Bitter Past, page 12
“How did she wander so far off trail?”
He flashed a sheepish grin. “Some bad judgment on her part. She’d brought along some whiskey to toast her mother. But Jamie doesn’t drink hard liquor, and she got light-headed. She should have just camped for the night and slept it off. But she was anxious to get down to the pass and call me as planned. She missed the flagging that was supposed to signal a turn to the left and then found herself on some tricky terrain.”
“I’m glad they found her and that she’s okay. Matt, I don’t think I told you that I’m a staff writer for the Flathead Journal. This is an incredible story, and once she’s had a chance to recover, I’d like to interview Jamie if she’s willing.”
“I’ll ask her.”
They exchanged contact information, then Joelle wished him well and went to the Snowdrift to get a coffee for the drive home. She hadn’t accomplished as much as she’d hoped, but she could salvage the day with a long hike, maybe all the way to Fern Lake this time.
On the drive home she tried to gather her thoughts. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together. Jamie’s disappearance, far from being a random coincidence, had been a consequence of Brent’s call, which had been precipitated by the blackmail letter, which in itself had come from the publication of Brent’s lottery win.
If only he’d never found the damned lottery ticket. If he’d worn that jacket a few weeks later, past the deadline to collect the money, he might still be alive.
But as much as the sequence of events was beginning to make sense, so many questions remained. She still didn’t know who had sent the blackmail note and whether that person had been driving the stolen truck that killed Brent. Going back even further, she couldn’t even confirm that it had been Eve’s body that was referred to in the blackmail note, and if so, who had killed her and what had happened to her body.
Somehow, she suspected she needed the answers to the old mystery before she could figure out what had happened to Brent.
In the midst of these heavy thoughts, she missed the turnoff to the Wards’ property and her cottage. It wasn’t until she saw the sign to the Ancient Cedar Trails parking lot that she realized she’d gone too far. As she pulled into the access road, intending to turn around, she noticed the Sheriff’s black Tahoe. What was Sheriff Waller doing here? Then she spotted the truck he’d parked next to, with its Wild Ward Outfitters decal. What the hell was Sam’s truck doing here? As she walked closer she spotted a third familiar vehicle: Edward Cocker’s Ford 250.
Sheriff Waller, Sam, and Edward. What were all three of them doing out here?
As she mulled over possible explanations, she parked and went to study the bulletin board of notices near the main trailhead. She was scanning warnings about bear safety, and leave-no-trace instructions, when she heard male voices. She turned to see Sheriff Waller and Edward Cocker emerge from the main trailhead, deep in conversation.
Upon spotting her, the Sheriff said something to Cocker, who nodded, then went to his truck and drove away. Then the Sheriff turned her way, eyes inscrutable behind his sunglasses.
“Good morning, Sheriff. Did you have a good hike?”
“I’m here on business.” His voice was curt. “Can you tell me the last time you saw Sam Ward?”
“Why?” Automatically she turned to look at Sam’s truck and then recalled how it hadn’t been at home this morning.
“As far as we know he didn’t come home last night. Did you see him?”
She shook her head. “No. Not last night, or this morning either. I did think it was strange that his truck wasn’t parked in his usual spot.”
“Seems like it was here all night.”
“How can you know?”
“There was dew on the windshield,” the Sheriff explained. “But I sure as hell can’t think of a reason he’d want to spend a night out here when he was just ten minutes from his own home.”
“Maybe he had a tent and went backpacking?”
“Strange that he wouldn’t mention anything to his wife, or son, or best friend though.”
That was hard to explain, and Joelle was getting a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. What if something had happened to Sam? Something related to what had happened to Brent… “Do you—”
Her phone rang before she could finish the question, the distinctive five-note pattern that signaled a call from her sister.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I need to take this.”
Zak nodded.
“Olivia? Is everything okay?”
“No. I just got a strange call. I wouldn’t have answered, but it was a Montana area code, and I worried it could be about you—that something had happened.”
“Who was it?”
“The man—or woman, they used some sort of software to distort their voice—said if I cared about my sister, I would tell her to go home and stay there.”
A primal fear froze Joelle, and for a moment she felt as trapped and helpless as she had felt in the cedar-lined chest all those years ago. And then her mind took over. How dare someone try to intimidate her grieving sister. “I guess this means you were right to be suspicious about Brent’s accident.”
“Right about that, but wrong to involve you. I’m going to call the police again, Jo. When I tell them about this call maybe they’ll step up their investigation.”
“No need. I’m standing with the Sheriff of Lost Trail right now. I’ll tell him everything. So don’t worry, okay?”
“The only way I won’t worry is if you go back to your condo and forget all about that awful blackmail letter. I never should have involved you.”
“Well, I’m glad you did, and I promise to check in every day around noon. If I don’t have time to call, I’ll send you a heart emoji.”
“What if I don’t hear from you…?”
“I’ll share my landlady’s contact information. Her name is Myrtle Ward. She’s a good person. She’ll know what to do.”
“Okay. That sounds like a reasonable backup plan. Though I’d prefer if you’d just go home.”
“Try not to worry. I’m being really careful here, Olivia.”
“You better be.”
*
“What was that about?” Zak hadn’t liked the sound of Joelle’s phone call. At least not the side he’d been able to hear. Joelle, who normally came across as part bulldog, part terrier, was looking atypically vulnerable.
“That was my sister—Olivia. She and the twins are staying with Brent’s parents in Syracuse. Apparently, she just got an anonymous phone call warning that if she cared about her sister—me—she’d tell her to leave Lost Trail and go home.”
“Jesus.”
Joelle was quickly regaining her equilibrium. “The caller must be the same person who left that horse manure in my car.”
“That’s logical.” Two warnings to leave Lost Trail. Combined with Sam Ward’s disappearance, and the unanswered questions about Brent Culver’s death, and it seemed something very dangerous was afoot in this county.
“If this person killed Brent because of his investigation into Eve’s death, why hasn’t he killed me already? Why keep giving me these warnings?”
“If you’re right and Brent’s death was deliberate, my guess is the perpetrator must realize that if another person from the same family dies, the authorities will take a much closer look at the accident that killed your brother-in-law. That’s the sort of scrutiny this person doesn’t want.”
“So you’re saying I’m safe?”
“I wish. There are limits to rational thinking, especially when someone is backed into a corner. You should do as your sister wants and go home. Leave the investigation to me. I promise I will get to the bottom of it.”
Joelle didn’t answer. Instead she shot another worried look at Sam’s truck. “I should check on Myrtle. See how she’s coping.”
“Before you go, I need your sister’s number,” Zak said.
“Why?”
“So I can call her,” Zak said, stating the obvious. He wanted an official record of the warning call she’d received.
“You’ll just stress her out more than she already is.”
“Don’t you think she’ll find it reassuring that the authorities are working to keep you safe?”
“Keep me safe? Is that what you’re doing? Every time you talk to me, I feel like I’m being interrogated. As if I’m the bad guy.”
“If I thought you were a bad operator, I’d have hauled you into an interrogation room long ago.” Zak’s patience with this woman suddenly snapped. “That said, I think we’re overdue for a good talk. And this time we’re going to have it in my office.”
*
Joelle drove behind the Sheriff’s SUV toward town. On the way she thought about Myrtle and Shawn. They must be so worried. Please let there be a simple explanation for Sam’s disappearance. There had already been too much tragedy this summer.
The Sheriff’s Office was housed in the upper level of a two-story brick building across from the real estate office where she’d first met Myrtle. The interior was smaller than she’d expected. But then, Lost Trail was a small county.
“Hey, Bea,” Zak said to the dispatcher, a neatly groomed Black woman in her late fifties.
“Has Sam showed up yet?” she asked, casting a sharp gaze on Jo.
“Afraid not.”
“Dang.”
The Sheriff’s Office was small, but his window had a decent view of Main Street and the mountains beyond.
“Coffee?” Zak Waller offered as he gestured her toward a leather chair. “Water? Apple juice?”
“I’m fine.”
He nodded then sat behind his big wooden desk. Besides his computer and a neat stack of papers, there was a photo of his wife, Nadine, and their son. That seemed to be the only personal touch, other than a bowl of apples on a credenza.
“So.” He flattened his hands on his desk. “You’ve been in Lost Trail for three days and already you’ve had someone dump a load of manure in your vehicle, and someone—presumably the same person—warned your sister that you need to leave town if you care about your safety.”
“That’s a fair recap,” she said with more aplomb than she felt.
One corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “My job is to keep you safe. But it might help if you did a little more sharing about what you’re doing here. There had to be a reason for Brent’s renewed interest in Eve Brooks and her disappearance sixteen years ago. How about you let me in on the secret?”
Joelle stared back at the Sheriff. Could she trust him? Did she have a choice? She opened her cross-body bag, then the zipper compartment in the back, and pulled out the copy she’d made of the letter. “Olivia and I believe that this is why Brent came to Lost Trail.”
He took the paper from her, unfolding it carefully. As he read, a deep furrow appeared between his brows. “You should have taken this immediately to the police investigating your brother-in-law’s accident.”
“My sister gave them the original, this is just a copy. But the authorities didn’t take it seriously. Thanks to his million-dollar lottery win, Brent had received so many crank letters and emails from people asking for money. The police figured this was just another attempt to scam him.”
“Do you have the name of the officer your sister was dealing with?”
“Maybe Sergeant Cooper? You’ll have to confirm that with Olivia.”
“I will.” He made a note on a pad of paper next to his computer. Then he snapped a photo of the letter. “This is starting to make more sense now. Brent wins the lottery, then Brent gets this blackmail note—presumably from one of the four people he worked with that summer, since the note refers to a gas station they stopped at on the way to a training course. Rather than sit back and wait to pay the money, Brent goes to Lost Trail presumably to find whoever sent the note, but also to see if he can find out what happened to Eve Brooks.”
“Yes. That’s it, exactly. But don’t you mean one of the three people Brent worked with?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’ve seen photos from that summer and there are always four summer workers. Brent, Shawn, Amanda, and Wyatt.”
“Have you ever wondered who took the pictures?”
“Holy crap. You’re right.” The question had occurred to her in the beginning. Then she’d sort of forgotten about it. Joelle sat back in her chair and narrowed her eyes. “That fifth person…was it you?”
Chapter Nine
“I’d bought a new camera that summer,” Zak said. “And I shot a lot of pictures, almost all of them candid shots. After a while the people around me stopped noticing.”
“So how did Brent get three of your pictures?”
“After that summer, I sent copies to everyone. I guess I felt we all needed to remember what had happened.” He’d felt guilty was why. Not reporting that body haunted him to this day.
“If you were there, then maybe you can be upfront with me. I’ve tried asking Shawn, Amanda, and even Myrtle about this body that the note mentions. Amanda mentioned there was an end-of-summer party in the forest. I’m assuming that was when you found the body?”
“Brent found her,” Zak said. “He’d gone into the woods to take a leak. When he saw the body, he freaked out and called all of us to see.”
“Was it Eve Brooks?”
“With hindsight, I think so. The night we saw her body, she hadn’t even been reported missing yet. That wouldn’t happen for another week, and by then we’d all left Lost Trail. I was helping with harvest on a family farm in South Dakota.”
“Here’s what I don’t understand. If the body did belong to Eve Brooks, wouldn’t the authorities have figured it out?”
Zak cringed. “The authorities never knew. We decided not to report finding the body until the morning after we’d sobered up.”
“Oh my God.”
“Really not proud of that. But I wasn’t the Sheriff back then. I was just another wet-behind-the-ears summer employee. The plan was to drive out to the trailhead in the morning. But Shawn ended up telling his folks, and then Wyatt’s parents got involved too.”
“You had a pancake breakfast.”
Zak wondered how she knew that, then he remembered. She’d seen the picture. “Yeah. Sam and Edward told us they’d hike back to the body and report to the Sheriff. We were able to give them a really detailed explanation of where to find her. But when they got there, the body was gone.”
Joelle took a few seconds to digest that. “So who do you think disappeared her body?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. If a predator had found the body and dragged it away, Sam and Edward would have seen signs in the undergrowth, track marks, debris from her clothing, maybe bones, or teeth or blood. But despite being expert hunters and trackers, they saw nothing. No body and no sign that there ever had been one.”
Joelle sighed. “Which brings us back to square one. Brent’s recent involvement started with the blackmail note. You know all the players. Who do you think sent it?”
He picked up the letter and reread it. Whoever sent this had a lot of information about that summer. “I honestly don’t know. That part about having a photograph of the body? That was a total bluff. They must have been counting on Brent not being sure if I had snuck in another of my candid shots.”
“Well then, let’s think about motive. I’ve heard that the Flint Creek Ranch is experiencing financial difficulties and that Wyatt was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. To my mind, that gives him and Amanda the best motive.”
He hadn’t heard about the MS diagnosis. But that explained the problem with Wyatt’s gait. “Okay, I grant you they have a motive. But it’s hard for me to see either of them stooping to extortion. Especially not Amanda. She’s a genuine, nice person.” Not that genuine, nice people couldn’t do bad things, if pushed hard enough. And Wyatt could be stubborn once he’d set his mind on something.
“We shouldn’t discount Shawn,” Joelle added, though somewhat reluctantly. “He could have financial difficulties we don’t know about. A gambling problem or something.”
“He’s a prudent guy. And very honest. But you’re right, it’s possible. If we’re being thorough, we should also include the parents who were at the pancake breakfast on the suspect list. They knew about the body. One of them could have written that note.”
“Edward, Vera, Myrtle…Sam.” Joelle paused, raising her eyebrows.
“Sam.” Zak picked up on the significant pause she’d left before saying his name. “You think Sam’s disappearance is connected in some way?”
“It must be. But I have no idea how. If he killed Brent, maybe my presence made him so nervous he thought he should disappear for a while.”
It was a possibility Zak had already considered. A possibility he found very distasteful. The downside of being Sheriff in a small community was that he was personally acquainted with a lot of the citizens. That could be an advantage at times, but it could work the other way. Based on what he knew of Sam Ward, he would never consider him a suspect for blackmail, let alone murder.
Yet, he had to keep an open mind.
“You’ve raised a lot of interesting questions. And I’m grateful you confided in me about the blackmail letter. But I really think you’d be smart to go back to Whitefish. Until I know more, I can’t guarantee your safety in Lost Trail.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Joelle tucked the blackmail note back into her bag and got up to leave. “I’m here until we figure out what’s going on.”
He’d been afraid she would say that.
*
Nadine watched as the journalist from Flathead Valley left her husband’s office. Joelle Medler looked flushed and a little annoyed. What had happened in there?
In a show of courtesy, she tapped on Zak’s door, then opened it. “What’s going on?”
“I finally found out why Brent Culver was so interested in Eve Brooks after all these years. His wife found this letter in his files.”
