Page 65 of Long Gone

“Checking my service. Anton said it was a problem out there, and it still is. Nothing.”

“No one was going to buy a home somewhere that lacked cell service.”

“Tell me about it.” I stuffed my phone back in my pocket. “One of Hugo Burton’s many issues.”

He continued down the hill as I scanned the land for any hints of where to look. “Let’s presume they performed a decent search,” I posited, “not extensive, but decent. Surely they would have seen a dead body lying out in the open.”

“You’re presuming the land would have been cleared. If there were a fresh body lying out there now, would you be able to see it?” he asked, nodding toward the side.

“No, but Hugo was still showing the land to potential investors. There was a gravel road here. Stands to reason it would have been partially cleared,” I countered.

“I disagree, but I suppose that would be easy to clear up.”

“I’ll ask his son.” Then I added, “When I get service.”

I held the map open as we continued across the acreage. Most of the land was clear here, with the exception of the weeds, but there were pockets of trees scattered on either side. I’d want to look around all of those. Malcolm continued on, periodically stopping to check his map. He curved to the left as we followed the road, which veered around a large grove of trees. After we cleared the trees, a piece of construction equipment sat to the right.

“That’s where the pool was supposed to be,” I said, glancing down at the map to confirm it.

Malcolm slowed a little as we passed. “It’s a concrete mixer. Those require electricity. I thought he didn’t have utilities down here.”

“Don’t most pool companies bring in cement trucks?” I asked. “Pools take a ton of concrete.”

“He would have needed electricity, and he definitely wouldn’t have used a small mixer like that to install a pool.”

“Agreed. He would have hired a pool company to put it in. They’d be in charge.”

“Check your service,” he said as he picked up speed, heading toward the road ahead.

I pulled out my phone and saw one bar in the upper corner. I opened my text app and sent some rapid-fire messages to Anton.

A few questions. 1. Was there a gravel road connecting Phase Two of Sunny Point to Phase One and the county road?

2. If so, was the land on either side cleared?

And 3, Was your father in the process of building a pool in Phase Two when he disappeared?

After I sent the last text, I realized that the Jeep was coming to a halt. We’d reached the county road entrance. There was a barbed wire fence along the road a good fifty feet before it ended, trees on either side.

“Someone put up a fence,” I said, stating the obvious.

“The question is who,” Malcolm said, leaning his forearm over the steering wheel.

“Could have been a number of people. Could have been Hugo’s family or associates. If there was a gravel road here, nosy people could have come in and driven all over the land.”

“True,” he said absently, as though lost in thought.

“Or it could have been the bank or the new owners.”

He sat up. “Larkspur Limited,” he said in a lilting voice.

I studied him closely. “You are interested in Larkspur.”

He snorted and turned to me. “They are an unknown, and I don’t like unknowns.”

“Then you must be really disappointed,” I said, “because life is full of unknowns.”

Rather than answer, he turned the Jeep around in a big U-turn and faced the pool, which was a couple hundred feet away. “You get an answer yet?”

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