him it seemed he hadn’t done it on purpose.
She returned her attention to Wayne. “Who are they?”
Wayne shrugged. “Some guys Cyrus knew. He worked with them, maybe. Liz didn’t like them, said they were bossy, and pretty rude to her dad. And she said they always came sort of secret and quiet, like they didn’t want anyone else to see them. They got all hinky when I was there once.”
“Was there another man who hung out with them?”
“Yeah.” He made a face. “Pretty creepy. Never said anything, but was always around when they showed up. Liz couldn’t stand him. Actually, if she saw him coming she took off. Said he scared her.”
“So were these guys Cyrus’ employers?”
“I guess. Not sure, though. Never even heard their names. Or what they did.”
“Robbie was telling me about ‘bad guys’ Cyrus hung out with,” Casey said, “but that no one knows for sure what they were doing that was bad. Would he be talking about these three?”
“Robbie?” He gave a half-laugh. “That boy sees criminals everywhere he looks. He’d have half the town in jail if we believed everything he suspected. And that’s just the stuff happening now. The town’s history is apparently an open booking session.”
The waitress came with their lunches, hamburgers and fries for everyone but Betsy, who got a small salad that she didn’t even touch. Wayne picked up his burger, then set it down and wiped his hands absently on his napkin.
“So you don’t think Cyrus was into anything illegal?” Casey asked.
“I can’t imagine it. He was a straight shooter. Wouldn’t take charity—wanted to pay his own way, which is supposedly why they lived in a car. He didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, there weren’t any other women…” He looked down at the table for moment, but then shrugged. “Liz didn’t seem to mind too much, about the car. She’d spend nights at Betsy’s sometimes, and I know he and Liz went to the church to sleep when it got super cold that one week.”
Betsy started. “Really? I didn’t know. Oh, why wouldn’t they come stay with us?”
“You know why. And like I said, I think Liz was okay with ‘camping out’ most of the time. She used the showers at school, and only slept in the car. She could study at one of our houses, or the library. She was okay. I think she felt like she sort of had to take care of her dad, ever since Vivian died. That pretty much destroyed him.”
Betsy frowned and crossed her arms, shaking her head.
“Back to these men,” Casey said. “Any idea what work Cyrus was doing for them?”
“Something temporary. He kept telling Liz it was just for a while, then those men would be gone. It was something he was good at, probably to do with woodworking. He was a master craftsman, people were lucky if they got something built by him.”
“Woodworking? That doesn’t sound criminal.”
“I told you, it wouldn’t have been. Not with Cyrus.”
Casey spun the photo around and looked at it again. Elizabeth—Alicia at the time of her death—had said it was the Three. It had to mean these three men, didn’t it? “Were these guys questioned after Cyrus was murdered?”
“Maybe. I hadn’t seen them around for a while. Cyrus went out of town sometimes, I guess to work, and Liz seemed to think Cyrus’ time with them was almost done. I’ve never seen them since Cyrus died.”
“She’d stay with me those nights Uncle Cyrus was gone,” Betsy said. “He told her she wouldn’t be able to hang out at the work site. I was always glad when she came, but it wasn’t often enough.”
Eric pulled out his notes. “We didn’t see anything in the newspaper articles about these guys, or about the cops even questioning anybody but Elizabeth. In fact, the media got on the Marshland cops for not knowing what they were doing.”
“Yeah, well.” Wayne frowned. “That was the big time folks thinking they knew more than people they considered hicks. The cops here did everything they could. They knew Cyrus and Liz, so it’s not like they didn’t want to catch whoever did it. They talked to all of us, all of their family, everyone Cyrus ever worked for. But there was nothing to go on. Forensics weren’t the same then as they are now, and the stuff they had just took them nowhere. The bullet couldn’t be matched to any guns, there weren’t any unknown fingerprints on the car—”
“How do they know that?”
“We all