The bartender looks our way, finally, and Sheriff indicates one more. I shake my head. I’m fine with my beer.

“Sarah had logged on to the site first, then introduced her brother to Ellie. Ellie, in turn, played Joshua in the same way his sister did. She wasn’t in love with him. She only needed a place to stay until everyone moved on.”

“Yeah, she lived in the mobile home with the sweet potato vines.”

“That’s what she said. She didn’t move on to the property with Joshua until after it was all done.”

“Let’s run down your theory,” he says.

“Okay, Ellie claims she was only a sounding board to Josh. She didn’t make anything happen. I’m not so sure about that.”

I sip my beer.

Sheriff speaks up. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She cut a deal and is off to face charges for murdering her parents.”

“Right. So, here’s what I think happened—backed up by the evidence: Sarah was looking for the right moment and she found it when she and Ida were planting the roses. She swung the shovel, striking the back of her mother’s head. The autopsy indicated multiple blows. The back of Ida’s heels indicated that she’d been dragged.”

“Back into the workshop,” he says.

“So, she was the first to die.”

I nod. “Merritt was lured into the workshop by Sarah. Josh, who believed her rape story, was lying in wait. He used the hammer and beat his father to death, while Sarah egged him on. During or right after the bludgeoning, Ida stirred.”

“She wasn’t dead. That’s what you think?”

“Her blood was on the hammer. No real castoff. Just a couple of blows to finish her off.” We stay quiet and watch the brunette wrangle a free drink.

“Cold. Calculating,” he says.

Though I know he’s talking about the Wheaton kids and Ellie, I resist adding that a free drink’s a free drink.

“There were three sources of DNA on the hammer. Mr. and Mrs. Wheaton and a third. Sarah’s?”

“Lab will let us know. But I suspect so.”

“How would it get there?’

“Not sure. Maybe she put it there.”

“To throw us off?”

I look at the foam in the bottom of my beer glass. “Maybe so. Maybe she’s smarter than we think.”

It’s what I would have done.

Sheriff shifts the conversation to Sarah’s purported defense.

“Do you think Wheaton was molesting his daughter?” he asks.

I shrug. “I honestly don’t know. My guess is that will be her defense. Her brother’s too. It might work. However, there isn’t a shred of evidence. No school counselor. No doctor’s visits. No friends to say she confided in them.”

My own story passes through my thoughts.

I’d never told another person about what happened to me until I met Karen Albright.

Forty-Eight