Page 48 of Child In Jeopardy
“What’s there?” Lana insisted.
Her mother didn’t answer for a long time. “God, Lana. Your father murdered Alicia, and I believe I know where her body is buried.”
Chapter Fifteen
Slater felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Out of his body. And he had no doubts Lana was battling the same thing right now.
The shock and sickening dread of what Pamela had just said.
Your father murdered Alicia, and I believe I know where her body is buried.
Slater had to shove aside the emotion of that accusation and remind himself to think like a cop. And that meant questioning things well beyond the surface level.
“Pamela, what did you find to make you think that?” Slater demanded once he was able to speak.
“Some old emails from the files I took from Leonard’s computer.” Pamela was still crying, but her words were rushed, as if she couldn’t say them fast enough. “I saw the date on them. It was when Alicia was murdered, and then I remembered something else. One of our vehicles had to be towed then. I don’t know why I recalled it, but it just flashed in my head when I read those emails.”
“Slow down, Mother,” Lana instructed. “What does a possible car malfunction have to do with Alicia’s murder and the emails?”
“Everything,” Pamela insisted, and she repeated the word several times before she finally continued. “I got a call from a tow truck company that night, and the person told me they had pulled the car out of a bog but there was some damage to the front end, and they wanted to know if they should go ahead and take it to the garage where the estate vehicles were normally taken for servicing and such.”
Slater mentally worked his way through that. This was obviously a towing service that Leonard was accustomed to using if they knew where to take the damaged vehicle.
“A bog?” Lana questioned.
“Yes, I think they said it’d gotten stuck in the mud.”
“Was Leonard driving the car?” Slater pressed, and again, he reminded himself that this could all mean nothing.
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. He was supposed to be at a fundraiser that night. I didn’t go because I had one of my migraines, but normally, Leonard would have a driver take us to and from such things.”
“Do you recall the name of the fundraiser or where it was held?” Slater wanted to know.
“I’m sorry, I don’t, but you could probably check the date since it was the night Alicia was killed. I’m not sure, though, if people would actually remember Leonard being there or not. It’s been so long.”
Yes, it had been. Twenty years was a long time to try to confirm an alibi, but it was possible that someone had taken or posted photos of the event.
“I’m not sure why they called me instead of your father,” Pamela went on several moments later, “and I didn’t think of asking them. I just wrote down the info, including the location of the pickup and the time.” She sobbed again. “It was at that old abandoned rodeo arena. The one out on Carston Road.”
Slater knew the one. It’d been an active site for small rodeos when he was a kid, but it had shut down about twenty-five years ago. Which meant it would have indeed been abandoned and empty when Alicia had died. As far as Slater knew, the owners had just left the place to rot away. It was a good place to bury a body.
“I think Buck or Leonard took Alicia there,” Pamela spelled out. “And I think a clue to where she’s buried is in one of theemails. Buck told Leonard that he’d ‘moved her to where you said,’and Leonard answered, ‘Make sure no one finds her. Ever.’”
That was exactly what Julia had already relayed to them. “That doesn’t give you a specific location for a grave,” Slater pointed out. “Leonard or Buck probably wouldn’t have allowed the tow truck to come that close if a body had been buried there.”
“I agree, and that’s why I kept digging through the files.” Pamela paused a heartbeat. “I found another email. This one came the following day, and in it, Buck said, and I quote, ‘I put her with the horses.’”
Slater glanced at Lana to see if she had a clue as to what that meant, but she shook her head. “Did he mean one of the stalls inside the old arena?”
“I don’t think so,” Pamela was quick to say. “I found an article on the internet about some horses being buried on the west side of the arena. Apparently, the owner created a sort of cemetery there.”
That jogged his memory, and Slater recalled hearing about the burials. He quickly used his phone to do a search, and while there weren’t many articles on the old arena that had once been called Rodeo Park, he did find one that mentioned the graves. Apparently, the owner had used the boggy area to bury some of the horses that had been champions.
“At the time of Alicia’s death,” Pamela went on, “the rodeo arena would have been closed for five years. No visitors to find a fresh grave. And there’s this other thing I found. Buck’s grandparents had a ranch less than five miles from the arena. I’m betting he visited there when he was a kid.”
Slater was betting the same thing, and while there was still no concrete proof that’s where Alicia was buried, or that Buckand Leonard had been the ones to kill her, the circumstantial evidence was starting to come together.
Alicia and Leonard had been having an affair, and something could have happened between them. An argument that’d turned violent. Or maybe some kind of jealous altercation involving Buck, Leonard and Alicia that had led to her death. Unless Leonard confessed about that, they might never know exactly what’d happened, but if there was indeed a body at Rodeo Park, then that added some physical proof to the circumstantial.