Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(87)
Rick said, “Her file is listed under her name. You should each have a copy by now. I want everyone to go through it, see what was missed, because we clearly missed something.” Rick changed the subject and swiped new info onto the screen. It appeared between the images of Tandy and T. Laine. “We discovered evidence of an old, failed, financial takeover attempt of four small local industries owned by the Tollivers. The businesses did not include DNAKeys, as we might have expected. We may have gotten fixated on DNAKeys because of the paranormal aspect. Go on, Nell.”
I put the financial network file up on the screen. “The buyout attempt was by a man named Wilder Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson owned and still owns a munitions company, one that the Tollivers’ plants produce parts for. He wanted to merge the companies together for a chance at a government contract, one that would have required all the plants be under one corporate heading. The Tollivers refused a merger. They also refused a buyout. Things were tense between the companies. Until . . . well, Jefferson also happens to be the father of Abrams’ wife, Clarisse.”
“Where’s Jefferson now?” Rick asked.
“He’s in an upscale nursing home in Nashville,” I said. “Diagnosis is advanced dementia.”
Rick sipped eggnog, thinking. “So Jefferson negotiated or approved a marriage between his daughter, Clarisse, and Abrams Tolliver.” Which sounded a lot like some church marriages, arranged and miserable, though I didn’t say so. “Now he has dementia,” Rick said, musingly. “Tells us nothing.”
JoJo was pulling on her earrings with one hand; her other hand was flying over keys, pausing so she could read, and then flying again. T. Laine was frowning on the overhead screen as she swiped through whatever file she was reading. I still didn’t look at Occam.
Rick said, “To summarize, the buyout attempt was eleven years ago and the financial takeover was dropped when Clarisse married Abrams and the companies merged. Eleven years is around the same time as the disappearance of Charles Healy from prison, and Clarisse getting pregnant with Devin. A lot happened that year.”
“So what does it mean?” JoJo asked. “The families married off the children like two kings consolidating countries against mutual enemies?”
“That isn’t as uncommon as you might think,” T. Laine said, “even outside of Nell’s church.” I started to say it wasn’t my church, but she went on. “Offspring of wealthy families marry into wealthy families. They meet each other at debutant balls or Ivy League schools, discover they have things in common, and fall in love.” Lainie’s tone went dark and caustic. “Their families sanction the union and then do business together after the knot is tied. The babies are named after grandparents and great-grandparents and are presented with trust funds and a future to marry—again into the right circles and for the right reasons. Money. They don’t marry grocers or car salesmen or schoolteachers or nurses or preachers or veterinarians or other ordinary people. They don’t marry paras. Only the right people.” Her mouth turned down and her eyes never lifted off her tablet. Tandy was watching her, but it didn’t take an empath to know that T. Laine, the moon witch, had not been the right sort of person for a rich man to marry. At some point in her life, she had been hurt.
Rick said, “Well, that generations-long tradition of intermarriage isn’t what happened here. There are no family records of the Jefferson family before 1950, when the elder Jefferson was delivered to an orphanage, at about three days old. Fifteen years later the children’s home burned to the ground in a massive conflagration.”
JoJo looked up at that one and grinned. “So the kid, Devin, is a pyro from his mama’s side? Not his daddy’s? We been concentrating on the wrong family name. And the nanny is gray because . . . why?”
I shook my head. No one had an answer. Yet.
I asked, “Is the PM on the body burned in the limo fire complete? Do we know for certain that it’s Sonya Tolliver, Justin Tolliver’s wife, the cousin-in-law of Senator Tolliver? And why was she with Devin instead of her own kids?”
“I asked that,” T. Laine said. “Security and Sonya had picked up the kids at school. They had dropped off Sonya’s children at ballet and soccer practice and were heading home.”
Rick leaned in to his laptop and punched a button. A form flashed up on the overhead screen, the words Preliminary COD at the top. “Cause of death for Sonya Tolliver is burning at extremely high temperature. There wasn’t enough liquid left in the body to do toxicology screening the usual way and liver tissue has been sent to a reference lab for special testing. The results aren’t expected back for ten working days. I doubt they bothered with ordering DNA comparisons. Why should they, when multiple witnesses know Sonya Tolliver was in the limo.”
“Can we get samples sent off for DNA?” Occam asked. The first words he’d spoken.
“You can check,” Tandy said, “but line seven says the body was burned so badly that the family requested immediate cremation.” He tapped his screen. “The forensic pathologist released it to the funeral home at two a.m. That’s five hours ago.”
“That’s awful fast,” JoJo said.
“The Tollivers have a lot of political pull,” Tandy said, wryly. “They usually get what they ask for, and there was no reason to hold the body.”