An accident on Interstate 24 had traffic backed up for miles, and it was dark before David and Madison arrived with Stephanie and Lucky. I was ecstatic to see my daughter, and Aggie and Rex were equally ecstatic to see Lucky.
After a quick recap of events, Madison said she had an early day tomorrow and went home, leaving David, Stephanie, and me to catch up. Hours in the car had provided plenty of time for David and Madison to fill Stephanie in on everything they knew, so there really wasn’t much left to tell. Stephanie looked exhausted after a day of travel, so we kept things short and went to bed.
Aggie, Rex, and I settled into bed and were just about to call it a night when I got a text from Red asking if everything was okay. I started a reply several times before finally typing, It will be. I could see he was struggling with what to say and eventually ended with, I love you. It didn’t take me nearly as long to type, I love you too. When there was no other message, I plugged my phone in to the charger and grabbed a notepad.
I quickly read through the notes David had taken earlier. Hard to believe that it was only a few hours ago that we had sat on the back deck, sipping wine and coming up with suspects for Naomi Keller’s murder.
Brittney Keller hated her stepmother. She humiliated her at a dog show. However, humiliation and murder were two separate things. Did Brittney hate Naomi Keller enough to murder her?
June Vannover was jealous, and she said she hated Naomi Keller. There was a part of me that empathized with her. I knew what it was like to feel tossed aside by the man you loved—the man you’d pledged your troth to. There were certainly times when I wanted to kill Bambi, the bimbo I blamed for wrecking my marriage. Of course, time had helped me realize that Bambi wasn’t solely to blame. June wasn’t ready to accept that yet. She could certainly have believed that if she killed Naomi Keller, then all would go back to normal with her marriage. The question is, did she do it? Did she kill her rival for her husband’s affection?
What about the injured spouses? Was Warren Keller aware that his wife had been having an affair and planned to leave him? If he did, did he care? Would he care enough to murder her? Would Dixon Vannover have a motive? If Naomi Keller had tired of Dixon Vannover, maybe he killed her?
Tomorrow, we would need to divide and conquer. We needed to figure out which one of these suspects killed Naomi Keller, and we needed to do it quickly. Someone had pressured the head of the TBI to pick up Dixie. Who had that type of pull? Red had prevented an actual arrest, but he wouldn’t be able to do that for long. If we didn’t provide another viable suspect soon, he could be forced to arrest her. If he refused, they would simply remove him from the case and make someone else do it. We would need to move quickly to find Naomi Keller’s murderer.