“Mr. Luke, did your son-in-law tell you not to talk to the police after he was arrested?”
“Yes. He said this was all made up. He said you and Sheriff Cruz were telling Hayden what to say.”
“Did he tell you not to talk to me?”
“He didn’t say don’t talk to you. He said not to trust you. He said this was all Dane Fischer. And that’s what we’d believed for so many years. But now … now that I know what he had. After I saw it with my own eyes. I can’t go along with this. I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I have no further questions.”
George shifted in his chair as Cutler stepped forward. The tips of Cutler’s ears turned purple, but I could sense no other outward sign of his mood.
“Mr. Luke,” Cutler said. “I want to be clear about something. You said Ellie was living with you at the time she went missing.”
“Yes.”
“She had her own bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“Her clothes, her jewelry, she kept them in the bedroom at your home?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Okay. After Ellie went missing, did you go into her bedroom?”
“What? I don’t know. I’m sure I did. Passed by it at least.”
“Did you remove Ellie’s things from the house after she went missing?”
“No. God. No. It was her room. We held out hope that she’d come back.”
“Did you remove Ellie’s things from her room after you found out she was dead?”
George looked down. “Not for a long time, no.”
“So you left Ellie’s room, which contained her clothing, her underwear, her jewelry, her hairbrushes, all of it remained undisturbed for how long after she died?”
“I don’t know. A while.”
“More than a year?”
“I think so.”
“More than two years?”
“Maybe two years. Finally, Jamie convinced us it was time to clean everything out.”
“Jamie convinced you. Did Jamie help you and your wife clean out Ellie’s room?”
“I don’t know. He might have. But I think it was mostly Claudia. She wanted to do it.”
“The police went through Ellie’s room after she went missing, didn’t they?”
“Yes. We let them.”
“And you had other people in that house in those two years, didn’t you? In fact, you held a wake at the house after Ellie’s funeral, didn’t you?”
“We did, yes.”
