Buried (Twisted Cedars Mysteries Book 1) (26 page)

Dougal pulled on a pair of work gloves, then went to get the spade he’d bought the other day.

The day was already warm and he expected his work to be hard. Maybe he should eat something first. At least go back and finish brewing that pot of coffee.

But he couldn’t wait. He had to do it now. He all but sprinted to the garden plot, straight to the area he’d found so much easier to turn over the other day.

He started to dig.

He scooped out dirt, one spade-full at a time, tossing it behind him, then digging in again. He kept at it for over an hour and had a hole about five feet deep, before he found something other than roots or rocks. It looked like a piece of fabric. He tossed off his gloves, then sank to his knees and brushed the dirt away with his bare hands. Not fabric, but plastic. Looked kind of green. Maybe a tarp?

He expanded his digging area, slowly revealing more tarp, and more, until an hour later, he’d excavated an area of about five and a half feet long and three feet wide.

Sending up a prayer to an unknown being, Dougal tugged on the tarp, pulling it free from the ground. Falling to his knees again, he pushed aside more dirt, the dank smell of it filling his nostrils.

Finally he found the edge of the tarp and was able to start peeling it away. His pulse pounded heavily in his throat. At one point he had to stop to gather his courage. Then he resumed pulling, unraveling layers of plastic until finally he was able to glimpse what lay beneath.

A skeletal arm, from which dangled a watch he’d seen before.

He dropped the tarp and pulled himself out of the hole. No way in hell was he looking further. As the shock wore off, and his ability to process rational thought returned, he realized this was a crime scene. Evidence. He should tamper with it as little as possible.

He planted the spade into a pile of dirt, dusted off his hands, then headed for the cottage to call Wade. But as he walked, he was thinking of how this would affect the women he loved. Poor Charlotte. And Jamie, too.

This was going to hurt both of them.

at work on Thursday
, Jamie left her cell phone off. If Kyle called her, she didn’t want to talk to him. He was supposed to be home later tonight. Hell, tomorrow they were supposed to leave on their honeymoon. She could just imagine what her brother would say about that. As far as Dougal was concerned, the next conversation she had with her husband should take place around witnesses.

Though it was supposed to be the day she worked at Quinpool Realty, Jamie spent the entire eight hours of her work day at her accounting firm. She felt so safe here. She hoped when she came begging for her job back, they would give it to her.

Finally, at five o’clock, just before leaving for the day, she switched her phone on. Sure enough, there was a missed call from Kyle. But what alarmed her more were the five missed calls from Dougal. She tried him back, immediately, but he didn’t pick up.

She tried Charlotte next, but she didn’t answer either.

Instinct warned Jamie something was wrong.

Hurrying to her car, she got in and drove, first to the library, and after that, to Charlotte’s house. She found no one at either place.

Jamie headed to the highway, next, driving fast until she reached the Old Forestry Road.

With each mile, her stomach clenched tighter. For Dougal to have tried to contact her that persistently, something had to be very wrong.

The trees on either side of the road seemed to be taller than usual, darker, pressing in toward her car as if begrudging the strip of land that snaked through their midst. She felt as if she were leaving behind, not only civilization, but also time. She was going back in history, to a time when her big brother had had all the answers.

If only it could be so simple now.

When she was less than a quarter-mile away, she could see lights. Too many lights.

She rounded the last bend and pulled up to a driveway choked with emergency response vehicles, including the Sheriff’s SUV and an ambulance. Whatever had happened, Dougal was okay. She could see her brother standing with Wade.

They both turned at the sound of her approach.

She parked quickly, jerking the car out of gear and barely remembering to shut off the ignition before running toward them. Both men looked worried and concerned.

But also, oddly, relieved.

“Thank God. I’ve been worried sick.” Dougal actually hugged her. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. Wade put a hand on her shoulder.

“You okay?” the Sheriff asked gently.

“I’m fine, but—what’s going on here?”

“I kept trying your cell. Where were you?” Dougal said.

“I had it off. But what’s going on here?” She glanced around, scrambling to make sense of all the people, the noise, the vehicles. Spotting Charlotte’s sports car, she asked where she was.

“Charlotte’s lying down in the cottage,” Dougal said.

“Did something happen to her?”

“Just a shock. I found something today, Jamie. I’m sorry. This is going to be hard for you to hear.”

She stared at him, wondering when any of this was going to make sense.

Dougal gestured toward an area off in the woods where yellow police tape had cordoned off a large plot of land, including what looked like an old gardening shed.” The people around the area were suited up. Crime scene techs, she realized.

“What did you find, Dougal?” she asked quietly.

“A body.”

She turned away from the woods, studied her brother’s face. Then Wade’s.

She was going to ask whose. Then, suddenly, she knew. “Is it Daisy?”

Dougal nodded, even as Wade answered more cautiously. “We suspect so. We won’t get confirmation on that until after the autopsy. But your brother and I both recognized her watch. It’s quite unique. She wore it all through high school.”

Jamie clasped her hands to her heart. The worst had been proven true. Daisy hadn’t run away from her children. She was dead.

When everyone had thought Daisy had gone mad, mitigating the pain had been the hope that one day she would get better. One day she might come back.

Now even that hope was gone.

As she watched, two paramedics emerged from the woods carrying a stretcher. She stared at the body bag on top of the stretcher. It seemed almost empty.

She turned away from the awful sight. “What happened to her? How did she die?”

Wade answered. “From the state of her skull, I’d guess a blow to the head.”

She stared at him, then her brother, in silent horror. Who had done it? Though no one provided an answer, she could tell what they were both thinking.

The same thing she was.

The most obvious person in cases like this was always the ex-husband, wasn’t it?

And she couldn’t deny that Kyle had been deceitful. “Oh my God. Kyle’s trips to Sacramento. Was he going there so he could withdraw money from Daisy’s account?”

“We think so,” Wade said.

Dougal pulled her close for a second hug. “I’m sorry, Jamie. When I advised you not to marry him, I never guessed it would be this bad.”

“I was so stupid—"

“Shh. Don’t say that. You saw the best in Kyle. You always had a big heart. Just like Mom. And that’s a good thing. But we’ve got a situation now, and the most important thing is for you to keep away from Kyle until we’ve sorted it out.”

She nodded.

“Where are the children?” Wade asked.

“They’re at Wolf Creek Summer Camp. We dropped them off on Sunday. They’re supposed to be there for two weeks.”

“Great,” Wade said. “At least we know they’re safe for now. Now all I’m worried about is you. Obviously it’s not a good idea for you to go back to Kyle’s place. And you shouldn’t be alone, either.”

“You can stay here with Charlotte and me,” Dougal offered.

She shook her head. “Stella will take me in.”

“I have to go back to town in a bit. I’ll drive you there,” Wade said.

She wanted to argue. But she was afraid she was about to become very sick.

wade glanced at the
darkening sky. It was going to rain, soon. Good thing they were almost finished with the crime scene. He nodded at one of his deputies, giving him permission to wrap things up. Then he moved away from the action toward the cottage where Dougal and Jamie were sitting on the porch.

After she’d vomited out the contents of her stomach, Dougal had gone into the cottage for some water and a blanket. Now she was settled in one of the old wooden chairs on the porch.

“I can drive you back now,” Wade said. “Have you had a chance to call Stella?”

Dougal nodded. “She and Amos are both at home. They’re more than happy to have Jamie come stay with them a few days.”

In the SUV, Wade helped Jamie fasten her seat belt before he executed a three-point turn and drove off.

What a hell of a day this was turning out to be. Wade hadn’t been close to Daisy Hammond since high school, still her death was tough to take.

It didn’t help to know that she’d been murdered and buried on his home turf. True, the crime had happened before he was elected Sheriff.

Still, it felt like a failure on his part.

He checked out the pressing clouds above, then glanced at Jamie, sitting silently in the passenger seat.

Her shoulders were covered in the blanket Dougal had provided. Her expression looked blank, and her fingers trembled on a Styrofoam cup filled with warm tea that one of the paramedics had given her.

She was in shock and he wished it could last forever, because once the numbness wore off, he knew she was going to hurt like hell.

And it wasn’t right.

That goddamned Kyle.

The rain started then. A slow, gentle rain—a cleansing rain his mother used to call it. “Just wait until the morning,” she would tell him when he was small, complaining about having to stay inside. “The world will be all fresh and clean and beautiful again.”

But the stain Kyle Quinpool had created would not be washed away so easily. The pain and hurt would linger for years.

He thought about Chester and Cory.

For lifetimes.

Before dropping Jamie off at Stella’s he asked if she knew when Kyle was getting back from his business trip.

She glanced at the time on his dash. “Should already be there.” Then she shuddered.

* * *

Though Wade hated leaving Jamie, he did it. Back in his SUV he headed to the Quinpool house and found Kyle’s vehicle in the driveway. Wade drove up behind it, effectively blocking him in.

As he headed for the front door, he thought back to all the times he’d visited here as a kid. Sad how things had changed over the years. Back then he’d figured he, Kyle, Daisy and Dougal would be pals for life. Sure hadn’t worked out that way.

Kyle was quick to appear at the door, his face either worried or angry, Wade couldn’t tell which.

“Where the hell is Jamie? Is she okay?”

“Jamie is fine. But she won’t be coming home tonight.”

“What are you talking about?” So many emotions flashed over Kyle’s face, it was difficult to read them all. But Wade thought fear was one of them. And possibly guilt.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Tell me where Jamie is first.”

“That’s not your main concern right now. We found a body buried out beyond the Hammond cottage on Forestry Road.”

Kyle grew still and alert, like a cat sniffing for danger. He stared at Wade cautiously, and when Wade offered nothing more, reluctantly stepped to the side.

“You better come in.”

Wade nodded. “Good idea.”

Kyle led him to the large kitchen at the back of the house. A couple of empty beer cans were on the counter. Kyle pulled out two fresh Buds, passed one to Wade, then popped open the other.

Wade was tempted. He’d never drunk on duty before. But it had been a hard day and it wouldn’t be getting any easier in the foreseeable future.

“So. This body...?”

“We’ll need autopsy results to be positive, but I recognized Daisy’s watch. You know she wore it all the time.”

Kyle swallowed. Wouldn’t look at him. “What does this have to do with Jamie?”

“She knows you’ve been going to Sacramento every month and withdrawing money from Daisy’s checking account so it would look like your ex-wife was still alive.”

Kyle took another drink of his beer, his hand shaking this time.

During the long drive from the cabin, Wade had been thinking. He had a good head for dates and he thought he could piece together what had happened.

“You and Daisy had just signed the final divorce papers, when she came to see you about something, probably involving custody of the twins. I’m guessing the visit was late at night. You invited her in, the two of you argued, you lost your temper and got rough. Too rough.”

He stopped. Kyle still wasn’t talking.

“Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, just got rougher than intended. But when you saw what you’d done, you panicked. You pulled your SUV into the garage, wrapped her body in a tarp, then loaded her into the back and drove out to her aunt’s old cabin. You and Daisy used to go there to be alone. You knew where to find it. And you knew it would be deserted.”

He paused. The look on Kyle’s face could best be described as horror.

“And you buried her, didn’t you? Then you drove back and started spreading the story she’d run off. You destroyed her purse, keeping the bank card so you could use it to make those withdrawals to create the illusion she was still alive…and corroborate your story.”

He stopped talking and waited for Kyle to react. Finally he did.

“You really think I’m capable of that?”

Wade hesitated. The fact was, he didn’t. Kyle had always looked to others to clean up his dirty work for him.

And then he realized what must have happened. Kyle’s parents had moved back in with him after Daisy left. So they would have been in the house, too. They could not possibly have failed to hear what was going on.

“Your parents were in on the cover-up, weren’t they?” Kyle’s dad, so proud, so protective of the son who had joined him in the family business, would have been the one to figure out what needed to be done.