Page 46 of Murder in the Lighthouse

It took twohours before they heard back from Trish. And it wasn’t an email or a reply online.

When the doorbell rang around five-thirty, Lucien checked the Ring Cam. Trish stood on the porch holding a box.

“Please tell us you didn’t get fired,” Brogan said as she opened the door.

“Not yet. Have I got lots to share with you guys or what?” Trish announced as she stepped into the entryway.

“Us too. But you go first.”

“I know what Bethany discovered that she wasn’t supposed to,” Trish revealed, setting the box down on the coffee table in the living room. She glanced around at all the laptops. “You guys have been busy.”

“Did you get my message I left for Truthseeker22?” Jade asked.

“I did. Very cryptic. I like that. I haven’t had time to set up a new email address yet. I was too busy looking for your home address. It was too easy. You really should do something about that.”

“And?” Brogan prompted.

“Ah, I think I know what Bethany encountered that got her into trouble.”

“We’re all ears,” Lucien said. “And we were about to order pizza for dinner.”

“Make mine a meat supreme. I’m starving.”

“Would you let her get to why she’s here,” Birk insisted.

“Sure,” Brogan said with a laugh, taking a seat on the arm of the chair. “You have the floor.”

“This is big,” Trish said. “Before he left the sheriff’s department, Ken Shepherd was assigned to a drug task force that arrested a foreign national, a major drug kingpin from Croatia who had been hiding out in Colombia. In hoping to expand his operations, he came to California, where he made a few mistakes along the way by underestimating how serious the local cops were about stopping the flow of fentanyl into the state.”

“That ties back to what we discovered,” Lucien stated. “That must’ve been the opportunity Ken had been looking for at the cartel level.”

“Yes, well, the case went nowhere when the evidence disappeared out of lockup. I mean, it just vanished. The entire bounty got logged in one day, and no one could locate it the next.”

“What disappeared? How much are we talking about?”

“Cash, product, a stash of untraceable phones, and boxfuls of illegal weapons, enough to fill a ten-by-ten evidence room.”

“Someone got quite a haul,” Birk noted. “What kind of product?”

“Drugs. Mostly fentanyl and lots of it.”

Lucien traded looks with Birk. “That sounds like a great start to his side business before the brothers make it their life’s work.” He told her about the shell companies and the offshore accounts. “They obviously ramped up their operation when they bought the vineyard. They ship cheap wine overseas in their bottles to hide the drugs in the shipping container. They probably pay someone off at the receiving end to get it through customs, smuggling it across Europe before reaping the rewards by massive amounts of money laundering.”

“Wow. Okay. Feed me, and I’ll tell you everything else I discovered,” Trish said.

Over a meat supremo topped with fennel sausage, pepperoni, salami, and bacon in honor of Trish and a vegetarian lover’s delight for Jade and Brogan, they sat around the dinner table, swapping tales of what they’d learned.

Trish took a bite of her pizza, savoring the flavors coming together before continuing. “So, get this: the drug kingpin from Croatia, known on the streets as ‘The Viper,’ escaped custody in Colombia with the help of his associates. That’s how the DEA got tipped off in the first place. In turn, the DEA tipped off the authorities in Santa Cruz, notifying them of his destination. It seems this guy picked Santa Cruz because it sounded Spanish.”

“He couldn’t be that stupid?” Birk remarked between bites.

“Does it sound like he’s a genius? Nope. Not to me. But it must have piqued their interest when Keith and Kenneth got wind of his arrival. After all, he was the right kind of stooge they were looking for to take their side business to the next level. Rumors surfaced that the Shepherd brothers had been looking for a way to tap into the drug trade. When the bust happened, there was gossip throughout the department and tons of speculation about the person who made the evidence vanish. All parties suspected Ken. And when he bought the vineyard, everyone wondered how he could afford the price tag. Now, I think we know.”

“Are you saying that Ken arrested this guy as part of his task force, took the evidence, and stole the drug trade out from under this Viper guy?”

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Trish confirmed with a grin. “Once the district attorney had to drop the case against Viper, the guy disappeared. Want to take bets as to what actually happened to him?”

Birk shook his head. “Ken or Keith or both killed him.”

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