Cold River - Carla Neggers [65]
“Just wanted to check on you. How’s your head?”
“A handful of ibuprofen does wonders.” He stood up with a dab of thick white paste on the end of a small putty knife. “Crazy to paint this place if you ask me. Doesn’t it look fine to you? Just a few nail holes to patch. There’s some minor work to do on the chimney, too.”
“Hard to believe Melanie Kendall and Kyle Rigby had the gall to stay here right under everyone’s noses. Did you run into them at all in November or back in April?”
“I told the Cameron boys and Jo Harper and Scott Thorne yesterday that I saw Kendall with Thomas Asher at the Four Corners church when they were up here in October. They were taking pictures. I only saw her that one time.”
“What were you doing in town?”
“Looking at a potential job.”
“The culvert?”
He glanced over at her. “Does it matter? I don’t recall ever running into Rigby. Jo showed me a picture of him, but I’d seen his picture in the newspaper and on television. I’d remember him if I’d seen him.”
Hannah watched Bowie work for a moment. “I imagine your probation officer wants you to stay as far away from this business as possible. That mishap yesterday…”
He slapped the Spackle onto the living room wall. “Bad timing.”
“Bowie, when I was up on the mountain yesterday, I got a good look at part of the foundation to Drew’s cabin. The original foundation would be almost two hundred years old. You can imagine the damage done over the years. He must have rebuilt it entirely.”
“I imagine so,” Bowie said.
“Even if he could have done the actual work on his own, I don’t know that he had the expertise in stonework to manage without help of some kind. What do you think?”
“You asking me from a technical point of view?”
She let his suspicion slide past her. “I’d appreciate your expert opinion, yes.”
“I could do the job on my own. Drew could if he knew what he was doing and had the right equipment and materials.”
“Did he know what he was doing?”
Bowie worked the paste into the nail hole with his thumb and smoothed it out with the side of his uninjured hand. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Your guess?”
“I’m not guessing, Hannah.”
“Cutting down trees, trimming them, constructing the cabin itself—I can see Drew handling that part on his own. But the stonework…”
Bowie didn’t look back at her as he spoke. “If he had help with any of it, not just the stonework, that means someone else knew about the cabin. Is that what you’re getting at, Hannah?”
She watched him dip his putty knife back into the Spackle tub. “Bowie…”
He stood up with fresh paste on the end of his knife and gave her a cool look. “I didn’t help Drew. If I had, I’d have said something by now.”
“Did you help him find that old cellar hole?”
“No. What about you? Your dad’s hobby was looking for old cellar holes. I went with him a few times. So did you. Did you two ever run into the old Cameron cellar hole?”
“My father had an idea it was on the north side of the mountain. We looked for it a few times. Drew had been looking for it on and off for years. That wasn’t a secret.” She stepped back as he slapped the Spackle onto the wall. “Did you point him in the right direction?”
“We talked about possibilities from time to time,” Bowie said, obviously reluctant to talk. “I gave him pointers on what to look for—trees, shrubs, groundcover, abandoned wells, the lay of the land. That’s it. I might be able to find it on my own now, but only because of what I’ve heard since November.”
“There’s no love lost between you and the Camerons.”
“I may have a short fuse, but I don’t hold grudges. Drew mellowed some. He’d come by and talk when I was doing a job at the Four Corners church the winter before he died.”
“About what?”
“Stonework, mostly.”
By then, Drew had already had Devin haul supplies up the back side of the mountain for his secret project building his small post-and-beam cabin on the site where Camerons had first settled in Black Falls.
“Did you know Drew was missing in April?