“Thank you,” Rachel said. “I appreciate you giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
Was that what I was doing?
“I’m going to pay another visit to Pegram now. Call or text when you have the information about Mrs. Miller.”
I put the Lexus in gear and headed west.
* * *
Twenty-some minutes later I was cruising down the road past Sal’s spread. I had not heard from either Zachary or Rachel again, so all must be status quo at the Body Shop, and Rachel must still be digging.
Pegram was quiet as the proverbial church on Monday in the middle of the day. I didn’t pass a single car all along the road to Sal’s house.
The gate was closed today, the two sides drawn across the driveway. The No Trespassing sign stared at me; shotgun silhouette a sober warning about what I could expect if I ventured beyond the fenceline.
I drove past the gate and pulled off onto the shoulder about fifty yards down, past the wooden fence enclosing Sal’s property, in a gravel patch outside someone’s paddock. A couple of horses were grazing beside a little brook. It looked as idyllic as it possibly could.
I left my purse and phone in the car when I set out. I didn’t want an incoming call giving me away if someone else was in the house—Sal was at the Body Shop, but he might be living with someone—and I also didn’t want the bag getting caught on things or slowing me down as I was skulking. I locked the car and stuck the key fob in my jeans pocket before I walked back along the side of the road, trying to look casual. Just any middle-aged woman out for a healthy mid-day stroll. Nothing suspicious at all.
At the corner of the property, I stopped to look around. There were no other houses in sight, so I was pretty sure no one was looking at me, and the log cabin itself appeared deserted. All the garage doors were closed, and there were no cars parked in the driveway. Also, no smoke coming from the chimney.
“This is stupid,” I muttered. “This is really, really stupid.”
But I climbed over the fence anyway, and darted up along the side of it, until I was as close as I could get to the garage and could run across the grass until I was behind it. That way, no one would be able to see my skulking from the road.
The garage was as big as the house, and built from the same timber. It looked more like a spread you’d expect in Montana or Wyoming than something you’d find in Middle Tennessee. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was what Greg’s place in Jackson’s Hole looked like. Maybe Sal had wanted the Wild West, but Nashville was as far as he had come.
There were no windows along the back of the garage, but there was a door in the middle of it, with a window in the upper half, and I stepped up and I cupped my hands around my eyes to peer in.
It was semi-dark inside, and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the low light. Then I could see that the five bays on the outside led into one massive room on the inside. The space directly in front of me was empty, I assumed it belonged to the pickup Sal drove to work. In the space to the right was an SUV, and beyond that what looked like a classic muscle car. Not a Porsche, more like a Mustang or Cobra. On the other side was a small boat, and a few things grouped together that might have been a motorcycle or ATV or maybe one of those Seadoos.
But it was the shelving unit that caught my attention.
It was full of miscellanea. Flower pots rubbed elbows with bottles of weed killer and buckets of grass seed. Bags of rock salt sat next to kitty litter and light bulbs. And there were cans of paint. In the dim light filtering through the windows, it was hard to make out the colors, but the smears on a certain can on the second shelf looked like they might be red. Or maybe it was orange. Or rust-colored primer.
Something in that color family, anyway.
I pressed my nose closer to the glass, trying to get a better angle, but it didn’t help, not even when I lined my toes up with the door and craned my neck. And the door was locked. I might as well admit that I tried the knob. It rattled under my hand, but didn’t open.
But even if it was red paint, I told myself, it didn’t prove anything. Anyone might own a gallon of red paint. And of everyone involved in this case, why would Sal, of all people, drive to Hillwood to vandalize my door? As far as I knew, Sal didn’t even know who I was.
I would have gone on—I had further thoughts on the subject—but before I could, something happened. I must have roused a sleeping beast when I tried the knob, because suddenly an angry bark from inside the house made me straighten up as if someone had snapped my spine straight.
It wasn’t a cute little yip like Edwina’s warnings. No, this was deep and aggressive, the kind of bark that came from a dog that meant business.
And then another one joined it.
I stepped back from the door, my heart hammering. And none too soon: the barking got louder, accompanied by the scrabbling of paws and claws, and the next second, two massive German Shepherds came barreling around the bow of the little boat and threw themselves at the door. Their teeth were bared, and their eyes were fixed on me with the kind of fury that made it very clear what they thought should happen to trespassers like me.
“Nice doggies,” I whispered, even though they couldn’t hear me through the door and their increasingly frantic vocalizing. “Good doggies. I’m leaving now.”
I moved out of sight, toward the back of the real house. A pair of double glass doors beckoned, and I stopped to stare into a massive family room, with a vaulted ceiling covered with cedar. A two-story stone fireplace took up the center of one wall with a seating area grouped around it. The sectional was plaid, but tasteful plaid, and the rug looked like the kind you could sink your toes into.
The other half of the room was taken up by a huge dining room set. Chairs for twelve, and an antler chandelier that must have been the demise of at least half a dozen ten-point bucks. Sal either had a very large family, or big dreams.
And on the far wall, between two doors that looked like they led to a kitchen and a foyer, respectively, sat a gun cabinet.
The dogs had made it into the family room from the garage now—up close and in the light, they were even scarier than I had thought; two slavering beasts that might as well have been werewolves for all the fuzzy feelings they gave me—and I didn’t want to linger any longer than necessary. The neighbors could probably hear the ruckus, and I was honestly afraid that with the way the dogs were hurling themselves at it, the glass in the door would break.
