Bloodlines

“Why should I be forced to put up with him?” she asked.

“You’ve never needed a second chance, I suppose? Or maybe you’re looking for an excuse to go home earlier in the day.”

She sat down, but said, “I love what we’re doing, but-I don’t trust Ethan!”

“I can’t make you trust him. Not going to try. But if you want to keep working on stories with me, you’re going to work on stories with Ethan.”

He met us late that afternoon in a conference room just off the morgue. I learned that he had kept up with our stories about the old cases of 1958 and 1978, which had been ru

“We think the Linworths and Ducanes screwed Mitch Yeager out of some money while he was under arrest in 1936,” Hailey said. “His bail was set high, and he needed cash. He needed money to pay his attorneys, too.”

“Wasn’t his family wealthy?” Ethan asked.

“His family had been involved in rum-ru

“Barrett Ducane offered to help Yeager raise cash by buying some of his assets, assets that were worth much more than Ducane paid for them,” Hailey said. “Linworth bought a few things as well, and those deals were in his favor, but not as lopsided as Ducane’s. Ducane and Linworth both knew that money was going to be made from the coming war in Europe and elsewhere-so they chose companies that could be easily retooled to make aircraft parts and munitions and things like that.”

“What did you find out today?” I asked Ethan.

“It’s probably not worth anything,” he said.

Hailey smirked.

He took a deep breath and explained to her why he had been researching Eden Supply. “It was owned by Granville Enterprises. Granville owned a lot of smaller, agriculturally related companies. Granville was a family name- Mitch Yeager’s grandfather.”

“Who was dead long before 1945,” Hailey said, “so the company was Mitch’s in those years.”

“Which doesn’t prove he knew that one driver in one subsidiary was taking a truck out to that particular orange grove after hours,” Ethan said. “Or that he knew Harmon was killing and burying women all around a four-county area. If Yeager did know, it will be hard to show it.”

“This is always the problem with him,” I said. “He’s there, but just out of reach.”

“What do you mean?” Ethan asked. “I thought it was his nephews and minions who did all the killing.”

“Which is why he’s out of reach,” Hailey said impatiently.

I tried giving her a look that told her to back off. Hailey doesn’t really get the whole “back off” thing, which helps her as a reporter but makes working with her a pain.

“Tell me more about this,” he said, looking at me.

“You’ve read the original confessions Eric and Ian made, the ones they recanted?”

“Yes.”

“O’Co

“That was Eric,” Hailey said, pulling out her own notes. “Ian was almost word for word the same-‘If you kill the people he loves and hide the bodies, you kidnap them and never let them be found-you make him wonder if they’re alive or dead, if he’ll ever see them again, and he starts to think about what might be happening to them. Then your enemy suffers all his life. Nothing you could do to him is worse than that. Nothing.’”

“O’Co

“He was seventeen when his sister disappeared,” Ethan said. “I spent some time reading about that today. But what could he have done to harm Mitch Yeager?”

“He was a reporter,” Hailey said. “He could have written something to harm Yeager’s businesses.”

“None of his early stories were about Yeager,” Ethan said. “He seldom had any stories published with a byline until late 1945.”

“You’re the expert on O’Co

Ethan looked mortified.

“Grow up or go upstairs,” I snapped at Hailey.

She cast a dark look at Ethan, as though he were to blame for my loss of temper.

“Ethan’s right,” I said. “O’Co

“Jack Corrigan,” Ethan said.

“Yes,” I said, surprised.

“I-I saw one of the columns…”

I thought his courage was going to desert him, but he seemed to take hold of it again. He lifted his chin a bit and said, “I saw the tribute to Corrigan he wrote just after Corrigan died, so I know Corrigan was his mentor. You say O’Co

“Yes. As a kid, O’Co

“Okay…Mitch Yeager might blame O’Co

“No, not just that. From the articles I’ve been looking into down here, and what I’ve read from O’Co

“It’s not like Corrigan committed the crimes,” Hailey said.

“Yeager wouldn’t be the first to blame other people for what were really the consequences of his own actions. So while he’s on trial, Jack is in the courtroom every day, gloating, no doubt. You would have to know Jack Corrigan to know how well he could do that. The woman Mitch had been seeing, perhaps hoped to marry-to bring himself up in social standing if nothing else-was sitting at Jack Corrigan’s side and flirting with Jack during the trial.”

“Who?” Hailey asked.

“Lillian Vanderveer. Now Lillian Linworth.”

“Shut up!” she said in disbelief. “He wanted her?”

“She was a society beauty. You’ll be lucky to age as well as she has.”

“I’m begi

“I think the worst of it for Mitch was that Adam became seriously ill with tuberculosis while he was in prison. Mitch wasn’t allowed to visit him, because the tampering charges caused his bail to be revoked.”

“So his brother is dying, his bail’s revoked, and though he owns a lot of assets, he doesn’t have much cash,” Ethan said.