Page 77 of Echoes at Driftwood Cottage

But getting answers about the mysterious couple in the grave was another matter. Brent revealed that DNA had yet to be extracted from the bones. Nothing had come back from the crime lab.

“DNA could take weeks,” Brent explained sitting inside his office. “I’m told that getting anything forensically from bones takes longer. Muriel’s looking for something called forensic-grade genome to create full profiles.”

“I wish I could help you,” Rowan offered, knowing she needed to make things better between her and the police. “I finally received a genealogy report back from the lab in San Sebastian. Well, it was more like a letter than a report. It said that I have no living relatives.”

“That just means that a relative connected to you hasn’t uploaded their DNA into one of those websites yet,” Brent explained. “You’ll need to keep checking and show some patience.”

“That’s what I told her,” Daniel confirmed.

“When Muriel is able to obtain what she needs for a profile, she’ll compare the DNA to yours,” Brent said. “Fingers crossed she gets enough DNA from the bones.”

“I hadn’t even considered that it would take so long,” Rowan admitted. “It isn’t like it is on those detective shows where they get the results back after the last commercial break.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you see on TV,” Brent grumbled, glancing over at Eastlyn. “See? People really do believe that sort of crap.”

“Things move a lot slower in our world,” Eastlyn noted. “It took Muriel and her team sixteen hours of sifting through that dirt to find the other bullet fragment, which delayed the ballistics.”

Brent shoved a report across the desk for Rowan to see. “The good news is that those fragments remained in the bodies. When they decomposed, they left behind pieces of the bullets.”

Rowan made a face before handing the report off to Daniel. “I realize that’s important, but I didn’t actually need to hear the details.”

Brent shuffled through a stack of files on his desk and pulled out a separate piece of paper. “The bullet fragments remained in the bodies during decomposition within the walls of the burial plot. That small plot contained those fragments that lodged beneath the bones. We were lucky. Ballistics found they were a perfect match to the guns owned by Jim Dewhurst.”

“Wait a second,” Daniel muttered. “It sounds like you’re saying the victims were shot with two different weapons.”

“That’s because they were. Surprising, huh? I know it shocked me. The male victim suffered a gunshot wound at close range to the head and chest with the Marlin rifle. The female suffered multiple shots from the smaller Walther pistol. My theory is this. While holding the Marlin rifle, Jim shot the male while Lynette fired the smaller pistol into the back of the female’s head at close range. Both victims probably died instantly. But the gunshot wounds would have created a messy, bloody scene that somebody had to clean up.”

Rowan traded looks with Daniel before turning to Brent. “So you’re saying you don’t actually know the location where the couple was killed?”

Brent nodded, still going through his folders. “Not yet. This is a complicated case.”

It was Eastlyn who added, “The fingerprints on the empty coffin belonged to Jim and Lynette, though. Not an earth-shattering result since those two were the obvious ones who touched the coffin before burial. Ask any of us on the team and we all agree. Those two were directly involved in the murders and the cover-up.”

“We know definitively that it took two people to murder the victims,” Brent pointed out. “But that’s not all we discovered. Gwynn’s autopsy revealed that she suffered a stroke brought on by a massive dose of cocaine. Even after so many years in a coma, the toxicology report shows that she was still receiving cocaine into her system on a regular basis. The only routine visitor she had was Lynette Dewhurst. You do the math.”

“But Gwynn was in a coma. How could she be getting cocaine?”

“When was the last time you saw her at the nursing home?” Brent asked. Without waiting for a reply, he went on, “She’d been going downhill for months. Her hands were black and blue in terrible shape from all the injections she’d received. The doctor explained to me about primary toxic encephalopathy and secondary cerebral blood flow along with a host of other serious medical problems. I believe all Lynette had to do was fill up a syringe, smuggle it past the staff, and keep injecting Gwynn with liquified cocaine every time she visited.”

“And you think that Gwynn’s original overdose wasn’t an accident?” Rowan prompted.

“I think eight years ago, Gwynn, in one of her more lucid moments, threatened to come clean about the double murders. Lynette didn’t like the idea of that surfacing after so long. So, she took care of her daughter, who wasn’t really her daughter, by the way. Giving Gwynn a massive cocaine overdose to get her out of the way solved a lot of her problems.”

“Lynette didn’t count on Gwynn surviving, though,” Eastlyn proffered. “That threw a wrench in the whole thing.”

“The doctors were shocked Gwynn lasted as long as she did,” Brent added, pushing the folder with the autopsy results toward Rowan. “How come you don’t seem surprised that Gwynn’s DNA didn’t match up with Lynette’s?”

“Don’t get mad at us,” Rowan stated. “We uncovered quite a bit of evidence suggesting Jim and Lynette were involved from the start with Dodge Nichols, long before 1971 when he started Celestial Moon. But after the deaths of his parents, when Nichols began the commune, Jim Dewhurst became his head of security. Through a series of sources that pointed us to state records—and Will Snelling verified—we discovered Lynette was Dodge’s older sister by seven years.”

“The guy who’s still on the run from the feds and was last seen crossing into Bulgaria using a fake passport,” Daniel added.

“You have my full attention,” Brent declared as he stopped sifting through the files and exchanged looks with Rowan. “What else?”

“The questions are simple. Did Lynette and Jim help him leave the country? Why was Lynette still loyal to Nichols when her parents cut her out of the will but left Dodge everything? It seems odd. After her parents died at the farmhouse from carbon monoxide poisoning, why was she still so loyal to her little brother, her very rich little brother? Unless the two siblings had an agreement in place before they died. What if Lynette and Jim got rid of her parents? Maybe Nichols agreed to toss them a few bucks after probate was over. People will do almost anything for financial gain.”

“To be fair,” Daniel began, “Will Snelling is still sorting through the mess that makes up the Nichols family. He’s trying to score a few details about Lynette leaving the family farm. The thing is she disappeared off the radar when she was sixteen. It’s almost ten years before she returns to the area. Likely due to a falling out with the parents. Maybe the parents thought she died so they didn’t include her in the will. But there’s a reason they left everything to Nichols.”

“Could’ve been a teenage pregnancy that upset them,” Rowan tossed out. “We’ll probably never know for certain. Although we haven’t been able to pinpoint where she spent all of her time, Will found hospital records from 1968 in Tucson, after she got involved in a brawl with a motorcycle gang and ended up needing surgery. Anyway, when she re-enters the picture, she brings Jim back with her to California. By this time, her brother had managed to convince people he was some kind of spiritual leader who could provide them with a place to live and plenty of food to eat if they worked the farm that later became Celestial Moon Commune.”

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