The Third Grave

by Lisa Jackson

  “I don’t know. Well . . . yes. Of course.”

  “No paperwork?” Delacroix pushed. “What about a birth certificate?” She took a swallow from her drink, but her gaze never left Greta’s.

  Greta blinked, started fiddling with her hair, her composure slipping. “I-I think they used my sister’s. I think she died and they just had me take over her information.”

  Nodding, Delacroix said, “But there should be some record of that. Of her death.”

  “I-I don’t know.” More flustered than ever, she shook her head, the shiny barrette sliding farther down, her recently pinned back hair falling into her eyes. “Herman needs to be here with me. He knows all this. Where’s my husband? I want him here with me or . . . or I want my attorney!”

  “I think he said he was already calling a lawyer, and you came to us,” Reed reminded her. “Of your own volition.”

  “Because I saw on the news that you were looking for me! That woman who talks for the police, she was on the air telling people to call in with tips or come in here. Marlow, I think her name was, and she had this image that she showed, a computer thing, and it looks just like me!”

  Delacroix leaned forward. “So you saw the image and thought, what? Wow! There I am?”

  “It was Herman. He saw the news and . . . and since, well, you know, I have this weird childhood, he asked me about how I came to be with Mom and Dad.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “That I didn’t really remember, but he showed me a clip of the news where you all were looking for Rose Duval and suddenly it all clicked. I remember going to the theater with my sisters and . . . and my brother let us off and we went into the show after we bought some candy.”

  “And then?” Reed said, not buying her story for a second. Delacroix was right, the woman was a fraud, either intentional or because she was a nut. He wasn’t sure which.

  “And then it gets kind of blurry. I, um, remember being separated from my sisters; they went back to the refreshment stand or the bathroom or whatever and I started looking for them and I must’ve wandered outside but . . . I can’t remember after that.”

  “We have tapes from the theater that day,” Delacroix said. “Neither Holly nor Poppy Duval ever went back to the refreshment counter.”

  “There weren’t cameras in the bathrooms. That’s illegal.”

  Reed said, “The cameras covered the entire lobby, including the entrance to both the men’s and women’s restrooms.”

  “But that’s what I remember!” Greta was agitated and on her feet.

  “That’s what you read and you added your own story to it.”

  “I want my husband and I want him now!” she said, and before Reed could say another word, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door. “I told him this was a big mistake. That you wouldn’t believe me.” With a toss of her head she was out of the room and into the hallway.

  “I’ll go get her,” Delacroix said, but Reed shook his head. “We’ve got it all on tape. Too bad we can’t prove it. I was hoping she’d drink from the soda, leave her DNA.”

  “We might not need it,” Delacroix said, and snagged a tissue, then kicked back her chair and walked to the door, where she bent down and picked up a shimmery object. The hair clip, tossed off when Greta had flounced out. Delacroix examined it and grinned. “And there’s a couple of hairs still lodged in it. Hopefully with a root ball.” Her smile widened. “We might have our DNA sample whether she knows it or not.”

  * * *

  “Oh, my God!” The face of the man looming in the doorway of Bronco’s cabin contorted in horror. “Bruno! Bruno! Oh, God, no, Bruno!”

  Nikki, nearly hyperventilating, tried to scramble to her feet but slipped in the blood.

  The man dropped the shotgun.

  He jumped off the porch and fell to his knees next to Nikki before she realized he was Reverend Jasper Cravens, Bronco’s father. “Bruno!” he cried brokenly, grabbing hold of his son’s shoulders and holding the stiff, bloody body close. “No, no, no!!!” His eyes bright with tears, he stared at Nikki. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said as relief washed over her despite the frantic beating of her heart. “I came here to ask him some questions and I found him out here.”

  “Who did this to my boy!” Tears streamed down the man’s tortured face. “Who did this?”

  “I-I don’t know. I just got here and I found him and—”

  From the surrounding trees came the sound of a dog whimpering. Jasper’s head snapped up. “Fender?” he called over the distant wail of a siren. “Fender?”

  “I called 911,” she said, still wary. Jasper had come with a weapon even though it was lying abandoned on the porch.

  A dog with a dirty mottled coat appeared from the shadows.

  “Fender. Come here, boy,” Jasper said brokenly, then openly sobbed as he petted the dog and sat next to the body of his son while flies buzzed around them and the gentle rush of the river as it slowly moved downstream was audible.

  “Sir, this is a crime scene,” she reminded him gently, and dialed Reed’s cell.

  “But my boy. My boy is dead.” Jasper sat on the blood-soaked grass next to the body of Bronco Cravens. Jasper’s big shoulders were shaking as he stroked the dog. “Why?” he whispered, blinking, and again, “Why?” He glanced up at the sky where a few tufts of clouds moved slowly. “Oh, Father,” he cried. “How could you let this happen? Why Bruno? Why my boy?” His voice cracked and he closed his eyes. Almost in prayer, he whispered, “Why have you forsaken me?”

  CHAPTER 24

  “Who did this to my boy?” Jasper Cravens demanded hoarsely as he stood and smoked a cigarette next to Reed’s Jeep.

  “We don’t know yet, but we’ll find out,” Reed assured him. He was still agitated, his stomach in knots, but calming down. Nikki was safe. After receiving her panicked call, he’d feared the worst. He’d driven here and found Nikki with Bronco’s body and Jasper Cravens and two deputies who had received the dispatch from her 911 call. She’d thrown herself into his arms when he’d shown up, but otherwise held it together. She was tough and had been through a lot in her life, but he was still relieved to find her uninjured. He’d held her a long moment, then suggested she wait in her Honda, close enough that they could see each other, while waiting to give her statement to someone on the force other than her husband.

  He should’ve been surprised to find her here, still nosing around the case after their last conversation.

  He wasn’t.

  He knew his wife too well.

  He glanced her way now, seeing her huddled behind the steering wheel, Bronco’s dog on the passenger seat beside her.

  “I just can’t believe he’s gone.” Jasper took another long drag and expelled smoke through his nose. He was a big man with a rotund belly, dark eyes and a receding hairline, dressed in black, only his white clerical collar giving any indication that he was the pastor of a local church. He watched as two EMTs carried a body bag to the back of an ambulance parked between the Jeep and a cruiser from the department.

  He studied the tip of his cigarette and watched the smoke curl toward a sky starting to turn lavender with the coming dusk. “You have to find out who did this. Bring him to justice.”

  “We will.” It was a promise Reed intended to keep.

  “You said you came by because you hadn’t heard from Bronco—er, Bruno, for a few days. Was that unusual?”

  “Not really. I mean, we talked once a week or so, but I just had this feeling. I’d texted and called and he hadn’t returned them, so I came out to see what’s what. I saw this other car in the driveway”—he motioned to Nikki’s Honda—“along with Bruno’s, and my first thought was that he had company and maybe I should just leave him be, but I noticed the front door was open, so I changed my mind. No one was in the house, but I found his rifle, my dad’s old Winchester, on the kitchen floor like someone dropped it in a panic. So I picked it up and walked throu
gh the house and found . . . Well, you know.” He dropped his cigarette onto the gravel and crushed the butt with the heel of his shoe. “Haven’t had one of those in thirty-three years.”

  “Did Bruno have any enemies?” Reed asked.

  “God knows,” Jasper said. “Probably. He had his share of troubles, but if you mean who are they?” He frowned, squinting upward where the tree tops met the lavender sky. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Girlfriends?”

  “None recently. Last one was Daria, no, that’s not right.” He rubbed his jaw, where a five-o’clock shadow had developed, as he thought. “Darla. That’s it. Darla something or other. Don’t know if I ever heard her last name. She’s the one who gave him the dog. Fender.”

  “Right.” The dog was with Nikki in her car. Dirty, but apparently unhurt.

  The ambulance drove off and Jasper’s shoulders visibly tightened and he blinked hard as if fighting tears. “Bruno was a good boy,” he said. “But he lost his ma when he was eleven. Cancer. Never got over it, I think. And maybe I wasn’t all that good at being a single dad.” He rubbed his head and sighed. From their vantage point they could see the photographer in the house, taking digital images that might have been missed in the video that had already been filmed.

  “Bruno was the one who discovered the bodies at the Beaumont estate.”

  “What?” Jasper said. “I hadn’t heard. He never told me.”

  “Do you know why he would be over there? We talked to him about it, but he was pretty evasive.”

  “The treasure,” he said, his eyebrows drawing together. “Oh, man, I bet he was over there looking for the jewels or cash or whatever the hell old Beulah stashed there.”

  “What?”

  Jasper snorted. “It’s something my dad used to talk about. The Beaumont treasure. I think it was just talk that Beulah Beaumont hid valuables in her basement. My dad swore he helped her stuff a bag into a hiding spot in the basement and Bruno ate it up. I thought it was all folklore, you know, a grandpa amusing his grandson, and he made Bruno swear not to ever go looking for it. But Dad died a few weeks back and he had a set of keys to the place. I’m betting Bruno went looking. He was always broke. And was always looking for that big score, you know. He didn’t put a lot of stock in working and saving for a rainy day, nope. He always talked about hitting it big, and Dad always fed him a line of bull about the Beaumont fortune.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “That’s got to be it.”

  “We searched that place top to bottom,” Reed said, “looking for other victims. Found no treasure.”

  “My guess, it was stolen long ago, or more likely never existed in the first place. If it did exist, I think there was a good chance that someone else in the family found it.”

  “You do?”

  “If my father knew it was there, then you’d think Baxter would have found out.”

  “Baxter is Beulah’s son?”

  “Adopted. But yeah. Beulah was Arthur Beaumont’s second wife. His first was Marianne, as in the Marianne Inn just up the road on this side of the river. Named it after her and I’m thinking that didn’t set well with Beulah. She was a bit of a . . . let’s just say she was a colorful character.” He gazed through the trees where the river was visible between the trunks. “You know, there was a time when the Beaumont house was always bustling. They all were. When the whole family lived there and when Beulah threw those massive parties of hers. They had a whole staff then—maids, gardeners, cooks, even a nurse, and Dad, of course. My dad worked over there and he’d tell us about what went on. Not just about the hidden treasure.”

  “Like what?”

  Jasper frowned. “Don’t like to gossip.”

  “This is a murder investigation.”

  “I know.”

  “Your son,” Reed reminded him.

  The preacher’s face crumpled. “Man. The trouble with the Beaumont men is that they all had wandering eyes. Started out with Arthur and, according to my dad, went right down the line. Grandfather, father and son.”

  “Meaning Arthur, Baxter and Tyson.”

  “According to my dad and he wasn’t one to talk idly. But it came out. He was disgusted by it, y’know. He’d lost my mother early on and missed her every day of his life, so he didn’t understand how some men could . . . stray, if you know what I mean.”

  A deputy walked by and Jasper asked to bum another cigarette.

  “Sure.” The deputy pulled a pack from his pocket and they both lit up.

  “Thanks. I’m gonna quit again tomorrow.”

  “Right,” the deputy said as if he didn’t believe the preacher as he walked toward the house and Jasper drew deep, the tip of his cigarette glowing red in the gloaming. He asked Reed, “You think that’s why my boy was killed? Over some supposed pie-in-the-sky treasure?”

  “I don’t know,” Reed said, “yet.” But it was a place to start.

  Jasper watched a bat skim by as the first of the stars began to wink in the darkening sky and the lights in Bronco Cravens’s home glowed through the windows, two members of the crime scene team still working, one pushing a vacuum cleaner, the rumble audible through the open front door. “This is a test, you know,” he finally said. “The Father, He’s testing me.”

  “How?”

  “By taking my son from me just a few weeks after Wynn, my dad.” His lips compressed. “A test of my faith.”

  “You think God would have your son murdered just to see how devout you are?” Reed couldn’t hide his skepticism.

  “Everything in life is a test,” the reverend said, and Reed bit his tongue. People believed what they believed and even if you argued with them, they rarely changed their minds, only got angry, and the man had just lost his son to a violent end. “Can I go now? I’ll take the dog.” Again, he blinked against tears.

  “Sure. If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  Jasper cleared his throat. “I will.”

  * * *

  Nikki listened through the open window of her Honda and though she couldn’t hear all of the conversation, she caught bits and pieces that drifted on the air with the acrid scent of burning tobacco. She had her iPhone set to her best recording app and hoped that it could pick up the conversation. With her free hand, she petted the dog who sat shivering in the front seat, but she was tuned in to what Jasper Cravens was telling Reed about his son and the Beaumont family.

  The parts she did hear agreed with what she’d already learned and also melded with what she remembered from her own childhood.

  She saw Delacroix approaching and slid her phone into the side pocket of the door as Delacroix opened the passenger-side door. “I didn’t know you were here,” she said to the dog as Jasper approached.

  “I’ll get him,” the preacher said, then whistled sharply. “Come on, Fender, guess you’re my dog now.”

  The heeler hopped onto the ground, following the older man as Delacroix brushed off the seat and slid inside. “Detective Jade Delacroix,” she said. “Don’t think we’ve formally met.”

  “Nikki Gillette.”

  “Right.” She nodded, pulled out her phone and a notepad from a jacket pocket. “Detective Reed thought it best if I take your statement, so as there’s no hint of conflict of interest or . . . well, whatever. Since he’s your husband.”

  “Got it.” Headlights flashed into the interior as a car engine started, and she caught a glimpse of Reverend Cravens backing around one of the county SUVs and driving away, taillights winking a bright red.

  Jade pulled the door closed and sat with her back pressed between the passenger seat and door so she could get a good look at Nikki even though the interior of the car was dark. “Let’s start with why you’re here and how you found Bruno.”

  “I’m a reporter, doing a piece on the history of the Beaumont estate and I knew Bronco—er, Bruno—had been over there recently, that he discovered the bodies of the girls who were hidden there, the Duval sisters. I thought he could give me
some insight about the property as his family is tied into the Beaumonts. His property, this cabin and the acres surrounding, originally belonged to the Beaumonts, and his grandfather worked for the family for decades.” She went on to explain about driving to the Red Knuckle, then out here and walking through the house to find Bronco’s body.

  Delacroix listened in silence, dark eyes observing Nikki closely, as if studying a bug under a microscope, searching for cracks. Lies. As if something in Nikki’s expression, some little idiosyncrasy like a tic near her eye or a vein throbbing in her temple or her tongue licking her lips nervously would give Nikki’s lies away.

  Or was it because she found it fascinating and unlikely that Nikki was married to Reed?

  Whatever the reason, Nikki felt uncomfortable in the tight confines of the SUV but tried her best not to show it. Obviously Delacroix didn’t trust her, or probably didn’t like her, but that was just too bad.

  “So you’re telling me you just happened to be out here on the night Bruno Cravens was killed.”

  “I didn’t just happen to be here. I came to interview him.”

  “But he didn’t know it. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “I said that he never returned any of my calls or texts.”

  Delacroix was nodding in the darkness. “So you just walked into his house.”

  “The door was open.”

  “And you saw the gun, the rifle, but just ignored it.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb anything.”

  “Because you knew it was a crime scene?”

  “No, because it was Bronco’s home, his stuff.”

  “And you weren’t invited? He didn’t know you were there?”

  “We’ve been over this.”

  “Just clarifying,” Delacroix said.

  “And badgering.”

  There was a tense silence where Nikki held the younger woman’s gaze, or thought she did, who could tell since night had fallen, but Delacroix finally said, “I think that does it. If I have any more questions, I’ll call.” She opened the car door and the interior light snapped on.

  “Do that.” Nikki didn’t bother to hide the irritation in her voice.