Chapter Fifteen
Slater felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Out of his body. And he had no doubts Lana was battling the same thing right now.
The shock and sickening dread of what Pamela had just said.
Your father murdered Alicia, and I believe I know where her body is buried .
Slater had to shove aside the emotion of that accusation and remind himself to think like a cop. And that meant questioning things well beyond the surface level.
“Pamela, what did you find to make you think that?” Slater demanded once he was able to speak.
“Some old emails from the files I took from Leonard’s computer.” Pamela was still crying, but her words were rushed, as if she couldn’t say them fast enough. “I saw the date on them. It was when Alicia was murdered, and then I remembered something else. One of our vehicles had to be towed then. I don’t know why I recalled it, but it just flashed in my head when I read those emails.”
“Slow down, Mother,” Lana instructed. “What does a possible car malfunction have to do with Alicia’s murder and the emails?”
“Everything,” Pamela insisted, and she repeated the word several times before she finally continued. “I got a call from a tow truck company that night, and the person told me they had pulled the car out of a bog but there was some damage to the front end, and they wanted to know if they should go ahead and take it to the garage where the estate vehicles were normally taken for servicing and such.”
Slater mentally worked his way through that. This was obviously a towing service that Leonard was accustomed to using if they knew where to take the damaged vehicle.
“A bog?” Lana questioned.
“Yes, I think they said it’d gotten stuck in the mud.”
“Was Leonard driving the car?” Slater pressed, and again, he reminded himself that this could all mean nothing.
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. He was supposed to be at a fundraiser that night. I didn’t go because I had one of my migraines, but normally, Leonard would have a driver take us to and from such things.”
“Do you recall the name of the fundraiser or where it was held?” Slater wanted to know.
“I’m sorry, I don’t, but you could probably check the date since it was the night Alicia was killed. I’m not sure, though, if people would actually remember Leonard being there or not. It’s been so long.”
Yes, it had been. Twenty years was a long time to try to confirm an alibi, but it was possible that someone had taken or posted photos of the event.
“I’m not sure why they called me instead of your father,” Pamela went on several moments later, “and I didn’t think of asking them. I just wrote down the info, including the location of the pickup and the time.” She sobbed again. “It was at that old abandoned rodeo arena. The one out on Carston Road.”
Slater knew the one. It’d been an active site for small rodeos when he was a kid, but it had shut down about twenty-five years ago. Which meant it would have indeed been abandoned and empty when Alicia had died. As far as Slater knew, the owners had just left the place to rot away. It was a good place to bury a body.
“I think Buck or Leonard took Alicia there,” Pamela spelled out. “And I think a clue to where she’s buried is in one of the emails. Buck told Leonard that he’d ‘moved her to where you said,’ and Leonard answered, ‘Make sure no one finds her. Ever.’”
That was exactly what Julia had already relayed to them. “That doesn’t give you a specific location for a grave,” Slater pointed out. “Leonard or Buck probably wouldn’t have allowed the tow truck to come that close if a body had been buried there.”
“I agree, and that’s why I kept digging through the files.” Pamela paused a heartbeat. “I found another email. This one came the following day, and in it, Buck said, and I quote, ‘I put her with the horses.’”
Slater glanced at Lana to see if she had a clue as to what that meant, but she shook her head. “Did he mean one of the stalls inside the old arena?”
“I don’t think so,” Pamela was quick to say. “I found an article on the internet about some horses being buried on the west side of the arena. Apparently, the owner created a sort of cemetery there.”
That jogged his memory, and Slater recalled hearing about the burials. He quickly used his phone to do a search, and while there weren’t many articles on the old arena that had once been called Rodeo Park, he did find one that mentioned the graves. Apparently, the owner had used the boggy area to bury some of the horses that had been champions.
“At the time of Alicia’s death,” Pamela went on, “the rodeo arena would have been closed for five years. No visitors to find a fresh grave. And there’s this other thing I found. Buck’s grandparents had a ranch less than five miles from the arena. I’m betting he visited there when he was a kid.”
Slater was betting the same thing, and while there was still no concrete proof that’s where Alicia was buried, or that Buck and Leonard had been the ones to kill her, the circumstantial evidence was starting to come together.
Alicia and Leonard had been having an affair, and something could have happened between them. An argument that’d turned violent. Or maybe some kind of jealous altercation involving Buck, Leonard and Alicia that had led to her death. Unless Leonard confessed about that, they might never know exactly what’d happened, but if there was indeed a body at Rodeo Park, then that added some physical proof to the circumstantial.
Slater’s attention went back to Pamela when she made another of those raw sobbing sounds. “And this means Buck and Leonard could have murdered Slater’s father,” she ground out. “They could have done it to silence him. Maybe Sheriff McCullough was getting too close to uncovering the truth.”
Hearing that said aloud felt like another punch to Slater’s gut, though his mind had already gone in that direction. And it was a direction he had to take.
“I’ll start arranging for a CSI team to go out to Rodeo Park and check for any signs of Alicia’s grave,” he said, somehow managing to keep his voice level. Inside, though, was a whole different story. He was battling an emotional hurricane that was ripping right through him.
“You’ll let me know if they find anything,” Pamela muttered, and then she quickly added, “I have to go.” And she broke down crying.
“Mom?” Lana tried, but the woman had already ended the call.
Lana turned to him, and even though he wanted to get started with that call to Duncan and the CSIs, Slater took a moment to try to settle some of the panic and dread he saw on Lana’s face.
He pulled her into his arms and brushed a kiss on her forehead. “One step at a time,” he murmured. “It could take hours or even days for Duncan to get a warrant to search the grounds. It’s in his jurisdiction,” Slater added. “So we won’t have to deal with the San Antonio cops.”
At least they wouldn’t unless there was a body buried there. Then it would mean Leonard’s arrest. Or at least the man being brought in for questioning. After that, a body would have to be sent to the medical examiner and maybe even a forensic scientist for evaluation. This was going to be a long, grueling ordeal, and at the tail end of it would be yet another new level of investigation into his father’s murder.
After a couple of moments, Lana finally eased back and looked up at him. “Slater, I’m so sorry.”
It took him a moment to realize why she was apologizing. Hell. No way did he want her to take a drop of blame for anything her father might have done. So he kissed her again. This time on the mouth. He hoped it settled some of her nerves because that’s what it did for him, and then he stepped away from her to go up the hall to talk to Duncan. It would no doubt be a long conversation, followed by getting all the cogs moving for the warrant and the CSIs. In other words, it was going to be a very long night.
“I’ll have Duncan come in here so we can talk,” Slater suggested. Of course, Joelle would likely want to be involved with that, too.
He left Lana while he went down the hall and lightly tapped on the door of the main bedroom. Slater immediately heard the footsteps, and a moment later both his sister and Duncan answered the door.
“What happened?” his sister wanted to know. Like Duncan, she wasn’t dressed for bed, but Slater spotted two laptops and a baby monitor in the small seating area of the room.
“We need to talk,” Slater said, motioning for them to follow him. “There have been some developments.”
That was all he got a chance to say before Lana rushed out into the hall. She, too, had the baby monitor in one hand and her phone in the other.
“There’s a problem,” Lana blurted. “My mom just called and said she was going to Rodeo Park.”
Hell. Not this.
“I tried to talk her out of it,” Lana quickly added. “But she won’t listen. Slater, she’s already on her way there to look for Alicia’s grave.”
L ANA CURSED UNDER her breath when she tried again to call her mother, and like the other four times, her mother didn’t answer. The calls went straight to voicemail. Lana had left three other messages for her mother not to go anywhere near the Rodeo Park, but she didn’t even bother to leave a fourth.
Her mother was no doubt on her way to what could be a burial site.
If Pamela did find something, then the evidence could be destroyed. But that wasn’t even her biggest concern at the moment. It was Leonard. What would he do if he found out where his wife was going? As much as Lana hated to consider it, she had to.
Her father might try to murder her mother.
It didn’t matter that Lana wasn’t close to either of them. Heck, she didn’t even like them. But she didn’t want another person to die.
Obviously, Duncan and Slater felt the same way because they were hurriedly assembling a plan. A plan that was being amended as they spoke. At the first suggestion, Duncan and Slater said they’d be going alone, but Lana had nixed that. If anyone could convince her mother to back off, it’d be her. It had taken Lana some time to convince Slater of that, but he’d finally relented.
“Luca, Sonya and Joelle will stay here with the babies,” Slater spelled out while he, Duncan and Lana strapped on their weapons.
Lana was thankful for the extra security since she didn’t want Buck’s accomplice to take advantage of their absence to try to kidnap Cameron.
“And, Duncan, you and I will take precautions in case this turns out to be something different from what it seems,” Slater added to her.
She was quick to agree. Because she, too, had already considered several disturbing possibilities. Maybe her mother was the accomplice and this was to draw them out. Or the accomplice could be using her mother to set all of this up. The emails could be fake, designed to draw them all out to a secluded location where they could be attacked.
And that led right back to her father.
Or Marsh.
No way was Lana going to cross him off the list of suspects. After all, Marsh had been around when Alicia was murdered, too, and he could have murdered her alone or teamed up with Buck.
“Stay safe,” Joelle muttered when they started for the door and the cruiser that was waiting for them outside. She kissed her husband and gave her brother and Lana hugs. “Stay safe,” she repeated.
“We will,” Duncan promised, and they stepped out of the house and into the night.
There was a chill in the air, and the drop in temps had caused a wispy gray fog to hover just over the yard and driveway. Lana hadn’t needed anything else to rev up the tension inside her, but the spookiness only added to it.
“Try your mother again,” Duncan instructed once they were on the road with Duncan behind the wheel and her and Slater in the back.
Lana did, but like the other times, it went straight to voicemail. This time, though, Lana did leave another message.
“Don’t look for the grave, Mother. Sheriff Holder, Slater and I are on the way. Stay put.”
Whether her mother would obey was anyone’s guess, but Lana was hoping this spooky atmosphere and the night would at least give Pamela cause to stop and rethink what she was doing.
“Have you been to Rodeo Park before?” Slater asked her.
Lana shook her head. “I’ve only driven past it.”
But she knew it wasn’t far. Only about five miles away. Still, it would be a very long drive since they had to stay vigilant for any attacks along the way.
“My dad used to take me and my siblings there,” Slater muttered, keeping watch out the window. “It used to be a fairly open field, but last time I saw it a couple of years ago, the nearby woods had practically taken it over. Unless your mother’s dressed for a hike, she probably won’t have gotten far.”
Good. Better yet, maybe Pamela had already changed her mind and already turned back toward the apartment.
Duncan threaded the cruiser around the deep curves of the country road, and when they reached the turnoff, the road narrowed even more. Obviously, there wasn’t a beaten track because what was left of the asphalt was pocked with potholes and even some weeds sticking up through massive cracks.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long for a building to come into sight. Well, what was left of the building, anyway. Lana could see glimpses of what had once been a rodeo arena, but portions of the massive roof had collapsed. Slater had been right, too, about the woods reclaiming the place. The wild shrubs now littered what was once a parking lot, and the massive tree limbs were like a canopy that was doing an effective job of shutting out the sliver of moonlight.
Lana sighed when she saw something else. Her mother’s car. It was parked in one of the few spots on the concrete where the weeds and shrubs hadn’t spread. The headlights were on, and the driver’s-side door was open.
But there was no sign of her mother.
“Keep watch,” Slater reminded her when Lana automatically hurried to get out and find her mom.
He was right. This could still be some kind of trap, but if her father and Marsh had come here, they’d parked out of sight. Unfortunately, that would be plenty doable because of the trees. It was possible her father had even sent a henchman to silence her mother, and if so, it could already be too...
Lana cut off that thought. She couldn’t think of another murder right now. She had to focus on getting her mother safely out of there so she didn’t contaminate a scene that needed to be examined.
Duncan stepped from the cruiser and put his hand over his gun. “Mrs. Walsh?” he called out.
Her mother didn’t answer, and the grounds were almost totally silence. There wasn’t even any buzzing of mosquitoes. Worse, the fog seemed to be getting even thicker and was swirling around their legs.
Duncan called out to her mother again, and when there was no response this second time, Lana got out of the cruiser as well. She stayed behind the cover of the door, knowing it wouldn’t do much good if someone tried to shoot her in the head. Still, she looked around and saw no one ready to gun them down.
“Mom?” Lana tried.
And there was an instant reaction. Sort of a muffled sound of relief, and several seconds later, her mother came out from behind one of the trees. Lana felt both relief and anger that her mother had come here.
Pamela wasn’t near the crumbling arena building but rather on what Lana thought was the west side of the property where the horse cemetery would be. Her mother was holding a flashlight that she had pointed toward the ground.
“I didn’t know who drove up,” her mother said, not coming closer. She stayed put, her body partially hidden behind the massive oak. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t your father or Marsh.”
Lana could understand that, but it didn’t ease her anger. “You shouldn’t be here,” she warned her.
“I have to find out the truth,” Pamela insisted.
“No, you don’t,” Duncan said, sounding very much like the lawman in charge. “We’ll have a warrant soon, and then a CSI team.”
Her mother frantically shook her head. “It might be too late. If Leonard knows we’re onto him, he could do something to destroy the scene. He could set a fire or something.”
A fire would definitely do some damage, but it likely wouldn’t obliterate a body in the ground.
“Come back to your car, Mrs. Walsh,” Duncan ordered.
Again, her mother didn’t respond. Not with words, anyway. But Pamela turned and started running.
Both Slater and Duncan cursed, and the three of them went after her. Thankfully, her mother wasn’t hard to follow because she kept on her flashlight, and Lana could see it bobbling through the dark and fog as her mother ran. Not for long, though. Her mother stopped.
Then screamed.
The sound ripped through the night and caused her, Slater and Duncan to speed up. Lana tried to tamp down any worst- case scenarios. And failed. There were just too many dangerous possibilities, ranging from a killer to wildlife about to attack.
By the time they made it to Pamela, she turned. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open as if preparing for another scream.
“There,” her mother said, and she aimed a trembling hand at something on the ground in front of her.
Steeling herself for what she might see, Lana moved closer. And closer. Until the fog cleared for a second or two so she could see the headstones for what she presumed were the horses’ graves. Then she saw something else.
Something that sent her heart to her knees.
Because there was another grave, an unmarked one, and it wasn’t covered, either. It was now a gaping hole.
Duncan fanned his flashlight into the hole and groaned. Lana soon saw why. At the bottom of the hole were the bleached white bones of what had once been a body.