Dead in Her Tracks (Rogue Winter #2)(16)

“Don’t men see that sort of thing?” Stevie asked, pointing upward.

“I’m sure he saw it,” said Zane. “I think he just didn’t care enough to do something about it.”

Men.

“You would have cleaned it, right?” she asked.

“Absolutely.” He busied himself in a bathroom cupboard.

Stevie suspected her brothers would have too. Well, maybe not Bruce. Unless he worried about a woman seeing it. She took a long look at the grimy tub that hadn’t seen a scrubber or Clorox in a long time. If she had wanted to kill someone, the tub would have been a natural place to contain the mess. But clearly Bob hadn’t cleaned it to erase evidence.

“Well, hello there.” Zane turned around, an orange prescription bottle in his hand. “If I hadn’t talked with Hank this morning, this bottle wouldn’t mean a thing to me.” He held it out for Stevie to see. Suboxone.

“Was he taking it regularly?” Stevie asked. She took the lid off the bottle. Half the number of prescribed pills were gone. “I wonder if he was trying to get clean from the oxy. Look at the label. He went out of town to fill it. He didn’t want anyone around here knowing he was taking the medication.”

“Are you saying our pharmacy might harbor gossips? Impossible,” stated Zane with a straight face.

Stevie smirked. “I suspect Donald knows everyone’s dirty little secrets. But I think he’s pretty good about keeping his mouth shut. Most of the time, anyway.”

They hit pay dirt again in the second bedroom. Cash. Lots of it. Stevie did a quick count of the bills that’d been tucked inside a paper bag and stashed in a short filing cabinet. “He’s got seven thousand dollars here. Could that be profits from Fletcher’s?”

Zane fanned out the cash on the floor. “I don’t think so. Look how nice and neat the bills are. And they’re big bills. Fifties and hundreds. Whenever I’ve been in Fletcher’s the crowd pays with cards or crinkled-up small bills. These look fresh from the bank.”

Stevie agreed. “It could be his savings. Maybe he doesn’t trust the bank.” She slid the cash into an evidence bag. The last time she’d found a big stash of cash in a search, the owner had been involved in drug dealing, and the rumors of drug dealing at the truck stop and Hank’s assertion of Bob’s drug addiction were firmly at the forefront of her mind. They moved to the kitchen and living room of the home.

“Oh shit. Look. We didn’t see this when you first took the pictures in here.” Zane opened the door to the small concrete back patio, and Stevie saw the outside doorjamb had been splintered next to the lock.

“Someone broke in. But when?” she asked.

“Bob never reported a break-in,” said Zane. “But if he was doing something illegal, I can understand why he wouldn’t. I think if he’d known about it he would have tried to secure the door somehow . . . he has a lot of cash to protect. But it doesn’t look like someone dug through his things, right? He’s a slob, but nothing is broken or emptied out as if a search had been done. And the cash wasn’t hard to find. Why leave it behind?”

“Could the cash have been planted for us to find?” Stevie asked.

Zane nodded slowly, weighing the idea. “But who has that much extra cash lying around for the sole purpose of incriminating someone?”

“No one in Solitude,” agreed Stevie.

She knelt next to the jamb and sniffed. “Smells like fresh-cut wood.” She pointed at the light layer of snow that the wind had blown onto the patio. “There’re splinters of the doorjamb on top of the recent snow. Not that Bob would have cleaned it up, but I think we need to consider that it happened after we locked him up. Or even after he was killed.”

Tension crept up her spine and she stood, scanning the woods behind the house. The snow was pristine in the open areas, no footprints. She closed the door, wishing she could lock it. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“If he killed Vanessa Phillips, he didn’t do it here,” said Zane. “I haven’t seen anything that indicates someone was murdered or held here. In a location as remote as this, he could have easily done so without raising suspicion.”

“So if he was smart enough not to bring them home, where would he have taken them?” She’d looked up the photos of the missing women from Medford and their faces were stuck in her memory. She hoped Solitude hadn’t harbored a serial killer with a taste for young women. “If Bob did it, he had a hiding place where he felt safe. Maybe we need to look deeper into the woods for some sort of outbuilding. He has three acres. Maybe we can’t see it from here.”

“I think he would need to drive to the area if he was transporting victims. There’s no driving around in those woods with the trees so close together.”

“He was a muscular guy,” countered Stevie. “He could have carried a woman or forced her to walk.”

“Let’s finish up inside and take a look around out back.”





CHAPTER EIGHT





Bob’s property had revealed no more clues, and two days later Zane felt like he’d hit a dead end in the investigations. Stevie suggested he step away from his desk and take a few hours off from work. Off from police work, anyway.