Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(65)

“Gabe,” Tess said as he started to move away. “Maybe I can help you break it to Marva. She’s been good to me lately, friendly when I came back.”

“Let’s see how she does first,” he said as he broke into a run. Vic went to brief Deputy Miller and Mike, who was toting a lot of gear. Tess leaned against the tombstone until Mike approached her. He explained that it was standard procedure to test her hands for residue—in case she’d picked up the gun. He produced what he called adhesive tabs and took samplings of her hands and wrists.

“I’ll check these out in the van with my scanning electron microscope,” he told her. “But I’ve got to photograph and deal with the body first.”

A scream pierced the air. “No! No! He wouldn’t!”

Tess hurried down a row of tombstones toward the driveway. Gabe was talking to Marva, bracing her with both hands on her shoulders. “If he’s dead, someone killed him!” she screamed.

Gabe’s low, steady voice sounded, followed by more shouting from Marva. “He wouldn’t do that, he had lots to live for! Yes, he bought a few old guns lately, Civil War ones, a couple older. No, I didn’t talk to him on the phone, haven’t since this morning, and he seemed fine.”

Marva saw Tess over Gabe’s shoulder. Tess stepped forward, hoping to find words of comfort.

“What’s she doing here?” Marva screeched, pointing at her. “Dane had nothing to do with her kidnapping, and this latest one’s made it worse! All he did was live across the field!”

Startled, Tess stopped walking. Gabe kept his voice low as he spoke to Marva again, but she cried out, “I don’t believe her! She’s the one who put you up to this—new suspicions, a search warrant. She came here to spy on or accuse Dane, and who knows she didn’t kill him?”

*

It was late afternoon and, exhausted and frustrated, Gabe and Vic sat silent in Gabe’s cruiser. They had searched Dane’s house. Mike had run the test to be sure Tess’s hands were clear of gunpowder residue before they’d let her go. They were still waiting for the body to be taken to the morgue for an autopsy. They planned to have volunteers search the entire cornfield for Dane’s satchel and phone, but nothing had turned up nearby.

Mike had helped with the search of Dane’s property; Jace too, after he had run Tess home and the coroner had taken over the crime scene. Gabe had been tempted to send Tess to the police station for safekeeping, but he didn’t want her there alone with Ann. Marva’s reaction to her had been tense enough, although the woman wasn’t responsible for what she said right now. She’d been taken to a friend’s house, and Dr. Nelson had sedated her.

And that, Gabe thought, was a good one, because they could probably have just taken a sedation drug from Dane’s cache of them hidden in his attic. They’d scoured it and the basement for forensics evidence of Sandy Kenton, coming up with nothing. But they had discovered two key things. They found a lot of drugs, including a few for humans like amnestics and hallucinogens, all neatly labeled. It would take Mike and the BCI lab days to do the tox tests on all of them, maybe match one of them to what was in Tess’s system when she drank the wine. They also found that Dane did have a small collection of antique American guns, two rifles and four pistols. When they’d shown the pistol in question to Marva, she hadn’t recognized it as Dane’s. But they could find no formal paperwork on it or on two of the other pistols, so it was impossible to know how many he’d had.

Gabe glanced in the rearview mirror again. He had it angled so he could watch for the body bag to be placed on a gurney to be wheeled out of the cemetery to the E.R. vehicle. It was starting to rain, perfect weather for this tragedy. Usually he loved the rain because he’d missed it when he was in Iraq, but today it only depressed him more. A handy place to die, a cemetery, Gabe thought. Marva said Dane had wanted to be buried there so it did make sense he’d kill himself there.

But the missing cell phone and satchel meant there had been someone else in the cemetery. It was looking like murder, not suicide, and that would complicate his investigation into the missing girls.

“They’re finally done with the body,” Gabe said when he saw movement. He and Vic got out to stand by their vehicle as the body bag was loaded, the doors slammed shut on a man’s life. The E.R. vehicle pulled past them and drove out.

“Even if his death stops future abductions, we still don’t have Sandy or the others back,” Gabe stated the obvious as they got back in the car. They pulled out, following the E.R. vehicle at a distance.

“Yeah.” Vic sounded as tired and discouraged as he felt. “Gut instinct—you think it was him who took the girls? Maybe in cahoots with someone else, like his sister?”

“You know that old saying, ‘Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.’ Someone would have let something slip over these years. I heard Marva always wanted children, but that’s proof of nothing.”

“Yeah. And in this case, I don’t buy the copycat thing. I’m sorry I told Tess about your mother and her father. Honest, I thought she knew.”

“She should have. I should have told her, since they didn’t. I just have a thing—an instinct to protect her like I didn’t do when she was taken.”

“So I noticed. You definitely have a thing for her.”