Page 62 of Long Gone

“You’re right. It sounds like he had grandiose plans and an inflated sense of ego.” I shot him a dry look. “Kind of like someone else I know.”

He grinned. “It’s not all that grandiose or inflated if you can back it up.”

He had a point.

“Some water bird lives out here that was holding up his plans, but he’d supposedly come up with a work-around.” He snorted. “Rumor had it he was hoping to build a dam and call it a water feature for the clubhouse patrons, adding concrete walls on the banks to keep the river contained.”

“And dry up the marsh,” I said. “That wouldn’t be legal. Surely the river is a public waterway.”

“It was fully contained on his land, and it’s considered a creek. He could do what he wanted with it as long as he didn’t interfere with the bird’s habitat. He’d just had that pointed out to him by Colter the day he disappeared.”

Scowling, I glanced up at him. “How exactly do you know that?”

“I can’t divulge my source, but I assure you, it’s been confirmed to be true.” When I gave him a dubious look, he said, “Trust me or don’t. Makes no difference to me.”

Though I didn’t doubt his information, I suspected I wouldn’t like the way he’d gotten it. There wasn’t a chance in hell he’d tell me if I pressed more, though, so I moved on.

“Seems like any potential investor would want to look at the marsh and see what was holding up the project.” I turned to check out the view of the creek. While it was pretty, I couldn’t imagine why it had been allowed to cause so many problems. “Why didn’t Hugo just move the clubhouse, pool and tennis courts somewhere else in the very beginning? Why wait so long to change his plans?”

“That is a very good question, one I can’t answer.”

“What?” I said, placing my hand on my chest in mock surprise. “You seem to have the answer to everything else.”

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond.

I headed to the side of the Jeep and reached in for my rain boots.

“You planning on walking around out there?” he asked in surprise.

I rested my butt against the foot kickboard. “That’s why I brought the boots.” I slipped off one shoe and tossed it onto the passenger floorboard.

“You think you’re going to stumble upon a dead body?”

“God, I hope not, but who knows what I’ll find.” I took off my other shoe and jammed my foot into the other boot, then stood.

Malcolm watched as I stepped onto the soggy ground. There wasn’t any standing water next to the clearing, but it only took walking about ten feet toward the river for water to start sloshing around my boots.

“This seems like it would be a nightmare to develop,” I commented as I continued walking around while Malcolm leaned an arm along the hood of the Jeep. “I take it you don’t know what his plan was for draining it, other than the dam? I have to assume that would have been shot down, even if he owned both sides of the creek.”

“Maybe he was building the clubhouse on stilts,” Malcolm volunteered.

I glanced over at him and grinned. “Was that your attempt to make a joke?”

“More like an impractical suggestion. Then again, I’m not convinced Hugo Burton was a practical man.”

He had a point.

I spent the next ten minutes walking around the land, not wading too far into the swampy area. “Seems to me that maybe Hugo actually planned to build the clubhouse on the ground where you parked and leave the marsh as the view.”

He glanced at the map, then back at me. “Only the map shows that’s where the outdoor seating for the clubhouse was supposed to be.”

“It’s not that pretty. And it likely smells in the summer.”

If Hugo Burton had been buried out here, I suspected his body would have been washed down the creek with any of the heavy rains we’d had from his disappearance up until now. Because I had no doubt the creek flooded several feet of the banks when the water level rose.

“So where to now?” he asked as I approached him.

“West, following the hint of the road that extends from the main road.”

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