Jack nodded, her eyes big as plates.
“And Mr. Hanley wasn’t around that evening.”
“He met a woman,” Jack said.
“The lovely Tatiana. His vanishing alibi.” Nicoletti had a smug look on his face. “The bastard set you up.”
“I don’t believe it,” Lana said. She looked at her granddaughter. “Paul may be a dope, but he isn’t violent, is he?”
Jack nodded. “I just sort of thought he was a loser.”
“Exactly,” Lana said. “He isn’t the type.”
Nicoletti barked out a single “Ha!” that echoed in the small kitchen. “Let me tell you something, lady. There is no type. I’ve met nerds who were scared of their own shoelaces but still managed to kill their girlfriends. I’ve met little old ladies who buried their husbands in their gardens and stood there crying over their peonies. I once collared a gym teacher who hacked up a boy before basketball practice. The only type I’ve ever run into is the type who is desperate enough to kill someone. Which is everyone, given the right circumstances.”
Jack bolted up from the table, her face a mottled gray. “Excuse me,” she said, looking at Lana. “I’ll be in my room. Your room.”
Lana glared at the detective. “You just had to swing your dick around, didn’t you.”
“What I had to do,” Nicoletti said, glaring back, “is impress upon you how serious this situation is. Mr. Hanley is a murderer.”
“Allegedly. What’s his motive in this fantasy you’ve cooked up?”
“We think they were in business together, Mr. Hanley and Mr. Cruz, doing something illegal in that valley across the slough.”
“Fruitful,” Lana said.
“Exactly.” Nicoletti waved a meaty hand. “Mr. Hanley leased the land, and Cruz’s roommates told us he was spending more time in Elkhorn than he needed for his job, that he had some kind of secret situation going on down here. He wouldn’t tell his roommates what, so we’re thinking it wasn’t aboveboard. They were working together. They had an altercation that Friday. Hanley hit Cruz, hard, with something rounded and metal, maybe a posthole digger or a shovel or that Maglite he wasn’t able to produce for us. And then later that night he dumped him in the creek.”
Lana kept her face impassive as she considered what he was telling her. Was it possible she’d made an error, and the big project Ricardo had left the land trust to do was not with Hal but with Paul? Or that Ricardo was meeting up with Paul instead of Diana? No. Those ideas were ridiculous. Verdadera Libertad was real, and so were Ricardo’s liaisons with Diana. Ricardo’s secret activities at the slough were pleasure, not business. Lana was sure of it. Almost.
She was about to open her mouth and wipe the smile off Nicoletti’s face when she realized her evidence about the affair was just as circumstantial as his about the illegal business partnership. And despite what she’d boasted to Jack, she didn’t yet have conclusive evidence that Hal Rhoads had been murdered. She couldn’t tell the detectives her theory. Not until she had rock-solid proof.
Nicoletti appeared to take her nonresponse as noncooperation. He curled his lip into a sneer. “Look, lady, I get it. A younger man pays you some attention, flirts a little, makes you feel—how did my ex-wife put it?—makes you feel alive. And reason goes out the window.”
Lana glared at him. No way in hell she was going to bring up her theories now.
She caught a whiff of Nicoletti’s awful cologne, like rotted apples rolled in pine sap. Strangely, it made her think of Paul, the stink of his car, musky and sweet at the same time. She remembered what Jack had said about the skunk smell at his leased land by the creek, and how the official at the Farm Bureau had told her there was no licensed strawberry farm under Fruitful or Paul Hanley’s name. Something was coming together, a vague cloud of an idea that started in her nose and was slowly filtering up to her brain. But before the haze cleared, Ramirez spoke.
“Ms. Rubicon, you’ve helped us before. We need your help now.”
“Meaning?”
“If you know where Paul Hanley is, any idea regarding his whereabouts, we need to know.”
“Perhaps I could—”
Nicoletti slapped his notebook down on the table. “Perhaps you could stop playing cute and tell us what you know.”
Lana straightened up and fixed the man with a vicious stare. “Detective Nicoletti. I know you are under a great deal of pressure. I know you have not been able to solve this murder, despite having multiple weeks and the full force of your department behind you. I know you have treated me dismissively and bullied my granddaughter. I know you need a goddamned belt to hold up those sagging pants you bought off the discount rack. What else is it that you want to know?”