Free Liberty...And Justice for All by Leigh James Page B

family.”
    I just glared at him, and at Catherine, who still had a disgusting smile on her face.
    I raised my hand. “Bartender? Can I please have another beer?”
    I needed it. This whole family thing was a lot more complicated than I’d hoped.

We’re Going Down
    “ I don’t know what to do. They all have alibis,” I told Ian the next morning. “Although they all have motives, too.”
    “Like what?” Ian asked.
    “Jacoby loves money. His mother said he doesn’t want to work for it. Katrina doesn’t appear to have a job, either, and was complaining that the money Eric left me belonged to the rest of them. And Robert hates Eric for what he did to his mother. He said Eric destroyed her.”
    “What about Alexandra and Marks?” he asked.
    “Marks hates me? And Alexandra is just pretending to tolerate me?” I guessed.
    “There, there,” Ian said, patting my hand, trying to console me.
    “What about you?” I asked. “Did you run the reports? Did you find out anything?”
    “Billy Brown was at his country club that night, dining with his wife,” Ian said. “I didn’t really suspect him, anyway. And the widow, Tillie, was out of town in Florida that week. She was updating her fabrics at her house down there. And she has the plane tickets and receipts to prove it. So they’re both out.
    “We ran preliminary reports on your siblings and on Marks but we haven’t pulled up anything—no criminal records, no warnings, no nothing. Marks has a couple of speeding tickets. The rest of them are clean,” Ian said.
    “So Billy Brown and Tillie are clear,” I said. “So is Eleanor. She was playing poker with her friends. But even though my brothers and sisters have alibis, I can’t shake the feeling it was one of them. They all live close enough—except for Jacoby—that they could have driven here late at night, after their alibi stuff.”
    “I’ll have the guys check to see if any of them flew or rented a car that day. If it was one of them, we’ll figure it out,” Ian said.
    “They all hate me, Ian,” I said. “All three of them said that I should never have inherited the money or the necklace. They were awful.” I felt my eyes fill up with tears but I blinked them back; my new siblings hardly seemed worth crying over. “I might go to Vegas a day early. I miss John so much I can’t stand it.”
    “You should go,” Ian said. “I’ve talked to him a couple of times and he’s absolutely miserable. It’s like talking to Old John. I vastly prefer New John.” He smiled at me. “So go. I’ll hold down the fort.”
    “Well, that’s the other thing I’ve been thinking…” I said. “I might drag Catherine with me. And one of the guys to babysit her. Maybe Matthew or Corey. I don’t trust her alone.” I stopped, wondering how much I should tell him. I decided not to share the fact that she’d slept with my angry half-brother, and that she’d snuck out of our hotel to do it.
    “She’s not going to like that,” Ian said.
    I sighed. “I know. But I don’t trust her. You, I trust. But I wouldn’t put anything past her at this point.”
    “Don’t you think bringing her to Vegas is sort of the opposite of a good idea?” Ian asked.
    “We’ll keep it low-key,” I said. “But I need to keep an eye on her. She’s making bad choices. I’m supposed to be helping her.” Instead, I only seemed to be making things worse.
    “Take her, then. Try to talk to her. But don’t push her when it comes to John. It just makes her meaner.”
    “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”
    “And don’t worry about your necklace right now—I can work on it while you’re gone,” Ian said. “But part of the difficulty is that the thief isn’t planning to sell it, if we take what they said in the note as fact. They’re just going to hide it. So we can’t look for it on black market channels, try to trace it that way.”
    “So what do we do?” I asked. “Break into each of my sibling’s houses and