Oh, hell. He knew exactly which one Evan was referring to.
“Ex-husband,” Trey corrected. “But yeah.”
Trey remembered it well. When he’d come across it, something about it had struck him as odd. He had pored over it for nearly two weeks when Baz urged him to follow up with the ex-husband.
He glanced at Evan, saw he was waiting for more, so Trey told him. “Because they’d recently gone through a bitter divorce, the police chalked it up to her wanting to get away from him.”
“I saw the report. Ex said their marriage had been good right up until she started cheating.”
“That’s what he claimed,” Trey stated. “I didn’t buy it.”
“No?” Evan shifted, facing him more fully. “Why’s that?”
“Just a feelin’.” He shook his head, kept his foot on the gas as he weaved between thicker traffic. “I know that’s not proof, but…”
“Sometimes it’s all you have,” Evan said. “Tell me. What’s the feeling you got?”
“I couldn’t get past the ex-husband’s statement. According to him, he’d had a fight with her the night before she disappeared. Said they were arguin’ because she was becomin’ a recluse, missin’ out on life. He suggested she meet new people, urged her to go out with some friends. Conveniently she does what he asks but never comes home.”
“Sounds relatively straightforward.”
“Yep. All tied up in a perfect little bow. Plus, he covered his tracks pretty well,” Trey admitted. “Her credit card was used at a gas station leadin’ outta town, another at a fast-food restaurant off the highway a couple of hours away. Meshed with his story that one of her lovers lived in Florida.”
“It didn’t jibe for you?”
“Not after I read the statement of a couple of her co-workers. Said she was workin’ hard to move on, gettin’ on with her life, goin’ out more.”
“The opposite of reclusive?”
“Exactly.” Trey focused on the road. “She had just joined an online datin’ site when she went missin’. Had been chattin’ with a couple of guys.”
“Did you talk to either of them?” Evan asked.
“I did. Both said she was friendly online, but she was cautious, so they hadn’t yet met in person.” Trey sighed. “One said they were plannin’ to have coffee the next Sunday.”
“I didn’t make it that far in the case files,” Evan said. “Sorry. She never made it to the coffee date?”
“No.” Trey still remembered talking to the ex-husband, seeing that bastard’s smug face. The woman hadn’t changed her will at the time of her death, so everything she’d had was left to him. The house, the cars. All of it.
Since Evan had read the file, he knew that Trey had tugged on a line leading all the way back to a construction site the ex had been working at when the woman went missing, which just so happened to still be under construction. A construction site that ended up being the burial ground of the ex-wife. The police were able to tie it back to him because of DNA. The fucker had been careless, believing no one would ever find the body because he’d done his due diligence to show she was missing, not dead.
“Sounds to me like you’ve got some damn good instincts,” Evan said now.
Trey wasn’t sure about that. Half the time, he felt as though he had no idea which way was up.
*
“So, Charlie … this thing with you andmy cousin … it serious?”
Charlotte Miller glanced over at the man in the passenger seat, smiled as she turned her attention back to the road. “You realize we’re on the job, right?”
“Technically, we’re drivin’,” Slade countered in that slow drawl that she suspected the ladies swooned for.
“You’re relentless, you know that?”
Slade chuckled, and Charlie decided she liked his laugh as much as she liked his laid-back, country-boy demeanor. It hadn’t been until Kylie Walker’s death earlier in the year that Charlie had been introduced to many of her girlfriend’s family members, including Autumn’s cousin Slade. One of Aunt Rose’s six kids, she’d been told.
Having come from a small family—an only child with only two cousins—it had taken Charlie a little while to get used to being around so many people. More so to be immersed in a small town that was just as meddlesome as it was welcoming, but Coyote Ridge was growing on her.
