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“It’s Jericho,” he let her know. “You’re on speaker,” he added to Jericho.
“Good because I’ve got two things you’ll both want to hear. First, Honey Bear. And might I say, as terms of affection go, that’s both sappy sweet and a little disturbing. Anyway, Honey Bear’s real name is Craig Merkins, a former Green Beret who got booted for insubordination and ended up a bouncer.”
“At Buckner’s bar?” Bree asked, slipping behind the wheel of the cruiser. Rafe rode shotgun.
“Nope. In fact, Honey Bear has trouble keeping a job so he’s floated around a lot. He’s got anger management issues, a possible drinking problem, and tends to rant a lot on Facebook about how much his life stinks.” Jericho paused. “But there’s no way he killed Dani Dawson.”
Bree groaned. From Jericho’s description, she probably thought she’d be bringing in Honey Bear on a murder charge. “How do you know he didn’t do it? Is he dead, too?”
“No. He’s been in jail for the past three weeks. He got into a fight over a fender bender, drew an illegal weapon, and ended up taking a shot at a cop. Said cop naturally got really pissed off and charged him with a whole host of things, including attempted murder of a police officer. Honey Bear won’t be going anywhere for a while.”
Didn’t sound like he would be. “Any signs this guy had the connections to have Dani killed?”
“None whatsoever. He’s flat-assed broke, and people don’t seem to like him enough to do any favors for him. Especially a favor that big. So, that probably takes you back to Dani’s boss, Buckner.”
“It does indeed,” Bree verified, pulling out of the garage. “My gut feel is he’s guilty of something. I just don’t know what yet.”
“Well, I’ll keep digging and see if I can turn up some dirt,” Jericho commented. “And that brings me to the second reason I’m calling. We have an ID on the skeletal remains.”
Bree hit the brakes, stopping the car in her driveway. “Who is she?”
“Sandy Lynn Franklin. She went missing eighteen years ago on her twentieth birthday. And are you ready for the punchline here?” Jericho didn’t wait for them to answer. “The DNA techs did a whole bunch more tests, and they’ve concluded that Sandy Lynn is definitely Wade Wainwright’s daughter.”
----- ??? -----
Chapter Ten
With the dread building in her with each passing second, Bree threaded the cruiser down the country road while Rafe was reading through the latest report he’d gotten.
A thorough background check on Dani Dawson.
So far, he wasn’t saying much, which meant there likely wasn’t anything in it they could use to try to pin her murder on Buckner. If there was nothing to find, then they’d have to rely on other things. Such as canvassing the area around the inn/body dump and showing Buckner’s photo to anyone who might have seen the man. That would be a huge drain on her manpower, but it was the next logical step since there were no traffic cameras on that particular stretch of the road.
The dread went up another notch when she took the turn to Wade’s estate. She knew he was home because she’d called his housekeeper to confirm it. The housekeeper had told Bree that Wade had been in his office since he arrived back home.
It didn’t sit well with her, but she had to face the possibility that the man had outright lied to them about Sandy Lynn being his daughter.
Of course, she was hoping that Wade hadn’t known it was a lie.
That he hadn’t been aware he’d fathered a child other than Tessa.
Though, judging from the age the forensic anthropologist had determined, this child, this daughter, would have been bornwhen Wade had been married. Around the time Tessa would have likely been a toddler. Certainly, if Wade had had an affair, he must have at least considered he could have gotten his lover pregnant.
She’d checked, and the DNA results were solid on this. Wade was definitely the dead woman’s father, and the dead woman wasn’t Tessa. That had been ruled out because of the height and size difference. So, who was Sandy Lynn, and why had her body been buried in Canyon Ridge?
Maybe the universe wanted to supply her with some answers to those questions because Rafe's phone sounded again with an incoming message.
“The preliminary background on Sandy Lynn,” he said.
That was fast since Jericho and Ruby had only gotten the “tasking” for the background checks less than a half hour earlier.
“Good. Read it to me,” she insisted. And she hoped the reading wouldn’t take more than a minute or two since they’d soon be at Wade’s.
“Sandy Lynn’s mother is Nancy Franklin, aged fifty-seven, which means she was nineteen when she had Sandy Lynn. No father is listed on the birth certificate.”
That didn’t surprise Bree. In Texas, the father couldn’t be listed unless he signed the certificate form or else the mother provided a court document proving paternity.
“Nancy listed her occupation as a waitress at a diner in San Antonio at the time of the delivery,” Rafe went on. “Jericho’s doing a background check on her now, and he’s pretty sure she’s still alive since there’s no death certificate. Once he finds her…well, she’ll need to know about her daughter.”
