Page 20 of The Sheriff's Baby

“There were traces of a prescription sleep aid in her system. Doxepin. Traces,” the doctor emphasized. “There certainly wasn’t enough of it to cause unconsciousness.”

Joelle frowned, and she waited for Duncan to ask the question she knew had to be on his mind. “Do you think she faked her symptoms?”

“Hard to say, but it’s possible she had some kind of allergic reaction. I’ll be checking for that. When I checked her online medical records, there weren’t any allergies listed. Not only that, she’s been prescribed this particular sleep aid for years. Still, it’s possible the drug in combination with something else caused the disorientation and the unconsciousness. As I mentioned earlier, thatsomething elsecould have caused the car accident.”

Yes, that could explain it. Joelle recalled seeing the cut on the woman’s head.

“How serious is that injury to the head?” Duncan wanted to know.

“We ran a CT scan, and there was no obvious signs of brain damage or even a concussion,” Dr. Benton was quick to say. “Once the patient is out of sedation for her blood pressure, I’ll do some neuropsychological evals since a CT scan doesn’t always confirm a concussion. It’s possible, too, that the trauma of the car accident is playing into her reactions.”

Duncan’s expression let Joelle know he was skeptical about that. But why would Kate have pretended to be drugged? The woman had literally staggered onto Molly’s property and then collapsed. Why do that?

Unfortunately, Joelle immediately came up with an answer. A bad one. If Hamlin was right about Kate being a criminal, then maybe her behavior was meant to make her look innocent while also pointing the blame at Brad. But Kate could have also done this to get closer to them. So she could try to do to Joelle what was done to Molly. Still, that seemed an extreme ploy especially since the woman hadn’t been on their radar before she’d shown up at Joelle’s.

“I still want to talk to Kate once she’s awake,” Duncan stressed. “I’ll also want the results of those tests you mentioned.”

“Is she a suspect in the attacks?” the doctor asked.

“A person of interest, but some information has come to light that I need to question her about. It could be related to the murder of Sheriff McCullough.”

“I see,” the doctor muttered after a long pause. “I’ll let you know the moment you can talk to her,” he assured Duncan.

When the call ended, Duncan stared at his phone for a moment before his gaze shifted to Joelle. “We really need to dig into Kate’s background.”

She couldn’t agree more. “I’ll do that and check for any updates from the CSIs, techs and lab.” They had a lot of cogs going in this particular investigative wheel, and any one of them could provide them with answers.

Maybe,finally, answers about her father.

Joelle couldn’t fully process that. Couldn’t deal with the emotions that would bring. She had to rely on the work not only bringing a closure to the case but to help her find the mental healing that had so far eluded her.

Of course, the healing would only be partial. She would still need to know what had happened to her mother.

“I’ll get that PI background report on Hamlin,” Carmen said, and she headed back toward the bullpen.

Joelle forced her hands to steady on the laptop keyboard while she checked for those updates. There was one which had come a little too late to say that the blood at Molly’s hadn’t been hers. That comparison had been fairly simple because her DNA was on file. Now that Molly had been ruled out, the sample would have to make its way through the database to see if there was a match.

Since Duncan was already at work on his laptop. Joelle didn’t relay the blood news. She just moved on to the next task—finding out if Kate Moreland had something to hide. The basics about the woman meshed with what they had already learned. She owned a lot of businesses she had inherited from her father who’d died a decade earlier.

Joelle continued looking into the woman’s personal life. Divorced, ex-husband deceased and only one child. Brad. There were plenty of social media posts about Kate’s fundraisers, parties and such, but there were no recent mentions about Brad. Joelle had to go back five months to find them, and she immediately saw a pattern. Before five months ago, Kate had posted many photos of her and her son together. Then, nothing.

Joelle had to wonder about the timing since her father had been murdered five months ago.

From across the room, Duncan’s phone rang, immediately getting her attention since it could be news about Molly. “It’s Ruston,” he said.

She automatically sighed. Her brother was no doubt checking on her again and probably thought she’d try to gloss over how she was doing. Which she would have done. No way did she want her brothers worrying about her any more than they already were.

“Ruston,” Duncan greeted, and unlike the other calls he’d been getting, he didn’t put this one on speaker.

Joelle couldn’t hear what her brother said, but whatever it was had Duncan slowly getting to his feet. “Hell,” he spat out.

That caused Joelle to stand as well, and she went to Duncan. “What’s wrong? What happened?” And too many worst-case scenarios started flying through her head.

Duncan lifted his finger in a “wait a second” gesture. “You’re sure it’s her?” Duncan asked Ruston.

The answer he got caused Duncan to curse again, and then he added, “Yeah, call me the moment you know anything.” He pressed end call, and he looked at her.

“Is it Molly?” she managed to ask, even though Joelle’s throat had seemingly clamped shut.

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