Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(82)

“He’s not listed, no child from before her marriage is listed.”

Eyes narrowed, the hunt bubbling in her blood, Eve nodded. “Bet that’s a pisser. Marries a doctor, has another family, and he’s not part of that. We’ll find out why and how. She gave him up, changed her name.”

“You were right about the geography, too. She stayed in the South.”

“Look at the other data here, Peabody. Not just a doctor—he ended up a big-shot ER doc, and there’s family money. Gooey piles of old money. She died rich, seriously rich. He predeceased her, the husband, just six months before.”

She ordered a split screen with Joseph Fletcher’s data.

“Okay, a lot of family money,” Peabody noted. “And he’s taken out by a drunk driver.”

“Tell Yancy we’ve got her, and I’ll fill him in later.” Eve called up the data on Violet Fletcher’s children.

“Look here,” she said as Peabody contacted Yancy. “Daughter’s chief of surgery, same hospital where Daddy headed up the ER. Older son’s a writer—looks successful.”

“Chasen Q. Fletcher? Very. I’ve read his books. They’re really good.”

“Younger son went into law and is now the senator from Louisiana. All three are married—once each—have children, and continue to live in the same area of the state—with the writer and his family residing in the house where they grew up.”

She studied the ID shots.

“Peabody, we need to have some conversations.”

“I’ll say. I guess we’re not going to actually have them in New Orleans.”

“No. Keep the search for the nail crap going, and we’ll hit the field after the conversations, but let’s find out what the unsub’s half sibs know. Start with the writer. I’ll start with the daughter. The politician’s bound to be more slippery with anything he knows about his mother’s former life. But we’ll get to him.”

“It’s moving now,” Peabody said as she hurried out. “It’s really moving.”

Damn straight, Eve thought, and contacted Dr. Joella Fletcher’s office.

She got the runaround, as she expected, but wouldn’t relent.

“Dr. Fletcher may be saving lives there,” Eve said to the third person she’d been passed to, “but I’m trying to save one here. Ask the doctor if she wants to be responsible for the murder of Mary Kate Covino, age twenty-five, because she’s too damn busy to come on the ’link.”

The woman on-screen smiled and, in sugary sweet Southern tones, said, “There’s no need for rudeness, ma’am.”

“Tell that to Mary Kate—and it’s Lieutenant, not ma’am. She talks to me now, or I get on a shuttle, come to her. And I’ll charge her with obstruction of justice.”

The smile vanished. “Please hold.”

The screen went to blue and drippy holding music. But this time the doctor herself came on.

“What in the world is this about? I had to leave a vital meeting of—”

“I don’t care. I’m investigating two murders, three abductions.”

The woman who looked to be wearing a sharp red suit stared back at Eve with Lisa McKinney’s eyes. “You do realize I’m not in New York City?”

“Your half brother is, and he’s my prime suspect.”

Joella Fletcher brushed at her perfectly groomed auburn hair around a narrow face—like her mother’s—and cast her eyes skyward. “I don’t have a half brother. I have two brothers, and neither of them are in New York. Now, Lieutenant—”

“Your mother was Violet Fletcher?”

“Yes.”

“Before she became Violet Fletcher or Violet Blank, she was Lisa McKinney, born in Bigsby, Alabama, in 1978, and gave birth to a male child in 1998.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s fact.”

“Lieutenant, my mother, Violet Blank Fletcher, was born in Tennessee. Her parents were drifters who moved around, taking work in housekeeping, lawn maintenance. Handyman stuff. They were killed during Hurricane Opal.”

“Her parents were Buford and Tiffany McKinney. Violet Blank didn’t exist before 2004. What did she say her parents’ names were?”

Eve actually heard Joella’s nails drumming impatiently on her desk. “She didn’t, that I recall.”

“Where did she go to school?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she went regularly because her parents moved around so much. She didn’t like to talk about it. She often said her life really began when she met my father.”

“I bet. And how did they meet?”

“He hired her to help with the house, the gardens. It’s an old family plantation house that came to him from his grandparents. They fell in love, married, raised a family there. A happy family that has nothing to do with murders in New York.”

“Your mother died last fall of an overdose.”

“Accidental,” Joella snapped. “She was grieving for her husband, my father. His death was so sudden, so hard. It’s still hard. She couldn’t sleep, and she became disoriented and took too many pills.”

“Doctor, I believe up to now you’ve told me the truth as you know it. It’s not the truth, but it’s what you were told, and why would you question it? But you just lied to me, and that tells me your mother took her own life.”