But how could it be Larry? Larry McNabney was supposed to have disappeared in early September, and this body had only been buried for a little over a month. If the body was Larry—and the fingerprints proved that—where had he been all that time? And more to the point, how had he wound up in the vineyard, when he’d last been seen in southern California?

Haddix, LaJeunesse and Scheffel discussed the matter, trying out the possibilities. If Larry had died in early September, Haddix was convinced, there was no way that he had been in the vineyard grave since that time—the body was too well preserved.

Preserved—that started people thinking. Had the body been frozen? No, Haddix said—otherwise there would be evidence of tissue damage from the freezing process. Well, what about a refrigerator?

That would do the trick, Haddix said—assuming that one could find a refrigerator large enough to contain a six-foot, two-hundred-pound man. They recalled the way the body had come out of the ground, folded up—as if he had been compacted. It fit. So did the hemorrhage across the upper back, which might have come from the interior surface of a refrigerator as the body was crammed inside.

That raised another possibility: had Larry been alive when he was put into a refrigerator? The hemorrhage suggested that it was possible, since bleeding generally stops once the heart stops. That meant it was possible that Larry had actually suffocated to death. But if that had happened, Larry had been so near to dying, no other evidence of suffocation was apparent.

How would a previously healthy 53-year-old man get into a refrigerator to die? The obvious answer was, after some sort of poisoning that left him either dead or too weak to resist. Haddix took samples of organ tissues, the hair, blood, stomach contents, and portions of the brain, along with the shorts, tee-shirt, and mud that had adhered to the body, and sent them all out for testing. There was an explanation for what had happened to Larry McNabney, and Haddix was determined to find it.

The same day as the autopsy, Sarah was again being interviewed by the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department. She called Lori Timberlake and told her that she’d just remembered something from the events of September 11. Timberlake invited her to come in and share it; she did not tell Sarah that Larry’s body had been found. But by the time this interview took place, an investigator from the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department, Robert Buchwalter, had arrived in Sacramento. Buchwalter had been to the vineyard and had observed the autopsy. Now he had some pointed questions for Sarah.

Timberlake introduced Buchwalter, and told Sarah that San Joaquin County was going to take over the investigation.

Before Sarah could say anything to this, Buchwalter asked her: “Do you know why?”

Sarah said she had no idea.

Timberlake told Sarah there were some “inconsistencies” from the previous interview that needed to be cleared up.

“Oh,” Sarah said.

“Regarding … mainly regarding Larry’s disappearance,” Timberlake said.

“Uh-huh.”

Buchwalter wanted to go back farther than that, however. He wanted Sarah to tell once more how she had come to work for the McNabneys. Sarah gave the basic background information all over again.

“Anything else?” Sarah asked. “I’m trying to think of what else you—” She acted as though she wanted to leave immediately.

“We’re just getting started,” Buchwalter told her, ominously. “We haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.”

Buchwalter made Sarah discuss her work for the law firm. Sarah said that while she was working part-time and going to school, she had a salary of $3,000 a month, along with the use of two cars, the BMW and the Saab. It was clear to Sarah that Buchwalter thought the terms of her employment were highly unusual for an inexperienced 21-year-old art student. Eventually they came to the mystery weekend in the City of Industry. Once again, Sarah said she’d driven back to Sacramento on September 9, and returned by air on September 10.

“And that was when Larry was like … I had told you about … first time I drove down, he was acting really strange, like from the first time I got there, acting kind of crazy, you know …”

“Okay,” Buchwalter said, “you’re describing strange … I don’t know what strange is to you.”

Sarah said that weekend was the first time that Elisa had told her about Larry’s drug use.

“She said, ‘Larry uses drugs,’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, well, what does he do?’” Sarah said. “And she was like, ‘Well, he does cocaine … I mean, he does ’em when he has ’em, like sometimes he’ll really do a lot of drugs …’ She told me that, like up in Reno he won a big case, and he left for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks. And with that money he went and bought like crank [methamphetamine] and stuff and did a whole bunch of drugs, like over a period of a month. And she didn’t know where he was until she hired a private investigator to find him.”

Buchwalter said he didn’t understand where all the money was coming from if Larry was busy doing drugs day and night for weeks and months at a time.

Sarah said she was being paid out of different smaller settlements that kept coming in while Larry was missing. Buchwalter turned back to the events of Larry’s disappearance.

“And she flew you back down on the tenth?” Buchwalter asked.

“Right. And she said that Larry was in and out. And I’m like, ‘What do you mean he’s in and out?’ She was saying, ‘Well, he’s leaving and he’s coming back.’ I’m like, ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ She was like, ‘I don’t know, Sarah, he’s freaking out on me.’

“And I’m like, ‘Okay, he’s freaking out.’ And she was like, ‘You know, the drugs.’”

“Uh-huh,” Buchwalter said.

“And so I didn’t actually stay in the room that night,” Sarah said. “I was like in the car pretty much all night long …”

“The car?”

“Her … her truck.”

“Her truck?” Buchwalter asked. He knew that the truck had been registered in Larry’s name as the owner.

“Uh-huh,” Sarah agreed. “But she was like afraid for me to go in there [the hotel room]. You know what I mean?”

The next morning, Sarah continued, she asked Elisa where Larry was.

“She said, ‘He’s gone,’ You know, this was early in the morning, and she said, ‘He’s gone.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, well, is he coming back?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know if he’s coming back.’”

She went to the horse show, Sarah said, and then Elisa came to her there.

“And she said, ‘Larry’s back in the room and he’s acting crazy.’ And I said, ‘Well, what do you mean by acting crazy?’ And she’s like, ‘He’s all over the room and he’s running around and making a mess of everything and kind of being crazy,’ you know what I mean? And Morgan, I think, she had Morgan in the room and …”

“Morgan?” Buchwalter asked.

“Her dog. And he was saying how he was going to throw Morgan off the balcony, kept joking, ‘I’m gonna throw Morgan off the balcony.’ I mean, Larry’s just—And I said, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ And she said, ‘Drugs, Sarah, drugs, drinking, all that crap, and it’s just messing him up.’ And so she said, ‘We’re gonna go check into a different hotel, because he’s embarrassing me and all my friends are here and Morgan’s barking all the time and we’re gonna get kicked out of this hotel room ’cause it’s a nice hotel.’ And so …”

Now Sarah made the second significant adjustment to her story from the earlier interviews. Where she had told Cranford on Janaury 15, and Timberlake on January 31, that she hadn’t seen Larry at all after returning from Sacramento on the night of September 10, she was now about to admit that she had, too, seen him, and even talked with him.

“I guess he was in the room and was … She said he was falling all over the place, and so she said, ‘I want to get him out of this hotel room, he’s embarrassing me …’ Larry always kind of embarrassed her by being drunk and stuff in public, she hated that, just hated that. So she said, ‘I want to get him out of here,’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t really want to help you if he’s acting crazy.’

“And so she said, ‘I’m going to go get a wheelchair and help him out, because he really can’t walk.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’”

They went to a medical equipment rental place not far from the hotel, Sarah said, and rented a wheelchair.

“Well, she found the place,” Sarah continued, “and she had my ID, and so they said, ‘They need you to sign something,’ so I went in and signed something and put the wheelchair in the back of the truck and we drove back to the hotel. And we went up to the room and I told her, ‘I’m not going to go in there,’ you know, ‘if he’s acting insane I’ll get help for you,’ in case he tries hurting her or something. And so she went in there and put him in the wheelchair and she pushed him out, and I helped her push him out to the truck, and as we were walking through the lobby he, like, started swinging his hands around and stuff like that. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, Elisa, he’s insane!’ She’s like, ‘Oh my God, just help me get him in the truck.’ So I helped her get him into the truck. And in the truck he started like, you know, saying, ‘I’m gonna kill you, Elisa, I’m gonna kill you,’ acting, mumbling, ’cause he just reeked of alcohol.

“So I said, ‘I’m not gonna be in the car with him. He’s crazy.’ And so she dropped me off at the corner in front of the horse show and I jumped out.” Elisa drove off with Larry in the truck. Sarah said she believed that Elisa had checked Larry into a motel, and then came back to pick her up some minutes later.

“Let me ask you this,” Timberlake said. “When you guys were bringing Larry out in the wheelchair, out of the lobby, you said he was flailing his arms around …”

“Yeah.”

“… and screaming and yelling?”

Sarah didn’t say anything.

“Did he argue with you guys, to get him into the truck? Was he okay with getting into the truck with you guys?”

“Well, yeah. She’s like, ‘Larry we’re gonna go to a different hotel, you’re embarrassing, you’re embarrassing.’”

Larry “jumped into the back seat,” Sarah said.

Buchwalter asked how Elisa had gotten Larry into the wheelchair.

“I didn’t go in there,” Sarah said. “I didn’t go in there.”

It seemed that Sarah definitely didn’t want to admit that she’d been in the hotel room. “I was standing outside the room,” she added. “I wasn’t going to go in there because I didn’t know how cooperative he was going to be about that. I mean, I’m like, ‘Okay, he’s acting crazy but he’s gonna get in a wheelchair?’ So I waited outside. And then, you know, she pushed him out.”

After Elisa dropped her off at the horse show and drove off with Larry, Sarah said, she met an acquaintance at the horse show and talked with him for fifteen or twenty minutes before Elisa returned, this time without Larry.

“She says, ‘I put Larry in bed.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, is he doing better?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s okay.’ And so then we drove back up [to northern California]. And she’s … we’re talking about other stuff, because … it pissed her off to talk about Larry, the way he acted.”

Sarah said that Elisa drove her all the way back to Sacramento, where they stopped at the office to pick up the Saab. Then Elisa drove back to Los Angeles, and Sarah drove the Saab to her apartment.

A day or so later, Sarah continued, she was driving the Saab back to the horse show when she wrecked it in the accident. Jason came to pick her up, and the day after that she flew back to Los Angeles, where Elisa and Greg picked her up at the airport.

“So I flew back down there,” Sarah said, “and that was when Elisa and Greg were like, ‘Larry’s gone, Larry’s gone.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean, Larry’s gone?’ And Elisa said, ‘Oh my God, I’ll have to tell you all about it. Larry, he took off.’”

Sarah now told how Elisa had sold the dually to the Van Vliets.

They had then driven back to Sacramento in the rental car, and Elisa began trying to operate the law office, Sarah said. When she asked if Elisa had heard anything from Larry, Elisa told her that he was probably with the cult or off on “a runner.” Elisa told her, Sarah said, that she would get hang-up calls from the office that she guessed were from Larry. She told Sarah that she had been served with divorce papers.

By December, Sarah said, the money began running low at the law office. Elisa had given her a paycheck that bounced, and asked her to get a loan to pay for the new BMW.

“Where’s Larry at this whole time?” Buchwalter asked.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said.

“You know, the hardest part I have with this, Sarah,” Timberlake said, “is, there is so much going on in that office that probably wasn’t on the up-and-up … You had to know. We’ve gotten information that not only Elisa, but you yourself were practicing signing Larry’s name to things.”

“Who said that?” Sarah demanded.

“Okay, you know what?” Buchwalter asked. “I think it’s a real good time to let you know something. You realize that I do not work for Sacramento County. Okay? I work for San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Right,” Sarah said.

“Larry’s dead.”

“Oh, my God.”

“This isn’t a joke anymore. All right? We’ve known since this whole thing started that you’re very close to Elisa, okay? She’s flying you all over the place. She’s flying you back and forth from overseas. She sells the truck when you’re in the middle of this. She’s paying you three grand a month. You guys are renting cars you aren’t even using, and shelling out all this money. Where’s Elisa at?”

“I don’t …”

“Don’t even start. Okay? Let’s get something understood. This is not a missing persons investigation any longer. This is a homicide.”

“Oh my God.”

“Okay? You’re in this right up to your eyeballs. Understand that? It’s not a game anymore. You’re young and it sounds like you got drug [sic] into something and went along for the ride. You’re living good. You’re flying all over the place. You’re running with a rich crowd. You’re driving expensive cars. Elisa’s dirty, okay? And you’re in this up to your eyeballs. I do not believe that you have no idea where Elisa is at. Not as tight as the two of you were and all of a sudden, poof …”

Sarah said it was hard to remember things.

“Don’t even go there,” Buchwalter said. “You’re not eighty years old with Alzheimer’s. Your memory’s not that bad. See, there’s a problem here. When people tell lies, it’s very difficult to remember what lies you told, and tell the same thing all over again.”

There were inconsistencies between Sarah’s first, second and now third statements, Buchwalter said.

“Sarah, think about what you’re doing,” he continued.

“I’m telling you I have not heard from her. I swear to God. I’ve not heard from her. You know how much I would like to get that car back and get that thing away because I can’t pay … I mean I would love to find Elisa. I—”

“Get what car back?”

“The Jaguar.”

“The Jaguar’s the least of your problems,” Buchwalter said. “Did you hear what I told you? I’m here because Laurence McNabney was found in a hole. He’s dead. All right?”

Sarah insisted that she had no idea where Elisa was. Not even Greg knew where she was, Sarah said, and Greg was her best friend.

“Best friend? Come on, Sarah, let’s be honest. It’s time to be honest here.”

“He was her horse trainer and it was kind of like a father–daughter thing,” Sarah said.

“Sarah, Elisa’s not the daughter type,” Buchwalter said.