Page 80 of The Sister's Curse

Detwiler met me on the road to the quarry, a favorite localswimming hole. Once upon a time, limestone was mined here, and it had since filled in with deep water. It wasn’t the sort of place where you’d take children swimming, more the kind of place that teenagers would sneak out and drink at. It was usually littered with beer cans, and the occasional lost swimsuit. We’d also fished a couple suspicious vehicles from the depths.

Detwiler had set sawhorses up as a roadblock, and he let me in via an access road overgrown with weeds. “Nice ride, El-Tee.” He nodded at the El Camino through my open window.

I made a face. “Whatcha got?”

“Two men, late twenties. Kind of old to be in the party scene, found floating on their inner tubes this morning by a couple teen girls.”

“What were the girls doing here?”

“One of them left her cell phone here last night. Apparently there was a party.” Detwiler lifted a shoulder.

I liked Detwiler, but he was way too square to know about parties. As a kid, he was working on his Eagle Scout badge when his classmates were toking up. “Gotcha. Are the girls still here?”

“They’re with another deputy, on the far side of the quarry, out of sight of the bodies.”

“Understood. Thanks, Detwiler.” I cranked up the window and headed down the road.

A narrow gravel trail, wide enough for only one car, opened to a stone beach. I parked close to the gravel, not wanting to get the rear-wheel-drive El Camino stuck. The back of the quarry was cliffs, from which people often made ill-advised dives. The water level was lower than I remembered it ever being, owing to the drought. I saw a patrol car there, as well as a white sedan and a black SUV. Two girls were sitting in the air-conditioning in the back of the patrol car, looking distressed.

In the distance, I spied two orange inner tubes. I could make out two sets of feet, toes up. I wondered how Detwiler had arrived at the conclusion that these men were dead and not just hungover and passed out, but my suspicious were confirmed when the breeze pushed the inner tubes around.

Both bodies were headless.

“All right, then,” I breathed.

I went to the patrol car, nodded at the deputy there. “How are the girls holding up?”

The deputy looked overwhelmed. “They’re freaking out. I tried to calm them down. I took their phones away to keep them from sharing evidence, but I called their parents.”

“They’re minors?”

“Both seventeen, and terrified about being busted for underage drinking.”

“So, they found the missing phone?”

The deputy handed me two phones. One was in a purple-glitter case, and the other one was jet-black, with a cracked screen.

“Okay. I got this. You wanna call Dive, Forensics, and the coroner’s office?”

“Will do.”

I popped open the back door to speak to the sobbing girls. “Hi. I’m Anna. What are your names?”

“Teresa.”

“Evie.”

“Teresa, Evie, I want to make it clear that you’re not in trouble here, okay?”

Teresa rubbed her eyes. “My parents are gonna kill me if they think I’ve been drinking.”

“Well,” I amended, “there’s not much I can do about that. What I can do is say that I’m not gonna charge either one of you withany wrongdoing if you tell me what the heck went on here last night.”

The girls nodded tearfully.

“So, do you know those guys?”

Evie shook her head. “No. Not really. We went with some friends to just have some beers and relax, you know? We wanted to take some videos, since it’s creepy here after dark.”