Chapter 2 - ELEANOR VALE
Margaret did not stay while investigators opened the old cavity.
Neither did I.
Police told us to leave the immediate area.
Dad handed over copies of his photographs and notes.
Then we sat inside his truck across the street.
“You knew yesterday?”
“I suspected.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know enough.”
“You could have said something.”
Dad looked at me.
“Like what?”
“That you might have found human remains beneath my boss’s pool.”
He gave me a look.
“When you say it like that, it sounds dramatic.”
“It is dramatic.”
“Which is why you wait for facts.”
That was Dad.
Facts first.
Feelings later.
Sometimes maddening.
Usually useful.
At 11:20 a.m., Detective Laura Ramirez came to the truck.
“They’ve confirmed human skeletal remains.”
I stopped breathing.
Margaret closed her eyes.
No identification yet.
No cause of death.
No conclusions.
But the remains were real.
The cellar was real.
And someone had sealed it behind newer concrete.
Detective Ramirez asked Dad:
“When was that newer section built?”
“I can only estimate.”
“Could it be original to the pool?”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“What?”
Dad explained.
The pool had originally been installed around 1989.
But part of the concrete covering the old cellar appeared significantly newer.
Possibly ten to fifteen years.
Richard and Melissa purchased the property from Richard’s father’s trust eleven years earlier.
Then renovated the pool six years ago.
My skin prickled.
“Could that concrete be from the renovation?”
“Possibly.”
Police requested building records.
The contractor who performed the renovation had gone out of business.
But permits existed.
Richard’s family history was more complicated.
Margaret explained it over coffee later that morning.
In 1974, the property belonged to her parents, Samuel and Ruth Vale.
Margaret was twenty-nine.
Already married.
Living twenty miles away.
Her younger sister Eleanor was nineteen and still lived at home.
Eleanor was dating a twenty-two-year-old man named Howard Cole.
Richard’s father.
My stomach dropped.
“Richard’s father knew her?”
Margaret gave a sad smile.
“Everyone knew them.”
Howard came from money.
The Vales did not.
His father owned trucking companies and industrial land.
Eleanor was bright, stubborn, and planned to study nursing.
Howard wanted her to marry him.
Margaret believed Eleanor loved him.
She also believed Eleanor was beginning to fear him.
The night Eleanor disappeared, she and Howard attended a party.
Howard claimed he dropped her at home at 10:30.
The next morning, her bed was empty.
Her coat was gone.
Her suitcase missing.
Police concluded she likely ran away.
“Did you believe that?”
“Never.”
“Why?”
Margaret opened her folder.
Inside was a letter.
Eleanor had written it two days before disappearing.
Maggie, I told Howard it is over. He says I’m humiliating him. Dad says give him time to cool down. I just want everyone to stop deciding what I’m supposed to want.
I swallowed.
“Did police see this?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“They said young women changed their minds.”
The investigation faded.
Months passed.
Then something strange happened.
Howard Cole began helping Samuel Vale financially.
Medical bills.
Property taxes.
Repairs.
“Why?”
Margaret looked at me.
“He said he felt sorry for us.”
Ten years later, after Samuel died and Ruth entered assisted living, Howard purchased the property.
For a fair price on paper.
Then he demolished the farmhouse.
Built a new house.
Added the swimming pool.
“He bought the property where his missing girlfriend had lived?”
“Yes.”
“That didn’t bother anyone?”
“It bothered me.”
But by then, Howard was successful.
Respected.
Married.
Two children.
He told people Eleanor had broken his heart and run away.
It made him sympathetic.
Margaret had no evidence.
May you like
Until my father opened a return line.
---
