Page 82 of Echoes at Driftwood Cottage

Daniel bumped her shoulder. “Stop beating yourself up. It might be that Wally saved valuable evidence.”

“Let’s hope. When did we ever get that lucky, though? I’ve been thinking. If Brent does look into the hippie names we gave him, how will he ever be able to make a connection to their real names? It’s impossible. No wonder he thinks we’re ridiculous and doesn’t take us seriously.”

“I didn’t expect Brent to take your truck. That’s an indication he’s making every effort to solve this.”

“That’s what Eastlyn said. But let’s face it, we’ll need a miracle to identify that couple. I have this gut feeling that those people are my parents. And I grew up living with their killers, calling them Granddad and Gran.” She made a face. “Thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach, Daniel.”

“Understandable, but not your fault.”

“But they tried to get me back and butted heads with two crazy people who murdered them.”

“Let’s just see what happens. Okay? I hate to bring this up now, but Mamie asked me if I’d take her out on the boat tonight after supper. We shouldn’t be gone for more than an hour or so.”

“Take all the time you need. You should go and enjoy yourselves. Forget about all this stuff for a couple of hours.”

“I don’t suppose I could persuade you to join us?”

She shook her head and saw his disappointment. “Sorry. But there’s no reason you shouldn’t enjoy your boat.”

“What will you do?”

“I promised Will I’d spend some time helping him track down Hallie. It’s the least I can do after everything he’s done to help me.” She looped her arm through his. “Wouldn’t it be something if we could actually find her?”

“Do you think Jim and Lynette were somehow involved with Hallie disappearing?”

“Unfortunately, after talking to Tansy, it’s a distinct possibility. What I can’t figure though is how Hallie would’ve ended up at the commune. Although Jim and Lynette wouldn’t let an opportunity like that pass them by.”

“That sounds creepy,” Daniel noted with a shudder.

“And you think my standing here isn’t? If what we think is even half true, they killed that couple. I won’t lie. I’m having a hard time accepting that the two people I knew were the same ones who were capable of murder. It doesn’t add up. It’s as though they became different people overnight. How is that possible? Even Tansy noticed how they changed, that the activity around the house lessened. It had to be the double homicide, right?”

“I suppose committing murder would drastically change your perspective. Maybe Nichols is the one who actually pulled the trigger, and they helped him cover it up.”

“That would be a very difficult selling point for me,” Rowan noted. “The guns were here, locked away in this house. Records at the cemetery show that Jim and Lynette bought the headstone. They’re the ones witnesses described arguing with the couple. Jim pulled a gun at the party. They were the last to see them alive. They passed off a child as their granddaughter. As much as I’d like to believe that Nichols did it, I don’t. Now, Hallie’s disappearance comes into play. They were bad people, Daniel. There’s no other way to look at it. And I need to figure out a way to come to terms with it. Fast. Because I need to put this behind me and focus on what’s ahead. And what’s ahead is finding out who I am.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The house owned by Nichols near the lagoon had been redesigned and redecorated so many times that Brent decided it wasn’t worth the effort to get a search warrant, especially since he didn’t believe it was where the murders had taken place.

More than anything his gut told him Jim and Lynette had probably driven the couple back to the commune. If that was the case, though, how did the bodies end up at Eternal Gardens? To get answers, he called the caretaker in to turn over all his records.

He stared across the desk at Jasper Willis, a man in his late sixties who’d brought in ten years’ worth of records in logbooks the size of journals. Jasper had gone to work as the caretaker at eighteen, helping his father keep the grounds in tip-top shape. Having worked there for almost fifty years, no one knew better than Jasper who was buried where.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Jasper declared as he sat fidgeting with his hat. “I didn’t know what was in that grave. I swear it. I watched them unload a casket back then, a cheap one if you ask me, and thought things were a little odd. But I had nothing to do with any of it, sure as hell not the mistake on that headstone. That was between Jim Dewhurst and Milton Schmidt.”

“What mistake?” Brent asked, scrutinizing the logbook Willis had brought with him, jotting down notes about the December 8th, 1999, funeral and burial of a child. “When did you catch it?”

“It wasn’t me. Sometime in January when the headstone was delivered Jim threw a hissy fit once he saw it. I remember he kicked up such a fuss about the name engraved on it that I thought I’d have to call the cops. Jim blamed Lynette. Those two went at it, screaming at each other, had a shouting match about it right outside my front door. Jim was so mad that he called old Schmidt himself at Schmidt’s Monuments to bitch about it. That’s who did the work, you see. Jim demanded a new one, accusing Milton of making a mistake. Old Milton told him he had the order in front of him and swore up and down that he’d carved the name and date Lynette had given him. That ended that. Milton wouldn’t budge an inch. I later found out that Milton had told Jim that it would cost him an additional grand to make a new headstone. That’s when Jim backed down and decided to leave it like it was. I didn’t know there were extra bodies in that grave. I swear it.”

“How does something like that happen?”

“I told you that burial stands out because the circumstances were strange. I’ll give you that much,” Jasper muttered, scrubbing the stubble on his chin. “But everything that’s in the logbook is the way it happened. I wrote it down like I saw it. The day of the service, the casket arrived from out of town.”

“Redwood City,” Brent supplied.

“That’s right. But it didn’t get there the usual way inside a hearse. No sir.”

“How did it arrive?”

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