“That would be great. Let’s get together tomorrow afternoon and hash out exactly what I want. I also brought you a box of canned goods. Don’t look at me like that. I need to unload them on someone. I’m trying to tidy up my pantry, and they’re just taking up space.”
Flanner grudgingly took the box of groceries. “I’m no charity case.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“I do appreciate it, though. Hunting these days has been spotty at best.”
Pleased that he at least accepted the canned goods, Gemma pointed to the box. “As you can see, I had an assortment of beans on hand.”
“I’ll put them to good use. Nothing goes to waste here.”
“That’s what I like about the cabin. You’ve used every scrap of material to its best potential.”
After leaving Flanner’s place, Gemma shook her head. “Why is he so stubborn?”
Lando spared his wife a glance. “Stubborn? You have him accepting food from you and agreeing to build you a shed. I’d say you have him eating out of the palm of your hand. Do you know how many trips I made out here, wondering if he had enough to eat? Never once did he ever let me leave a bag of groceries. Not one single time. He took to you like you were his long lost friend.”
Gemma lifted a shoulder. “What can I say? People like me.”
“What do you intend to do with this shed?”
“Put it right next to the greenhouse so I can use it for my seedlings. That greenhouse will always belong to my grandmother. But the shed, I picture it as all mine.”
Lando left it at that because he had to track down Bruce Barnhart via cell phone and send a string of text messages to get Bruce’s attention. The caretaker didn’t make it easy. The man kept dodging him up until Lando threatened to pull him in for an official interview down at the station. That pressure worked.
After wasting an hour with the back and forth, Bruce finally agreed to meet Lando just over the property line at the same gate entrance where Flanner had stood two days before.
But this summit was very different.
Lando found an annoyed Bruce Barnhart sitting in a brand-new, shiny, silver metallic pickup. The caretaker had cleaned himself up. Clean-shaven, he now looked like a boyish fifty-two-year-old with brown hair and blue eyes. After he got out of the truck, Bruce leaned against the side of his new ride. He stood about six-feet tall with a slim build.
Still sitting in the passenger seat of the cruiser, Gemma realized this wasn’t the man who had worn the San Francisco State sweatshirt the night of the murders. Disappointed, she listened to the man’s voice when he spoke to Lando.
“I told you a couple of times over the phone that I don’t know anything about a body,” Bruce insisted. “You know as much as I do. I have no idea how the man ended up dead near the creek. None.”
“So you haven’t seen a stranger nosing around since last Thursday or Friday where he shouldn’t be?”
“No. We get hunters out here sometimes. Maybe he was hunting illegally and encountered someone else who didn’t like him on his turf. It happens. But it wasn’t me.”
“Where were you last Sunday night when Ben Zurcher was murdered?”
“During the storm? Like any sane man, I was at home, in bed, asleep. The power went out at my place. I went to bed around midnight and didn’t wake up until morning.”
“Can anyone back you up on that?”
“No. I got divorced several years back. I’ve lived alone ever since.”
“But you’re very loyal to Jocelyn Williams, right?”
“She’s my employer. I was nineteen in 1987 when I went to work for her parents. The Trasks were good people. And when they were killed in that car accident, I stayed on because Sandra asked me to. And yeah, I’m a loyal kind of guy. But I draw the line at killing anybody for my employer. Oh, yeah. I know what you’re getting at. It was a horrible thing what happened to Sandra and her family. It ’bout killed me when I found out how they’d been murdered. But it wasn’t me that did it. I’d like to find the guy who did, though.”
“Okay, if that’s true, why were you so reluctant to talk to me?”
“Because I don’t like thinking about or talking about those little girls beaten to death in their beds. I knew those little angels. They were