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"He's hiding something, all right," Evan said to Julius.
“It would appear that way,” Julius agreed. “The old man would rather die than have us dig up whatever's in the garden. And speaking of which, what were you saying earlier about the search warrant?"
Julius sat with his cousin Evan at Evan’s penthouse condo suite.
He didn't want to leave Cleo tonight but he had no choice. He had business to attend to.
He didn't want to get Cleo involved unless he had hard facts.
“Got some bad news, cuz. It's going to take longer than we thought to get that search warrant."
"What the hell for? Isn’t it simple? Two people are missing and all the evidence points to their bodies being buried on Maple Boulevard."
Inwardly Julius was fuming and trying to calm his nerves. He was often a man in control but this time fury blazed through his veins.
Not only was this whole situation torturing Cleo, it was torturing him, too.
Just what the heck was that old man hiding?
“The fact is, he doesn’t want us to dig up his land, and he's also insisting there's nothing there. Now the courts have their hands tied. It's not as if your dad and Cleo’s mom had been reported missing. They told everyone they knew that they were heading off to Mexico together.”
"But they weren't in Mexico.”
“That’s where the problem lies. Looks at if some of our sources have been inaccurate. People can sneak into Mexico a little bit easier then they can here. Looks as if they might have turned up there after all under assumed names.”
"What the heck's going on then? Where do we begin to look?” Julius leaned forward anticipating an answer from his cousin.
This was beyond ridiculous now. He felt as if he were going to lose his temper or do something irrational.
"Well I had a new team check some stuff out over there. Private detectives who specialize in this sort of thing. They’ll keep digging even if it means finding a needle in a haystack. Meanwhile, getting the search warrant is a little bit tricky here because it’s not seen as an emergency. Your dad and Cleo’s mother sent text messages from Mexico.”
“Allegedly.”
“Yes. Allegedly. But we have no concrete proof to refute that right now. It might take a little bit more time. And meanwhile I have couple of PI’s at Maple Boulevard to make sure nobody goes digging up the ground and shifting bodies around before we get the warrant.”
“I doubt the old man's in a position now to dig up any shallow graves. He can’t even get up the stairs without assistance."
"That's true but you'd be surprised when people are determined or scared. He could very well try to do some digging in the middle of the night and hide the bodies somewhere else, or worse, find a way to destroy the bodies completely in an incinerator."
Julius cringed at the thought. He couldn't bring himself to think of such a horrible thing happening to his father's body or to Cleo’s mother's body.
Still, another serious question loomed.
Where the hell were his father and Cleo's mother? Were they dead or were they alive?