Page 31 of The Devil Went Down to Laughlin
The same idea had already occurred to Caleb. “No, I’ll do it. You two stay here.”
As Ty opened his mouth — probably to protest — Prudence produced a key fob from inside her satchel. “We still need to look inside Delia’s car.”
And she clicked the fob, and immediately the little SUV’s lights flashed.
“You have a key?” Caleb demanded.
“Sure,” Pru said easily. “I gave her my backup, and she gave me hers. That way, we each had a little extra insurance in case either of us got stranded somewhere.”
“You could have said something about having a key.”
She shrugged. “I needed to dust for fingerprints before I looked inside the car.”
Caleb glanced over at Ty, who appeared nonplussed.
“Okay, then you two check out the interior of the car. I’m going to wander. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll bump into someone who saw Delia.”
Neither Pru nor Ty seemed too optimistic about the scenario, judging by their dubious expressions, and Caleb had to admit it was something of a long shot. Although there were a few other cars in the parking lot, they hadn’t seen a single soul. Anyone who was out and about in the park would be widely spaced enough that there was a good chance they wouldn’t have gotten close enough to notice any details about any other people they’d seen.
Although Caleb hoped Delia’s coppery hair was distinctive enough that someone might have caught a glimpse of her and would remember the sighting.
Besides, venturing out into the park seemed like a better way to use up some of his nervous energy than pawing around inside her car.
As he went, though, he found his spirits drooping lower and lower. He didn’t see anyone around, and the grounds appeared to be meticulously kept, with not a single dropped candy wrapper or soda can to stand out in the landscape. Possibly, that would have allowed him to instantly note anything Delia might have left behind, but he couldn’t help thinking that if the park rangers were this neat, they very well could have come along and erased any evidence of her presence here.
If she’d even left the parking lot.
He realized he hadn’t seen her at all today, so he had no idea what she’d been wearing when she drove down to Laughlin. She would have gone into the office first, since he knew she had an appointment in the morning, so maybe she was still wearing her usual professional attire of a blouse and skirt and heels.
No, that didn’t sound right. Although there had been times when she’d been forced to battle a demon while dressed up, usually she tried to wear something comfortable and practical if she wasn’t going to be at the office. She’d probably changed into jeans and flat shoes, most likely sandals, considering how hot it was out here.
So, even if he actually managed to bump into someone along the path, the only description he’d be able to give would be of a slender red-haired woman in her late twenties and not much else.
Great.
He made a loop and then headed back to the parking lot, knowing he wasn’t going to find a damn thing out here even if he stayed in the park all afternoon and all evening. The best he could do now was circle back and hope against hope that maybe Pru and Ty had found something inside Delia’s vehicle.
That sort of search wouldn’t have taken them very long, though. He wondered what they would have found to talk about while he was gone.
The two of them were sitting on the open hatchback of the Hyundai when he approached. Caleb wasn’t sure that was entirely respectful, but then again, it wasn’t as if park benches had been provided out here in the parking lot.
Also, the Range Rover would have automatically locked itself, so it wasn’t like they could have sat down in there, even if they’d wanted to deal with the heat.
“Find anything?” Pru asked, and he shook his head.
“Nothing. No sign at all that she even went into the park. I didn’t see anyone I could ask, either.”
The low grumble of a motorcycle approached from the feeder road that led into the parking lot. All three of them looked in that direction.
“Great,” Caleb muttered.
The motorcyclist was a cop. Not that any of them were doing anything illegal, but still, he tried to avoid law enforcement whenever possible. So far, the identification he’d procured at some cost seemed to be holding up — once he’d used the fake birth certificate to obtain a Nevada driver’s license, everything had been golden —and yet he’d rather not stress-test it right now.
Both Pru and Ty got up from their perch on the rear hatch of Delia’s SUV. Neither of them looked worried, but then, Ty rarely did. Caleb was a little less certain about how Prudence would act under pressure, although he had a feeling that anyone whose daily routine involved following cheating husbands and collecting evidence on insurance fraudsters probably wouldn’t lose her cool very easily.
“This your vehicle?” the cop asked after he’d paused right behind the Kona. He was so typical that he might have come right out of central casting — burly, maybe in his late thirties or early forties, hair cut short, mustache on his upper lip and mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes.
For just a second, Pru hesitated. Then Ty tilted his head toward her so slightly that Caleb might have imagined the gesture, and she said, “Yes, it’s mine. Is there a problem?”
