Page 123 of The Graveyard Girls (Detective Ellie Reeves #11)

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO

Bush Road

Ellie left a nervous Ida and Kat at the station with Deputy Landrum to record their statements.

Deputy Eastwood was on her way to the station with Hetty who would be held in a separate interrogation room from Ida to prevent the women from comparing stories.

She sympathized with them, but she had to run this investigation by the book.

Everyone had kept too many secrets. Including Cord.

Dammit. Disappointment mingled with worry.

She had to have a conversation with him when they returned. Then they’d talk to the DA and decide if charges should be brought against Ida and Hetty and Cord for obstruction of justice.

But first they needed to find Joe. Carrie Ann’s life depended on it.

Derrick had called with a lead, so she drove back to Ida’s to pick him up. He quickly filled her in on what he’d found in Joe’s shed. The idea of Joe watching teen porn made her stomach sour.

“Do you believe Ida?” Derrick asked as Ellie pulled to a stop, and he climbed in her Jeep.

Ellie nodded. “Two teenage girls living with an abusive Earl? Yeah. Everyone in town believed Earl was guilty which supports their story about his violent behavior.” She imagined the girls hiding in their rooms out of fear, and compassion swelled inside her.

If Cord had known the Bramble girls were being abused or had seen what happened, obviously his protective side had emerged and he’d kept silent to protect them, thinking the Bramble girls had been through enough.

That Earl’s death meant they had a chance at life.

“What do you want to do about McClain?” Derrick asked, his tone deep.

Ellie cut her eyes toward him. She was still pissed at the way he’d handled the situation. “I don’t know yet. But you should have come to me first.”

His jaw hardened. “I was just doing my job and following the leads.”

Was that all it had been? He and Cord had butted heads in the beginning, but during the cases they’d worked, they’d settled into a cordial relationship and developed mutual respect. Things might have been turned on their heads now. Time would tell.

Thunder rumbled and dark clouds cast eerie shadows across the sharp peaks and ridges of the mountain. Ellie turned onto a narrow winding road that looked as if it went nowhere. Overgrown bushes choked the shoulder of the road, and the graveled surface was pocked with potholes.

“I see why he’d choose this area,” Derrick said.

“Off the grid.”

Derrick glanced up from his tablet where he’d been researching Joe’s background.

“It looks like Joe and his mother lived here before they moved to that farm.” He rubbed a hand across his beard stubble.

“She was definitely the woman in those photos I saw, the one dressed like a hooker and wearing red stilettos.”

“Where is she now?”

“According to this, she abandoned him when he was twelve. DFACS found him alone at the house after a teacher reported his absence from school for seven days. They sent him to live with a grandmother who lived in Brambletown. She died when he was seventeen and by then, he’d aged out of the system.

At fourteen, he started helping out at the cemetery doing lawn maintenance. ”

Gravel spewed from her tires as the Jeep chugged up the unpaved road. Around a bend, she spotted a long driveway flanked with pines and more bushes and barreled up it hoping they weren’t too late for Carrie Ann.