“Do you think she could have killed him?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. People in love do weird things. You know it’s either love, money, or revenge, right?”
“Sometimes, it’s self-defense,” I noted.
“Maybe. Hopefully, not in this case,” the sheriff said somberly. “I’d hate to see one of the Basanelli kids get caught up in this, and you need to know they’re all very protective of their mom.”
I sat back and drank my coffee, letting his words sink in.
A question had been bugging me since I’d learned the location of the bodies. “How would the killer have gotten the bodies into that room in the abandoned Marsh Mansion?”
“That’s a good question. Also, Richard’s truck was never found,” the sheriff noted.
“If they left the bar and drove over the pass, which is likely, how did somebody intercept them and kill them both?”
He glanced down at the closed file folder. “Yeah. I don’t think they would’ve just driven out to that mansion. Plus, it was the middle of summer. That’s when all the kids partied out there.”
True. That’s when we partied out there even years later. Somebody must have known about that room. “Why wasn’t that basement space around when I went to keggers there?”
“What do you mean when you attended keggers?”
I flushed. “It’s a little too late to get mad at me for drinking beer in my teens, Sheriff.”
“That’s what you think,” he muttered. He pulled out another piece of paper. “I have the forensic report from Elk County. The victims weren’t killed in that room.”
I paused. That was exactly the opposite of what I’d expected. “You mean they were killed somewhere else and then dumped in that room in the middle of summer?” How did that make any sense?
“Yeah,” he said somberly, “which indicates somebody involved was likely young, partying there, and knew of the place.”
Oh, great. More evidence against Nick or his brothers. “I don’t remember that room.”
“There was a cave-in of sorts from the surrounding beams. Even some of the earth from the side of the mountain covered that entire area of the basement—at least by the time you were out there doing what you shouldn’t have been doing.”
“It was a beer or two and a nice bonfire on the beach.” I rolled my eyes. “It sounds like whoever put the bodies in the cement room…what? Caused the cave-in?”
“I would’ve,” the sheriff said. “Obviously, the bodies had to be covered.”
“But why that room? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just bury them?”
The sheriff shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe time was an issue, and frankly, it worked. Once the bodies were in that cement room, nobody found them. I mean, back then, did you ever imagine the property values around the lake would explode like they have? That somebody would buy that old place, tear it down, and build something new?”
“No. I would’ve thought it’d be there forever or burn down at some point.”
“Exactly,” the sheriff said.
That led to more questions. “But they were dropped into a cement room. If the haunted mansionhadburned down, the bodies would’ve been found then.”
“Somebody hadn’t been thinking all that clearly. Murder does that to a person.”
“Most likely,” I agreed. The sugar settled into a lump in my gut. Especially if the murderer was young, angry, and unprepared. Damn it.
Chapter15
Nick Basanelli was nervous. It took me several moments to recognize the expression he wore because I had never seen it before. The guy was usually uber-confident and smooth as glass. At the moment, he was sweating.
“Dude, relax,” I said, pushing inside his condo with my arms full of bags.
He took a couple of them, his eyebrows rising. “I asked for champagne and maybe some roses.”
