Page 48 of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

“Of course I already looked,” he said as he sat in a chair in front of my desk, then popped open his container.

“Well?”

He nodded his head toward my desk. “Have a look yourself. I’ve got a pot pie to eat.”

I opened the folder and scanned the top paper. It was a police report for Bethany Brewer’s death. A quick scan of it showed that Bethany’s body had been found on her family’s land, next to a small stock pond, with a traumatic head injury close to her left temple. Her sister Lila found her the next morning after the attack, already dead. Her parents said they’d last seen her at dinner the night before she’d been found, indicating that Bethany had gone to her room immediately after dinner. Thenight of the attack, Lila had been out for the evening and when she returned home, observed a lump on in Bethany’s bedspread that made her think her sister was tucked in bed, sleeping. But when she woke up the next morning, she discovered Bethany had piled several stuffed animals under her blanket. Unlike her parents, who did not at first express concern over the discovery of the deception, Lila grew worried and started searching the farm for her and found her by the pond. When the police inquired as to how she had known to look there, Lila hesitated before answering that Bethany liked to go there to think.

At first, the police theorized that Bethany had fallen and hit her head, but they never found any evidence that would have accounted for her injury. When they realized they were looking at a murder, they called in the sheriff’s department. The autopsy revealed that she’d been struck on the left side of her head, and that the injury must have been inflicted by an object with jagged edges, like a rock, though no murder weapon was found on site. Her time of death was placed around nine to eleven p.m. the previous evening.

Lila and her parents had been questioned. From their interviews, the police ascertained that Lila had been with a friend and missed her curfew, coming home after midnight, which led to a fight between her and her parents. Jim Bob and Celia had gone to church after dinner and had come home around nine. They claimed they hadn’t realized Bethany was gone, and the officer found the parents’ statements to be trustworthy. The sheriff’s deputies also questioned Bethany’s friends and classmates, but nothing unusual turned up. She wasn’t very involved in school, but she hadn’t been bullied, and she didn’t have any enemies that anyone knew about. The case remained unsolved.

After I finished reading, I glanced up at Luke, who was nearly finished with his food.

“A cold case?” I asked.

“Looks like it, but in cold cases, the detective tries to work on it between other cases. Follows leads that anyone brings them. But in this instance, he never looked into it again. Or at least if he did, he didn’t add his notes to the file.”

“I don’t suppose he’s still around to ask questions?” I asked.

“Nope. He was in his fifties at the time, and he died fifteen years later…about a month after he retired. Heart attack.”

“Is there anyone else from the force we can ask?”

“The Sweet Briar police chief and the sheriff who were in office at that time are also deceased, and so is the police department’s receptionist from back then. I can’t find any personnel files to look up who else may have been on the Sweet Briar force. The few guys who were in the sheriff’s department at that time and are still around and kickin’ don’t remember a thing about it.” He licked some pastry crumbs from his plastic fork. “Yep. I tracked them down. Which means we won’t be gettin’ any answers from law enforcement.” He pointed his fork at the food container on my desk. “You better eat that.” Theor I willwas definitely implied.

I popped open the lid, and my stomach growled at the sight of the flaky pastry crust. “Some of her friends’ names are listed in the report. We can talk to them. See if they remember anything. A few of the names looked familiar.” I closed the folder and rose from my chair to hand it over to Dixie. “You know half the people in this town. Maybe you can track them down.”

She rolled her chair to the edge of her desk and took the folder. “On it.”

I took a bite of my pot pie and nearly groaned. Maybelline might be a terrible gossip, but she was an amazing cook. Even Meemaw was hard-pressed to make pie crust this good…not that I’d ever admit it to her.

“You’re not planning to talk to anyone tonight, are you?” Bill asked, looking up at the clock.

It was well after seven, and it wasn’t like this was life and death. “No. Tomorrow will work, presuming Dixie can get some interviews set up.”

She snorted. “Please.I know most of these people. I’ll have half a dozen interviews set up for tomorrow within the hour. Now, what about the parents? Did you get their files too?” she asked, turning to Luke.

“Sure did,” he said smugly. Then he nodded toward me. “And I’ll save you the trouble of lookin’. They died together in a car accident. Ran off the road and flipped over. Both were killed instantly. Jim Bob was driving. The report states a witness said the car started swerving all over the road, almost like Celia was jerkin’ on the steering wheel, and then Jim Bob lost control, and the car flipped. The report says he narrowly missed crashing into another car.”

“Why would she have been grabbing the wheel?” I asked with a frown.

“Good question,” Luke said. “I guess we’ll never know.”

“And they were never suspects in their daughter’s murder?” I mused. “Call it a hunch, but the parents don’t strike me as particularly loving people, if their family photos—or lack thereof—are anything to go by. I can’t see them being easily dismissed as suspects.”

“I know a couple of people who go to the same church. They’re old enough that they probably attended about the time they did,” Dixie said. “I’ll set up some interviews with them too.” She grimaced. “But they have a bit of a sweet tooth. We might need to bring them a bribe.”

“Like a box of candy?” I asked.

“Nope. Chocolate chip cookies. Homemade. But I won’t have time to make any,” she said as she turned to look at Bill with somuch love in her eyes, I wondered for the umpteenth time how long it would be before she moved to Atlanta permanently to live with him. My heart ached to think about it. “I’m stayin’ with Bill, and you know how Meemaw feels about fornicatin’.”

I laughed. “You notice that I’ve never brought Luke home for an overnight.”

“No, you just go to his house,” she said. “Which is why I’ll sure be glad when the overseer’s house is done. Then Bill won’t have to stay in that seedy motel.”

“You and me both,” I said, then added, “The house being done. Not Bill having to stay in a motel.” I grimaced. “No offense, Bill. Of course you’ll be welcome to stay.”

He chuckled. “None taken. And thanks.”

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