I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) (21 page)

He hadn’t, but what about the others?

“Now I want to ask you something,” he said.  “What will you do about Jesse when you get the proof you need?”

I leaned back and closed my eyes knowing all I had to do was say the word, and Jesse would never been seen again.  “I honestly don’t know.”

Morning brought a trip to the hardware store for an assortment of shovels.  I was surprised when I saw Jesse and noticed someone had taken the time to bandage his foot.  Maybe organized crime had a soft spot after all.  I didn’t.  Not for Jesse.  I wanted to tear off the bandage and slam my foot on top of his until the pain was like nothing he’d ever felt before.  But I needed to be patient.  By the end of the day I’d planned to turn him over to the police, and that was enough for me. 

The six of us piled into an SUV and followed Jesse’s directions.  Aside from telling Lucio when to take a left or a right, Jesse stayed quiet.  But after what he’d told me the night before, I couldn’t.

“I never thought you were capable of such cruelty,” I said.  “It goes to show I’m a poor judge of character sometimes.”

Jesse stared out the window acting like he hadn’t heard me.  I opened my mouth to continue, but he said, “Stop.  We’re here.”

One by one we exited the SUV until we were all out.  Giovanni’s men gathered the tools they needed and we set off.  Jesse had been outfitted with a pair of crutches, but even then, it felt like we were moving in slow motion. 

After a short walk, I said, “I can’t keep this up.  Can’t he point us in the direction of the body?”

“We’re close, but she’s right—I can’t make it,” Jesse said.

Giovanni thought it over and looked at his men who were all out of breath and sweaty like they’d just competed in a triathlon. 

“I’ll stay with Jesse,” Giovanni said.  “You three go with Sloane.”  

“How much farther is this thing?” Lucio said.

Giovanni stepped toward him.  “Is there a problem?”

Lucio replied, “No boss—no problem.”

I looked around.  Trees and bushes dotted the landscape for miles.  “Tell me what I’m looking for—a tree, a rock or marker of some kind…”

“A tree,” Jesse said.  He flattened his hand, turned it to the side, and used it to point us in the right direction.  “Follow this straight up.  You’re gonna walk for about five minutes.  You’ll come to a wicked-looking tree with blackened branches like it’s been burned in a fire.  There’s an X carved into the base.  You’ll wanna dig in front of that X.”

It seemed absurd.  If I buried someone outdoors, I’d pick the plainest tree I could find so it wouldn’t draw attention.   Not the one that stood out like a rabbit at a chicken fight. 

“How far down is she—five feet or so?” I said.

Jesse shrugged.  “More like three.”

“Three?”

“We knew nobody was ever gonna find her,” Jesse said.  “It was late and we were tired.”

I gathered the men and we set off.  The wind whistled through the trees whipping dust and fragments of weeds into the air.  It was strange—eerie.  Almost like Ivy knew I was coming to set her free.  Several minutes went by and I caught a glimpse of blackened wood.  “I think I see it!” I said. 

The tree was twisty and viney and looked like it grew right out of a Tim Burton movie.  It had to be the one.  The men gathered around while I searched the base for an X.  It didn’t take long for me to find it. 

“Right here,” I said.  “Dig in front of this.”

The excavation began, and since I had the power of three, it wasn’t long before Lucio shouted, “I feel something!”

The men scraped at the dirt with their hands.  I watched, my body stiff, unable to move.  I couldn’t believe we were actually excavating a hidden grave.  Lucio punched his hand down into the soft dirt and then twisted it, trying to grab hold of what he felt before.  Seconds later he shouted, “Got it!”

He retracted his hand until it was all the way out and we all gathered around.  Everyone had a look of confusion in their eyes.  I turned to Lucio.  “Keep digging.”  

“Well,” Jesse said.  “What did you find?”

I grabbed an object from my pocket and hurled the object in Jesse’s direction.  It landed at his feet. 

 He reached down and picked it up with a quizzical look on his face.   “You shouldn’t have.  What’s this supposed to be anyway?”

“A message.”

“In a bottle?”

He turned it around in his hand. 

“Look inside,” I said.

Jesse stuck his pinky finger in and pulled out a dirty piece of paper. 

“Read it,” I said.  “Out loud.”

JESSE

I SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST

“What is this—some kind of joke?” Jesse said.  “Where’d you get this thing?”

“That
thing
was found in the hole where you said Ivy was buried.”

“So you found her—her body, I mean?” 

I shook my head.  “She wasn’t there.”

He shuddered, terrified.  “No…no…no…she has to be.   Maybe you weren’t in the right spot.”

I whipped out my phone and showed him the picture I’d taken of the carving on the tree.  “Is this it?”

He nodded.           

“The guys dug even deeper than you said—still nothing.”

Jesse flung the bottle to the ground.  “How’s that possible?”

“Obviously she wasn’t dead when you guys put her in there.”

“But we covered her up—a person couldn’t survive that, could they?  Even if she wasn’t dead, she would have suffocated.”

Giovanni gave Jesse a look like he was a total amateur. 

“How long did you wait there after she was buried?” I said.

“I dunno.  Half hour, maybe less.  We wanted to get the hell out of there.  It gave us the creeps.”

“What’s the significance of the BUD LIGHT?” I said.

He shrugged.

“Oh, come on, Jesse.  There has to be one.  The bottle at your house, the one here.  You were drinking it the night you buried Ivy, weren’t you?”

Jesse frowned. 

One of the men looked at Giovanni.  “What you want us to do with him, Boss?”

Jesse’s eyes were as wide as saucers.  “You’ve got no proof I did anything to Ivy.  Let me go!”

I smiled and retrieved a digital recorder from my pocket.  I wiggled it back and forth in front of Jesse.  He frowned, well aware of the implications.

“Insurance,” I said.  “Attempted murder.  And you’re a cop, so you know how it goes.” 

Giovanni instructed his men to squeeze Jesse in between them in the back seat until I decided what I wanted to do next. 

“Well,” I said looking at Giovanni, “I’d say we have our motive.  Revenge.” 

“My baby!” Trista screamed into the phone.  “She’s missing!”

“For how long?” I said.

“I don’t know!”

“Have you called the police?”

“They’re on their way—so’s Rosalind.”

I looked at Giovanni and he turned the car around.  I grabbed a piece of paper from the glove box, scribbled Trista’s address on it and handed it to him. 

“Trista—I need you to take a deep breath and tell me everything that’s happened since Alexa left you.  Don’t leave anything out.”

 “I don’t know if I can, Sloane.  I feel like I’m going to pass out—I keep blacking out and grabbing the counter for support.”

In that moment, I was glad her twins were at school.  They didn’t need to see their mom like this.

“If you want me to find her, you have to tell me whatever you can,” I said.  “I know it’s hard.  Everything will make sense when I get there, but right now, I need you to keep talking to me.”

“Alexa left here Sunday night.  She wanted to get back because she had a shift at the hospital the next morning.  But she never showed up for it.”

“What time did she leave?” I said.

“Around six pm last night.”

“Is that the last time you heard from her?”

“Ummm, no.  She called me to say she forgot to take the money I left on her nightstand and asked me to mail it out today.”

“What time was that?”

“Hold on a sec…”

She pressed a few buttons on her phone.  “It was at 6:52 pm.”

“Okay, so that explains why she wouldn’t have turned around—she’d been driving for almost an hour.  Is that all she said?”

“We talked for a minute and she said she was stopping at a gas station.”

“Do you know which one?”

“Andy’s.  She liked to go there because of his custom-made sandwiches.”

“What was she driving?” I said.

“2011 Jeep Liberty—Rosalind bought it for her.”

“Color?”

“Red.”

I relayed the information to Giovanni and he made a call.   

“Trista, how did you find out Alexa was missing?”

“She didn’t answer any of my phone calls last night.  I assumed she was sleeping.  We usually talk on her way to work, but when she didn’t call to check in, I called the hospital and they said she hadn’t shown up.  So then I called Alexa’s roommate.  She said Alexa never came home last night.  She assumed she stayed here another day and....”

The line went quiet, but the phone was still engaged.  I heard a thud like a hundred pound bag of sugar hitting the floor.  

“Trista!  Are you still there?”

I turned to Giovanni.  “Hurry!” 

Andy, of Andy’s Gas and Grub, confirmed a red Jeep Liberty had been parked in the corner stall for about eighteen hours.  He’d checked his security cameras and saw Alexa exit the car, but she never entered the store.  At one point she looked over and walked to the other side of the building like she was meeting someone, but it was beyond the parameters of his security cameras.  He’d called police to report the abandoned car, but so far no one had arrived to check it out.

We arrived at Trista’s and I sprung from my seat before the car screeched to a stop.  A police car pulled up behind us and an officer shouted, “Wait!”  But I had no intention of following his orders.  Inside the house, Trista was face down on the kitchen floor, drool dripping from the side of her mouth. I stuck two fingers on her neck—she had a pulse. 

Her eyes flashed open and she grabbed me.  “What happened?”

One of the police officers grabbed me from behind and attempted to pull me back, but I didn’t budge. 

“Remove your hands from her,” Giovanni said.

The officer spun around and glared at him.  “What’d you just say?”