“Sounds like she accepted your apology,” Walt notes with a quick glance at me before making the turn onto McMurtry Road.
I toss my cell onto the console. What else can I do? I did exactly as I promised David I would. I called his mother. She was, as always, charming and accommodating. “Who knows? You can’t ever tell with her.”
David’s mother would never allow her composure to slip or any sort of improper emotion to show. Not to me. Probably not for anyone. I hesitate, feel bad for half a second for holding this uncomfortable situation against her when I was the no-show at dinner. But then, it’s true. I met David’s parents not long after we started dating. I’ve known them for approximately six months, and I still feel like an outsider. My future mother-in-law is one of those people whose social graces are so ingrained that she would smile at the devil himself if he showed up at a function as long as his name was on the guest list. She was probably holding the phone tight enough to crack it as she listened to my feeble excuse for not attending thefamily dinner. Tracking down a missing pedophile couldn’t possibly be more important than one of her scheduled events.
A good future daughter-in-law would be looking for a way to make it up to her. I’m certain she views the situation from that perspective.
I fear I will never be what she considers a good daughter-in-law.
Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it’s easier to believe they don’t like me, and then I don’t have to feel guilty when I let them down. David has said this to me frequently since I moved into his house. I wonder whether this is the pattern for the rest of our lives together. I think of this baby growing inside me, and I am suddenly extremely anxious. A child needs a happy home without all this tension and frustration.
“She doesn’t like you?”
I push away the thoughts of the future and almost laugh. “I really can’t say for sure. I think they’re still shocked David and I didn’t fizzle out after a few weeks. I’m reasonably certain they had a family meeting and concluded I was a momentary blip on his radar—a rebound adventure after he and his longtime, more appropriate girlfriend ended their relationship.”
Walt grunts. He would just as soon see me single and happy again. I shake my head and focus on the landscape as we maneuver onto Hogans Branch Road. It is true that I’m happiest when it’s just the work and me. Got that from my dad. I’m not sure I’m capable of changing a part of me so deeply ingrained. Probably embedded in my genes.
First thing this morning, I made up my mind not to mention anything about yet another headache to Walt. He worries about me too much as it is. Besides, how could I explain that not long after David and I made love, the agony woke me up from a dead sleep? That has never happened before. I was sleeping like a baby. I retreated to the guest room and shut out all light and all sound to get through the night. Rather than explain it to David, I left before he came downstairs this morning. I couldn’t possibly tell him that after our beautiful lovemaking, I grew immensely ill.
I hope the doctor is right and the hormones go back to normal in the second trimester.
“Here we go.” Walt navigates his SUV across a narrow stream that flows over a dip in the long gravel driveway.
The cabin belonging to Janie Hyatt sits about a quarter mile beyond the stream, even farther from the road and surrounded by thick woods. The driveway bends around a small pond with a short dock jutting out over the still surface. A fishing boat floats in the water, one end tied to the dock. From all appearances, it’s the typical log cabin with a screened-in front porch overlooking a tranquil pond. The perfect getaway from the noise and stress of city life.
“Nice place,” Walt says.
“Yeah.” I reach for the door and climb out. No vehicles around. “I wonder if anyone’s home?”
“Doesn’t look that way,” Walt says, mostly to himself. “All my calls to either of these two just go to voicemail.”
“They are definitely avoiding us,” I say.
I scan the tree line as we move toward the cabin. Leaves flutter with the sudden movement of a bird. I watch it soar across the clear sky and disappear from sight. The quiet reminds me of the farm. Somewhere miles away I hear the sound of a car.
“So I’ve been looking for a retirement place,” Walt announces. He flashes me a grin and a wink.
“Good one.” We both know he’s planning a move to Florida, but the cover is a solid one. If anyone shows up, we’re obviously lost. Just out driving around looking for the cabin we saw on some real estate site. What man wouldn’t love his own little fishing hole right off the front porch? Surely this perfect place is for sale.
We separate and move around opposite ends of the cabin. That’s when I smell the distinct scent of smoke. Two seconds later I spot the burned structure.
“Walt! We’ve got something.”
He hurries around his end of the cabin. “Well, well, lookie what we have here.”
We both approach the burned rubble that was once some sort of structure. A wood door, very much like half the set of double doors to my barn, lies on the ground. The edges are scorched, but it’s about the only thing wood that survived the fire. In the expanse of ash that was once the barn are lumps and clumps of things that didn’t burn completely, maybe some sort of equipment that could easily conceal human remains.
“I think maybe it was a barn.” My comment is unnecessary, but I feel so surprised by the find that I can’t hold back the words. This could be where Fanning met his demise. Damn. I blink, feeling oddly disjointed. I can’t decide whether to regret the discovery since this means the two vics, Reeves and Hyatt, are in big-ass trouble, or to be jumping for joy that one more piece of shit has been erased from this earth.
“I think you’re right,” Walt says as he surveys the mess.
Urgency has me venturing around the edges of the debris. Can’t disturb or risk corrupting any potential evidence. Not that doing so would be safe even if I dared. There could still be smoldering embers embedded in all that rubble.
“Fanning could have been restrained in the barn,” I suggest when Walt doesn’t.
“Possibly. But we got nothing that points in that direction.” He looks from the cabin to another shedlike structure beyond the burned-out barn. “Looks like they were lucky and there was no breeze to spread the fire.”
“Yeah.” Another thought occurs to me, this one particularly unpalatable. “Since we haven’t been able to contact Hyatt or Reeves since the initial meeting with Reeves, maybe one or both were victims here instead of Fanning.”
