Chapter 19

NINETEEN

The foul weather was making Clint Wasser’s life a misery. Being in the automotive industry and responsible for making sure replacement parts were available on demand was getting more difficult by the hour. When the call came from Dustin Crawley, he leaned back in his seat and watched the rain pour down his windshield. “Heck, Dustin, I really don’t need to deal with this right now. Maybe you need to drop by and see Lily and settle her down?”

“Lily’s not the problem. It’s Marissa. From what Lily said to me during our conversation, the woman is freaking out over the news conference.” Dustin was speaking from inside his truck. Wasser could hear the engine roaring in the background. “Josie called Lily and she called me. I needed to pass on to you what’s going on and you can tell Wyatt. That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

How Wyatt Twotrees had become the leader of their group he had no idea. They were equal partners in the dealership, selling popular new cars and servicing them as well. Wasser heaved a sigh. “Okay, what’s the emergency this time? What did Lily tell you, and don’t leave anything out or embellish any of the information because when we’re passing things back and forth important information gets lost.”

He listened with interest to what Josie had told Lily about her conversation with Marissa. It was obvious that the news about Cole and Abby had hit Marissa hard. She’d always been a mousy little girl from grade school. He’d often wondered how she’d become friends with the other girls because she just didn’t fit into the group. Having her around all the time made it difficult for the guys if they wanted to pursue a romance with any of the others because she was always hanging around. In the end it had only been Cole and Abby who had gotten together. The others just hung out. It had been fortunate that the incident with Cole and Abby had happened over Halloween as they’d graduated the following December and gone their separate ways—until now.

Rain hammered down on the roof of his truck, sounding like buckshot. Alongside the curb, water rose up halfway to his hubcaps. The vehicle parked ahead of him had clumps of debris piled up to its grill. It seemed that not only bodies were being washed down from the mountainside. It would be like a quagmire up there with no pine needles covering the forest floor. Rain and flooding left all the trails covered in slimy mud and it sometimes took a complete year before the vegetation repaired the damage. “You know we wouldn’t be the only people who buried bodies up in the mountains. I figure it goes on all the time with the number of serial killers that end up in town. I’m surprised the river isn’t filled with zombies floating by. It won’t be too long before people will be getting used to seeing them.”

“This is the point. Most bodies decay.” Crawley didn’t sound amused. “They should have been bones by now and not almost perfectly preserved with all the evidence intact. This is the problem. We can all keep our mouths shut and hope it goes away. I can’t imagine that there’s any evidence on the bodies that would point to us at all. It was cold that night and everyone was wearing gloves. We know the bodies have been in the river for heck knows how long, so I figure if we happen to have dropped a few hairs here and there, the chances of them being on the bodies would be remote. Personally, I don’t believe we have a thing to worry about provided we stick to the same story. We were never at the Whispering Caves that night. I figure if we insist this is the case, they’ll leave us alone. With the number of serial killings going on over the last few years, surely the sheriff has more on her plate than worrying about a twelve-year-old accident. We all know it was self-defense, but now with a few more years under my belt, I figure I would have called the cops and explained what had happened but that’s too late now. We’ll just hope that no one cracks.”

Wasser rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. “Do you figure us guys are solid?” He listened intently as Crawley sucked in a breath. “Women are so emotional when it comes to things like this. On second thought, we should have handled it ourselves and not risked bringing them into it at the time, but I figure they would have got suspicious of us rushing around to move camp and all and then making like we just arrived.”

“Yeah, I don’t figure we have any problems with the guys and I don’t think Josie would risk getting the cops involved when she’s happily married. That’s not the sort of thing you’d want to divulge to your husband, is it? Especially now that we are technically all murderers. I hope you caught the part of the media conference where they said they were buried alive. This makes us all equally responsible for their deaths.”

Staring at the roof of his truck, Wasser grimaced. “Yeah, I heard that, but we still need to keep the women on track. I’ll pass the information on to Twotrees and he’ll contact Jess.”

“Lily mentioned that Josie and Marissa are having lunch at Aunt Betty’s Café tomorrow at one. I’m wondering if one of us should drop by, make it look like a casual meeting, maybe have a cup of coffee with them. We need to make sure that they are still on the same page.” Crawley turned off his engine, and rain could be heard pounding the roof of his truck. “It would have to be you or Twotrees, as Clint and me rarely drop by Aunt Betty’s Café for a cup of coffee.”

Starting his engine, Wasser stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror. “I can’t go. I’ll be in a meeting at one, but I’ll relay the information to Wyatt. When we work something out, I’ll give you a call and you can pass it on.” He disconnected and headed his truck along Main. “One thing’s for darn sure, they always say that bad deeds come back to kick you in the ass. Seems like that’s true.”