What We Found (22 page)

I trembled, suddenly queasy. A father-daughter murder team? The image of Bethany in the ditch flashed through my mind, and I had to close my eyes for a second. Surely no father would drag a daughter into something like that. But what did I know about fathers? And what if it was the other way around—what if Lia had killed Bethany, maybe by accident, and her father had helped cover it up?

Surely not. And yet….

I stared at my brother. “I want you to stay away from them.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it. If you see them, run the other direction. Go someplace safe or call the police.”

“Now you sound like Mom.”

“Ricky!”

“Okay, okay, I’m kidding.” He sat at his desk. “I guess I’ll poke around online some more, since that’s all I’m allowed to do.”

I gazed at the back of his head. Seeing his father for four years without telling Mom or me proved that he got away with a lot more than he was “allowed” to do. And he was hitting that age where rebellion was its own reward.

I stood and put my hands on his shoulders. “Remember how horrible it was when the car was out of control yesterday? Someone doesn’t like us. Or me, anyway, but that puts you in danger as well. I want you to be safe. Please promise me that you’ll be safe.”

He twisted his head to look up at me. “Yeah, okay. Don’t worry. I’m not stupid.”

I squeezed his shoulders. “No, you’re definitely not.” Maybe too smart for his own good, though. “I love you, kid.”

He looked embarrassed but mumbled, “Love you too.”

I headed for my room. I definitely needed a good night’s sleep. Maybe if I woke early enough I could call Kyle. Was it too soon? It was probably too soon. But I remembered the beauty and thrill of the hawk soaring toward us, and the comfort of Kyle’s arm around my shoulders. Maybe I needed moments like those even more than I needed a good sleep.

When I entered my room, my phone was ringing. The number was blocked. I watched it go to voicemail. When I finally got up the nerve to check the message, the voice was low and unfamiliar. “You’ll pay for what you did. I swear you’ll pay.”

I got through the night with the help of Mom’s sleeping pills, but I did not wake early enough to call Kyle. The day passed in a blur of work, retrieving cars, reviewing the articles on Bethany when I had a few minutes free, and looking over my shoulder. Jay seemed to be keeping a low profile, which suited me fine. Mr. Preppard glared when I passed him in the hall, but he didn’t start anything.

At home, it was my turn to make dinner. While we ate, Mom finally got around to prying into my sort-of-date with Kyle, but she kept her advice to a manageable level. In fact, she said, “He sounds like a decent man,” which was about the best compliment she’d ever give a man.

I gave a weak laugh. “He’s darn near perfect. It’s intimidating.”

She studied me for a minute. I braced for the lecture about how no man could be trusted. Finally she said, “No man is perfect. No woman either. But don’t sell yourself short. If he’s a good man, you’re worthy of him, and he’d be a fool not to realize that.”

I stared while she dug back into her chicken, ignoring the fact it was dry from overcooking. Maybe we really would be able to develop a new relationship.

After dinner we left Mom watching TV, and I dragged Ricky back to his bedroom. “We need to do something,” I said. “I’m going crazy waiting and not knowing what the police are doing and wondering if someone’s watching me and—” I decided not to go into detail about what might happen if Bethany’s murderer decided to take revenge on me for finding the body.

“Do you have any ideas?” Ricky asked.

I sat on his bed. “One thing came to me when I was reviewing the news articles. The police have been looking for Bethany’s car ever since she was reported missing. They haven’t found it.”

“You think it will help solve the crime?” Ricky asked. “If the murderer used it to move her body, maybe he left something behind! A clue, like a hair or some blood.”

I made a face. “Right. I don’t know if the police are still looking for it, since she’s been found. I guess they must be, but now they know she’s not with her car, so maybe they’re not worrying about it. The question is, if they haven’t found her car, how could we?”

Ricky squinted in concentration. “What would the police have done? They must have put out an alert.”

“Probably. But that would mostly work if the car got left someplace where it would be towed or ticketed. Maybe a police officer would notice it driving down the street, but it was a white Toyota Corolla, not exactly something that would stand out in a crowd. Since obviously Bethany didn’t leave town in it, the car could still be around somewhere.”

“It’s not near the resort, is it?”

“No. I looked around the parking lot when I left today, but it’s not there. It’s possible the police found it, towed it, and didn’t let the paper report it. But surely one of the employees would have noticed, and I haven’t heard any rumors about that.”

“Okay,” Ricky said. “She didn’t leave her car anywhere obvious, like her house or where she worked, or the police would have found it.”

“Either she left her car someplace else, or someone moved it afterward. If the police haven’t found the car yet, maybe the murderer hid it somewhere. But where?”

The door opened and Mom came in. “What are you two doing?”

Ricky and I exchanged a guilty glance as I tried to think of an excuse. But did we really have to keep this a secret? We weren’t doing anything except thinking. And Mom, who usually assumed the worst about people, might have insight into sneaky behavior. “We’re trying to figure out where someone might hide a car.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Any particular car?”

“Bethany Moore’s car, which is missing. We wonder if the murderer might have hidden it someplace, either to hide evidence or to make it look like Bethany left town.”

Mom sat beside me on the bed. “That makes sense. He might have hidden it in a remote corner, pushed it into a ravine in the mountains, or drove it down some wash outside of town. That’s hard to track. Have you checked Google maps?”

I glanced at Ricky’s computer, where the screensaver was a mesmerizing kaleidoscope. “They’re not updated that often, are they? Even if you could identify a car from the air like that, I don’t think you’re seeing what’s out there right now.”

“Not to actually find the car,” Mom said. “To find places where it might be—back roads and so on.”

I looked at Ricky. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Mom sniffed. “What did you expect?”

Ricky got on the computer and brought up a map of our town and the surrounding area while Mom and I leaned over his shoulders. “Of course, her car could be in Mexico by now,” Mom said. “But we can’t do anything about that, so we might as well start with what’s possible for us.”

“If I really wanted to hide a car, I’d drive way back into the mountains,” Ricky said. “I bet you could lose a car for years.”

“How would you get home?” Mom asked. “You’d have to have somebody pick you up in another car, and if the murderer was working alone, he wouldn’t want that. Even hitchhiking would be dangerous, because someone might remember you.”

“Right,” I said. I sometimes forgot how clever Mom was when she focused on solving problems rather than complaining about them. “More likely he’d drive the car someplace where he could walk back home.” All of our known suspects lived in or near town, so that narrowed down the area. We didn’t have local bus service, so that wasn’t an option. Still, the question remained—
was
the murderer working alone?

I studied the map of the roads in and around town. “There are an awful lot of back roads and remote corners around here,” I said. “It will take forever to check them out.” I didn’t like the idea of driving out into those lonely places alone, or with Ricky and Mom. The murderer must have better things to do than keep an eye on a hidden car, but what if someone really were following me?

“It’s definitely a needle in a haystack.” Mom took over the mouse and started sliding the map around. “Eight thousand people in town. You have to figure several thousand cars, plus tourists passing through. That’s a big haystack.”

There had to be a couple dozen white Toyota Corollas, not to mention all the other similar white cars. I had a hard enough time picking my own small blue car out in a crowded parking lot, especially when parked between two larger cars.

I straightened. “Wait a minute.” Maybe that was it!

Mom and Ricky turned to look at me. I glanced at the computer screen again, at the streets and buildings and parking lots that looked vaguely familiar but so different from above. “If you wanted to hide a car, why not hide it among a bunch of other cars? Say, in a large parking lot?”

Ricky’s eyes widened. “Like hiding the real jewels in a bunch of cheap fakes!”

Mom nodded slowly. “Where then? A shopping center? There aren’t many places open overnight, though. A car would stand out if it was the last one left, and it was parked in the same place for a month.”

I bent over the desk and shifted the map around some more. There had to be someplace in town. “There.”

“The college?” Ricky said.

“Yep.” I straightened. “Lots of cars, and with student housing, people are there twenty-four hours a day. Plus, I bet lots of students leave their cars in one spot for weeks and only drive if they’re going shopping or skiing or something. That’s how it was at UNM. Especially during the semester, I don’t think anyone would notice.”

We looked at each other and the air tingled with excitement. Mom said, “Let’s go find out.”

“Really?” Ricky grinned.

Mom nodded. “I don’t like the idea of that murderer going free, and I really don’t like the fact that he’s harassing Audra by damaging our cars. I don’t see any danger in looking for Bethany’s car. And I don’t trust the police to follow up on our advice. So let’s see what we can find. Maybe we’ll help catch the bastard.”

We scrambled for the door and piled into Mom’s car. Ricky chattered as we drove across town, comparing this idea to mystery stories he’d read. But the closer we got to the college, the more my idea seemed naïve. As we turned through the college campus gates, I said, “Do you really think it could be here? Wouldn’t the police have found it?”

Mom said, “Depends on whether they were really looking for it, or only sort of looking for it. When the girl was reported missing, they might have assumed she left on her own, especially given her history. In that case, the police wouldn’t have driven all around town looking for a parked car. So the question is whether or not they’ve thought to do so since her body was discovered.”

The detectives who’d interviewed me might think of something like that, but I wasn’t so sure about the local police. And the detectives had other cases and weren’t based here in town. Since they wouldn’t be familiar with the town, they might have simply asked the local police to look around. The college was on the opposite side of town from the resort and in no way associated with the case, so the local police might not have looked carefully there. It seemed that we had at least a chance of being a step ahead of them.

And then what?

Then we reported the car to the police and let them do their job. And hoped for an arrest soon, so I could get back to building my life. Finding the car wasn’t the answer to everything, but it was an answer to one of the questions. That was a start.

We drove to the main parking area near the large school buildings. The lots were only about a quarter full, since daytime classes had ended, and that made our job easier as we drove up and down the rows. Every time I saw a white car my heart raced. None of them had Bethany’s license plate, which we knew from a news article. Most weren’t even Toyota Corollas.

We finally found a Corolla and paused behind it, peering out our windows. “Wrong license plate,” I said. “But what if he changed it? We’d never find the right car.”

Mom frowned over that for half a minute. “I was going to say that would suggest premeditation, but since it’s been a month since she disappeared, he could’ve come back any time since then. A bit risky, but not impossible. I don’t know how we can deal with that. Tell the police our idea, I guess, and let them check the vehicle identification numbers.”

That made sense, but I didn’t want to wait for the police or to wonder if they’d actually done anything, since they probably wouldn’t tell me. I swallowed hard and got out of the car. Across the parking lot, a young guy was getting in his car. A few people were walking along the sidewalk between the parking area and buildings. A car drove slowly past on the street. No one seemed to be paying attention to me.

I ducked and looked through the window of the white Corolla. I heard a door close and Ricky moved around the other side of the car. After we’d studied it for a minute, I glanced across at him. “Okay, hotshot detective. What do you deduce?”

“That’s a chemistry textbook on the front passenger seat. I don’t think Bethany ever went to college. And that gym bag in the back is partway open, I can see a pair of shoes. They look like men’s.”

I moved around to his side of the car. “Good spot on the shoes, I couldn’t see them from my angle. I also noticed a crumpled bag from Sonic and a drink in the cup holder. The window’s cracked open and I can smell French fries. If the car had been sitting here in the sun for a month, the smell would have faded—or gotten a lot worse, I’m not sure which, but this smells pretty fresh. Conclusion?”

“It’s not the right car.”

“I agree. Nice work, detective.” I put my arm around him and we headed back to our car. Ricky grinned at me as we got in. I wished I could think of it as just an intellectual challenge, the way he seemed to. It would be fun to play detective together. But this was no game. I was torn between wanting Ricky to understand that, too, for his own safety, and wanting to protect his innocence a little longer.

The best way to keep him safe
and
protect his innocence was to expose the killer and get him behind bars.