She got Phil on the first ring. He sounded tired and hungry. Apparently, back at the ranch, they hadn’t gotten around to take-out pizza. Then again, HQ hadn’t dealt with a bunch of kids threatening to gouge out eyeballs. Win some, lose some.

So far, Phil had covered the basics: DMV records, employment history, and various criminal databases. Running the list of employees that Karen had supplied, Phil could report that no one had any outstanding warrants or history of arrest. Ed, the burly MC, liked to speed, and Danielle needed to clean up a few parking tickets. Greg, on the other hand, was clean as a whistle. D.D. supplied the MC’s sordid family history. Phil promised to dig deeper into Greg and his sister’s past.

“Though, by the sound of it, Sally was a juvenile and it never went to trial, so not sure what I’ll find in the system,” Phil warned.

“Let’s start with verifying that Sally exists, that her parents were poisoned with strychnine, and that her current residence is costing Greg an extra twenty grand a year.”

“That I can do.” D.D. could practically hear Phil cracking his knuckles over the phone lines. He loved a good data search.

“Have you heard from Neil? How’s he coming with the list of other hospital employees, contractors, etc.?” D.D. asked.

“He turned in a preliminary list of janitors, food service workers, deliverymen, and a few contractors an hour ago. Still working on those, though one name did jump out—the healer, Andrew Lightfoot. Guessing Lightfoot’s not a real name, because it’s not in the system.”

D.D. glanced at Alex, then remembered. “He mentioned in the first interview that he reverted to an old family name. Sounded better for business.”

“Well, if you want the skinny, get me better info.”

“Deal.” D.D. snapped her phone shut, turned to Alex. “More questions for Lightfoot,” she reported. “Starting with his real last name.”

Which shouldn’t have been too hard, except when they reached the main ward of the hospital, Lightfoot had disappeared.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN

DANIELLE

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Greg.

“Why didn’t you ever ask?” he replied.

We were huddled at the interrogation table, confined to the classroom, under another detective’s watchful eye. The nanny detective was on the other side of the room, eating pizza and reading files. That gave us the illusion of privacy, though he probably had crack hearing and was writing down every word we said.

“I would’ve understood,” I said. I sounded petulant, even to me. Greg’s secrets angered me. I was the one with baggage. He was supposed to be an open book. Now I had to face the fact that Greg had his own tragic past, and was still a better-adjusted person than me.

Greg regarded me thoughtfully. “Why?”