Below the Bones

by Elliot, Kendra

“Both blonde and attractive,” said Tessa. “I wonder if the hair color is important. Jeff Lamb liked blondes too.”

  “Is Kurt searching specifically for missing blondes?” Mike asked Tessa. “It could steer us toward the third victim.”

  “He knows about it, but he also knows it’s not conclusive.”

  “Did the investigators from the different cities connect these two women’s disappearances?” questioned Cate.

  “They didn’t,” said Tessa. “Yes, they both show up on a list of missing women in Washington, but no one looked closely at the two cases side by side.”

  “I guess I know what we’re doing the rest of the day,” Mike said. He held Cate’s gaze. “I could use another pair of eyes. You’re still cleared for temporary duty.”

  It’s just computer work.

  “Yes, I’ll help.”

  Five hours later, Cate’s eyes hurt. And they were no closer to finding a link between the two women than when they’d started. Her back room looked like a command headquarters—of a very small command. Papers were in stacks on the table and on the floor. Her printer had been going nonstop.

  Three laptops and several yellow pads took up the rest of the space. “Should we have set up at your county sheriff’s office instead?” Mike asked.

  Cate grinned. “This room is bigger than the office. They’ve got a holding cell and a desk. That’s about it.”

  “A few chairs,” Tessa added. “And a TV. It’s too crowded if all three of us are there.”

  Mike raised his brows but didn’t comment; instead he made a notation on a whiteboard Cate had hung on the wall.

  Tessa had dashed to the hardware store and bought the four small whiteboards the place had in stock, causing people to stare as she’d emptied the shelf. “I’m curious to hear what the gossip says I’m doing with all these boards.”

  “It’s office supplies. Four whiteboards,” said Mike. “That’s gossip worthy?”

  “Yes,” Tessa and Cate replied in unison.

  “Your gossips are hard up,” he said. “What do they have to say when crime actually happens?”

  “Oh, that makes the gossip mill too,” said Tessa. “I post all our arrests on our Facebook page—it’s easier to maintain than a website. We can’t afford a web developer anyway, and people love to read about who got in trouble that week. It’s in the weekly paper too.”

  “What kind of crime do you have on an island?” Mike asked. “Besides this case.”

  “We have a lot of domestics,” Tessa told him. “Fights. Burglaries. There’s a drug problem here, which feeds all three of those.”

  “Tourist season is different, though,” added Cate.

  “Yes, that’s when we get the complaints about tourists clogging the streets and blocking traffic. A lot of trespassing calls, because tourists will cross private property trying to get the best view and selfie. The most interesting call last week was that someone stole a Slip ’N Slide.”

  Mike stared at Tessa. “Didn’t you use to work for the Seattle PD? How did you handle the change of pace? You’ve got to be bored.”

  “Priorities change.” Tessa pressed her lips together, and Cate knew she didn’t want to discuss her mother’s Alzheimer’s.

  “I didn’t hear about the Slip ’N Slide,” Cate said quickly to change the topic. “Who took it?”

  “The next-door neighbor. She was tired of hearing the kids screaming nonstop as they used it.”

  “I thought you small-town islanders all get along, like in Mayberry,” said Mike. “I’m growing disenchanted.”

  “And we’re getting off topic,” said Cate. “Focus, people.”

  “I’m beginning to think our recent victims were totally random,” said Tessa in frustration. “We’re simply not finding a link between these two women.”

  Cate leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. Tessa was right. “Okay. Let’s try a different approach for a while and refocus on Jeff Lamb. He obviously has a contact on the island. Who is it?”

  “Where’s his prison visitor-and-phone-call list?” asked Tessa.

  “I’ve got it here somewhere,” said Mike, reading his screen. “Sending it to the printer.”

  Cate went to take the pages from the printer behind the bookstore’s counter. Her teenage employee sat on a stool at the counter, reading a novel, and didn’t look up as his boss took sheets from the printer for the tenth time that day. Cate didn’t care if her staff read on the job. Business was often slow—there wasn’t a lot to do—and if they discovered a book they loved, they could recommend and sell it to customers.

  It was a good idea in theory, but she didn’t think it had actually happened yet.

  She grabbed five sheets of paper and squinted at the tiny print. “So many phone calls,” she muttered. The last page was personal visits. She felt smug, looking at the short list, recognizing that most of the visits were from his attorney. She hoped it bugged the hell out of Lamb that he was alone for the most part. His family had hightailed it out of Washington and cut all ties when he’d become one of the state’s most notorious killers.

  She went back to her chair and handed two of the pages to Tessa. “It’s mostly phone calls. No one can call him. He has to either make the call collect or with a prepaid card. And the phone number he calls has to be on an approved list.”

  “Which we don’t have,” said Tessa.

  “Sorry,” said Mike. “They wouldn’t give it to me. Something about inmate privacy.”

  “But they’ll give you the numbers.” Tessa rolled her eyes. “So we have to look up all these numbers to see who they belong to?”

  “Do you want to go back to searching for connections between the two identified victims?” asked Cate.

  “No.” Tessa organized her pages on the table and got started.

  Cate went through the visitor list first. There wasn’t much to research. A couple of reporters and a local true-crime author had visited. She knew Lamb wasn’t allowed to profit from his story and had a sour attitude about letting anyone else profit from it—even the families of his victims. She wondered why he had agreed to see the author.

  He was bored.

  She imagined he enjoyed teasing the author, letting him think he might get permission to write his story. He’d probably stretched out the entertainment for weeks.

  Cate started to research the phone numbers and discovered many of them were Google numbers, leaving her no way to track the owner’s identity. “Mike, there has to be a way to get the approved-name list from the prison. Most of these numbers are unsearchable.”

  “I’m finding the same,” said Tessa.

  “So that’s why they let me have those lists. I’ll see what I can do.” He picked up his cell phone and stepped outside.

  “Mike doesn’t want us to know who he’s going to call,” said Tessa with a grin. “Why didn’t he contact that person for the list in the first place?”

  “Because he needs to leave an appropriate trail of inquiry.” Cate had done the same a number of times. Gone through all the accepted channels and then quietly jumped a fence when she hadn’t found what she’d wanted. “We might as well wait on searching these numbers until he gets a list.” She had no doubt that Mike knew someone who would get it.

  Cate scanned the women’s social media accounts, which were still up, and looked for friends in common but found nothing. It was disturbing to see photos of the happy women, knowing they had been murdered. Especially the images with their kids. Cate stopped on one that showed Tianna hugely pregnant with her twins. She stood on a beach, the ocean behind her, her hand on her stomach and a beaming grin on her face.

  So horrible for those babies to lose their mother.

  As she looked at the photo, the hairs on Cate’s arms rose.

  She knew exactly where Tianna had stood in the photo. Even though only a few yards of rocky sand was visible in the picture, Cate saw far in the background—nearly cut out of the photo—the distinctive prof
ile of Ruby’s Island. The tiny island stood in the middle of Widow’s Bay. Tianna had been photographed on the beach just north of Harlot Harbor.

  Cate’s brain spun with questions and possibilities.

  Does this mean anything?

  “Tessa, look at this photo.” She turned her laptop toward the deputy, who leaned closer.

  “Wow. She was really pregnant there.”

  “Can you tell where she is?”

  “No—wait a second. That’s Ruby’s Island in the background!” Her excited gaze met Cate’s. “Tianna has been to Widow’s!”

  “But she hasn’t even had the twins in this picture. They were nearly a year old when she died, and we know she wasn’t on the island when she vanished.”

  “Let’s see if Nayla Reynolds has also visited the island. Wouldn’t it be odd if they’d been here on the same date?”

  Cate switched to Nayla’s Facebook account, but the photos were hidden by her privacy settings. “Damn privacy options.” Noticing that Nayla also had an Instagram account, she pulled it up, crossing her fingers that it wasn’t locked down.

  It wasn’t.

  Cate started to scroll. “If I don’t find any pictures, we should try to get her old credit card records. Perhaps there are some charges that place her on the island.”

  “On it,” said Tessa.

  Cate scrolled and scrolled, noting that Nayla had consistently labeled her posts with her location. The woman had taken over two thousand photos, mostly of her daughter. Cate paused every time she saw something that could be on the island. She slowly searched through the dates around the time of when Tianna’s photo had been taken.

  Nothing. Disappointed, Cate continued to look.

  Two minutes later she saw it.

  She opened the post. Nayla’s husband held their toddler daughter and an ice cream cone in front of Widow’s Ice Creamery. She checked the date. It was nearly two years earlier than Tianna’s photo. She showed Tessa her results.

  “Well, they weren’t here on the same day, but they did both visit Widow’s. I think it’s something . . . they must have caught someone’s attention.”

  “You think it’s a local we’re looking for,” said Cate.

  “It has to be someone who knows the area well enough to get three women onto the island and into the state park without anyone seeing something suspicious.”

  “True.”

  Mike reappeared. “The list is being texted to me in a photo.”

  Someone doesn’t want to use their email.

  “We discovered that Nayla and Tianna have both visited the island,” Cate told him. “But at different times.”

  Mike considered that. “It’s something, right?”

  “Yes, but we aren’t sure what.”

  His phone dinged, and he opened the text. He read it quickly. “There’s about twenty names. Nothing immediately jumps out at me, but maybe it will to one of you.” He handed his phone to Tessa, and Cate looked over her shoulder.

  Tessa flinched at the same moment Cate caught her breath.

  Cate scanned the rest of the names and came back to the only one she knew.

  Chris Corbin. The island’s real estate agent.

  10

  “What do you know about Corbin?” asked Mike as they walked down the street to the real estate office. They had checked the other names on the list, and no one lived on Widow’s Island. The link between Jeff Lamb and Chris was too big to ignore.

  Cate and Tessa exchanged a glance. “I don’t know much except that he’s rather quiet,” said Cate. “Seems to be good at his job. Clients say positive things.”

  “Same here,” agreed Tessa. “I don’t know him personally at all.”

  “If you want more information, Mike, I could call Jane,” suggested Cate. “She knows everything about everybody.”

  “I’d like to know who I’m dealing with. Call her.”

  Cate dialed. Jane picked up immediately, and she put her grandmother on speaker. “Jane, what can you quickly tell me about Chris Corbin?”

  “The real estate agent? I think he’s been here for about ten years. I remember Leslie was done with the real estate business about that time, and Chris took it over then. Let’s see . . . he dated Molly Kramer for a bit. Didn’t last. Lots of ladies around here have their eye on him, you know. Single men are rare on the island—although most of the single women are older than him. He’s always polite. Umm . . . seems like he leaves the island for a few weeks after the holidays. Goes somewhere warm, I believe. Maybe Arizona? What else do you want to know?”

  Mike shrugged at the question, and Cate understood. Chris Corbin seemed to lead an unobtrusive life.

  “I think that’s good enough for now.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I need to go—and please don’t tell anyone I asked you.” Cate mulled over the information as she ended the call. “Where do you think he goes in the winter?” she asked Tessa.

  “Who knows?” said Tessa. “Right now I’d like to talk to him, but I don’t want to tip our hand. I think asking why Jeff Lamb calls him would definitely do that.”

  “She’s right,” said Mike.

  “His car isn’t there,” Cate said, pointing at a spot next to the real estate office. “Chris always parks between those rocks.”

  “Whose car is that?” asked Mike.

  “Emma’s,” said Tessa.

  “She’s Chris’s assistant. You might have briefly seen her when we arrived at the bakery yesterday. Henry had been talking to her. I’ll call and ask her if Chris is in the office.” Cate dialed, and Emma promptly answered. “Hi, Emma, it’s Cate Wilde. Is Chris in?”

  “I’m sorry, Cate. He took the day off today. Do you need his cell number?”

  “I have it.” She looked at Tessa, an idea forming in her mind. “I might stop by with Tessa for a few minutes. You’ll be around?”

  “Yes, I’m here until five.”

  “Okay. See you in a few.” Cate ended the call.

  “What are you doing?” Mike asked, concerned lines between his brows.

  “Since he’s gone for the day, let’s ask Emma if the Reynolds and DeLeon families found their vacation rentals through Chris.” She looked from Mike to Tessa. “Chris’s name on that call list is definitely a lead we need to follow, but we don’t have any connection from him to the women—only a connection to Jeff Lamb. I think if we find that those families are past clients, that’s some hard evidence that could get us a warrant.”

  “I don’t know if Emma will feel comfortable giving out that information,” said Tessa.

  “I’ve found that asking nicely gets me a lot of facts that I didn’t expect,” said Cate. “Most people like to be helpful. The worst that could happen is she says no, so we’ve got nothing to lose.”

  Tessa eyed Mike. “Maybe you should wait outside since you’re not a familiar face.”

  He agreed and stepped off the sidewalk to head to the other side of the street.

  “I’ll ask Bruce to drive by Chris’s house and see if his car is there,” said Tessa, pulling out her phone. She swiftly sent a text and then followed as Cate opened the office door and entered.

  “Hi, Cate, Tessa,” Emma said cheerily from behind the reception desk. “Abby, say hello.”

  Her daughter was on her knees at the waiting room’s coffee table, coloring in a book. She looked up and nodded gravely at the two women. “Hello.” And she went right back to coloring.

  “What can I do for you two?” Emma asked.

  “A friend of mine used Chris to find a vacation rental about four years ago, but she doesn’t remember the address,” said Cate. “She wanted to recommend it to someone else. Do you think you could find the rental record?”

  “I think so,” said Emma as she pulled her keyboard close. “What’s her name?”

  “Nayla Reynolds.”

  Emma hummed softly as she typed and studied the screen. Cate was pleased that the young woman
had landed on her feet in a job she seemed to like.

  “Here we go. Nayla and Tim Reynolds. I’ll write down the address for you.”

  Cate glanced at Tessa, who widened her eyes. Her idea had paid off.

  Chris Corbin worked with one of them.

  “Can you check one more name?” Cate wanted to hold her breath. “Tianna DeLeon.”

  Emma input the name and scrolled several times. “I’m not seeing that name . . . could it be under something else?”

  “Maybe her husband’s name? Is there a DeLeon at all?”

  Emma shook her head. “Nothing’s coming up.”

  Disappointment rocked Cate.

  At least we have one. He could have crossed paths with Tianna in a different way.

  “Thanks, Emma,” said Tessa. “See you later, Abby.”

  “Later, alligator,” the little girl said without looking up from her coloring book.

  “After a while, crocodile,” Cate added as she followed Tessa out the door.

  They crossed the street to Mike and told them what they’d found. Tessa’s phone beeped.

  “Bruce says there’s no car at Chris’s house. He’s asking if we want him to knock.”

  “No,” said Mike. “Again, I don’t want to give anything away, especially now that we have a connection between him and Nayla Reynolds.” He looked to Tessa. “Can you put together a team to approach the home with me? If he’s there, all the better.”

  “Kurt and I can be ready in a half hour,” Tessa said.

  “Perfect. I appreciate the support. We’ll just ask him some questions.” He looked to Cate. “You coming?”

  “Yes.”

  I wouldn’t miss it.

  Henry stood beside Cate as they hung back at the road behind the police vehicles, watching as the three deputies and Mike walked up to Chris’s front door. Henry had texted Cate a half hour ago, hoping to meet at home for dinner, but Cate had said she was going with the police. He pressed for details and was shocked.

  Chris Corbin.

  That can’t be right.

  He didn’t see a killer in the quiet man. Chris had been to Henry’s clinic a number of times, trying to get his high blood pressure under control. Henry had adjusted his medications until they’d found the right drug and dose. He’d found the real estate agent intelligent, and they’d had several discussions about football, fishing, and Los Angeles, where Henry had lived and where Chris had spent a few years during college.