Page 113 of The Graveyard Girls

“Ida, do you know where Joe is now?” Ellie asked.

“Like Kat said, he went on a delivery last night. He should be home sometime tonight.”

“I called the trucking company and left a message,” Derrick said. “Hopefully they’ll call me back with his location.”

“I’ll call an ERT to come here,” Ellie said.

Derrick gave a nod. “I’ll search the grounds in case Carrie Ann is somewhere on the property.”

Kat clutched her stomach as if she might be sick, and Ida choked back a protest of denial. Ellie bit down on her lower lip. Normally she’d call Cord to lead the search but considering his questionable involvement in the case, she couldn’t include him.

Ellie gestured to Ida’s daughter. “Kat, you need to come with me and your mother.”

“You can’t arrest my daughter,” Ida snapped. “She’s just a child. And she had nothing to do with any of this.”

“I realize that,” Ellie said. “And I’m not arresting anyone at the moment. It’s for your protection, Kat. If Joe decides to come home, neither of you should be here.”

Ida choked back more tears and Kat’s chin quivered.

Derrick gestured to Kat. “Please retrieve that computer.”

Ida gestured for her daughter to do as Ellie asked and Kat rushed from the room. She returned a few minutes later, looking contrite at Ida’s disapproving look.

As the three of them walked to the car, Ellie thought about Cord’s reaction to her questions. His denial of killing Earl but his refusal to offer information.

He wasn’t protecting Joe. He was protecting Ida and Hetty Bramble.

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY

“Please let me call Hetty and warn her that deputy is coming,” Ida begged as she and Kat settled into the back of Ellie’s Jeep. “She’s gonna be scared to death.”

Ellie slid into the driver’s seat and locked the doors. “I’m sorry, Ida, but we can’t do that,” she said softly. For all she knew, Hetty would take off and run. “But you both have the right to an attorney, if that’s what you want.”

“You can’t arrest Mama and Hetty,” Kat cried in distress. “They acted in self-defense.”

Ellie’s heart squeezed for all of them. “We need Hetty’s statement, and after we look at the journal, we’ll discuss how to move forward.” Considering the time lapse, their accounts of the night Earl died, and statements about Earl from locals, she had a feeling the prosecutor wouldn’t press charges. But she couldn’t promise anything yet.

Kat slid her arm around her mother and hugged her. “It’s okay, Mama. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

Except nothing was all right.

They needed to find Joe. If he hadn’t killed Carrie Ann, maybe they could save her.

Then the cloud of suspicion and gossip would start all over again for Ida and her daughter. For years people had wondered if Ida and Hetty had covered for their father.

Now they would question if Ida had covered for Joe.

Even if she denied it, people would wonder how she could possibly be unaware she was living with a serial killer.

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE

Briar Ridge Mobile Homes

While he waited on the ERT, Derrick conducted an initial sweep of the property in case Joe was somewhere on the premises or he’d left Carrie Ann’s body on the land.

Woods backed the trailer park and would require manpower, but he found one tool shed out back housing tools but another locked tool shed nestled between some trees and broke the lock. As soon as he opened the door, his gut tightened. A brown leather sofa sat along one wall facing what he guessed to be a fifty-four-inch TV.

The wall to the left was covered in pictures of teenage girls. Derrick pulled on latex gloves and walked over to the shelf beside the TV where CDs were stacked by an old CD player. He ground his teeth as he read the titles—all teenage porn and S&M.