get yourself together for him.”
“Do you have tea?” Dina asked.
“In the cupboard to the left of the sink,” Jewell replied.
“Jewell, the police are doing everything they can,” Cork said.
She pressed a hand to her forehead. “There’s got to be something more.”
In a few minutes, the kettle began to whistle. As Dina was pouring boiling water into cups, she said, “We could hit the roads ourselves, see if we spot his vehicle. According to Ned, Stokely drives a Dodge Ram pickup with a camper shell. Any idea what color, Jewell?”
A look of horror slowly twisted Jewell’s face. “Oh God, no.”
“What is it?” Cork said.
“I saw him. I saw him last night. He drove past Ned’s office when we were there with Charlie. Why didn’t I think of it then?”
Dina came quickly from the kitchen. “When we were there with Charlie, you said? So it was before she ran?”
“Yes. Before.”
Dina’s mouth settled into a grim line. “This changes things. We’d better let Ned know.” She pulled out her cell phone. “What’s his number?” Jewell gave it and she punched it in. “Ned? It’s Dina Willner.” She listened a moment. “Okay… Look…” She explained the situation. “I know, I know… Yeah, we’ll be here.” She ended the call.
“So?” Cork said.
“He just checked the trailer. Nothing. He’s going to call the state police out at the Copper River Club and let them know about Stokely’s truck last night, then he’ll check the lumberyard and head back to his office.”
“And we’ll do what?” Jewell asked. “Just sit here doing nothing? I don’t think so.”
“I’m right there with you,” Dina said.
In his chair, Cork shifted his weight to his right butt cheek, hoping to relieve some of the discomfort in his left leg. “And what is it you intend to do exactly? Where do you start?”
“I don’t know,” Jewell shot back.
“All right, here’s something to think about, something that’s been rolling around in my head for a little while,” Cork said. “Hodder-and maybe the investigators, too-believe Stokely’s a likely suspect for the murder of Delmar Bell. I don’t think so.”
Dina crossed a leg over her knee and leaned toward him, looking intrigued. “Why?”
“The timing doesn’t work. Yesterday I heard Olafsson say the TOD-time of death-on Bell was between three-thirty and four. If the gate log is correct, Stokely left the Copper River Club at three-thirty. It’s a good forty- five minutes to Marquette. Unless he flew, Stokely wouldn’t have made it in time to kill Bell.”
“So Calvin didn’t kill Del,” Jewell said. “So what?”
“So who did?” Cork said.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters,” Dina said. Understanding blossomed in her green eyes. “It matters because it means Bell and Stokely weren’t in it alone.”
“There are others?” Jewell looked fearful, momentarily defeated. “God, who?”
“That’s what we have to figure out,” Cork replied. “If Stokely’s disappeared, maybe it’s because somebody’s hiding him.”
“Or he’s hiding from somebody so they won’t take care of him like they took care of Bell,” Dina said.
“Or they’ve already taken care of him like they took care of Bell,” Cork added.
“What about Charlie?” Jewell asked.
“I don’t know,” Cork said. “But if we understand who else is involved, we might stand a better chance of finding her. Let’s backtrack a little. You suspected Stokely and Bell in the first place because of the murder of the runaway girl twenty years ago. You told me Ned described a football celebration of some kind, followed by drinking at a cabin somewhere. The kid who confessed to killing her picked her up on the way home. Maybe Bell and Stokely were with him and had a hand in it. That was your thinking, right?”
“Yes,” Jewell said.
“So far, it seems pretty reasonable, especially in light of everything that’s happened since we started asking questions. But what if there was someone else with them that night?”
“Who?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. Let’s figure a normal car, big, strapping football players. Four, maybe five could have fit in comfortably. Bell, Stokely, Messinger, and one or two more. Who could the extras have been? Start with an assumption that they were football players on the championship team. Add that it’s somebody who still lives in the area. And finally somebody able to come and go at the Copper River Club without raising a lot of suspicion.”
Dina said, “That’s why you asked the guard at the gate about Stokely’s visitors.”
“The state police will get around to asking the same question.”
“He said Stokely didn’t have visitors,” Dina pointed out. Then she looked at Jewell. “Was his brother, Isaac, on the team?”
“No, he graduated several years before. He was long gone to the military by then.”
Cork asked, “Who else is still around who was on the team?”
Jewell closed her eyes to think, but it was Dina who answered. “Ned Hodder.”
“It’s not Ned,” Jewell said sharply. “I’d know.”
“Give me another name, then,” Cork told her.
“I can’t think,” Jewell said a little desperately.
“You have a high school yearbook?” Dina asked.
“Yes.”
“Get it. Maybe it’ll help.”
Jewell went up to her bedroom and came back down carrying a big yearbook that said Bobcats in green across the front. She sat on the sofa and flipped through the pages. “Here,” she said. “The football team photo.”
The photograph was pretty standard yearbook fare: the whole team suited in their gear and seated on the bleachers of the football field, coaches standing on either side. Jewell’s finger went slowly over the list of names below. It went all the way to the end without stopping.
“Well?” Dina said.
“Calvin, Del, and Ned,” she said, defeated.
“Hodder visits the Copper River Club regularly. He wouldn’t raise a lot of suspicion,” Cork pointed out.
“Yesterday when we went to see him, he wasn’t at his office,” Dina added. “We called him, and he said he was checking on a break-in outside of town. He could have been on his way back from killing Bell.”
“Not Ned,” Jewell said again, but with less conviction.
“I like the guy, too, Jewell,” Cork told her. “And I wouldn’t mind being wrong. But for Charlie’s sake we need to check it out. Where does he live?”
“His family’s always had a place southwest of town, an orchard. Ned lives there alone.”
“Dina and I will go.”
“I’m going, too,” Jewell said. “If it’s Ned, I want to know right away.”
“What about Ren?” Dina asked. “Won’t he be home from school pretty soon?”
“With the hours I work, he almost always comes home to an empty house. I’ll leave him a note. He’ll be fine.”
“What if he’s heard about Stokely’s secret cemetery?”
“I don’t think he has. Gary Johnson wasn’t even up there. If our local newsman doesn’t know yet, nobody else does.”
Cork bent and withdrew the Beretta from the holster still strapped to his ankle. He checked the clip. Dina did the same with her Glock.
“Oh Christ,” Jewell said. “You’re not going to shoot him.”
“Are you with us?” Dina asked.
Jewell took a deep breath. “Yes.”
