Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
The cab was a working man’s cab, Nash mused. There was a travel mug in the holder. A phone charger in the cigarette lighter. Three foam cups on the passenger floorboard, church bulletins folded on the dash, and reading glasses in the door pocket.
Nash had searched a lot of vehicles. The ones that were lived in always told you the most.
He cracked the garage door open and then turned the key partway. The fuel needle came up past half. He turned it the rest of the way, and the engine caught on the second try.
Wren glanced around the interior. “Sixty-eight years old, and he kept his truck better than his blood sugar.”
Nash smiled. “Most men do.”
Then she went quiet.
Nash looked over at her. She was staring at the dash.
“What?”
“The radio’s off.” Wren’s arms had come down at her sides. “I’m not sure if that’s truly important or not. But Paige seemed to think it was.”
Nash left the engine running and opened the glovebox, still holding the rag.
Owner’s manual, still in its plastic sleeve. Insurance card. Tire gauge. A church directory from 2019 with a rubber band around it.
Jammed underneath all of it was a wad of gas receipts thick enough that it had stopped lying flat.
He worked it out with two fingers.
“That’s a lot of paper,” Wren said.
“He was a car guy. Car guys keep receipts.” He squared the stack against his palm and started through it.
Each one had the same four lines of thermal print, already going gray at the edges.
“Fuel Stop,” he said. “Same station on every one of them.”
He squinted.
“What is it?” Wren asked.
“This truck can hold twenty gallons. But he’s been buying thirty.”
“What? How . . . ?”
“I don’t know.”
“How far back do these receipts go?” she asked.
“These go back three months. But if I had to guess, there are more somewhere, and they go back even longer.” He turned the top receipt toward her. “Where is this?”
Wren took it by the corner and leaned closer to see the faded letters.
“Route 9. Past the county line. It’s probably about forty-five minutes from here—and in the opposite direction of his work.
” She didn’t lower her arm. “There’s nothing out there that way.
That’s not me being dramatic—there’s nothing.
Hunting leases. Three or four trailers. A camp that’s been shut since before I was born. ”
“Ninety minutes each trip, plus whatever he did when he got there,” he muttered. “That’s a man giving up most of a day, over and over, and coming home and lying to his niece about it.”
“Why would he lie to Paige?” she asked.
“Because he was hiding something.”
Silence fell between them for a few seconds.
“Whatever your uncle was doing out on that road, he was doing it right up until the last full day of his life,” Nash said.
“Do you think . . . ?” She frowned before continuing. “Do you think he’s the one who took Christian? That he was driving back and forth to check on him? I mean, she thinks this is a recent development. But she’s only lived with him for a few months, so who knows how long he’s really been doing it.”
“I’m wondering if he was keeping Christian, and Christian figured out a way to escape. Maybe he hit him over the head and ran. That could have killed Roy. And the trauma from it could have caused the memory loss issues for Christian.”
Wren physically shuddered.
Paige walked them out onto the step and hugged Wren for a long time. “Tell your mama I said hello.”
“I will.” She wouldn’t.
Nash had the keys in his hand and wasn’t moving toward the truck.
“Paige, one more thing.” He took the receipts out of his jacket and held them up. “These were in the glovebox. I took them. I should have asked first.”
She squinted at them. “What are they?”
“Gas receipts. The truth is that I work for the TBI. As soon as I saw these, I realized they could be important. I’d like to give them to Sheriff Wilder.”
Her hand remained on the storm door. “You’re TBI?”
“And he really is my neighbor,” Wren added.
Paige barely seemed to hear her. “Do you think my uncle was into something? I don’t want you to run his name through the mud.”
“That’s not my intention. But he may have been murdered. And these receipts might help tell the police why.”
Paige looked at the receipts a while longer. “Take them. And you come back and tell me what you find out.”
“Here’s my number if you need anything in the meantime.” Nash handed her one of his cards, and she nodded in thanks.
Wren waited until she was inside Nash’s truck before she reacted. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “We have to tell Luke. All of it.”
Nash turned to her in surprise. “All of it?”
“Everything we’ve been holding since yesterday because we wanted to be sure first.”
“What changed your mind?”
Wren looked at Uncle Roy’s house. “Yesterday I thought we had time. I thought we’d figure out who Christian was first. Then we’d know what to say.”
Nash waited.
“Now Roy is dead—he’s been murdered. He’s been driving to the middle of nowhere every week, and we have no idea why. There’s clearly more going on here than I ever imagined.”
Nash nodded slowly. “Okay.”
As they sat there in his truck, she blinked at him. “That’s it? Okay?”
“You didn’t ask what I think. You told me what you’re doing.” He unlocked the truck. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s the right call. But it’s not my decision to make.”
“I have to tell my sisters first. I don’t know how they’re going to receive it.”
“You could call them.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I need to say it face-to-face.”
Nash opened his door. “Then that’s where we go.”