Page 76 of Wicche Hunt

Osso looked at me in the rearview mirror as he pulled to a stop in front of the main house. “What?”

“Sorry. I’m not a cop.”

Hernández got out and opened the back door for me. “It’s okay. Most of your questions we’ve already asked ourselves and have done the digging, but not all. Sometimes you bring up ideas I hadn’t considered.”

I grabbed my backpack.

“Besides,” Osso said, “you do all this for free. We can put up with questions and theories for free psychic insight.”

“Okay. I’ll finish the thought. Do any of those service employees or their families have ties to Cypress Academy? Like the women we met, Isabel and Sofia. They’ve been at the school a long time, but I’m sure others had a hard time and left and now maybe work for the company that cleans here.”

“You’re losing the thread,” Osso said as he led us toward the cliff at the edge of the property. “The killers aren’t a couple of disgruntled cleaning ladies. You said we’re looking for young men, previous students of Cypress, right?”

“Good point.” I followed in his wake.

“You’re not wrong, though,” Hernández said. “That is what we check. Maybe one of them has a nephew who’s brilliant and got a scholarship to attend. Lots of possibilities.”

Osso snorted a laugh. “You really see these people inviting the little Latino charity case to their millionaire parties?”

“Depends,” I said, and Hernández nodded. “If the scholarship kid was a star at the school or just friends with this couple’s son, yeah, he’d be invited.”

“This isn’t a school that accepts a bunch of poor kids who work hard. We checked. There are only one or two scholarships given every year. Maybe I’m jaded, but I’d guess those scholarship kids are treated like the help by the rest of the students.” He stopped at the edge of the lawn.

“Huh,” I said. “I would have thought they’d at least put up one of those short corral fences, so people didn’t accidentally walk over a cliff to their death.” We all walked to the edge and looked over. The water barely broke over the rocks. I checked the time on my phone. “Low tide.”

Osso nodded. “If Garza went over at high tide, the killer may have thought the body would be washed out to sea.”

“Body gets caught on the rocks, ebb tide, and sailboat passes,” I said.

“We were lucky,” Hernández agreed. “The coroner says his death was last night. If the tide hadn’t been receding, we might not have found the body for weeks.”

“If at all,” Osso said.

“Are we sure this is where he went over?”

Osso shook his head.

“Okay.” I handed my backpack to Hernández. “You two move back. Let me wander around a bit.”

THIRTY

A Spring in His Step and a Song in His Heart

Ishook off the conversation and centered myself. Closing my eyes, buffeted by the wind, I lowered my guard and thought about the man’s death. Immediately, I felt emotions coming at me from Hernández and Osso. “Could you guys move farther away? I don’t need to know someone got into a fight with their significant other this morning.”

“Don’t look at me,” Osso grumbled.

“It wasn’t a fight. Just a misunderstanding about who said they’d stop at the market yesterday. We’re out of coffee,” Hernández explained.

Thankfully, their voices and emotions were quieting as they moved farther away. I tried again. No. This wasn’t the place. “A man shoved his elderly mother over right here. He wanted to inherit the family fortune, but—based on the clothing—it was probably a hundred years ago.”

I walked along the edge. The murder had taken place last night. I should feel something. Since I didn’t, I kept walking. When I reached the tree line, I almost turned back, but I felt a pull ahead. Yes. This felt like the one who’d killed the teacher at the country club.

When I passed a large pine tree, the buzz became painful. I slipped off my glove and touched a finger to the bark.

He checks his thick gold watch again. The stupid old man is late. He looks up at the big house and steps out of the moonlight, leaning against a pine tree. The family never used to have cameras pointed in this direction. Hopefully, that’s still true. He pulls down the brim of his ball cap and tugs up the collar of his jacket.

That’s all he needs. He’ll never hear the end of it if he gets caught trespassing. He checks his watch again, anticipation building. Is it fear? No. It’s excitement.

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