Chapter Eight
Having determined that the caller was the new neighbor, Buck told him to stay put. He would need to question them, and he might as well do it right away. One more thing he wanted to take care of first, though. He scanned through the contacts on Lulu’s phone until he recognized the name he was looking for: Jace Barwick, in Bisbee. Lulu’s boyfriend.
Still wishing he could get cell reception here, he used the landline to dial the number, waited. After a couple of rings, he heard a click, followed by, “Hello?”
“This is Lieutenant Buck Shelton with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office. I’m calling for Jace Barwick.”
Hesitation. “Umm, that’s me.”
“Mr. Barwick, are you Lulu Lavender’s boyfriend?”
“We see each other,” Jace said.
“Did she happen to spend last night with you? Or away from her home anywhere, to your knowledge?”
“No,” Jace answered immediately. “I talked to her right about nine thirty, and she was at home. Then I got a text from her, a little after ten. And she posted an entry on her Instagram later than that. I think she was there all night.”
“And you haven’t heard from her today?”
“Not yet. Can you tell me what this is all about?”
“Please think very carefully, son. Is there any place else she might have stayed the night? A friend’s house, something like that?”
Jace didn’t consider for long. “Like I said, she posted online, late. She wouldn’t have gone out after that. Please, what’s going on? I’m kind of freaking out here.”
“I’m afraid I might have some bad news for you, Mr. Barwick. I’d prefer to tell you this in person, but I’m afraid there isn’t time for me to drive up to Bisbee right this minute. Lulu’s not in her house. Her family has been killed—her mother, father, and both boys, but there’s no trace of Lulu, and—”
“Oh my God!” After the exclamation came a huffing noise Buck took for labored breathing, or perhaps an attempt to hold back sobs.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, son. There isn’t necessarily any indication that Lulu’s been hurt in any way. That’s why I asked you if there’s any other place she might have spent the night, because there’s no sign of struggle in her room.” He heard no response from the other end of the line and wondered if Jace had hung up, or fainted. “Mr. Barwick?”
“I’m here.” The voice was faint, unsteady. “She has some friends around there, but I don’t know all their names. Sasha, I think, and Elenora. Becka. Paul. I … there are more, but … their numbers are in her phone, I think.”
“We’ll do everything in our power to find Lulu, Mr. Barwick. I don’t want you to have any doubts on that score.”
“Do you … do you know who … killed her family? Kevin and Neal?”
“At this point we don’t know much of anything, I’m afraid. But we’ll find out, you can bank on that.”
Jace sniffled a little before answering. “Okay. God, I can’t believe … nothing better have happened to her.”
Buck was not at all surprised by the boy’s quick switch between emotions. He was dealing with a lot, and it had all come from nowhere. Buck had seen the bodies, and Lulu’s empty bedroom, all of which made the whole thing very real, very concrete. Jace didn’t have that advantage. Very likely it wouldn’t be real to him for a while yet.
After finishing up with the boyfriend, Buck left Scoot to mind the crime scene and drove through the downpour to the old Martin house, where Oliver Bowles lived now. The sand-colored stucco-sided house occupied a five-acre parcel that had once been part of the same ranch the Lavenders owned now. A ten-thousand-acre spread had been whittled down to eighty-acre lots, then just under forty, and finally five. That kind of subdivision was common enough in these parts—Buck’s own ranch had once been a larger cattle outfit, but it had been split between his father and three other siblings, then divided again when his father died. Most of the owners had sold out and moved on or passed away long ago, but Buck still owned some of his dad’s portion and ran some cattle on it with the help of a Salvadoran immigrant named Aurelio Santana.
Beside the house Buck couldn’t stop thinking of as the Martin place—they had lived there for forty-eight years, and both Nestor and Leticia were buried down in Douglas now—was a steel garage, and behind that a shed big enough for a riding lawnmower and some other garden implements but not much more. The rest of the land, except for a trimmed lawn immediately around the house, was the same combination of mesquite, creosote bush, yucca, and other high desert scrub the Lavenders had.
Buck thought he’d seen Oliver around the area a couple of times but had never met him. When the door opened, he knew he had been right.
“Mr. Bowles?”
“That’s right. Oliver Bowles. Come on in.” Oliver Bowles extended a hand, and Buck took it. The man’s grip was firm and he gave a friendly handshake. Nothing sketchy there, Buck thought. Oliver directed Buck through the dining room and into a living room, really an extension of the same area defined by furniture more than walls.
Oliver looked to be in his late thirties. Lean but muscular, he appeared to be a guy who worked out some. Maybe he played tennis or soccer, not football or baseball. That was just a guess, but a cop had to learn to make quick judgments about people.
Oliver had short black hair, about a third of which had turned to gray. Black wire-framed glasses, stylish, with small oval lenses. Deep creases in his thin cheeks that probably acted as dimples when he smiled. He wasn’t smiling now. He wore a black polo shirt, jeans, leather moccasins, with no socks or jewelry.
“Has something happened at the Lavenders’?” he asked. “Stupid question, you wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t. What’s going on?”
“I’d like to be the one to ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Buck said. “After I’m done you can have a turn, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Should my wife be here?”
“She home?”
“She’s painting in the other room,” Oliver said.
“Fetch her, please.”
Oliver pointed to a leather armchair and left the living room. Buck sat down, examining the room. Nicely decorated with lots of floral fabrics on chairs and sofa—the leather chair was an anomaly, and Buck guessed Oliver had offered his own favorite seat. Cut flowers and live plants spilled from pots here and there, mostly copper with white china handles and ornamentation. The smell of fresh paint masked any aroma from the plants and flowers.
Buck heard murmured conversation, then both returned. The wife was a looker, a little younger than her husband and with a body on her that made Buck think of the calendar hanging on the wall at Hank’s Auto Repair and Tires. The Arizona sun had tanned Oliver Bowles, but his wife kept out of it or slathered on the SPF-50. Only a spray of freckles across her nose showed that she had ever stepped outside the house.
“This is Jeannie,” Oliver said.
“Pleased to meet you, Sheriff,” she said. “I only wish it were under different circumstances.”
“You can call me Lieutenant Shelton, ma’am,” Buck said. He had taken off his hat and held it in his lap, in the leather chair Oliver had indicated. He kept his pants leg—where mud from the running board of his vehicle smeared his calf—well away from the chair. His pants stayed muddy there for the entire monsoon season, no matter how hard he tried to step past the running board when he got out. Holding his hat with his left hand, he half stood and shook Jeannie’s with his right. “Or Buck. Cochise County only has the one sheriff and he don’t like us to forget it. You’re doing some painting?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“You didn’t just move in, did you?”
“We’ve been here since January, Lieutenant,” Oliver answered coolly. He and Jeannie sat together on the couch across from Buck. “We didn’t do a whole lot of work on the house right away because we wanted to see how we liked it here, how my job would pan out, that kind of thing. We’re feeling a little more settled, so we’re going ahead with some projects. Now, what is it we can we do for you?”
Buck had wanted to get a sense of both of them, but now that he had he wanted to question them separately. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’d like to talk to each of you in turn. All right if I take your husband outside for a few minutes? You can go back to your painting and we’ll be right back.”
Her smile wrinkled the skin around her nose. “Be my guest.”
Oliver Bowles shrugged and led the way back outside. “Is this how it’s usually done?”
“That’s right,” Buck said. “I like to hear from one person at a time.”
They stood under an overhang just outside the front door. The lawn needed cutting. Buck knew how that was—during the monsoon, grass you usually had to coax out of the ground burst forth so fast you could hardly keep up with it. “What do you want to know?” Oliver asked.
“You all know the Lavenders very well?”
“We’ve met the whole family a few times,” Oliver said. “But we haven’t really socialized much, I’m afraid. Been kind of busy. Really the only one we know well is Lulu.”
“How do you come to know her?”
“She’s been in a couple of the classes I teach at Cochise College. And she’s been very helpful since we moved in here. She came over the day we moved in and introduced herself. Since then, anytime we’ve needed to know something like how to get cows out of the yard or what to do about tarantulas or centipedes, she’s the one we turn to.”
“How often would you say you see her?”
“Monday, Wednesday, Friday,” Oliver said. “Last quarter she was in a Tuesday/Thursday class. Sometimes she rides to school and back with me, but only if she’s not doing something else before or after classes.”
“And what about your wife?”
“She sees Lulu, I don’t know, maybe once every week or two. We have her over for dinner sometimes. And she’s watched our place a couple of times when we went out of town. Is Lulu okay, Lieutenant?”
“Like I said before, Mr. Bowles,” Buck dodged, “you’ll get your turn, but it’s not here yet. Can you tell me when the last time either of you saw her was?”
“Monday,” Oliver answered flatly. “I drove her to school, then saw her in class. She had an activity after school, so she didn’t need a ride home.”
“What about the rest of the family?”
“When did we see them last?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t know. When I’m driving Lulu, she usually comes over here and meets me. She has a cup of coffee with us, and then we take off. When I drop her off, sometimes there’s somebody outside and other times there’s not. I guess it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen them.”
“Have you been in their house?”
“Yes,” Oliver said. He watched a curve-billed thrasher hop from a soaptree yucca to the ground, no doubt chasing some tasty insect. “They had us over for dinner after we got settled in. We had them over once too. They’re nice people and everything, but we really didn’t have much common ground, so we didn’t keep it up.”
“How long since you’ve been inside there, would you say?”
“Probably four or five months,” Oliver said, then corrected himself. “Or, no. Couple of months ago Lulu had a DVD she wanted to loan me, so when I dropped her off, I went in the front door and stood there talking to Hugh for a couple of minutes while she found it. Nothing more extensive than that.”
“You don’t have any idea where Lulu spent last night, either of you?”
“I would assume she spent it at home. She’s a good girl, gets along with her family. There’s no tension there that I’ve seen, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
So far Buck had no reason to suspect he was lying or trying to cover anything. Time had come to drop the bomb and watch Oliver’s reaction.
“Lulu’s missing,” he said. “And the rest of the family has been murdered. Hugh, Manuela, the boys, they’re all dead.”
Oliver’s reaction was subdued, but appeared authentic. A widening of the eyes, parting lips, blanching of the skin. He looked incredulous. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely,” Buck said. “I just came from there, as you know.”
“But—someone killed them?”
“That’s right. All except Lulu, who’s nowhere to be found. I know this will be hard for you, since you seem close to the girl, but I have to ask. Do you think she’s someone who could have killed her own family and run away?”
Oliver shook his head dramatically. “Definitely not. No. No. She isn’t that kind at all. She’s peace-loving, gentle. She’s a bit of a progressive activist, actually, certainly not a person with any violence in her.”
“We’ve all got some violence inside us, Mr. Bowles,” Buck corrected. “Sometimes it’s just a matter of how far down you have to dig to turn it out.”
“Not Lulu Lavender.”
“I don’t think so either, sir,” Buck said. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk to your wife now. You can wait out here until we’re done.”
“You say that like I have a choice.”
Buck tossed him a smile. “Guess I’m peculiar that way.”
He left Oliver on the covered walkway and found Jeannie inside, trying to resume her painting but obviously unable to focus on anything but her anxiety over what Buck and her husband were discussing. She invited him to sit in the same chair he’d used before, and he complied, again removing his hat. They talked for about ten minutes, covering much of the same ground, but she had nothing different to say about the Lavenders than her husband had.
Finally, he told her the same thing he’d told Oliver about the murders and Lulu’s disappearance. “Your husband doesn’t believe Lulu could kill her own family,” he added.
“I agree,” Jeannie said. “Lulu would never do anything like what you’re suggesting. She didn’t even want us to kill rattlesnakes.”
“Good for her,” Buck said. “It’s against the law to kill them. I can’t say it isn’t done, especially if they get near the house. But I can’t advise it, either.”
“That’s what she told us,” Jeannie said. “But more than that, she said, they’re God’s creatures too, and if we just left them alone, they’d leave us alone. So far, she’s been right.” She paused a moment, then brought her hands up to her face, as if she could catch the sobs that burst from her. “Oh, God, she’s got to be okay.”
Buck let her plea hang in the air for a few moments, wanting to see how she would follow it up.
“Do you have any idea who might have done it, Lieutenant?” Jeannie asked, breaking the silence. “Or where she might be?”
Buck spread his hands. “I have nothing at all yet, except a houseful of bodies and a missing girl,” he admitted. “But we’ll find her, and we’ll figure out what happened. You have my word on that.”