A Sweet Death, page 13
part #3 of Stoneybrook Series
“And you’re sure the boyfriend isn’t hiding something more?” Luke asked, his blue eyes narrowing as he synthesized the information.
Hadley shook her head. “No. I’m not sure at all, but as of now, I don’t see a motive for him to hurt her.”
Luke snorted. “No motive? He thought she was using him for drugs? I think you might be wrong, Had.”
“I don’t know. Sure, I can see him being upset, but this doesn’t fit.” Hadley chewed on her lip for a moment before going on, unsure of how Luke would take the next part. “There’s another suspect who just doesn’t make sense.”
“Who’s that?”
“Dennis.” Hadley felt simultaneously awful and relieved as the name left her lips. She’d been as convinced as anyone the moment they’d found out he’d left town, but the more she pondered the situation, the less and less it seemed like a sure thing.
Luke didn’t make fun of her or make her feel like she was being naïve to trust a man because she’d known him her whole life. He simply said, “Why?”
Luke pulled the truck onto the gravel road leading to The Ridge.
“Even if it was a large chunk of money, even if he felt completely betrayed by her, I just don’t see it as being grounds for kidnapping or … more.” Hadley swallowed the word murder, unable to think that way just yet.
They bumped along the primitive road until they reached the lookout point, and Luke parked.
Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair. “I dunno, Had. I mean, Dennis has always struck me as a deeply depressed individual. Take it from me, that kind of mental space can make bad things seem so much bigger. It’s possible it doesn’t seem bad to someone else, but Dennis could’ve definitely seen the stealing as something more than a simple betrayal.”
Hadley froze, focused on what Luke said. “Why’d you say take it from me, just then?”
His tanned cheeks flushed a little. “What?”
She knew he was pretending not to have heard her correctly, but she pushed on anyway. “You said you understood the kind of mental space he was in, a depressed space. Luke, have you been depressed?”
Clicking his seat belt free from its holder, she thought he was going to bolt at first. But then he exhaled and dipped his chin in a nod.
She suppressed a gasp. Even though she’d been thinking about how she hadn’t seen him extremely happy in a long while; the man was so generally goofy, laid-back, always joking, it seemed impossible he was going through something like depression.
“I’m getting better,” he said quietly after a moment of awkward silence. “I promise. Coming home has made it better.”
Hadley’s eyebrows knit together with worry as he fidgeted uncomfortably.
He coughed. “Well, shall we?” He had his door open, and his boots hit the ground before Hadley even had a chance to answer his question.
They met at the tailgate of the truck before walking in the direction of the road. Hadley watched her shoes as they tromped through millions of crinkly, dried, golden leaves. Despite the many leaves underfoot, the trees surrounding them still had most of their foliage, the color change looking like someone had blown gold dust over the forest. Hadley pulled in a lungful of the crisp, wood smoke-tinged air, smiling a little.
Luke did the same. “That’s one of the things that’s helped,” he said. When she shot him a questioning glance, he added, “The fresh air. Being someone who grew up outdoors, who spent almost all of my time outside, those ten years stuck in an office behind a desk affected me more than I thought they would.”
Hadley shoved her hands in her pockets as she listened.
“You can go outside in Seattle, sure. There are a ton of parks, and you don’t have to drive too far to find hiking, but there’s just something different about the air around here.” He took another deep breath, closing his eyes.
The sudden urge to hook her arm through his came over Hadley, but she quickly quashed it as they came to where the dirt road they were on met up with a paved main road. Looking both ways, they turned, walking along the right side as it wound up the hill toward the hospital.
“Are we sure she didn’t walk along the other side?” Luke asked, glancing across the two empty lanes of roadway.
“No, but Jaxon said he pulled his car over to let her out. If that’s true, she would’ve been on this side of the road. Whether or not she stayed on this side, I don’t know. It was late and dark, so it would’ve been dangerous for her to cross, I would think.” Hadley eyed the other shoulder.
“I think it would’ve been just as dangerous for her to walk over here, honestly,” Luke said, pointing to their right.
Hadley’s gaze followed his gesture. Next to them was a long guardrail, curving alongside the road. On the other side of it, a two-hundred-foot drop down into a wooded ravine.
20
A low cloud had settled at the bottom of the ravine, making the place feel eerie as Hadley stared down at it from the road above. She shivered.
“She wouldn’t have ventured from the roadway, though,” she said, her voice a whisper.
Miranda had grown up in the valley; she knew as well as anyone not to go wandering off into the woods.
“Not on purpose,” Luke said, his deep voice sounding all too loud in the quiet of the deserted road.
Glancing down the long drop once more, Hadley’s stomach sank. Had Miranda fallen in the dark? “But there have been search parties out here for days. If she’d fallen, they would’ve found her”—Hadley gulped—“her body by now.”
Luke nodded, but she could see in the way he clenched his jaw that he didn’t agree. “They would’ve found something, for sure.”
Needing to compartmentalize because she couldn’t seem to stop picturing the girl hurt at the bottom of the ravine, she moved on. “Let’s assume the police and their dogs would’ve found some evidence if it had been an accident.” They kept walking up the hill. “We’re looking for clues of a deliberate abduction.”
“Like Dennis following her all the way up here after their fight and—” Luke stopped short. “You’re right. That’s just not ringing true to me. If he was so mad, why didn’t he take her right away? Why didn’t he chase after her when they finished their fight? She had time to go over Cassie’s, meet Jaxon, and come up here for a while.”
“Right? It just doesn’t make sense.” She ran her teeth across her bottom lip. “But if Dennis had nothing to do with it, then why did he disappear?”
Luke ran a hand over his chin as he seemed to ponder the same thing. A whooshing sound in the distance grew louder, and a car came around the bend, speeding past them and kicking up fallen leaves in its wake.
Hadley’s breath quickened as the incline they were scaling increased. After close to ten minutes of walking, however, they had yet to find a break in the guardrail and the opposite side of the road was just trees and a fifteen-foot-high bank of soil.
If this was where Miranda had been, there was simply nowhere else she could’ve gone than forward, especially if she thought she was going to meet Cassie at the hospital. Hadley tried to think like a seventeen-year-old girl who’d just fought with her boyfriend. She knew Miranda to be a kind girl, empathetic—maybe even to a fault, she thought, remembering how she was probably buying drugs to help her mother—but also emotional at times.
There were a few instances when a tourist had gotten upset in the candy shop and had taken it out on Miranda. Hadley had stumbled in after one such occasion, and the girl had been almost inconsolable.
Even if she were emotional, Hadley thought, she would’ve known to get to the hospital where there were other people and Cassie could meet her. She would’ve been scared out here all alone, in the middle of the night.
Luke cleared his throat, interrupting her thoughts. “Okay, hear me out. I know you don’t think the boyfriend did it, but what if he didn’t actually drop her off like he claimed to?”
“But he did.” Hadley shook her head. “Miranda called Cassie right after he did.”
“Okay, but he doesn’t have an alibi for that time, right? So he could’ve come back for her after driving around all angry for a few minutes.”
“True.” Hadley conceded. “But Paul and the sheriffs already had to let him go because of a lack of evidence once. If they have any hope of pinning this on him, we need something more than his lie.”
Luke picked up his pace as if he suddenly realized how quickly they were running out of time.
Around the next bend, a blue sign for the hospital came into view. A white arrow pointed forward. The hope Hadley’d been holding on to since this morning flitted away. One more curve in the road and they’d be at the hospital, they’d be by cameras and lights, and Miranda would’ve been safe. If something went wrong, it had to have happened before the hospital.
She stopped, letting out a defeated sigh. “Sorry for dragging you along, Luke. There’s nothing here. I don’t know why I thought we might be able to find something when the sheriff’s department hadn’t been able to.” Her shoulders slumped forward and she turned around. “We can go home now.”
Luke didn’t say anything, but he did turn to follow her, and he did wrap an arm around her shoulders, just like she’d wanted him to before. She sank into him, and they walked back down the hill toward his truck.
Birds sang and chirped while the wind rustled through the papery, dry leaves providing a canopy overhead. While the valley had its fair share of evergreens, there were a decent number of maples, oaks, birch, and madronas as well. This road seemed to be primarily oaks and maples, and their golden hues looked almost fake in their vividness. It was almost peaceful walking along the road with Luke.
Almost.
Amid her calm exterior, Hadley’s mind was ripping through the clues and time lines and possibilities surrounding Miranda’s disappearance like a frustrated burglar, searching for something, anything, of value in a house.
She could tell by the way Luke’s eyes would narrow every once in a while, that he was going through a similar search in his brain. And sure, they could’ve talked it out since they were likely thinking through the same things, but there was something wonderful about walking with someone and not needing the clutter of words. It was a privilege, Hadley was sure, only afforded to people who’d known each other for a long time, so long that simply being near each other was enough connection.
As they crunched their way down the dirt road leading back to The Ridge, Hadley became instantly thankful for the silence, for their ability to listen, watch, and ponder. She was sure if they’d been talking, if they’d been at all distracted with something else, Luke wouldn’t have spotted what he did as he walked around the front of his truck after letting Hadley in to the passenger side.
He stopped, studying the lookout point. Hadley tapped her finger on her leg impatiently. Sure they’d just wasted time walking up and down a mostly deserted back road so they obviously weren’t in a rush, but this really wasn’t the time for sightseeing either.
Luke took a step closer to the overhang, and it was then Hadley realized he wasn’t looking out at the mountainous landscape, but down at the grass. She opened her door and poked her head out.
“What?” she called out, placing a foot on the truck’s running board.
“Call Paul. Now.” Luke’s voice was as sharp as a brand new knife.
Heart rate spiking, Hadley slipped her phone out from her pocket and dialed her brother as she ran toward Luke.
“What am I telling him?” she asked, her words shaky with fear. Reaching Luke she noticed the tire tracks in the dirt at the edge of the cliff. Taking one shaky step forward, she followed Luke’s gaze down the hundreds of feet.
The back end of a car was just barely visible amid the brush and boulders at the bottom of the cliff. She wasn’t sure if the ringing was from the phone or her mind.
“Had, what’s up?” Paul’s voice rang through her ears.
“You need to get everyone you can over to The Ridge, right now. A car’s sitting at the bottom of the cliff.”
The minutes it took for the sheriff’s department to arrive seemed like years to Hadley. She and Luke paced along the edge, trying to get a better look.
“Should we try to drive down there?” Luke asked, stating—more than once—if they followed the main road down the hill, his truck could handle the off-road well enough to get them close to the wreck.
As curious as Hadley was to see what was in the car, her stomach curled up like a boxer’s fist each time she thought about who might be in that car.
“No. We need to wait until they get here,” she said.
The Cascade Ridge-based officers showed up first, and by the time Paul and Sheriff McKay arrived, they’d already decided on a plan to lower a winch down and pull the car out. A crew drove down to the bottom and would hike over to the site to make sure there weren’t any casualties before they pulled the car up.
“Tell us when you’re near,” McKay grumbled into a radio, the static before and after he spoke making Hadley’s nerves fray. He swiveled back to face Paul. “Tell me the car was not there when we did our sweeps. If you guys missed—”
“It wasn’t.” Paul’s voice was deep and sure. “I’ll vouch for it myself. I was out here yesterday and it wasn’t here.”
Hadley sidled closer to her brother, noticing him squinting at his tablet as he poked at the screen. He was enlarging a picture he’d taken of the license plate, just visible at the bottom of the cliff. He switched to a different application and typed in the plate number.
When the new application opened, Paul glanced over his shoulder in a gesture that told Hadley she needed to step back. She did, but both she and Luke craned their necks slightly to try to catch a glimpse.
Paul narrowed his eyes at his screen.
“Tell me what you’ve got, James,” McKay called out from where he was talking to another deputy.
“It’s registered to a Zack Pittman. A few parking violations and”—he poked at the screen—“a ticket for running a red light Thursday night, just before midnight.”
Hadley’s pulse quickened. That was right about the time Miranda went missing.
Paul poked at the screen while Hadley thought. There were only two red-light cameras in Cascade Ridge: one in the busy uptown district and one right outside the hospital. Hadley held her breath. She wished she could see what Paul was looking at.
“Sir, you’re going to want to see this.” Paul cleared his throat and stepped toward McKay, leaving Hadley and Luke behind.
But before Paul could reach the sheriff, a river of static poured from his radio again.
“We’re here.” The radio cut out, leaving more static.
Paul paused. Hadley’s breath caught in her throat. Now that Paul had moved, she could clearly see the screen to his tablet. The picture showed the same car sitting at the bottom of the cliff, turning right, into the hospital parking lot.
“Anyone in the vehicle?” McKay asked, a dreadful mix of eagerness and fear coating his question.
Everyone went silent, the horrible static the only sound.
“We have a body.”
Static.
Hadley wrapped her arms around her middle, sure she would throw up.
“White male, twenties, blunt-force trauma to the skull—the back of the head, not the front. There’s no blood in the vehicle. He was dead before he went off the cliff.”
The breath she’d been holding rushing out of her all at once. Hadley leaned forward and rested her hands on her knees, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
It wasn’t Miranda.
21
Hadley should’ve been relieved. Miranda’s body wasn’t in the car. There was still hope she was alive.
It should’ve been a comfort. Instead, Hadley paced through her kitchen the next morning, scattering worried cats each time she moved to a different part of the room.
The dead man had been driving in that same part of Cascade Ridge right around the time Miranda had gone missing. But if he was the one who’d taken her, why was he dead? If Miranda had somehow defended herself, hitting him over the head and pushing his car off the cliff, wouldn’t she have come back home?
Hadley chewed on her bottom lip. It was possible the teen was worried about what she’d done, afraid she would be punished for the man’s death even if it was self-defense.
Something still seemed off about the scenario, though.
In the red-light photo she’d caught a glimpse of yesterday, the car had been turning right, into the hospital, not going straight. If he’d somehow kidnapped her in the parking lot of the hospital, surely one of the cameras would’ve captured it, but Paul had said there’d been no trace of Miranda anywhere in the footage.
Hadley suppressed the urge to yell in frustration.
Now it was Tuesday, the fourth full day since Miranda had gone missing. She didn’t want to look at any stats about missing persons being found after so long. Even without checking, she knew they weren’t good.
She had the day free to go searching. When she’d taken Gran home from the jam kitchen upon returning to Stoneybrook yesterday, the woman had told Hadley she expected her to pick her up at nine tomorrow so Hadley could resume her efforts. The real problem was that Hadley wasn’t sure where else to search.
Closing her eyes for a second to focus her thoughts, Hadley reminded herself about what Gran had told her yesterday about not giving up. She hadn’t gone to see Brenda, after all. Maybe Miranda’s mom knew something she didn’t know could be important. It was worth a try at least.
Grabbing her keys, Hadley headed out the door to go pick up her grandmother.
Once Gran was all set in the kitchen a half hour later, Hadley got back into the Jam Van and began driving back up to Cascade Ridge. She didn’t think she’d driven up to the crowded city as many times in her whole life as she had this week.
