The sheriff raised both eyebrows. “Sure do. Follow me.”
He turned and walked down a narrow hallway, stepping into a little office.
The sheriff kept his office clean. His desk was mostly clear, except for a coffee mug that read “If Dad Says No, Ask Grandpa.”
The sheriff sat down and picked up the mug, finding it empty.
“Wouldn’t be gentlemanlike if I didn’t offer you a cup of joe. Need a refill myself. Cream and sugar?”
“No coffee for me,” Bette said. The coffee at Lisa’s had her nerves bouncing and jostling.
The sheriff left.
Bette heard a woman stop in the hallway.
They spoke briefly and the man let out a chuckle.
He returned several minutes later with a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies.
“Oatmeal chocolate chip?” he asked, pushing the plate toward her. “Chloe, wife of one of my deputies, has made it her life’s mission to fatten us up.” He laughed and bit into a cookie.
Despite the woman’s efforts, Sheriff Montgomery was anything but fat. Probably approaching sixty, he looked like he’d still outrun most teenagers. Long and lean, the man moved like an athlete.
Bette took a cookie and nibbled the edge.
“You caught me off guard, Bette. Did you know Matt?”
Bette shook her head. “I didn’t know Matt or Peter. I’m from downstate, the Lansing area, and my sister disappeared ten days ago.”
The sheriff nodded and took a sip of his coffee.
“Not of her own accord?”
“No. Something happened to her. Something terrible, I’m afraid,” Bette confided.
“And somehow you’ve linked her disappearance to Matt Kelly and Peter Budd?”
“Greta Claude.”
A stormy look passed over Montgomery’s features, and he didn’t bother hiding it.
“You suspect she hurt your sister?”
Bette set her cookie down and threaded her fingers together. She thought of her conversation with Hillary and the torment in the woman’s face. She hadn’t thought so, no. She’d assumed Weston Meeks had hurt Crystal, but the more she uncovered about Hillary or Greta Claude, the more convoluted the whole story became.
“Crystal, my sister, was having an affair with Greta Claude’s husband. Greta’s name is Hillary Meeks now. A few days before Crystal vanished, she found out she was pregnant.”
The sheriff blew out a breath and shook his head.
“That’s one woman I wouldn’t want to cross, I’ll tell you that. But Bette, I never found an ounce of evidence that Greta murdered Matt or Peter.”
“But your instincts told you she was involved?”
He planted his hands on the table and shook his head. “I can’t say that. I’d rather not say it. People are allowed to share their theories, but without evidence it’s only gossip and I make it a point never to gossip.”
“But you looked into her? You considered her a possibility?” Bette demanded.
“I understand why you want me to confirm your fears,” Montgomery told her. “When someone disappears, we’re desperate to make the puzzle pieces fit. It’s always strange when one person has so many dark things happen in their life. Two people very close to Greta Claude died while she lived here in Marquette. I can’t say what other tragedies surrounded her in the years before she came here and the years after she left, but I know that coincidences exist. I’ve met people who seem forever in the hurricane’s eye through no fault of their own. I looked into Greta because she was Matt’s girlfriend. We always consider the significant other in cases of violent crime.”
“And did she have an alibi?”
The sheriff cocked his head. “Sort of. A high school boy threw a big house party in town, not three blocks from Bishop Park. Greta showed up at the party. People saw her, but there was a lot of drinking. She might have slipped away for a half hour. Her alibi didn’t clear her. But she got a ride home from the party, and Matt’s murder was…”
He paused and put both palms together as if in prayer. “Messy. I can’t imagine how she could have returned to that party without a speck of blood on her. I mean, we’re talking about a sixteen-year-old girl, not a seasoned killer. A boy drove her home. He said she seemed perfectly normal. Cool, kind of distant, but that was her nature.”
“Matt’s sister, Lisa, told me they found him in a hangout spot, a fire pit area. Why was he there that night?” Bette questioned.
The sheriff spread his palms out. “That’s one of the many pieces we’ve never fit into the puzzle. Nobody knows why he went there. No one said they had plans to meet him. Everyone figured he’d be at the house party down the road. A few of the kids figured he was planning to head there after he met someone at the bonfire.
“A lot of rumors circulated. Some people thought he might be seeing a girl on the sly, maybe somebody with a boyfriend and her boyfriend showed up that night. Matt’s friends, my son Nate included, swore up and down that wasn’t the case. He was still dating Greta, although he intended to break it off. Matt didn’t have a disloyal bone in his body. He wouldn’t run around, especially with another guy’s girl.”
Montgomery picked up another cookie and picked a chocolate chip off the top, sliding it into his mouth.
“What about Peter Budd?” Bette asked.
“The coroner classified his death as an accidental fall.”
“But you didn’t believe it?”
He laughed. “I notice how you keep putting words in my mouth.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to presume.”
“It’s okay, you’re presuming right,” Montgomery confirmed. “I didn’t believe it. One, because not a single person had ever heard of Peter Budd going up to that cliff. Not his wife, his buddies, nobody. The man was lazier than a toad. He had to hike a mile up a rocky path in the woods to get to that cliff. Nature enthusiasts and teenagers are the only people who hike up there. It’s beautiful.
“But Peter wasn’t exactly a man who appreciated nature. He rarely veered far from his trailer and his refrigerator of beer. When he did go out, he frequented a pub within walking distance of his trailer. When he fished, he went to the river a few miles from his place. I found it odd that he’d go to Black Rocks, even odder that he’d get close enough to the edge to fall. Odder still that he left all his fishing gear in the truck.”
“Did you investigate his death?”
“Sure, absolutely. I prodded the coroner to do a thorough autopsy including a toxicology screen. I wondered if someone had drugged him. He wasn’t a loved guy, so I had more than a few people to consider if murder had been the cause of his death, but the coroner came up empty.
“A couple saw him on the trail that day and said he was alone. He was struggling up the hill, panting. One funny thing is they saw a blanket laid out on that cliff edge. They passed it before Peter, so he couldn’t have taken it with him unless he’d gone up and back down. Anyhow, they didn’t see anyone else around, but when they passed the area twenty minutes later, the blanket and Peter were gone. They had no idea he’d gone over the cliff. They didn’t hear a scuffle, a scream. They figured the man they’d seen had walked back down the hill. They saw his truck when they left the park.
“The couple spotted his picture in the newspaper a few days later. His body had washed up on the beach about a mile from the park. Once they came forward, we found his truck and got a better idea of how he died.”
“How do you know he fell off the cliff?” Bette challenged.
“Our guys searched the whole park and the cliffs. We had a deputy who rappelled out there on the regular and found one of Peter’s shoes lodged between two of the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Seemed likely that he’d fallen on the rocks. His foot had been stuck, but the water eventually pulled his body out, leaving the shoe behind. The coroner also suspected a fall based on the damage to his body.”