Free Shadows by Edna Buchanan

turned to her as he got to his feet. “And you just happened to call a cab after you knew we’d found it? What was your big hurry?”
    â€œFergie and Di are home alone, since early this morning.”
    â€œSure. I’m Prince Charles and you’re the Queen Mother. I’ve had it with you, Kiki.”
    He stepped out and slammed the door.
    â€œLeave it open!” she wailed.
    â€œFour forty-one,” he said into the radio. “Whatcha got, Naz?”
    â€œSeven,” Nazario said. “Cause unknown so far. Could have been live births. Circa 1961.”
    â€œCrap. Where you at?”
    â€œPulling into the station garage now.”
    â€œGood, I want you to take a crack at Kiki. She seemed to like you.”
    Â 
    Nazario reported to the others in the lieutenant’s office.
    Salazar whistled and ran her manicured fingers through her curly brown hair. “Edelman won’t be a happy camper.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Riley said. “We have to go over that place inch by inch, maybe even dig around the back of the house. God knows what else we’ll find out there.”
    â€œI’ll get a temporary restraining order against any action by the builder,” Salazar said. “How’s thirty days?”
    â€œWe can extend it if necessary, right?” Riley said.
    â€œRight. Edelman’s gonna hate it.”
    â€œI know I do,” Burch said. “Jesus. Babies. Little babies. You know what the time frame means.”
    â€œNolan had three teenage daughters, didn’t he?” Riley asked, face taut.
    â€œSummer, the oldest, was sixteen when her father was murdered.” Burch consulted his notebook. “Spring was fourteen, and Brooke, thirteen.
    â€œNolan was the only man in the house, right?”
    Burch nodded. “The son, Sky, was nine at the time.”
    â€œLooks like our victim might have been a bad dad, a very bad dad,” Riley said.
    â€œNobody ever looked seriously at the wife or the kids as suspects,” Stone said. “Never found a motive, either.”
    Riley, pale under her tan, toyed with the hand grenade on her desk. “Incest is a motive.”
    â€œThink those babies are his?” Salazar said.
    â€œSick, but not unheard of,” Riley said. “Similar cases have surfaced around the country, mostly in rural areas.”
    â€œThe products of incest buried in backyards or locked in a trunk in the attic.” Salazar shuddered.
    â€œOr the cellar,” Burch said. “Why hide them if they were legitimate? That son of a bitch.”
    â€œAccording to the background investigations and news clips in the file, Nolan and his wife were always out and about, attending charitable functions, their pictures on the society pages. In the years before his murder, she sure wasn’t home pregnant all the time,” Stone said.
    â€œSomebody was,” Riley said. “Incest sounds like a good motive to me.”
    â€œMight explain why the widow and kids split right after the murder,” Corso said.
    â€œAnd hung on to the property,” Salazar said.
    â€œKept it in the family like everything else,” Corso said.
    â€œThe wife knew,” Riley said, thinking out loud. “No way she didn’t. Three girls, seven babies?”
    â€œGuy was having himself a field day,” Corso said.
    â€œIs the widow still alive?” Salazar asked.
    Burch nodded.
    â€œWonder why she’d sell the place now?” Riley frowned.
    â€œForty million good reasons,” Burch said. “That’s what Edelman paid her.”
    â€œShe’s gotta be, what, in her seventies by now. Maybe she’s senile and forgot what they left behind in the cellar,” Corso said.
    â€œI don’t care how old you are, you don’t forget something like that,” Riley said. “She knew Edelman’s intentions, that he’d demolish the Shadows. Figured nobody would remember