Ryland glanced at the photos. At first he appeared baffled. Then recognition struck.
His jaw sagged.
He went pale.
“Where did you get that dress?” he demanded, hoarse with fear and fury.
“Pamela saved it,” Irene said. “She states that you forced her to wear that gown on several occasions when she was a girl. She says you got a kick out of raping her when she was dressed like that.”
“You can’t prove anything, do you hear me?” Ryland snarled. “Not one damned thing.”
“Pamela also states on the video that any reasonably good lab will find DNA evidence all over the skirts of that dress.”
Ryland uttered an inarticulate roar and leaped toward her, both hands outstretched.
Instinctively she fell back, vaguely aware of the sound of Duncan’s video camera in action. All sh ould see was the rage on Ryland’s face as he came toward her.
And then Luke was suddenly between her and Ryland, moving so quickly she wasn’t sure what had happened until she saw Webb stretched out flat on his back on the floor.
Luke stood over him. “I told you, no threatening the reporter.”
“I want my lawyer,” Ryland said, strangely composed now “I’m going to ruin each and every on f you.”
Forty-Five
Two days later Irene sat in a booth next to Luke in the Ventana View Cafe. Tess and Phil faced them from the opposite side. The remains of four platters of pancakes littered the table.
Irene was aware of the curious eyes that surrounded them. The cafe had filled up with remarkabl peed shortly after she and the others had been seen entering the establishment.
“You did it, Irene.” Tess picked up the copy of the previous day’s edition of the Glaston Cove Beacon that Adeline had sent via overnight delivery. She waved it like a banner. “You brought down Senator Ryland Webb. I heard on the news this morning that there are rumors that he’ll officially call off his campaign by the end of the week. Not only did you crush his chances of getting into the Oval Office, it’s safe to say that his odds of being reelected to the Senate again in this state are less than zero.”
Irene looked at the headlines splashed across the Beacon. She had already viewed them on the online edition of the paper, but there was something very satisfying about seeing them in print.
WEBB CAMPAIGN HIT BY ALLEGATION F SEX WITH MINOR he scandal was in full sail. All of the major dailies in the state, including those from San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, were rushing to jump on the story, but they were still playing catch-up. Two had announced that they were launching independent investigations of their own. The radio and television talk shows were in a frenzy. New evidence of Ryland Webb’s murky sexual past was pouring in hourly. Adeline had phoned three times to gloat over the number of hits at the Beacon’s online Web site.
“At least this time the politician’s loyal little woman isn’t going to stand by her man.”
Tess indicate he photo that Duncan Penn had shot of Alexa Douglass. It showed her getting out of a limo with her daughter in front of an elegant San Francisco town house. The caption read Douglass ends engagement
to Webb.
“Webb is definitely dead meat,” Phil said. “And Irene is the one who brought him down.”
Irene looked at the three of them, gratitude and affection so thick in her throat she was afraid she might burst into tears. “I couldn’t have done it without the help of all of you. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Luke grinned. “Guess that makes us all junior cub reporters. Who knew we had the talent? Here hought I’d be stuck on the innkeeping career track for the rest of my natural life.”
Irene picked up her coffee mug. “I just wish I could have found a way to force Ryland Webb to confess to the murders.He killed four people that we know of—my parents, Pamela and Hoyt Egan. And he’s going to walk.”
“Maybe not,” Luke said. “It’s true that the cops probably won’t be able to prove that he killed your folks and Pamela, but they may be able to link him to the death of Hoyt Egan. They’ve got a strong motive, after all.”
“Blackmail,” Phil said. “Yeah, that definitely works as a motive. Now that they know what to look for, the cops may get lucky and turn up some solid evidence in that case.”
Tess leaned back in the booth, a worried frown shadowing her face. “There’s one thing that I’m no ure I understand here.”
Luke speared a wedge of the uneaten portion of the stack of pancakes on Irene’s plate. “What’s that?”
“Why did Pamela decide to expose her father after all these years?” Tess asked.
“She kept the secre or so long. Why go public now?”
“She had been in therapy,” Phil reminded her. “Maybe something happened in those sessions tha ushed her into going public.”
Irene looked at the newspaper on the table. A sense of absolute certainty welled up inside her.
“It wasn’t the therapy,” she said quietly. She pointed to the photo of Alexa Douglass and her daughter. “There’s the reason. Little Emily Douglass. Pamela realized that her father was about to acquire another child bride. She could keep her own family secret, but in the end she could not stand by and allow history to repeat itself.”
Forty-Six
Irene tossed the pen onto the table and studied the latest version of the time line.
Frustration churne n her stomach. No matter how she tried to connect the dots, she could not come up with a reasonabl ay to put Ryland Webb anywhere near Dunsley on the day of Pamela’s death.
She had been so certain that when she sat down with all the facts she would find something in additio o a motive that she could give to the police to tie Webb to the murder. But thus far she had come up empty-handed.
There had to be a connection, she thought. It was inconceivable that Pamela had died because of an accidental overdose.
She got up and went into Luke’s small, orderly kitchenette to pour herself more tea.
It was the fourt ime she had gotten out of the chair in the past forty minutes. She had already wandered into the kitchen area three times, twice to refill her mug, once to check the refrigerator to see what she needed to buy for dinner.
Mug in hand, she went out the back door of the cabin, propped one hip against the porch railing and contemplated the placid surface of the lake. The view from this cabin was slightly different from th ne she’d had while residing in Cabin Number Five. From here she could see more of the lake.