. “Phenotyping? That’s where you narrow down the traits, like blue eyes versus brown, right?”
Lucien nodded. “Think of it this way. Genealogy translates to heredity, heritage, and ancestors. Phenotyping deals with appearance. Phenotyping comes back with hair color and skin tone. It can even zero in on what region of the world the subject’s descendants originated, and tell you what country they were from.”
“What do you plan to do with your DNA results? Run phenotyping and genealogy?” Beckett questioned.
Lucien frowned into his wine. “I paid this private lab to do both. Although I’m fairly nervous about uploading my DNA into a database to look for relatives.”
“What he’s alluding to is that rock stars tend to sleep with a lot of people,” Brogan pointed out. “It’s possible we could have a half dozen siblings out there somewhere we never knew existed. Both my parents are gone, so there’s no one for me to confront, no one to get upset over the outcome. But Lucien’s results could set in motion an entire backlash from his dad.”
“Or dear ol’ mom,” Lucien included. “Depending on what comes back on her side.”
“And you never thought to do this before now?” Beckett quizzed.
“Not really,” Lucien said, getting to his feet and moving toward the whiteboard. “We’ve avoided going down that path for a reason.” He picked up a marker and tapped the name next to Tazzie’s. “But let’s shelve our DNA project for now and focus on finding out as much as we can about Dennis Marshall—also known as ‘Cruz’ to his peer group back in Gidget’s day. We’ll handle tracking him down in Santa Cruz. He should be easy enough to find. One by one, we need to learn where all these surfer dudes were the night Gidget died.”
“And we need to locate the guy they called Lex Luthor, real name Leon Gilbert or Leon Gibson. Anyone who calls himself Lex Luthor needs a thorough screening.”
“Gilbert and Gibson are fairly common names,” Beckett groused, keying the information into the notes app on his phone. “But I’ll see what I can flesh out with a background check on anyone who used the nickname Lex Luthor.” He studied the whiteboard. “For two days’ work, you already have several viable suspects in your sights. I’d say that’s a positive step for such a cold case. Build on that by interviewing each one.”
“Except the dead guy,” Brogan added. “That would be James Meadows, also known as ‘Jimbo’ or ‘Tolkien.’ Don’t look at me like that. The whole nickname thing is complicated. But Tazzie used both when she talked about him. We’ll still do a deep dive into his background, though. In fact, at this point in the investigation, we have enough people to track down and interviews to do that we should stay busy for the next day or so.”
