Dying Echo A Grim Reaper Mystery - By Judy Clemens Page 0,77
told me how you knew to come to Marshland. Or even what Elizabeth’s real name was.”
“Here we go,” Death sang.
“Lucky, I guess,” Casey said.
Kay nodded. “Um-hmm. And how is that?”
“Ricky had already figured out the Texas part.”
“Right.”
“We have the photo of Cyrus and his car.”
“Which has nothing on it to indicate it was even in Texas, let alone a specific location.”
“We searched for missing women from Texas.”
“Of which there are thousands if you go back that far.”
“I don’t know, Casey,” Death said. “I think she’s got your number.”
“It was everything together,” Casey said. “And my lawyer and I were talking about how her false name—you can ask the cops, they thought it was a false name, too, since they couldn’t find anything on Alicia McManus—and how people often choose something sort of like their real name. When we saw the name Elizabeth Mann, it sort of stood out.”
“Wow,” Death said. “That’s actually a pretty good argument. But at the same time it’s a bit lame.”
Kay looked steadily at Casey. After a while she said, “Okay. I’ll accept that for now.”
Casey tried not to look too relieved. “So can I ask some questions?”
Kay gestured for her to go ahead.
“Why were there never any suspects, other than Elizabeth?”
“We talked to a lot of people.”
“But no one seriously.”
“Who’s to talk to? People in this town? Nobody here would shoot down someone they know. They aren’t like that.”
“Kay, this is Texas. Everybody has a gun. Or two. You telling me they aren’t going to use them?”
“Yes, of course our citizens own guns. But these are law-abiding neighbors. We don’t have gangs or the mafia or even drugs, other than the random weed. Our folks aren’t resolving their differences by shooting each other. They have guns in their houses to protect their homes and families from outsiders.”
“By owning deadly weapons that can be turned just as easily on them?”
“Oh, boy,” Death said. “Are we really going to get into this argument? I don’t think you can win it. Not down here.”
“You were asking about suspects,” Kay said. “And there just weren’t any to be found. The gun forensics didn’t match up with anything we have on file. No one saw strangers that day, certainly not these men on the photo, and there wasn’t anybody in town who wanted Cyrus dead. We may have wanted him locked up, but not dead.”
“Locked up? Why? From how Wayne talked, Cyrus was a straight arrow.”
“From a hormonal teenage boy’s perspective he might have been. He put up with Cyrus because he was in love with Elizabeth. Even sixteen-year-old boys get snookered when they’re horny. Or maybe I should say especially sixteen-year-old boys.”
“But what was Cyrus into? If you had reason to lock him up, why was he still free?”
“It wasn’t that he was a criminal. But he was living in a car. A lot of us wanted to lock him up for child endangerment.”
“Betsy said he didn’t want to take charity. And that Elizabeth was the one who chose to live in the car instead of with Betsy.”
“I’m sure that’s what Betsy’s father told her.” She rested her elbows on the table. “Cyrus was a woodworker. A good one. Just the year before he’d had his own business, making custom furniture, but apparently he was never good with the money end of things, so he ended up selling out right in the middle of his wife’s illness. I’m sure the stress did him in. He got another job right away, over on the Gulf with some people who built luxury houseboats—”
“As if there’s any other kind,” Death said. “You ever see a poor person with a houseboat?”
“—and that was a good start, but he lost that job within a few months. It was like something had switched off in his head. His bad business decisions expanded into bad personal decisions, and the next thing we knew, he and Elizabeth were living on the street, and he was working shady jobs.”
“Couldn’t you do something about their living arrangements? Aren’t there laws—child services, or whatever?”
“Believe me, we did our best. Chief Zinn, who was here before me, he was friends with Cyrus, with his parents, actually, and he did everything to get him to be sensible, but there was something about it…” She shook her head. “Elizabeth didn’t help. She said she was staying with her dad no matter what, and she didn’t mind living in the car.”
“So you let a fourteen-year-old make her own housing decisions?”