Vendetta

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

VENDETTA

Lauralai talked a lot.

Like, a lot.

While the words spewing from her throat were important, there were so many of them at once. It took me a while to fully comprehend anything she said. I tried to tell her to slow down, but it only worked for about a minute before she was back at her regular pace.

We did get a handful of research done in the two hours we spent working. Our job was to figure out anybody who had a motive to abduct or even kill our father. It wasn't a very pleasant idea, but a relevant one.

Lauralai also informed me that Mr. Muriel, Principal Frankson, and a couple other teachers were friends with Sandra on Facebook since her Junior year, which is against their contracts. I didn't know that Frankson and Sandra were that close, and made a mental note to ask him about it the next day.

She also found a handful of pictures with a blonde guy, who she assumed was a secret boyfriend. Unlike most of her pictures with boyfriends, these never showed his face and were scattered throughout her timeline. There was also no one tagged in any of these photos, and Sandra always made sure her boyfriend was tagged. I guessed that maybe he didn't have Facebook, but said we'd look into it further later.

We figured that Dad's enemies included co-workers. He wasn't known to be a very social guy and was either working in the office or working at home. I remembered his computer constantly being on, along with his mind. During family dinners, he'd get ideas and leave swiftly to write it down.

We looked into people he'd hired, his competition, people he'd fired after being Head Detective, and whoever replaced him. We made a list of names and organized them in a chart. The list was very eye-opening, considering the people on it were people that I've seen walking down the street. I'd hate myself if it was any of them that took my father and I smiled at them.

HIRED

Dominick Callahan

Ashtyn Kane

Mike Anselm

COMPETITION

Orlen Cuthbert

Roland Porter

Lyndon Crispin

FIRED

Orlen Cuthbert

Otto Frankson

Roland Porter

Barton Luther

Lyndon Crispin

REPLACEMENTS

Dominick Callahan

Ashtyn Kane

I could tell my father was an incredibly intelligent man just by looking at the people he hired and the people he was replaced with. He knew he'd be putting himself in danger so he hired people he knew would be able to carry on without him. While they didn't solve it, they still had very important information.

I also realized that my father wanted a clean slate and fired a handful of people, mostly people in direct competition with him. I thought it was very interesting that Frankson used to work for the police, and that his first name was Otto. It was also crazy to me that he was fired, which is not something you hear of very often.

Sandra DeMorris Murderers

Clarke DeMorris

Otto Frankson

Maxxe Muriel

Mysterious Blonde Guy?

Draven Ventura Abductors

Dominick Callahan

Ashtyn Kane

Orlen Cuthbert

Roland Porter

Lyndon Crispin

Sadly, none of the suspects overlapped with one another. Not yet, at least. We scheduled a meeting for that Monday where we'd present all of the information we'd gathered over the weekend.

I made sure Lauralai was good for the night and started heading back to my house. I was very excited to have a full list of people and suspects, but not excited to find out they still lived here. I was more excited to cut down the list with alibis and excuses, not smiling at a murderer.