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“You’re asking for trouble,” she murmured aloud. But hell . . . what a story, if it were true. And maybe even some closure for Bailey’s family.
She knew where the Crassley compound was, a ramshackle, sprawling single-story house in dire need of repairs, with a weedy drive and a barbed-wire fence that corralled a car graveyard. She was driving in the opposite direction, so she turned around and drove past the western boundaries of West Knoll and onto the county roads.
She bumped up a long, pothole-riddled drive and parked on a grassy mound to one side, aiming her Escort for a straight shot out, if she needed it, which she might. Six or seven large dogs barked madly at her behind the barbed-wire fence in a pen of sorts as she got out of her car and stepped into a pile of dog shit. Fuming, she tried to scrape the smelly stuff onto the clots of gravel that showed through the weeds as she walk-hopped toward the sagging front porch.
Loud voices sounded from within. Angry voices. A man and a woman. Gale, most likely, and Nia. When Nia came flying out of the house, that answered that. She acted like she didn’t see Ellie as she stomped down the porch steps and over to the area where about twenty vehicles in various states of disrepair were parked. Ellie realized Nia’s car had been one of the paint-faded hoods—rusted cars, trucks, and what have you; there was even a tractor out there—as the girl jumped inside her green Chevy and burned away from the others. Smoke flew out of her tailpipe as she took off again.
She’d better not be going back to Michael and/or Joey.
She almost turned around, but now there was only one Crassley at home. She moved forward and rapped her knuckles against the side of the tattered screen door. She put on an expression of friendly interest, though suddenly she didn’t know exactly what she planned on saying to him. She didn’t really want to complain about Nia; she thought she’d heard “Penske” in the argument she’d overheard between them, and that didn’t bode well.
She heard him trudge her way, and then he pushed through the screen, causing her to back up. Standing in front of her on the porch, the man had a rifle tucked under his arm.
“You’re that reporter,” he said.
She stopped short. Oh, holy God, she thought, and only after a long moment did she nod her head.
“Well, come on in,” he said, opening the screen to have her walk through ahead of him.
Gale Crassley . . . possibly Penske’s killer . . . possibly Bailey’s . . . a man who knew the inside of a jail cell better than the walls of his own home.
With the greatest reluctance, she ordered her legs to walk inside.
* * *
McCrae knocked his knee as he was swinging away from his desk, and he bit off a string of invectives. He was mad at himself. For his feelings for Delta.
Just because she lied doesn’t mean she’s a killer.
Quin came looking for him. “We got a lot to discuss.”
McCrae nodded. He’d avoided him on purpose. A lot had happened in the last few days that they hadn’t gone over.
“Come outside.”
They walked out the back door together and stood on the edge of the field. A hawk slowly cruised overhead, looking for small prey, while the sun reached out warming fingers of light through the cloud bank.
“Tech came back. They found a block of concrete in Timmons’s car. Markings and dust on the accelerator.”
McCrae frowned. “Someone lodged it in place on the accelerator and turned them loose?”
“Looks that way. They were likely unconscious as they went over.”
“What the hell for?” McCrae exploded.
“They’re looking for prints, fibers, whatever, to see if someone drove the car to Grimm’s Pond. So far nothing.”
“In that case, Brian and Zora likely drove themselves. Why?”
“There’s a house about half a mile back on the road on that side of the cliff. Number of houses on five-acre lots, far enough apart for privacy, close enough to run into your neighbors now and again. One of ’em’s just closed up and empty. Got dusty tire tracks on the tarmac that match Brian Timmons’s.”
“So he went there? Or someone drove him there?”
“It’s Anne Reade’s family’s old house.”
McCrae regarded him incredulously. “Anne Reade.”
“She’s out of town and hasn’t lived there for years. She was taking care of her father, but he moved to a nursing home earlier this year. It’s been uninhabited since February. I talked to her on the phone. She’s in South Carolina. She’s got a boyfriend there and is moving at the end of the summer to join him and start teaching there. She said Brian knew the h
