what three-quarters of the town thought they knew.
“Alright—then, how do you know all this?”
Dev couldn’t very well write in a police report that he was getting information from the town gossip. He needed to follow her source until he heard from actual witnesses with credible intel. Misinformation was harmful, and not just to criminal investigations.
Dev hadn’t liked the feeling when he’d heard that Shea was expecting. He hadn’t liked wondering whether pregnancy cravings had something to do with all those special orders for odd foods, even though he already had a good explanation. And he hadn’t liked swallowing his pride and going to Delilah to hear the story, or the desperation he’d felt in needing the truth.
“Phoebe Tran told me,” Betty reported. “You know…Stanley Tran’s mother? The one who works with you on that economic council? You know Phoebe owns that cleaning service, right?”
Dev hadn’t known that, but he nodded, thinking he knew where Betty might be going. “Did they contract her to clean the Packard house?”
“She’s been contracted with Packard for decades. Goes up and cleans the whole place every month, like clockwork. Every single year, Packard renews. She’s got contracts with plenty of the Elk Mountain folk—the same thing, of going in monthly to clean then coming in to clean more frequently whenever they come to town to use their place.
“Only, nobody ever stays on the Packard estate. She goes in to clean the dust and run the water and stop the place from falling into disrepair. There’s other maintenance Packard brings in, like pest control. But, according to Phoebe, nothing’s been moved—not a plate in the cupboard or a chair pushed out from a table for someone to sit. She says it’s eerie—dated furniture, almost like a period museum. The house hasn’t been used or visited in years.”
It answered quite a few questions Dev had thought about himself. Clearly, he had been wrong to assume they wouldn’t be staying up at the Packard place. The helicopter had been in and out at least four times and Packard and his entourage had only been seen on and off in town. According to what Brody had eavesdropped, they had business with some contractors in Denver, which made sense if the team was there to project manage the build.
“You know anything about Gil having a contract with ‘em?”
Gil owned the property management company most vacation home owners used to maintain their properties.
“No,” Betty said. “But I’m thinking he’s worth a call.”
An hour later, Dev hadn’t called Gil, but Brody had come to get him in the cruiser. He wanted them to go together to survey Number Ten and Number Five. Number Ten had been the first of the mills to get hit and was the first on deck to go under construction. Whatever this was, Brody wanted Dev to see it. He promised to have Dev back at the Spoon in time to help Delilah. After the lunch rush, Silvio would be there with his delivery in the afternoon.
“When’s the last time you were up here?” Brody wanted to know as they pulled up to Number Five.
Dev couldn’t exactly recall. “Weeks,” he concluded.
“It rained most of last week.” Brody kept talking as they both got out of the car. “So why are these tire marks fresh?”
Brody had parked in an odd spot, a little bit off to the side of where he usually did. Sure enough, parallel mud tracks indicated a large truck. Boot prints from at least three different sets of shoes were also clear to Dev’s trained eye. More telling than the boot prints were a fourth set of prints—smooth-soled ones that were completely wrong for this terrain. The owner of the fourth set of prints didn’t have the experience or good sense to know what to wear to a construction site.
“You see any signs of forced entry?” Brody quizzed.
“No obvious ones,” Dev said, approaching the large padlock on the outside of the fence.
“Yet, these footsteps resume directly inside. That means, whoever was in this truck didn’t hop the fence or cut the lock. They had a key and they walked right in. I’m guessing you didn’t give ‘em a key, sheriff?”
Dev shook his head and put his hands on his hips. “Nope.”
“Well, I sure as shit didn’t,” Brody returned. “When I realized they’d been here, I didn’t want to enter the area. I thought both of us should be here for this.”
“Take pictures,” Dev commanded and left it at that. He didn’t like to feed Brody’s imagination.