O’Neil asked, “Was this your house when your folks were married?”

Finesse…

“That’s right.”

Dance offered another glance to O’Neil. The cheating husband had lost it in the property settlement. Now he was back in. He couldn’t take title—it would be part of the bequest to Trish from her mother. But when she came of age Martin would work on her to get it transferred back to him. Motive one for Frederick Martin to be the killer. She suspected there was another too.

“Was it a tough divorce?” O’Neil asked. Good delivery, Dance thought; they’d rehearsed the line on the drive here.

“Oh, yeah, totally. It was awful. They said really bad things about each other.”

“I’m sorry,” Dance offered.

“It totally sucked, yeah.”

She added, “Hard about the money too, I imagine. The alimony payments?”

“Oh, yeah. I think they called it something else.”

“Maintenance,” O’Neil chimed in. Of the two of them, Dance and O’Neil, he was the only one with firsthand knowledge of the dissolution of a marriage.

“Oh, yeah, that’s it. They don’t know that I know. But I heard them talk. Really big checks. Like fifteen thousand a month.”

Dance assumed that, while child support would go on as long as the girl was under eighteen, maintenance payments would terminate upon the death or remarriage of the ex-spouse. So Martin would save nearly two hundred K a year. For a man living in a small house in the valley, presumably with limited income, that could be a huge windfall.

Motive number two.

And Martin would have known Michelle would be at the club. He would have given instructions to the unsub to make sure the girl was safe.

Or would he?

Dance felt her gut flip. If the girl had died too, was her father the beneficiary of her will? Would he have gotten the entire house and estate back in that case?

Then Trish was saying, “It’s, like, too bad Dad’ll lose all that.”

“Too bad…what?” Dance asked.

“I mean, he does okay at his job but he could really use that money. Trying to go back to school and everything.”

Silence for a moment. The girl’s words spun like a top through Dance’s thoughts.

“Your mother was paying your father maintenance?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

O’Neil asked, “Why did your parents get divorced?”

Trish looked down. “My mom kind of cheated on him. And he’s such a nice guy. Really cool. But Mom, she just sort of…you know, she ran around a lot. And not just with one guy but a bunch of them. Dad worked part-time to raise me and put Mom through school. He didn’t finish his degree. So when he found out she’d been cheating on him and went for the divorce, the judge made her pay maintenance. Man, I don’t know what he’s going to do now for money.”

Dance would have TJ check out the facts but Frederick Martin’s motive for killing his wife was looking pretty flimsy; any inheritance would surely be held in a trust for the girl. “Well, thanks for your help, Trish. I’ll let you know if we find anything else.”