Page 36 of Canyon Killer
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Ian is waiting.” She ended the call. Let Mom imagine what he was waiting for.
Ian was coming out of the bathroom when she exited the bedroom. He was freshly shaved and smelled of mint and soap. “Good morning,” he said. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“My mom woke me.”
“Is everything okay?”
“She went up to my apartment this morning—just to make sure I was okay, she says. And she noticed I hadn’t come home last night. Because she was in there yesterday, too, and saw the dirty dishes in the sink. I have no privacy!”
“I’m sorry. That is aggravating.” He wrapped his arm around her, and she leaned into him briefly.
Then she straightened. “I’ll survive. But it’s just as well she woke me. I have to be at work at ten, and I want to revisit the cave first.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Let’s have breakfast first.”
She hurried to get cleaned up and dressed, and met him in the kitchen, where he handed her a mug of coffee. She drank deeply. Nothing like that first cup to improve her mood.
They ate toast and peanut butter, finished their coffees, then stepped outside. Bethany breathed deeply of the cool morning air, the scent of evergreens detectible beneath the construction dust. She followed Ian across the canyon. Colored stakes and paint marked the location of various structures, mazes of scaffolding rose up in several places and bridges and platforms were beginning to take shape.
“Will the via ferrata extend this far?” she asked as they approached the trail up to the caves.
“I originally thought it would, but the engineer determined the soil is too unstable in this area. That’s probably why the mudslide did so much damage. We’ll stick to the areas with more stable rock formations.”
They climbed toward the cave. The trek seemed easier this time, the trail better defined than before, she supposed, because of all the trips various law enforcement personnel had made back and forth to the Bostons’ unfortunate gravesite.
At the entrance to the cave, Ian switched on a flashlight and played its beam across the floor. The opening itself was smaller than she’d remembered, dark and musty and swept clean.
“You say this wasn’t here when you purchased the property?”
“No. The sheriff’s department has pictures taken fifty years ago that show a lot of trees and underbrush here. The cave openings might have been in there somewhere, but they weren’t obvious in the photos. We think the mudslide last month took out a good chunk of hillside and revealed these openings.”
“Then how did Gerald and Abby get in here?”
“They may have crawled in to hide from someone. Or been forced in here at gunpoint, then shot.”
She shuddered. “I’d really like to know who Katherine’s boyfriend was,” she said. “If he was ruthless enough to run over her and leave her lying in the road, he might not balk at murder.”
“If Gerald’s nephew doesn’t know his name, I don’t see how we’ll figure it out,” Ian said.
“I want to try again at the historical society,” she said. “I’ll bet those old newspapers have more about Katherine. They probably would have reported the accident that injured her leg. Maybe we can find out more about her. And we can look for information on Abby’s family as well. Maybe they were locals, too.”
“It would be interesting to know more about them,” Ian said.
“Let me see.” She took the light from him and directed the beam along the walls, then shifted it to the floor. The impressions of many shoes showed in the dust, along with drag marks and flat areas where the deputies had set equipment. Something glinted in the light on the floor of the cave. She moved to examine it more closely. “Ian, look at this.”
He came to stand beside her. Spotlighted in the beam of the flashlight was a thin gold band.
She bent and picked it up. “It looks like a wedding ring.”
Bethany studied the ring. “Maybe it was Abby’s?” Ian sounded doubtful.
She shook her head. “Look at this place. The sheriff’s department swept it clean. How could they have missed this?”
“We’d better take it to them.”
She looked around the cave once more. “Do you think someone was here after the police left?” she asked. “Someone who left this?”
