Betrayal with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Three) (13 page)

“No, though oddly enough, there’s a cow that likes to frequent the area. The most she’ll do is startle you by bumping into the tent, though,” he replied.

“You know, I’ve never actually seen a cow up close,” she said, glancing over to him for a reaction. She didn’t have to wait long, because he stopped in his tracks and turned toward her, wide-eyed with a disbelieving expression.

“How’s that possible?” he asked.

She laughed loudly, walking past him. “Until moving to Addison Valley, I always lived in the city. I’ve driven past places that have cows behind the fence on the side of the road, but I’ve never actually been close enough to touch one.”

“Wow,” he said on a long breath. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”

Rilynne laughed.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what did your father do before he disappeared?” Ben asked, almost hesitantly.

Rilynne was taken aback by the sudden conversation shift, not to mention the question itself. Although a lot of people had curiosity surrounding her father’s disappearance, it wasn’t often that they asked about him past that. Usually after she informed people that he had vanished, they didn’t seem to want to ask anything further.

“He was a paramedic,” she stated. “That’s actually how he met my mom. Her best friend had taken a nasty spill down a flight of stairs after having a few too many drinks, and my dad responded to the call. He let her ride to the hospital with them in the ambulance, and they just hit it off.” Rilynne could feel herself smiling as she spoke. “She told me that he said he knew that night he was going to marry her. She was already dating someone else at the time, though, so they started spending time together as friends. After her relationship ended, they started seeing each other, and after about six months he proposed.”

“He didn’t wait long at all,” Ben said, holding a branch up for Rilynne to pass under.

“She said there was no doubt in her mind they were meant to be. They got married a year later and moved to Bodker. Two years after that they had me, and she said that we were the perfect little family. She told me that in all of the time they had been together, they only had three arguments, and even then, they were very small. I guess that’s one of the main reasons she said she knew something had happened to him when he disappeared. She said that there’s no way he would have left us willingly.”

“And there was never any hint as to what could have happened?” he asked.

“Nothing. He had just gotten off of a long shift at work, and surprised my mom with tickets to New York to see her favorite musical. He said he had a big surprise for her, so he was going to go get takeout from their favorite restaurant for dinner to celebrate. He called in the order and left, but he never made it back.”

“Wow,” he said in a low voice. “I’m so sorry.”

She let out a deep breath. “I was too young to really know him,” she replied. “I have a few memories, but sometimes I think they’re really just my mind making them up from the stories my mom told me.”

“Did the police ever have anything to go on?” he asked.

She shook her head. “They know that he made it to the restaurant to pick up the food, but no one along the walk back to our house remembered seeing anything. They found the takeout bags in a trashcan about two blocks away, but there was no obvious sign of struggle. The theory was that someone grabbed him off of the street.”

“They didn’t think that he could have just left?” She could again hear the hesitation in his voice as he asked, but she couldn’t blame him for the thought. As an officer herself, it would have been the first thing to come to mind if she ever looked into a similar situation.

“His surprise for my mom was that he had just been offered a promotion at work. He was being made chief of their station,” she explained. “With that, the tickets, and the fact that he had actually picked up the food, it wasn’t considered a possibility. Since my mom was on the phone with her best friend during the time he vanished, they quickly eliminated her as a suspect and started searching elsewhere.”

She glanced over to find him seemingly lost in thought. “What do you think happened?” he asked a few moments later.

“I’ve run through everything a thousand times in my head, but nothing makes sense. Everyone loved him, and my mother was his world. I don’t think that he would have just left us, but…” she stopped, unsure if she wanted to continue.

Ben stopped walking and turned toward her. “But what?” he asked curiously.

She took another deep breath. “A couple weeks after he disappeared, my mom started receiving envelopes in the mail that had nothing in them but cash. It was never more than a couple hundred dollars at a time, but they would show up every few months. No matter how many times we moved, the envelopes would always arrive within weeks, though they were never redirected through the post office. Whoever has been sending them seems to always know exactly where we are.”

“Where you are? Are you still receiving them?” He seemed almost shocked. She couldn’t really blame him. Although she had gotten used to them, even to her it was a little startling that someone had always kept a close eye on her.

“The last one actually came a couple weeks ago. After I moved out of my mother’s house, they started coming to me, too,” she explained.

He started walking again, though he was visibly shaken. “What did the police say about them?”

“My mom called them after she received the first few, but they didn’t find any prints on them or anything that helped with the case. Then after we moved for the first time and they still showed up, she called again. They said that there was nothing they could do unless someone was putting us in obvious danger. After that, she stopped reporting them.”

“So someone’s keeping close enough tabs on you that they know every time you move? That’s a little scary. Do you have any idea who’s sending them?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I’ve always wanted to believe that it’s my dad out there somewhere making sure that we were taken care of, but I think that’s just wishful thinking more than anything else. Honestly, I think that whatever happened that night, someone feels guilty enough to send us money. My best guess is that someone might have tried to mug him, or maybe accidentally hit him and he was killed. Not wanting to be discovered, they probably took his body and hid it somewhere, then started trying to make amends for it by sending us money. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say, so he continued to walk in silence beside her.

“I’ve never actually told anyone about the money before,” she said a few minutes later. She could see him look over at her through the corner of her eye, but she kept her gaze on the path. “I didn’t even tell Christopher. He opened one of them once and asked about the money, but I just told him that it was from my mom. I didn’t really know what else to say.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?” he asked, his eyes still set on her face.

“Are you kidding, he would have freaked. Pretty much the way you are now, actually,” she chuckled. “I’m not afraid of the person sending them to me, because if they wanted to hurt me, they would have done it long before now.”

He seemed to want to ask something else, but just grinned instead and continued down the path.

“It’s nice to talk about him,” Rilynne said when they reached the fork in the road two minutes later. “Most people seem to be too afraid to ask me anything about him after they learned that he disappeared.”

“I know the feeling,” he replied. “They’re the same way after I tell them that my parents died. It’s almost as if they’re afraid you’ll see it as an insult if they ask you to think about what happened.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I had one girl in college get upset and say ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t know’ when she asked where my dad was. Some people seem to see it almost like it’s taboo to even talk about it. I like talking about my dad. I didn’t really have the chance to get to know him, so in a way it keeps him alive for me.”

He reached out and took her by the hand and squeezed it gently. She half expected him to release it right after, but he didn’t. Instead, she felt his thumb gently sweeping across the back of her glove. “So what do you do with all of the money?” he asked.

“When I was in college I would put it toward things that I needed, but now it all goes into a savings account. Actually, when my apartment was broken into, it was that money that first led us to the conclusion that it hadn’t been a simple robbery. I had just gotten it in the mail, and it was still sitting on the table by the door, untouched.”

“I actually remember that,” he said. “It was one of the first things that I noticed when I walked in. I remember thinking that even if someone had broken in for reasons other than robbery like they were saying, it was still odd for them to leave without grabbing cash that was laying out in the open. Leaving it there made it obvious right off the bat that it wasn’t a robbery. She didn’t even try to obscure that fact.”

“I still don’t understand half of the things she did,” Rilynne said. “Oh, did you hear that Matthews is actually considering buying the land that the cabin was on?”

Again, he stopped dead in his tracks. “What?” he exclaimed. “Why on earth would he want to buy that?” His tone, along with the expression on his face, was more amusement than the confusion or even anger she would have expected.

She studied him curiously before responding, growing amused herself by the dumbfounded look he now had. “Okay, so you’re a local,” she started. “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about the land and its old owner.”

He seemed to be thinking about it before the glint of recognition settled in. He laughed.

“Well after we looked into the property for the case, he started to do research into the man who owned it and the lore around the land. He found out that he was actually a suspect in a bank robbery and they never recovered what was stolen. He’s now convinced that it really is hidden somewhere on the property. If anything, he may end up building a few cabins out there and using the stories to rent them out.”

“The fact that the property was used by Addison Valley’s only serial killer won’t make renting out there difficult?” he asked as they began walking back down the frosted path.

“Actually, you’d be surprised at how many people will actually go out of their way to stay at a place with history like that. It’s like hotels that are supposedly haunted, I guess. Some people are fascinated by them.”

“I guess,” he said unsurely. “I imagine that he’ll have to rely mainly on tourists, though. I don’t see many locals wanting to stay out there after having to live through those horrors for a year.”

“What, you mean you wouldn’t want to go stay out there if you had the opportunity?” she joked.

“I think I’ll pass,” he said, flashing her his impish grin. “I wonder how Derek Hartley will respond to it.”

Other than Ben and Rilynne themselves, Derek Hartley was the only surviving victim of the Pirate Killer. Although he escaped with his life, he had still suffered a partial leg amputation from the ordeal. Rilynne still thought of him often, as he had lived in the apartment directly above hers at the time. Even though she wasn’t directly responsible for his abduction, he still held a great deal of resentment toward her, which actually led to her moving out of the building and into the house she now rented.

“I can’t even begin to imagine,” she replied. “I don’t see him being supportive in any way, though.”

“So, does Matthews really think that the treasure is still hidden on the property, or that he has any chance of finding it if it is?” he asked.

“No clue. Although, he’s determined and probably has a better chance than most,” she replied. “He’s been working with several local historians to get all of the property information he can. The older man who had been caring for the property, Russ Turley, said that he had heard there was a hidden bunker on the land that it was hidden in. I can actually picture Matthews out there with a metal detector searching over ever inch if he actually did buy it.”

Ben chuckled. “Do you think that Katy will let him?”

“Now that’s the true question, isn’t it,” she chortled. She glanced down at her watch trying to estimate how much longer they had to walk before reaching the car, and guessed no more than half an hour. Though she was enjoying her trek through nature, she was starting to feel the effects of not having eaten.

“You’re right, though,” Ben said several minutes later. “I can completely see him out there with a metal detector and a shovel, scouring the land like a little boy on a treasure hunt.”