This was speculation he agreed with. People just didn’t show up at a farm seventeen miles outside of a small town only to bury Grandma.
“Someone who knew her,” Miranda said.
“She was in her nightgown and robe,” Kelly Compton said. Knight shot her a look in the rearview. Compton had her files open on her lap and her tablet balanced on her right knee, all long legs and arms. “Pics show it. It doesn’t look like she was wearing much else. Shoes. Thick socks. Undies—the exact kind you’d expect a woman of her age to wear.”
“That gels with the pink comforter,” Knight said.
“Quilt. It was a quilt. There’s a difference. The quilt she was making,” Miranda said quietly. “Helen was always quilting. Every time I saw her, she was making something. She made beautiful quilts. It was her largest source of income. There’s one hanging on the wall in the dining room at the inn.”
“How well did you know her?” Jac asked.
“I was good friends with her granddaughter Monica from about the age of nine until they left town. I’d been to her house many, many times. I knew Helen, and I knew her daughter Pauline. A little. Helen watched the kids; there were six of them; Pauline may have been pregnant with another at the time. Helen was almost always in a nightgown and robe. Pauline worked second shift at the plastics factory a mile outside of town. It went out of business about six years ago, I think. It was one of the few places that employed a large number of people from the county. Other than the ranches and the hospital and the school system.”
“So who all lived with Helen Caudrell?” Knight asked.
“Hmm. There was her daughter Pauline, and Pauline’s husband Luther. I rarely saw him. He was loud and obnoxious. Frightening. Always spouting off conspiracy theories and fear of the government. Grandma and my father wouldn’t let me over there if he was home. Grandma was careful to check where he was at first. Especially when I was younger. There was Lesley, Monica, Junior, Honey, Jennifer, and I think the youngest was named Marcie. Monica was my age. There were two in elementary school at the time they left, Junior and Honey were in middle school, and Monica and Lesley in high school. But it’s all one building, so our paths crossed often.”
“What do you remember about them?” Jac asked.
“Not much. Monica and I avoided her siblings as much as possible. She preferred to hang out at my house. She wasn’t exceptionally close to any of them.” Miranda shifted in her seat, putting one hand next to Knight’s shoulder as he drove. She faced the two women in the rear seat. “Everyone in town preferred to hang out at the inn, including the sheriff’s younger brother. He was casual friends with Monica’s older brother, I think. There were some days we’d have thirty to forty kids in our parlor.”
He could see that. The Talley Inn had a large open living room and parlor area, perfect for people to lounge in. Teenagers could easily pack in there and just escape the adult world for as long as they were allowed to.
“The question is, where did they go after Helen was murdered?” Jac asked. “Randi, you said they just up and moved one night?”
“Yes. It was in April, just before the school year ended. We were freshmen. Her brother was a junior. The sheriff’s brother Levi was in his class. Half the families around here homeschooled, even back then. A lot of the outlying ranches are too far from town. There isn’t a huge number of kids in each grade. We all knew each other. For about a week, the rumor was they were pulled to homeschool because their father had a problem with one of the teachers. That didn’t surprise anyone because of his personality. Except me. Monica would have contacted me in some way, and she didn’t.”
“Should we talk to that teacher?” Jac asked.
“Can’t. Mrs. Ramey passed away from a stroke less than three years later, if I recall correctly. She was already in her seventies by then. I was a senior in high school.”
“She hadn’t retired?” Knight asked.
“Good teachers are hide to find here in Masterson. My cousin Daisy works at the elementary school now. It’s a problem keeping teachers. Neighboring counties just flat out pay more. It’s been a problem in the county for as long as I can remember.”
Small towns had their good and their bad. Knight understood that. He personally thought they were mostly bad.
No doubt Dr. Talley would disagree.
“Who might know what the problem was?” Jac asked.
Miranda was quiet for a long moment. “I think it involved Monica’s brother Lesley. Levi would have known, most likely. Lesley was always hanging on Levi’s coattails. That’s the sheriff’s—and Dr. Masterson’s—youngest brother.”
“Well, where do we find him?” Knight asked, almost impatiently. His own team had never worked this slowly.
“We’ll have to go for a drive. The Mastersons own ranches all over the county.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Patience, Knight. It’s a virtue. You might want to try it.”
15
“Where did they go?” Jac asked.
“A family of eight people doesn’t just disappear into the night like that. Not without some sort of trail.” Miranda studied the bulletin board, making mental notes of everything listed less than an hour after they’d spoken with Nate Masterson at the hospital. Trying to reconcile it with the family she’d known so long ago.
Perhaps she was too close to this.
Monica Beise had been her best friend. If there had been secrets going on in that family, wouldn’t she have known about them? She would have liked to think so.
But she knew that wasn’t the truth. Some families had secrets buried so deeply they weren’t ever brought to the surface. Not until they erupted and bubbled and steamed.
Some secrets were so dark they were never called out. Never brought to the light.
Was that the situation here?
Monica had had bruises a few times. Unexplained ones. Ones that now, as a professional in the law-enforcement field, Miranda recognized for what they were.
Someone had inflicted those bruises. And Monica had never told her who. Miranda spun and looked at the people surrounding her.
Kelly was near the exit. Jac had her laptops spread out over the rear folding table, with a whiteboard shoved up against the wall behind them. Jac’s neat handwriting outlined everything they had already found.
“Social media. Monica had a page that she’d access at the inn when she could. Or at school.” Miranda looked at Jac. “So did her older brother, I think. Where did they go? They didn’t just stop posting. Especially Monica. She was practically addicted. She called it her only connection to the outside world.”
Jac was already shaking her head. “I checked that already. Nothing. From April fifteenth of that year. Her page and her brother’s literally just stopped.”
“Were they shut down?” Max asked from where he lounged against the wall, as far away from Jac as it was possible for him to get. Miranda bit back a sigh—the two of them were going to have to figure things out between them eventually. Maybe.
Jac was an expert at avoidance. It was almost pathological.
“No. That’s the odd part. The pages were still in existence until the website itself closed.” Jac had special programs available only to the PAVAD: FBI directorate. They had the ability to track previous websites in ways that Miranda didn’t fully understand. “They just hadn’t been updated or visited since mid-April of the year of disappearance.”
Everything lasted forever on the internet—that was what Jac had told her several times. Miranda was exceptionally careful of anything she ever posted online. It was just dangerous not to be. But Monica would have been a completely different story. A teenager as obsessed with the internet as Monica was back then…no, she wouldn’t have just stopped cold turkey. Not by a long shot. “It looks like the entire family that had social media just walked away.”
“Monica was big into the internet. She wouldn’t just quit.”
“We’ll keep looking. It’s possib
le she changed her name—that they all did,” Jac said. “It’s finding those names that might be a problem. It’s either that, or they were all killed and buried on the property. I can trace friends through social media, see if there’s overlap, but that’s going to take a while.”
Miranda shook her head. The DCI of Wyoming had considered that. Nothing had been found to indicate a mass homicide anywhere.
But then again, Luther Beise’s ranch wasn’t exactly small overall. Two hundred acres. It was one of the smaller ranches in the county, but it wasn’t a small piece of land.
Finding bodies wasn’t a guarantee.
“But it wasn’t that easy to change your entire identity, even fifteen years ago,” Max said. “Someone, somewhere always slips up. And we’re talking eight people. Six of them children. Someone, somewhere knows where the Beises have gone.”
Jac nodded. “Then we keep looking until we find them. I’ll set up some protocols, get the searches started. I need to drive to the airport and pick up Agent Lorcan. She’s bringing a trainee to join us now.”
Miranda nodded. “You want someone to drive with you?”
“I’m good. I remember where it is now. Unlike the first time you made me drive around out here.”
“It’s not my fault you took a left turn and ended up at Derrick Tyler’s.”
“It wasn’t ending up there that was the problem. It was getting out of there still single that was a bit iffy. All those brothers…with…umm…romance…on their minds. And you weren’t exactly helping the situation, you lunatic—giving them dating advice while I was right there.”
Jac was speaking the truth. There were plenty of Tyler brothers in the town—a set of twins had taken a shine to the quietly pretty Jac that day and had dogged her footsteps the entire week they were in town. Miranda had had a blast watching her friend deal with the courting—and competing—Tylers.
“Just be careful.”
“Will do.”
“What do we know about the victim?” Max asked. “I mean, besides the cause of death.”
Miranda nodded. “Good question. I suppose I knew the family—at least, the oldest daughter—the best. Levi Masterson—the sheriff’s brother, who we’ll interview this evening—and a few others knew the oldest son. I’m not sure of the younger children’s friends. Some of the Clary girls, possibly. They were around the same age or so, and were the closest neighbors. The youngest three children were incredibly quiet. Never said anything or did anything that I noticed. But I was a teenager—we didn’t have much to do with Monica’s siblings unless we were watching them. Which was rare. Helen watched all the children. Pauline and Luther were usually at work, especially when we got home from school.”
“What did Luther do?”
“He bounced around quite a bit. A ranch hand and truck driver, mostly,” Clint said as he came into the room. He was in a dress shirt and trousers, and if Miranda wasn’t mistaken, he had a formula stain on his shoulder. He’d mentioned an early court appearance that morning. “Never stayed in one position too long. My interviews turned up that he had some problems with alcohol and mental illness at the time.”
“What about Helen’s daughter?” Max asked. “She’s a bit of a mystery as well.”
“She never had a social media presence that I can find,” Jac stated.
“Pauline worked at one of the only local factories,” Clint took the remaining empty chair in the room and turned to the whiteboard. “It’s closed now, but there are still some of her supervisors in town.”
Miranda made a decision. They could sit inside discussing this case for probably the next six weeks, but if they didn’t get out there and actually do something, they would never have the answers they were seeking.
“Jac, get me some names before you go for Agent Lorcan. Dr. Knight and I are going to go find out what we can about Pauline. She is the one who would be the most affected by what happened to her mother. Let’s see what she had going on back then.”
16
They found two of Pauline Beise’s former supervisors who were more than willing to talk to them. Max and Clint headed to the town just south of Masterson to interview one.
She and Knight took the other.
Colleen Tanner was closing in on eighty, smelled like a chimney, and eyed Knight like he was a piece of filet mignon. One she was ready to dive into. “You’re a tall, delicious one, aren’t you, honey?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miranda bit back a snicker. His cheeks didn’t even flush. Her gaze met Colleen’s, and Miranda was struck by the intelligence and humor. “Mrs. Tanner, we have a few questions regarding a woman who worked with you fourteen years ago.”
“Honey, I’ll answer any questions y’all have—provided he’s doing the asking. I don’t get much eye candy in here anymore, except for that hottie Doc Lowell. There’s that big, hot stud who runs the hospital now, too, but he married that little redheaded hellion nurse of his and took himself off the market. Has the look of his granddaddy, that one. Had me a go round with that Masterson a good fifty years ago. Those were the days.” She wiggled the wand on her wheelchair and headed toward the alcove near the window of the Terrington Acres retirement home rec center. “Well, come on, you beautiful young people. I’m sure you’ll prove mighty entertaining.”
Miranda laughed outright. “We’ll do our best.”
Knight pulled Miranda’s chair closer to the window as Miranda answered questions about who her people in Masterson were again. Colleen Tanner was sharp as a tack; her body just wasn’t keeping up with the rest of her. “My grandmother runs the Talley Inn and Flo’s Diner.”
“Gerald your daddy, or Arthur, or you Jessi’s girl? You have the look of her, around the eyes. Sorry about her passing.”
It was a question she’d answered many times; her father and his brother were identical twins. “Gerald. I’m his eldest daughter.”
“He always was a handsome one, but always had that stick up his…rear. It was a nice rear end, but he sure did follow the straight and narrow. Unlike that brother of his. No shame when that one took off—those kids of his were far better off, I’ve always said.”
“He is still very regimented. My sister and I absolutely adore him.” Her father was on the autism spectrum and had always preferred life very structured. Much like her youngest sister, Meyra.
“And that city girl he married?”
“She passed away when I was a girl.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. He sure did worship the ground she walked on.”
“That he did.” One thing she would always remember was how much her father had loved her mother. How he—the man she had never seen cry—had wept after the stroke had taken her. “He adored her.”
“And you girls.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever remarry?”
“No, ma’am. He never has.” And never would, Miranda suspected. He’d loved her mother a great deal.
“A pity. A man shouldn’t spend his days alone. Neither should a woman, for that matter.” She shot an eagle-eyed look toward Knight. “You married, gorgeous?”
“Uh, no. I’m not.”
“Good thing. That means you’re available.” The older woman grinned mischievously at Miranda. “I’ll fight you for him, honey girl.”
“No, no, that’s perfectly ok. Knight here has a cranky attitude. He’s better off with a woman who can control him.”
Now, now his cheeks turned red.
Miranda considered it. For one fourth of a second. Being with Allan Knight. When he scowled right at her, she stopped. Nope. That was never going to happen. No matter how pretty he was.
“Now, you’re a Talley of Masterson County, little girl. I don’t doubt you’re up to the challenge. I know exactly what your kind is like. That little nurse cousin Dixie of yours gives me fits on a weekly basis.”
Dixie worked at the hospital and nursing home when not working at the diner. She’d been the one to let them in the buildi
ng a few moments ago. “Maybe. Ms. Tanner—”
“Colleen. I’m too old to be anything but who I am. Who’s this person you have questions of?”
“Pauline Caudrell Beise,” Knight said quietly. He had shifted to stand behind Miranda’s chair. Miranda looked up at him.
Yep. No doubt he was using her as a physical buffer between himself and the older woman.
The question was why. Why did he find Colleen Tanner so frightening? She was a harmless woman who had lived a full, interesting life in Masterson County. Not like she was after Knight’s virtue or anything.
Well, maybe she was, but Knight could probably outrun her if he really tried.
Before she left for St. Louis, Miranda would make a point to interview Colleen for the book she was writing about life in small towns. Miranda had personal recollections from more than fifteen people now. It would be her second collection—she’d studied small towns for her thesis, too.
She was more than charmed by Colleen. Knight was most definitely not.
“What do you want to know about that old prune-faced bag of bones?”
Well. That was not something Miranda had expected to hear at the moment. “You didn’t get along?”
“No one got along with that controlling nincompoop. Always thinking she was the boss—even when she wasn’t.” Coleen snorted, rubbed a boney knee, shot an admiring look at the breadth of Knight’s shoulders, and then turned back to Miranda. “You got to understand something. The factory was the only place you worked, if you were anybody around here. Unless you were a Masterson or a Talley, or one of that crowd. Ones with the education to go places, they were.”
Miranda wasn’t ashamed of her family heritage. The Talleys had been some of the Masterson founding families. It was something she and her sisters and cousins took great pride in. “Go on.”
“Well, it was a regular soap opera around the factory. All this talk about who was screwing around with so-and-so, who was selling drugs to get others high, which Tyler was going to get arrested on the weekend.”
Buried Secrets: PAVAD: FBI Case File #0005 (PAVAD: FBI Case Files) Page 6