Beneath Blackwater River Leslie Wolfe (me reader txt) 📖

Kay turned her attention briefly to Carole, surprised to find the proud woman weeping, her back bent, her shoulders heaving, her bony hands clenched tight at her chest.

“I—I never wanted this,” Carole whimpered. She didn’t care about her appearance anymore. She didn’t pat dry the tears that smudged her makeup, nor did she touch her hair to make sure every strand was in place. Something in what Bill had said must’ve hit home hard. “But you’re wrong,” she said, her voice modulated by sobs, “Blanche wasn’t here, she was in New York.”

Kay looked at Blanche. She stood calmly, pale, drained, silent. Why hadn’t she said anything in her defense, if she’d been out of town?

“Is it true?” Bill asked, looking at Blanche.

She lowered her eyes under his intense gaze. When she spoke, her voice was strangled with emotion. “Dylan and I met with the Chinese investors in New York yesterday.”

Bill wrung his hands, his brow scrunched, his gaze agonizing. “If it wasn’t you, then you hired someone to kill Alyssa,” he said, sounding a little unconvinced. When he said the words, Blanche flinched, looking at him for a brief moment, deeply hurt. “Come on, admit it,” he continued, “you never liked Alyssa. Even if she was your niece, you hated her as the heiress of the business. She was in your son’s path, and you wanted your—”

Blanche stepped forward and reached for him, her fingertips barely brushing against the fabric of his shirt. His shoulders fell and he breathed out, lowering his head. It was as if that ephemeral touch had wiped away all his rage, leaving him tired and drawn, subdued, defeated. Kay watched his transformation with disbelief, as if watching a raging lion submitting to a frail woman’s caress, no whips, no chains, just magic. Then Blanche stood on her toes, closing the distance until their foreheads touched.

“Bill, you know that’s not true,” she whispered. “We both know that really, really well.”

He whimpered and put his arms on her shoulders, the beginning of an embrace held back by something Kay couldn’t decipher.

What the heck had just happened? Kay thought, wondering what Blanche’s secret was. She’d tamed her brother with one touch, with only a few words.

She would’ve liked to question them until she uncovered all their secrets, but those weren’t hers to uncover. By the looks of things, none of those people had killed Alyssa or had any prior knowledge of her death. No one could fake the physiological reactions she’d witnessed, dilated pupils, pallor, hypertension, sweating. Her unsub wasn’t in that room. It was time for her to move on, and pick up the trail someplace else.

“Well, Detective,” Carole intervened, inserting herself between Kay and her children, forcing Kay to step back. Mercurial as quicksilver, she had returned to her normal self, standing tall, chin thrust forward, only a smudge of eyeliner in evidence of her earlier meltdown. “If we’re done here, we have a funeral to organize.”

“Yes, we’re done,” Kay replied. “Mr. Caldwell,” she called, and Bill raised his head to look at her, breaking contact with Blanche slowly, regretfully. “We would appreciate it if you could stop by the morgue tomorrow morning, say ten o’clock?”

He nodded, averting his eyes. All the rage supporting him was gone. What was left of him was barely standing, an empty husk ready to disintegrate in the slightest breeze.

“Thank you,” Kay replied. “And please accept my deepest sympathies.”

A few moments later, Kay breathed the fresh evening air thirstily, welcoming the refreshing chill and the smell of dew-soaked earth beneath fallen leaves. Whatever she’d witnessed in there was both inexplicable and, most likely, irrelevant.

Yet her instinct was telling her otherwise. Why was there a gnawing feeling in her gut, urging her to go back, to turn every stone and question everything, to tear through the carefully arranged appearances the family had displayed for her?

Alyssa’s killer might’ve been closer than it seemed.

19Questions

It was almost dark when Elliot drove through the Caldwell Farms gates, but he still hoped he could find the woman he was looking for, or at least someone who knew her and could give him a name and an address. Running the tags of the truck seen picking up Kirsten off the side of the road had led him to Caldwell Farms, the recognizable truck leaving a trail of sightings along the interstate.

He stopped at a fork in the road, then made his choice quickly, leaving the residence to his right and choosing to approach the industrial-like building complex to the left. It was well-lit and people swarmed around it, loading and unloading equipment, moving trucks around, while work orders were tracked on clipboards carried by supervisors wearing hard hats in bright yellow, adorned with the Caldwell Farms logo. Days were long and busy at the end of the November harvest season.

Some of them slowed their end-of-day routine to give the detective’s unmarked vehicle a long, suspicious stare before pretending to go about their business, but instead converging in small groups to observe and comment from a safe distance. The red-and-blue flashers hidden in the vehicle’s grille were a dead giveaway, and so was the make and model of the custom, an enhanced Ford Explorer. Perhaps some of them might’ve even recognized him; there weren’t that many Texan cops in Franklin County, California.

Elliot climbed out of the vehicle, before putting on his hat and adjusting his belt buckle. Then he took out his phone and reviewed the stills he’d received from his counterpart in Oregon, all taken from grainy, black-and-white surveillance videos from a gas station. One showed the girl he was looking for eating at a table with a middle-aged, somewhat overweight woman dressed in work blues with the same logo he could see on people’s hard hats and on the front gate. Another showed the back of the woman’s truck, marked with the same branding colors, pulled over at the pump, refueling. Finally, a third image was a barely intelligible shot of the woman’s face as