Page 83 of Deeper Than the Dead

Again, Bent led the way.

“I think,” Bent said, once they were on the other side and back on their feet, “whoever put the bodies in here hoped they would never be found. Whoever left Sheree didn’t seem to be so concerned about discovery.”

Vera couldn’t tell him that Sheree was where she was because they had been kids. Just damned kids who had been desperate and had no idea what they were doing. It hadn’t seemed real ...

“Any headway on ID’ing any of the other remains?”

“Nothing yet.”

She looked around the smaller space. All those times as kids when she and Eve had played here, they had never come into this part of the cave. Vera hadn’t even known it existed. There was no reason to believe Eve had either.

Standing here like this ... with all that was happening, she felt the walls closing in on her. She felt trapped and out of options. Her career was over ... her personal life was unraveling.

Maybe her and Eve’s secret wasn’t the only one in the family.

Was it actually possible her father did have something to do with this?

No. She refused to believe such a thing.

A hunter or caver—maybe the dead guy who’d been tucked in here or someone he’d known. Someone who’d found it obviously by accident and used it for his own private dumping ground. Unless there was a friend of her father’s who’d taken advantage of their family.

Had her mother ever been in here?

The possibility that Eve knew things that she was keeping from Vera still terrified her. She walked closer to the ledge where the two women’s remains had lain. She surveyed the area slowly, carefully, and still she almost missed it.

Her attention jerked back a few feet to the small, scattered stones ... white stones about the size of a dollar coin. Their mother, Vera, and Eve had spent hours searching for stones like that ... just the right size and color for artwork.

Cold flashed through her. Didn’t mean anything. Those stones could have been in here already. The cave could be full of them for all she knew—she glanced around, scanned the ground—except it wasn’t.

“The FBI wants to interview your father.”

Vera jerked back to the present, and her gaze collided with his. “You know what they’ll do. Twist his words and make him out to be the killer behind all this.”

“I’ve told them you and your sisters will have an answer for them tomorrow.” He looked around, as if needing a place for his attention to land. “If you get the doctor to go to a judge and attest that nothing your father says can reasonably be considered true or accurate, we can likely either stop the interview or have it ruled as inadmissible in court.”

Vera struggled to push the stones out of her head. Focus on his words. It was important for her to know every step Bent and the FBI took. As for the medical opinion, she was well aware of this, but she appreciated his bringing up the possibility.

“As much as I would hate to appear like an impediment to justice,” she said, “it’s the only way to protect him. At this stage in his illness, we really can’t know for sure that anything he says is accurate. He could confess to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby in his current state.”

“You’re right.” Bent set his hands on his hips. “The trouble is, they won’t stop until there’s a break.”

No good cop would. “I get it. They want to solve this thing.”

“Don’t we all,” he said, more to himself than to Vera. Then he set his gaze solidly on her. “I’m worried about Eve. I still think she’s holding back.”

Okay, so this was about more than showing her the crime scene. “I’m not going down that road, Bent.” She held up her hands. “We’ve talked about this more than once. You think I’m hiding something. You think Eve is.”

Forcing her gaze straight ahead and away from where the stones lay scattered, she headed for the narrow opening that would get her the hell out of here.

“Don’t do that, Vee,” he said, coming up behind her, daring to put a hand on her arm. “I’m not trying to pin anything on you or Eve or your father.”

She shook off his touch and rounded on him. “What happened to the two of us conducting our own parallel investigation?”

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Higdon usurped our morning. You were there. As for the other, whether you want to see it or not, Eve is hiding something.”

Vera damned well knew they were both hiding one big-ass secret, but there was no way in the world she could tell this man. She couldn’t even tell him about those little pale stones until she knew what they meant.

So she lied. What else was there to do? “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

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