“Ma’am, did you think she had any idea someone would murder her?” Axel asked.

“Murder?” The woman reared back, her faded blue eyes startled. She pressed a veiny hand to her chest. “Oh, dear. I didn’t . . . I thought she fell. I always imagined she had some premonition of her death and left me these items for you because of it. But you think she was intentionally killed?”

The older woman looked near tears, and Axel could imagine how difficult it would be to hear that a beloved sibling hadn’t simply had a tragic accident, but someone had snuffed out their life. “I’m sorry if you didn’t know. The police never officially ruled it a homicide, but we have every reason to believe it was.” He explained the positioning of Julia Mullins’s body at the bottom of the cliff. “We can also place someone at the crime scene with her less than an hour before her death.” He whipped out his phone and showed her the picture. “How close were you and your sister before her death? Do you recognize this man?”

Gail blinked and stared in openmouthed shock. “I . . . Oh, goodness. This is all so much.” She fanned her face with a delicate hand. “I’d steeled myself to visit her attorney and see the items she’d left with him. That’s already like suffering her death again. But this news is terrible.”

“I know.” Mystery hugged her aunt. “Do you have any idea who the man in the picture is?”

“Well, no. I hadn’t been out to California since I gave up on my silly Hollywood dreams and moved home. Your mother stayed behind to marry your father and—” She sighed. “I’m afraid I didn’t know everyone in her life. We weren’t terribly close after I moved home.”

“So this man is not familiar?” Axel directed her back to the photo.

“No. And she didn’t confide much to me about who or what was in her life before she died. The only thing I know is that she’d been discussing leaving your father and moving home. I applauded her decision. I know you love your father, but he was hardly a faithful husband.”

“He wasn’t,” she agreed. “And I know how much that hurt her.”

“Of course. She loved that man, and he devastated her over and over. I was helping her find a home here. We’d planned to enroll you in school here before the fall term started. Honestly, those last few weeks of Julia’s life were the most I’d talked to her in ten years.”

“You mentioned confusing activity when she was here last,” Axel reminded her. “Can you tell me more specifically what you mean?”

“Well, Julia was quite secretive. She didn’t say a lot to me, really. During the day, we’d take Mystery on day trips and look around the countryside for potential places she could move. At night, after she’d tucked Mystery in, she’d drag out that dratted laptop and tap away. I asked her what she was working on, but . . . she didn’t tell me much.”

A shock wave zipped through Axel. That laptop of hers, the missing one. Whatever Julia Mullins was typing on it could well be at the heart of her murder. He glanced over at Heath. Yeah, they might not agree on who got to claim Mystery, but they both knew instantly this was important.

“Can you recall anything she did tell you?” Heath asked.

“If you know anything about my mother’s murder, please. Even a small speck of information would be helpful. I think whoever’s behind her death means to kill me, too.”

“Kill you?” The woman looked positively petrified. “Oh, my. Oh, dear.” She fanned herself again. “Are you sure?”

“Very,” Axel answered. “So anything you can tell us is helpful.”

The woman sank into a chair at the kitchen table, empty mug forgotten. “Well, she seemed withdrawn and wouldn’t answer questions. The only thing she said that I remember is that she expected your father would take forever to give her a single cent from the divorce. So she knew that money would be an issue when she left him.”

Mystery frowned. “She was wrong about that. My dad said he’d give her money as long as she didn’t move me back to Kansas.”

Gail shrugged. “When she came to visit the month before she died, Julia was certain Marshall would cut her off, so she was determined to make her own money. She told me she’d been writing a . . . memoir or something. She intended to sell it and had a publisher interested. When I pointed out that she was hardly a famous woman after a few small roles in movies and TV, she huffed at me and admitted that she wasn’t the focus of the book.”

Marshall Mullins had been. His wife had intended to blow the doors wide open on his extracurricular love life. She’d been writing a tell-all book. Axel swore under his breath. Across the top of Mystery’s head, he noticed that Heath did the same.

Time to question her father again. He definitely knew more than he was letting on, and he’d press the famous bastard hard—without Mystery listening to inhibit his tongue—until he got some damn answers.

Seeming to read his mind, Mystery gaped. “But Daddy didn’t kill her. I know he didn’t.”

“He doesn’t look like the man in that photo,” Axel conceded. “But certainly there are plenty of douchebags willing to kill a defenseless woman for a few dollars.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Mystery shook her head. “My mom asked for the divorce, not him. He was upset when she demanded they split.”

“Maybe then he snapped,” Gail supplied. “It happens. I watch the ID TV channel all the time, and you see the shows about these crimes of passion that—”

“With all due respect, we’re just speculating now,” Axel cut in. “Your sister could have written things in that book that upset any number of people.”

“Indeed,” Heath agreed. “Mr. Mullins said something about the wife of a very dangerous man. Maybe that man found out about the affair. Maybe some other woman didn’t want her secret fling with Mullins exposed, so she made sure his wife’s accusations could never be printed.”

“Maybe.” Mystery frowned. “But who else knew she was writing this book? Not my dad.”

“She would have tried to hide it, I’m sure. It’s not like she’d have wanted him to know that she intended to blow the lid on his sex life wide open,” Axel pointed out.

She scoffed. “All anyone had to do was read the tabloids. Dad didn’t try very hard to hide who he was sleeping with on any given day.”

“That may be true, but your mom could give far more accurate information, not tabloid speculation. And maybe she’d found out about some lover of your father’s who’d go to any length to keep their cheating out of the rags.”

“The way they hounded him relentlessly, I can’t see the paparazzi missing even one of his girlfriends. But I guess it’s possible.”

“Whatever your mother knew may have gotten her killed.” Axel reached for her hand. “We have to keep digging and figure this out.”

“Yes.” Gail looked flustered. “Yes, of course. I think . . . I need a few minutes to myself to process everything. My poor sister.” She stood and looked as if she fought tears. “If we’re going to reach the lawyer’s office by three, we should leave here shortly before two, but there’s a café in Emporia. It’s one of my favorites. If we leave in the next hour, I’d like to have lunch there. It was one of Julia’s favorites, too.”

No way and no reason Axel could say no to that. “Of course. We’ll be ready to leave about noon.”

“I’ll bring you some of those cookies I baked last night and my homemade lemonade to tide you over.” Aunt Gail sniffled. “Thank you.”

Then she left the room and ran up the stairs, looking distraught.

Mystery’s face fell. She looked at him with tears swimming in her big eyes. “What did my mother know that got her killed? It can’t be who my father shared a bed with.”

Axel agreed with her assessment. “We don’t know. The bigger question is how do we get our hands on that manuscript? Can you think of any place she would have stashed a copy?”

“No. We’ve moved twice since she died. Someone would have found it. If she’d left it with a friend . . .” Her eyes widened as if a thought occurred to her.