Chapter Eight
Eight
Leanne’s headlights swept over the limestone ranch house as she curved up the driveway. A light was on in the TV room, and she pictured Boone asleep in his leather recliner. She parked behind his silver Cadillac Escalade and took out her phone.
I’m here, she texted. U home?
She stared down at the screen, but her brother didn’t answer. Sighing, she slid from her truck and closed the door with a quiet click. The front yard was dark, and the whisper of wind through the oak trees was the only sound.
Walking up the driveway, Leanne passed the limestone guest cottage, which sat empty much of the time.
She went around the side of the detached three-car garage and stood on an overturned flowerpot to slide her hand along the top of the doorframe until she found the key.
She unlocked the door, then stepped inside and paused for a moment in the cold darkness before turning on the light.
Three spotlights shone down, illuminating her stepfather’s pride and joy.
In bay one was a 1921 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, a near-perfect replica of the one used in Giant, which had been filmed down the road near Marfa.
In the middle bay was a painstakingly restored 1938 Ford pickup.
Bay three held a much more modern vehicle—a Ford F-350 capable of pulling a loaded horse trailer.
The horses were her mom’s pride and joy. Her two chestnut mares occupied the stables behind the house, where they were showered with attention daily. Regina Everhart often said that she liked horses more than people, and anyone who knew her understood that she wasn’t joking.
Leanne glanced around the garage. The gleaming epoxy floor was cleaner than the one in her kitchen. She slid between the Rolls-Royce and the antique pickup, careful not to scratch the paint with the zipper of her leather jacket.
At the back of the garage was a wooden ladder. Leanne maneuvered it beneath the door to the attic, then climbed the creaky steps and pushed open the hatch. The door stuck, so she gave it a hard shove, and it flopped onto the attic floor with a whack.
Dust filled her lungs, making her squint and cough. When the tickle was gone, she groped around for the light switch.
A bare bulb came on, lighting up a space with a plywood floor. Irritation surged through her. A six-thousand-square-foot ranch house, and all her dad’s belongings had been relegated to a musty attic not big enough to stand in.
Leanne hitched herself into the cramped space. She grabbed a rafter to pull herself up and stood hunched beneath the sloped ceiling. The tips of roofing nails glinted through the decking, and she ducked lower as she sidestepped boxes of vinyl records and bins of fishing tackle.
Swatting at cobwebs, she approached a row of cardboard boxes, all labeled with her mother’s loopy handwriting.
Leanne remembered loading the cartons into her mom’s car, with the help of some of her dad’s friends, on the day her childhood house was sold.
It had been two years ago this February, barely two months after Leanne’s father was killed in a drunk driving accident.
A week after selling the house, her mother married Boone Sullivan.
Even for people who knew about Regina and Boone’s affair, it was a shockingly short timeline. For Leanne, it was the blink of an eye.
It was hard not to feel bitter about the marriage, although Leanne tried.
Before her mom became Regina Everhart, she’d made a name for herself as Regina Mays, a three-time barrel racing champion.
She was a rodeo queen, a local legend, a consummate performer.
How hard would it have been for her to play the role of the grieving widow for one short year? Or even six months?
Leanne crouched beside the first box and tipped her head to the side to read her mother’s writing.
According to the labels, the first two boxes contained tax files.
She lifted the lid off the third box. Several folded copies of the Madrone Sentinel sat on top.
Leanne knew the headlines without even having to look, and she moved the papers aside.
Stacks of yellow legal pads stared up at her.
Her dad’s notes.
Not his notes from official police interviews—those were preserved with case files and other reports.
These notepads contained her dad’s to-do lists, which he always kept close at hand.
The yellow pads floated between the kitchen table and his truck, and sometimes his workbench in the garage, where he would jot down to-dos that came to him while he was sanding wood or staining a piece of furniture.
So much had been trashed in the move, and Leanne hadn’t known whether the lists had made the cut. To see that they had brought a wave of relief. The legal pads were bound by big rubber bands, four and five to a batch. Leanne lifted out the first stack, glimpsing the date at the upper right corner.
She unbundled a notepad, and a sense of calm settled over her as she flipped through page after page of her dad’s familiar handwriting. The lists were like a journal of sorts, and if you could decipher the messy script and cryptic abbreviations, they provided insight into her father’s life.
Tues 9:30, crime lab—Wayne?
17:00—follo w/ E.M.
Wed. 8:30—MPD mt
14:00 depo @ courthouse—Gonzales
Call R.
Was “R” a reference to her mother? Or was it a professional phone call, something to do with a case he was working on? A case, most likely. Leanne couldn’t imagine her father making a note to call his wife in the middle of the afternoon.
Leanne flipped through the pages, skimming through the hours, days, and weeks that made up her dad’s life.
So much was recorded. So much was not. Page after page devoted to meetings and phone calls and places he intended to be.
But not a single line referenced a trip to the liquor store or a detour by Paco’s Pub on the way home from work.
She reached the end of the first legal pad and set it aside. Sifting through the bundles, she found a pad from the year Hannah Rawls was murdered.
The year that changed everything.
July Fourth, a normal day, according to the list. Her dad noted a staff meeting, some phone calls, something about the fire department—likely related to the fireworks display scheduled for that night.
July fifth, nothing.
July sixth, nothing.
July seventh, nothing.
Those days were a frantic blur, but even all these years later, the details were engraved on Leanne’s brain.
She’d been fifteen that summer and had just started her first real job working the concession window at the town pool.
Fourth of July had been packed until dusk, and she’d come straight home from work and crashed, only to be awakened at three in the morning when someone showed up at the house looking for her father.
Leanne remembered her dad putting on his boots and leaving.
She remembered the steady stream of cops tromping through their back door for days, and the endless pots of coffee her mom kept brewing in the kitchen.
She remembered the TV reporters, the press conferences, the pleas for help from the public.
After three and a half days of searching, aided by law enforcement agencies from far and wide, the search came to an end when Hannah’s body was found at the bottom of an abandoned well. She’d been beaten and strangled.
The day after Hannah’s body was discovered, Lee Everhart’s notes resumed.
7:00 ME, mt w/ Syd
11:30 Sher. Off.—all hands
13:00 presser?
Follo w/ ME—prelim rp?
Call crime lab—tox screen,
Vic clothing—white powder?
15:00 MPD—all hands
16:30—presser—dress unif
The note about the press conference preceded a list of phone calls that went on for two pages, followed by several weeks’ worth of detailed to-do lists.
Paper-clipped to the final yellow page was a business card for Dark Sky Gallery.
The address was in Marfa, but Leanne had never heard of the place.
Not that she knew much about the Marfa art scene, but she’d at least been to a few galleries.
She unclipped the card and flipped it over.
A seven-digit number was written on the back.
“What on earth?”
She jumped at her mother’s voice.
“Is that you, Leanne?”
“It’s me.”
The ladder creaked as her mom mounted the rungs and poked her head through the hatch. She wore a black silk robe, as though she was getting ready for bed. But her auburn hair was done, and her ruby red lipstick told Leanne she’d been out earlier that evening.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing up here?”
“Just looking through some stuff. I’m coming down.” Leanne stashed the legal pad in the box and replaced the lid.
“You damn near scared me to death! I thought you were a prowler.”
“I’m coming down now.”
In the light of the bare bulb, her mother’s makeup looked garish. She shook her head and stepped down the ladder. Leanne followed, switching off the light as she went.
Then they were standing in the garage, surrounded by Boone’s expensive toys.
“What on earth are you doing rooting around the attic like a racoon? That’s a good way to get shot.”
“Since when do you shoot raccoons?” Leanne brushed the dust off her shoulders.
“I thought you were a burglar.” Her mom planted a hand on her hip, and her shiny red fingernails put Leanne’s filed-down nubs to shame.
“You’re all dressed up,” Leanne said. “Where’d you go tonight?”
Her mom ignored the question, still searching Leanne’s eyes for clues. But the last thing Leanne planned to do was bring her mother into her secret investigation.
“We had a committee dinner.”
That would be the Rodeo Committee, which Regina cochaired. Outside of riding, it was her favorite activity.
“You never answered my question,” her mom said. “What were you doing up there?”
“Just looking through some paperwork.”
“The Moriarty case?”
Leanne didn’t respond.
“Not you, too.” She rolled her eyes. “What is everyone’s fixation on that damn girl? She’s been dead sixteen years.”
“Mom.”
“Well, it’s all anyone can talk about! They’ve got it on CNN, for God’s sake.”
“It’s a high-profile case. People are interested.” Now she sounded like the DA.
Her mom shook her head. “Hasn’t Sean Moriarty destroyed enough lives? That case drove your father to distraction. He was obsessed. Sean Moriarty ruined our marriage.”
Leanne turned away. “Right.”
“What? He did!”
“You don’t think you and Boone had something to do with it?”
Her mom drew back, clearly offended. The affair was no secret, but they didn’t talk about it openly.
Her mom took a deep breath and settled her fists on her hips. Her chest was flushed now, and she seemed to be making an effort to calm down. She was on blood pressure medication, and Leanne felt a wave of guilt.
“Have you seen Ben this week?” her mom asked, changing the subject.
“No. Have you?”
Her tense expression answered Leanne’s question.
“He hasn’t been home in six days.” Her mom nodded in the direction of the empty guesthouse. “I think he’s with that girl, Diandra.”
Diandra was her brother’s sometimes-girlfriend, who—lucky for Ben—had supposedly kicked her drug addiction. Unlucky for Ben, she’d replaced it with alcohol. Leanne’s mom believed she was a bad influence on Ben, and Leanne concurred.
It was one of the few topics they could agree on.
“I’ll call him.” Leanne didn’t have the heart to mention that she’d texted him three times today and gotten no response.
“You want to try him tonight?”
“It’s almost midnight, Mom. He’s probably asleep at her place.”
At her mother’s worried expression, she felt another wave of guilt.
You need to look out for your brother. His damn head’s in the clouds.
How many times had her dad said that? The words lived in her brain, no matter how often she reminded herself that Ben was an adult, free to screw up his life however he wanted.
He wasn’t her responsibility, but for as long as she could remember, her dad had told her otherwise, and even now, he was telling her from the grave.
“I need to go.” Leanne moved for the door. “I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“Not the Moriarty case, I hope.”
“This is something else.”
“The girl at the train tracks?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard about that.”
Leanne reached for the door. “Don’t worry about Ben. I’m sure he’s fine.”
Her mom sighed. “Bullshit, Leanne. You’re sure of no such thing.”