card I wanted you to pick.’’
‘‘I agree,’’ said Kingsley. ‘‘That’s exactly what she did. She had Redding primed before he went into the attorney’s office. She made herself so reasonable and trustworthy, talked about all the different ways he could handle the will. By the time he got to the lawyer’s office, he probably thought the whole idea was his. What about the gifts to the daughter and the mother?’’
Diane shrugged. ‘‘Cooling the mark. Showing how generous she really is, to take attention off the fact that the boys weren’t getting anything and she was getting so much. And it could be that she identifies with the daughter and maybe the mother.’’
‘‘You’re good at this,’’ said Kingsley.
‘‘I’m becoming cynical, is what I am,’’ said Diane. ‘‘We were right; she had killed before. This deadly staph infection of Redding’s sounds very much like the tetanus method she used with Archer O’Riley.’’
‘‘I noticed that too,’’ said Kingsley.
‘‘You said you have some news,’’ said Diane.
‘‘I do. I showed a linguist the written entries in Clymene’s scrapbooks. There isn’t much, but he identified some wording in the archaeology-theme scrapbook that is pretty specific to a place. In one of the photographs the archaeology crew are receiving mail. The text says, ‘The mail was just called over.’ ’’
‘‘I’ve never heard that expression,’’ said Diane.
‘‘It’s unique to the Outer Banks of North Carolina,’’ he said. ‘‘I think we may know where she is from.’’
Diane looked up as the door opened. Jin’s head peeked in.
‘‘Hi. I found a relative of the triplets. Interested?’’
Chapter 44
‘‘So,’’ said Frank, sitting down on the couch and pulling Diane into his arms, ‘‘you’re going on a road trip tomorrow.’’
‘‘Plane trip. New Bern, North Carolina. About five hundred miles from here,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Kingsley wants to interview her as soon as possible and not give her any advance notice. He doesn’t want to give her the chance to back out of seeing us, or possibly even notify Clymene.’’
‘‘And she is?’’ he asked.
‘‘Carley Volker. She had her complete DNA profile posted on one of those ancestry Web sites. Jin did a good job finding her. It’s not as easy as simply matching charts. There’s a lot of mathematical probability that goes into finding common alleles among relatives.’’
‘‘So tell me what you know,’’ he said.
Diane liked to talk cases out with Frank. He had a way of asking questions that made her think.
‘‘Not a lot that we know. A lot we have some good guesses about. One of the problems is that they are identical triplets. Some of the photographs we’re finding may not be Clymene, but one of her sisters. Hell, for all I know they may all be in this together—three little black widows all raking in the money.’’
‘‘So, what do you think you know?’’ said Frank.
‘‘For the sake of argument, I’ve decided Clymene must be about thirty-five years old, so that’s my base.’’
Diane sat up and took a sip of wine. She had made one of her famous three-cheese-and-meat lasagnas for dinner and Frank had opened a bottle of wine. She took another sip before she spoke again.
‘‘In 1987, Clymene was with a man named Simon Greene, aka Jurgen Heinrich, possibly somewhere in Europe. He was using her in porno movies. Kade couldn’t find any earlier photographs of her, but that doesn’t really mean anything.’’
‘‘So, 1987 is the first date she appeared on your radar. She would have been how old then?’’ said Frank.
‘‘Fifteen. We suspect her father sold her around that time, possibly much earlier. He probably saw her as just a spare. After all, he had two more just like her,’’ said Diane.
‘‘You feel sorry for her?’’ asked Frank.
‘‘I feel sorry for the terrible things done to her, the chance for a normal life taken from her,’’ she said. ‘‘I feel sorry for that little fifteen-year-old. I don’t feel sorry for the murderer she’s become.’’
‘‘Why don’t you go over your timeline with me?’’ he said, rubbing her shoulders.
‘‘In 1991 Greene was murdered, burned alive. We think by Clymene, but we have no proof,’’ said Diane. ‘‘She would have been nineteen at the time—old enough to defend herself and to make it on her own.’’
‘‘It could be argued she was just defending herself. Found the opportunity to escape from her captor,’’ said Frank. ‘‘If it were Star, I would expect her to fight . . .’’
‘‘I know,’’ said Diane. ‘‘And I agree, if the killing had stopped there.’’
‘‘That was 1991. What next?’’
‘‘The next time we pick her up is six years later in 1997 and her name is Kathy Delancy Bacon and she is married to Grant Bacon of Richmond, Virginia. He died in a boating accident.’’
‘‘Wealthy husband number one,’’ said Frank.
‘‘Four years later, in 2001, she is Estelle Redding and married to Glenn Redding of Seattle, Washington. He dies of a rampant staph infection and leaves her two hundred million dollars. In 2004 she is Clymene Smith Carthwright and married to Robert Carthwright of the Atlanta Carthwrights. He dies when a car he was working on falls off its jack and crushes him to death. Then in 2006 she is Clymene O’Riley, married to Archer O’Riley here in Rosewood, and he dies of tetanus. That’s her history as we know it,’’ said Diane.
‘‘The events in your timeline are located all across the country and in Europe. You said the epigenetic profile
