Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(53)
“I didn’t want to spook you,” Gabe said, “though I hate to put it that way, considering what’s hanging over us. It reminds me of the gift shop where Sandy was taken.”
He leaned toward her and looked at the dark green house out her side window. “Hard to believe Reese Owens grew up here,” he muttered, and turned off the engine. “As much as his wife’s a snob, I’m surprised he didn’t have someone erase records of this old address too. Sit tight. I’m going to see if anyone’s at his boyhood home, ask if there’s someone in the neighborhood who’s lived here a long time. Lock yourself in.”
Tess watched as he went up to the door, rang the bell, then talked to a young woman whose face was obscured behind the torn screen. He came back out to the car, unlocked and opened her door. Arms on the roof of the car, he leaned down toward her.
“Maybe things are finally going our way,” he said. “Mrs. Bowes, who lives right across the street, has been here for thirty years. The problem is, this woman says she’s a bit of a gossip, so isn’t that too bad?”
“I have a feeling I should not go with you,” she said.
“Be right back. And I’m not sure it’s a good thing you’re reading my mind,” he said, and winked at her. He closed the door, then motioned that she should lock herself in again.
It was a good thing, she thought, he wasn’t reading her mind. No man had ever gotten to her the way he did. His glance, his voice, his touch, made her tingle and tremble and in the most delicious way—even when things were supposed to be strictly business, maybe life-and-death business.
*
The two-story, gray house had tired-looking lace curtains in the windows, upstairs and down. The narrow sidewalk was sunken and cracked, and the porch boards creaked under Gabe’s feet. The two-seat swing on chains was atilt and moving slightly in the breeze as if ghosts sat there.
When he rang the bell, he saw the curtains twitch as someone looked out. He could hear a TV program blaring from inside. A short, elderly lady with some of her white hair on end and some matted down opened the door. The TV got louder. It sounded like some game show with a lot of applause. She must be hard of hearing. Gabe raised his voice.
“Mrs. Bowes, I’m Sheriff McCord from over in Falls County, just checking up on someone who grew up in this neighborhood. I understand you’ve lived here for years.”
“Thirty-five with my husband, Bob, who worked at the paper mill, but he passed. My daughter says I’m getting forgetful, but not about the past, no, sir. Want to come in? I’m watchin’ a rerun of Family Feud, but I can turn it down.”
He didn’t want to leave Tess alone, even locked in a police car. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just ask you a question or two from here. It concerns the Owens family, and the boy was named Reese.”
“Oh, him. Did real well for hisself, married up, he did. He’s even a mayor now in some little town down yonder.”
Gabe heard applause from the TV in the dim room behind her. It hit him that Reese might resent having to run such a small town, but in a way, he might be hiding out there. If Reese was mayor of a big town, that would bring more media attention, maybe a check of his past, hidden records or not. Maybe that’s why he ate too much, taking out his frustrations that way. And maybe Reese took little girls to prove he was clever, or to feed his sick fantasies that had started here in his teens. There were no doubt plenty of places in that huge house on the hill to hide a child. The Owenses were childless. Maybe they wanted a compliant, sweet little girl—several of them.
“Yes, that’s the man,” Gabe said. “Mrs. Bowes, do you recall anything about Reese Owens getting in trouble with the law?”
“Well,” she said, drawling her words and rolling her eyes. “They tried to cover it up then and after.”
“Who did?”
“His family at first. Then I’ll bet his wife’s people. You know who her granddaddy was, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. What sort of trouble was he in years ago?”
“I’ll tell you, young man, but I don’t want what I say showin’ up in the papers or on TV. My Bob took good money for promisin’ to keep quiet ’bout it once, though I was shopping at Kmart that day and never promised a thing. Just don’t you go getting poor little Reese in trouble for something bad he did long ago. People change, you know.”
“I won’t get him in trouble for that. This is about something that happened more recently.”
“Well,” she said, leaning closer to the screen and glancing past him as if there might be others hovering. “He got hisself accused of lewd acts on a minor, a kindergarten girl lived over on the next block back then, Ginger Pickett. I remember her name, all right. The evidence was iffy, least we thought so. At first we heard he could be sentenced up to two years in juvie prison. Then we heard eighteen months. Then he got nothing for it, but they moved away. And that’s the last we heard of him till his marriage—oh, not countin’ when a man came here to talk to Bob and the neighbors to keep quiet and handed out good money for it too. We spent it on fixin’ up things around the house here. You sure you don’t want to come in? I’ll turn the sound down.”
“I really can’t, Mrs. Bowes, but you’ve been very helpful.”
“And what you’re askin’, I’ll bet you couldn’t look it up in the old court records, right? I mean, if they’re gonna spend good money on the neighbors keeping a tight lip, they prob’ly wiped the record clean.”