“Both of you are killers,” she went on, shooting glares at both of them. “Ethan murdered my Isabel, and you probably killed someone when you were a kid. Murdered her and then pretended you didn’t remember. Just like you killed the woman you ‘found’ this morning.” She put the wordfoundin air quotes. “You’re a bad seed, Livvy Walsh—”
“Get the hell out of here, now,” Ethan growled. “If you say another word, I’ll arrest you for trespassing. Leave and don’t come back, Vernice. You’re no longer welcome here.”
Vernice looked more than ready to argue with him about that, but she must have realized this was a fight she wouldn’t win against two cops who she’d thoroughly riled to the core. She turned on her heels, and with her arms pumping and curse words flying from her mouth, she went back to her car.
Ethan didn’t wait for Vernice to be out of sight before he pulled Livvy back into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, brushing a kiss on the top of her head.
“I’m sorry, too,” Livvy returned.
When she looked up at him, he didn’t see the hurt he’d expected. Just the opposite. She looked like a cop.
“Vernice seemed to know a lot about me, my nightmares and New Hope,” Livvy said. “She also connected Zadie’s murder to one that may have happened when I was a kid.”
“Yeah. I caught all of that.” He glanced in the direction of Vernice’s car as it sped away. “I think I’d like to find out whatelse Vernice knows. I’ll text Grace to see if she’s willing to bring her in for questioning.”
“Good idea,” Livvy remarked as he took out his phone and sent the text. He got a reply in under a minute and relayed it to Livvy. “Grace will contact her and arrange a meeting.”
“I wonder if there are any other connections that Vernice didn’t mention,” she said as they started toward the house.
He nodded. Livvy and he were on the same page. “Let’s do some digging on the computer,” he suggested.
And despite the hellish experience they’d been through, well, pretty much all day, it felt good to aim all those emotions and frustrations into something that might give them insights as to what was going on.
Of course, a lot of those emotions were because of that kiss. That scalding-hot moment they’d shared before Vernice had arrived. No way was his body going to let him forget about that, but his brain was pushing him in the right direction.
Find the killer before this spilled over even more onto Livvy.
They went inside, and Ethan got some milk for Livvy and a Pepsi for himself while she booted up the laptop. Dropping down in the chairs in his breakfast nook, they got started. Livvy pulled up everything in the database on Vernice.
Because Vernice had once been a social worker, there were plenty of background details on her. She was fifty-eight, which he recalled was the same age as Chloe. That probably wasn’t relevant, but he kept it in mind anyway.
“Born and raised near Renegade Canyon,” Livvy read aloud. “The only time she left was for college at UT Austin.”
Ethan was scanning the info when his attention landed on something. Hell. Now, that could be relevant. “Look at the address where she was born and raised.”
Livvy leaned in closer and made a sound of surprise. “Coyote Creek Road.” She turned to him. “That’s near the house where we found Zadie’s body.”
“A stone’s throw away,” he muttered, thinking of the area.
There were some houses there that had long since collapsed and been reclaimed by the woods, and Vernice had lived in one of them. He hadn’t known that.
“Vernice moved back there after college,” Ethan went on as he continued to read. “And when her mom passed away when she was twenty-two, Vernice moved into town. She got married, and a couple of years later, she had Isabel.”
“So, Vernice would have still been living in that house when I was six,” Livvy remarked.
“Yeah.” But that might not be connected either. Still, they could try to find out if it was. “I’m sure Grace or someone is running a check on whoever owns the house where we found Zadie’s body, but let’s do some looking of our own.”
Livvy immediately shifted over from Vernice’s background info to the county land records’ database. Since they had Vernice’s maiden name, Sullivan, they were able to get a quick hit.
“Vernice’s family owned the land for nearly fifty years,” Livvy read. “And thirty-six years ago when she moved into town, Vernice sold it to a developer, who went belly up.”
After that, it’d changed ownership a couple of times and now belonged to yet another developer, who was apparently doing squat with it.
“Now for info on Vernice’s neighbor,” Livvy said, shifting the search to the other property.
It currently belonged to the same developer, and the house hadn’t had a resident in over a decade when the owner had died. Ethan followed the ownership trail, working his way back to twenty-eight years ago, when Livvy would have been six.
“Hell,” he said when he saw it.
