“And you don’t remember his name?” I asked. “Maybe a nickname?”

“Sometimes she would call him Peep. But never a given name.”

I glance at Marco. I wasn’t sure whether that would help us or not, and judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t either.

“Did Heather leave anything behind?” Marco asked. “Anything we could look through?”

Her body stilled. “Are you trying to find who killed her?”

Neither one of us answered at first. Then Marco finally said, “The sheriff’s department is convinced that Wyatt killed her, but we think someone else is guilty. We’re trying to figure out who.”

I turned to him in surprise. He wasn’t supposed to be any part of this. He was only here because he’d insisted on offering his condolences.

He gave me a grim look. “I’m in this now.”

Chapter Twenty

Marco turned back to Hilde. “But I have to tell you that even though I’m a deputy, I’m not lookin’ into this in an official capacity. That means you’re under no obligation to tell us anything.”

“I’ve got nothin’ to hide,” she said. “And I’m not sold on the theory that Wyatt killed her either. I’ll help you however I can.”

I pushed out a sigh of relief.

“Did she leave anything behind that we can look over?” Marco asked.

“She took most everything—” she made a face, “—or at least someone did, but there’s still a box of odds and ends in the closet in her old room. You’re welcome to look through it.” She got out of the chair and led us to the first doorway of several down a long hall, flipping on an overhead light as she walked into the room—what appeared to be a guest room with no personal ornamentation. Just some framed cross-stitch samplers hanging on the walls.

“Let me just get it out of the closet,” Hilde said, crossing the room and opening a sliding closet door. She started to reach for a cardboard box over her head, but Marco made his way inside and pulled it down for her.

“Just put it on the bed,” she said, pointing to a solid peach comforter.

He set it down, and she opened the tucked flaps and rifled through a couple of items at the top before standing upright.

“Yep. That’s it. Mostly a bunch of papers and letters and such. Feel free to dig through it.” She walked back to the wall and leaned against it, giving Marco an expectant look.

Marco and I exchanged a glance, and then we both sat down on the bed, one on either side of the box. He reached in and pulled out a small framed photo. He glanced at it, then handed it over. It was a photo of a smiling younger Wyatt and a woman with brown hair that hung slightly past her shoulders. His arm was slung around her, and she was leaning into him in a way that spoke of possession. She was pretty—very pretty—and I tried to not let Emily’s comment about my own looks burn. Both of them seemed happy. They were standing at the overlook with the valley behind them.

As I stared at the photo, it occurred to me that I’d rarely seen Wyatt smile. Had he been happy back then? I knew from Ruth that he’d always had a tendency to keep secrets, but surely it had become more pronounced after his arrest.

Marco’s gaze held mine as though asking if I was okay, and I gave him a soft smile.

He grabbed a handful of papers next and started to sort through them.

Hilde had given Marco permission to look through the box, but I wasn’t sure if I was included in that invitation, so I turned to her and said, “You were very kind to take in your high school niece when her parents moved away.”

She made a face. “I was young once, and she seemed so happy here, especially since she was datin’ Wyatt. She was devastated when her father announced he’d found a new job. And I was all alone, so I figured it might be nice to have the company. My Artie had died a couple of years before and we never had kids. I think some small part of me hoped she’d be like a daughter.”

The disappointment in her eyes let me know that had never happened.

“Her parents were okay with her staying?” I asked.

“At first they put up a fuss, which I’d expected, but they came around before too long. In hindsight, I suspect they realized their lives would be a lot more drama-free if she stayed behind.”

“Did Heather realize they felt that way?”

“She never said, but how could she not? She rarely talked to them on the phone, and she didn’t want to go spend the summer between her junior and senior year with them. Or the summer she graduated. She went from here directly to college.”

“Did you consider sending her back to her parents?” I asked.

“Sure, I considered it, and even threatened it, but she’d cry and plead with me to give her another chance. And then she’d follow my rules and do her chores and come home before curfew, and I’d soften, but soon it would all start all over again.”

“So you were relieved when she went away to college?” I asked.

“It seems wrong to admit to such a thing, but yeah. But then she showed up on my doorstep several years later, completely unannounced. She said she’d had a fight with her parents and asked if she could stay with me for a few days until she figured out what to do. So what could I say? I let her stay, and days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Only I’d married Phil by then, and he wasn’t too keen on Heather bein’ here. He was never so happy as the day she said she was leavin’.”

“Can we talk to Phil?” Marco asked as he handed me his stack and grabbed another.

“He died last year,” she said in a subdued tone. “Heart attack.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

She frowned. “We got six good years. I can’t complain.”

I started leafing through the pile Marco had handed over. There were several receipts and birthday cards, one of which was from Wyatt. It was a cheesy, sentimental card, which he’d signed, “Love, Wyatt,” and nothing else. There was a warranty for new tires for a Toyota and an invoice for nail supplies. Nothing of use.

Marco went through the next pile even quicker before he handed it over. It proved as benign as the first pile—a few credit card bills, a receipt from a dentist. Marco was going through the last pile when he went still.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe nothin’…”

“But maybe something?”

“It’s a receipt for the Mountain View Lodge. It’s dated the week before Wyatt’s arrest.”

I squinted in confusion. “Do you think Wyatt and Heather spent the night there?”

“I can’t see Wyatt doin’ that,” Marco scoffed. “You’ve seen those rooms.”

“So she went there with her boyfriend?”

“Maybe.”

I glanced up at Hilde. “Do you think Heather sometimes spent the night with her other boyfriend?”

“She was gone a lot. She never moved in with Wyatt, and I’m sure it was because she was meeting her boyfriend on the side. Kept Wyatt from noticing.”

We needed to talk to someone who was close enough to Heather to possibly know who her side boyfriend had been. Since Mitzi was out of the question, I wondered how well Dick Stinnett knew her. Or May McMurphy.