Cold Tears

Cold Tears

Molly rolled to her side and cried out as her broken rib wrenched her awake. She groaned, sat up gingerly, fighting against nausea as the room spun around her. Drawing shallow breaths to keep the pain in her side tolerable, she watched the gray rectangle of the window execute a never-concluding fall to the floor. She turned on the lamp, gasping as harsh light slammed raw pain through her eyes to the top of her head.
Bracing against the walls, she stumbled down the hall to the bathroom and went in without flipping the switch. As she did often, especially when drunk or hung over, Molly replayed all the bad times, running through the futile what ifs. It was a bad idea and she knew it, but it was irresistible compulsion lately, like picking at a scab.
On the way back to her lonely bed, she stopped by the other bedroom and listened for the comforting sound. Hearing nothing, she held her breath to listen closer. There was only the sound of air whistling from the overhead vent. She reached inside and flipped the switch. The bed was disheveled, but unoccupied. Back toward the living room light flickered from the television. She went into the bedroom to pull the blanket from the bed. Dragging it to down the hall, she tried to remember if Katie had said anything about bedding Mancie down in the living room.
The cradle was empty, causing her a confused moment of anxiety.
She tried to calm herself as she went back to the bedroom. Colliding with the doorframe shot pain through her side, but cleared some of the fuzz in her mind. She breathed deeply and then went around the bed, sure that she would find her daughter curled up on the floor again. Mancie wasn’t there. Molly dropped to her hands and knees to peer under the bed. Nothing!
Beginning to panic, she hurried back to the living room, throwing on the hall light in the process. She searched the floor behind the chair and couch. Then she rushed to her own bedroom, thinking maybe she had brought her daughter there like she used to right after Pat moved out. The bed was empty. She searched everywhere again, but Mancie was not in the house.
Then she saw the security chain hanging unfastened. She went to the door and tried the knob. It was unlocked.
“Mancie!” she shouted, rushing into the darkness.
She screamed her daughter’s name again. And then she just screamed and screamed.




August 30
Sun shimmered from the face of the Atlantic as Jill’s flight chased westward, carrying her home to Richard. Mirabelle was gone, but she was through with mourning. That’s the way her aunt would have wanted it. She would not feel sorry for herself. She couldn’t afford to.
I’ll make this work, Aunt Mirabelle, she vowed to the precious woman who had been her only real parent.
Soon Richard and I will be together again and everything will start coming together.
She looked out at the clouds and tried to picture his smile. He hadn’t smiled much lately, but who would, considering what had happened to him, what had happened to both of them.
None of it was his fault. Why can’t he see that?
Like the accomplished scholar she was, Jill had exhaustingly researched post-traumatic stress, but her study only armed her with the names of his demons, not with a means to exorcise them. He used to speak to her about Somalia. Now he refused to discuss it, much less the nightmare precipitated by the psychopath he had been forced to kill. He only became angry when she brought it up. The psychiatrist warned that he could not ignore it away, but Richard had no use for psychiatry.
He’s too good to have faced all that and come away undamaged.
Everything she had tried to do seemed to only make it worse.
Maybe nothing I do will ever make a difference.
She twisted away from the gloom.
You always said that despair is a sin, Aunt Mirabelle.
She reminded herself that things had been improving before she left for the funeral. Richard had seemed enthusiastic about the possibility of her taking a Ph.D. position at Auburn, even cheerful. He was supportive of her career, and seemed to be coming to terms with the demise of his own dreams of a law enforcement career. How different his recovery would be had that dream been left to him. The pardon had only solved his legal problems.
Clouds now veiled the sea below, sealing her inside the narrow world of the cabin. With the absence of turbulence, the steady low drone of the jet’s engines provided the only clue that they were moving. She closed her eyes.
Tonight, she said to herself as she imagined lying against him, wrapped in his arms.

The door opened to a fetor of mildew and something sour in the dead silent air. Dropping her suitcases in alarm, she cried out.
“Richard!”
No answer.
No! Please, God! Not that!
She rushed inside, leaving the door open. In the kitchen an open gallon of milk turned to curds and whey sat on the edge of a sink filled with beer cans. Other cans littered the table and counters. One lay on the floor beside the overflowing trashcan. There were no dirty dishes, but a solitary glass of spoiled milk sat on the counter beside a black and shrunken banana hosting a small cloud of gnats.
Holding her breath, she walked slowly down the hall to the bedroom. The bed was disheveled but empty. In the bathroom the towels hang neatly as she had left them, but the stool was unflushed.
The basement! she thought numbly.
Trembling, she went to the stairway and opened the door. A high-pitched series of blips and beeps sounded and pale light flickered in the dark. She flipped on the light switch.
“Richard?” she called out fearfully.
A chair scraped on the concrete floor.
Thank you, God, she breathed, closing her eyes in relief.
Richard appeared at the foot of the stairs.
“You’re home,” he said, smiling at her.
“Are you okay?”
He didn’t look okay.
“Yeah . . . I’ll be up in a minute . . . I just---hold on.”
He darted back into the darkness.
“Just got to turn off the computer,” he called out. “I’ll be right up.”
Jill’s heart was racing. Her knees felt like jelly.
“Why did you take it down there?” she called down.
There were other, more important questions to ask.
“The light,” he said, taking two stairs at a time as he hurried toward her. “I . . . can see the screen better away from the light. I’ll bring it back up for you after while.”
His appearance appalled her. Although always thin, Richard had wasted alarmingly. His eyes were dull and sunken, his face pale above unkempt whiskers. He appeared not to have shaved in her absence. The clothes were the same he wore when she left for the funeral. A sour smell suggested that he had gone without bathing too.
“What have you been eating, Richard?”
“Stuff,” he said vaguely. “Mostly from the fridge.”
“But you bought beer?”
He shrugged.
“I only bought a couple of cases. I didn’t get drunk---honest. I made it last for two weeks. What is that? Less than two cans a day?”
“What exactly did you eat?”
“I . . . don’t know. I wasn’t hungry. But I could eat something now,” he said eagerly.
Jill fought back tears as she imagined him holed up in the basement, subsisting on the occasional can of beer, and playing video games, neglecting even minimal housekeeping and personal care. Obviously, he had neither worked nor tried to find work.
“Richard, I love you, but . . .” she began sternly. “I have to go to the college to check my mail and talk to Doctor Campbell. When I get back, we’ll go get something to eat and . . . and we have to talk.”
“Sounds great.”
“Could you clean up this place and shower . . . and either trim that awful beard or shave it off.”
“I’m sorry about all this,” he said lamely.
“I know, dear.”
Jill left the house feeling as if she would choke on the knot in her throat. She drove only around the corner before pulling to the curb. She put the car in park and covered her face with her hands. Finally, she cried.

Absent the beard, Richard looked even thinner. Sharp cheekbones accented his sunken eyes. He continued to apologize.
“I just couldn’t find the energy to do anything, Jill,” he said. “I tried . . . I just . . . couldn’t keep anything going. I’m so sorry. You had to go through all that and then you get back here and find . . . all this.”
She tried to imagine what had made him do what he had. It was nothing like him.
“What happened, Richard? What’s going on?”
“I really don’t know. I just . . . you were gone and . . . and nothing seemed to matter anymore.”
“But I was coming back, Richard. You knew I was coming back.”
“Things will be different now---better,” he said. “You’ll see.”
Would things ever be right again? She didn’t know. One thing was certain. He needed her. She vowed never to leave him again.
“Say, I’m hungry. I really am,” he said, his sentences stumbling over each other in his eagerness. “You promised we’d get something to eat. How about that Chinese place you like? Want some cashew chicken? That would be good, wouldn’t it?”
Jill had no appetite, but she wanted him to eat.
“That would be nice,” she said.
Richard held the door open for her as they went out, his courtesy reminding her of a first date. He started the car, but made no move to leave.
“Sorry for all this,” he said. “This was all you needed. You come home and find me . . . wallowing in self-pity like that. I’ve been so damned selfish.”
“It’s okay, Richard. We’re together again. Everything will be all right.”
She was not at all sure that everything would be all right.
“I’ve got to find a job working with my hands, Jill,” he said as they pulled out. “I can’t talking people into buying things they probably don’t need.”
“Everyone needs insurance,” she said. “Why can’t you try to stay with this job?”
“The commission part bothers me---my income depending on how many policies I sell---it just seems that sooner or later I’ll be pushing people to buy more than they can afford.”
With the few policies he had sold so far, Jill thought that there was little danger of that. She wanted him to keep the job, keep any job for that matter.
“I’m sure that a lot of honest people sell insurance,” she said.
“No,” he said stubbornly. “I want a job where the only thing I have to do is show up every day and work my butt off.”
It wouldn’t matter to her if Richard never made as much money as she would eventually make as a professor. She was no snob when it came to honest work. She worried, however, that it might eventually matter to him.
“So have you applied for such a job?”
“I talked to a guy,” he said vaguely as he pulled into the lot at Taipei Garden.
Their budget prohibited ordering from the menu, so they went through the buffet line.
“I’m sorry about your aunt,” he said, covering her hand with his when they got back to the table. “I wish we could have afforded for me to go with you.”
“We did the sensible thing. Aunt Mirabelle would have understood.”
“Was it a nice service?”
The priest had said nice, appropriate things, but he was new to the parish and hadn’t known her aunt.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You sound angry,” he said.
“Just disappointed. No one ever appreciated her.”
“You are angry. From what you tell me, it was their loss. I wish I could have met her.”
He was beginning to sound like Richard, her man, the one she had expected to find when she returned home.
“Thank you,” she said squeezing his hand.
“She’d tell me quit feeling sorry for myself, wouldn’t she?”
She studied him intently.
“Is that what happened?”
“I let you down, Jill. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“We agreed not to unless there was an emergency. I didn’t want to bother you with something so . . . so trivial. I mean, it’s silly, isn’t it? A grown man, and I can’t even spend a few days alone without . . . just falling apart like that.”
“We were warned about this. Maybe you should---”
“I’m not seeing a shrink,” he said stubbornly, cutting her off. “You know how I feel about those guys. Got to be a little nuts themselves or they’d never go into the business.”
“They are doctors.”
“Witchdoctors, maybe. No one is screwing with my head. And I’m not taking a bunch of mood altering drugs either. No chemical crutches for me, thank you. I’ve got enough problems without that.”
Normally reasonable, Richard was adamant. He could clearly benefit from counseling. She gave it another go.
“After what happened while I was gone, don’t you think that perhaps . . .”
She stopped when she saw him clench his jaw in anger.
“Look, Jill. Think of it like . . . like I fell off the wagon or something while you were gone, okay? I just kind of fell down this hole and couldn’t get out. But I didn’t do anything destructive like get drunk, or try to kill myself, or something. Now you’re back now, and I’m fine. Stop worrying about me.”
“I’m not worried,” she said.
“Sure you are. You came home and found this crazy guy holed up in the basement like a junior high kid playing hooky. It probably scared the hell out of you.”
He thought he was exaggerating her concern, but he didn’t know the half of it. Telling him the truth would serve no purpose.
“Well, I love that guy and I need him,” she said, squeezing his hand again.
“I’ll pull it together now,” he assured her. “You’ll see.”
The doctors had warned her that his emotional recovery would be a long, perhaps life-long process. This day was brutal confirmation of that. Jill saw clearly now that she would have to provide strength and stability for them for the foreseeable future. She vowed again never to leave him alone.

On the way home, he slowed abruptly, looking intently to his right.
“There’s the guy I told you about,” he said, pulling quickly into a service station behind a flatbed truck loaded with roofing shingles.
“What guy?”
“Hold on. He’s getting ready to leave,” he said, getting out and trotting toward the station.
Two rawboned, shirtless men in their early twenties came out. One of them noticed Jill and smiled appreciatively. As they went to the truck, the other looked back at her, said something, and dug an elbow into his buddy’s ribs. Both laughed. She ignored them and turned her attention toward the station where Richard stood talking to a man clad in jeans and a soiled T-shirt. The man opened the driver’s side door of the truck and turned back to nod. Richard nodded back.
“Looks like I got a job starting tomorrow,” he said as he got into the car.
“Those men are carpenters?”
“Roofers. Hard work and we start early. I’ll be getting the minimum wage to start with, but it’ll be steady work through the fall. Eric has more work than he can handle. Two of his guys quit on him.”
“Do you know how to do that?”
“Nothing to it. Easy as falling off a roof,” he said with a laugh.
“I see you still have your dreadful sense of humor.”

It was still light out when they arrived at the house, but Jill was tired, having been up for nearly twenty-four hours. Jill left the bathroom door open and Richard sat on the edge of the bed. While she showered they talked about a possible move to Georgia in the fall. He held a bath towel open for her when she stepped from the shower. He draped it around her as she came forward and leaned into his embrace.
“Shower and come to bed,” she said. “I bought something I want you to see.”
“I haven’t had an offer like that in a long time,” he said.
“Too long?” she asked, offering him her lips.
“Way too long.”
When they kissed she realized it was for the first time since her arrival. Jill began to believe that everything really was all right, or was at least on the way to being all right. While he was in the shower, she put on the negligee she had brought back. It was white (his favorite color on her), mid-thigh with a plunging neckline; the semi-concealing design was more alluring than complete nudity. Of course, it was as comfortable as loosely tied burlap, but comfort wasn’t the point. Wearing it, she felt something that she would have scoffed at before Richard came into her life. Where such scanty attire would have left her feeling vulnerable and demeaned, it now aroused her.
She lowered the lights and threw back the sheets, anticipating what a psychologist might dismiss as mutually reinforced behavior. Richard came into the room, and just stood staring at her for the longest time. Wordlessly, he came to her and she rose to pull him down atop her, and everything was as it should be---for a while. Then he rolled away with a mumbled curse, and sat up to turn off the lamp, almost upsetting it in the process.
Jill put a hand gently on his shoulder.
“It’s okay. You’re just . . . you have eaten almost nothing since I’ve been gone.”
He jerked away.
“Richard, it’s all right. Things will be better when---”
“When what? When I go see your shrink?”
“They told us that it might take time for us to . . . ”
“Why do you say us? It’s me! I’m the one who’s screwed up!”
She heard him searching for his clothes in the dark.
“Don’t leave, Richard. I want you in my bed. I want you to hold me.”
“What’s the point, Jill?”
“The point is that I love you and I need you. This isn’t your fault.”
“Then whose is it?” he asked as he headed for the door. “I know. We’ll get the shrink to prescribe me a combination of Viagra and Prozac. Why stop there? Get him to prescribe the whole damned pharmacy, a pill for every damned thing.”

Jill lay awake and alone, dressed in pajamas now. The costly negligee was stowed at the bottom of her drawer, where it wouldn’t remind her of her bad judgment. She knew that Richard’s problem wasn’t physical, nor did it stem from a lack of desire for her. It was the depression. Was it any wonder that he still couldn’t function fully? How whole could anyone when forced to do what he had done? The scars on his neck and shoulders were as nothing compared to those on his psyche. Depression was probably inevitable given the kind of person he was. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did, and someone had to be blamed. And Richard blamed himself. That was what the doctor had told her, and it seemed right. Yet, Jill’s self-doubt remained. She was no more immune to accepting responsibility than Richard.
Maybe I’m not as attractive as I was. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I’m being too aggressive or too coarse or doing something that turns him off. I just wish I knew.

Richard lay on the couch, angry, confused, and ashamed.
Look at what she’s gone through compared to me, and she’s holding it together. She comes home from burying he aunt and finds a basket case. Now this. She doesn’t need me---not like this.
He heard something outside.
A voice?
He heard it again and sat up, anticipating a knock at the door while wondering whom it could be and what it could be about. None came. Nor did he hear the voice again.
Probably just a couple walking by on the sidewalk, he thought.
He looked toward the bedroom. Sleeping separately was no way to solve things.
But what can I say if I go back to bed?
Hoping that Jill was already asleep so that he wouldn’t have to say anything, he started for the bedroom.
If neither or us say anything, then in the morning we can go on pretending nothing is wrong. That will sure solve things, won’t it?
He delayed reentering the bedroom, detouring to look through the blinds. A heap of rags or something lay on the shadowed lawn between the house and the one next door. He had decided that dogs must have overturned a trash barrel when the object moved.
“Jill,” he called out. “Come here! I think there’s someone laying out in the yard.”
She came from the bedroom.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Look at this?” he said, separating the blind for her. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s a woman,” she said. “Should I call the police?”
“Let’s go see what’s wrong first.”
“No,” she said, grabbing his arm. “If someone hurt her, he may still be out there.”
“I don’t see anyone. We’ve got to see if she’s hurt.”
He got a flashlight from the closet.
“Stay here,” he said as he opened the door.
Richard played the beam, searching the shadows for someone hiding. Jill had followed him outside. Satisfied that no one was near, he went to the woman and knelt. Jill stood close behind, her hand on his shoulder while she continued to glance around nervously.
“I think she’s all right,” he said.
The woman breathed noisily as if she had a cold.
“No apparent injuries,” he said. “She’s breathing steady. I think she’s just passed out.”
When Jill knelt beside him she wrinkled her nose.
“She reeks of alcohol.”
“Look at the way she’s dressed,” he said. “Running shorts, tee-shirt, no shoes---she hasn’t been out on the town, I don’t think.”
He shined the flashlight around the lawn, easily picking up the crooked path of feet dragging through the heavy dew. Tracing backward, he saw they came from the porch of the house next door.
“I thought so. She’s the lady who lives over there,” he said. “I’ve seen her a couple of times at a distance.”
He shook her lightly.
“Hey! Wake up. Come on. We’ve got to get you back in the house.”
He couldn’t rouse her.
“We can’t leave her here,” he said. “Help me carry her back to her house.”
“Maybe we should call the police,” suggested Jill again.
“Probably just get her taken to jail. She already looks kind of down and out,” he said, struggling upright as he hoisted the woman’s dead weight.
“Help me get her back to her house,” he grunted.
“If there was some kind of trouble with a man. He might be over there and as drunk or high as she is. He might attack us,” said Jill.
That made sense.
“I’ll go see,” he said, lowering the woman to the lawn. “You stay here while I clear the house. If there is someone there, I’ll . . . well, I’ll determine what the situation is.”
“Be careful, Richard.”
As he stepped onto the porch, he called out. Getting no response, he knocked at the half-open door and called out again. Through the doorway, he could see light coming from an interior room. He went in, continuing to call out and explain his entry as he flipped on light switches. The place was untidy but not dirty. Most importantly, it was empty.
“There’s no one inside,” he said when he came back. “Let’s get her inside.”
“Are you sure it is hers?”
“It’s where she came from,” he said as he knelt to get his arms under her shoulders and knees. “Help me stand up with her.”
He struggled up onto the porch and through the door into the living room.
“Let’s just leave her here,” he said, lowering the limp woman to the couch. “We ought to lock the door before we leave, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Let’s go,” said Jill.
She was leery about being in a stranger’s house and was eager to leave.
“I would have just called the police,” she said when they got back inside their own home. “I think that’s what most people would do. Your heart always seems to be in the right place, Richard.”
“Too bad my head doesn’t follow suit, huh?”
“Come back to bed with me,” she said softly.
“I’m not much use to you, Jill.”
“Of course you are. We must have patience. They told us that.”
“What if . . . this never gets any better? How fair is that to you?”
“I don’t want us to be apart anymore. I thought I was going to lose you once. I couldn’t bear it. Come to bed. I need you to hold me and tell me things will be all right.”
“But I’m what’s wrong, Jill.”
“That will only be true if you don’t come back to bed. You did nothing wrong tonight. You never have. Things have happened to you, Richard. They have happened to us. Come.”





September 1
Richard worked a flat bladed shovel under the last of the old shingles and pried them loose. Despite an aching back and sweltering late summer heat, he enjoyed his first day of hard work. After popping out the remaining nails, he began carrying shingles across to his coworkers using the nail guns. Instead of detouring around it, he stepped onto stack of plywood decking. The top sheet slid immediately. He lost the shingles and tried to gain his balance, visions of an improbable surfboard ride to the ground danced in his mind momentarily as the sheet gained speed. Better sense prevailed, and he jumped to the side but continued his slide toward the edge. Desperately seeking traction, he caught the rain gutter with his boot at the last second, preventing a fall to the concrete patio two floors below.
He heard something pop in his ankle, but felt nothing as he congratulated himself on his agility and good fortune. As he scooted back from edge, the world suddenly receded toward darkness and silence. He realized that he was approaching shock.
“You okay, Carter?” yelled someone behind him.
“I’m fine,” he called back although he was sure the ankle was broken.
His painful descent by ladder did nothing to dispel the possibility, but once on the ground he found that he was able to stand on it. He hoped it was only a sprain.
At home he downplayed the increasing pain for Jill’s sake, doing nothing more than treat it with an ice pack. It awoke him in the night, and he had to wake Jill to fetch Tylenol from the bathroom. It took the edge off, but he was unable to sleep. In the morning she helped him to the car and drove him in to see the doctor on call at the local hospital.
While Richard waited to be examined, Jill went to a medical supply store to rent crutches. He told her that he could walk without them, but she had heard enough of his assurances. The sight of the grossly swollen ankle and his obvious pain made her brush aside his objections. The good news was that injury proved to be only a sprain, howbeit a serious one. A small bone chip showed clearly on the MRI. The doctor suggested an operation to remove it, but without insurance, they would have to eat the entire medical cost. The office visit charge was minimal, but the MRI cost was not. Richard decided that an operation was financially impossible, and omitted telling Jill of the doctor’s suggestion of surgery.
“I’m glad they’ll let us make payments for the imaging,” said Jill as she drove him home.
“Why does that cost so much?” he grumbled. “We’re barely making it, and now this. It’s only a little sprain.”
“It could have been broken,” she reminded him. “An untreated fracture can develop necrosis. You could lose your foot.”
“Ah the virtue of being members of the working poor. If we were indigent we wouldn’t have to pay anything.”
“And if we were rich we could afford good insurance,” she said. “Complaining about things you can’t help does no good. It only makes one less capable of remedying things.”
“We were remedying things.”
“Why can’t you be thankful?” she asked sharply. “You said yourself that it was a stupid thing you did. You could have been killed. Think about that.”
“Sorry. I’ll try not to add to your burden by crabbing around.”
Jill wondered how well he would cope without having anything useful to do.
“Perhaps you could do some of the cooking and cleaning while you recuperate,” she suggested.
“Instead of playing video games,” he said, studying her in profile. “I’ll hop right to it.”
When she took her eyes from the road, she saw his smile.
“When you’re able,” she said, relieved. “Today I want you to stay off it. Keep it elevated.”

Jill had to be at the university for a two o’clock class. She fixed Richard a sandwich and tea before leaving, and took it to the living room. Through the window she saw him in the glider on the porch. He was reading, his foot resting on an upturned five-gallon bucket.
“Good idea,” she said as she handed him his lunch. “The fresh air will do you good.”
“What time will you be back?”
“Around four,” she said looking dubiously at the title of the book in his lap. “Not exactly light reading.”
“It’s just an interest, Jill. I know stuff like that’s all over for me.”
“Well take care of yourself,” she said as she bent to kiss him on the lips.
“I will, Babe.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Me too.”
He watched until her car disappeared around the corner. Then he took a bite of the sandwich and turned back to his textbook. He was lost in his when a weak, hesitant voice recalled him.
“Excuse me.”
Richard looked up to see a thin woman on the lawn in front of him. Lank hair framed a pale, somber face, one badly in need of makeup. Bony arms enfolded almost non-existent breasts. It was the woman he and Jill had found passed out on the lawn.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “Can I help you with something?”
She looked at his book and frowned.
“You a cop or something?”
“A cop? No. A roofer with bum ankle,” he said smiling at her. “How about you?”
“Waitress or bar maid,” she said dispiritedly. “Take you pick.”
“So we both work for a living,” he said. “I’m Richard Carter. You’ve probably seen my wife. Jill’s going to SMSU.”
She looked away in the direction Jill had driven a half hour before.
“Must be nice to be that smart,” she mumbled. “Oh, I’m Molly Allsop---I mean Molly Randolph. Allsop is my ex’s name.”
“Richard Carter,” he said. “Glad to meet you, Molly. I don’t have another chair, but you’re welcomed to sit on the edge of the porch.”
She made no move to come forward.
“Did something happen the other night?” she finally asked.
“What do you remember?”
“You took me back in the house, right?”
“My wife and I did. We found you . . . uh . . . unconscious out there on the lawn.”
“Drunk,” she said. “Sorry---I mean, thanks for helping me and all. I didn’t use to be like that, but . . . well, I guess I am now . . . but I . . . just---look, thanks. It was real nice of you to help me out like that. Sorry,” she said for the second time. “Tell your wife that I’m real . . . that I appreciate her too.”
Something in the woman’s manner cried out to him. Perhaps everything was her own fault. He had no idea. She reminded him of a dog that had been mistreated and abandoned simply because it belonged to the wrong person.
“Do you like tea?” he asked impulsively.
“It don’t look like you should be getting up.”
“No, but you could do me a favor,” he said holding up his empty glass. “I need a refill. Jill probably left the tea on the stove. If you could get me some ice out of the fridge and pour me another glass, maybe you could get some for yourself too. There’s sugar on the table.”
“I shouldn’t be bothering you.”
“What bother? You’re doing me a favor.”
“You sure?” she asked, coming up on the porch.
As she passed on her way inside, he noticed with disapproval a tattooed chain on her forearm. Many, even of his generation, had skin art. Although it was none of his business, he winced at the irrevocable self-mutilation.
“Why are you reading that book?” she asked when she came back outside and handed him the tea. “You in college too? Gonna become a cop, right?”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said. “Thanks for bringing me the tea.”
“But you’re still interested in that stuff. Why?”
Good question, he thought.
“I’m not sure. I wanted to go into law enforcement.”
He let it hang there.
“You ought to be a cop,” she said decisively. “You probably wouldn’t turn out like most of them.”
The brittle distaste suggested unpleasant experience with the legal system. Richard imagined arrests for disorderly behavior, perhaps drug stuff, even prostitution.
“They don’t give a damn about people unless they got money,” she said bitterly.
“They’re not all like that,” he said, thinking that he was wasting his time by saying it.
“Around here they are,” she insisted. “They didn’t even try when I needed them.”
“Somebody hurt you?”
“You mean like beat me up?” she mumbled. “I wish. No. Someone stole my baby, and those bastards didn’t even try to find out who it was. They don’t care. Nobody cares.”
There should have been more emotion in her voice, a pathetic tone to match the tears trickling down her cheeks instead of her flat, spiritless drone.
“I used to think that somebody took her to sell, you know, like on television? But then I read about all these . . . guys . . . and now I hope they did---sell her, I mean---because that means she’s with somebody who maybe loves her. I just want her to be okay . . . even if I never see her again.”
“Your little girl was taken? When?”
“Three and a half months ago---a hundred and seven days ago actually. She’ll be one in a month . . . if she’s . . .” She came to a choking halt. “She’ll be one in November.”
“You don’t think the police did a thorough investigation.”
“They never even asked me no more questions after that first time. If I’d have been somebody important I bet they would have. It hardly even made the papers. Can you imagine that? Somebody takes a little baby out of her own house in the middle of the night, and it ain’t even important enough to put in the paper! I hope this whole town goes to hell!”
Richard was sure that she was mistaken. Policemen were often crass in both word and manner. Joking was a way of coping. She had probably overheard some of that and misconstrued it. He had never heard a policeman joke about something happening to a kid.
“I bet you would have busted your butt trying to find Mancie if you was a policeman.”
“Maybe they just didn’t do a good job of letting you know what they were doing. Some cops are real bad about that.”
She snorted contemptuously.
“You don’t know them,” she said, holding up her glass. “Want me to take this back in the house? I got to go. I just come over to . . . thank you for . . . the other night. Tell your wife I appreciate it . . . and that I’m sorry to have been such a . . . nuisance.”
“No. People are supposed to help each other. Just leave the glass there on the porch, Molly.”
Head down and eyes averted, she seemed about to say something, but then turned away. As Richard watched her walk listlessly across her unkempt lawn, he wondered what the real story was. She had to be wrong about the police, and the newspaper too. The case had probably gone cold. Besides, what mother wouldn’t be upset when they stopped running stories about her missing baby?
“I wonder how often she’s even been sober since it happened?” he said softly as he struggled to his feet and picked up the crutches to hobble inside.

Jill found him at the computer when she came inside carrying his book and the two glasses he had left on the porch.
“How is your ankle?” she asked, taking a surreptitious look at the monitor, expecting to see a game screen.
“As good as can be expected.”
“You had a visitor?”
“The woman next door came over to thank us for taking her in the house the other night. Sad case.”
“Yes. I gathered that much,” she said tersely.
It wasn’t like Jill to be sanctimonious.
“Her baby is missing. She says the police haven’t found out anything.”
“Oh no. When did it happen?”
“One hundred and seven days ago. She keeps count.”
“Of course she does,” said Jill softly as she stared past him, imagining it. “They have no idea who took the child?”
“Not according to her.”
“How old?”
“Mancie---I think that the little girl’s name---was around eight months old.”
“Was? You think she’s dead?”
“She could have been taken by someone desperate to have a baby, but if it was like a pedophile . . . those type of cases don’t turn out well.”
Jill glanced at the computer monitor.
“What do the news accounts say?”
“Apparently there aren’t many. She told me that, but I didn’t believe her. I found one in the Springfield paper, but only this in the local.”
She bent to read over his shoulder.
“Can you imagine something like this not at least making headlines in a small town paper?” he asked
“That can’t be more than fifty words,” she said, carrying the glasses into the kitchen. “How awful for her. No wonder she drinks.”
He struggled onto his crutches and followed her.
“You know, I don’t have anything else to do while I’m waiting for the ankle to heal. Maybe I’ll look into it.”
“You’ve probably found everything that’s on line already?”
“Tomorrow I’ll go down to the police station and ask what the story is on Molly Randolph. I’ll explain that I’m her new neighbor and she told me about her missing baby. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of the police by the way.”
“That’s understandable. If I were her I’d probably be angry with the whole world.”
“She pretty much is. I imagine it’s just a case of bad public relations. Cops bust their butts when something happens to a kid.”
Jill took meat from the refrigerator and set the oven to preheat.
“I’d like to know about it too,” she said, frowning as she slit open the package, removed the meat to a broiler rack pan, and then went to the sink to wash her hands. “Try to remain detached, Richard. I can’t imagine anything more depressing than this.”
“Something I should avoid in my delicate condition, huh? I’m not fragile, Jill.”
Of course he was. If what had happened to him in her absence had taught her anything it was how terribly fragile he had become.
“Don’t get too close, Richard.”
“Don’t worry. Either she’s mistaken or . . . well, I can’t think of what else it would be. It’s probably just a case of bad public relations.”

September 3
The day almost got off to a really bad start when a car veered backward out of a driveway directly in front of them. Jill panic stopped, barely averting a fender bender that they could little afford.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Richard yelled as the driver sped away without a backward glance.
“He’s probably late for class,” said Jill.
“You know him?”
“No, but I’ve seen several boys come out of there. See how many cars are there. I think they’re students sharing a house.”
The rest of the trip to the college was devoid of further adventure. They agreed on a time for him to pick her up, and he took the car for the day. City Hall was a red brick building two blocks from the courthouse. All street parking adjacent to it was reserved or already taken, forcing Richard to park two blocks away and hobble uphill to the police station. The interior looked like a nineteenth century newspaper office.
“You mean Molly Allsop,” said a man in civilian clothes, answering the question he had directed to the woman manning the front desk.
The man stood behind an untidy desk at the back of the small room sorting a handful of papers and envelopes. The suit may have fit twenty years and forty pounds ago. A carelessly knotted tie draped over his bulging abdomen. His rumpled trousers and long-sleeved shirt retained the traces of numerous wrinkles in the process of obliteration via stretching. His florid face was undergoing the same process, but less effectively.
“Yeah,” said Richard. “She mentioned that as the name of her ex. Can you tell me what the story is on her?”
“Lowlife loser. What’s your interest?”
With that, everything Molly had told him seemed feasible.
“Next-door neighbor,” he replied. “We just moved in, and I was talking to her. She said something about her baby being missing.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So what’s the story? The baby is still missing, right?”
“Well the kid ain’t with her anymore.”
Richard waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.
“Well do you know where she is?”
“The kid? Probably with her dad or somebody else who can take better care of her than her so-called mom, which would be like almost anybody.”
“Her dad? You suspect a parent abduction?”
Richard wondered why he hadn’t thought of that immediately. It had to be the most common cause of child abduction.
“Could be,” said the man. “He doesn’t live around here anymore, so it’s hard to check out. Go on home and forget about it.”
Richard was getting angrier by the minute.
“Just tell me if you actually know something about the baby, and maybe I will.”
“I don’t have to tell you nothing,” said the man blandly.
“Oh really,” said Richard. “I see that . . . what does that little sign say? Lieutenant Adams? I assume that’s you. I want to get that straight.”
“What?”
“I like to correctly identify the people I quote when write up a story. The title should read, ‘The Missing Child No One Seems To Care About.’”
“Now wait a minute,” said Adams. “There’s been a misunderstanding here. I busted my ass looking for the kid. The bottom line is: no one saw anything; there ain’t been nothing else like this happen around here; and no body of a baby has turned up. The case is still open. We just ran out of leads.”
“You checked out the father?”
“Of course. He denies it, but I think he may have his kid,” said Adams frowning in concern. “You got a recorder running?”
“No. I got a good memory for words,” said Richard. “Why don’t you go find out if the father has the child?”
“He’s way over in Butler County. Ain’t in my jurisdiction. Besides, if he does, the kid’s probably better off.”
“You’re content to leave it at that even though you have no idea where the child is?”
“Look. I went over to talk to him, but I couldn’t stay there long because the department doesn’t have the money for that. I talked to both the patrol and the sheriff’s office over there. It’s their business now---investigating him and getting the kid back, that is if he’s got it.”
“But there’s no urgency as far as you’re concerned?”
“I didn’t say that. Are you sure you’re not recording this?”
“I’m not recording anything,” said Richard. “But another thing I’m curious about is why the disappearance didn’t make it into the local paper?”
“Of course it did.”
“Fifty words on page three! I would have thought that something like that would make headlines in a town this size.”
“You’ll have to ask them down at the paper office about that. For the record, I’m still following up on it.”
“Following up on what?”
“On anything having to do with the case.”
“When was the last time anything came up concerning it?”
“It hasn’t. I interviewed her friends, the people she worked with, the babysitter. No one could tell me anything, even her. By the way, she tested way drunk on the Breathalyzer that night. And she had a controlled substance in her blood. She was out of it. Couldn’t even tell us when the kid went missing. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t the one who did it.”
“Did what?”
“Maybe there was an accident, or maybe some boyfriend did something. This disappearance thing could be a cover up.”

When Jill finally came down the steps at four-fifteen instead of three-thirty, Richard just leaned over to open the door for her instead of asking what the hold-up had been. Her expression and pace betrayed irritation with the petty tyranny of academe. As a graduate assistant she was learning the truth of the adage that responsibility flows to the competent until they drown.
“How’s the overworked and underpaid?” he asked as she got in.
“Let’s not talk about it. How was your day?”
“Interesting,” he said, figuring the question was only pro forma.
“So, what did the police say?”
“They’re don’t put much stock in what Molly told them.”
“They think she’s lying?”
“The ‘police’ is one guy, and I don’t think he’s too good at his job. Molly may be right. I think he’s kind of lazy. He came up blank initially and jumped to alternate conclusions. Now the strategy seems to be, ‘Just waiting for something to turn up.’”
“Alternate conclusions?”
“Either the baby was killed, and Molly had something to do with it, or the kid was kidnapped by her father---which, by the way, seems to be just fine with him.”
“Those aren’t illogical hypotheses,” said Jill, irritating him. “The family is always suspect at first, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, but this guy isn’t doing anything.”
“At least he talked to you.”
“Only because he thinks I’m a reporter.”
“What made him think that?”
“I kind of . . . misled him. He was being real obnoxious so I asked him his full name so that I could get it right when I quoted him in a story about a missing baby no one seemed to care about.”
“You lied to him? Can’t you get in trouble for that?”
Richard laughed.
“For impersonating a journalist? They’d have to arrest everyone who works for the supermarket scandal sheets.”
“You shouldn’t have lied to him.”
“Yeah, well he shouldn’t be sitting on his butt when there’s a missing baby to find.”

Jill vetoed eating out. Instead, she made a delicious dinner from almost nothing. She turned leftover tortillas into Romano cheese-covered appetizers to go with a soup comprised of only milk, potatoes, onions, and cracked white pepper. Afterwards they huddled on the couch and watched sitcoms. At ten Richard crawled gingerly into bed, having tweaked his ankle when he slipped in the shower.
“I can’t understand why the disappearance didn’t make a bigger splash in the local paper,” he said.
Jill snuggled into his arms without responding.
“How does that happen, Jill? That’s got to be a big story.”
“Conspiracies happen only in movies, dear.”
“No. Something’s going on,” he said. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”



September 4
Jill was encouraged that Richard had found the energy to fix breakfast while she was in the shower. She sat, allowing him to hobble over and serve her from the sizzling frying pan while she resisted the urge to rearrange the misplaced flatware.
“I’m going to the newspaper office this morning,” he announced.
“Why?”
“Maybe someone down there can explain why they gave such short shrift to the story. I still can’t imagine people not getting more worked up about a missing baby.”
“Neither can I,” she said as she trimmed her fried eggs.
Richard always cooked them with the skillet too hot.
“Try not to anger anyone,” she said. “And don’t lie anymore.”
“Adams just jumped to a wrong conclusion. I think he’s got a habit of doing that.”
“When he discovers that you are not a reporter, he will be very angry, I think.”
“He won’t find out,” he said blandly. “That guy couldn’t find his own butt if he used both hands.”

After he dropped Jill at the campus, he returned to clean the kitchen and kill time until the newspaper office opened. He had just pulled the stopper on the sink when there was a knock at the back door. Bracing himself on the counter top, he hopped over to look through the curtain. Molly Randolph stood outside in her signature pose, listlessly at attention with her arms folded and no hint of animation in her face. He unlatched the door and opened it.
“Can I come in for a minute?” she asked.
“That’s why I opened the door,” he said with a smile. “Do me a favor and get me my crutches. There right over there.”
“We drank the last of the coffee,” he said when she brought them over. “I can make more if you want.”
“No. I don’t drink it,” she said. “I hate to keep bothering you. It’s just that . . . you’re the only one that seems to even care.”
“I’ll bet your friends and family are more concerned than you think.”
“What friends? And my family thinks worse stuff about me than that friggin’ cop.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I done something to Mancie,” she said, her face threatening to collapse.
She blinked away tears and composed herself. “Here,” she said, thrusting a picture at him. “This is my daughter.”
It was a professional photo, the sort mass-marketed in discount stores, a semi-glossy wallet-sized print of an overdressed baby sitting in front of an ornate background. The almost hairless little girl clutched a teddy bear and smiled at someone, probably Mama, above and to the right of the camera. Mancie Allsop was a beautiful child. Something came immediately to Richard’s mind, something he couldn’t share with the distraught mother.
What could be a more perfect career for a pedophile than being a photographer specialized in child portraits? You’ve got the pictures to stimulate your fantasies, and addresses for your potential victims. You could also learn about single-parent families. Predators of all types become adept at spotting weakness and opportunity.
“She’s beautiful,” he said, handing her back the photo.
“Yeah, she’s the only thing I done right.”
She sniffed noisily and cleared her throat.
“I've been thinking, Mr. Carter. You know about police work and stuff. I don’t have no money now but if you could maybe try to find out what really happened, I could pay you. I know it’s a lot to ask but . . .”
“Molly, I can’t do that. You need a licensed investigator. It may not even be legal.”
“It cain’t be against the law to ask questions and try to find out stuff, can it?”
“Look, Molly,” he began tentatively.
“Please? I’ve got to know something. No one cares. Just help me find out what happened.”
“I’ll see what I can find out, but you can’t pay me.”
I’m already doing that, he rationalized. What could it hurt?
“Molly, but don’t get your hopes up too much. I probably won’t be able to find out any more than the police have.”
His admonition was ridiculous, of course. The desperate woman would clutch at anything that allowed her to continue hoping for the return of her baby.
“I knew you would,” she said. “I just knew you would. You’ll find her for me. You will.”
“Molly, I’m not a trained investigator---I . . .”
“You’re smart though. And you care about people. I could see that right away. You care, and that’s good enough for me. You won’t get tired of looking and just say, ‘to hell with it,’ like that Adams bastard done.”
Richard thought that she had probably just summed up precisely up what ‘that Adams bastard’ had done, but he wasn’t sure that he could do any better.
“I’ll do what I can,” he promised.
“Is there something I can do to help?”
He needed a starting place. As a policeman he would begin with a rigorous interrogation of Molly herself. He couldn’t do that, of course.
“There is,” he said. “But it won’t be fun. Could you write an account of everything you remember about the day she disappeared?”
“Night,” she corrected. “They took her at night.”
“No, I want you to tell be about that whole day. Try to remember everything you did, everyone you met, what everyone said and did. Everything.”
“Even if it don’t have nothing to do with Mancie?”
“Everything, Molly. You never know when some little something will turn out to be important.”
“You going to start today?”
“As much as I’m able on a bum ankle,” he said, deciding not to tell her about yesterday’s encounter with Adams.
“I guess I’ll go back and get started,” she said. “My handwriting ain’t very good. Should I maybe print?”
“Just so I can read it. The main thing is to take your time and write down everything. Work really hard on that.”
Molly stopped at the door.
“I remember it all, Mr. Carter. It’s all I’ve thought about since it happened.”
He watched her walk briskly across the weedy yard. Suddenly she had a purpose. Adam’s was not out of line in suspecting Molly. When something happens to a baby, the parents are always suspect. But if she was guilty then why did she want the investigation to continue rather than just letting it fade away as it was apparently well on its way to doing? Adams probably thought it was an act. By nature, cops were suspicious. He wondered what Molly had done to confirm Adams’ opinion.

The James River News was housed in a red brick building whose corbelled false front parapet overhung a sloping sidewalk. Inside, a drop ceiling with fluorescent light panels clashed with dark tongue and groove flooring and tan stuccoed walls. The small room was cluttered with half a dozen computer cubicles. The receptionist sat just inside the door. Richard leaned on his crutches as a young conservatively dressed and overweight woman looked up expectantly.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“I’d like to speak with the manager or editor.”
“I’m the editor and owner,” said a man sitting at a desk to his right. “We aren’t hiring, and we have all our supplies contracted, so we aren’t buying either. If you want to run a an ad Mary there can take care of you.”
“I’m not here on financial business,” said Richard. “I was hoping you would have time to talk to me about an incident that was reported in your paper a few months back. By the way, I’m Richard Carter,” he said, extending his hand while leaning on his crutches.
“Hal Dillard,” said the man, half-rising to shake hands. “You’re welcome to look in the basement. That’s where we keep back issues. Or I’ll get someone to find it for you if you know the date.”
He was obviously eager to hand Richard off.
“Actually, you could probably tell me about it and I wouldn’t have to take up any of your employees’ time.”
Dillard seemed to like that idea.
“Okay. But I don’t have much time.”
“It’s about the baby that disappeared.”
“The Allsop woman,” said the man, nodding. “Sad case.”
“Yes. I would think that such a shocking thing would be pretty big news in a town this size.”
“Oh it was. Is,” Dillard corrected himself. “People are shocked.”
“But . . . there wasn’t much about it in your paper, was there?”
“We didn’t report the details because we didn’t want to hinder the investigation---you know, tip off whoever it was that took the little girl.”
“Mr. Adams asked you to play it like that?”
“He didn’t make a formal request,” said Dillard, squirming.
Then he looked around the room before turning his attention back to Richard,
“I haven’t had my breakfast, Mr. Carter?” he asked, getting up abruptly. “Come across the street and we can continue out conversation over there.”
“I might take a cup of coffee,” said Richard, as he followed Dillard to the door.
As they waited for traffic to clear before crossing in the middle of the block, the editor spoke, his tone exaggeratedly solicitous.
“How did you hurt your leg?”
“Fell off a roof,” said Richard as they stepped from the curb.
“Do it yourself job?”
“No. I’m going to college, but kind of between things right now, so I picked up a job with a roofing crew.”
They went inside a storefront café and sat at a table in the back corner. After the waitress took their order, Dillard leaned back and sighed.
“I didn’t want to tell you in the office, but the reason there wasn’t more of a story about it was that my main writer---well, the only one I have---is, shall we say, overenthusiastic. Charles wrote local sports before I promoted him. He’s fond of exaggeration, I’d guess you’d say. That’s fine when writing about high school football, but he’s a bit over the top for straight news. I like the kid, but I didn’t trust him to handle this one with the kind of sensitivity it needed. I was going to write it myself, but other stuff came up, and we just basically rewrote the police report. Nothing else developed, so there was nothing to base follow ups on.”
Richard thought of several questions, but before he could ask Dillard had one of his own.
“Just what is your interest in this?” he asked. “Are you a relative or a friend of the mother?”
“I’m just curious, and until the ankle heals I’ve got time on my hands.”
“And you’re a friend of hers?” Dillard repeated.
“I guess you could say that. I’m concerned about what happened to the baby.”
“Of course. We all are,” said Dillard as his breakfast arrived.
The editor began an elaborate preparation ritual before eating. First he buttered his toast, making sure to evenly spread the butter to the edges of each wedge, and then he repeated the process with packets of grape jelly. After dicing his eggs, both horizontally and vertically, he gathered the butter and jelly packets into a bowl, wiped his hands fastidiously, and then placed the napkin atop the bowl. On cue, the waitress took the refuse away and refilled his cup.
“You know,” he said, pausing before beginning his repast. “We buy most of our stories---and all our editorials. Local sports, area news, and obituaries are about all that we actually produce ourselves. I’m not much of a writer myself, but I can spot bad copy. That was probably my father’s biggest disappointment. I can turn a profit with the paper though, and I run it to make money, Mr. Carter. That’s about all there is to it. I’m sorry we didn’t do a better job of covering the story, but that’s just the way it turned out.”
“You didn’t think doing follow ups to let your readers know how the investigation was developing would be a good idea?”
“Moot. Nothing developed. Besides, there was a real touchy political story about that time. Charles was covering that thing about the school superintendent. I had to ride herd on him. A lot of charges were being thrown around. School board meetings became a real rodeo. Number one rule of small town journalism: boost, don’t tear down.”
“So how did that push the abduction off the front page?”
“It didn’t. A doctor died under suspicious circumstances. Wilson. Burned up in his house. The fire marshal thought it might be arson, which of course would make his death a homicide, but they couldn’t find any evidence of a . . . fire starting chemical---you know like gasoline or kerosene.”
“An accelerant,” said Richard, supplying the word and getting a nod in return.
“That got everyone’s attention for a while, and then, like I said, there wasn’t any news to report about the baby except for the disappearance itself, and everybody already knew about that. I couldn’t see any reason to rehash it.”

On the way home, Richard thought about Dillard killing a story because it was bad copy, or because it might “tear down” rather than “boost” the community. It was possible. People could be quirky, and none more likely to be quirky than big fish in small ponds. Perhaps a fussy editor with a bean-counter mentality would kill a story with such obvious interest because some readers who were also prospective ad clients might find the story depressing or offensive.
“I wonder why the guy made time for me instead of just blowing me off?” he asked himself as he stopped at the curb in front of the house.
As he hobbled up the walk, Molly came across the lawn.
“I wrote everything I could remember,” she said waving a yellow legal pad.
“Let’s go inside and get started then,” he said.
They sat at the kitchen table as Richard read quickly through Molly’s account of the day preceding her daughter’s disappearance.
“Okay, Molly,” he said, laying it aside.
“You write that you left Mancie with this Katie Nash. Was she Mancie’s regular sitter?”
“Since February. When Pat and me was still married I took her to Little Tots’ Daycare, but I couldn’t afford that when he left me. Katie was real good. She never got upset or nothing if I didn’t get home when I said I would. And she always took real good care of Mancie.”
“And how old is Katie?”
“Maybe twenty-five. Why? Do you think Katie had something to do with it?”
“No. I just need to know as much as possible about everyone who might be involved. Other than you, she was last person known to be with your daughter. So tell me about her.”
“Like I said, she was a good babysitter. She also does housework and sits for shut-ins sometimes. She lives in a little house over on Vine. Her folks bought it for her. They live out in the country.”
“She’s not married?”
“She ain’t got no husband or boyfriend. Katie’s so shy with men that I don’t know if she ever will have. Oh yeah. She always wanted her pay in cash so that she wouldn’t have to report it and get her check took away.”
“Government assistance?”
“Yeah. There’s something the matter with her hip that makes her limp pretty bad. She don’t have no problem getting around or nothing though. I know what that’s like. I almost quit one of my jobs ’cause of that. Of course if Pat would have paid his child support like he was supposed to then I could have got by with just one job.”
“You worked two jobs?”
“Waitress and barmaid,” she said. “That finally stopped the welfare check, but we come out better on it. ‘Course we couldn’t have without Katie.”
“So you were working two jobs when Mancie disappeared?”
She looked dismal.
“There’s something I didn’t put in there,” she said motioning toward the legal pad. “I got off a little after midnight---that’s what I didn’t put in there---but I didn’t get home until around two. There was this guy, Kirk---I wrote about talking to him in the bar. I went over to his place after I got off . . . and then I didn’t get home when I was supposed to.”
Richard was suddenly filled with misgivings. He had just started and she was already withholding things from him. For a moment he was tempted to tell her that he was through trying to help her. Instead, he flipped back the pad to her account of the night.
“Here. You go on and put it all in there,” he said, looking up at the clock. “I’ve got to go pick up Jill. Just let yourself out when you finish. Let’s talk about this again tomorrow.”
She stared at the pad.
“Your wife don’t like this none, does she?” she asked without looking up.
“She’s okay with me trying to help you.”
“Don’t tell her what I write in there,” she said. “Okay?”
He almost promised.
“Look, Molly. I won’t just tell her everything you tell me in confidence, but Jill and I don’t have any secrets. If she asks me something straight out, I’m not going to lie to her.”
“I don’t guess it matters none. She don’t think much of me no how.”
“She doesn’t think badly of you. It’s the situation she doesn’t like, and that has more to do with me than with you.”
“Tell her I’m sorry about all this.”

On the way back from campus Richard related Dillard’s account of the newspaper’s skimpy coverage of the disappearance.
“It sounds a bit implausible,” she said. “Do you believe him?”
“As strange as it sounds, I think he may be telling the truth. One thing I learned from being in the service is that a lot of stuff happens, or fails to happen, because people kind of drift through things a lot of the time.”
“They didn’t report it because they were lazy?” she asked skeptically.
“More like they didn’t know exactly how to do it, so they put it off, and it ended up not getting done at all.”
“At least that’s more believable than a conspiracy theory involving the police and the newspaper,” she said. “There have actually been very few conspiracies, you know---historically speaking, that is.”
“How about Lincoln’s assassination, Hitler’s, or Julius Caesar?”
“War and politics don’t count. I mean things like media or business conspiracies, that sort of thing. Can you think of any possible reason for the police and the newspaper conspiring to suppress the story of a kidnapped baby?”
“No. Maybe Adams didn’t find much and just gave up, while the newspaper staff was just incompetent and maybe lazy. Molly said she hopes they all go to hell---the whole town for that matter. Life wasn’t exactly great for her even before all this.”
Jill looked out the window and frowned.
“Richard,” she began tentatively. “Are you sure that you’re not offering her false hope?”
“I’m not promising her anything. She just wants to know what happened. If the baby is dead, she needs to know that as soon as possible. But it’s possible that someone just wanted a child to raise. If that’s the case, then maybe she can get Mancie back.”
“Just don’t encourage her to believe that it is going to turn out like that.”
“I’m not.”
As he turned onto the block where they lived, he said, “She doesn’t think you approve of her.”
“I don’t,” said Jill. “I sympathize with her, but her lifestyle is irresponsible, and she may have put her child at risk by exposing her to the wrong kind of people.”
“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
“No one can save us from ourselves, Richard. And when we have children, it’s time to grow up and begin being responsible adults.”
“Not everyone was raised like you.”
“There may be reasons for irresponsible behavior, but there are no excuses. When given a child, one must provide for it first rather than gratifying self.”
Jill’s uncharitable appraisal surprised him.
“Did you know that after her husband abandoned her, Molly had to work two jobs?” he asked.
“Maybe if she had stopped spending her money on cigarettes and alcohol she could have worked only one job and been more of a mother to her baby.”
Richard had thought at first that Jill’s dislike of Molly stemmed from her own abandonment as a child. Now he realized that there was more to it than that.
“You really dislike her, don’t you?”
“I don’t really know her, Richard, but what I do know, I don’t like.”
“Are you telling me not to help her?”
“I can’t demand that. I wish this whole . . . situation had not occurred, but it has, and now you are involved. You’ve assumed a responsibility. You should see it through whether I like it or not.”

After a lunch of soup and sandwiches in the kitchen, Jill took the car back to campus to research for an eventual doctoral thesis. Richard sat at the table and began reading through Molly’s amended notes, marking names and jotting down questions he needed to ask. Then he constructed a computer database to plot the time of events for the day that Mancie had been taken. The obvious starting place for his investigation was the crime scene, not that there would be any evidence left there after three months, but just to get the layout and have Molly explain what she remembered of the night, perhaps walk him through it. Then he would start interviewing people. Of course none of them would have to talk to him. He would start with Katie Nash and Kirk Tinsley.
He found a Catherine Nash in the phone book and jotted down the number and address, but found no Tinsley that he could assume was Kirk, all the entries being either first initials plus surname or else women’s names. He got to his feet and went across the back lawn. His knock at the backdoor went unanswered. Hearing a noise, he turned to see Jill’s car pulling in. He went across to see what was wrong.
“You’re home early,” he called out.
“I couldn’t concentrate,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to be with you instead of there.”
“That’s flattering,” he joked. “Didn’t know I could make such an impression.”
She didn’t smile.
“We need to talk,” she said. “But let’s go inside first.”
Bewildered, he followed her up the stairs.
“Richard, I’ve decided that I don’t want you to do this,” she said when they were inside.
“Why not?”
“It’s not good for you.”
“You’ve been talking to that psychiatrist again,” he said in irritation.
“I wouldn’t do that without talking to you first. Beside, I would have you talk to her.” She touched his arm gently before continuing. “You remember what she told us.”
“Yeah. Avoid stressful situations. Well, stressful situations are part of life. You avoid them by being dead.”
“But this isn’t part of your life. You don’t have to do this.”
“It’s part of my life now. I didn’t go looking for it, but . . . Molly needs me. She’s depending on me, and it’s too late to back out. I know you think I’m weak and fragile, but for the first time since . . . what happened, I don’t feel that way.”
“The doctor said that your post-traumatic stress and the depression would do that. Remember? We need to avoid the violent ups and downs. Until you heal you need to keep things . . . steadier.”
“Life has ups and downs, Jill. I’m fine. Besides, I don’t believe all that crap. People never had post-traumatic stress until some psychiatrist wrote a paper about it.”
“If you won’t think of yourself, then think of me. I won’t be able to take it if . . .”
“If what?”
“Oh, Richard,” she said miserably. “Look at the way I found you when I got back. I don’t . . . It scared me, Richard. It really scared me.”
He had been trying to come to terms with it himself. The blackness that had wrapped around him when she went to France had been as incomprehensible to him at the time as it had been irresistible.
“As long as you’re with me, I’ll be fine,” he said sincerely. “I’m just nothing without you.”
She blinked at him the way she did when she was about to say something she knew he wouldn’t like.
“Promise me that when it’s over, you won’t do this again.”
“Do what again?”
“Like police work,” she said. “You know that’s over for you.”
“I know. Don’t worry.”
“Promise,” she persisted.
He nodded. A wordless assent seemed less a lie than saying it aloud.




September 5
After Jill left for the college, Richard constructed a second database, this one to be filled with information on Molly’s friends and acquaintances. He would begin with her family and then work outward in widening circles of association. In the absence of a lead, a good start would be to command as much detailed information as possible.
At nine Molly knocked at the back door.
“You wanted to talk about what I done that night?” she said by way of greeting when he opened the door.
“Well you were pretty clear,” he said, squinting at the pad. “Especially about the times. How sure are you about that?”
“Getting to work and leaving, real sure. I like getting to work on time. Bosses give you enough trouble without you making them mad. It’s their money you’re getting, ain’t it.”
“Okay, and the phone call times. Are you as certain about those.”
“They’re pretty right, ’cause I only call on break.”
Richard had suspected her time notations had been estimates. It surprised him that the same woman who was now unemployed and drifting into alcoholism could have been so meticulous.
“Molly, could we go over to your house walk through what happened that night?”
“You mean like actually go through all of it or just tell you about it.”
“Let’s act it out---that is, if you’re up to it.”
“I can do that, Mr. Carter. I go through it every day.”
“All right,” he said, picking up his crutches. “Let’s start with you coming home that night and go from there.”
They began at the car.
“I missed this railing and stumbled,” she said as they got to the porch. “I didn’t think I was drunk, but maybe I was. I busted one of my ribs. Adams was all over that---thought that me and some man had a fight and did something to Mancie. Anyway, after I picked myself up, I started to get out my key, but Katie must have heard me fall because she opened the door and let me in.”
Molly opened the door and they went in.
“Did she say anything to you?”
“She was probably mad that I was late, but I don’t remember her saying nothing. She should have, but Katie don’t do that.”
She frowned in concentration.
“This is one of the parts that ain’t too clear. I remember looking in on Mancie. And I remember seeing her laying on the bed. After Pat cleared his crap out of here I set up the little bedroom for her. I read about how babies ain’t supposed sleep in the bed with their parents on account of it increases the risk of crib death.”
She snorted.
“You’re probably thinking, ‘Yeah, especially if their momma comes to bed drunk.’ I didn’t usually do that, Mr. Carter. I don’t know why I done it that night. I didn’t mean to drink that much.”
“Show me where you saw your daughter when you first came in,” he said.
She led him down the hall toward an open bathroom. One the left just before it was a small bedroom, obviously the nursery. A small single bed was made up with large throw pillows lining each side.
“I put Mancie in the middle there,” she Molly. “It ain’t as good as a crib, but she couldn’t fall off. I was going to get me another crib when I got the money.”
“Why didn’t you use the one in the front room? You could have moved it in by your bed, couldn’t you?”
“The railing’s broke. The only way it will stay up is if you put something under it. It fell once and pinched her arm real bad. I didn’t like to use it at all.”
“And you’re sure she was in here when you got home?”
“I seen her on the bed. Everything about her is running together like some kind of a dream, but I saw her. I know I did.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Katie went home and I went to bed. When I got up I saw that I forgot to put the security chain on when she left. Katie always locks the door when she leaves, and I always latch the chain, but saw it off when I was looking for Mancie later.”
Molly trailed off with a far away stare as she remembered the night.
“Okay,” he prompted. “What happened next? What do you remember doing after she left?”
“Nothing. I just went in and laid down. I didn’t even change for bed. The next thing I remember is waking up with this stabbing pain in my side---busted ribs, I think.”
“You didn’t go to a doctor?”
“No point. They cain’t do nothing for broke ribs. It don’t hurt no more.”
“Okay. Let’s go to your bedroom. That’s where you were sleeping, right?”
Molly led him back up the corridor to a slightly larger bedroom.
“I rolled over and the pain shot through me. I had to go, but I couldn’t hardly make it to the bathroom because breathing hurt, and . . . like I told you, I was drunk. I was feeling sorry for myself because of all the stuff that had happened---Pat leaving me and all.”
She drew a loud breath.
“I didn’t know nothing,” she said ruefully. “I’d do anything to go back to the way it was then. Pat could treat me like crap and run around with as many girls as he wanted to if I could just have my baby with me.”
“You were telling me what you remembered about that night,” Richard prompted gently.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s see. On the way back to bed here, I stopped by Mancie’s room. I didn’t want to wake her up, so I just listened for the sound of her breathing. I didn’t hear nothing. I turned on the light. She wasn’t there.”
“Do you remember what the bed looked like?”
“Just . . . she wasn’t there. So I went to the living room to look for her there. No. Wait. I took a blanket off the bed for her---I don’t guess that’s important though. She wasn’t in the crib or anywhere. I run back here and looked under the bed, but she was just gone.”
“I know it’s hard, but walk me through it. Show me where you went.” said Richard. “You found the bed empty so you took a blanket from it and went into the living room.”
“Yes,” she said, going to the front of the house.
“I looked in the crib here, on the floor behind the chair there, and then I run back into the bedroom again. Then I guess I just lost it because I don’t remember anything until they handcuffed me. I remember how much it hurt . . . my ribs, not my wrists. They throwed me in the back of a police car and just left me there. I guess they was looking for Mancie.”
“Let’s go back a minute. When did you notice that the security chain was unlatched?”
Molly squinted in concentration.
“I don’t remember. Maybe when I was looking for Mancie, or maybe when I went outside.”
“So you do remember running outside?”
“That’s where I was when the police came, but it ain’t clear.”
They went back to Richard’s house and sat on the porch.
“Molly, tell me about Kirk Tinsley.”
“He’s just a guy,” she said, shrugging her thin shoulders.
“Are you still involved with him?”
“I never was. I just seen him that one night.”
Richard frowned, trying to reconcile her statement with what he thought he knew about her. How does a single mother whose whole life revolves around her baby go to a virtual stranger’s apartment at one in the morning when she should go home to her child?
“That’s what they call a ‘euphemism,’ ain’t it? Miss Brown taught us about that in English when I was in high school. I done more than just see him.”
She looked away before continuing.
“I actually saw Kirk in the bar a bunch of times. Him and his buddies were regulars. That night they wasn’t with him and he come up to talk before I went on shift. He hung around all night, and I’d catch him looking at me ever once in awhile. He was waiting outside when I got off, and he was nice . . . so I went with him. I ain’t going to tell you no more.”
“Tell me what else you know about him,” said Richard.
“Not much.”
“Okay. What did you talk about?”
“Nothing important or personal. He was trying to pick me up. I knew that right off. And I guess that was okay with me.”
She looked at him now, her expression unexpectedly challenging, as if to tell him he had no right to judge what she had done.
“I’ll need to talk to him,” he said. “How do you think he’ll react?”
“I don’t know him good enough to tell you that.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“I never even talked to him again. I ain’t been back to The Honeycomb.”
Richard would have to talk to Tinsley, but he was more interested in the only person other than Molly known to have seen the missing baby that night.
“I need to talk to your babysitter,” he said. “You say she’s shy with strangers. Could drive me over and introduce us?”
“I guess.”
“Okay,” he said, getting up onto his crutches. “I’ll need to shave first. While I’m doing that, I want you to write down a complete list of all your family, friends, people you worked with and where they live.”
“All of them? Why?”
“It’s the way it’s done, Molly. I want to find out as much as I can about everyone who had anything to do with you and your daughter.”
“That cop never done nothing like that.”
“He probably did. Maybe he just didn’t ask you about them?”
“He asked me plenty,” she said bitterly. “He asked me about Kirk, and then he asked me about my other boyfriends. He said it real snotty, like I was a whore or something.”
Her emaciation suggested that perhaps she did have a habit that could eat up three sources of income. Crack would provide the stamina for it. He could imagine the self-sustaining cycle getting started that way. For the first time, he wondered if Molly had accidentally killed her child in a meth-induced rage. The problem with that scenario was that she wouldn’t have had the time or the clarity of thought to dispose of the body before the police got there---unless she had help.
“If it was some stranger, you probably won’t find nothing, will you?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe someone will remember seeing something or someone suspicious,” he said over his shoulder as he went into the house. “You can wait here if you want. It won’t take me long to shave.”

Molly’s car, a gray-green Hyunda of indeterminate but advanced age, sported one blue quarter panel of approximately the same hue as the cloud of oil smoke that belched forth when she started it. As she pulled onto the street, Richard’s knee bumped the glove box, causing it to pop open and spilling its contents onto the floor. He picked up a pair of baby booties with the tiny strings tied together in a double bow. Molly looked straight ahead, pretending not to notice as he put them back inside and closed the door.
“Katie’s afraid of talking to you, but she agreed to do it since you’re helping me find Mancie.”
Richard knew first-hand how uncomfortable police questioning could be, and although he wasn’t a policeman, his questioning would be a near equivalent. A person as such as Molly had described might well be frightened when asked about the disappearance of a child left in her care.
“I’ll try to set her at ease,” he said as he read over the list of acquaintances Molly had jotted onto the legal pad. “Tell me about your ex,” he said.
“He’s a handsome, spoiled brat who couldn’t handle having a family to take care of,” she said quickly. “Everything was good until I got pregnant. Then he lost interest in me. He called me ‘fat.’ I thought he was like joking or something, but he wasn’t. Then he started staying out. I don’t think he had any one girl he was seeing, but he was getting . . . what he wanted. After I had Mancie, he acted like a proud daddy for a little bit. I thought at first it was because he wanted a boy, but Pat didn’t want no child at all.”
She stared straight ahead grimly.
“I’m glad he’s gone,” she said. “We don’t . . . we didn’t need him.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care anymore. He works construction. He’s on the road a lot.” She sniffed loudly. “There’s a picture of him in the glove compartment with Mancie’s slippers . . . if you’re interested.”
Richard took out a framed picture, a four by six suitable for a desktop. It was discount store professional, a smiling young couple. Molly, looking ten years younger, leaned affectionately into the right shoulder of a smooth-faced man with sun-bleached blond hair, startlingly blue eyes, and the sort of confidently posed smile one might see in an underwear ad. He took a closer look at Molly, shocked at the before-and-after. Her face was full, her complexion clear, and her smile dazzling.
“When was this taken?” he asked.
“Last year, right after I found out I was carrying Mancie. I hadn’t told Pat yet.”
So maybe things weren’t really all that fine for the two of you before you got pregnant, he thought.
“What did he say when the police questioned him?”
“They didn’t tell me nothing.”
Molly turned onto a short street that dead-ended abruptly minus a cul-de-sac at the edge of a brushy field. Halfway down the block she parked on the street behind a bright blue Neon sitting before a small, neat house with white vinyl siding and an unadorned but closely mown lawn. As they got out, Richard noticed the curtain move at a front window. The door opened as soon as Molly knocked.
“Katie,” she said. “This is Mr. Carter, the man I told you about.”
Katie gave a quick, short nod. “Pleased to meet you,” she mumbled, her eyes meeting his momentarily before flitting away.
Instead of offering her hand, she crossed her arms and massaged her plump forearms nervously.
“I’m pleased the meet you to, Katie,” he said softly.
The fidgety woman was dressed conservatively, had longish, poorly styled, brown hair, and a fleshy, long face devoid of discernable make-up. The word “dowdy” came to his mind although she was too young for that description.
“He’s helping me find out what happened to Mancie,” said Molly.
“It’s terrible,” stammered Katie. “I made tea. Want some?”
Richard realized that Katie was probably mildly retarded.
“That would be really nice,” he said.
Katie hesitated, and then turned abruptly to lead the way into the kitchen.
“Come on,” said Molly. “Katie only eats and drinks in the kitchen.” She spoke loudly for Katie’s benefit, the way adults do when trying to encourage children. “Isn’t her house real pretty?”
“It really is,” replied Richard with overstressed and ingenuous enthusiasm.
He winced at his condescending tone and vowed to tone it down. Perhaps tidy was a better term than pretty. Everything was squared away and clean, ready for inspection more than for photographers. The walls were hung with cheap prints of idyllic landscapes that he thought might have come from a nineteenth century artist of lesser talent than Constable. The only clutter was an assemblage of portraits crowding a bureau against one wall, and a bric-a-brac case arranged with porcelain and glass cats in various states of suspended animation. It was a grandmother’s house.
He stopped to examine the pictures on the bureau, picking up a portrait of a professionally posed and very pretty young woman.
“Are these pictures of your family?” he called out.
“Yes,” said Katie, reappearing in the doorway. “That’s Daddy and my mom in the middle, and Grandpa Nash and Grandma Nash in the back at the left, and Grandpa and Grandma Williams over there to the right.”
Talking about family seemed to make her more comfortable than the requirements of introduction.
“That’s my little sister, Doris,” she said with obvious pride.
Richard replaced the picture in its spot.
“In front there is her husband, Jerry. Doris and Jerry are going to have a baby around Christmas. That other one is Bobby, Jerry’s brother. It’s not a very good picture though. He’s nicer looking than that.”
Katie suddenly ran out of words again, paused uncertainly, and then went back through the doorway without speaking again.
“Come on,” mouthed Molly, leading the way.
The kitchen was spare, with Formica topped table and counters, cheap white appliances, and more kitties, some adorning the windowsill above the sink, and others the top of the refrigerator. Katie took a plastic pitcher from the refrigerator and poured tea into matching glasses embossed with black and white kittens playing with a ball of yarn. She presented one to each of them wordlessly before returning for her own.
“Katie, Molly has told me everything she can remember about the day someone took Mancie. Can you tell me what you remember?” asked Richard.
Instead of answering, Katie looked beseechingly at Molly.
“Go on, Katie. He’s trying to help.”
“But I don’t know nothing, Molly,” she said, as if begging out of an unpleasant task.
“It’s okay. He’s really nice.”
“All I want you to do is tell me about that day,” said Richard, trying to reassure her. “Just start with when you got to Molly’s house and go with what you can remember from there.”
“Go on, Katie. Tell him,” encouraged Molly.
“I got there early---like I always do. I’m always on time.”
“Okay, when was that,” Richard prompted.
“It was a quarter of five, fifteen minutes early. I like to get everything ready before I start.”
“Go on. Tell me everything you can remember happening.”
“Nothing happened. I just fed her and changed her diaper when she needed it. I rocked her and put her to her to bed.”
“Do you remember me calling you?” prodded Molly.
Katie bobbed her head. “Sure. You called two times.”
Haltingly and with frequent prompting, Katie got out the story, substantially confirming Molly’s version of events, giving precise times for the phone calls. She insisted that nothing unusual had happened while she tended to Mancie. No one had stopped by or called until Molly came home at 2:48 in the morning.
“I thought it was a little earlier than that,” said Molly, “but if Katie says 2:48, she probably right. She’s good with numbers. Let her hear a phone number one time, she’s got it, don’t you Katie.
Katie nodded.
“Tell me about Molly coming home,” said Richard.
Again, Katie looked at Molly instead of answering. Molly encouraged her with a nod.
“You was kind of . . . loopy.”
“I was drunk,” corrected Molly. “Now just go ahead and tell him about it. You have to, Katie. I don’t remember much of it.”
“You come home late. Mancie had been asleep a long time. And you was holding your tummy like you had a bellyache. You went in the bathroom and throwed up. I cleaned it before I left. When I got through, I went to see if you was okay, but you was already asleep. I went in the nursery and checked to see that Mancie was covered up, then I just locked up and went home.”
“Are you sure you locked the door when you left?” asked Richard.
Katie’s looked stricken.
“Tell him, Molly,” she blurted. “I always lock up. I always lock up because you never know who’s out there watching you. I always lock up.”
“She always does, Mr. Carter. And I always put the security chain on, but I didn’t that night because I passed out before she left.”
“Okay. When did you leave the house, Katie?”
“At three minutes to three.”
“Did you see anything outside or as you drove home that seemed unusual?”
“Like what?”
“A car parked where it shouldn’t be or maybe someone outside?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, Katie. You’ve been real helpful. What do you think happened to Mancie?”
“Some baby stealer snuck in and took her,” she blurted.
Richard flinched at the insensitive remark, but attributed it to Katie’s naiveté and slowness. The succinct remark hit Molly hard. Her face contorted as she fought off tears, a reaction which distressed Katie.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. “No one will hurt sweet little Mancie. It was probably just some lonely woman who wants a baby. Nobody would hurt a little baby. She’ll probably take real good care of her.”
“I know she will, Katie,” said Molly, regaining her composure.
Although he thought he knew the answer, there was one other question that Richard needed to ask.
“Katie, do you have a boyfriend?”
Her chalky face suddenly burned bright red.
“No,” she said quickly, avoiding eye contact.
“It was real nice of you to talk to me,” said Richard, trying to sound soothing. “If I think of anything else to ask, do you think Molly and I can come over again?”
“That would be okay I guess.”

“I don’t know if she has a boyfriend or not,” said Molly when they were in the car again, “but I think there’s someone she likes.”
“Who?” asked Richard.
“I have no idea. I can’t even imagine who, but you saw her blush. Katie’s got someone she likes.”
“Molly, don’t take this wrong, but . . . she doesn’t seem too bright. How come you were comfortable leaving your daughter in her care.”
“She’s great with kids, single-minded. She doesn’t get distracted like some of the other ones I tried. They’d watch the soaps, or get lost in a book, or spend all day talking on the phone. Katie loves kids, especially babies. All she cares about is what the baby needs. Nobody could have taken better care of Mancie.”
“Maybe she’ll tell you who it is she likes if I’m not around,” Richard suggested. “If there’s a boyfriend we have to know who he is. See if you can find out. And find out how long he’s been seeing her if he has. It’s possible that he came over to see her while you were at work that day.”
“You think she had a boyfriend who done something to Mancie?” she asked, dismissing the idea. “No, Mr. Carter. Katie would never have been able to hold it together if that happened. You have to know her. She’s a good sitter because she sticks to routine. She doesn’t get distracted. When something unexpected happens, she gets real nervous. I would have noticed that when I got home.”
“You were drunk, remember?”
“Yeah, but I still would have noticed,” said Molly dismissively. “I think you’ve got something wrong about her, Mr. Carter. You think Katie’s dumb. She’s not. I hired her because she’s really good---and she’s not cheap.”
“She seems . . .”
“Retarded? She’s not. She’s a little slow, but mostly just socially backward maybe. She’s plenty smart, and when she can stick to her routine she’s great.”
“What if something unexpected comes up?”
“She has a list---not that she needs it. She’s got it memorized. It spells out what she’s supposed to do for everything from Mancie getting sick or hurt to a fire or a tornado, even an earthquake. Other people might lose their heads when something like that happens. Katie falls back on her lists. She came up on a bad accident out on the highway once. She made all the calls she was supposed to right away, and then got out and helped until the police and EMT’s got there.”
“How did she know what to do?”
“She memorized a list she read somewhere. I think it might have been an EMT manual.”
Richard tried to reconcile what Molly was saying with what he had seen of the babysitter.
“Are you sure about that? I mean that she can really understand stuff like that?”
“She not as stupid as you think, and neither am I, Mr. Carter.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid, Molly.”
“I wouldn’t blame you. I wasn’t irresponsible when it came to Mancie. I wouldn’t leave her with someone who couldn’t take care of her good. I didn’t either.”
“I don’t think anything like that about you,” he tried to reassure her.
“Sure you do, and I don’t blame you. I made me plenty of mistakes, like marrying Pat, but I took good care of my baby. Katie was as good a sitter as anyone could want. When something happened to Mancie, she was with me, not with Katie. That was the only time I was ever irresponsible. I swear it is.”



September 6
Kirk Tinsley met Richard on the landing, and it was obvious from the beginning that he intended the interview to be short. Molly had only with great effort secured Tinsley’s reluctant assent to the meeting, and had stayed behind. The stocky man stood with arms folded at the foot of a flight of exterior stairs leading to his second story apartment.
“Why do you think I have to do with any of this?” demanded the muscular little man, thrusting an indented, rather than cleft chin forward in challenge.
“I didn’t say I did,” said Richard. “I’m just talking with everyone Molly met or talked to that night. You did, so you’re on the list. It’s as simple as that.”
He offered his hand.
“By the way, I’m Richard Carter.”
“You some kind of private investigator or something?” asked Tinsley ignoring the hand.
“No,” replied Richard mildly. “I’m just a friend who happens to have a little investigative experience.” (Technically, it was true. He had just come from interviewing Katie Nash.) Molly wants me to help her find out what happened to her baby. I’m sure you can understand that.”
Tinsley softened.
“We talked at the bar, and then she came over for a drink after closing. She didn’t stay long. I don’t have any idea what happened to her daughter.”
“When did she decide to come over?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did the two of you arrange that before she went on shift, during her shift, or when?”
“Why? I mean you’re trying to find out what happened to her kid. That’s what she told me, so what does us getting together that night have to do with it?”
“Someone took her baby that night. Maybe whoever did that overheard the two of you talking about it. If he knew she was coming over here, maybe he saw it as a chance.”
“I don’t think it happened like that,” said Tinsley, speaking for the first time without rancor.
“You don’t think anyone overheard you?”
“No. We talked a while before she went on shift, and then passed a few casual words during the night. After closing time I hung around outside until she came outside. That’s when she decided to come over. There wasn’t anyone out there close enough to hear what we said.”
“So before that, while you were inside---you stayed there all evening, or did you go somewhere for a while?”
“I never left.”
“Were you with anyone?”
“Just some guys. We watched the baseball game.”
“Friends of yours?”
“Yeah.”
Richard wanted a list of names, but hadn’t established sufficient rapport to ask for one yet. He decided to come at him from a different angle.
“You know, I didn’t meet Molly until my wife and I moved in next door to her about two weeks ago. Have you seen her lately?”
“Haven’t seen her since that night,” said Tinsley defensively.
“I saw a picture of her,” continued Richard. “It really surprised me. She’s really changed since she lost her baby. You should see how much weight she’s lost.”
“I imagine it’s been hard on her.”
“She was a real looker, wasn’t she?” asked Richard.
“Nice too,” said Tinsley uneasily. “I knew she was divorced, but I didn’t know about the kid until she got here. That’s why nothing happened between us. I didn’t want . . . well, that whole situation was way too complicated. She came in, we had a drink or two, and then she went on home.”
“A woman in her condition might expect more from a guy than he’s willing to promise right off the bat,” said Richard. “A lot of guys would take advantage of her without a second thought.”
“Maybe,” allowed Tinsley soberly.
“If your friends are like mine, they gave you the business about talking to her.”
“A couple of them said something,” allowed Tinsley. “Normal stuff.”
“Any of them have a history with her?”
“I don’t think anyone knew anything about her but her name. She hadn’t been working at The Blue Hole that long.”
“The Blue Hole?”
“Name of the place before McComb took it over.”
Richard imagined how it probably went as the men watched and talked about Molly.
“So who was there that night?”
“At our table? Just about . . . maybe four or five guys. Don’t ask me their names.”
Richard understood Tinsley’s reluctance.
“I guess I can get the information from the bartender or other waitresses. Of course they might get it wrong. Why don’t you help me get it right?”
“I don’t have to. You’re not the police,” Tinsley pointed out.
“No, but a baby is missing. That’s the real point. How in the world can the truth hurt you or your friends?”
Tinsley gave him four names. Richard wrote the names in a small notepad and put it back in his shirt pocket.
“What shape was she in when she left here?”
Tinsley scowled grimly and looked away. “I feel bad about that,” he finally replied. “She was in no condition. I should have took her home, but I wasn’t in much better condition.”
“She was drunk?”
“Drunk enough for a DUI. She didn’t drink that much here though.”
Until that moment Richard hadn’t known that Molly had driven her own car over. He had assumed that Tinsley had brought her home with him. Some detective, he thought.
“How long was she here?”
“Not long, maybe from about maybe 1:45 to 2:15.”
“Half hour. Whose idea to call it a night?”
“Mine. She had trouble focusing, you know. I thought it was a good idea for her to go home before she passed out on the couch. I didn’t think it would be a good place for her to spend the night.”
“Because of her child?”
“Yeah,” said Tinsley, jumping at the suggestion although it clearly hadn’t occurred to him at the time. “I thought she should be getting home to her baby.”
As he approached the bar where Molly had worked, an iridescent pink Lexus with nearly black windows lurched backward onto the street like something from a demolition derby. With a duet of squealing tires both vehicles jerked to a stop scant inches apart. Incongruously, the other driver laid on the horn before burning angry rubber half way to the corner. Richard stared in wonder at the vanity plate of the departing car: CHARITY, it proclaimed, the license plate holder was a chrome chain of heart-shaped links.
“Obviously not a motto, must be a name,” grumbled Richard as the car disappeared around the corner ignoring the stop sign.
The Honeycomb was a respectable-looking, small town, Midwestern bar with a small, neatly lined parking lot. Its brick façade’s tinted windows beckoned with the requisite neon logos, but a tastefully professional sign proclaiming its name and substantial brass door fittings lent a touch of class. Inside, dark faux paneling of intermediate cost, a polished wood bar with padded leatherette armrest and brass foot rail fronted mirrored shelving holding stock and tumblers. At the nether end of the room a small slightly raised stage, now darkened, sat replete with sound system. Matching booths and tables filled the remaining space to near capacity but short of congestion. Suffusing it all was a cool, twilight veil, and a mélange of alcohol, stale smoke, and air freshener common to such establishments in the early daylight hours. The two places a blind man could be plopped down and know immediately by the odor where he was: a hospital and a tavern.
Richard swung himself forward on his crutches, attracting the attention of a man about his own age standing behind the bar holding a clipboard. They were the only ones in the bar. Three boxes of liquor sat on the bar. The man lifted eyeglasses, letting them rest on his receding hairline and looked in Richard’s direction.
“I don’t suppose it’s ever too early for business. What can I get for you?”
“Too early for me,” said Richard with a good-natured smile. “My wife says I can’t drink until the sun goes over the yardarm. I think that’s sometime around noon.”
“If you’re looking for a job, you’re out of luck. I’m not hiring right now.”
“Not looking,” said Richard. “How about a Bud light?”
The bartender smiled amiably.
“What Mama don’t know won’t hurt her, huh? Draft or longneck?”
“Bottle’s fine. I actually came to ask a few questions for a . . . friend of mine,” said Richard as the man brought a bottle from under the counter. “Molly Randolph. She used to work here about three months ago? Were you here then?”
The man carefully wiped moisture from the bottle, uncapped it, and set it on the bar in front of Richard.
“I hired Molly. Damn shame about her baby girl.” He paused and frowned. “Friend?” he asked skeptically.
“Next door neighbor actually.”
“How’s she doing?”
If he didn’t care he did a good job of sounding like he did.
“How well could she be doing?” replied Richard.
“I don’t know, man. She was so screwed up, and then that happens. Probably blames herself.”
“What do you mean, ‘screwed up?’”
“Higher than a kite---not like her.”
“Drunk?”
“No. I know what she drank that night. It wasn’t enough to mess her up that much. I mean, I’m not for sure, but she wasn’t acting right.”
“Just that night, or was it like a habitual problem?”
“Hey. Forget what I said. All I know is that she wasn’t right from the day her old man dumped her.”
“Was she doing her job all right? Or did you keep her on because you felt sorry for her?”
“I don’t run no social program. She showed on time, did her job, turned in all her tips. It’s just sometimes when she came in she looked like she had something under her skin, you know . . . too fidgety and . . . bird-like.”
“Did you know she was working two jobs?”
“No. But that might explain it.”
“You think she was taking speed to keep up?”
“Two jobs, trying to be a mom---that takes a lot of energy. She wouldn’t be the first to think . . . you know . . . like a temporary boost might get her over the rough stretch.”
Richard thought McComb was engaging in an awful lot of speculation for professional bartender, to say nothing of a sympathetic boss. Then again, there was no accounting for personality.
“What can you tell me about Kirk Tinsley?” he asked.
“Tinsley? Decent guy. Quiet. Guy had been giving her the eye for quite a while. That night he finally worked up the nerve to talk to Molly before she went on shift. Then he hung around longer than usual. He’s usually out of here by ten o’clock. He stayed until . . . I don’t know . . . longer than that, way past nine . . . maybe midnight. I understand they got together.”
“You do?”
“That’s what a couple of his buddies were saying the next evening after she got picked up for questioning. I hope you find out something. At least I think I do. Maybe not knowing would be best.”
“How so?”
“Well if some pervert took the kid . . . you know.”
“Yeah, that would be bad.”
Richard winced at the inanity of his remark as he fished out his money clip.
“Thanks for talking to me,” he said as he slipped out a five and placed it on the counter. “I gotta go pick up my wife. “ With luck your other customer won’t run over me when I leave.”
“Other customer?” asked the bartender as he slid Richard his change.
“Yeah. A lady in a Lexus almost plowed me over a while ago.”
“People are always using the lot as a turn around. I been thinking about putting up a sign.”




September 7, 12:35 AM
The sound came again, waking him.
“Richard,” said Jill drowsily. “I think someone is at the door.”
He got up, pulled on his jeans to the incessant ringing of the doorbell, and went through the house, flicking on lights as he went.
“Police. Open up,” came a gruff shout through the door.
“Hold on,” he said as he opened the door a crack, leaving the security chain attached.
Two men stood on the stoop, one a uniformed officer he didn’t know, but the other he recognized.
“What’s this about, Detective Adams?” he asked as he unlatched the chain to let them in.
“How about I ask the questions for a while,” said Adams coming in.
Jill came into the living room, cinching the belt of her robe.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Go back in the other room,” said Adams gruffly.
Angered, Richard’s first instinct was to respond harshly, both to defend Jill and to impress her with his ability to do so. He checked himself, however, and responded as he would have to an overbearing NCO when in the Marines.
“Do as he asks, dear,” he said to her before turning back to Adams. “Now sir, what do you need to know?”
Jill retreated, but only a few steps, watching intently while twisting the tie of her robe nervously.
“Where you were yesterday?” asked Adams.
“I took my wife to the college at nine, and then spent the morning here at the house. At one I went into town to have lunch with her. Then I went to Kirk Tinsley’s place to talk to him about Molly Randolph. I dropped by the Honeycomb and was there about half an hour. Then I drove around for an hour or so before going back out to the college to pick up Jill. We came home and haven’t left.”
Adams scribbled down notes in a small pad, taking his time and not bothering to respond until he was done.
“When did you leave the house the second time? In the morning?” he asked.
“No. Around one,” said Richard, repeating the information patiently.
“And what time did you pick up your wife at the college?”
“She got off at three. I was waiting for her when she came out. Now can you tell me what this is about?”
“Not yet.” He turned to the uniformed deputy. “Keep him here while I talk to the woman.”
Adams walked into the bedroom like a man accustomed to going where he pleased and doing what he wanted.
“Where were you yesterday,” he said without preamble.
“You are not going to question me here in our bedroom,” said Jill sternly, as she brushed past him. “Come to the kitchen if you want to talk.”
Adams gaped after her for a moment before following.
“I intend to get some answers,” he said lamely as they arrived at the kitchen.
“Of course,” said Jill. “I presume it’s your job. Do you want me to fix some coffee?”
“No. Just answer my questions.”
“Then let’s sit at the table,” she said, sitting without waiting for his response. “I’m a graduate assistant at SMSU. My husband picked me up at three yesterday afternoon. We went shopping for groceries and then came home where we have been the entire evening and night.”
“That’s not exactly what your husband told me,” said Adams.
Jill looked at him a moment. “He forgot about the shopping trip.”
“Why would he forget that?”
“He hates shopping. Do you enjoy taking your wife shopping?”
“I’m not married,” said Adams impatiently. “Can anyone confirm that the two of you were at home together all evening?”
“Why would they have to?”
“Just answer the question.”
“No. We just moved to town this month and haven’t met many people yet. Perhaps Miss Randolph saw the car here all afternoon and evening.”
“Randolph? That’s Molly Allsop?” he asked as if surprised.
“Mr. Adams, she was living in the house next door when you came to investigate the disappearance of her baby. I know you didn’t forget that.”
“Meth head---totally unreliable,” he grumbled dismissively. “Tell me about the morning.”
“Richard drove me to the campus at nine. He needed the car to go into town later. You noticed the crutches. He’s been unable to work since he hurt his ankle a week ago.”
“Workman’s comp, no doubt,” said Adams snidely.
“No. We are on one income until he can work again.”
“Where was he when you woke up?”
“What?”
“Where was your husband when you woke up tonight?” he repeated loudly, as if he thought Jill was either hard of hearing or simple-minded.
“On his side of the bed as he always is. And before you ask, he didn’t go anywhere during the night. I’m a very light sleeper. I would have known.”
“Why do you assume that I was going to ask about that?”
“Because it was the logical point of your question. Please tell us what this is about.”
“I don’t have to tell you nothing unless I charge him.”
“With what?”
Adams stared at her a long moment, obviously trying to unnerve her.
“Tell me about Katie Nash,” he said softly.
Jill frowned. “I never met her. She was Molly’s babysitter the night her baby was taken. Has something happened to her?”
“Stay here,” said Adams, getting up and going into the living room.
Richard leaned on his crutches, getting angrier with each moment that the officious detective spent sequestered with Jill in the kitchen. Making a scene wouldn’t help matters, however, so he didn’t say what came to his mind as Adams reappeared.
“Your wife tells it a little different, Carter,” he said.
“Not much different, I’ll bet,” said Richard evenly.
“Tell me about Katie Nash,” demanded Adams.
“What about her?”
“You tell me. Did you see her yesterday?”
“No.”
“Ever been in her house?”
Richard immediately picked up on the “in her house.” Normal people would say “to her house,” but not policeman. “In” suggested that the house was a crime scene.
“Something’s happened to her,” he said. “Is that what this is about?”
“Were you ever in her house?” repeated Adams.
“Yes. Molly and I went there to talk to her the day before yesterday.”
Adams eyed him suspiciously.
“Got an answer for everything, don’t you?” he said. “Tell me what you did in Michigan.”
Richard stared at him blankly. “I killed a man,” he said tonelessly.
Adams took handcuffs from his pocket. “I think we better continue this downtown,” he said. “And I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to say anything else until we get there.”
“You’re arresting me?”
“I’m taking you to the station for questioning,” said Adams before rushing through an explanation of the Miranda rights.
“I told you that my husband was here all night,” Jill protested loudly, pushing past the officer trying to bar her way. “You have no right to do this to him.”
“Yes I do,” said Adams with a tight smile.
“I’ll be all right, Jill,” said Richard. “Don’t worry about me.”
“How long will you keep him?” she asked, on the verge of tears.
“Call his lawyer,” Adams said to her, turning back to Richard. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
“You’re really arresting me?”
“I’m taking you into custody for questioning in the death of Catharine Nash. The handcuffs are department policy. I didn’t need to tell you that, but you’re being cooperative and I’m being sensitive.”
“This is ridiculous!” said Jill in outrage.
“It’s okay, dear,” Richard said as he turned around and held his wrists together behind his back.
“Done this before, huh?” said Adams.
“Don’t call a lawyer,” said Richard, ignoring the smug comment. “This is all a mistake and we’ll straighten it out. We can’t afford a lawyer, Jill.”
“If you can’t afford a lawyer,” said Adams as he snapped the handcuffs snug, “one will be provided for you, remember?”
“We won’t need one,” said Richard calmly.
Jill stood in stunned silence staring at the closed door after the uniformed officer and Adams took Richards elbows and led him out, supporting his weight awkwardly. It had been like something from a fascist state. Undecided as to whether she should ignore Richard’s decision not to call a lawyer or not, she fretted anxiously and vented her anger at the empty house.
“You idiots didn’t even let him use his crutches!” she finally screamed.
Then she calmly got dressed and went outside intending to drive to the police station, only to realize that she didn’t know where it was. She stopped at a service station for directions.

Richard patiently explained how he had gotten involved with Molly Randolph’s search for her missing child, careful not to imply criticism of Adams’ work on the case. He also explained that he had been majoring in criminology while working part time for the sheriff’s department in Lake County, Michigan. He told them that it wasn’t surprising that his prints were found at Kate Nash’s house since he and Molly had gone there Tuesday. He remembered handling photographs on a bureau in the living room, and asked if that was where they found his prints. Adams refused to say. Having nothing to hide, and eager to convince Adams of that as quickly as possible, he agreed to take a polygraph. He anticipated only spending an uncomfortable night in lock up before being released after the test in the morning. To his surprise, Adams informed him that the technician who administered the test was at the station. Richard agreed to take it immediately, eager to put the whole thing behind him and get back home to bed.
Then it all went bad. As soon as they began hooking him to the machine, he began to feel light-headed. Although he knew better, he began to worry that the machine would give false readings. Yet, he began to calm himself as the routine data elicited to calibrate the readings and establish a baseline were gone through. Then, instead of going directly to the point and asking about Kate Nash, the operator began to ask general background questions, apparently making it up as he went along. He asked about Richard’s Marine experiences. Getting an emotional response when asked about acts of violence, he asked Richard if he had ever harmed a child. The needles went off the scale.
The raised eyebrows and the exchange of glances between Adams and the technician hit him like an electric shock. His face flushed with dread. By the time they got around to asking him about Kate Nash, his readings were all over the place with one serious and damning spike. Richard recognized the panic attack as soon as it began. He understood what was happening, but he was powerless against it. The test was inconclusive, but confirmed Adams suspicion that Richard was hiding something.
Drenched in sweat, Richard tried to relax his body and calm his runaway emotions. Then he heard a commotion in the outer office.
“You can’t go in there, Miss!” someone shouted as the door banged open.
Jill stood in the doorway, her eyes fixed on him a long moment. Then she turned angrily toward Adams.
“Lady, you’re getting ready to get yourself arrested if you don’t get the hell out of here,” he said.
“Stop cursing at me,” she said. “If you take a proper statement from me, you will find out everything that you need to know about my husband.”
“I already took your statement,” said Adams.
“You didn’t ask enough questions.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, lady.”
Jill bit back a sarcastic retort, and when she spoke her voice was soft and deferential.
“If you’ll just hear me out, I think we can clear all this up. My husband had nothing to do with whatever happened to that poor woman.”
“Okay,” said Adams. “Put him in the holding tank until I hear out the little lady.”
He had Jill sit behind the table upon which the polygraph wires lay like stray strands of black spaghetti.
“My husband is not a well man,” began Jill.
“Just a minute,” said Adams. “We’re gonna tape this. Begin again.”
“My husband isn’t well,” she repeated. “He probably should be taking anti-depressive medication, but he refuses to even admit that he has a problem. Some terrible things have happened to him, some while he was serving his country . . . in the Marines, and then later after he got out.”
“Some terrible things happened to some people he ran into, didn’t they?” asked Adams pointedly. “How many people has your husband killed other than Catherine Nash?”
“He didn’t kill Catherine Nash. I told you that he was with me all evening.”
“How do you know she was killed tonight?”
“You said so, didn’t you?”
“No, lady. I didn’t.”
“Then it was a logical assumption that your actions implied.”
“Looks like you got an answer for everything too---just like your husband.”
“Hook me up to your machine,” said Jill, nodding toward the lie detector.
“Maybe I will,” said Adams. “Answer my question, though. How many people has your husband killed?”
“Two. One was an enemy soldier in Somalia. The other was a man who killed several women. He was a sexual predator.”
“That was the one he was charged with murder for?”
“Charges were never filed.”
“No. He received a pardon,” said Adams with a smirk. “His family must be pretty well connected to swing something like that.”
“My husband’s family has no influence whatsoever. He was pardoned because it was justice to do so. You should see what that man did to him.”
“And then your husband took the law into own hands?”
“It wasn’t like that at all. It was . . . no, this won’t do any good, will it? You won’t believe anything I tell you. Call the Lake County Sheriff’s office in Michigan. Ask them about Richard Carter.”
“I will,” said Adams. “But I doubt that it has anything to do with what he did here other than show his tendency to violence.”
“He’s not a violent man,” she said adamantly.
“His polygraph was a mess,” said Adams, “but one thing came out of it real clear. That non-violent husband of yours has perpetrated violence against a woman. He said he didn’t, but that was plainly a lie. My guess is that it was Miss Nash, and we know what kind of violence was perpetrated against her.”
Jill realized at that moment what had happened.
“No. That woman he thinks he did something to was me,” she said. “The man he killed in Michigan was a . . . sexual predator.”
“A rapist?”
“And a murderer. He killed several women, and Richard suspected that he was after me. I wouldn’t believe him, and Richard took me somewhere once . . . against my will so that I would be out of the man’s reach, but he didn’t hurt me. He was protecting me. That’s what you discovered.”
“He kidnapped you?”
“No. He only took me somewhere I didn’t want to go,” she began. “I suppose that technically it was an abduction, but it was just to protect me.”
“Then he killed this guy?”
“Call the Lake County Sheriff. I know you don’t believe me.”
Adams made the call. Jill sat listening to one side of the conversation and trying to imagine the other. Adams ended the conversation sooner than she thought he should have. He replaced the receiver and looked thoughtfully across at her.
“Wait here,” he said, getting up and moving toward the door.

Richard looked up when Adams came into the cell.
“Would you mind removing your shirt, Mr. Carter?”
“Why?” asked Richard, making no move to comply.
“Because I just heard a strange story from the people you used to work for.”
“About Boyd?” Richard made no move to remove his shirt. “That has nothing to do with anything.”
“Okay. You want to spend the rest of the night in a cell, be my guest. I just want to know what I’m dealing with here.”
Richard unbuttoned and removed his shirt and then turned around.
“Happy now?” he asked.
Adams stared at over a dozen angry red scars running roughly parallel and angling from the juncture of his neck and right shoulder down to his shoulder blade. The stitch marks were too numerous to count.
“He did that while you were strangling him?”
“It takes a long time to strangle someone,” said Richard woodenly. “Can I put my shirt back on now?”
“Why didn’t you leave him to the police?”
“Police aren’t all that good at doing things before a crime is committed.” said Richard, buttoning his shirt.
“I’m going to cut you lose, but don’t go anywhere. We’ll try a polygraph again when you calm down.”
“No we won’t,” said Richard. “I’ll talk all you want me to, answer anything you ask. Tape it, analyze it, do anything you want, but I’m not getting hooked up to one of those damned things again.”
“You know what that makes you look like?”
“Like a liar. I’m not. I’m entitled to my privacy. Your man asked questions that had nothing to do with the case you’re investigating. Besides, you know as well as I do that I should have been apprised of all the questions to be asked during the test.”
“What do you have to hide?”
“Nothing criminal, just things that are none of your business. Tell me that you have nothing in your past that you don’t want to share with strangers.”
“I’m not a suspect in a murder investigation,” Adams reminded him.
“Neither am I, at least not for long.”
“How can you be so sure of that?”
“Because you might be an overbearing jackass, but you’re not a stupid one.”

She might as well have been up. After nearly an hour of readjusting position Jill softly threw out a question, hoping for his sake that Richard was asleep and wouldn’t answer.
“Are you angry with me?”
“Why would I be angry,” he asked, turning toward her immediately.
“For telling that man what happened to you.”
“No. He already knew some of it. He assumed the worst, and the damned lie detector confirmed it. The operator went fishing and I lost it. He asked if I had ever harmed a woman intentionally. He was referring to Katie Nash, of course, but I immediately thought of what I put you through on Bonne Femme. I heard the machine respond, and after that I panicked because I knew they would read it as guilt. I even felt guilty.”
“If he takes you in again you should have a lawyer present.”
“No. I’m going to cooperate. Maybe Adams will tell me about the murder.”
She rose on her elbow to look at him.
“Why do you want to know that?”
“It could be related to whatever happened to Molly’s little girl.”
Jill rolled over and turned on the lamp.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I can’t sleep. I’m going to catch up on some work.”
“Are you angry with me?”
She didn’t answer.
“I didn’t go looking for this,” he said, sitting up. “But I’ve got to do it. Molly needs to find out what happened. This has destroyed her life.”
“I just don’t want it to destroy ours,” said Jill.
“It won’t. I can handle this.”
You couldn’t even handle a lie detector, she thought.
“Just be careful, Richard. The truth could be terrible.”
“And how terrible will it be for Molly to go on not knowing? I’ve got to try.”
“It’s not your job. She had no right to ask. You aren’t a policeman.”
“But she did ask,” he said as he gingerly swung his feet off the bed.
“And now you’re committed,” she said wearily.
“I’ll quit if you tell me to,” he said in a strained voice.
“You know I want you to quit, but I won’t demand it.”

Feeling guilty to be lying in bed while depriving Jill of sleep, Richard figured that he would spend the remainder of the night awake. There was nothing to do if he got up. Jill would no doubt be using the computer, and the TV would only bother her, besides which there would be nothing on worthy of attention.
He awoke three hours later to the smell of breakfast cooking. When he came into the kitchen he found Jill ready for school and looking as if she had enjoyed her full quota of sleep.
One of the advantages of youth, he thought.
“Sorry about last night,” he said.
“It could not be helped,” she said, putting a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. “How is your ankle this morning?”
“Stiff, but better,” he said, taking the hint that she preferred not talking about the evening’s ordeal. “Did you manage to get much work done?”
“Quite a lot actually.”
He noticed that she hadn’t set a plate for herself.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked.
“I’m running late.”
She picked a valise from the floor, bent down to kiss him on the cheek, and headed for the door. Molly knocked at the back door before Jill could have gotten around the corner at the end of the black.
“I told them that I took you over to talk to Katie,” said Molly as soon as he let her in.
She chewed her lip nervously.
“Who could have done that to her, Mr. Carter?”
“Molly, you said earlier something about a boyfriend. Do you know who that might be?”
“Not really. I just thought she might have one because of the way she acted when you asked, but she’s real shy. Maybe just you saying it embarrassed her.”
“No one’s been hanging around her?”
“Not that I know of. She’s not real social, so if she met a man it was probably somebody she met while she was babysitting or cleaning.”
“She does housework as well as babysitting?”
“She works with shut-ins.”
“I wonder if she kept an address or appointments book,” he said.
“Are you going to start trying to find out what happened to her instead of trying to find out about Mancie?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the table as if she knew his answer.
“Why would you think that?”
“It’s more interesting,” she said. “Adams said that’s what you would do. He said it was like a hobby for you. That you was doing it for fun.”
Molly obviously thought it was true. In fairness to Adams, Richard understood how he might come to that conclusion. What he couldn’t understand was the Adam’s motive for saying such a callous thing to her.
“Well that’s ridiculous,” he said. “Here’s the way it is, Molly. Katie Nash was the last person, besides you, who was with your daughter. We’ve got to consider the possibility that whoever killed her may have had something to do with your daughter’s disappearance. Her death might have nothing to do with Mancie, but we can’t just assume that.”
“And that’s the real reason you’re interested?”
“Of course.”
Molly looked at him sharply.
“You think Katie knew who took Mancie?”
“It could be, but it also might be that whoever it was just thought she might have seen him hanging around or looking at Mancie, something like that. She told us that she didn’t see anyone, but maybe the guy didn’t know that she didn’t see him.”
Assuming that the two crimes were connected violated a basic tenet of investigation he had learned from his favorite professor: Ockham’s razor, the best explanation is the one requiring the fewest assumptions. Richard decided to probe in another direction until he knew more.
“Molly, what are the chances that your ex-husband took Mancie?”
She snorted contemptuously. “I wish! Pat never cared about her. He wouldn’t even send the support payment like he was supposed to, and he sure didn’t want her! She’d cramp his style. When we was married I kept hoping he would grow up some, but he never did---never will.”
So Molly’s ex didn’t love his daughter. Kids still got used as chips when marriages fell apart.
“How . . . contentious was your divorce?” he asked.
“Hah,” she laughed bitterly. “It was peachy. Only we didn’t have no divorce. We had us a dissolution. That means that no one accuses no one of nothing. You just go up to the judge and say you cain’t get along no more and he dissolves your eternal vows. Ours was real friendly and understanding. There wasn’t no property to split, so we split the debts, including the lawyer’s fee. I got Mancie and he was supposed to pay a measly two hundred a month child support---of which I seen exactly a month and a half’s worth: three hundred dollars.”
A sizeable child support payment might be stretched as a motive for killing one’s own child, but two hundred dollars a month seemed too inconsequential as motive.
“Was he vindictive?” he asked.
“I never did anything for him to be vindictive about. I was your basic doormat, only after I had Mancie he didn’t even bother to wipe his feet on me. I guess Pat was always like that,” she said listlessly, but I never saw it until I got pregnant. At first I thought it was my fault because I gained so much weight. He kept telling me I was fat, and then he just started staying away from home more and more at night. He was sleeping around, but I didn’t want to let myself believe that.”
Richard found nothing appropriate to say.
“I shouldn’t have let it happen, I guess. I thought we needed a baby, but I guess I knew better than to talk with him about it first. Funny how I just knew. Why didn’t I understand that it wouldn’t work out. A baby don’t solve no problems. They’re not supposed to.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I had Mancie for all the wrong reasons, but she wasn’t no mistake.”
“I don’t think most babies are planned,” he ventured.
She shrugged, heaved a sigh, wiped her eyes, and then raised her chin.
“Do you and Mrs. Carter plan to have children any time soon?”
He realized with a shock that he and Jill hadn’t even discussed the possibility.
It hasn’t even crossed my mind. I’m no more grown up than Molly’s ex husband.
“We haven’t . . . decided,” he said. “We’re waiting until we get more settled.”
“Oh. She wants to get her career started first. That’s good thinking. I wish I’d been that smart.”
She pushed her coffee cup around the table.
“Pat never even came to the hospital. Mancie was two days old before he ever laid eyes on her. ‘She’s real pretty,’ he said. As far as I can remember, that’s the only thing he ever said about her. And I thought, ‘Yeah, Pat. That’s all you ever said about me too.’ And it was. It was the only thing he ever thought about me. I might as well have been a car or a horse. He likes horses. It don’t make you feel real good about yourself when the only thing someone can say about you is that you’re pretty.”
“Well, I think that you’re . . . more than that. You’re a hard worker.” Realizing how that sounded, he hurried on. “And I think you’re pretty smart---and I know you’re conscientious. I’m sure you were a good mother. I mean, you worked two jobs, didn’t you?”
Tears filled Molly’s eyes again.
“I thought I was, but if I hadn’t come home . . . I was drunk, Mr. Carter. It happened while I was passed out drunk! Someone came in and took my baby and I didn’t even know about it. I was supposed to latch the door and I didn’t do it.”
“Katie locked the door,” he reminded her. “If someone could get past the deadbolt, they could have gotten by the chain too.”
Perhaps thinking about the details made it all too clear for her.
“Why did they take her?” she wailed. “Why? What’s happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly, reaching across to lay a comforting hand on hers.
She flinched away. Then both of them tried to act as if his clumsy gesture had not occurred.
“Molly,” he said clearing his throat. “How well did you really know Katie?”
Her face turned white. “You do think she had something to do with Mancie’s disappearance. No. She loved Mancie. She would never do anything to harm her.”
“I didn’t say that I think she harmed her, but she was the last one to see Mancie that night.”
“No. I saw her too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I told you I looked in on her. I saw her on the bed, Mr. Carter. I remember it real well.”
“Did you see her?” he asked gently. “Or bedclothes that you assumed was her?”
“I saw her face, Mr. Carter. I can still see it. It’s the last picture I got. I’m sure.”
He still thought that Mancie might have been gone before Katie left the house that evening. It would have been a simple matter for the sitter to see Molly to bed and make a quick trip back into the bedroom to pull a bundle of blankets apart, whereas taking a child Mancie’s age out of bed could have easily awakened Molly.
“Katie didn’t have nothing to do with it,” she repeated. “She was a friend of mine, and she loved Mancie.”
“But someone killed her just as we’re starting to look into the disappearance, right after we talked to her.”
“It wasn’t about that,” blurted Molly. “It was a sex thing.”
“What?”
“Adams told me that someone did something to her. I’m not sure what, but it was a sexual attack.”
“Maybe they’ve got DNA material,” he muttered. “Not that Adams will tell me.”
He heard the front door open.
“Your wife’s back,” said Molly, standing up abruptly. “Look at the time. I’ve got to go.”
“You don’t have to rush off.”
“I . . . was supposed to take some medicine at ten.”
She went out the back door just as Jill came through from the living room.
“How long as she been here?” she asked.
“She came over right after you left. Did you forget something?”
“Research notes. I picked up the wrong ones,” she said, holding up a blue manila folder. “These are yours.”
“So, are you in a hurry?”
“I’m late,” she said. “Richard, I noticed that you have a list of names and addresses. You’re going to talk with those people?”
“I’d like to.”
“But they’re out of town, one of them out of state. Before you go please consider the expense.”
“It’ll only be gas money.”
“And food. I’m taking my lunch to college, you know.”
“Then I won’t eat,” he said.
She looked as if she were about to say something, and then closed her eyes in exasperation. “I’ve got to go. See you when I get back.”
“I’ll be here if I’m not in jail,” he said, trying lamely to lighten the mood.
She didn’t smile.




September 8
Molly thought it unnecessary and Jill objected to the expense, but no investigation of a missing child could omit the father, which was why Richard was heading east on highway 60 toward a construction site two hundred miles from James Mill. Molly had given him the name of the construction company, and a helpful secretary had shown him the site on a wall map. It was at the intersection of the highway he was now traveling and the north-south highway north of Poplar Bluff, meaning that he literally couldn’t miss it.
He parked behind orange construction barrels narrowing northbound traffic to one lane, drawing questioning stares from a cluster of men in hardhats sitting on stacked concrete forms and eating lunch from fast food bags evidently brought from the town some six miles to the south. One look at the soft ground made him decide to leave the crutches in the car.
“We’re not taking on additional crew,” called out a man in clean coveralls sitting with the others.
Richard waved off the comment without slowing his pace.
“I’m looking for a guy I think is working here.”
“How bad you need a guy, sweetheart?” cracked one of them, a short, raw-boned oaf in a sleeveless sweatshirt that may have been yellow at one time.
“I need to talk to Pat Allsop,” he said, ignoring Yellow Shirt. “He here?”
“You here to serve him?” asked Clean Coveralls.
“You mean a subpoena? No, I’m not an officer of the court. I want to talk to him about his daughter. Can you tell me where to find him?”
“Something wrong?”
“Yeah, there is.”
The trackhoe sat two-thirds of the way down a looping off-ramp being chewed away and loaded onto five-ton dump trucks to be carted off. A thin, shirtless man with bicycler’s body, flawless golden tan, and surfer’s blond hair sat dangling his legs from the open cab, smoking as he watched Richard limp toward him. Pungent wood smoke from a dozed up tangle of pine trunks and rootwads smoldering in the median hung in the still air.
“You Pat Allsop?” called Richard.
“Maybe. Who are you?”
Startlingly blue eyes stared down at him blandly.
“Richard Carter. Your former wife said that---”
“Hold it right there! I don’t owe her no damned child support. She ain’t got the kid no more.”
“This is not about money,” said Richard calmly, trying to hide his indignation. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Mancie. I thought it would be a good idea to see you. I’m sure you’re worried about her.”
“Well, yeah,” said Allsop unconvincingly.
“Any idea about what might have happened?”
“I don’t know nothing about it. Are you a cop?”
“Just a friend.”
Allsop looked Richard up and down, made an evaluation, and smirked.
“A friend, huh? Well, like I said, I don’t know nothing,” he repeated, looking up as a large piece of equipment fired up off to his right.
He flicked away his cigarette.
“I got to get back to work.”
“Do you think you’d have time to talk about---”
Allsop cut him off.
“Ain’t got nothing to say,” he tossed out as he climbed into the cab.
“Let me ask you a few questions and then I can get out of here and leave you alone. I need to get back to Springfield.”
“Not now. I’m on the clock.”
“How about after work?”
“Suit yourself, but I ain’t hanging around forever.”
“What time do you get off?”
“Around five or six,” said Allsop disinterestedly as he started his machine.
Disgusted, Richard started back to his car. Paying little attention he wandered into the path of a dump truck and was almost run down. He stumbled out of its path, tweaking the ankle. The driver threw him a silly grin.
Now that his trip was prolonged for five or more hours, Richard decided to find a computer to send an e-mail home advising Jill so that he wouldn’t have to make a phone call. The local library was his best bet. He drove into town, passing a string of motels, chain restaurants, and strip malls flanking the highway. Failing to notice a small sign near the football field, he continued until he reached a highway intersection and realized that he was leaving town on the south. Turning left, he crossed a viaduct bridging the switchyard and found himself literally on the wrong side of the tracks. After passing a mixture of squalid residences and down-at-the-heels businesses, he reached another intersection where a sign directed him toward the post office, which he assumed would be downtown where he expected to find the library.
The two-lane concrete street appeared to be an older version of the main highway west of town. After passing more old businesses sitting on graveled lots, he recrossed the switchyard to a brick street running past the rotten roofed remains of a depot. Elaborate stairs led down to the derelict building. After a few blocks he came to the courthouse sitting on its raised lot. Down the street he saw a newly constructed “justice center,” the current euphemism for county jail. This was the old part of town, where the streets ran parallel and perpendicular to the river rather than being oriented to the cardinal points of the compass.
He took a left and drove past an old theatre where he turned right and then hard right again onto Main. He parked across from the public library. Using his crutches this time, he went up the wheelchair ramp and entered. The library, typically, was in the care of solicitous ladies falling just short of the description “little, old.” They were soft-spoken, helpful, and apologetic that he couldn’t check materials out. They assured him, however, that he was more than welcome to peruse any and all items in the stacks. They assumed that he had come to research genealogy, a phenomenon he had observed in previous visits to small-town libraries. When he asked if he could access a computer to send an e-mail, he was escorted to a bank of four PC’s, all of which faced the circulation desk in order, he presumed, to discourage accessing “unacceptable” sites.
He sent an e-mail to Jill’s college address, hoping to catch her in her professor’s office. Getting no immediate answer, he sent a longer explanation of his situation to their home address. Before he left home, he had told her that he might not be back in time to pick her up at the college. She told him she could arrange for a ride if he didn’t get back in time. He hoped she would check her messages at home via a computer on campus. While waiting for her reply, he visited on-line newspaper sites, accessing only the free morgues and the thumbnails of the subscription services. At each, he made queries using “Allsop,” “Randolph”, “abduction,” “disappearance,” and “kidnapping.”
He got more hits with the last three than he could sort out until he paired the names with each in turn. Eventually he got three stories from Springfield area papers (all of which he had examined before) and two from the Kansas City Star, which turned out to be derivative summaries of the Springfield stories. He was about to search child abductions by date when Jill’s reply came, informing him that she had a ride home with a colleague and bidding him to get in touch if he had further information about his ETA. He answered immediately that he should be home sometime around ten or eleven.
“Porch light will be on. Hurry home.” Then as an afterthought: “DON’T SPEED.”
“Don’t shout, don’t worry, just keep supper and bed warm.”
“If cold you have only self to blame. I repeat: don’t speed, my love.”
“Not to worry. Got to go. Librarian twisting ear. Good bye, love.”
“Adieu.”
He spent the rest of the afternoon accessing heartrending news items about missing children, none close enough to James Mill to suggest relevance. He also found references to an Allsop in the Springfield papers, not Pat, but on one “George Allsop” who was the topic of a series of legal and investment stories concerning development schemes gone bad, the most notable of which was one in the area of Lake Taneycomo. Numerous investors, not so well-heeled as before they got involved with said Allsop, were out for his blood. For a time grand jury indictments seemed imminent. Then, over a year ago, the story dried up without coming to prosecutorial fruition.
Richard wondered if the Allsop involved was related to Pat Allsop. Then he came across an intriguing reference to one of George Allsop’s partners, Harold Dillard. If “Hal” was short for Harold, which it surely was, it suggested a possible, although improbable, motive for Dillard giving the story of Mancie’s disappearance the short shrift.
Maybe Dillard knew or suspected that Pat Allsop had pulled off a custody kidnapping. Then, being a friend of the Allsops played the story low-key, doing his best to consign the case to the realm of forgotten tragedies. Maybe Adams helped out by dragging his feet on the investigation.
The sticking point was Adams. Richard couldn’t fathom a reason for the detective to deliberately muff an investigation. He chided himself for running with his imagination.
Small town conspiracy, Richard? Come on. These guys are probably not even my Allsop and Dillard
He glanced at the time and logged off.

At 4:30 he arrived at the construction site just in time to see Pat Allsop climb into a shiny, black, extended-cab pickup with dual wheels and enough chrome to be visible from orbit. Richard slowed, searching for an access to cross over, but before he could find one, Allsop pulled onto the southbound lanes and accelerated toward town. Chancing a ticket, Richard crossed the muddy median between construction barrels to pursue him. Despite kicking it up to seventy, (the maximum he thought he could get away with without chancing a ticket) he couldn’t regain sight of Allsop’s pricey toy until he approached rush traffic backed up at the first light on the north end of town.
He ran the yellow to keep the glossy pickup in sight. They passed the Walmart, the Ryans, and the Home Depot, and then Allsop pulled into an old block building with a pig-shaped sign overhanging it and proclaiming “Lonnie’s Bar-B-Q” in large cursive. Richard pulled into the half-paved lot beside Allsop’s behemoth and limed inside, again foregoing the crutches.
Lonnie’s ambiance was working class, replete with a pool table that badly needed refelting, and the requisite neon signs. A small cluster of tables serving as the dining area, and the aroma of barbecued pork suffused the interior. Behind the Spartan bar stood a giant clad in a Sturgis Rally T-shirt that once fit. He inclined his head when Richard made eye contact.
“What’ll it be?” he asked.
“How about a Coors?” asked Richard, his voice causing Allsop to look up from the table where he sat with his own brew.
With bottle in hand---no stein was offered---Richard went across.
“Guess I missed you when you got off work,” he said. “Mind if I sit?”
“I’m expecting someone,” said Allsop.
He apparently saw no need to explain why he had left work before the “five or six” that he had misled Richard into thinking was quitting time.
“I don’t mean to be a bother,” said Richard, sitting uninvited. “But I came a long way to talk with you.”
The door opened and Allsop looked over Richard’s head toward it.
A girl who might have still been in high school came over and leaned her hip into Allsop’s shoulder. She had shoulder-length red hair like Jill’s only a deeper auburn, the kind he always thought of as Irish Red. A filmy blouse accented her lush figure and tight jeans accented her teenage waist.
“Who’s your friend?” she asked, eyeing Richard speculatively.
“Just a guy,” said Allsop as he slid a possessive arm around her and squeezed her thigh.
“Go sit at the bar until I get through talking to him.”
It wasn’t a question, and she understood that.
When she had moved out of earshot, Allsop said, “I don’t have to talk to you, you know.”
“Well I appreciate you doing it.”
“What the hell you want from me,” said Allsop sullenly. “I done told the police that I don’t know nothing about what happened the kid. I ain’t see it or Molly since I moved out.”
In a nutshell, that was all Richard came away with.

“The bottom line is he couldn’t care less,” Richard said as he got into bed. “Pat Allsop is a self-centered narcissist.”
“I think that’s redundant,” said Jill, yawning as she turned to him. “Sorry.”
“He’s a jerk,” he continued. “He didn’t want a child or a wife, and he’s glad to be rid of both so that he can chalk up more conquests. You should see this little girl he’s running with---probably no more than nineteen.”
“That was my age when you started talking to me at college,” she said, snuggling into him.
“That was different,” he said, squeezing her to him. “My intentions were honorable.”
“He lied to me about the time he got off work, and I almost missed him. I thought maybe it was because he was trying to hide something, but he was just trying to avoid the inconvenience I put him through---you know, answering all those boring questions about something so inconsequential as his child disappearing.”
“You exaggerate because you don’t like him.”
“No. He actually referred to Mancie as ‘it’---not ‘my baby’ or ‘my little girl’, but ‘it!’ Can you believe that?”
“Maybe he’s smarter than you think,” Jill suggested. “Maybe he took the child and wants you to think he wouldn’t do it because he never wanted anything to do with her.”
“No chance. The only thing this means to that jackass is that he doesn’t have to pay child support now.”
“I wonder what makes people that way. He sounds like a real loser.”
“No. Golden Boy is a winner. The losers are the women who fall for that beautiful face.”
“Beautiful face? What an odd way to speak of a man. But I suppose there’s something to that. The mirror is a convincing liar. It makes us believe that we are what they appear to be instead of what we do. Perhaps we would be better off if we didn’t know what we looked like.”
“You’re waxing philosophical,” he said as he pulled her close. “Let me assure you, lady: your mirror doesn’t lie. You do as beautifully as you appear.”
“The only mirror I care about is the one in your eyes, Richard.”
A dozen things came to his mind, none adequate, so in answer he held her tighter, remembering something he heard once.
An embrace is denial of the fact that parting is inevitable.


September 9
“You want me to do what?” Richard had asked.
“Go with me,” Molly had replied. “I could point out the people that knew her, maybe introduce you to them, tell them you’re a friend of mine.”
So here he was, doing something he intensely disliked, attending a funeral, or rather the visitation, that strange custom of meeting people associated in various degrees to the deceased---a sort of a wake without benefit of the booze. Molly drove.
Doris Chandler smiled politely when Molly introduced him. Katie’s sister was an elf of a woman with black, professionally coiffured hair and tastefully somber attire befitting the occasion. She thanked him for coming, and quickly turned her attention to the man in line behind him. He dutifully followed Molly past the casket, glancing only briefly at the corpse before hastening through the door into the lobby of the funeral home. The ordeal was over before it had fairly started, which was fine with Richard.
“There’s Jerry,” said Molly. “Let me introduce you.”
Tall and lean, Jerry Chandler seemed to have been turned out by the same hairdresser and clothier as his wife. He appeared ready to momentarily burst into song, televangelistic sermon, or used car sales pitch.
“Hi, Molly,” he said in a well-modulated voice with just a touch of down home accent. “It’s nice of you to come. Doris and I appreciate it.”
He sounded sincere in an honest, folksy way reminiscent of certain by-gone character actors. A young Ronald Reagan came to mind.
“Who’s your friend,” he asked extending a hand in Richard’s direction.
“This is Mr. Carter,” said Molly. “He’s helping me try to find out what happened to Mancie.”
Chandler cocked his head questioningly as Richard grasped his hand.
“As you can see by the crutches, I’m temporarily out of circulation as far as work is concerned,” Richard felt compelled to explain. “I’ve had a little training in criminology, and I live next door to her, so we’re kind of retracing the steps of the police investigation to see if we can find out anything they may have missed.”
“I see,” said Chandler, his voice betraying veiled skepticism. “I hope you . . . succeed---find her, I mean.”
“Mr. Carter thinks it would be a good idea to talk to everyone who knows Mancie and me,” said Molly. “Do you think you and Doris would have time to talk to him?”
“I really don’t think this is the place for that.”
Chandler’s objection was understated, but well taken.
“Of course not,” Richard hurried to answer apologetically. “We mean later. Perhaps in a few days.”
Chandler tried to beg off.
“I don’t think we know anything that would help. We only know Molly through Katie.”
“I wouldn’t take up much of your time,” Richard assured him. “Any investigation just . . . well, it has to be pretty exhaustive. You have to talk to everyone remotely connected to . . . the victim.”
He noticed Molly wince at the term.
“You’ll have to come to Eureka Springs then. We have a show every night but Monday. Mr. Peele even expects us there tonight. We’ll come back for the funeral tomorrow, and then we have to get back for the show tomorrow night.”
“How about say the day after tomorrow then?”
“If you want to make the trip, but I don’t think we can tell you anything worth the bother.”
Richard apologized again for the inopportune timing of the request. Chandler waved it off and gave him directions to Peele’s Old Time Ozark Oprey. They set a time of two-thirty for the interview.
Adams was leaning on Molly’s car and squinting at them in the bright sunlight when they went out.
“What’s going on?” asked Richard apprehensively.
“We need to talk,” said Adams tersely.
“Okay. Can you give me a ride home then? Or are we going down to the station?”
“I’ll run you home,” said Adams, without acknowledging Molly’s presence. “My car’s right over there.”
“I’ll see you later, Molly,” he said gently. “Okay?”
“Okay, Mr. Carter.”
Richard stowed his crutches in the back seat of Adams’ car. As he got in soda cans crunched beneath his feet.
“What were you doing at the visitation?” he asked, when as Adams pulled onto the street.
The flabby skin below Adams’ chin trembled in what Richard assumed was irritation.
“Seeing who showed up---not that it’s any of your business. What were you doing there?”
“Molly asked me to go.”
“Hell of place for a date. Besides, I thought you were married.”
“It’s about the disappearance. Molly wanted me to meet Katie Nash’s sister and brother-in-law.”
Richard expected a snide remark about amateur investigators, but didn’t get one.
“Good luck,” said Adams. “By the way, if you find something, you gotta tell me. Withholding evidence is a crime.”
It was, but it was a very difficult crime to prosecute unless someone deliberately concealed the facts.
“Why would I conceal anything from you? I presume we both would like to know what happened to Mancie.”
“I’m more interested in what happened to Catherine Nash right now,” said Adams. “Any ideas?”
He sounded exhausted. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead and cheeks, but his face looked blanched rather than red.
“I don’t even know how she was killed,” Richard pointed out. “The paper said she was bludgeoned?”
Adams chewed his lip. His hand quivered slightly as he gripped the wheel tightly.
“Say, are you all right?” asked Richard.
“Sugar,” said Adams. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
“You’re diabetic.”
“Chalk one up for the junior G-man,” said the detective, failing to load the remark with the amount of sarcasm he intended.
“Then why are you still drinking regular sodas?”
“Can’t stand the taste of that diet crap,” Adams said irritably. “What have you found out so far?”
“Nothing much. I went over to Poplar Bluff yesterday and talked to Mancie’s father. What do you know about him?”
“What did he tell you?” asked Adams, showing no intention of answering Richard’s question.
Richard was tempted to match Adams’ reticence, but couldn’t see how antagonizing him would help.
“He seems unconcerned, maybe even a little relieved that he doesn’t have to pay child support anymore.”
Adams didn’t respond.
“Is there a connection between the Allsop’s and Mr. Dillard down at the paper?” Richard asked.
Adams smiled wryly.
“How did you find out about that?”
“I read some old news stories. I was looking for something on Pat Allsop when I noticed Dillard’s name. What’s the story?”
“George Allsop and Hal Dillard lost a ton of money together. George is Pat’s dad, by the way.”
“I see,” said Richard.
“You see what?”
“Did Dillard downplay the story of the abduction because of his involvement with the Allsop’s? I would have expected it to be big news in a town this size.”
“Nobody downplayed nothing. It was big news, believe me. There just wasn’t anything new to report after the disappearance itself. You’ll find out the same thing I did. There just aren’t any leads.”
“Look, I’m not criticizing you,” began Richard.
“Not to me, you’re not,” said Adams, cutting him off irritably. “Before you go any further, there’s something you ought to know about your friend. She was higher than a kite that night.”
“She told me she was drunk.”
“I didn’t say ‘drunk.’ I said high. We got diazepam and alcohol from her blood.”
“Valium?”
“She could have taken the big sleep with that combination, especially in the concentrations we found.”
Adams watched Richard process the information.
“So she didn’t tell you,” he said condescendingly. “Dopers ain’t exactly the most forthcoming people in the world. Carter, I don’t know how she held it together long enough to pull it off, but my bet is she’s the one that did it.”
“You think Molly killed her own daughter and then cooked up the abduction story?”
Adams shrugged. “She may have had help.”
“Who?”
“I’ve already told you enough. What I just told you is a little heads up, a little something you should consider.” Remember, Carter: you find something, you bring it to me.”
They pulled to a stop in front of the house. Richard got out and retrieved his crutches from the rear seat. As he was about to go up the sidewalk, the passenger window slid down and Adams leaned forward to make eye-contact.
“Hey, Carter. Something else for your information: Molly Randolph’s on meth.”

As he was negotiating the porch steps, he noted with relief that Molly’s car was not in her driveway. He needed to think through the implications of what Adams had dropped on him. Had Molly killed her daughter in a fit of drug-enhanced rage? He didn’t think that was a likely result of a Valium-alcohol combination. Perhaps she had done it by accident. He thought that more likely. A third possibility was that a boyfriend had killed Mancie and Molly had covered for him. The problem with all that was that Molly was pressing to get the investigation going again.
He went into the kitchen to make coffee, wresting with the possibility that she was in the throes of some sort of drug-induced schizophrenia. A knock at the back door startled him, and he looked up.
“It’s open,” he yelled. “Come in, Molly”
She stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind her.
“What did Adams want?” she asked.
“He wanted to talk to me about what I’ve been doing. Where’s your car?”
“Back down the street. I run out gas. Did he threaten you?”
“No, Molly, he didn’t threaten me. But he told me something about that night that you hadn’t said anything about.”
“What?” asked Molly, seemingly mystified.
“That you were high.”
“I told you I was drunk.”
“But it wasn’t just alcohol, was it?”
Molly jerked her head back and looked puzzled.
“He’s a damned liar,” she said. “I had too much to drink, but that was it. I didn’t take anything else.”
“You weren’t on a prescription drug, maybe a tranquilizer?”
“I wasn’t on it,” she said vehemently. I got a prescription for Valium right after Pat left, but I never even got it refilled. You can’t take that stuff before going to work. And you can’t take it with alcohol unless you want to kill yourself.”
“When you’re drunk you don’t think well,” he said, watching her reactions intently. “Could you have taken it after you came home drunk?”
“I’d never get drunk enough to do that,” she said, clenching her jaw in anger. “That bastard Adams is saying that because he wants you to quit trying to help me. He’s afraid you’ll find out what happened when he couldn’t. He’s afraid people will find out how damned stupid he is!”
Richard didn’t think Adams had lied, but Molly’s reaction seemed genuine. The inescapable fact, however, was that they couldn’t both be telling the truth.
“He told me something else,” he said. “Something about drug-use.”
Molly’s face turned white and she slumped back against the door. He waited for another explosion.
“The meth,” she said woodenly. “Now you’re going to quit.”
“So it’s true?”
She pursed her lips and nodded mutely.
“There are programs,” he said. “You could go to detox and try to get yourself together. I’d still try to find out what happened to Mancie, Molly. But you can’t help me much as long as you’re on that stuff.”
“I’m not on it anymore,” she said.
He didn’t believe her.
“When did you quit?” he challenged.
“When you promised to help me get Mancie back.”
“Wait a minute. I never promised you that. I said I would try to help you find out what happened. That’s all.”
“You think she’s dead. She’s not! I’d know it if she was. Someone has her and you’re gonna help me get her back. That’s why I quit.”
The unreasonableness of the responsibility she was trying to thrust on him irked, but was eclipsed by something even more troubling. He had no intention of getting entangled with a methhead. Yet, he found himself unable to simply wash his hands of her.
“Getting off meth isn’t that easy,” he said. “Tell me about quitting. Tell me exactly how you did that.”
“That night you took me back to my house I was running out, trying to make it last by cutting it down. I was trying to kill the want with gin and stuff, but . . . I think that I was caving then. I think I maybe was coming over here to get some more.”
“Where were you going?”
“Over here to see Jimmy and Ashley, but they wasn’t here nomore. They lived here before you guys. It ain’t real clear. I was kind of out of it.”
“Wait---you mean this was a meth lab?”
She shrugged.
“They’re all over the place, but Ashley is the only one I ever got it from. When they moved, I was too scared to try to find me another source. Alcohol don’t work too good.”
She looked up at him and sniffed.
“I never took it before Mancie was gone. That stuff will kill you, but I just didn’t care anymore. Now I got a chance to get her back and I ain’t gonna to let it kill me because she’s going to need me.”
Richard heard the front door open.
“Richard?” called out Jill.
“In here,” he responded. “Molly and I are in the kitchen.”
“Hello, Molly,” said Jill, noticing the woman’s tears. “Is something wrong?”
“No, ma’am. I was just . . .” She stood up abruptly. “I was just going. I’ve got to . . . to do something.”
Jill stared after her until the door closed.
“What’s going on, Richard?”
“Apparently this place was a meth lab. Molly used to buy drugs here.”
“Wonderful. Where does she buy them now?”
“She says she doesn’t.”
“Right!” said Jill in disgust.
She went to the back door and locked it.
“Don’t you think it’s time to tell her to go away and leave you alone?”
“I can’t, Jill. Not now.”
“I see,” she said in annoyance.
“No you don’t. Sit down and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, opening her purse and taking out her keys again.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the college,” she said, turning to leave. “I have some work to do.”
“Wait a minute. When will you be back?”
“I’m not sure,” he heard her say from the living room.
He stood in the center of the kitchen listening as the door closed and the house became quiet. A few moments later her heard the car start. Then everything was quiet. He was alone.




September 12
A basically sleepless night passed with replays and imaginings interspersed with anticipation of everything turning bad. He must have fallen asleep for a time between two and four because there was a gap in his memories of reading the glowing clock face. His body complained that he hadn’t slept at all. His gritty eyes, achy muscles, and sore throat suggested an insipient cold. Richard’s ankle throbbed as he dressed, signaling a high-pain day, but he decided to ditch the crutches for the day.
Jill grimaced when he hobbled into the kitchen, but didn’t say anything. She was in her aggrieved, long-suffering mode.
“How do you want your eggs?” she asked.
“Cooked,” he replied.
Jill was in no mood for his attempted levity.
“Come on, Jill. I’ve been up most of the night worrying about this. I don’t want you mad at me.”
“I’m not angry with you,” she said, her back still to him as she tended the eggs. “I’m exasperated. You need to get away from that woman and you need to forget about all this awfulness.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s not your job, Richard. Let the police handle it.”
“They aren’t even trying to find Mancie anymore. Adams thinks Molly herself might have done something to her.”
Jill turned around abruptly.
“Of course he does,” she said, raising her voice. “She’s a drug addict. Do you have any idea how disorganizing methamphetamine is to thought processes? There’s no telling what she might have done in a fit of rage.”
“She wasn’t on meth when Mancie disappeared.”
“How do you know that?” she asked angrily. “Because she told you? My God, Richard! You know you can’t believe anything that a drug-addict tells you. You’re just getting yourself---haven’t you had enough tragedy in your own life? Haven’t we had enough?”
“I’m not getting that involved with her. I’m just trying to find out what happened to a little girl.”
“She comes over every day, Richard. If you were a policeman---which you are not---you wouldn’t allow that kind of behavior. You would have some kind of objectivity. You would keep your distance. The job would be intellectual, not personal.”
“I’m not emotionally involved,” he objected.
“Of course you are,” she sighed. “How could you not be?”
It was too much for her.
“This is all going to end badly,” she said, angrily pushing the frying pan to the back of the stove. “And there’s not a damned thing I can do to make you stop.”
In the silence that followed the sounds of traffic going by on the street could be heard.
“I would think that being a woman you would understand how she must feel.”
“I don’t. I know how a responsible woman would feel, but I don’t know how a drug addict feels.”
“Neither do I, but I think I know a little of what she feels,” he said softly. “You’ve gone through a lot, Jill, but you’ve never had to face the guilt she has. Molly blames herself. She turned to meth because it gave her something to fill up the blackness for a while. She knew what she was doing at the time, and knew what it would do to her, but she just didn’t care anymore because as far as she was concerned her life was over.”
“Why must you insist on bringing that into our life?”
“Because she thinks Mancie is still alive, and she believes that I will get her back. However misplaced that is, I just don’t have it in me to tell her she’s wrong. I can’t take that hope away from her, no matter how small the chances are. I’ve got to try.”
“Because she’ll go back to drugs if you don’t?”
“Maybe.”
“She’s blackmailing you, Richard. This is typical passive-aggressive manipulation.”
“Molly’s doesn’t think like that,” he objected.
“No. It’s instinctive.”
“Well, whatever it is, I can’t quit yet. I’ve got to try.”
“I know,” she said as she divided the now overcooked eggs.
She dumped them into separate plates with crisply fried but cold bacon and brought them to the table. Richard put bread in the toaster, poured Jill some coffee, and refilled his cup. He set them on the table and went back to get the toast.
“How would you like to see a music show the day after tomorrow?” he asked as he sat.
“Music show?”
“Yeah. I want to go down to Eureka Springs to talk with Katie’s sister and her husband. They’re performers down there.”
Jill thought about the rent that was due in two weeks.
“We can’t afford to go to a music show. You know that,” she said.
“Come with me anyway. I’ve heard it’s an interesting little town. We’ll just sightsee. We don’t have to spend any money.”
She relented, not because they could afford the expense, but because she much preferred having Richard engaged in something positive than sunk into the sickening despondency she had found him in when she came back from burying her aunt.
Oh Richard, she thought. At best you will confirm that poor woman’s worst fears. At worst you’ll find out that she killed her own baby. What will that do to you?



September 13
No direct route led from Springfield to Eureka Springs; it was a case of, as they like to in the hills, “You cain’t get there from here.” The best highway south went through Branson, but Richard wanted to avoid the traffic, so he and Jill detoured west around Lake Taneycomo. At 11:30 they as they traveled south of Cassville they came on The 86 Café, named sensibly if unimaginatively for the highway upon which it sat.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Let’s keep going,” said Jill.
“Food’s reasonable and the service is good,” he replied as he slowed and put on the blinker.
Jill didn’t want to stop. Cassville had been Mic Boyd’s hometown, and the scene of his first murder.
“I never thought we’d be back here again,” he said as they walked inside.
“Why are we?”
He shrugged.
“Because I need to . . . face things. It’s only a place, Jill. It’s not him.”
Richard had killed Mic in self-defense. There may or may not have been another way for it all to have ended. Such things change one’s world.
Before they settled into a booth a waitress took their drink orders.
“What do you know about Eureka Springs?” asked Jill, transparently eager to divert him.
“It’s got a music show,” he said, stating the obvious, which was the only thing he knew.
“I looked it up on the net. It’s got quite a history,” she said.
He recognized her tone as what he called her “teacher’s enthusiasm.”
“It was a . . . I guess you would call it a ‘spa.’ They built a railroad from Kansas City to bring people to the healing waters. The old hotel where the rich and famous once stayed while taking the cure is still there.”
“People used to believe in all sorts of nonsense,” he said.
“Back when doctors and their medicines were as likely to kill as one’s disease, maybe soaking in warm springs and drinking mineral water wasn’t such an unhealthy alternative.”
“Holistic nonsense,” he replied.
“Once, holistic medicine was state of the art. The ancient doctor, Aesclepios prescribed fresh air, clean water, rest, and a balanced diet among peaceful surroundings.”
“Who? I thought Hippocrates was the guy who invented doctoring.”
“Aesclepios lived long before Hippocrates. Hippocrates’ ideas come in part from him. Anyway, you shouldn’t judge people from the past in light of what we know today.”
“So Eureka Springs was a kind of hillbilly Lourdes?”
She laughed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” she said. “No. You’re right. Lourdes is known for its healing waters, but the power of the waters are associated with Bernadette’s vision of the Virgin. Pilgrims have gone there ever since.”
“Same thing then, minus the religious stuff.”
“People have always seen curative powers in odd-tasting springs. The native Americans put great stock in medicine waters.”
“Yeah. I can see that. The more disgusting something smells and tastes the more likely that it’s good for you---my grandmother’s creed. I remember cod liver oil, castor oil, mineral oil, and this creosote like cough medicine that burned out your guts and took your breath away,” said Richard as their order arrived. “Wonder what the locals have been doing for a living since the bottom fell out of the healing waters market?”
“They cater to tourists.”
“Recycling the glory days, huh?”
“History is important, Richard. It’s good for people to know about the past. Too few do.”
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it?”
“If we don’t remember where we came from, then we do not know where we are.”
“Yeah. You know my favorite thing about history?”
She shook her head.
“It’s this history teacher I know. Man, I tell you, she’s some real eye candy.”
She gave him the look she always did when he pulled off one of his low-brow bushwhackings.
“You are a Neanderthal,” she said in mock irritation. “But I’m fond of you, so I may keep you around.”
“So the reason you married me is because you’re a closet anthropologist.”
“A closet paleohistorian actually.”
It was silliness and small talk, and almost the way they used to be. Jill remembered the way it was and realized that she and Richard had never been carefree. From the start things had loomed. There was no other way to put it. Richard had always seemed about to break, but he had persistence. A cliché came to mind: “bloodied but unbowed.”
He noticed her expression.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“You. Us.”
“Good stuff?”
“Always,” she said.

The road wound across northwest Arkansas’ Oachita Mountains, part of the Ozark Plateau’s eroded highlands covered in second-growth timber. Real estate agents emphasized the value of hunting acreage and the abundance of landscaping sandstone to be had for the picking, thus trying to convince would be buyers that a liability was an asset.
Richard dropped Jill off to browse the shops and restaurants downtown while he drove up the steep winding street to the show places along the highway. Peele’s Old Time Opry was a small auditorium housed in a large frame building with a false front reminiscent of buildings facing Front Street in cinematic versions of the old west. It was an odd mixture of down-home quaint and theme park having little in common with the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville that most people called “The Grand Ole Opry.” Ramps herded paying customers efficiently to the turnstiles.
No one was in sight when he arrived, and Richard wondered how he would get in. Feeling like a fool for not having thought of that difficulty, he tried the door. To his surprise, it was unlocked. In the deserted lobby were displays of hillbilly kitsch memorabilia, which he imagined, were made in the hills---the hills of China. He hung a right past the vacant cash register and met a girl coming out of the auditorium.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I’m looking for Jerry and Doris Chandler.”
“Back that way,” she said without slowing.
He went into the auditorium. The lights were up, but the place was empty save for a man in his early thirties sitting on the edge of the stage with a bundle of wires and coaxial cables lying tangled in his lap like so much black spaghetti. He threw Richard a quick glance before returning his attention to the cables.
“Excuse me,” said Richard. “The girl outside said that Doris and Jerry Chandler were in here?”
“Back there,” he said, gesturing with a pair of needle-nosed pliers toward a door to the left of the stage.
The door was labeled “Employees Only.”
His tentative knock was answered by a man in denim overalls, red flannel shirt with a blue bandana knotted loosely about his neck like an off center bib. The music show motley clashed with Jerry Chandler’s elaborately styled hair.
“I see you made it, Mr. . . . I’m sorry,” he said. “All I remember is that you’re Molly’s friend.”
“Richard Carter. Sorry to bother you, but I’d like to talk with you if you’re not too busy.”
He expected the man to beg off.
“Not at all,” said Chandler with surprising compliance. “We just finished rehearsing a new number. I don’t have anything to do until five. That’s when we start getting it together for the first show. Are you staying?”
“I don’t know if we’ll have time. It’s a long way back and my wife has to work in the morning.”
“I’m not sure what I can tell you, but go ahead.”

Jerry Chandler claimed not to know any of Katie Nash’s acquaintances, but he left the distinct impression that he didn’t approve of Molly. Doris Chandler came out while they were talking, and proved more expansive if not enlightening.
“My sister didn’t have any enemies,” she said. “I don’t think it was anyone who knew her that did . . . those awful things to her. It had to be some stranger who broke in.”
It was the first Richard had heard of the house being broken into.
“I don’t suppose you could give me a list of her friends, clients, or anyone else who she might have associated with?”
“So you do think it was someone who knew her?”
“It almost always is, ma’am,” he said. “In any event that’s where we have to start.”
She frowned as if something had just occurred to her.
“You’re working for Molly, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That means you think that whoever killed Katie . . .” Her voice threatened to crack, but she composed herself. “You think it had something to do with the baby?”
“We don’t know.”
“You do think so. You’re wrong, Mr. Carter. Katie didn’t know who took the baby. If she had seen anyone or anything suspicious she would have told the police. She was very protective of children, but especially of Mancie.”
“I’m not at the point of even considering a theory,” he said. “I’m just gathering information . . .like who her acquaintances were.”
“There aren’t many. I gave them to the policeman.” She hesitated. “I suppose giving them to a private investigator won’t hurt anything. Besides, if you’re looking for whoever took the baby you might find something that will help the police catch the man who killed my sister.”
Richard didn’t correct her mistaken assumption.
“They took her address book---the police, I mean,” she said. “Katie was a meticulous person. Everyone she knew was in it, along with birthdays and anniversaries. She always sent cards.”
“To family and friends?”
“And her clients too, the children and the elderly.”
Adams wouldn’t let him see the address book.
“That could be evidence, so I won’t have access to it any time soon,” he said, taking a small pad from his shirt pocket. “So if you would maybe you could write down the ones you remember.”
“I only know the names of a few clients, the ones she talked about.”
Doris was writing when a tall, once thin man wearing an expensively tailored suit and professionally smoothed face came into the room.
“Signing autographs, Doris,” he asked, his voice light, but with a hint of censure.
“Oh, no Mr. Peele. This man is an investigator. He came to ask me about Katie.”
“Terrible tragedy,” said Peele, turning penetrating eyes to Richard’s face. “I hope you find whoever did that terrible thing.”
“I hope the police do,” said Richard. “I’m actually working for one of Katie Nash’s former clients. Her baby is missing. Mrs. Chandler is giving me a list of names to help with my investigation.”
“You’re a private investigator then?”
“Yes sir.”
Peele seemed either satisfied with Richard’s explanation or disinterested. He turned his attention back to the Chandlers.
“That number had a few rough spots. Get the others together and run through it again. It’s not ready for the show yet.”
“Okay, Mr. Peele,” said Jerry.
“Get it right,” he warned. “I’ll be in the audience tonight.”
“Yes, sir.”
Peele left without further word, having swooped down from on high to set things aright, he now departed to affairs not the ken of his minions.
“Impressed?” asked Jerry Chandler.
“Jerry!” said Doris, looking fearfully at the door through with Peele had disappeared.
“It was an innocent question, dear. I’d like to know what kind of impression our legendary boss made on Mr. Carter.”
“He seems . . . on top of things,” said Richard.
“He’s a control freak,” said Jerry Chandler, bringing another wince from his wife.
She looked fearfully at the door again.
“He’s a good boss, though,” said Jerry. “I mean he pays well. He’s just a perfectionist, especially with his flagship business. He built the Opry back when he and his family were still performing. How old do you think he is?”
“Sixty?”
Richard was guessing on the high side. Peele had obviously undergone a facelift.
“Add ten years,” said Chandler with a laugh. “He opened this place when Branson was just an annex of Silver Dollar City. Later he built another theater over there on the strip and began buying up land along the highway leading out to the City. The guy anticipated everybody, made a fortune, and he’s still got every penny.”
“Sounds like a sharp guy.”
“Yeah. The only person to ever get the best of him is my brother.”
“Jerry!” warned his wife again.
“Everybody knows about Lyla, Doris.”
Chandler turned to Richard.
“You see, my brother had big ideas about being an agent. He had this girl who was a fair singer, but had no stage presence. He brings her down here for an audition. The old man does all that personally. Well she was up here on the stage and she was a looker and nailed all the notes, but there’s no personality in her voice---plus she’s got no volume. So I figure the old man will give her a thanks, but no thanks, which he did---at least as far as the show was concerned.”
Jerry Chandler paused a moment to set up the conclusion to his story.
“Now she owns half the show,” he finished with a grin.
“He married her?”
“Two years of bliss. They’re in the middle of a divorce right now. Only time the old man ever got burned, but she’s gonna torch him good unless his lawyers can find a way out. She stayed with him just long enough to catch a real break.”
Richard wasn’t really interested in the soap opera, but Chandler was intent on finishing. Perhaps it was his way of striking back at an overbearing boss.
“The old man sold a bunch of his land and reinvested the profit. She’s claiming half of it---which is a big chunk---because he supposedly made the money while they were married. He’s got about a handful of other ex’s he’s retired and put out to pasture, but Lyla’s holding out for the golden parachute.”
“Did you have anything to do with her getting the audition?” asked Richard.
Chandler grinned wryly.
“I helped set it up as a favor to my brother. When they got married, I was the fair-haired boy. Now I’m not sure what my standing is.”
“He catches you talking about him, you’ll get us fired,” said Doris in irritation.
“He won’t fire us,” he assured her, before turning back to Richard again.
“The boss never lets personal matters influence his business decisions.”
“Except for marrying his last wife,” said Richard.
“But he never let his ‘Honeybunch’ get on-stage which is probably the reason she’s divorcing him. She’s not a gold-digger.”
“Of course she is,” objected Doris.
“I don’t think so,” insisted Jerry. “She married him hoping to jump-start a career. But the old man’s a perfectionist. He protects the show like it’s his virgin daughter. No way was he going to let that airy-voiced amateur take the stage. Say what you want to about Mr. Peele; with him, the show comes first.”
“As they say,” said Chandler raising his voice in a nasal twang, “Dance with the one what brung ya.”
“Mr. Peele is very professional,” said Doris. “Have you ever seen the show, Mr. Carter?”
“This is my first visit to Eureka Springs.”
“You should see the show tonight.”
“I’d like to, but my wife and I have to get back to Springfield.”
“I’d give y’all complimentary tickets except the old man frowns on reducing the gate,” said Jerry Chandler.

Richard found Jill at the restaurant where they had agreed to meet. He waved away a waitress hovered near.
“Ready to go back?” asked Jill.
“Unless you want to stick around for the show. The Chandlers speak highly of it.”
“No thanks,” said Jill, pulling a face. “I have no taste for hillbilly exploitation, even if it native exploitation.”
“A little premature in your judgment there, aren’t you, little lady,” came a mild, baritone voice from the next booth.
Richard closed his eyes in embarrassment as he recognized it. The man got up and came around the divider, smiling tolerantly.
“That remark of yours is what I get for eavesdropping,” said the man. “I’ve already met your husband. Let me introduce myself. I’m Rennie Peele.”
Jill looked at Richard in puzzlement.
“Of the . . . music show?” she stuttered.
“This is my wife, Jill, Mr. Peele,” said Richard awkwardly.
“I’m sorry to be so rude as to intrude upon your privacy Mrs. Carter,” said Peele, nodding politely. “I often do . . . I guess you would call it, informal research like this. I like to know what people think of the show.”
“I’m sorry if I said something to upset you,” said Jill pointedly. “I thought I was speaking only to my husband.”
“Of course,” said Peele. “You haven’t actually seen the show, have you?”
“We haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Well it may not be quite what you imagine. It’s a wholesome mixture of gospel and blue grass music, folklore, home-spun humor, and patriotism---it’s family oriented . . . and I don’t think it’s all that exploitive.”
Peele pulled a thin, oblong wallet from inside his jacket and took out two tickets.
“It would be a favor to me if the two of you could attend tonight. Please accept these in token of apology for my rudeness. Oh, those are good for the entire season if you can’t make it tonight.”
Jill took the extended tickets.
“That’s very gracious. I’m sure we can find time to attend, but maybe not tonight.”
“Well, like I said, they’re good for all season. If not tonight, December might be a good time. We have a Christmas special starting the tenth.”
As Peele left, Richard leaned over.
“Don’t I feel like wallpaper?” he said softly.
“What?” asked Jill.
“He couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“He was just being polite.”
“Yeah. So far he’s been polite to half a dozen ex-wives.”
“I don’t intend to be anyone’s ex-wife.”
He laid enough money on the table to cover the tab plus a moderate tip
“Let’s stay for the show,” said Jill when they got to the car.
“It’ll put us back awfully late,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll sleep on the trip back.”

The show was a blend of songs and comedy skits, which, as advertised, ran the gamut from gospel to blue grass to patriotic, including a rendition of the national anthem. The audience, predominantly Midwestern working class, and uniformly white, enjoyed the slightly hokey, but polished two-hour extravaganza.
“So what did you think,” asked Richard on the way out of town.
“It was better than I expected. The performers talented, and it definitely was family oriented and patriotic.”
“The comedy was kind of crude though.”
“I would say ‘simple’ instead of crude,” said Jill. “But remember there were children in the audience. The silliness was for their benefit, I think. Thank you for staying. I enjoyed it.”
“Well it wasn’t rock concert, but it did have its charm.”
“You need to tell Mr. Peele how much we appreciated the show and thank him again for the complimentary tickets.”
Richard wondered why he hadn’t been given the tickets at the theater. Then he remembered that Jill hadn’t been with him.
The old man still has an eye for women.








September 14
Ira McVey, an elderly semi-invalid for whom Katie had done once-a-week housecleaning, was sensibly leery of admitting a stranger into his home. He listened skeptically from behind the screen door as Richard explained about the missing baby. At the mention of Mancie’s disappearance, the old man unlatched the door to let him in. McVey seemed sharp, but could tell him little. Katie had come to clean for him on Wednesday as scheduled, just four days before her death. He had noticed nothing unusual in her behavior. Back at the car, he read the addresses of the remaining two names Doris Chandler had given him. One was out in the county. It could wait.
No one turning from Main onto Cedar could miss the daycare center. Multi-colored plastic constructions littered a pea gravel playground surrounded by a sturdy six-foot high hurricane fence. The house, a white vinyl sided ranch, sported an eight-by-eight gaily-painted sign proclaiming “Tots-N-Friends.” “Daycare,” proclaimed the subtitle in case one missed the obvious. He parked on a new concrete slab added to the parking lot, and went to the door, trying not to limp on his stiff ankle.
A woman with loose strands of hair and a questioning expression met him at the door. She carried an inquisitive blue-eyed baby with intelligent eyes and a profusely running nose.
“We aren’t taking any more children just yet,” she said apologetically. “I can give you the names of two other places that are pretty good.”
“I don’t have any children,” said Richard.
“Oh?”
“I’m sorry. It looks pretty hectic. My name is Richard Carter. I just came to ask if you could tell me about Katie Nash.”
A child’s cry pulled her attention away.
“Marla,” she called. “Johnny needs your attention.”
A muffled reply seemed to satisfy her and she returned her attention to Richard.
“I’m sorry. It’s kind of hectic today. It’s always hectic.” She bent to grab a Kleenex from a table by the door and gently mopped the flinching child’s nose.
“You were asking about Katie?”
“Yes. She worked here sometimes?”
“Whenever I had sick little ones that couldn’t stay with momma or family---like today. I could sure use her. She was really good in the sick room. There’s something going around right now. I don’t know who I’m going to get to help. No one like her---that’s for sure.”
“That’s a good boy, Joshua,” she said as she finished with the baby. “Pardon me if I don’t shake hands---standard procedure not to touch another person when you’re working with a sick little one. I’m Carol Oats. And you’re with the police?”
“No, ma’am. I’m just asking about Katie because I’m tying to help a . . . friend of mine, Molly Randolph, find out what happened to her baby. You remember the little girl that disappeared?”
“I see,” she said, suddenly on guard. “Could you show me some identification?”
“I told you I wasn’t with the police.”
“I still need to know who you are. By the way, there’s a surveillance camera that gets all license plates in our lot. And we have surveillance in here too.”
Richard took out his wallet and showed her his driver’s license.
“That little girl never stayed here,” she said, looking up with a frown. “Why are you asking about Katie?”
“We don’t think she had anything to do with the disappearance.”
He thought that “we” sounded better than “I.”
“She couldn’t have had anything to do with it,” she said, dismissing his denial. “You should have seen her afterwards. She was worried sick---couldn’t even eat.”
“Ma’am, I’m just trying to find out everything I can about everyone who had contact with the little girl. Someone killed Miss Nash and---”
“So it is possible that whoever did that is also involved in the disappearance of the little girl.”
“Maybe you should---” she interrupted before stopping in mid-sentence.
Her face was pale. Richard wondered what had alarmed her.
“Did you keep a record of when Katie worked here?” he asked gently.
“I think you better leave,” she said.
“Maybe you could---”
“I said leave.”
She was being assertive, but Richard saw fear in her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you,” he said gently. “I just want to find out what happened to Mancie Randolph.”
The woman withdrew and shut the door in his face. The deadbolt clicked as he turned away.
While driving out to see the last of the people on the list, Richard tried to assess his encounter at the daycare center. Was it he or his questions that had alarmed Carol Oats? Most likely it was the situation. A woman she knew had been mysteriously murdered and then a stranger shows up asking questions about her. Her caution was only prudent.
A mailbox with faded letters confirmed that he had found the home of the last name on Doris Chandler’s list. At the end of a short, gently curved, gravel drive, a lap sided saltbox stood on a hillcrest, its high-ceilinged veranda cast in shade while sun glinted from its tin roof. Old maple trees flanked the drive, their uneven spacing suggesting that some of their number now belonged to the ages. The aura was early-twentieth century, mid level gentry. It perhaps had been the abode (be it ever so humble) of folks who were country rich, work-a-day, lemonade-at-noon, and Sunday-go-to-meeting without fail. A high-waisted grandmother opened the door at his knock and peered through the screen door questioningly.
“Hello,” she said as if she had seen him before.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Richard Carter, a friend of Katie Nash,” said Richard, more than stretching the truth. “Are you Fiona Platte?”
The woman’s face fell into a long-suffering pained expression. She seemed well acquainted with grief.
“I am,” she said.
“Who is it?” came a loud child-like voice from behind her.
“Never mind, Zachary. It’s just a man. I’m going to go outside and talk to him on the porch, but I’m not going anywhere.”
She stepped out and shut the inside door behind her.
“My grandson,” she explained with a tight smile.
Daylight didn’t flatter her. She looked weary. The term “time-worn” came to mind.
“It’s terrible what happened to Catherine,” she said. “Are you working for Mr. Adams?”
“No, ma’am. I’m not with the police.”
“Of course. You just said that you were a friend of Catherine’s.”
The white lie didn’t sit as lightly as he thought it would.
“I understand Katie---Catherine worked for you sometimes.”
“The fifteenth of every month. That’s when I go see my husband. She takes care of Zachary for me. Being out of the house frightens him. He’s a sweet boy, but---well, he has to be taken care of. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him when I’m gone. I really don’t. There aren’t many people as good with slow children as Catherine was. I suppose he’ll end up in a state hospital. His mother ought to take care of him, but she didn’t want him even before he was born.”
She smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“What do you want to know about Catherine?”
“Did she say anything about being afraid of someone, anything that would make you think someone would want to hurt her.”
“Hurt her? No. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.”
“And she didn’t say anything that made you think she was worried?”
“I don’t recall anything like that.”
“Grandma! I want to come out,” called the boy plaintively.
“I’m coming, Zachary. Don’t you worry. I’ll be right in,” she soothed. “I just have to talk to this man a little bit.”
“Did anyone ever come out with her?”
“Here? No. She was always alone.”
“I want to come out, Momma,” the boy sobbed.
“Just a minute, honey.”
“I’ve taken up enough of your time,” said Richard.
He thanked her for speaking with him, eager to release her to take care of the retarded boy.
She visited her husband once a month? In a nursing home no doubt, he mused as he drove back to town. I guess she found taking care of two was beyond her ability.
The old lady had been polite, almost painfully so, but leaving felt like an escape.

He didn’t escape Adams, however. The detective was sitting at the curb when he got home.
“Get in,” he said gruffly when Richard hobbled over to see what he wanted.
“What’s going on?” he asked when he was seated.
Adams slid the car into drive, grimacing as if in pain.
“I’m thinking about hauling you in for interfering in an investigation,” Adams finally said.
Richard knew that it was a ridiculous charge, impossible to prosecute unless it involved concealing evidence, which he was definitely not doing since he hadn’t found any. Adams was angry, however, so he decided not to rile him further.
“All I’ve done is ask questions. Is that against the law?”
“Carol Oats called in a complaint. That’s the lady who runs the child care place in case you don’t know her name.”
“Complaint? What does she say I did?”
“She said you demanded that she show you her pay records.”
“I asked if I could see the dates when Katie Nash worked there,” said Richard, trying to think of a reason for the woman to have felt threatened. “It seemed to put her on guard for some reason. She asked me to leave, and I did. That’s all there was to it.”
“And you didn’t refuse to leave?”
“Of course not.”
“Who else have you been bothering?”
Richard didn’t want to tell him, but had no intention of lying.
“Katie Nash’s sister and her brother-in-law. She gave me the names of Katie’s clients, the ones she knew about anyway. So far the only ones I’ve talked with are the lady at the daycare and Fiona Platte out on---”
“You bothered the old lady with the retarded kid?”
“I talked to her. It didn’t seem to distress her. In fact, you’re the only one who seems---”
“Why are you doing all this?” interrupted Adams.
“You know why. I’m trying to find out what happened to Molly’s little girl.”
“What in the hell does a daycare or an old lady with a husband in the pen have to do with that?”
“In the pen? I thought Mr. Platte was in a nursing home.”
“Wouldn’t you just go ape if it was for child molestation?” said Adams sarcastically.
“Is it?”
“No. He’s in Leavenworth for falsifying a federal flood insurance claim. I wish you’d quit bothering folks that have got enough trouble in their lives.”
He felt like asking Adams where his sensitivity was when he was dealing with Molly, but held his peace. Adams could probably be a lot bigger pain than he was being currently.
“Look,” said Adams, suddenly softening his manner. “The Nash homicide doesn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of the kid, okay?”
“How can you be so sure? I mean haven’t you even considered that it might?”
Adams either smiled or had an attack of acid reflux.
“Someone killed her to keep her from talking, right?”
“It’s got to be a possibility.”
Adams set his jaw.
“No. This was sexual. We’ve got us a pervert here all right, but not one that’s interested in little kids. Pedophiles don’t do what was done to Nash.”
“She was raped?”
“She was beaten to death. Penetration isn’t requisite to classify a crime as sexual. I think that’s what they told us in class,” said Adams. “I didn’t pay a lot of attention to most of that theoretical crap, but that made sense.”
Richard was getting a fix on Adams now. He had seen plenty like him in criminology classes, experienced cops being forced by superiors, or state law to take P. D. courses. Their attitude: “I’ve paid my fee; now give me my B.”
“What led you to classify the homicide as a sexual attack?” he ventured.
“Oh nothing much,” drawled Adams sarcastically. “Maybe she just laid down for a nap and forgot to wake up. That’s what it looked like at first. Then I noticed a few discordant details that led me to suspect otherwise. Like that she was laying crosswise on the bed---that and that her dress was hiked up over her head and her underwear had been ripped off. Then again maybe she did that all by herself.”
“Sounds like a pose,” said Richard.
“Really? Why didn’t I think of that?”
“And the perpetrator was trying to shock whoever found her. Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Adams seriously. “What I think is that we got some guy who can’t get it up---a guy who gets his jollies by looking and imagining. Nash wasn’t much to look at, but she was an easy victim because she wasn’t too smart. Probably his first, and I sure as hell hope his last. It’s someone who lives near her, someone she knew and trusted.”
Adams had circled through town and was now headed back toward Richard’s house.
“That’s more than I should let you know,” he said. “The reason I’m telling you is that I want you to stay away from the people I’m questioning about Nash. Whether you believe it or not, you are interfering in my investigation. And I’m not going to have it. You got that?”
“I understand,” said Richard.
“I really want this guy, Carter. It would really tick me off if you screwed things up for me.”
“Got it,” said Richard.
“Good. Knock yourself out on the disappearance. I hope to hell you find out something. If you do, I don’t think you’re going to like it though because your little friend is involved. You find out anything, you bring it to me. I want to find out what happened to the little girl as much as you do.”

September 15
It occurred to Richard that he knew nothing about the Molly that used to be. The disappearance of her only child, the breakup of her marriage, and drug dependence had to have changed her. Finding out how much would require legwork. He decided to use her list of acquaintances to track down former employers. Molly hadn’t been the sort of person who flitted from job to job, but she had worked in a number of places, most of which knew the value of attractive and personable women.
After dropping Jill at campus he drove to the first place on his list, The Fishing Hole, a place specializing in you guessed it. As he went to the door, it occurred to him that her self-proclaimed profession of “waitress and barmaid” meant that she contacted a hell of lot of people, some of whom may have seen a personal relationship where she hadn’t.
His knock summoned a woman wielding a broom who intended to turn him away until he mentioned Molly. She led him through a darkened room with upturned chairs into the back. The kitchen was cold. Catfish houses didn’t do breakfast. Owner, head cook, and manager, Rona Pennyworth, listened to his explanation and then rubbed her hands on her apron before reaching behind to untie it.
“Let’s sit in the dining area,” she said. “You drink coffee, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The old lady folded her apron and placed it on a gleaming stainless steel counter beside the fryers and a gleaming coffee urn. She tapped it and handed him a heavy porcelain mug before leading the way through swinging doors into the equally cool dining room.
“We keep it chilly in the morning,” she explained. “When the fryers and ovens are going full blast it still gets uncomfortable out here and unbearable in the kitchen.”
“I’m comfortable,” he said as they sat. “Thanks for the coffee and taking time to see me.”
“Molly’s a good girl,” she said. “Are you a friend or just working for her?”
It was a good question, one he hadn’t stopped to consider.
“Both, I guess. My wife and I moved in next door to her about a month ago. When she found out that I’d had a little training in criminal investigation, she asked me to see if I could find out anything about the disappearance of her baby.”
“So why are you here? Do you suspect someone at the restaurant, or one of the customers?”
“I don’t have any theories whatsoever,” he admitted, which was almost the truth. He didn’t have a theory, just not one he cared to share.
“I’m here to find out about Molly.”
“Why?”
Richard was beginning to appreciate the difficulty of his unofficial status. Policemen didn’t have to explain themselves.
“I need to know what she was like, what her concerns were, and who she associated with before all this happened,” he explained.
“I don’t know much about her personal life. All I can tell you is that she was a good worker and a popular waitress. She turned in more tips than any of the others. The tips are split with the kitchen help and the busers. I got three girls working the floor, two boys cleaning tables, and two cooks. Each girl turns in her tips, I take out half to split with the others, and then return half of what each girl turns in. It’s fair, but some girls complain. Molly didn’t.”
“How long did she work for you?”
“Since . . . let me see . . . She came to work about two years ago. She only took off about two weeks when she had the baby. Of course she quit when the baby disappeared. She didn’t call in, but I guess I can understand that.”
“Was she dependable?”
“You mean did she show up on time? Always. The only time she even called in was when the little girl got sick and she had to take her in to the urgent care. She took off that day. I went ahead and paid her. I wouldn’t even mention it, but that girl brought her check back after payday and told me I made a mistake. That tell you anything about what kind of person she is?”
“How about customers? Did any of them seem . . . sort of more interested in her than was normal?”
Rona Pennyworth retuned him an amused wrinkly smile.
“Getting flirted with is part of being a waitress. The trick is to keep all the guys friendly without leading them on. You also have to have a thick skin. People treat waitresses about four different ways. They get overly-friendly, they get demanding and insulting, they act like you’re a piece of furniture, and some of them treat you like a casual acquaintance. That last one is ideal, and they’re the ones most likely to leave regular tips. It takes a lot of social skill to be a good waitress. They don’t get paid enough. I knew that when I worked tables. Now I understand the other side of it. The restaurant has to turn a profit or everybody’s out of work.”
“So did she have extra trouble with any too-friendly customers?”
“Not that I know of, but I spend most of my time in the kitchen. Occasionally I come out and talk to a few customers---you know, just to let them know I appreciate the business.”
“Was there ever a time when she seemed worried or times when her behavior changed?”
“Other than when the little girl was sick, no.”
“Did you ever see any of her family or friends at the restaurant?”
“I don’t recall, but like I told you, I’m in the kitchen most of the time. Maybe Jessica or Mark can tell you something. He’s out back loading stock. Jessica should be in any time now. We open at ten-thirty. Those two are the only one’s still here who worked with her. Turnover’s terrible in this business. I sure hated to lose Molly.”
“You say this Mark is out back. Can I go out and talk to him?”
“Sure,” said Rona, standing up. “Come on. I’ll take you through the kitchen.”
A middle-aged woman was dumping cornmeal into a large metal bowl of the sort Richard remembered from kitchen duty in the Marines.
“Hushpuppies,” explained Rona. “We hand-make them. Those frozen things ain’t fit to eat.”
As they walked through the stock room, she said, “You see Molly, tell her that I got a job for her if she ever wants to come back.”
She opened a door onto the alley to show him out.
“Mark,” she called out.
An overweight man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, looked up with pained expression as he wheeled a hand truck overloaded with crates marked “fully-dressed catfish fillets.”
“This fellow wants to ask you a few questions about Molly.”
“I’ve got to get the rest of this stuff in,” he mumbled.
“Then talk to him while you’re doing it,” she said before reentering the building and leaving them alone.
She hadn’t raised her voice, but her inflection left no doubt as to what Mark’s options were: none.
“I don’t know anything about her,” he grumbled as he wheeled his frozen cargo past Richard and into the open cold room.
Richard followed him inside, wondering if the peevishness arose from the man’s feelings about Molly or was just sour disposition. He extended his hand.
“I’m Richard Carter,” he said, his breath billowing momentary fog in the frigid air. “I’m trying to help Molly find out what happened to her baby.”
“I don’t know anything about the baby either,” said the man, pointedly ignoring the hand.
“Help me out here, Mark. A baby’s missing. All I want from you is a little information. By the way, what’s your last name?”
“Why?”
“I just want to make sure that Detective Adams and I are talking about the same person when we compare notes.”
The bluff verged on being a lie, but a comparison of notes could occur should Adams decide to chew him out again.
“Holmes,” he said, turning to face Richard and crossing his arms.
“Mark tell me about Molly. Anyone you know who may have been friendly to her, or even unfriendly for that matter?”
“She didn’t have much to do with anyone here at work,” said Holmes, turning Richard’s question around. “She was snotty to everybody except Rona---and the male customers. She sure knew how to come on to them. The fatter and uglier the better. Trolling for tips I guess.”
Richard suspected Mark had hit on Molly and been spurned.
“Well how about those guys? Any names for me?”
“I didn’t pay that much attention.”
“Well, did anyone ever drop her off at work or pick her up afterwards?”
“Didn’t see anyone. Had her own car. That’s all I know. Go ask Jessie. They were real tight.”
“I guess Jessie liked being treated like dirt,” said Richard.
“What?”
“You said Molly was snotty to everyone but the boss. Remember?”
“Yeah, well, Her and Jessie are two of kind.”

Jessica Mills was tiny, bubbly, and birdlike. What she lacked in looks she made up for in energy and enthusiasm. Molly’s fellow waitress looked to be on the high side of thirty if one looked at her face. The backs of her hands were more honest.
“So you’re trying to help that girl,” she said. “It’s about time someone did. She’s a sweetheart. I can’t imagine how awful this is for her. I want to help you, but I can’t imagine what I know that can be any use.”
“I’m trying to find everyone who knew or associated with her.”
Jessica nodded eagerly.
“I never met any of her family,” she said. “Except Emmanuel, that is.”
“Emmanuel?”
“Mancie, her little baby girl. Have you seen pictures of her? She was a real sweetheart. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt such a sweet baby.”
Richard hoped Jessica wouldn’t produce a picture of the child. The realization that he felt that way sobered him because it exposed the fiction of his involvement being academic rather than personal.
“Mark said some of the single guys who came here were . . . I guess you could say interested in her,” he prodded.
“She’s a good-looking girl. A lot of those guys flick out a lure wherever they see a fish flounce.”
Richard had never heard the metaphor before, but he understood it at once. Inexperienced (and mostly unsuccessful) fishermen frequently cast into water where a fish had recently disturbed the surface, usually accomplishing nothing beyond scaring the fish off.
“Anyone in particular? Maybe someone who was a regular customer, or someone who perhaps showed a little too much attention?”
“You mean an eyeballer, the kind who thinks a two-dollar tip buys them a make-believe peep show. Honey, if we wrote down ever’ lonely guy with them rovin’ eyes, we’d be here all day.”
Richard considered the unlikely possibility that an offended “eyeballer” had taken the child to get back at Molly for a rejection, but discounted it. On the other hand, most crimes had an element of the stupidly incomprehensible.
“How did Molly usually handle things like that?” he asked
“She was pretty good at it. The trick is to discourage them without making them mad. After all, a tip’s a tip. But you’re talking about someone with a . . . like an obsession with Molly, ain’t you?”
“Something like that. Anyone seem particularly eager to start a relationship with her?”
“No name comes to mind.”
“Did anyone picked her up after work or maybe bring her in in the morning?”
“A guy did come in just to talk once. He never even sat, just stood by the door. She went over, they talked a bit, and then he left. It was about a week or so before she stopped coming to work. Of course he could have just been asking something about the menu, or takeout, or something like that.”
“But there was something unusual about it or you wouldn’t remember it,” prompted Richard.
“I guess,” said Jessie squinting as she though about it. “I think it was because of how close they was standing. They were kind of like intimate distance. I think she knew him.” She shrugged. “Ask her about it.”
“I will. Describe him if you can.”
“Mmmm. Maybe like a little bull of a man. He was shorter than her, but looked like he could take care of himself. I couldn’t hear what they was saying, but I remember her nodding a couple of times.” She shrugged again. “That’s all I know.”
Richard was beginning to feel good about his developing skill as an investigator. Now it was time for the hard part.
“You and Molly are friends, right?” he began.
She gave him a qualified nod-slash-shrug. “Work friends,” she said. We didn’t spend no time together except here at the restaurant.”
“Jessie, I’m sort of friend of hers too, and I’ve talked with Molly quite a bit.”
She frowned for a moment and then motioned for him to go on.
“Did she ever . . . come in . . . like hung over or anything like that?”
“No, she never came in hung over,” she answered quickly, but her eyes darted away.
“But?”
“Sometimes she came in awful tired, you know . . . and then she’d like really pick it up after awhile.”
“Like maybe she was taking something to help her get going?”
Jessica shook her head dismissively.
“Forget what I said. Molly wasn’t like that. If she was taking anything it was probably caffeine tablets or maybe ginseng. Molly wouldn’t take anything worse than that. That baby was her whole life after her no-good husband run off on her. She was too smart to go popping pills.”
“A lot of people get a second wind once they get the day going,” said Richard.
Just why he felt compelled to defend Molly, he couldn’t say, but he was pretty sure that it wasn’t exactly a textbook maneuver for an investigator. He drove to the next place where Molly had worked feeling considerably less the cold-eyed detective that he would like to see himself as.

Barnburner’s Pub and Grill occupied a faux wharf shed overlooking a small artificial lake or large pond. Take your pick. The walls were hung with nets, oars, seascape prints, and nostalgic signs more suitable to a fish house than anything remotely connected to a barn. It took neither clairvoyance nor genius to deduce that its former incarnation involved that aquatic fare passing for seafood in the Ozarks: catfish. Perhaps James Mill hadn’t been big enough to accommodate two such establishments, hence the reasonable transformation into a bar. There was always room for another of those.
The faint, but cloying smell of hickory wood smoke hung in the air. A lunch crowd had gathered, consisting primarily of construction workers. Fries and Barbecue seemed to be the catch of the day. A few washed down their meals with pulls or sips from aluminum soft drink and beer cans, however, here and there men drank from pint Mason jars with glass handles. Country music of the never-actually-been-on-a-farm kind rolled across the room from overhead speakers.
Richard ordered something called a “burnerburger,” the cheapest thing on the reasonably priced menu. While waiting for the noon crowd to thin, he ate slowly, sipped iced tea, and tried to ignore the crap coming from the radio station supplying the ambiance. He could have stood the lyrics, some of which were actually uplifting. A nationally syndicated radio personality, however, was preaching to the choir, the “choir” consisting of those in desperate need of their daily vitriol fix.
“Sweet or unsweet?”
Richard looked up to see a chunky waitress holding a pitcher in each hand.
“Unsweetened,” he replied.
“He really knows how to give ‘em hell, don’t he?” she commented as she refilled his jar.
“Sounds like hell to me,” he said. “Have you worked here long?”
“Long enough to know you ain’t a regular, sweetie,” she cooed, favoring him with a smile.
If she was trolling for tips, as Mark from the fish house had put it, she was overdoing it.
“I was just wondering if you worked here when Molly Randolph---she might have been going by the name of Allsop---when she worked here.”
She wrinkled her nose distastefully at the mention of Molly’s name.
“Yeah, I worked with her, if you could call what she did working. She hustled for tips. Stole my customers.”
Well at least there won’t be a halo effect to everything she tells me about Molly, he thought.
“Doesn’t sound like she much of a person,” he prompted. “Why do you think she did stuff like that?”
“Greedy---and jealous. I did real good on tips until she come in here and started falling all over the guys, you know rubbing up against them ever chance she got and give them the come-on. You don’t got to do that to get tips, but guys are guys I guess.”
“Any particular guy she seemed to have a thing with?”
She snorted.
“She wasn’t particular. Why you asking about her anyway? You thinking about giving her a job?”
“No. I’m not hiring anyone. I heard something about her daughter going missing. What was that all about?”
“Beats me. She and her old man broke up. Maybe he took the kid.”
He nodded as if he agreed with her assessment.
“Is your boss here?”
“Oh, you’re a salesman. Or are you just looking for work?”
Why he would be asking about Molly if either of those were the case, he couldn’t fathom. He decided to let her think what she wished.
“There’s a job opening?” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied eagerly. “Bartender for nights. I’ll go get the boss.”
Belatedly it occurred to him that the woman was trolling for something more substantial than tips. A moment later a woman in faded jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt came from the kitchen, rounded the bar, and bore down on him.
“Lindsay says you’re looking for a job. Ever tend bar?”
He shook his head apologetically.
“She just assumed that. I just asked if her boss was here, and, before I knew it, she took off to find you.”
She pursed her lips in disappointment.
“We have regular suppliers if you’re a salesman.”
“I’m not. I came to ask about Molly Randolph. Could you spare the time to talk to me about her?”
“You’re with the police?”
“No,” he said, half rising and extending his hand. “By the way, my name is Richard Carter.”
She took it in her cool grasp.
“Sheri Grimes. You’re a private investigator? I didn’t know they really existed except on TV. Oh. It’s about the baby. You’re working for the Allsop’s, aren’t you?”
“I’d rather not say,” he said honestly.
The job would be simpler if he actually were a licensed P. I., not that that could ever happen.
“Molly is a good person,” she said angrily, but without raising her voice. “I don’t know what they’ve told you about her, but Molly didn’t do anything to that child. She was crazy about little Mancie.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she was always talking about Mancie---showing pictures---and the phone calls. I had to get on to her for calling the babysitter so often.”
“I heard she maybe had a drug or an alcohol problem.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said flatly. “She never drank at work. She came in on time, busted her butt on the job. I don’t care what they told you. Molly was responsible both as a worker and a mother.”
“I believe you,” he said. “By the way, I’m working for Molly, not the Allsops. I didn’t mean to mislead you, but I wanted an unbiased evaluation.”
Sheri Grimes stared at him, having none of it.
“You meant to mislead me,” she said. “Maybe that’s the way things are done. It’s still dishonest.”
“Rude too,” he agreed. “Sorry.”
“So did you find out what you wanted to know?”
“I suppose, but there is one other thing. Your waitress couldn’t remember any particular guy who seemed more than casually interested in Molly. Do you?”
“She was a nice looking girl and she was friendly, so she got her share of attention. Anyone in particular? Not that I recall.”
He apologized again, thanked her again for her time, and pushed up from the table to leave.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “How’s Molly doing? I haven’t heard from her since she left.”
“She went through a rough time, but I think she’s bearing up a little better now.”
“Tell her . . . tell her I got a job for her if she wants to come back.”

“Oh, Mr. Carter,” said McComb, flashing a practiced smile before Richard was half way through the Honeycomb’s door. “Bud light, right?”
“Not today. I came to see if I could talk to any of Molly’s co-workers. Would any of them still be around?”
The bartender-owner frowned.
“Would it help if I ordered a beer first?” asked Richard, only half joking.
McComb laughed and shook his head.
“I think I still got an address for Cynthia. The others are who knows where. Lot’s of turnover in a bar. Just a second. I’ll see what I’ve got in the office.”

The well-maintained brick ranch at the address had an attached two-car garage like most of the surrounding houses. Cynthia Sappington lived in an upscale neighborhood---upscale that is for a barmaid in James Mill. It sat on a small lot in a sixties era track house development. No one answered his knock, but as he turned away the garage door began sliding up startling him. Tires grinding on pavement explained the mystery. Tuning, he saw a late model economy car of indiscernible foreign manufacture stop in the drive instead of driving inside. The window slid down and a blonde leaned out.
“What do you want?” she asked, neither friendly nor otherwise.
“If you’re Cynthia I want to talk to you about Molly Randolph.”
“Why?” she asked, making no move to get out of the car.
Richard introduced himself and said he was looking into the disappearance of Molly’s child, and that her former boss had given him her address. Instead of answering, she rolled up the window and made a call on her cell phone. Then she drove it into the garage and shut the door behind her. A few minutes later she opened the front door.
“Bobby says you’re okay,” she said, showing him into a neat, but not homey living room.
“I’ve been out looking for work,” she said dispiritedly. “Bobby said he’d put in a good word for me when I get an interview, but so far I ain’t found nothing. You don’t know anyone who’s looking for a hostess, do you? I don’t want to wait tables no more, but it might come to that. I’ve got bills to pay.”
“No,” said Richard. “I’m new in town.”
“I hope I don’t have to work in a station again,” she fretted. “Might come to that, though.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something.”
“Yeah,” she said.
Looking for work can be a full time job. He’d been there more than once. He wondered if the blowhard on the radio who lived by hurling invective, ever experienced living paycheck to paycheck.
“How long did you work with Molly?” he asked.
“I was there when she came. Real shame about her baby. You all got any idea what happened yet?”
She obviously assumed he had some official authority for questioning her.
“No more than before,” he said.
“I hope she gets her back. Can’t imagine how awful that would be.”
“Tell me your impressions of Molly.”
“Good person. Worked hard. Married the wrong guy.”
“Did she have any . . . bad habits?”
“What? You mean like smoking or overeating?”
“Like drinking too much or something like that.”
“You mean like drugs. No, she was pretty straight, you know.”
“How about guys?” He noticed her look. “I mean after she and her husband split up.”
“She didn’t like sleep around, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t think Molly would ever sleep with more than one guy at a time. You know, she had . . . ethics. Not that having good ethics always does you a lot of good. It sure don’t keep you from getting canned.”
“Bobby fired you? I thought . . . He’s giving you a reference, isn’t he?”
“That jealous bitch made him fire me just because she came in and saw him helping me put an earring back on.”
“Who?”
“Can you tell me how a good guy like Bobby gets involved with someone like her? I mean, she’s pretty in a trashy way, but she’s meaner than hell. Is vindictive the right word for that?”
“Sounds like it,” he said. “You were telling me about Molly?”
“Yeah. You asked about drinking. The only time I saw her even take a drink at the club was her last night there. This guy was interested in her. I think maybe Bobby was trying to fix her up.”
“Why do you think Mr. McComb was doing that?”
“On account of her husband leaving her and all. He felt sorry for her.”
“I meant to ask what made you think that he was trying to fix her up with this guy?”
“Because before she was with that guy she and Bobby were talking a lot that night. If his bitch girlfriend had seen them, Molly could have kissed her job goodbye too.”
“Know the name of the guy?”
“Chuck? No. Kirk. It was Kirk something-or-other. Funny last name, but I can’t remember it now. You’ll have to ask her or Bobby.”

Across the street from Sappington’s a jogger in yellow spandex shorts and black top slowed her pace. She sat a moment on the low, stone wall near Richard’s car, took a bottle clipped to her belt, uncapped it, and squeezed a mouthful of water as she surreptitiously glanced at his license plate. Then she stared at the street number painted on the curb as she pretended to catch her breath. Recapping and replacing the bottle, pushed up and jogged down the block and around the corner without looking back.

Molly’s front door opened as soon as he pulled to the curb in front of the house he and Jill were renting. Richard still thought of it that way. It had been their residence for four months, and probably would be for the foreseeable future, but it didn’t feel like home. Molly came across the yard as he went up the sidewalk. She didn’t seem as hunched and frail as she had been when Richard met her. A pang of guilt hit him, as he thought about the false hope he was giving her. Molly was pathetically grateful for his help, not that he had helped her much, or ever would for that matter.
Whatever happens, knowing is better than not knowing, he said to himself as she intercepted him. Neither noticed the car that passed or the woman who glanced casually in their direction before continuing up the block and turning right on Hepplewhite.
“You find out anything, Mr. Carter?”
“No, but it’s too early to expect much, Molly.”
She went in with him and they sat at the kitchen table where, for want of a better term, she debriefed him. He told her about his visit to her former workplaces.
“Tell me about this Mark Holmes at the fish house. You and him ever have trouble?”
“Mark’s lonely,” she said. “I couldn’t do nothing about that.”
“But he wanted you to, I take it?”
“He used to like me. Now he don’t. That’s just the way it is sometimes. I don’t think it was anybody’s fault, but I think something like that happened to him before. That’s why he’s kind of bitter. It don’t help being like that. It just drives more people away from you.”
Richard was pleased with himself that he’d nailed Holmes character at first glance.
“Rona says she’s got a job for you if you want to come back.”
“Maybe I can get myself together and do that. I always liked Rona. She’s easy to work for.”
“How about Miss Grimes?”
“She was alright, but not sweet like Rona. She was kind of demanding, but fair. That’s all you can really expect. After all, it’s their money your working for, ain’t it?”
“And Lindsay?”
“Lindsay did a good job, but she saw everything as a competition. I don’t understand that. She wasn’t a very happy person. I think that a lot of people are like that. It seems to me that there are a lot of people who come out on the short end of things.”
Richard doubted that very many of them came out on a shorter end of things than Molly had. Yet, despite her obvious sadness, it wasn’t difficult to be around Molly. Maybe that was because she didn’t turn her rage on everyone, only on the system that had failed her, Adams in particular.
“So you didn’t have any problems at the fish house or the grill?”
“Small stuff. Most people got their problems.”
“How about the Honeycomb? I hear his girlfriend can be a real . . . pain.”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t have much to do with her. But she’s got a short fuse. You learn to stay away from people like that if you can. I think she’s a part owner. Did you meet her?”
“No.”
“She didn’t come in much. I think she was pretty busy with her career.”
Richard was only half listening. Something had been bothering him about the man Jessie at the fish house had spoke of coming to see Molly.
“I got the impression that you didn’t date or begin a relationship after the separation until the night you went to Kirk Tinsley’s place. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“No relationships at all?”
“No dates or nothing,” she said. “I never went anywhere with anyone and nobody came to the house. Why?”
He tried to find a diplomatic way to ask about the inconsistency he thought he saw.
“Molly, tell me straight. Was the night Mancie disappeared the first time you had anything to do with Kirk Tinsley?”
She blinked as if surprised.
“Why?”
If she had been lying to him all along he would quit.
“Just tell me,” he said
“It’s the first time I ever went with him anywhere.”
“But you talked to him before that? I mean on a regular basis? It was more than just casual, wasn’t it?”
“It was more like he talked to me,” she said. “He’s kind of awkward so it took him a while, but I finally realized that he was doing more than just normal guy stuff.”
“He was hitting on you?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. You have to know Kirk---not that I know him all that well. I don’t know if anyone does. He’s shy. I think he was interested in more than just . . . you know, casual stuff. I didn’t know how serious he was until he showed up one day at The Fishing Hole. That’s the first time he asked me for a date. He just shows up, asks for me without even taking a seat. The whole thing was kind of weird. I think he had been working up his nerve. What he said even sounded like he had been practicing. I turned him down.”
“Then what made you change your mind later?”
“You mean why did I go to his apartment when I knew what that was going to lead to?” Her eyes held his defiantly. “I was lonely, Mr. Carter. No one had treated me like I was . . . anything in a long time. I hurt his feelings pretty bad, but he come back and . . . I felt like . . . valued. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

He filled Jill in on his day while they shopped at a discount store. At the checkout she had him return a couple of items to the shelf that would have put them over her calculated allocation. On the way home he told her his impression of the people he had met during the day. She listened without enthusiasm. He failed to notice.
“All I’ve done so far is prove that she didn’t deserve something like this,” he said as they put away the groceries.
“No one deserves something like that,” she said tersely as she turned to the task of preparing dinner.
“What I meant is that talking to the people who worked with her and her bosses has given me a better picture of what she was like before all this happened. Before the baby disappeared she was doing a hell of a job coping.”
“Because she worked two jobs instead of going on assistance?”
Richard knew she was upset, but he had no idea why.
“That and the fact that she seemed to have done it without feeling sorry for herself. From everything I’ve heard, she was conscientious and cheerful. Most everyone liked her. Two of her former bosses said they’d hire her back in heartbeat.”
“The ‘halo effect,’” said Jill as she closed the refrigerator door.
“What?”
“Or maybe the ‘generosity error.’ People exaggerate good points when asked to evaluate someone they know.”
“Like at funerals?”
“In this case perhaps, because of the tragedy.”
“Maybe, but I’m beginning to think she’s pretty remarkable. You have to admit she’s come a long way since we first met her.”
“When are you going back to work?”
The abrupt change of subject startled him.
“You’re mad at me?”
“I’m not angry. I just want you to stop playing detective.”
“I’m not playing, Jill,” he said sharply. “I’m trying to help Molly find her baby.”
“In all likelihood the child is dead. You know that. Before you got involved that poor woman was probably beginning to accept it too.”
The fear that Mancie was dead threatened to become a conviction. Richard pushed it aside.
“So I’ve given her hope. The kid could be alive, and we might get her back. If not, well Molly still needs to know. I going to help her find out what happened.”
“Richard, if the police---”
“The police! You mean Adams.”
She started to say something, stopped, shook her head in exasperation and went past him through the living room. He followed, catching up to her in the bedroom.
“Whatever you were going to say you might as well say it, Jill. Let’s go ahead and clear the air here.”
“Okay, Richard. I don’t like what’s happening.”
“Why? If nothing else, at least Molly’s in better shape than she was.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” she said.
“Of course she is. Look at the way she was when we first met her and the way she is now.”
“I’m looking at the way you both are---at this . . . thing the two of you have going.”
“You’re jealous? Jill, there’s no . . . thing going on between us. We don’t have a relationship. Good grief! She call’s me ‘Mr. Carter.’”
“I’m not talking about a romantic relationship, Richard, although any fool can see how much she admires you. What I mean is that the two of you have this mutually reinforced . . . delusion.”
“Oh. I get it. We’re a couple of crazies because Molly wants to pretend that Mancie is still alive and I want to pretend that I’m a real detective. Well that’s ridiculous.”
“Richard I wish that poor woman hadn’t lost her child too, but right now I really don’t care about her. I don’t. I care about you and what she’s doing to you.”
“If she’s doing anything, she’s making me feel useful. I know I can’t ever get into law enforcement and I can’t get a P. I. license either. But this is about Molly, not me. That’s all this is about.”
“This is all about Molly?”
“That’s all it’s about. I want to help her.”
“What happens when you fail?”
“I don’t know, but I think she might be able to handle that too. She’s got strength.”
“What about the meth?”
“The meth is what I’m talking about. Do you have any idea how many people ever get off of it? Almost none.”
“Fine. How hard will it be to resist going back on it if all that you’re doing turns up nothing?”
“I’ve got to try.”
“I know, Richard, but try to prepare yourself. I won’t be able to stand it if you go back to being what I found when I came back from the funeral. I need you, but I don’t need that.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”




September 16
“Hey! Hey! Stop!” yelled Clinton Gage as he stumbled toward the dozer.
Unaware that his new boss was stumbling across the landfill toward him, Jared raised the blade and backed up for another push. As he locked the right track to swing the rusty yellow monster around, he noticed Gage.
“Now what?” he mumbled as he looked at the recently leveled pile he had readied to be covered with a layer of dirt.
He dropped the blade and reduced the engine to idle. Gage motioned for him to cut the engine. He did so and braced for a chewing out although he had no idea what the man could be upset about.
“What the hell you trying to do, get my license pulled?”
“What did I do?” asked Jared, totally at a loss.
“What did you do? You’re pushing the damned stuff into the river! I said to extend the fill toward the north.”
“Isn’t this north? I looked at the sun and this is at a right angle to it.”
“And it’s fall, you idiot. The sun comes up to the southeast this time of year. You were supposed to push it that way, damn it. Hell! You can see the river, can’t you?”
“Sorry,” mumbled Jared. “I don’t think anything went into the creek though.”
“That creek is the upper end of the Pomme de Terre River. Get the hell out of the cab and come on. Let’s go take a look at what you did,” said Gage, walking to the edge of the fetid heap and peering down the slope toward the concrete retaining wall he had had constructed to contain run-off from the landfill.
“I knew it! You sent stuff over the wall.”
Jared stared down the slope in puzzlement.
“That’s only one bag.”
“Well that’s one too many. Get down there and throw it back inside the wall.”
By the time he got to the bag, he was ready to quit. He had almost fallen headfirst as he made his way down, sliding to a stop only when his left foot hit the base of the retaining wall in knee-deep, foul-smelling cold water. He scrambled over the wall and looked down at his new work boots, now covered with an oily substance that rendered them useless for anything except working at the landfill.
He snatched at the bag angrily, expecting to be able to fling it over the wall in one continuous motion, but succeeded only in tearing it open and releasing the terrible stench of rotting meat. Assuming someone had cleaned out a freezer and dumped the contents into the bag, he held his breath and bent to slide his hands under what remained of the bag. What he saw made him recoil in horror and stumble backward.

“So I decided that I should maybe get a job again. I mean, sitting around and drawing a check when I’m perfectly capable of supporting myself ain’t right.”
Richard thought that Molly looked good. She was gaining enough weight to look less like a scarecrow. Her color was good and her complexion was beginning to clear. Jill would have recognized it as just a decent application of makeup. She wore what he thought of as a ‘pants suit,’ and her hair was styled, not professionally, but adequately.
“Where are you applying?”
“I called Rona. Figured a restaurant would be better for me than a bar, at least for now. You know how alcoholics are supposed to keep themselves away from situations.”
“You’re not an alcoholic, are you?” he said.
“I think maybe I am, Mr. Carter. I ain’t going to drink though. Mancie will . . .” Tears came to her eyes as she choked to a halt. “I know it ain’t certain, but if I get her back . . . well, she ain’t going to come home to no drunk.”
A car turned onto the block, slowed and stopped in front of Molly’s. Adams got out. He started up the walk, saw them sitting on the porch, and detoured across the lawn.
“What do you want?” asked Molly as he reached them.
“Something’s come up, Miss Randolph.”
Molly clutched Richard’s arm, her fingers digging fiercely.
“Mancie?”
“Maybe,” said Adams. “We’re not sure, but we may have found her.”
“Where? How?”
“We found a small body. It . . . I’m sorry, but there’s a good chance it was hers.”
Molly shook her head violently.
“No!” she gasped, her words coming in staccato bursts punctuated with sobs as if she were trying to recover from a punch to the gut. “It’s not her---can’t be---you’re wrong---you’re WRONG!”
Adams waited for her to spend herself. When she paused, he said, “You need to come with me. We need a DNA sample.”
“I’ll bring her down,” said Richard.
“No you won’t, Carter,” said Adams sharply. “You’ve done all you’re going to on this.”
Molly clung tightly to Richard. He put a comforting arm around her.
“Come on, Adams. What will it hurt to let me ride down there with her?”
“I don’t have to answer to you, but you better damned well believe you have to answer to me. Now you stop interfering or I will arrest you for interfering in an investigation!”
Richard knew that Adams meant what he said, and he saw that the man was angry enough to follow through. Besides, he was right. No matter how hard it is on the parents, when a child is murdered, they are the first to be interrogated. He knew that Molly was in for necessary, but extremely cruel ordeal. Whether being accused of killing her daughter would be any worse than the finally knowing Mancie was dead he didn’t know.
“Miss Randolph,” said Adams. “We also have some clothing and a blanket you might be able to identify.”
“There wasn’t no blanket missing,” mumbled Molly.
She looked at Richard.
“That means it isn’t her.”
Her chin began to tremble, and then she cried out.
“Oh God! It has to be! It has to be!”
She doubled over, almost fell to her knees, sobbing hysterically.
Adams pulled her gently upright.
“Let’s go, Molly,” he said. “Come on now. Let’s go down to the car.”
Before Adams put a hand on her head to keep her from bumping it as he put her in the back, Molly looked back at the porch. Richard stood there a long time, staring up the street numbly long after Adams car had disappeared.
“What have I done?” he said.

When Jill came home she found Richard in the kitchen at the stove.
“What are you doing,” she asked.
“Trying to be a normal person,” he said without turning around.
“I’ll need the car tomorrow. I’m going to tell Eric I’m ready to come back to work.”
She placed her books on the table, puzzling at his emotionless tone.
“You’re cooking soup?”
“Stew or something. I cleaned out the refrigerator.”
“What’s wrong?”
“They found Mancie,” he said. “I don’t know the details, but Adams took Molly to identify personal effects.”
“Oh no. How’s she taking it?”
“A hell of a lot worse than she would have if I hadn’t encouraged her to believe that the baby might still be alive. Why didn’t I listen to you?”
“Richard, this isn’t your fault. The only thing you’re guilty of is caring about her.”
“No. I used her to pretend I was something that I’m not. I actually enjoyed all that crap! Real cops have to make people miserable by prying into their personal lives. I did it for recreation, for fun, like it was some sort of real life video game.”
“That’s not what you did, dear. You only---”
“Don’t do that, Jill,” he said turning to face her. “I know what I did. Please let me try to come to terms with it. From now on I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do. I’m leaving all the make believe cops and robbers stuff alone and I’m going to get a real job and do real work---hopefully the kind that actually helps people instead of hurting them.”
“Richard, I know what you are and---”
He cut her off again.
“No you don’t. Or perhaps you do and just don’t want to admit it. I’ll tell you exactly what I’ve done to Molly. It was like she had terminal cancer or something and I came along and convinced her that the doctors didn’t know what they were talking about and she was going to be just fine.”
“Now you stop it,” she said sharply. “You and I both know it wasn’t like that. You never told Molly that her baby was still alive or that you were going to get her back.”
“But Molly believed that, and I didn’t do a damned thing to keep her from believing it.”
“It’s hard to kill a person’s hope, especially if you really care about them,” said Jill softly.
“Jill, how’s she ever going to get over this?”
“She won’t get over it, Richard. Whether you came along or not, she was never going to get over it. People live with these things, but they don’t get over them.”
A knock at the front door interrupted them. Jill went to see who it was. Richard heard an exchange of female voices, and closed his eyes in dread. A moment later Molly came into the kitchen with Jill.
“The little sleeper they recovered wasn’t hers,” said Molly. “It didn’t belong to Mancie. I’m real sorry for whoever the little girl’s momma is, but it wasn’t Mancie. I knew it wasn’t.”
“Molly, whoever took her could have put different clothes on her,” said Richard.
“It wasn’t her,” she said confidently. “They took a blood sample from me for DNA comparison. They’ll find out they’re wrong soon enough.”
“Molly, listen to me. You have to prepare yourself . . . for the . . . for the possibility---no, actually it’s the probability that the baby they found is your little girl.”
“That’s what Adams said. He’s wrong. It’s not Mancie.”
“Molly, you can’t know that,” he said gently.
“I do. God wouldn’t have brought you right next door to me like this unless it was to find her for me.”
Richard was stunned to realize that she meant it. Then he was appalled.
“No, Molly. It was just random chance that Jill and I moved here when we did. Don’t you see, it was just an accident.”
“There aren’t any accidents, Mr. Carter. Everything happens for a purpose. It come to me down at the police station. Mancie’s alive. You’re going to find her for me.”

“What am I going to do, Jill?”
Jill stared at the door through which Molly had gone nearly an hour ago.
“You’ve done enough,” she said. “More than enough. I wish we could afford to move.”
“Don’t blame her, dear. I’m the one that’s responsible for this mess. She had already given up hope before I came along and started . . . dabbling!”
“She fastened onto to you, Richard. You can’t blame yourself. We’ve got to find some way to . . . detach her.”
One part of Richard wanted nothing more than to do just that, but another part, an essential part would not let him walk away from the tragedy that he had inadvertently deepened.
“A godsend!” he said in disgust.
“She had no right to say to that to you.”
“I can’t blame her for hoping, Jill. I can barely stand it myself, and I didn’t even know Mancie.”
Jill frowned, and then sighed as if she had finally seen through to the end of a problem.
“I think maybe she’s just going through a normal process. This is just normal denial. If so, she’ll proceed to anger and then finally accept it. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure. I don’t know how long it will take, but I think she’ll eventually come to terms with it.”
It was Psych 101, and neither of them really believed it.





September 17

The next day Adams pulled Molly in for a follow up interview.
“I told you it wasn’t Mancie,” she said patiently. “I would know if it was my baby. It’s not.”
“The DNA is going to confirm that is,” he insisted.
“It wasn’t her,” Molly insisted.
Her reaction angered him.
“You know what I think, Molly? I think you killed your little girl. And then I think you---or maybe a boyfriend of yours---just put her in a trash bag like she was so much garbage and threw her in some dumpster.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think,” she said calmly.
“Don’t be such a smart ass. We’ve got the bag too, Molly,” he said. “I’ll bet we get fingerprints off it.”
“I hope you do. Maybe you can find out what happened to some other poor momma’s baby. Maybe it will be somebody more important than me.”
“Look, Molly. That’s your baby. You and I both know it.”
“It’s not.”
“No others have disappeared! When the DNA test comes in, I’m going to arrest you.”
“I don’t care. It’s not Mancie.”
“What if it is, Molly?”
“It’s not. But if it was, Mr. Adams then my life would be over anyway.”

Jill came home at two, to find Richard staring at the computer screen.
“You’re home early,” he observed listlessly.
“I had a headache so I left right after the last class. Are you okay?”
“Oh I’m peachy. Nothing like finding this stuff to brighten your day,” he said, nodding toward the screen.
She came closer and saw a professionally designed web page.
“What kind of advertisement is that?”
“It’s personal site,” he said, choosing an option. “See. You can leave messages and addresses. But it’s not for everyone, only for like-minded aficionados.”
She read over his shoulder.
“Pedophiles! I knew they communicated via the Internet, but . . .”
“You haven’t seen anything,” he said returning to his search page. “See. There are chatrooms, picture galleries, even Op Ed sites to champion this poor, misunderstood, persecuted minority. I found out that we---that is the tyrannical majority---just don’t realize that this is just another type of sexual orientation. You see there’s nothing inherently bad about personal choices like that. My favorite site is called ‘Young Love.’”
He clicked the selection.
“Get out of that disgusting site,” she said as soon as the home page lit the screen.
“Yeah,” he said. “My sentiments exactly.”
But when he exited “Young Love,” the photo of a nude little boy filled the screen. He closed it, but it was replaced with a similar photo of a little girl. When he closed it, another similar one popped onto the screen. Finally, one came up which refused to be closed. Jill reached over his shoulder and shut off the computer.
“Makes you look at censorship a little differently, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Too late,” she said. “The Internet is the ultimate multinational entity. No government has the power to manage it. Besides, if you want freedom of expression you have to take the good with the bad.”
“Freedom of expression, huh? I doubt our founding fathers had anything in mind but politics and religion. They didn’t have pornography back then.”
“Of course they did,” she corrected. “Even the Greeks and Romans had the kind of filth you just found.”
“Our address is probably on some list now. Sorry,” he said.
Jill knew she had been right to come home early. As she feared, the discovery of Molly Randolph’s dead child was quickly eroding the progress he had made since her return from France. A collapse into apathy seemed imminent. She hated thinking of him as an emotional cripple, but, as melodramatic as it sounded, that was the case. No matter, she would not let him succumb to his wounds.
“Go shave,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “You are going to take me out for a late lunch.”
“We’re short of money. Remember?” he said without moving.
“That’s why we’re going out,” she said, affecting levity. “After you get some energy, you’re going to go out and tell your boss that you’re ready to come back to work. We need another breadwinner.”
“You’re right,” he said, trying to sound upbeat. “Can’t have a slacker under our roof.”
“Without additional income, we may have to find another roof,” she said. “Come on, lazy bones. Up and at ‘em.”

After a fast food meal, Richard called the office for the worksite so he could find his boss. He told Patterson that he was fit, and asked when he could return to work. Although he seemed reluctant, he told Richard to report at four in two days at a worksite in a new subdivision being built on the eastern edge of town.
“I’m glad it’s new work,” he told Jill on the way back home. “I hate removing old shingles. All I have to do now is lay shingles and pop ‘em with a nail gun. And it’s all single story work too. I won’t have as far to fall.”
“Be careful this time.”
“Trust me. I will.” He heaved a sigh. “It’ll be good to get back to the kind of work that wears you out. Man was meant to earn a living by the sweat of his face.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be ‘sweat of his brow?’”
“‘Sweat of his face.’ Look it up. I like physical work.”
Jill thought he was trying too hard to sound upbeat. She hoped it wasn’t just for her sake.
“Good,” she said. “Let’s call Mr. Carson when we get back home.”
“The landlord? Why?”
“I want you to talk to him about the back porch rail. It’s really in bad shape. Tell him that you’ll fix it if he’ll buy the new materials.”
“Trying to keep me busy, huh?”
“I thought you liked physical work.”

They spent the afternoon on routine tasks, neither mentioning Molly nor her murdered baby. Richard faked an upbeat mood, but it fooled neither of them. He understood what was happening to him. They both did, but talking about it wouldn’t help. The thing was not amenable to reasoning, encouragement, or understanding. His depression was a dark addiction without the reward of a high. It was a sucking mire of despair and guilt. Jill blamed Molly, although it was obvious that the woman had mental problems of her own.
In the evening Jill bathed, fixed her hair, put on perfume, and slipped into the negligee that he liked the most. When she came in and turned down the lights, he made the requisite remarks of approval, but her heart sank at his artificiality. Stubbornly, however, each of them pushed on, trying to force it. After a time, he faked a coughing fit, made the excuse that he thought he was coming down with a cold, and rolled away from her. She pretended to believe him.
Two hours later she was still wide awake, staring into the dark and listening to his steady breathing. She got up and rummaged through her dresser without turning on the light until she found something comfortable enough to sleep in. She changed, leaving the negligee on the floor beside the bed until the morning. When she carefully crawled back into bed, he stirred slightly and rolled further away. She scooted over to his side of the bed and gently put an arm around him.
“I’ll take care of you, love,” she whispered softly. “I’ll take care of you.”
Richard didn’t move, but her words struck like an accusation.
I’m supposed to take care of you, he thought. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.




September 18
Carpenters prefer new construction to old work because things only have to be done, not first undone. The railing had not been merely fastened to the back porch; it had been constructed as an integral part, its corner posts serving as support for the deck. A decent reconstruction required disassembling much of the deck so that he could dig out the rotten corner post nearest the house. When Richard got that far, he discovered that it had been sunk in concrete. The whole problem could have been avoided by using treated lumber and devising an above ground means of anchoring the posts.
“Looks like you got your work cut out for you.”
Richard looked up to see Molly sitting on what remained of the deck.
“And I don’t have much time,” he said. “Got to be at work by ten.”
“You’re going back to work?”
“My ankle’s about as good as it’s going to be for awhile.”
She looked away, frowning. “I don’t guess you’ll have much time to look for Mancie.”
He felt miserable for her. As bad as things were, they were bound to get worse.
“Molly,” he began. “Let’s just wait, you know until . . .”
“They’re wrong. Carter. That little baby they found wasn’t my Mancie. They showed me the blanket and stuff. It wasn’t hers. They even asked me what kind of diaper she had on. It was the wrong kind. I don’t know who that baby’s poor momma is, but it ain’t me.”
He could tell her that the kidnapper may have kept Mancie for several days, bought different things for her. Who knew how a child killer, let alone a pedophile might think or act?
“You still going to help me?” she asked.
“Molly, even if that child wasn’t you---”
“It wasn’t,” she insisted.
“Okay, Molly. But look, I think maybe you’ve . . . overestimated me. That was my fault for letting you think that I was experienced enough to know what I was doing. I mislead you.”
Molly had begun shaking her head as soon as he had begun.
“I don’t care about that. I never did. You’re smart and you care. That’s good enough for me.”
“Don’t trust in me, Molly. I can’t do anything for you.”
“Mr. Carter, you’re the only one who can.”

Richard escaped by fleeing to the building supply store to price materials for his repair job. After taking an estimate to his landlord, he killed time driving around town until ten when he was due at the housing development. Two hours into the job, while coming off the roof, he miscalculated which rung he was on and, not only stepped down too far, but planted his foot on the side of a two by four. He winced as pain shot through his injured ankle. Unfortunately his boss was there when it happened and watched intently as Richard tried to walk it off.
“Go home and ice that down, Carter,” he said. “I want you to go get that taken care of. I’ll file a workman’s comp claim, but . . . well, you’re accident-prone. You need to get you another job.”
“No. I’m not filing a claim. The ankle will heel. I need the job, boss.”
“I like you, Carter, but I can’t afford you. You’ve been disabled a hell of lot more than you’ve been at work.”
“Hey. I said I’m not filing for comp. Come on, man. I need the job.”
“I can’t do it, Carter. Next time it might be something more serious than an ankle.”
“You know I’m a good worker.”
“When you’re not on the disabled list. I can’t have you falling off a roof on me. Look. I know a guy who might take you on if I put in a good word. All his work’s at ground level.”
Richard bit back his frustration. It was no time to vent.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said.

“At least he’s giving you a reference,” said Jill when he told her his news on the way home. “How badly did you hurt yourself this time?”
“I won’t have to go to the doctor,” he said. “It looks like it’s back to square one as far as heeling is concerned, though. Sorry.”
“We’re managing fine.”
Richard recognized her tone. Jill had shifted into her “cheerful coping” gear. A “sour bitching” gear might have made him feel better, since it would allow him to focus his frustration on her instead of himself, but he wouldn’t get that from Jill. Not to worry, “sour bitching,” in the form of Sergeant Adams, was waiting for him at the curb when they got home.
Richard limped over to see what he wanted.
“Take a ride with me,” said Adams.
“Just a minute,” he said before going back to the car.
“He wants me to go with him,” he said.
“Does he have a warrant?” asked Jill, glaring toward Adams.
“Of course not. I think I’ll go with him and see what he has to say.”
“Tell him to leave us alone. He has no reason to bother us like this.”
“Okay, dear,” he said, but only to pacify her. He had no intention of saying anything of the sort to Adams.
“So what do you want with me?” asked Richard as they pulled away from the curb.
“I want to see your list,” said Adams.
“What list?”
“The list of Molly Randolph’s acquaintances. You’ve got one, don’t you?”
Richard’s ankle hurt, and he wasn’t in a particularly good mood. Adams’ officious manner didn’t help things.
“I don’t have to show you anything.”
“What? Client-investigator privilege?” snorted the detective. “Stop playing games unless you want a part in the crime. That woman either killed her kid or she’s covering for whoever did.”
“That’s ridiculous! If you had a brain in your head, you’d know better than that.”
“Why? Because she gets all weepy and comes on like she’s so desperate to find out what really happened? Wake up, Carter! She’s playing you.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Adams laughed as if he found Richard’s naiveté vastly amusing.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll admit that she might not know exactly what happened that night, but she damned sure knows who killed her kid, even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself.”
“You’re not making any sense,” said Richard.
“Let me explain it to you. The blood work showed that she was floating on Valium and her alcohol was high too. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill her. Now it could be that she somehow killed the kid by accident. The kid had a broken neck like can happed with violent shaking. But as much crap as she had in her, there’s no way she could have gotten it together enough to get rid of the body all by herself. They tell me she couldn’t have driven in her condition. So someone else got rid of the body. I’d make you for it if you lived here at the time.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” said Richard.
“Yeah. Well, let me go on. It ain’t consistent with the retarded babysitter. So it’s gotta be that Molly is covering for someone and vice a versa. Either she’s covering for the killer or she’s the killer and had an accomplice.”
“Adams, she really thinks that Mancie is still alive.”
“That’s crap. As soon as the DNA results confirm that it’s her kid she’ll come up with something else. Wait and see.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think. I want your list. If you won’t give it to me then I’m going to charge you with impeding an investigation.”
“You won’t do any such thing,” said Richard. “But if you want it then take me back to the house. It’s on my computer. I’ll run you a copy, but there’s not a name on it that you couldn’t have come up with if you were doing your job.”
“Stop. You’re hurting my feelings.”
“What’s going on?” asked Jill when Adams followed Richard inside.
“The detective wants my list of Molly’s acquaintances,” said Richard. “I’m getting him a printout.”
When Richard touched the mouse, the darkened screen lit.
“What the f---” began Adams when he saw the popup.
“I was looking up pedophile sites, and this crap has been popping up ever since,” he said as he hit the reset button. “Every time we go on the Internet that happens. I guess I need to download something to block them.”
“What interests you about that filth?” asked Adams, his voice heavy with disdain.
“Nothing. I just thought maybe a local pedophile took the baby. It’s a possibility you might consider.”
“I’ll check out more likely ideas first.”
“Yeah. Well, none of the people I talked to mentioned you. I guess you didn’t make much of an impression.”
The computer finally finished rebooting. Richard called up his database and clicked on “Print.”
“There you go,” he said. “Be my guest.”
Adams squinted at the paper Richard handed him.
“This it?”
“That’s all.”
“I’ll let you get back to your dirty pictures, but I wouldn’t want it to get out that you’re interested in that kind of stuff. We’re kind of conservative around here. Most people probably aren’t too open-minded about that sort of thing.”
“I told you how that popup got on my screen. You tell anyone anything else, and I’ll sue you.”
“Yeah. You do that.”
“What an ass,” Jill said as she watched Adams pull from the curb. “Why does he have to act like that?”
“He’s diabetic and not taking care of himself,” said Richard. “I think he’s on edge most of the time. Maybe that’s why he’s jumped to his conclusion about Molly.”
“He may be right, Richard.”
“No. I don’t know what happened, but I know what didn’t happen. Adams is ignoring the fact that Molly seems to be the only person who didn’t want to bury this thing and forget about it. That’s not consistent with guilt.”

The call interrupted supper. Richard’s answer touched off a well-primed charge.
“What the hell are you trying to do?”
Everything considered, he was in no mood.
“Well, tell me who in the hell you are and maybe I can tell you,” he snapped.
“What have you been saying to the police about me?”
“Tinsley?”
“Damned right. What have you been saying?”
Richard mentally cursed Adams.
“I didn’t tell them anything about you. If Adams is---”
“I’m going to get you for this,” interrupted Tinsley.
Richard imagined the powerfully built little man grinding his teeth.
“Look, I know Adams is irritating, but I didn’t tell him anything about you.”
“Like hell you didn’t!”
“Hey! You believe what you want to believe. I didn’t do a damned thing, and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t give me a reason to!”
“Richard!” Jill admonished, trying to calm him.
“Stay out of this, Jill!” he shouted.
The outburst shocked them both. Jill’s mouth dropped open. Then she clenched it shut. Richard closed his eyes ruefully. He clicked off Tinsley in mid-rant and tossed the phone onto the couch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never . . . I don’t know why I why I did that.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly.
But it wasn’t.




September 19
Jimmy Pete had two faces, one a sour scowl. The other he took from cold storage when dealing with clients. He had been born in the wrong century. He would have been a much happier man had slave labor been available to him. Instead, he had to make do with the next best thing, high school dropouts and immigrant labor brought up from Texas. The latter, Jimmy’s Lawn and Landscaping Service had temporarily lost due to problems with visas, the problem being that most of his crew had none, which had come as a surprise to Jimmy, trusting soul that he was. For the time being Jimmy had to scrape for crew, which was why he took on over-aged, over-dressed, and over-qualified Richard Carter.
Grass cutting season was almost over, the Zoysia and Bermuda lawns having gone dormant brown, but Jimmy had landed a fat contract laying sod and landscape planting in the housing development where Eric Patterson’s roofers were working. The grueling work of rolling out and trimming in sod was stoop labor, but the mild early fall weather made it bearable. His fellow workers were divided over whether laying sod in the summer heat or the winter cold was the truest foretaste of Hell, a place they uniformly hoped and believed Jimmy Pete would go.
Richard had worked three backbreaking twelve-hour days in a row. As he sat on the freemasonry wall surrounding the new duplexes waiting for Jill to pick him up, Pete stopped his truck and slid down the window.
“Don’t come in tomorrow,” he said.
“Why?” asked Richard in surprise. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Come back on Monday. Don’t need you tomorrow.”
Pete rolled up the window and sped off before it occurred to Richard that working tomorrow would give him a forty-hour week.

September 20
Richard filled Friday by finishing the back porch. James Mill didn’t allow trash burning, but there was only a little over a five-gallon bucket of scrap wood left from his repair job. A fifties era brick barbecue pit sat, albeit in disrepair, at the back of the lot however. Since there surely was no law against barbecuing, he decided to burn the wood inside it. He was congratulating himself on finding the loophole in the no-burn ordinance when it began raining. He went in and turned on the local weather. Radar showed the splotch of rain stretched all the way back to the Texas panhandle. He smiled at his good fortune. Had he been dropped off for work and then the sod laying had been called off for the day, he would have had to find his own way home. On the other hand, Jimmy Pete might have kept them at it while he supervised from the comfort of his truck cab.
He turned off the TV, wondering what he could spend his time doing while waiting for Jill to come home. Neither reading, watching TV, nor going on the Internet appealed to him. He thought only momentarily about sending e-mails to his mother in Florida and to his friend Kevin in South Bend, but he didn’t know of anything that he wanted to say to either of them. What he needed was work, but the dishes and housework were done up. He could cook something for supper and save Jill the trouble, but he couldn’t start that for at least another four or five hours.
While he was casting about for something to do, he heard a knock at the back door. Molly had come to break his heart. When he opened the door to let her in, she smiled.
“You didn’t go to work today, huh? Are you sick?”
“No, the boss decided thirty-six hours was as much work as I was capable of this week.”
“Yeah, I’ve had me some bosses like that.”
“I got some coffee on. Can I get you some?”
“That’d be real nice,” she said with a shiver. “Raining harder than I thought when I started over. Can I use a towel to dry off?”
“In the bathroom. Help yourself.”
He poured the coffee, wondering how he found might rid himself of her as soon as possible without hurting her feelings. Without a car, he was stuck with no means of escaping her. He wondered gloomily if he would ever be free of Molly and her dead child.
“I sure wish they’d hurry with that DNA thing,” she said, coming back into the kitchen.
He handed her a cup of coffee without meeting her eyes.
“Molly, you should try to prepare yourself for the possibility that it was your child that they found.”
She took a sip of the coffee and shook her head dismissively.
“It wasn’t Mancie, Mr. Carter. I don’t need no DNA to tell me that, but I know you do. I’ve been thinking about it, and it ain’t reasonable for me to expect you to know what I know, but Mancie and I still need you to help us. That’s why I want them to hurry up.”
He studied her face. It had changed a lot since he first met her. Hope alone had made that difference? She was sure things would turn out all right. Richard was sure of just one thing: he didn’t want to be there when it all came crashing in on her.
“Molly.” He paused and drew a deep breath before continuing. “If the test shows that the baby they found is . . . is your girl, I can’t do anything else for you.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Carter. It ain’t her. And you know, if it was, I wouldn’t . . . well I suppose I’d like to see whoever done it caught before some other poor momma loses a baby, but I wouldn’t be interested in vengeance. That’s for the Lord to take care of.”
From meth head to Holy Roller! he thought sadly. How far are you going to fall from grace this time, Molly?
“I’ve been thinking, Mr. Carter. Don’t they say that most crime is committed by family?”
“Violent crimes, yes. Not necessarily all crime.”
“Child abductions, though. They usually are, aren’t they?”
Richard realized her question wasn’t hypothetical.
“Do you have a definite idea of who did it, Molly?”
She shrugged.
“I ain’t certain. I guess I’m trying to be upbeat about the whole thing---you know, wanting to believe that whoever took her did it ’cause they loved her.”
“You don’t mean your ex-husband?”
“Pat? No. But grandma and grandpa Allsop might have. They never treated me bad or nothing, but they never liked me a whole lot neither.”
“Why didn’t they like you?”
She smiled sardonically.
“Because I was trailer trash. They thought Pat could have done better for himself.”
Adams had to have talked to the grandparents early in his investigation. Maybe that’s where his negative impression of Molly came from.
“I never thought much of them either seeing as how they looked down their nose at me,” she continued. “I pray to a merciful God that they’ve got her because I know they love her.”
Mancie was dead, and the sooner Molly accepted that, the better off she’d be.
No, he realized. Her life will be over. Mancie is all she had.
“I didn’t just come over to tell you about Grandma and Grandpa Allsop, Mr. Carter,” she said. “I got a confession to make.”
Richard feared that Molly was about to confess she was in love with him. His face flushed in anticipation. Molly didn’t notice.
“I come over because I was sure you was about to quit on me. I couldn’t let you do that without trying real hard to stop you. No momma could. I know you got to work and all. And your wife don’t like what you’re doing for me, but me and Mancie really need you. You’re the only hope we got.”
Relieved at being spared the love thing, Richard concentrated on finding a way pry her from her delusion.
“Molly,” he began gently.
“I need to apologize too, Mr. Carter. Not for bugging you to help us, but for laying that thing on you about it being the Lord’s will and all. I do believe God sent you to help us, but I don’t expect you to believe that. It’s my faith, Mr. Carter, not yours, so you don’t need to pay no attention to it.”
When he didn’t respond, she continued.
“None of that makes any sense, does it?”
“It makes perfect sense, Molly. I’ll tell you what. When the DNA results come in . . . well, let’s let that decide what I do, okay?”
“Sure,” she said eagerly. “If it’s not Mancie, then we’ll keep working on it, right.”
“Right, but if it is---”
“Then I won’t bother you no more.”

“She’s manipulating you is what I think.”
“She’s sincere, Jill. That’s all I was trying to tell you. I just hope that faith of hers can somehow carry her through what’s going to happen when the DNA results come in.”
“The delusion won’t end when the results come in.”
“You think she’ll refuse to accept it. I never considered that.”
“Well I did. That woman has sunk her claws into you, and she’s not going to give you up without a fight.”
Richard tried to pass it off. “No, you’re misunderstanding her. This is all about Mancie, not me.”
His tone finally clicked it all into place for her. From the beginning, Jill had known there was something wrong. She had always been intuitively uncomfortable with Molly’s monopolizing of Richard’s time. Now she saw it clearly. It wasn’t Molly so much as Richard. The tragedy had given his life meaning, something she was apparently unable to do. Her hurt seemed childish. Yet, if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she was both jealous of Molly and angry with Richard for his unconscious betrayal of her.
“What’s wrong, Jill?” he asked, noticing her distracted expression.
“Nothing. Just make sure that . . . you don’t do anything to encourage her---I mean after the results come in. It will be hard for her to accept. Don’t be so soft-hearted that you encourage her to . . . any kind of false hope.”
“Right. I wonder if she’ll want me to continue . . . you know, like when the shock wears off.”
“You hope so, don’t you?” Jill said sharply.
“What?” he asked, surprised again by her reaction. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me! What’s wrong with you? We have bills to pay, and all you want to do is play detective. This is a job for the police, and you know it.”
Richard thought Jill had it all wrong. He tried to back off and consider the disparity in their differing assessments of what was happening. She had a point, but was blowing it all out of proportion. The “playing detective” thing rankled, but was not entirely unjustified. To restore harmony, he decided to concede the point (in principle).
“It is a job for the police. I just wish they’d do it. And speaking of bills, how short are we?”
“I’ve paid the rent, but we’re about fifty dollars short on utilities. I’ll drop the cable or the Internet. You choose.”
“When is the bill due?”
“Yesterday.”
“Then write the check. Today was supposed to be payday. I’m going in to get my check from Pete instead of waiting until Monday.”
“I’m not writing an insufficient funds check. We’ll cash your check and then I’ll go in and pay cash and apologize.”
“Apologize for being a day late?”
No, apologize for being late period.”

When he got to the job site, Richard saw a new man working with the crew, and Jimmy Pete’s truck parked at the entrance to the development. Pete scowled in his direction as he got out of the car.
“Need your pay already, huh?” he said disdainfully when Richard approached.
He made no move to get out of the truck. Richard thought of a mounted overseer on an antebellum cotton plantation. It was almost enough to make one believe in reincarnation.
“Bills are due,” he said.
Pete hunched to the side in order to pull a wad of cash from his pocket. He counted twenties from the outside of the roll, and then unfolded it to get at smaller bills.
“I can wait if you want to write me a check,” offered Richard.
“Simpler this way,” said Pete, handing over the cash. “Now you don’t have to give it all back to the government. What Sam don’t know won’t hurt him.”
That confirmed what Richard already suspected. People don’t insist on cash only transactions for simplicity sake. They are tax-evading thieves more than willing to let honest taxpayers pick up the whole tab for public works and services. Richard decided to keep careful note of his pay from Pete and make sure to account for it all when he paid taxes. As Pete rolled up the window to the pickup, Richard counted his pay. He frowned, and then pecked on the window. His boss rolled the window back down again.
“You made a mistake,” said Richard. “I worked thirty-six hours. You only paid me for thirty.”
“I don’t pay for lunch and your breaks,” said Pete. “Only for the time you actually work.”
“I didn’t count those, Mr. Pete. I worked thirty-six hours.”
“You miscounted.”
“No. I did not take two hours of break a day.”
“Hey, I keep good records. If I was you I’d just take the money and be glad I had a job.”
“All I want is what I worked for.”
“You don’t appreciate the job? Well, I don’t need no lazy trouble makers like you around.”
“You’re stealing nearly forty dollars from me,” said Richard.
“Yeah? Well go tell anyone you want to about that. See if anybody cares,” said Pete. “By the way, I think one of my sod-cutters is missing. I’ve got a suspicion one of my workers stole it. Know what I’m saying?”
“I know exactly what you’re saying,” said Richard. “You’re saying that not all psychopaths kill people.”
Getting the last word could have been satisfying if Jimmy Pete had understood. As it was, Richard walked away with a little less than sixty dollars and one more lost job.

October 16
Richard spent the next two weeks filling out applications for quick shop and other less than forty hour a week jobs. His college credit, military service, age, and gender all worked against his chances of landing a low-paying position. Molly dropped over for an occasional prod, but he put her off with the excuse that all his time was taken up job-hunting, which wasn’t exactly the truth, but close enough. He tried to smooth it over with Jill by mentioning the possibility of reenrolling in college for the spring semester in order to pick up a G.I. bill check.
The first week of October came a killing frost, which was depressing. The second week of the month his ship came in---rather his scow docked. Quick Fill hired him part time to do oil changes, transmission checks, and lube jobs. Moiling in the gloom and muck of a grease pit periodically swept by cold air wouldn’t provide the optimum winter occupation, but Richard figured he’d probably get fired before cold weather anyway if he were true to recent form.
Friday was Richard’s day off, but Jill had to go in early. Although he was still working for the minimum wage and was held to less than forty hours a week, Richard was beginning to feel better about his contribution to the finances. He planned to go get his paycheck and pay the utility bill before it went overdue again. Looking outside, he saw that a heavy frost had come in the night. He hated what it foreshadowed, but decided to shake off all portents by surprising Jill with breakfast. When she came into the kitchen as he was carrying milk and eggs to the stove.
“What are you doing?” she asked with a yawn.
“I was going to make French toast,” he said. “But the only bread we have is that leftover baguette that’s as hard as a rock, so I guess it’s scrambled eggs.”
A laugh interrupted her yawn.
“What?” he asked, puzzled at her amusement.
“You had a wonderful idea. It was sweet, but let me do it.”
“I can scramble eggs,” he objected. “And what’s so funny.”
“Being unable to make French toast because the bread is stale,” she said. “The French term for it is ‘pain perdu,’ which means ‘lost bread.’ It’s what one does with stale bread.”
“Then I can still fix it.”
“I’m sure you can, but let me fix it Aunt Mirabelle way with vanilla, sugar, and cinnamon. I want to share it with you.”
“Do I have time to shave?”
“Plenty of time. The bread must be allowed to absorb the liquid and it must be heated slowly to cooks through without burning the outside.”
“I kind of like it gooey on the inside,” he said.
“You shouldn’t eat undercooked eggs. Salmonella is present in many commercial eggs now.”
“Food poisoning? Must be quite a blow to the eggnog industry.”
“They probably pasteurize it.”

“This is a little watery,” said Jill as she spooned a lumpy reddish concoction over Richard’s French toast. “Aunt Mirabelle made it better. It didn’t have time to cook down and thicken properly.”
“What is it?” he asked suspiciously.
“Compote. Think of it as strawberry syrup.”
He took a tentative taste. Although he would have preferred maple syrup, it wasn’t bad.
“Who knew that recycled stuff could taste so good,” he said.
“That’s what cooking is all about.”
“It’s becoming a lost art,” he said. “I don’t guess most young women have been exposed to it the way you have.”
“One only has to care. If one can read, one can learn to cook.”
“This is good,” he said. “My compliments to your Aunt Mirabelle.”
Tears came to her eyes.
“Sorry, Jill. I didn’t think,” he stammered.
Jill shook her head.
“No. I just wish the two of you could have known each other.”
A knock at the back door interrupted the conversation. They exchanged exasperated smiles.
“I’ll let her in,” said Jill, patting his hand as she got up.
Molly stood on the back stoop, coatless and hugging herself against the frosty air. Her face fell when Jill opened the door.
“Come in, Molly,” said Jill. “We were just having breakfast. Have you eaten?”
“No, ma’am, but I’m not hungry. I just came to tell Mr. Carter about what they found out.”
“About what, Molly?” he called out.
“I would have told you last night, but it was late when you guys come in. Mr. Adams told me yesterday afternoon. The tests come in, and it wasn’t Mancie.”
Richard didn’t know how she had managed to misunderstand Adams, but he was sure that she had.
“What did he say exactly?”
“He said, ‘The DNA don’t match up with yours, Molly.’ Them’s his exact words. I told you it wasn’t her.”
Then what the heck is going on? Richard wondered.

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t help her,” said Jill as they arrived at the campus. “I just said that this has to end sometime.”
“You mean I need an exit strategy?”
“Exactly. Sooner or later you are going to have to disengage yourself from her.”
“You make it sound like she’s a leach or something.”
“She’s attached herself to you. That’s for certain.”
“I’ll . . . detach as soon as this is over,” he said irritably.
“Over? When will it be over, Richard? When Molly gives it up? What if she doesn’t do that? What if they never find any trace of the baby? That woman is tenacious. She won’t give up until someone proves to her that her baby is dead. I sympathize with her---I really do, but she’s . . . co-opted you into this hopeless pursuit. Don’t you understand? The only way she’ll let you go is if you prove a negative. And no one can do that, Richard.”
“So what? I just wrap it up and walk away?”
“You have to.”
“How?”
“Find a way,” she said, getting abruptly from the car.
Before shutting the door she opened her purse and then leaned back in to hand him the checkbook.
“Here. Pay the utility bills after you put your check in the bank.”
And with that she was gone, leaving Richard alone in the idling car with nothing but the aura of her discontent and his own irritation. He was angry with both women and berated each in turn on his way to Quick Fill, rehearsing all the things he would never say to either. The problem was that, given their individual perspectives, both were right and he was their bone of contention.
“And I’m beginning to feel well-gnawed,” he grumbled to himself as he went in to pick up his check.
Unlike Jimmy Pete, his new boss handed over his check cheerfully, and even took the time for some idle banter. After that Richard drove. Thinking seemed easier when he gave himself something to do. Mulling over his dilemma, he came to the obvious conclusion that Jill had to come first. However, Molly had become a burden that he couldn’t just shrug off. Rightly or wrongly she saw him as a literal Godsend come to get her baby back. Jill was right. That was a terrible and unjustified responsibility to impose on someone. Yet how could he blame her?
Although it felt like hastily cleaning up and walking away from an incomplete job, he saw a way clear of the mess. Ignoring the feeling that he was only running away from Molly’s desperate petition, he thought through his rationalization.
Okay. I’ve questioned her friends and co-workers, I’ve talked to Adams, and I’ve reconstructed the night it happened. Let’s just finish with a canvass of the neighborhood, and when nothing turns up I’ll just tell her that I’m at my wits’ end, which will be the truth. I’ll have given it my best shot and come up dry.
Richard came to a tee in the road and stopped. He realized that he didn’t know where he was and couldn’t remember how he had gotten there. Popping the glove box, he pulled out the map. It did no good because neither the county blacktop he was on nor the one he had come to were shown. He took a left because Springfield and James Mill had to be somewhere off in that direction.
He turned back onto his street a little after noon, with two hours still to kill before picking up Jill. To avoid Molly he drove by. At the end of the block he slowed and stopped as an idea came to him. He’d canvass the neighborhood. Beginning on the opposite side of the street he knocked at the corner house, but got no answer. Nor did he get a response at the next one. The third house held more promise. The college boys lived there. The number of cars at the curb and in the drive suggested that all of them couldn’t be gone.
Repeated knocks actually went unanswered, and he was about to give up when he heard an excited whoop from inside.
Probably the idiot that nearly backed into us, he thought.
Making a fist, he pounded on the door, determined to draw attention. His pounding finally elicited a response.
“Hold on!” someone yelled.
He held on. And held on. Then he commenced banging again.
Finally, the voice called out.
“It’s open!”
Trying the knob, he found it unlocked. He pushed open the door and peered into what had once been a living room and was who knew what now. A motley of sheets and blankets covered the windows. The light from three flickering computer monitors on the back wall alleviated the gloom. All the walls were lined with computer stations, most with darkened monitors. Glowing specks indicated that all the towers were on, however. Two young men were recumbent, but intently riveted at adjoining stations, while a third sat upright and equally intent at one on the opposite side of the room. Absorbed in video games, none paid the slightest attention to the stranger who had walked in.
“Do you think one of you guys could spare a minute to talk to me?” asked Richard.
None seemed to hear.
“Hey!” he repeated, raising his voice. “I want to talk to one of you guys.”
“Minute,” said the one off to his left without looking up.
Richard waited. And waited. Evidently a minute was of a different duration in cyberspace.
“Come on guys,” he said. “I don’t have all day.”
“I was almost there!” lamented Richard’s lone respondent, jerking his controller above his head in frustration.
The boy placed his controller on the desk and swiveled his seat to blink at Richard. He looked to be in his early twenties, and had the scruffy whiskers of a late season deer hunter.
“What you want?” he asked Richard with a cough as he stood and stretched.
“Whoa!” he said before Richard could answer. He steadied himself on the back of the chair.
“Fat rush,” he explained.
“You surfaced too quick,” said one of the others distractedly.
“I live down the block---next to the lady whose baby disappeared,” said Richard.
“A kid disappeared? Wow.”
The response surprised him until he considered the darkened room and the obsession with gaming.
“Yeah, about three months ago. You didn’t hear about it?”
A shake of the head and a shrug.
“Well I’m trying to find out if anyone in the neighborhood saw or heard anything out of the ordinary at the time. No one’s asked you about this before now?”
“First I’ve heard,” he said with another shrug. “Either of you guys heard anything about a missing kid around here?”
“Alien abduction, Boots,” tossed out one without removing his attention from the screen.
The other might as well have been on the moon, which he probably was.
“None of you remember anything unusual around then?”
“You a cop?” asked his lone respondent.
“No. I’m not a policeman. I’m just trying to help the lady whose kid disappeared,” said Richard, taking a closer look at the room.
It reminded him of something he’d seen, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“How many people live here?” he asked.
“Nine after we voted The Tuke out.”
“The Took?”
“The Tuke,” said the young man, correcting Richard’s pronunciation. “He never put anything in the pot, so we exiled him.”
“And you’re all college boys, right?”
“Not,” corrected the young man with a grin. “Gamers. We’re like a colony, you know. Shared responsibility. Everyone’s gotta throw in to keep it going. Gotta eat, pay rent, keep the power on---stuff like that. A guy don’t put nothing in, we gotta cut him off. Sic transit el Tuke.”
“So you do work?”
“We all got jobs but Grant. He gets money from his parents.”
“So, it’s all guys here, huh?”
“We had a chick for a while. Didn’t work out. She was as much a slacker as the rest of us. I think we were like expecting maybe she would be like our momma or something. She was mad all the time.”
Richard counted the empty chairs in the room.
“So you got what, six guys at work?”
“Yeah. It takes a lot of money.”
“But you’re splitting it nine ways, right?”
Using terminology that Richard didn’t know, and probably couldn’t find in any dictionary, the young man, Brent Goins, explained the world in which he and his housemates lived. On-line video gaming evidently cost a lot. Richard got the distinct impression, although he didn’t understand it, that there was real money to be made, albeit e-cash or credit accounts with various gaming services. Most of the housemates had low-paying, part time jobs, but Goins and one of the others present worked full time in the medical field, perhaps as male nurses, orderlies, or low-level technicians assistants. Their jobs were necessary, if regrettable forays for cash, and none of them seemed interested in anything remotely resembling reality. Richard figured that if any of them were a pedophile he would indulge vicariously. Considering the living arrangements and the relative disinterest of the gamers, Richard ruled them out as far as involvement in whatever happened to Mancie Randolph.
Back outside, he saw Adam’s car parked behind his. He knew what was coming before the window rolled down.
“Get in,” said Adams.
His blood pressure didn’t even spike when the sour detective barked at him.
“What’s on your mind, sir?” he asked as he got in.
“Just keeping in touch with the other investigator on the case,” said Adams sarcastically.
“It’s getting complicated, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a game, Carter. We got two murdered kids. Molly Randolph may be all atwitter about the DNA results because she sees it as proof that her baby is still alive, but you ought to know better.”
Richard saw the implications of the DNA analysis---he had seen it all along, and he sympathized with what he now realized was Adams’ genuine concern.
“I know what it means,” he said. “It means that Mancie is most likely dead, probably has been all along.”
“So if your little friend didn’t have nothing to do with it, then she really believes her kid is still alive.”
“And the second dead child means there’s a homicidal pedophile out there, right?”
“That’s my problem!” snapped Adams. “What I don’t get is you. Why do you keep feeding Molly’s delusion? What’s the point? Are you just so eaten up with playing detective that you don’t want to let it go?”
“No. It’s not fun. I made a promise to Molly, and honestly, I’m trying to find a way to beak it. I’m going to finish what I started. That’s what I was doing today. I’ve talked to her friends and the people she worked with. Today I’m canvassing the neighborhood. As soon as I can tell her honestly that I’ve done all I can, then I’m going to walk away from it.”
Adams stared at him a long minute.
“And you aren’t curious about the babysitter?”
The question surprised him.
“Why? Has something come up?”
Adams shook his head.
“Oh, I see,” said Richard. “You think that if I really believed that Katie’s murder had something to do with the disappearance of Mancie, then there’s no way I’d just walk away from my . . . investigation.”
“I don’t read you as a guy who gets bored and quits. I’m pretty good at reading people.”
You didn’t read Molly worth a damn, thought Richard.
“I’m not bored. I just can’t find anything. It’s time to give it up.”
Adams dismissed his explanation.
“You told me that Katie Nash’s murder was staged as a sex crime,” he said. “Tell me how you thought that might fit into the theory you had.”
“Maybe the abductor was afraid she could identify him.”
“Okay. So what about the second baby?”
“What do you mean? I don’t know anything about the second baby.”
“No one seems to,” said Adams. “It doesn’t match any missing person’s report by age, sex, and time of death except the Randolph kid. It wasn’t a newborn someone just threw away. The DNA should have matched Molly’s baby but it didn’t. And Molly did have a child in case you’re wondering. I talked to the O. B. So it wasn’t someone else’s baby that she adopted or anything like that.”
Richard was barely listening. He was thinking about what Adams had said earlier.
“Wait a minute. No one reported another missing baby? That’s impossible. How far did you check the missing persons’ reports?”
“The whole state as well as Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma. Got nothing.”
“It had to have been brought here from somewhere.”
“So we’ve got this traveling pedophile?”
“Why not? Maybe a truck-driver or salesman or something like that.”
Richard remembered an idea he had earlier when viewing Mancie’s photographs with Molly.
“For example---and I’m not saying this is the way it was, but those guys who set up photo sessions in the discount stores---what would be a better way to troll for kids. You got all the pictures you want and you got their names, addresses, phone numbers. And they travel all the time.”
Adams stared at him soberly. Then he grimaced and shook his head.
“That’s what I like about you, Carter. You got a theory for everything. Get out and go on about your detecting business.”
“Listen, detective,” said Richard. “I’m serious about getting out of this and . . .”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’ll believe it when I see it. Go on. You’re giving me a headache.”

On the way to campus Richard decided that Adams’ sudden willingness to discuss the case was nothing more than an attempt to pump him for information, which meant that Adams was drawing a blank. He now had three crimes and no leads. Adams had no idea where the body at the dump came from, who might have killed Katie, or what had happened to Molly’s baby. Circumstance suggested that the three crimes could be related, but Richard couldn’t see exactly how that might be.
“Adam’s has got to know that if the second baby’s death is related then that pretty much rules out Molly,” he said aloud. “But that takes away his only suspect.”
Of course the three crimes could be indirectly related. The two babies’ could be victims of a pedophile, and Katie could have been killed because the perpetrator feared she could identify him. Speculation. He not only had nothing to back it up; he had no idea of how to find anything to back it up.
Richard had not yet learned what Adams and every experienced investigator knew: most crimes are solved because criminals are foolish. They let other people know what they have done, or let themselves be seen committing the crime. Then someone comes forward. So far, no one had, and the longer it continued that way, the less likely anyone would.

“Have you told Molly that you’re through with the investigation?” asked Jill before she had even buckled her seat belt.
“I haven’t seen her today,” he said. “But I’m wrapping things up.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s not going to give up easily, Jill. I’ve got to show her that I’ve done all I can. I’ve interviewed just about everyone I can think of, and now I’m canvassing the neighborhood to make sure that no one saw anything suspicious. After I draw a blank with that, I’ll just tell her I can’t think of anything else to do.”
As he turned down the block they lived on, Jill said, “You’ve paid the electric bill, right?”
“I forgot. I put my check in the bank, though. I’ll pay it tomorrow.”
“I want it paid today,” she said as he pulled to the curb. “Good grief!”
The reason for Jill’s exasperated remark was coming across the lawn toward the car.
“Get out and talk to her,” said Jill. “Give me the checkbook. I’ll pay the electric bill.”

Richard had fully intended to keep his promise to Jill, but Molly swamped his resolve, and he ended up delaying telling her that he was going to quit, vowing to do so as soon as his canvass was done. Jill was not pleased.
“You’re just feeding her delusions and your own,” she had said before walking away from him.
He knew that the chances of Mancie being alive were almost non-existent, and he knew that Molly needed to come to terms with that, but he balked at being the one to tell her there was no hope. He went to sleep that night angry at the situation. He hadn’t asked for any of this, didn’t want it---and yet, Molly was not the only one who could not let it go. Richard wanted desperately to believe that Mancie Randolph still existed.
He awoke in the night with the vestiges of a vivid dream receding rapidly from him. All he could remember of it was that it involved Katie Nash and the unidentified baby.
Right, he told his subconscious. Connect the parts that are most likely to have nothing to do with each other. If you’re going to bother me, tell be something useful.

He lay awake for the remainder of the night, wishing to forget it all and be finally rid of Molly and the burden of her desperate hope. Let it go, Molly. Let me go, he thought tiredly as he rolled from bed and went to make the coffee.
It was Saturday, and he wanted to let Jill sleep, but she came into the kitchen just as he was cracking eggs into smoking oil. Taking over, she removed the pan from the burner to cool. Over a breakfast devoid of references to Molly they discussed plans. She would drop him off at work, spend the day working at the library, and pick him up when he got off. After breakfast she packed them both a lunch. The mood was decidedly upbeat, which he attributed to his promise of a disengagement from Molly and his gainful, albeit penurious employment. At bottom, it was just Jill being who she was.
As they approached the corner the gamer called “Boots” recognized Richard and stepped into the street to wave them down. Richard stopped and opened the window.
“Say man, Coomer thinks he saw something hinky going on over there.” He nodded toward Molly’s house. “Maybe around the time you said that kid disappeared. He might’ve seen a guy carrying a kid out to the car.”
“That’s interesting,” said Richard, wishing Jill weren’t with him. “I’d like to talk to him. It’d have to be tonight, though. I’m working until seven.”
“He’s not here anyway. Might be back tonight, I don’t know. I’ll call if you give me your number.”
“I don’t have anything to write with,” said Richard. “And I’ve gotta get to work.”
“Me too. Just tell me. I hold numbers.”
Richard gave him his phone number. When they were back on their way to his work, Richard explained the living arrangement of the gamers.
“What he just told me probably doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
“You should tell Mr. Adams,” Jill replied. “Let him talk to them.”
“Well there probably isn’t anything to it. These guys aren’t well-grounded in the real world. Most likely this Coomer won’t have any idea of what night it was that he saw whatever he saw.”
“Let the police do it, Richard.”
“I intend to as soon as I find out if there’s anything to it.”
He felt her tense.
“Look, Jill. Adams and guys like these don’t mix real well. They may not even talk to him if he comes on the way he does with me. Right now they’ll talk to me, so I’m going find out what they know and then turn it over to him.”

“I know exactly when it was,” said Boots. “It was the night that the kid disappeared.”
When it came to real world affairs, Richard figured any date beyond payday involved more concentration than they were likely to spare. They seemed to have a different concept of time, hence the call he had just received rousting him from bed at two in the morning.
“How can you be certain of the date?” he asked.
“E-mail,” replied Boots without hesitation. “I remember Coomer went outside just as I was dropping a buddy of mine the news that I’d just crossed the third threshold of Sardis. I checked the dates and there it was, two fifty-four. Then I pulled up the . . . a file . . . anyway it was the night the kid disappeared, May fifteen.”
As cyber-challenged as he was, Richard knew that Boots had hacked a file rather than looked through old newspaper issues. He decided that he didn’t want to know which files he had broken in to.
“Tell him what you saw, Coomer,” prodded Boots.
“I saw a guy carrying a bundle . . . coulda been a kid. He put it in a car.”
“Could you recognize the guy if you saw him again?”
Coomer shook his head.
“Dark, and I don’t got exactly twenty-twenty. It was a guy though.”
Richard thought it would be a good idea to get the whole story in context.
“Why did you go outside?” he asked.
“To leak. The crapper was stopped up.”
“Could we go out and you show me? You can show me where you were and explain it from there.”
Boots tagged along as Coomer led them over to the right side of the house where the street light cast deep shadow.
“I was taking a whiz right here,” he said. He pointed in the general direction of Molly’s house, the third one down on the far side of the street. “The car was parked in front of that house down there.”
“By the one with the light colored roof?” asked Richard, estimating the distance at seventy-five yards.
“No. It was parked back there by that one with the lights on.”
“That’s the wrong house,” said Richard.
“Yeah, but he came from that house, the one with the light roof. The car was parked over there though. That’s why I remember it. It seemed kinda odd, you know.”
Richard realized that the man really could have witnessed the kidnapping.
“Why didn’t you go to the police with this?”
“Man, I didn’t even know a kid was missing until Boots said something.”
“And no one came by to ask you boys if you saw anything?”
“They asked me,” said Boots. “But they didn’t say anything about a kid. I thought they were trying to get something on the dudes that lived in the meth house. I didn’t mess with that. Bad to even know anything about that garbage.”
Richard turned his attention back to the potential witness.
“Can you describe the car?” he asked.
“Dark. Four wheels.” He shrugged. “It was dark, like now. Maybe a little foggy---I mean not real foggy, but kind of milky, you know?”
“Which way was it pointed.”
“That way,” he indicated the far corner of the block.
“Tell me what the man did.”
“He came across the yard walking right at me carrying something held to his shoulder, kind of hunched down like he was protecting a baby from the rain or something.”
“It was raining?”
“No, man. I was just telling you how it looked.”
“Did you get a look at his face?”
“No. He kept his head down and just opened the door and put it inside and then came around, got in and drove off.”
“Did he lay it on the seat or hand it to someone?”
“He didn’t bend in real far. I didn’t see anybody else, but I think he handed it to someone. I remember thinking maybe they were taking their kid to the emergency room. He forgot to turn on his lights until he got to the corner.”
“He drove away with the lights off?”
“Yeah, but I done that myself though because the street light is so bright and when you’re tired you can do that. That’s what I thought happened.”
Richard’s pulse raced. Finally he had stumbled onto concrete evidence that Mancie had been abducted just as Molly had claimed from the beginning.
“But you didn’t see anyone in the car when the dome light came on?”
“No. I don’t think it did. I didn’t see anyone else.”

“Why didn’t they say something at the time?” demanded Adams.
“They don’t live in the real world. Besides, according to them when they were asked about seeing anything that night, no one bothered to tell them about the missing baby.”
“But this---what was his name?”
“Coomer?”
“Yeah. This Coomer saw something suspicious, why didn’t he say something?”
“I don’t think he was there when your officers questioned them. And the gamers just assumed it had something to do with the people living in the house Jill and I rent. Apparently it was a meth lab. They didn’t want to know anything about that.”
Adams looked as if he were about to growl.
“I appreciate you bringing this to me, Carter. It doesn’t change anything though. I still think your little friend killed her kid. This just confirms that she probably had a boyfriend help her get rid of the body.”
“Yeah right! They probably did it right after they killed the other kid and threw it in the city dump. What was the motive for that one? You know what this looks like but you won’t admit it. This was an abduction pulled off by two people.”
“So how does the baby in the city dump figure into that?” countered Adams.
“I don’t know,” Richard admitted.
“Welcome to my world. Theories are fine, Carter, but you got to deal in fact. What I know is that your friend was higher than a kite, she was the last one known to be with the kid, and she was out looking for love that night. The kid was an obstacle. Tinsley told me that he cut it off with her as soon as he found out she had a kid.”
“What about the fact that she is the only one who wants to keep the investigation going?”
“Who knows what she’s convinced herself of since she killed the kid? Carter, I hate to break this to you, but drugs disorganize a person’s thinking. She may not even have a good grasp of what she did that night. Want to get psychological about it, she might have repressed the memory. She may even be crazy as a loon. The fact is, she’s the only one that had a motive for killing the kid.”
“How does the second baby fit into all that?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe it doesn’t. Even in small towns there are such things as coincidences.”
“Two homicides and an abduction?”
“Three homicides,” corrected Adams. “I’m beginning to think you may be right about Kate Nash. She may have been killed because she knew who helped Molly get rid of her baby.”
Richard’s surprise must have shown.
“The scene may have been staged as a sexual attack. If it was, then the question is, why would anyone do that? And the answer is to conceal the real motive. People are killed for money, revenge, rage, and occasionally to cover up another crime. If it wasn’t a sex thing, then that last motive seems most likely.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Right now I’m going over there to interview this Goomer or Coomer or whatever, and then put it in the book with everything else that isn’t leading anywhere.”
Adams got up from behind the desk, wincing as if he had a bad headache.
“Come on. You’re going with me,” he said as he limped toward the door.
“Something wrong?” asked Richard.
“Besides a retarded woman and two babies being dead, everything is just peachy.”
“I meant with you. You hurt yourself.”
“I got old knees,” grumbled Adams. “Takes a while for them to loosen up. Don’t get the idea that I’m making you like a consultant or something. I want you to introduce me to your new buddies.”

Richard felt conspicuous waiting in the cruiser. He had worked as a deputy sheriff in Michigan, although his duties had been restricted to those of a road deputy, running the rural roads on night patrol. Adams vehicle bore a county logo but lacked a complete police package, having only a shielded dash light and radio. He noted with approval, however, a GPS system mounted below the dash.
Adams came out in less than ten minutes. Richard assumed that he was bringing Coomer out to run him through what he had witnessed the night of the abduction, but the door shut behind the detective and no one followed.
“Wasn’t he there?” asked Richard when the pasty-faced Adams got back in the cruiser.
“He was there, and I got his story.”
“And?”
“Nothing to it. He can’t identify the man or the car, and he has no idea what the man was carrying.”
“Come on now,” objected Richard. “What do you carry clutched to your shoulder like that but a baby?”
“He says maybe that’s what he saw,” said Adams sourly. “The car blocked his view.”
“That’s not the way he told it to me.”
“People change their stories when you try to pin them down. They assume stuff and tell you that’s the way it was. Then you ask them what they actually saw, and it suddenly isn’t so clear anymore. The guy saw something. Who the hell knows what.”
“So it won’t pass the muster for court. Still, him seeing anything like that on the night Molly’s baby disappeared means something, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not so convinced the date is right.”
“It’s not just the date. Boots sent an e-mail while Coomer was outside. That pins down the time exactly. It was at 2:54 A. M.”
Adams dismissed it with a snort.
“Your guy isn’t even sure of the date. He sent about a dozen of those e-mails out over about a two-month period, most of them in the early morning hours. You want to believe that that one cinches it. It’s too damned convenient. What happened was you started asking questions, this guy, Boots, wanted to be helpful, and both of you got carried away.”
“He’s sure that he sent that particular one at a time when Coomer was outside, and Coomer remembers seeing the guy carry something across Molly’s yard to the car,” objected Richard.
“Why would he remember that? Ever think about it? You call someone up in the middle of the night to tell them something important, Carter, not just to crow about winning a video game.”
“You were in the house. You think games are unimportant to these guys? Sure. They’re overgrown kids, but that’s the point. Their whole lives revolve around gaming or whatever you call it. It’s about all they think of. That call was important to him. That’s why he remembered it.”
“There’s a big difference between finding a lead and drumming one up, Carter. This had been real entertaining but I’m tired. I don’t want to play anymore.”

Richard told Jill about passing along to Adams what the gamers had told him.
“Good,” she said. “Now maybe Mr. Adams can find out what happened.”
Before he could tell her that Adams had rejected the gamers’ story out of hand, there was a knock at the back door. Jill let Molly in.
“Hi, Mrs. Carter,” she mumbled, looking around Jill in search of Richard.
“Come in,” said Jill. “My husband has something to tell you, I think.”
“About Mancie?” she blurted excitedly. “What is it?”
“Just about the night that she disappeared,” Richard said quickly, seeking to limit her expectations. “Someone who lives down the block may have witnessed her being taken. Mr. Adams is looking into it.”
“Adams?” said Molly incredulously. “He’s actually doing something.”
“He’s actually working pretty hard on the case, Molly,” said Richard. “I think maybe we misjudged his commitment . . . to finding out what happened.”
A shift in Jill’s body language signaled approval, but Molly slumped. Both understood that what he was saying signaled his deference to the detective.
“I’m glad he’s finally taking an interest,” said Molly dubiously.
“I’m sure he will find out what happened,” Jill soothed.
Molly frowned. Her eyes flicked to Richard’s, held them a moment.
“At least you know now that I’m telling the truth. Right, Mr. Carter?”
“I’ve always believed you, Molly.”
“I knew you wouldn’t quit on me.”

Jill leaned her back against the door after watching Molly go back across the lawn to her own house.
“Why didn’t you tell her that you were going to leave it up Mr. Adams now that he has a concrete lead?”
“I didn’t tell you all of it. Adams doesn’t believe Boots has the time right and he’s not convinced that Coomer witnessed the abduction.”
“But he’s looking into it?”
“After his fashion.”
“I’m sure that if there’s anything to it then he’ll find out what happened. You need to drop it so that we can get on with our lives.”
“Hey. I’m working, and we are on with our lives,” he said.
“When are you going to tell Molly that you’re going to have to stop spending your time on this?”
“Give me time. I can’t just drop it on her.”
“When?” she pressed.
“Soon. Soon.”

Wrestling with it most of the night produced two conclusions and a resolution. The first conclusion was that Jill was the most important thing in his life. Without her he would have no life. The second was that, rightly or wrongly, Molly had sunk deep hooks into him. Her plight was now his burden, and he could no more betray her than Jill. He had to forestall Jill issuing an ultimatum or his situation would become impossible. One of the women had to change what they were demanding of him. Molly couldn’t, and he feared that Jill wouldn’t. Nothing short of discovering what had happened to Mancie could really resolve things. He decided to simply to play for time and hope to find something that would put Adams onto a viable suspect. But what would it take? Adam’s reaction to his possible eyewitness wasn’t encouraging.
What was encouraging was what Coomer had seen was the abduction then there were two perps. A two-person crime ought to produce more leads than a single perp crime. Then he thought of a way he might be able to verify the date for whatever it was that Coomer had seen.

October 18
Larry Penrod nodded.
“I heard about it. A real shame, but why talk to me? You don’t think one of the boys had anything to do with it, do you?”
“Your renters? No, sir. But the one called Coomer may have seen something the night it happened.”
Penrod’s mind was playing catch-up with what Richard had told him earlier when he had introduced himself.
“You’ve been hired by the woman then?”
“I’m helping her,” said Richard vaguely, hoping to let the matter rest there.
“And you’ve already talked to the police?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Adams---the investigator on the case---he and I discussed it yesterday.”
“I don’t know what I could---Wait a minute. Why isn’t he here?”
“He probably will be later. We’re looking for confirmation for Coomer’s statement.”
Linking himself with Adam’s investigation was disingenuous, but Richard needed all the leverage he could get.
“Confirmation? I don’t know anything about what he saw.”
“Right, but I understand they had a plumbing problem that night. Did you by any chance have to call a plumber?”
“The stopped up toilet. That happens about once every two or three weeks. I don’t know if it’s their fault or if something was wrong with the way the toilet was installed. I got a guy who takes care of all my maintenance problems.”
“So it happens all the time?” Richard said dispiritedly.
“Only with those guys. Still, they’re the best renters I’ve got. I charge them two hundred each, and then eat the cost of a once a week house cleaner. Great deal all around. They get what they want and I get what I want.”
Richard did the calculation in his head. Penrod was probably clearing about three times the going rate for rent.
“And they’re always on time with the rent?”
“Now they are,” he laughed. “They used to be kind of slipshod, but I installed a lock on the breaker box. Now, if they’re too late on the rent, I just cut off the electricity until they pay. They got gas heat, so the pipes won’t freeze in the wintertime. Those boys can get by without food, air conditioning, anything, but you shut down their computers and it kills them. I only had to do that once. Now if one of them can’t come up with his share of the rent, the others cover for him.”
Penrod was proud of his solution.
“Is your maintenance guy on salary or do you pay him by the job?” asked Richard.
“Pay for services rendered.”
“So . . . he submits a detailed bill. You wouldn’t happed to keep a record of payments, would you”
Penrod snorted. “Ever been audited? You bet I keep a record.”
“If you take a look at your records do you think you could tell me the dates your man did plumbing work over there?”
“Yeah. That house is the only one I’ve ever had plumbing work done on.”

“It still doesn’t mean he saw someone taking the baby.” Adams insisted.
“No? Then it’s the biggest damned coincidence in history!”
“You’re not listening, Carter. You never listen. If he’s not making it up or confused, the guy saw something, but not necessarily what you want to think he did.”
“Why are you so dead set on thinking Molly did this?”
“Because it’s the most likely answer. What have you found out that should make me change my mind?”
Richard tried to see Adams’ point. He couldn’t.
“Okay,” he said. “If Coomer did see a guy hand a baby into someone in the car that night---you’ve got to admit that’s a possibility---then you’ve got---”
“We’ve got your friend Molly in the car taking the dead body,” said Adams impatiently.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why be so careful with it if the baby wasn’t alive? Doesn’t it make more sense that Coomer saw the abduction?”
“No, because he doesn’t know what he saw. You’re a hell of lot more sure of what he saw than he is. That’s because with you it’s become a matter of faith. You’re all wrapped up with Molly Randolph and you’ll believe anything she tells you.”
Adams was wrong. Richard wasn’t at all sure of what had happened. Adams was the one fixed on an idea. Somehow the detective had arrived at logic-proof conviction. Only concrete evidence could open his mind again. At least Richard hoped it could.
“Carter, don’t bother me on Sunday again. No, don’t bother me at all again.”
“Not even if it means withholding evidence?”
“Fat chance.”
“Why are you so hell-bent on seeing Molly Randolph as the perpetrator rather than a victim?”
“Maybe because I saw what was in her system that night! And maybe because I’ve seen what druggies can do to the kids they’re supposed to be taking care of! It doesn’t surprise me that she’s got you fooled. She’s probably trying to convince herself that she didn’t do it. But she did, Carter! You can bank on it. And what really burns me is that if we prove it all that will happen is she’ll cry to some shrink and get off with a slap on the wrist and a bunch of counseling at tax-payer expense.”
Richard could have said something about confusing political doctrine with real events and the lives of real people, but it would do no good. Besides, it wasn’t in his interest or Molly’s to alienate Adams further. As it was, he thought the detective would probably still speak with him should anything concerning the disappearance turn up.
October 19
Molly said the neighbors on the other side of her house had been a young couple who were seldom at home and had moved shortly after Mancie’s abduction. She thought they were hospital workers because she had seen each in scrubs occasionally. Richard obtained the house owner’s name from land records at the courthouse. He called the man, making a vague reference to the investigation to give the impression that he was a policeman, and elicited the information that the former renter was Joseph M. Shell. Feeling ambivalent about his increasing competence at duplicity, he conceived a stratagem for discovering Molly’s former neighbors’ new address. The phone book listed the old address.
He called Ma Bell and got their number. After eight rings a hesitant female voice clicked on.
“Hi. This is the home of Joe, Mandy, and Marcie---” (short pause for a nervous giggle) “We’re not home right now but if you leave a message and number we’ll call you back. Have a nice day.”
He had intended to obtain the new address by pretending to be calling another Joseph Shell at a different address, a ruse that could work in a leave-the-keys-in-the-car-at-night small town. With only two hours before he had to pick up Jill, he decided on an alternate stratagem. The medical park was a collection of offices of varying specialists, from pediatricians to podiatrists clustered around a clinic. Welcome to “strip mall medical center.”
With more offices than he had time to visit, he opted for the clinic since more people worked there. He recited a carefully concocted story that he was passing through town, had a few minutes, and thought he would look up his cousin whom he thought worked at the clinic. The severe matron manning the business window listened to the whole thing before informing him that no one named Shell worked at the clinic.
Back at the car, he thought about trying some of the doctors’ offices in the park, but couldn’t come up with a third stratagem. The cousin bit wouldn’t play face-to-face with one of the Shells. He punched in their number again and got the same chirpy message. He had decided to drive out to the college and try again tomorrow when the significance of the answering machine message hit him.
He punched a number into the phone.
“Molly, this is Richard.”
“Did you find out something, Mr. Carter?”
“No, Molly. I just wanted to ask you something about the people who used to live the other side of you, the ones who moved out.”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to find them so I can interview them,” he said, not wanting to share his idea with her just yet. “How long did they live there?”
“They were there when I moved in.”
“How often did you see them?”
“Just every now and then. Not every day. I told you that they both wore scrubs sometimes.”
“Yes, I remember. Probably health care workers. Can you give me a physical description of them?”
“They was both kind of small, especially her. I remember thinking that she surely didn’t handle patients like a nurse would have to sometimes because she was so tiny.”
“How many times would you say you saw them?”
“Maybe ever two or three days. I saw them leaving for work mostly.”
“How many cars, one, or two?”
“Just the one. I think they maybe worked at the same place. Why are you so interested in them? Did you find out something?” she asked eagerly.
“No. I just want to talk to them,” he said distractedly. “I want to know as much as I can about all your neighbors. I’m trying to get a picture of the neighborhood at the time.”
“That guy who saw someone take Mancie---he said the car was parked in front of their house, right?”
“Yeah. I need to talk to him again to see if he remembers seeing their car there too that night. Did you ever see any car other than theirs parked there?”
“I can’t remember one. You think they might know something?”
“I don’t know. Look, Molly, I didn’t mean to make you think I’ve found out anything important. I’m just trying to look into everything for you and I wanted to touch base with you on this.”
“I’ll bet that damned Adams never talked to them,” said Molly bitterly.
“He probably did, Molly. They canvassed the area right after the disappearance, remember?”
“They just went through the motions, Mr. Carter. They all thought that I done something to my baby. They still think that. That’s why they’re not looking for her. Thank God you come when you did. I just wish you had come earlier.”
“Were you ever in their house, or did they ever come over to visit?”
“No. Why?”
“I’d just like to know what kind of people they are before I go visit them---you know, so I’ll know what to expect.”
“They seemed all right, but kind of standoffish like city people are. I think they come from somewheres else. They talked like . . . I guess with an accent.”

He had given her plenty of time to mention it, but Molly hadn’t mentioned the third member of the family, the Marcy on the answering machine. Neither had she referred to the petite woman as pregnant. As he pondered the possible significance of that, the phone rang.
“Who is this?” asked a male voice when he answered.
“Who did you call?” countered Richard.
Silence for a moment.
“You called twice today without leaving a message. You could have left your name and told me why you called.”
“Oh,” said Richard. “I’m sorry about that. I’ve never liked answering machines. You’re Joseph Shell, right?”
“Yes?”
“Well,” Richard improvised. “I’m Robert Snell. I moved into the house you used to live in and---”
“How do you know where I used to live?”
“Because the address is the same as mine . . . on the letter that came that is . . . an official looking envelope. It came to the house but with your name on it. I thought it might be important. I guess the post office made a mistake.”
“I don’t understand that. I filled out a change of address.”
“Well, if you give me your address, I’ll stick in another envelop and put it back in the mail. I don’t think it would be a good idea to just write ‘wrong address’ on it. It would probably end up in the dead letter room or something.”
“Official looking? What’s the return address?”
“Someplace out east,” said Richard. “I’m on the road right now and don’t have it with me. It looked like maybe it was some kind of legal papers.”
“From a lawyer’s office?”
Richard cursed himself for elaborating the lie.
“Look, I’m not sure. I should have taken a better look at it. It just looked like it might be important and I thought I’d try to help somebody out. If you want me to just pitch it or scribble wrong address on it and drop it back in the box, then I’ll do that.”
After a short hesitation, John Shell gave his mailing address. Richard made note of it and then punched off the phone in disgust.
“A damned post office box,” he grumbled.

On the way home from the campus he thought of a way to at least find the Shell’s new home. When he and Jill got home, he left the car running.
“I’ve got some running around to do,” he told her.
“Where are you going?”
“To see this guy about . . . maybe getting another job. I’m getting a little sick of working in a grease pit. Look at my hands.”
He held up oil stained fingers. There was a rind of black beneath each nail and the lines of his knuckles were etched darkly.
“The smell’s getting to me, it’s ruining all my clothes, and winter’s coming on.”
It wasn’t wholly fabricated. He wasn’t looking for a new job just yet, but the smell of motor oil had lost its teenage mystique. On the way out the door, it occurred to him that lying to Jill was worse than just a bad idea. He reversed his direction.
“Jill,” he said, poking his head into the kitchen and startling her.
She looked at him expectantly. He changed his mind again, excusing his lie by telling himself that she would be happier thinking his absence was job related.
“I should be back in about an hour or so,” he said.
“I’ll have dinner ready.”

He tried to look inconspicuous as he lingered near Plexiglas boxes trying to peek at the contents. His hopes sank when he saw that Box 563 was empty. He got down a handful of brochures and took them to a stand with a chained pen attached and pretended to read the information while watching people coming in to check their mailboxes. Richard knew that he looked about as inconspicuous as whipped cream on a hot dog if anyone suspected surveillance, but doubted that anyone coming in would notice him. It was the postal workers in the other section of the lobby that worried him. At four, one of them came to lock the door separating the lobby where the PO boxes were from the counter.
Shortly thereafter a car stopped at the curb, and a diminutive woman wearing blue scrubs came in and made straight for the area near box 563. She fit Molly’s description. Evidently her box was empty, because she turned to leave after just a glance. He exited after her and walked past as she got into the passenger side of a car idling at the curb. He noticed a car seat, but couldn’t get a good look at the baby as he hurried past and crossed to his car, which was facing the wrong direction.
Richard got in and quickly circled the block breaking several traffic laws in the process. Luckily he caught sight of them waiting at the stoplight. He barely made it through behind them before it changed, and then tried to follow inconspicuously a few cars back. Traffic thinned as they left the center of town and was nearly non-existent by the time they turned into a lower middle class residential neighborhood south of the housing development where Richard had roofed and laid sod. The woman turned repeatedly toward the driver, apparently absorbed in conversation.
When they pulled into a short drive beside a house with neither garage nor carport, he took a calculated risk, and pulled to the curb in front of the house as they were exiting the car. The man frowned questioningly in Richard’s direction as he exited the car, his look matching the challenging tone he remembered from the phone call.
“Excuse me,” said Richard, trying to get near enough for a look at the baby. “I’ve been driving around the neighborhood trying to remember the address a friend of mine gave me. My wife told me I should write it down. I guess she was right. His name is Howard Pinkston. You wouldn’t happen to know where he lives, would you?”
“I don’t know anyone with that name,” said the man curtly.
“We just moved in a few months ago,” offered the woman as she closed the back door of the car. She straightened, clutching the baby close against the cold.
“He drives a kind of funky looking car,” Richard improvised. “It’s a . . . I guess you would say a metallic or metal flake green thing. Looks like a June bug.”
“I haven’t seen a car like that,” said the man, obviously eager to end the encounter.
Richard smiled toward the woman.
“My wife and I are expecting our first,” he said. “How old is your little one?”
“She’s going on four months,” she said with a smile as she turned her face down to the child in her arms. “Aren’t you, Marcy?”
Proud mother came around the rear of the car and turned her child to face Richard as if introducing him.
“See the nice man, Chelsea. If he’s lucky he’ll have a little girl just like you.”
Wide black eyes peered inquisitively at him, their size and sparkling intelligence enhanced by pronounced epicanthic folds.
“She’s beautiful,” said Richard.
Shell stepped protectively to his wife’s side.
“I don’t remember seeing the car either,” said Momma. “Sorry we can’t help you find your friend.”
“No,” said Richard. “I’m the one that needs to apologize for intruding on you like this. Thanks anyway. I guess I should have listened to my wife and written down the address.”

Richard pulled the envelop from the printer tray, stuffed the promotional letter inside, sealed it, and affixed a stamp.
“What’s that?” asked Jill as she read the address.
“The conclusion of a misadventure,” he said. “For a while this afternoon I actually thought I had tracked down Molly’s baby.”
He explained how he had gone to the post office to stake out the box and how he had felt when he saw the couple had a baby with them.
“I knew from what Molly told me, that they didn’t have children, and if the lady had been that far along in pregnancy Molly would have mentioned it. So I followed them home and worked an excuse to get close enough to see the child.”
“You could have scared those poor people to death if they knew you were following them.”
“I was careful. Anyway, the woman wasn’t the least bit reluctant to let me see the kid, which should have told me there was nothing fishy going on. And there wasn’t. They’ve adopted. You should see her. She’s the most beautiful little girl, an Asian baby. I think that explains them moving so soon after Mancie disappeared.”
“Of course,” said Jill. “The mother wouldn’t want to stay where a child disappeared.”
“To say nothing of the meth house, if they knew what was going on here.”
“So now you’re through?”
“Of course. There’s no need to bother them at all.”
“There never was,” said Jill. “Adoptions are a matter of public record. So are births. You didn’t need to bother them at all. A simple trip to the court house would have sufficed.”
He hadn’t thought of that.
“I would have still had to check out an adoption. People who sell babies probably know how to fake up the paperwork. As far as that goes, they both work in a hospital, I think. They might have even been able to falsify a birth certificate. I don’t know how difficult that would be. Probably not very if you had the complicity of an obstetrician.”
Jill shook her head.
“What?” he asked.
“Statistical possibility isn’t actual possibility.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does. If one drops a handful of straight pins on the carpet, there is a chance that any one of them will land so that it sticks and stands upright. The same goes for each of the others, which means that there is a chance that they will all stick in the carpet and remain upright. It just won’t ever happen.”
“You just said it could happen. Besides, what I’m talking about is a lot more likely than your pin thing.”
“No. It’s like Ockham’s razor. Don’t construct needlessly complicated solutions when a simpler one satisfies all the data. Like the pins. If you found a hundred pins stuck in the carpet and standing upright, would you think that someone dropped them and they ended up like that?”
“Okay, you made your point . . . a hundred actually.”
Jill put a hand on his arm the way she always did when trying to comfort or soften the blow when she was about to say something he didn’t want to hear.
“I’m not just talking about what you did today,” she said. “It’s this whole thing. Molly was there when whatever happened to her baby occurred. The simple explanation is that either she or the babysitter or someone that one of them let in the house did something to the baby. All these wild ideas are just that, Richard. As horrible as it is to think about, it is extremely unlikely that the child is still alive. No one took her because they wanted a baby of their own. If this ever ends, it will not end well, Richard. This is not something you can change”
“I can’t just abandon her, Jill.”
“She has no right to do this to you---to place this burden on you.”
“She isn’t doing anything to me. Sometimes a situation just come up and responsibility is just . . . it just happens. You have to do something because there’s no one else to do it.”
“No. This responsibility belongs to Mr. Adams. He gets paid for it, and he knows what he’s doing.”
Richard bridled at the remark. Jill was right. He had no experience to speak of, but he had will, something Adams seemed to lack. Fighting his irritation at Jill for ratcheting up her insistence that he quit on Molly, he attempted to put her off with a watered down variation of the truth.
“It’s about wrapped up anyway,” he said, “I’ve talked to everyone I can think of. There’s not much more that I can do.”
“I hope you can leave all this sadness behind.”
“Don’t say anything to Molly. Let me tell her.”
Jill held him with her eyes the way she did when about to reveal how much he had hurt her. Already he felt guilty.
“Just don’t lie to me anymore,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked, convinced that she already knew that he had no intention of really cutting loose from Molly just yet.
“You told me you were going to look for a job when you were really going see those people today. You could have just told me.”
“I should have.”
He was lying again. Not with words, but by trying to make her think he was sorry. It angered him that she was insisting that he give up something he had to do. Although he understood her feelings, even knew that they were justified, he still felt that she was being unreasonable. He had taken on a responsibility, and she had no right to make him abdicate it. Yet he owed her everything. She was his life. He had no idea how to reconcile the conflicting imperatives. He could no more betray Molly than he could betray Jill. He had given his word to both women and now they were each insisting that he keep it. He had completely misjudged both of them. Jill was not as tough as he imagined, nor Molly as weak.


October 20
After work the next day he got a ride home. Molly came out before he could get inside. He wasn’t up to her importunity, but she was his duty. As he watched her plow across the yard, coatless, head down, and hugging herself against the cool, he considered the possibility that Jill was right in thinking that Molly had manipulated him into the role he now filled so inadequately.
“Did you talk to the Shells?” she asked.
“Yesterday,” he said as they both arrived at the porch. “They’ve adopted this beautiful little oriental baby. I found that out by pretending to be someone I’m not, so I couldn’t ask them if they remember anything about that night. I kind of screwed up there.”
Molly opened the storm door so that he could unlock the house. She seemed as comfortable coming to the house as if she lived there. He didn’t want her to come in and didn’t want to go to her house, but it was too cool to stay out on the porch. He let her in, hoping to get rid of her before Jill came home.
“You got to ask them about the car,” she said.
“Maybe I can get Adams to do it.”
“Better have a plan B.” Molly continued to hold her arms folded tightly to her breasts as if still cold.
“I’ve been thinking, Mr. Carter,” she began tentatively, avoiding his eyes.
“About what?” he asked.
“About the Valium they found in my blood that night. I never took any, I swear. Well, I did but I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You mean . . . you mean you remember that now?”
The bottom fell out of his stomach. Molly was changing her story to fit the facts.
“I don’t remember doing it. I’m not stupid. I know you’re not supposed to take tranquilizers and alcohol together. I wouldn’t have done it before she disappeared. Later maybe, because after Mancie was gone and they wouldn’t do nothing I just kind of stopped caring.”
“But you think you might have taken it by accident?” he asked skeptically.
“No. Somebody must have slipped it to me. That’s got to be what happened because not even Adams would make that up. So it’s got to have been part of the plan---to take Mancie.”
“So who do you think did it?”
“I don’t want to tell you,” she said.
Richard wondered what kind of crazy game she was playing. For the first time he considered the possibility that Molly was mentally ill.
“Here,” she said, thrusting him a crumpled piece of paper she had clutched in her fist.
“That’s a list of the ones it could have been---the ones who . . . could have put it into something I drank or ate that afternoon or that night. It’s got to be one of them.”
Richard looked at her neatly printed list. Molly had listed them alphabetically.
“And you’re not telling me which one you think it is because---?”
“I don’t want to influence you. You have to keep an open mind.”
Jill was due home at any time, and Richard wanted Molly gone before she arrived.
“I tell you what I want you to do for me, Molly. Go home and see if you can make a list of everything you ate and drank that day. Include where you were and who you were with at the time if you can. Be as detailed as you can.”
Before Molly could answer, the front door opened.
“Oh, hi, Molly,” said Jill. “How are you today?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Carter. How are you?”
“Tired. It’s what happens when you work all day. Remember?”
Jill’s uncharacteristic rudeness stunned him. Molly reddened.
“Yes, ma’am. I do,” she said, recovering after a moment. “I’m . . . uh . . . I’m sorry . . . for everything. I’ll go make that list, Mr. Carter,” she said, hurrying past Jill toward the door.
The kitchen was dead quiet for a long moment.
“I never knew you could be so . . . so mean,” said Richard. “What’s going on?”
“Not mean, Richard, blunt. Someone has to be blunt. Obviously it’s beyond your capabilities. If you can’t find a way to end the---”
Until she stopped in mid-sentence Richard didn’t realize that he was shaking his head.
“Why am I even talking to you?” she asked sharply. “You don’t want to end it. You like wallowing in all this sadness. Why, Richard? Why? Hasn’t there already been enough sadness in your life?”
“There’s been plenty of sadness in my life. You know that. But what you don’t understand is---”
“I understand that you---” she interrupted.
“Just listen for once and let me explain,” he said raising his voice to override her interruption.
“Don’t yell at me,” she said.
“I’m not going to. But what I am going to do is finally be honest with you. I don’t intend to quit on Molly until I’m sure that I’ve done all I can to help her find out what happened to Mancie. I’ve taken on a responsibility, and I’m not walking away from it. I know you don’t like that, and I don’t like it that you are so dead set against it. It’s tearing me apart, Jill. I’m scared to death that you’re going to make me choose between her and you.”
She stared at him coolly.
“It’s not about her, Jill. It’s about helping her. Can’t you see that?”
“What would you do if I told you to choose?” she asked.
“I’d quit on her, walk away, feel miserable, and probably resent you for making me do it.”
She stared at him, blinked as if considering and rejecting words of reply. Then she closed her eyes.
“That’s it then.”
It sounded like a death sentence.
“Are you going to leave me, Jill?” he asked, barely getting the words out.
“No,” she said with a sniff as she turned away. “I took a vow. Remember?”
“So it’s just duty then?” he asked following her into the kitchen.
“It must be a good word. You seem to place such high value on it.”
“That’s right. I do. It’s why I’m trying to help Molly Randolph. My problem is that I don’t understand why you’re forcing me to choose between the woman I love and need and the human being who needs my help.”
Jill turned around to face him. He started to draw her close, but she put her hands on his chest and gently disengaged for his tentative embrace.
“I won’t make you choose, Richard. And I won’t leave. Go do what you have to do, just don’t bother me with it anymore.”
“Honey, I---”
“And keep that woman out of my house.”




October 21
Jill’s unreasonableness and his cloying irrational guilt robbed him of the night. He yawned and fidgeted through work until noon. Now, trudging to City Hall, he took another try at dismissing the guilt. Getting Molly out of his life would satisfy Jill, but the only way he could to do would be to discover what happened to her baby.
He took Molly’s list from his pocket and read through it again: three people who might have drugged her. Of course the theory that she had been incapacitated so that Mancie could be taken could be fanciful or even an outright lie. Was it only the hopeful delusion of a mother desperate to get her child back? Adams saw it a Molly’s attempt to divert suspicion from herself after she had committed or was complicit in infanticide. Richard didn’t want to believe that, but he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. Mother’s weren’t supposed to do such things, but some mothers obviously did, and of all crimes, domestic violence was the most senseless.
Adams looked up sourly as Richard approached his disorganized desk.
“What now?” he asked irritably.
“I just came to ask if you had talked to the Shells,” Richard replied.
“Who?”
“The Shells. They lived next door to Molly, on the side opposite from me over where Coomer saw the car parked. By the way, you ought to see if Coomer saw one or two cars there that night.”
“Since you’re being so generous with your advice, why don’t you tell me why you think these . . . Shells, or whatever their names are, took the kid?”
“I don’t think they did. They just adopted a little girl about Mancie’s age, but it’s not her. It’s of Asian descent I think.”
Adams turned over a form he was filing and wrote “Shell” on the back.
“You came here to kind of prod me into action. Is that it?”
“No. I’m here because you warned me not to withhold information.”
“Commendable,” said Adams sarcastically.
“And I wanted to ask for a favor.”
“Sure,” said Adams, crossing his arms across his chest in the classic closed gesture. “You’re my partner, aren’t you? Or do you prefer the term ‘consultant?’”
“Call me an ‘informant.’ Can you tell me how much Valium and alcohol Molly tested for when you picked her up?”
“She was totally whacked.”
“Can you give me the numbers?”
Adams snorted.
“You want a copy of the tox screen? You gotta be kidding.”
“You can tell me the blood alcohol content and the level of Valium in her blood. What could it hurt?”
Adams was mercurial, at one moment an ill-tempered grump, the next an oversized gnome with Irish-like humor. Something presently tipped his scales toward the sunny side, although his skies were never entirely free of clouds.
“Okay, trusty consultant,” he said. “I’ll give you the numbers and maybe you can confront your little friend and find out what kind of doped up frenzy she was in when she wasted her kid. Oh, and if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, get her to tell you where the body is.”
Richard had only a layman’s knowledge of drugs, but he doubted that combining depressants could produce any kind of frenzy other than snoring. He covered the two plus miles from City Hall to home in less than half an hour, shortcut the lawn, and jumped onto the porch without using the steps as he fished out his keys. He had a call to make before Jill came home. The one positive thing coming from his sleepless night was a resolve to compartmentalize his efforts on Molly’s behalf, compartmentalize himself actually. Henceforth, Jill would see and hear nothing to remind her of Molly. His time with Jill was Jill’s. His time away would be Molly.
She ought to be happy with that, he assured himself as he punched in the familiar number.
A half dozen rings and then a remembered voice: “Lake County Sheriff’s Department.”
“JR,” he said. “Just the man I wanted to talk to.”
“Richard?”
“One and the same. How are things in Michigan?”
“Fair to middling. How are you and that pretty lady getting along down south?”
“Fine. She’s a graduate assistant at the college here and . . . I’m working steady. Things are good.”
“What kind of work you doing?”
Richard looked at the crusted grease beneath his fingernails, and then thought about the favor he was getting ready to ask.
“A little investigative work actually.”
“You can’t have a P. I. license . . . yet. You working for an investigator?”
“Something like that.”
He was getting too good at lying.
“Look, JR, I’m actually working in a grease pit, but I’m also looking into something for a friend. I really need a favor. If I give you some raw data from a tox screen do you think you could find out how . . . I guess you would say how incapacitated a person would be and for how long?”
“I can’t do anything like get someone to work up an official analysis of a tox. You know that.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I just want generic information.”
“What you got?”
“A combination of Valium and alcohol.”
“Whoa. That could get you dead.”
He gave JR the numbers that Adams had told him, and listened to the hanging silence on the other end of the line.
“Richard, tell me what this is about.”
“Truth? The suspect in a crime that took a considerable amount of organization to pull off and cover up had those levels in her blood when picked up by the police. What I need to know is how capable she could have been given the amount of stuff in her system.”
The silence hung again.
“The guy on the case gave me those numbers himself, JR. I’m in regular contact with him.”
“Then why don’t you have him do what you’re asking me to do?”
“Because he doesn’t know me like you do.”
Again the silence hung in the air.
“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be in touch sometime this afternoon or tomorrow.”
Richard hung up with the feeling that more separated him from JR than mere distance. Friends didn’t push friends, and that’s what he was doing, but he was constrained by circumstances to call in all the markers he could. The problem was, when it came to his friend, JR had all the markers. He was the one who had taken tracked down the evidence that had resulted in Richard’s pardon.
Molly knocked at the back door, peered in, and then came in without waiting for him to let her in. She handed him a slip of paper.
“That’s as much as I can remember,” she said, taking a seat at the table. “I’m a little hazy on parts of it, but I think it’s right. I put parenthesis marks around the part I’m too sure of. All the times are estimates.”
“This is good,” he said as he quickly scanned the list, his mind more on what he was going to tell her than on her efforts to reconstruct her consumption of food and drink on the day her daughter disappeared.
“Look, Molly. There’s . . . something we need to talk about. You’ve known for some time that Jill isn’t too comfortable with what I’m doing for you.”
“I know she don’t like me, Mr. Carter. But I don’t think I can do anything about that.”
“It’s not you. It’s the situation she doesn’t like. It reminds her of something that happened to us before we came here.”
“What was it?”
“I’d just as soon not talk about it. The point is that she doesn’t like it when she comes home and finds you here or finds out that you’ve been here talking with me.”
Molly reddened.
“She thinks we---she’s jealous of me?”
“No. She just doesn’t like the situation.”
“I never meant to be no problem for you,” she said, turning to look out the window. “Does this mean you’re going to quit?”
“No, but we can’t visit here at the house.”
“Then she wouldn’t want you over at my house either. That would be worse, wouldn’t it? What if I only talked to you when she was here? That way she would see that I ain’t interested in anything but getting my baby back.”
“No, it’s just best if . . . if you don’t come over anymore. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll meet in a public place, let’s say a restaurant. We’ll have coffee or something so that they won’t throw us out, and . . . we’ll make it a regular thing. You know that little place over on Madison there close to The Quick Lube? Let’s meet there whenever either of us has something we want to talk about. It will be like I’m reporting to you.”
Molly nodded self-consciously.
“Okay,” she said, obviously embarrassed. “Then I guess I’d better be going before she comes home and gets . . . upset.”
Richard followed her to the door.
“Molly, Jill isn’t usually like this. She’s really a very compassionate person.”
Molly nodded again.
“Don’t keep no secrets from her, Mr. Carter. If we’re going to meet at that café, you need to tell her. Me and Pat got in trouble by doing that---keeping things from each other, I mean. It ain’t a good idea.”
“Of course I’ll tell her, Molly,” he said, dismissing the idea that Jill could be jealous of someone like Molly, or anyone for that matter.
After seeing Molly out he took the paper she had given him to the kitchen table and read through it. She had either eaten almost nothing, a sandwich before going to work and peanuts throughout the evening at the bar. At home she had drunk unsweetened tea from a pitcher kept in the refrigerator that she had made earlier in the day. But that night she had consumed four mixed drinks, one at nine, one at eleven, and the third and fourth in quick succession around one forty-five at Tinsley’s apartment. The drink at eleven was enclosed in parentheses. Signifying that she wasn’t sure about the time? And she had taken two Tylenol tablets when she arrived home.
If she was telling the truth and had remembered correctly, then there were four possibilities he could think of: Katie had put the Valium in the tea, someone at the bar (McComb?) had slipped it in one of her drinks, Tinsley had slipped it to her at his apartment, or she had mistakenly taken it in place of the Tylenol. He discounted the sandwich or the peanuts, unable to imagine how anyone could spike either of those.
He dismissed Katie as a suspect out of hand because such a thing seemed beyond the capabilities of the slow-witted woman. Likewise he dismissed a mix up of Valium and Tylenol. That left Tinsley, or an unknown person at the bar.
The practicability of drugging Molly in order to take the baby made him uncomfortable. He tried to imagine a plan that would work. A key to the door had to be obtained beforehand, or the door had to be left unlocked by Katie who was subsequently killed to silence her. The sticking point was Molly who would have to be drugged enough to knock her out, but not until she got back home. There were too many moving parts, and too much that had to go as planned for it to work.
The there was the fact that all the people who could have drugged Molly seemed to be men. He couldn’t imagine a reason for Tinsley or Bobby McComb to want a baby, and, while he could imagine Katie wanting the child, he couldn’t imagine her being cool enough to conceal her connection to the crime.
No wonder Adams doesn’t buy any of this crap, he thought morosely.
A slamming car door told him Jill was home. He got to the door just as she struggled in overloaded with groceries.
“Is there more in the car?” he asked as he took part of the load from her.
“No. I brought it all,” she said, without leaning forward to give him the customary kiss.
“Why didn’t you wait and let me help you with that stuff?” he asked, following her to the kitchen.
“I could manage,” she said as she bent to open the crisper. “How was your day?”
“Busy. Everyone in town must have seen the ad for our special.”
No reply. She hadn’t enquired about his workday.
“I told Molly that she shouldn’t come over anymore,” he said.
“Did you blame that on me,” said Jill, pretending to rearrange the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.
“Of course not. I mean I told her that you were uncomfortable with it, but I didn’t blame you.”
“How did she respond?”
“I think it embarrassed her.”
“What about me? How do you think I feel when I find another woman with my husband every time I came home?” she said, standing up with her back to him.
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t be jealous of someone like her. What I’m doing with Molly is strictly business.”
“I never thought you were having an affair, Richard. But I am jealous of the time you spend with her.”
“The only time I spend with her is when she comes over to ask if I’ve found out anything about her baby,” he said heatedly. “We don’t go anywhere together. We don’t do anything. There’s nothing between us that you could possibly object to.”
“There is! The child is what you share. She’s obsessed and so are you.”
“And what? You can’t compete with that? That’s silly.”
“You’re missing the point, Richard. She doesn’t think you will get her child back, she knows it. And you know it too. That scares me.”
“No, Jill. I’m not sure of that at all.”
“Yes you are---but it won’t happen.”
“I know that Mancie is . . . probably . . . not alive, Jill, but I hope she is.”
“You can’t afford to hope too much, Richard. Please don’t.”
“I’m not as fragile as you think.”
This time when he tried to embrace her, she came to him.
“And I’m not as strong as you think I am either,” she said, burrowing her face into his shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you.”
He thought she was being melodramatic.
“That’s silly,” he soothed. “Molly’s only a friend. That’s all she could ever be.”
“I’m you’re friend too, Richard.”
“Of course, and the most important thing in my life.”
“When things are important, you must take care of them,” she said earnestly. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“I will. I promise.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to disengage from her. It only made you lie to me.”
He had lied, but it still irked him that she was bringing it up again.
“I’ll keep it separate from us,” he promised.
“Impossible,” she said putting her hand on his chest as a signal for him to release her. “Do what you have to. I still don’t want her in my house. It doesn’t appear . . . proper.”
“Proper? You’re worried about what people will think?”
“Appearances matter.”
“Well the truth is good enough for me,” he said.
The phone rang.
“The appearance must be the truth,” she insisted, as she went to answer it.
“JR?” she said, casting him a questioning glance. “No, he didn’t, but I just got home. Here he is.”
As she handed him the phone she mouthed, “What’s going on?”
He held up his hand, signaling he would explain later.

After the call he went into the kitchen where Jill was busy with dinner.
“I thought I ought to find out about the Valium in her blood,” he began, trying to draw Jill into a conversation. “Adams let me see the results of the tox screen and that was it, so I called JR.”
“Couldn’t Mr. Adams get in trouble for that? Surely it’s against procedure.”
“He didn’t give me actual copies of anything, no evidence or anything like that.”
“Why?”
“I have found a few things that he hadn’t. Maybe he’s hoping I can help him figure things out.”
“It doesn’t seem right. In fact it’s bizarre.”
He shrugged.
“He’s odd. He warned me right away not to withhold information, but I think it’s a tacit agreement for us to exchange information.”
“He’s using you, and I don’t trust him.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Are you forgetting the way he acted when he arrested you? You’re going to get in trouble for this. I just know it.”
“For what? Asking questions? I don’t think so,” he mumbled dismissively as he studied the figures that JR had read to him.
“Jill, all JR gave me was the normal dosage and the half-life of Diazepam, I guess that’s generic for Valium. You’re good with math. Do you think you could you help me make sense of it?”
“No,” she said. “I have to fix dinner.”
Irritated that she thought her domestic chore was more important than what he was doing, Richard nonetheless decided not to say anything that might disturb the equilibrium they had regained. It never occurred to him that his condescending termination of their conversation had hurt her feelings.
He went to the computer optimistically thinking that he would soon have a bead on just when Molly had taken the Valium. The concept of chemical half-life was simple, but counterintuitive: the rate of drug metabolism is a geometrical progression rather than arithmetical one. If the body can rid itself of half a drug in an hour, that doesn’t mean that it can rid itself of all of it in two hours. Drugs wash away in diminishing amounts but at a constant rate percentage wise. If after an hour half remains, then after two hours one quarter is left, after three hours, an eighth, and so forth until the amount remaining becomes negligible. Everything being equal, that should make it easy to determine time of dosage.
At first he thought he could simply use JR’s numbers to work backwards from the tox screen levels to pinpoint the time Molly had ingested the drug. Then he remembered her alcohol consumption and wondered how that had altered the metabolic rate? He guessed it would have impeded it, but wasn’t sure and had no idea how much. Then he noticed a footnote describing the variations in individual metabolic rates. Although Valium’s average half-life was twenty-four hours, it could vary from twenty hours to sixty hours depending on the person. Then there was the dosage uncertainty. Had she ingested a normal dose? A higher one? A lower? Were there more than a single instance of ingestion?
He thought he could at least reject out of hand the possibility of a lower dose, until he thought about it being slipped into a drink. Who was to say that Molly would drink all of it? Maybe the Valium would make the drink taste odd. Then again, she could have vomited part of it up before her body had absorbed it. He made a note to ask her about that.
It was now obvious to him that he could not account for all the possible variables, so he decided to see what he could come up with if he kept it simple. He worked backward from the time her blood sample was taken using a normal dosage and assuming Molly’s metabolic rate was normal. His calculations gave him a time of six twenty in the morning, by which time she was in police custody. He decided to do the calculations for a double dose, expecting to get a time near when she came home from Tinsley’s apartment sometime around two. Now he reconsidered the possibility that she had taken the Valium by mistake. Perhaps she was so drunk that she had taken way more than two of the “Tylenol” tablets. His math, however, gave him one fifteen, around the time she left the bar for Tinsley’s. None of the figures were making sense. They didn’t match any of the times that she said she’d had a drink either at the bar or at Tinsley’s apartment.
Richard stared at Molly’s note and tried vainly to make sense of his calculations. The only thing of which he was relatively certain was that Molly had not taken two Valiums in place of two Tylenols when she got home. Realizing he lacked the expertise to correctly interpret his data, he wondered if he could catch Adams in a good mood and prod him into getting an expert suggest a probable time for the ingestion of the drug.
“Math never was my strong suit,” he grumbled, turning once again to the contemplation of motive.
Let’s do a little triage here, he told himself. Lay aside the pedophile thing. If that’s what happened it’s too late to do anything. Toss out accidental ingestion too because it’s too coincidental to be believable. So go with: somebody drugged her. Who are the possible candidates? Katie Nash, Tinsley, and maybe McComb.
He could imagine Katie wanting a child badly enough to abduct one, but she seemed incapable the guile necessary to conceal such a crime. Someone had killed her, however, and the time frame made him suspect that it was done to silence her. Of course, it could have been the sex crime that Adams thought it was. If not, she had either known something about the abduction or was in on it. An unlocked front door indicated that she might have been the proverbial “inside man.” Richard didn’t think Katie’s murder was the sex crime that Adams took it for. He suspected that it was to silence her. So did that mean she had been involved in a conspiracy or had simply seen something that the abductor didn’t want known?
Who could have involved the feeble-minded woman in a plot to take the baby? It would probably be a benign abductor---benign meaning one who would want to keep the child alive and well. Grandma Allsop came immediately to mind, but grandmothers didn’t usually stage sex crimes to silence co-conspirators.
“So not Granny Allsop,” he muttered.
Something tickled at his memory, something Molly had said concerning Katie Nash. Then he had it. It might mean nothing, but he picked up the phone.
“Molly, this is Richard. Remember when we went to see Katie Nash?”
“Right when we started. Sure. Why?”
“You said you thought she might have a boyfriend. Did you ever get to talk to her about that?”
“No, but I’m pretty sure there was a guy she liked, but I never talked to her about it.”
“If there was a guy do you have any idea who it might be?”
“Probably some married guy or someone with no intention of doing anything but using her.” Molly paused for a moment. “It’s just a feeling I got. She didn’t say nothing.”
“Did you say anything to Adams about that?”
“No.”
Molly wouldn’t talk to him unless forced to. Richard thought someone should bring the possibility to Adams’ attention, but he was loath to also. Worse than hearsay, it was speculation based on vague “feelings,” feelings from someone Adams considered a definite doper and a probable killer.
“Still no idea as to who it could have been?”
“If I did I would have given his name to Adams---not that it would have done a lot of good.”
“Molly, I’m going to talk to him. If there was a boyfriend he needs to know about it.”
“He don’t care about Katie any more than he does me, Mr. Carter.”
“He wants to catch her killer.”
“Then why didn’t he talk to me about her? I was one of her clients.”
“Not at the time she was killed,” he reminded her.
“Mancie wasn’t taken that long ago, Mr. Carter. You know he should have questioned me. You think Katie being killed had something to do with Mancie. Why don’t he?”
He started to answer, but she cut him off.
“I’ll tell you why. It’s because he knows I done something to Mancie. It’s what he’s always thought. That’s the reason he never looked for anyone else. He’s a stupid man, Mr. Carter. Stupid and lazy and if I never get my baby back it’s his fault!”
“Being angry doesn’t do us a lot of good, Molly,” he said. “Let’s try to stay on good terms with him. We don’t have to like him, but we need him.”
“Sorry to go off on you like that, Mr. Carter. Want me to see if I can come up with another list?”
“A list would be good. Tell you what, you think about the man who Katie might have been seeing. I’ll meet you tomorrow at the café, okay?”


October 22
“You think I’m stretching credibility?” said Richard. “How about your dismissal of the babysitter’s murder as unrelated to Mancie’s disappearance?”
He had walked to City Hall after work, and was due to meet Molly at the café in an hour.
Adams ran both hands over his fleshy face. When he shook his head the flab at his neck quivered like a turkey’s wattle.
“So where’s the kid?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Richard admitted. “Maybe with whoever---”
Adams cut him off.
“And how about the second baby?”
“What? Oh, the one found at the dump. I have no idea.”
“Finally we agree on something,” said Adams as he leaned back in his swivel chair and appraised Richard through bloodshot eyes.
“Carter, can you appreciate how bizarre this is? I don’t mean you waltzing in here like you’re on official business. That’s par for the course when you’re on a mission from God, I guess. I mean the fact that I actually listen to you instead of throwing your out on your ass. Maybe the diabetes is making me senile.”
Richard suppressed a retort in favor of riding out the soliloquy. He needed Adams.
“Carter, we gotta stop meeting like this. It’s getting embarrassing. See, I’m being nice about it. But the fact is: I don’t want to see you in here anymore. Got it?”
“I thought you told me not to withhold any information I came across.”
“Right. Send me a letter or give me a ring.”
“All right, but before I go I thought of something you might want to consider.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Adams condescendingly.
“It concerns the half-life of Valium. Have your experts worked it backward to get a time for the ingestion?”
“You mean do we know when she doped herself up? Does it matter?”
“It does if someone else slipped the stuff to her.”
“She had a prescription for the damned stuff, Carter! She’s also a meth-head!”
Richard felt like shouting, but resolved to check his irritation. It didn’t work.
“So how long has she been a doper, Adams? Do you know or even care? Check her criminal record and then check her damned medical records!”
“I did,” replied Adams mildly, “no record doesn’t mean she didn’t use. It just means she didn’t get caught which was too bad for the kid.”
“Look,” said Richard trying to calm himself. “I don’t know what happened to her baby any more than you do, but I know her. She’s not what you think she is.”
“I don’t think. I know. I had her pegged from the start.”
“Sure you did,” said Richard, mimicking Adams sarcasm. “What you don’t know, because you didn’t bother to find out, is that she only started using meth after losing her baby and then seeing a police force not trying to do a damned thing about it except accuse her!”
Adams gaped, snorted contemptuously, and then smiled.
“You got a thing going with her!” he laughed. “You gotta be crazy.”
Richard got up to leave.
“Jump to all the conclusions you want. The only thing I’ve got going with her is trying to find out about her baby.”
“Hey, Carter!” said Adams as Richard reached the door. “You’re little girlfriend is smarter than you think she is. Trust me on that. I’m pretty good at reading people.”
“Maybe you should try reading tea leaves. That way you could solve all you cases without getting off your butt.”
The parting shot was satisfying, but counterproductive. It wasn’t even witty. Richard realized his mistake before he reached the door. As soon as he was outside he turned and went back in. Adams saw him and frowned.
“Don’t bother apologizing,” he said.
“I’m not. I just came back to tell you something I forgot. I know you don’t put much stock in what Molly says, but she thinks Katie Nash might have been seeing someone.”
“Who?”
“She doesn’t know, but thinks it might have been a married man.”
“You got to watch those sudden rememberings, Carter. They’re first cousins to story changing. I’m sure as a detective you know what that means.”
“You mean she’s amending a lie to explain contradictory evidence?”
“It’s what guilty ones do. A changed story is a kind of confession.”
“Molly hasn’t changed her story. And you haven’t developed any new evidence for her to explain,” Richard pointed out.
“So she’s fried her brain cells. Who knows what she’s thinking? Have you ever considered that she might be making all this stuff up because she can’t live with the truth?”
“The truth being that she killed her baby?”
“She probably didn’t do it on purpose if that’s any consolation. All the rest is probably just some make believe something or other to get away from the guilt. It’ll all come out sooner or later.”

Molly sat parked across and down the street from the restaurant until she saw Richard approaching on the other side. She got out and hurried across, angling to intercept him. Except for the manila pad she carried, a stranger might assume that she was meeting her husband or boyfriend for lunch, an impression of which Richard was acutely aware of after Adams’ comments and yesterday’s argument with Jill. Maybe meeting in a public place wasn’t such a good idea. Molly was uncomfortable too, but like Richard, pretended not to be.
“What have you got there,” he asked as they reached the door to Carol’s Place.
“Just a tablet. There’s nothing on it.”
He frowned questioningly as he held open the door.
“I just thought it would look more . . . business like,” she explained.
They sat at a booth near the door and ordered coffee.
“I went to see Adams today,” he said as soon as the waitress was gone. “I wanted him to have his toxicology expert try to pin down the time the Valium got into your system.”
“They drugged me so they could come in and take Mancie without me waking up,” she said slowly as she thought her way through the implications of what he was doing.
When it hit her, she impulsively reached across to clutch his arm.
“If you can find out the time then we can figure out who did it!” she said excitedly. “Adams can arrest him and make him tell us where Mancie is.”
“It’s not that simple, Molly. There are a lot of variables in figuring how long it takes for the levels of the drug to fall off. What I asked him to do may not even be possible.”
The truth was that Adams might not even speak with him again, much less follow up on his suggestion to talk to the toxicologist.
“There is one thing I’m pretty sure of, however,” he said. “You didn’t take Valium in place of your Tylenol after you got home that morning. The level would have been higher than it showed, even if you only took one pill at the therapeutic dose.”
“Wait. What did you mean about the variables? I thought they could figure that sort of thing out pretty accurately.”
“People metabolize things at different rates. Then there’s the alcohol you took with it. On top of that, we don’t know the size of the dose or if it was given to you all at once or in increments.”
The excitement drained slowly from Molly’s face as he spoke. Then something struck her.
“But we do know a couple of things. See, if I didn’t take it after I got home, then it had to have been while I was at work or at Kirk’s. So that narrows it down a lot.”
“What about Katie?”
She shook her head dismissively.
“Katie could never do anything like that. She was . . . well, she was just Katie, you know. What you saw was what you got. It has to have been one of the guys at the bar or Kirk.”
He nodded absently.
“Molly, there’s something I’ve been wondering about. It’s one of the things that has kept Adams from believing you.”
“You mean about the drugs---the meth. I already told you about that. I never took none of that stuff until later.”
“No. I mean, that obviously didn’t make Adams take you any more seriously, but I think the main thing is that no one broke into your apartment that night.”
“Katie probably forgot to lock it. I already told you that. She usually did, but it was real late when she left. And I forgot to put the chain on.”
“But you said that she was really good with routine, and didn’t you tell me that she always locked it when she left?”
“If I didn’t let her out, she did.”
“So what do you think the chances are that she forgot on the one night when you were knocked out on Valium and alcohol?”
“She left it unlocked on purpose? You think that she was part of it?”
“Did anyone else have a key?”
“Sure, the landlord. Oh yeah, and Pat probably still has his.”
“You’re ex-husband has a key to your house? Did you tell Adams about that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the stupid man didn’t ask,” she said. “He should have, but it don’t matter because Pat didn’t take her. He never wanted either one of us. It would probably have been best if he had listened to his parents.”
“His parents objected to his marrying you?”
“They never actually said nothing to me, but I knew right off that his momma didn’t think I was good enough for him. I can kind of understand her feelings, I guess. You want the best for your children, and she saw me as kind of a step down for him because my family ain’t like theirs. You know how rich people are. Would you want a son of yours marrying trailer trash?”
“How did they feel about Mancie?”
“Mr. Allsop never seemed to care one way of the other about her, but her Grandma took to her like natural.”
Molly face lost all expression.
“She come to visit us even after Pat left me. I thought she kind of got to like me. She won’t talk to me now.”
Molly was far from the muddle-minded druggie Adams took her for. She had shown Richard astute intuition when it came to people, perhaps a talent hard-taught by disappointment.
“Could Pat have taken Mancie?” he asked.
“You mean for his momma?”
Molly shook her head violently.
“She didn’t take my baby. I wish to God that she did.”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but are you sure she couldn’t have done it?”
“I called her the day after it happened. It was terrible. I needed so bad for someone to talk to. She screamed that I done something awful to Mancie. I begged her to believe me that I didn’t. We was both crying. No, Mr. Carter. I’d give anything to know that she did, but she didn’t.”
And Pat wouldn’t. After meeting him, Richard could believe that.
He declined Molly’s offer of a ride, mainly because he wanted to walk and think, but also because he didn’t want Jill to see them riding together. He had no intention of keeping his meetings with Molly a secret, however. Despite Molly’s rejection of the idea, on the way home he tried to imagine a conspiracy involving Molly’s ex, her mother in law, and the unknown third person needed to slip Molly the tranquilizer. As a fourth he added Katie Nash whose role presumably was to leave the door unlocked. Thinking it through only made the dubious scenario more incredible, yet he had to visit the Allsops.

Jill paced, able to concentrate on neither academic nor domestic work as she waited for Richard to come home. Consumed as he was with his investigation, her husband was oblivious to the real cause for her concern, which was just as well since she couldn’t discuss it with him. All she could do was worry. She had never worried about losing him to Molly as he had assumed, although she wished the woman were out their life. Jill didn’t dislike Molly. In fact, she ached for the poor woman’s loss, but she would willingly sacrifice her for Richard. What she feared was his obsession with finding her baby and his inevitable failure. Would that be the final push sending him into the abyss yearning for him since the night he killed Mic Boyd.
Closing her eyes, she saw again the way he was on her return from her aunt’s funeral.
“Please, God,” she prayed.
That homecoming had shattered her hopeful illusion that he was coping with his depression. He couldn’t sleep through the night and he couldn’t keep a job, yet he stubbornly refused to see a mental health specialist. He flew into a tirade about mood-altering drugs whenever she mentioned professional help. His use of alcohol had never been more than casual, but she worried that that might change. Every day she came home she looked fearfully for signs that he was drinking surreptitiously.
She had stopped willing him to change; now she would gladly settle for things to remain as they were so long as they did not deteriorate. If only he could cope then she could cope as well. It galled though. Coping meant managing the problem instead of fixing it. She resented having to live that way. The realization of that, her resentment, had come earlier in the day. She had tried to deny it, but it was there, and now, like another layer of affliction, her resentment made her ashamed.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she said to herself.
“You didn’t ask to be born into this wonderful world either, my child,” she imagined her Aunt Mirabelle replying in her wonderfully accented English.
The thought brought a pang of loss made sharper by her present need to be what her aunt had always been to her, strength and encouragement. For the first time she suspected that her aunt had never really possessed that certainty she had always displayed. Well, Mirabelle would never succumb to tears, and neither would she.
So she peered through the curtains and waited, as she waited every day whether at home, or on the steps at the college. She waited, dreading the time when he would fail to come. Jill knew that it was foolish to think that nothing could happen to him if she were near, but that feeling had become a conviction.
He came around the corner, walking head down with no trace of the limp now. Preoccupied, he walked past before retracing his steps and coming across the lawn. She released the curtain and retreated to the kitchen.
“Jill?” he called when he came in.
“In here, Richard,” she called, coming into the front room with a cup of coffee for him.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a sip. “So how was your day?”
“Boring,” she said, beginning to relax now that he was with her and safe.
“Boring? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word.”
“I taught my professor’s classes today, if you can call it that. I read his lecture aloud while the students dutifully took notes. Since freshmen are incapable of intelligent thought, the professor holds forth. Today he did it by proxy.”
“You could have spiced things up a little,” he suggested.
She shook her head.
“Lese-majeste. Lowly female graduate assistants do not add to or take away from the words of the great man.”
“So how long are you stuck working for Professor Chauvin? The entire year?”
“I shouldn’t complain,” she said going back to the kitchen. “He’s a nice man and an excellent scholar.”
He followed her.
“Just not much of a teacher.”
“The two do not always equate,” she said as she took a roasting pan from beneath the counter and grabbed the olive oil from the counter top.
“Do you think you could get celery and carrots from the crisper and dice them along with an onion?” she asked.
They were a family---at least the beginning of one---and Jill determined to ground him in family things.
“Sure. What are we fixing?” he asked as he opened the refrigerator and knelt to retrieve the vegetables.
“Roast chicken and root vegetables.”
How would a baby change things? she wondered.
“What’s wrong with these carrots?”
“Those are parsnips. Peel two of them along with three large carrots and one sweet potato? Chop two other carrots without peeling them and set them aside with the chopped celery.”
Don’t be a fool, Jill. Babies are problems, not solutions.
While Richard hacked up the vegetables, Jill took the chicken from the refrigerator, removed the packet from inside, rinsed it out, seasoned the inside with salt and pepper, and began packing some of the unpeeled vegetables inside the bird along with a halved lemon.
“Are we going to eat that?” he asked dubiously.
“No. All that goes inside and underneath just flavors and keeps it moist. The ones you peeled will go in a little later. We mustn’t overcook them.”
She trussed the bird, basted the outside, salted it, peppered it, and placed it on a bed of chopped vegetables in the roasting pan, tented it with foil, and put it in the oven. Then she brought up a subject that she hoped would please him.
“Richard,” she said. “It’s inconvenient not having my car, and it will soon be too cold for you to walk home. Find us a reasonably priced second vehicle.”
“Another car? How much can we afford?” he asked as he finished peeling the vegetables.
“Payments of one fifty maybe.”
“A Lexus is out I suppose,” he said with a grin. “How about a pickup?”
She grimaced and then shrugged.
“It’ll be yours. Suit yourself,” she said, taking off the apron and stepping out of the high heels she still had on.
“Just cut those in one to two inch pieces and put them in a baking dish coated with a little oil,” she said.
“The dish or the vegetables?”
“Both. Put them in the oven in about a forty-five minutes.”
“Where are you going?”
“To soak in the tub. Vanity has its price. I should have worn sensible shoes. I knew I would be on my feet all day.”
“Go ahead. I got it covered in here,” he assured her.
She went to the stove and set the timer.
“I know. When this goes off put in the vegetables and then reset the timer for another thirty minutes. If I’m not back by the time it goes off the second time, remove the chicken but not the vegetables and turn off the oven.”
“Never knew KP could be so much fun.”
Suddenly her arms were about him and she was nuzzling the nape of his neck.
“What’s this all about?” he asked as he leaned back.
Her lips brushed his bristled cheek. “I just love you, that’s all,” she murmured, tears in her voice.
“Hey. Me too, kid,” he said, patting her forearm at his abdomen.

The meal and the evening were what they were meant to be. In the afterglow they held each other in bed, speaking softly in the dark of things both dear and inconsequential. Richard “forgot” to mention his meeting with Molly and did not speak of the missing child. Jill tried not to think of past ghosts or future fears and contented herself with just having her man safely in her arms.


October 23
They plowed through a light but insistent cold rain toward the campus. He was keeping the car again today. Although he kept up with the conversation, Richard’s attention strayed to thoughts of Molly, Mancie, and the Allsops. Preoccupied at work, he performed his required tasks, responded when spoken to, and remembered the substance of none of it. No doubt it was a dry hole, but he had to check out the Allsops. Yielding to the compulsion, he skipped lunch and drove down to the ill-fated housing development on Lake Taneycomo as soon as he got off, planning to return in time to pick up Jill at four.
Myrtle Glen’s grandiose gate befitted a venerable estate, not the scraped earth barrens he saw before him. A lone completed structure thrust multiple brick-clad facets skyward, attempting perhaps to inspire envy. To Richard it said, “Look what I can afford!” Like many of the lower middle class, he was afflicted with inverse snobbery. Unlike most, however, he knew it was inspired by envy.
The Allsop’s aren’t all that rich, he reminded himself as he surveyed the area looking for an alternate way in. The gate required a passkey. The pavement ended not fifty feet past the entrance. Beyond, a future road had been graded, but had been left to waist-high weeds now gone to seed. He had approached over a circuitous road of new concrete devoid of houses or other structures save signs advertising lots for sale. The Allsop’s project had all the earmarks of a very expensive and ill-conceived scheme well on its way to belly up. Impressive though the view, their project clearly stood on the wrong side of the lake. The terrain presented few good sites for homes. All the high ground was well back from the lake. Everything close to the water was a mud flat. He wondered idly if a Venetian project was feasible.
Probably not. No tide to carry the sewage away.
Thinking of the construction problems brought Pat Allsop to mind. As far as he knew, Molly’s unlikable ex still worked a job on the other side of the state. Having a key made him an obvious suspect as. Richard looked across to the isolated manor, imagining Mancie safe in the care of a loving but misguided grandmother.
How do you handle the legal problems of raising a child with no birth certificate?
Only an extremely impulsive and naïve person would get into a situation like that, certainly not a businessman already up to his ears in financial problems.
Plus everyone knows about their granddaughter’s disappearance, so how can they ever explain having a child at their age?
The Allsop’s would be more believable suspects had they moved away to settle where no one knew about the disappearance. Was such a move was in the offing?
“Maybe all their money’s in this boondoggle,” he mumbled.
People thinking clearly don’t pull off family abductions. It takes heat of passion and no thinking through to the consequences. Besides, how does Katie Nash’s murder fit something like that? A sociopathic husband cleans up his wife and son’s mess? Too much passion. Too much shared stupidity.
He stared across at the pretentious house, realizing he had wasted his time and gas in coming. Clearly he couldn’t approach it, much less find a way to talk himself inside. Even if he did, the house was too large to examine surreptitiously. Its seclusion made it a good place to hide a child one had no business of having, but maybe the Allsop’s had just sunk all their money plus all they could borrow into the real estate and simply had no option but to live there. But they could be living there with a baby they had no right having. Molly didn’t think so; however, and reasonably intelligent people didn’t kidnap their grandchildren. The Allsops could have challenged Molly’s fitness as a mother if they could prove drug abuse.
But Molly didn’t have a drug record at the time Mancie disappeared.
The main drawback to his Allsop conspiracy theory was that he lacked believable conspirators. There was a father trying to avoid child support, a disinterested grandfather, and a grandmother who reportedly went hysterical when the child disappeared. Add an unknown fourth person enlisted to drug Molly. It was a hell of a stretch especially when he added the complication of Katie Nash’s murder.
I wonder what percentage of family abductions result in premeditated murder of someone outside the family?
He thought about the baby at the dump. Coupled with Mancie’s abduction it suggested the existence of a predatory pedophile, except that no frantic parents had come screaming to the police about a second missing child. There was a simpler explanation: someone had “solved” their problem by simply throwing an inconvenient baby away like so much trash. It happened too often.
One pathetic little victim at a time, Richard. Find out who drugged Molly and you’ll find out who took Mancie.
Tinsley seemed most likely since he and Molly had shared drinks both at the club and later at his apartment. Molly claimed there had been no sex that night. Maybe adult women didn’t appeal to Tinsley. Everyone at the bar knew about Molly’s little girl because she had shown them pictures. Had the photos of the beautiful child ignited Tinsley’s passion? Richard imagined the man waiting until Katie was gone and Molly dead to the world, and then coming in to take the baby.
Richard shuddered.
But maybe Tinsley was a helper. Perhaps Molly’s coming home later than expected had thrown off the timetable. He imagined a kidnapper, having drugged Molly, arriving at her home expecting to just go in and take the child. Only when he gets there, Katie Nash hasn’t left yet. Crimes don’t always come off as planned. Richard had learned in Somalia the difficulty of coordinating activities, even simple and straightforward ones. So perhaps Katie saw him or his car, or he thought she might have. Then he killed her and staged it as a sex crime.
The next time Adams seemed in a receptive mood he would suggest checking out Tinsley’s phone records.
“Speculating without facts, Richard,” he reminded himself as he turned the car around to leave. “Let’s just find out who drugged Molly.”
On the way through town Richard detoured left on Market and drove past The Honeycomb. He didn’t have time to stop. The Lexus that had almost backed into him sat crookedly taking up two handicap spots near the door and partly obscuring a real estate agent’s sign leaning against the brick wall.
It surprised him that McComb had his place for sale because it seemed to do a good business. Of course, income was only half the equation. Bobby McComb could be in financial straits for any number of reasons both business and personal. Money was the essence of most criminal enterprise.
Kidnapping for ransom?
His pulse quickened at the thought, but his rash enthusiasm evaporated immediately. Molly Randolph had no money for ransom, and no one knew that better than McComb. He had been the one paying her.
He drove on out to the college thinking about the three reasons he knew for stealing a baby. Ransom was out unless someone was trying to shake down the Allsops, which he doubted. Someone desperate to be a parent, like perhaps Katie Nash, could have taken the child, but cases like that seemed almost always to be impulsive, involving children left unattended. Mancie’s abduction involved two premeditated acts, drugging Molly, and breaking into the house. That meant it was planned, perhaps for a more sinister motive, one no normal person could understand. For the first time he wondered if knowing what happened might not be worse for Molly than not knowing.

When he turned onto campus, he saw Jill walking toward him two blocks from the steps where he normally picked her up. She checked traffic and then crossed as he bent to push open the door.
“I almost missed you,” he said as she got in. “What were you doing way down here?”
“I got tired of waiting,” she said, looking straight ahead as she buckled in.
Catching her irritation, he glanced quickly at the dashboard clock.
“Sorry I was late.”
“You weren’t that late.”
“I’m not very late but always late, right?”
“Not always,” she said. “Just most of the time. I should adjust my schedule accordingly.”
“What else is wrong?”
“Forget it, Richard. A man was bothering me. I walked away from him. End of story.”
“If I had been there on time you wouldn’t have had to, right?”
He noticed her clenched jaw. Jill’s refusal to really accept his apology and her continued anger irritated him. She was making a big deal out of nothing.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s not do this. We don’t need it. Forget about that creep.”
“I know how to handle unwanted attention, Richard. It’s inattention that . . .”
“I don’t ignore you,” he objected loudly.
“No. You yell at me when I tell you how I feel.”
Richard felt the sickness inside she always caused when she became oversensitive. When that happened there was no pleasing her.
Probably hormonal, he thought, but he had a little too much sense to say so.
“What do you want from me, Jill? We’re sitting here arguing over nothing. I was exactly fourteen minutes late and some creep sees you standing around and hits on you---which is perfectly understandable because you’re a good-looking woman and you’re on a college campus---and I get the blame for it all.”
“If this were the only time you have forgotten about me . . .”
“I didn’t forget about you.”
“What were you doing that it took you so long to get here then?”
“I was out of town and it took longer to get back than I expected.”
“It usually takes about as long to come back from a place as it does to get there,” she said.
They drove two blocks in silence.
“Tomorrow get another vehicle,” she said as he turned onto their street. “Then I can come home when I want without having to depend upon you.”
He pulled into the drive and jammed the car into park.
“Can we call a truce now?” he asked sharply.
She turned away. They sat in silence, neither making a move to get out. Richard felt that something terrible was happening, something he had not the slightest chance of changing. No serious accusations had been hurled. No names had been called, but something was going seriously wrong. Jill’s small hand found his. Face averted, she stared out the window. Wordlessly, she squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. Then they got out and went into the house. They didn’t take the fight inside with them, and during the evening both pretended that it had never happened.

October 24
Richard spent the afternoon filling out forms and running. At the end of his paper chase, he owned a fifteen-year-old Ford 150. Its two hundred thousand miles showed, most notably in its bed and upholstery. The engine and steering were tight, but the brakes needed work. The tires failed to pass inspection, which ran the actual cost up twenty-five percent, but by the end of the day he had his own ride and Jill was no longer dependent upon a negligent husband.
Without Molly’s customary visit, things approached normality in the evening until he mentioned his investigation.
“Jill, I’ve come up with three reasons someone might want to abduct a child: to raise as one’s own, to hold for ransom, and the pedophilia thing. Is there another reason you can think of?”
“No, Richard. It’s horrible, and I don’t really want to think about it.”
“Well I have to.”
“Yes. I know,” she said, closing the book she had been reading and standing up.
“I’ve got laundry to do. Are all your coveralls in the hamper?”
“Of course.”
Clearly Jill wanted total disengagement from Molly, but Richard knew that without her (misplaced) confidence in him, Molly would lose hope and crash back to meth. Having failed so often, Richard couldn’t live with that on his conscience. Through his ineptitude or her weakness that might happen anyway because the story wasn’t likely to have a happy ending. So many things were unclear, but not his duty. Molly could---probably would---descend into ruin, but he couldn’t walk away and just allow it to happen. Richard had to keep going as much to save himself as to save Molly.
Later that night, he lay beside the bride of his youth in that twilight world between sleep and consciousness as half-formed and loosely connected thoughts drifted through his mind. Molly, a drowning swimmer, was dragging him down as he tried to save her. Jill treaded water nearby repeating over and over again, “A promise is a promise.” Molly gasped, “She’s down there. My baby’s down there.”
He jolted upright, and then got out of bed carefully so as not to awaken Jill. On the way to the kitchen for aspirin he pieced together what it meant. Molly “knew” that Mancie was still alive. Although he only knew the child from pictures, Richard wanted to believe it also. She had to be so that he could find her and kick himself free of the clutching darkness.
He went back, got carefully into bed, and adjusted the covers.
And he became as one dead.
He recognized it as a “fever thought,” one of those obsessive phrases that had tormented him since childhood whenever he was sick. He jerked reflexively away from it. Jill moaned softly and adjusted her position.
If you have to think, think to a purpose, he scolded himself.
But where to start?
Find a loose end to pick at.
He settled on the Honeycomb. Molly had spent the entire afternoon and most of the night there when Mancie disappeared.
McComb suddenly wants to sell the place? It’s busy. So why? Has he been living beyond his means? Maybe he’s just tired of it. Maybe he plans to buy a different one. Maybe he won the lottery!
He wanted to turn it off and get to sleep, but his restless mind recycled its stale thoughts like pasteboard ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. Baseless speculations refused to stay dead whenever he shot them down.
Gambling can run up debts in a hurry---drugs too. Owing enough to the wrong kind of people can make a guy desperate enough to turn to crime.
He sighed aloud. Jill stirred.
Right! Grandma Allsop paid him a bundle to steal her granddaughter. So let’s fill in the rest of this jewel. Daddy suddenly gets an attack of parental concern and decides his momma should raise Mancie. Granddad catches the responsibility virus and suddenly has time for the baby too. Somehow they tumbled to McComb’s need for quick cash. He agrees to drug Molly and drive the getaway car when Pat goes in to kidnap the baby. Then Gram and Gramp move out to the Taneycomo mudflats to keep the baby from prying eyes. Granddad gets Dillard to keep the story low key in the paper. Might as well throw in Adams too since he’s obviously botching the investigation on purpose.
Irritated that he allowed himself to elaborate the ludicrous conspiracy, he turned on his side and tried once again to go to sleep. His mind wouldn’t let it go. Richard gave up his quest for sleep in disgust, got carefully out of bed, and tiptoed to the kitchen. While coffee drizzled slowly through the maker, he thought of a conspiracy that might have happened, only not such a wild one---complicated, but not wild. It also involved the same two motives. The person who wanted Mancie had hired someone desperate for money to drug Molly and put her out of commission.
He poured a cup of coffee, thinking that there were no benign reasons for taking the child, only less malignant ones than pedophilia. Katie Nash’s pronouncement echoed in his mind.
Some baby stealer snuck in and took her.
Knowing that some men hunger for children slapped away his hope that Mancie was safe and in the care of some misguided person who loved her.
What would I do if Mancie were my child and one of those animals killed her?
“And he became as one dead,” he murmured.
“What?”
He turned to see Jill standing in the doorway, cinching the belt of her robe.
“Just talking to myself,” he said. “On your way to the bathroom or should I pour you some coffee?”
“I’m up I think. What time is it?”
“Only four. Sure you don’t want to go back to bed?”
“No. I have work to do before class. I should have done it last night. Did you get any sleep at all?”
“Some,” he lied. “I’m good to go for the day.”
“Are the nightmares back?” she asked.
No, he thought, and don’t summon them.
He stared at her a long moment and then shook his head.
“I haven’t even thought about Somalia in a long time. I think maybe he’s . . . maybe I’ve . . . come to terms with . . . what I did over there.”
“Richard it’s not something you did. It’s something that happened to you. You were the second victim in that. You know that’s what the doctor said.”
“Yeah,” he said irritably. “Well the doctor wasn’t there. I was. My finger was on the trigger, and I was the one standing when it was all over.”
“I don’t want to make it worse for you,” she said. “I know it just irritates you when people say they understand, but I think I can imagine how you must have felt.”
It wasn’t how he had felt. It was how he still felt. No good could come from telling her that she, the so-called doctor, and all his supportive well-wishers were out of their damned minds if they expected him to be able to put it behind him. The fact was that the soldier he had killed was only a child. That fact remained no matter the mitigating circumstances that were supposed to make it all right. Perhaps that was why Mancie had become such an obsession. He was going to balance the books.
Right, Richard! Simple arithmetic: destroy a life? No big deal---just save a life, and everything is okay again.
“You’re going through it again, aren’t you?” Jill asked, moving closer as if she could comfort him.
He moved away.
“I’m all right. Just leave it alone. Okay?”

Richard failed to notice the car across the street when he pulled into The Honeycomb lot after work. He parked next to the Lexus with the unmistakable vanity plates. He grimaced at its nearly black, cop-killer windows, wondering if the vehicle fit a police profile, or if the price-range lifted it above suspicion. He went inside to find an agitated waitress hurriedly gathering tumblers and mopping the floor with a hand towel.
“I know, ma’am,” she said brittlely. “I just didn’t expect you to turn around so quick.”
A diminutive, expensively dressed woman with big hair brushed a small wet spot on her blouse with a handkerchief. Her miniature features were set in a scowl beneath a cloud of blonde hair. Although no more than five two, she dominated the situation as rich, connected people tend to do. Not deigning to respond, she dropped the handkerchief onto the floor, turned on stiletto heels, and glared at someone behind Richard.
“Fire her,” she mouthed, blue eyes blazing. Then she brushed past.
As he turned to watch her leave, he saw McComb at the end of the bar near the door.
Richard took a barstool and ordered beer.
“How’s Molly?” asked McComb as he wiped down and uncapped the bottle.
“She seems to be doing okay,” Richard answered, trying to sound disinterested.
He took a pull on the bottle.
“I heard that they might extend riverboat gambling to the lakes down here,” he improvised. “What do you think the chances of that are?”
McComb shrugged.
“Not if your bible thumpers and the folks in Branson have a say. Where did you hear that?”
“A guy at the gas station said something about it. I used to gamble a little up in Michigan. Where would a guy go around here to connect up with something like that?”
McComb looked at him a long moment.
“Go back to the gas station and buy a lottery ticket.”
Richard laughed.
“I’d like something with a little more skill involved and a little better odds.”
“Go to St. Louis or Kansas City and hit the boats.”
“Odds are still lousy. How about betting on sporting events? A guy’s got a real chance with that kind of action.”
Over the next half hour Richard sounded McComb out on the local gambling scene, trying to get a feel for the man’s interest and perhaps involvement. McComb showed neither unusual interest nor reticence in talking about it, but like the experienced bartender he was, he didn’t name names when it came to illegal activity. Eventually, he mentioned a former athlete who “likes to talk about possible outcomes” and had a “hypothetical interest in the point spreads.” He suggested that he and Richard get together and discuss their common interest.
“You know him pretty well?”
“Me? No. I just hear guys talking. I don’t know anything about him really.”
“I might do that. Where can I find him?”
“He works out of . . . at Higgins Sporting Goods down on Vine.”

Bookies, even small-timers, don’t discuss business with strangers, much less reveal details, but Richard knew how he could find out about McComb’s gambling habits if he hadn’t burned his bridges too thoroughly.
“Back already?” said Adams when he saw Richard coming toward his desk. “What do I have to say to get my point across? You’re wasting your time and mine, Carter.”
“Probably, but this comes under the heading of not withholding information. Molly told me something she may not have told you.”
“Let me guess. Something really helpful, like maybe she remembers seeing someone that night but she didn’t recognize him. Something like that?”
“Pat Allsop still had a key to the house.”
Adams’ look said he hadn’t known it, but he feigned disinterest.
“So what? He didn’t want the kid, so why would he take it?”
“Beats me,” admitted Richard. “But since there were no signs of forced entry maybe it ought to at least be in the case file.”
“You lecturing me on investigative procedure now?”
Making Adams angry wouldn’t help.
“No, just explaining why I came down. I just found out about the key and thought you should know right away.”
Adams didn’t seem to appreciate the information.
“I’ll just insert that jewel in the case file as you suggested and you can be on your merry little way.”
“I was hoping you could answer a question for me while I was here.”
When Adams didn’t object immediately, he hurried on, prefacing his request with an explanation.
“Molly insists that she didn’t take the Valium on purpose or by accident. If she’s telling the truth, then there are only a few people who could have done slipped it to her. I was looking at Bobby McComb, and---”
“Why?” interrupted Adams.
“The bar is the logical place for it to have been done, and he’s got the bar up for sale. Maybe he was in financial trouble and---”
“Ridiculous. Molly Randolph didn’t have money for ransom. Kidnappers hit rich people.”
“Some people might consider the Allsops rich,” Richard pointed out. “Maybe---”
“They didn’t get a note,” objected Adams impatiently.
Then he laughed.
“That’s a good one. McComb trying to get back the fortune he was paying her to wait tables!”
“Maybe it wasn’t ransom. Maybe someone wanted a baby real bad, bad enough to pay big bucks.”
Adams grinned as if getting a punch line.
“I see where you’re going with this. Grandma and Grandpa can’t stand to be separated from their grandchild after the split so they pay McComb to drug Molly so that her ex can steal the kid when she passes out.”
“I didn’t say that’s what happened,” said Richard, angrier with himself for actually considering the possibility at one time, and embarrassed that Adams thought that he still did.
“Then the evil grandparent kidnappers kill another baby, throw it in the dump and go commit a sex murder on the babysitter just to muddy the waters. It’s brilliant, Carter. I gotta hand it to you. I would never have thought of that.”
“There is a market for healthy babies,” Richard reminded him. “And, as you pointed out, there are two other homicides that may be associated with the abduction.”
“Disappearance,” Adams corrected.
“Yeah. Well Molly could have died with that alcohol-Valium mix. That would have been three homicides.”
“Most likely self-administered. Hell, Carter. It could’ve even been an attempted suicide after she killed the kid.”
Richard hoped the “most likely” indicated a softening of Adams’ attitude.
“Look,” he said. “Take another look at her---I mean before the disappearance---all you’ll find is a hard-working, responsible young mother who---”
“Who found holding down two jobs and raising a kid more than she could handle without chemical help. Face it, Carter. It got the best of her. She got high and somehow killed her kid---probably by accident, but she did it. Maybe she can’t live with it so now she’s making all this stuff up. Hell! By now she probably believes it.”
“So she killed Katie Nash? And just why would she do that?”
“That probably had nothing to do with Molly Randolph’s kid,” said Adams wearily. “I don’t know. About all I know is that you give me a headache, Carter.”
Since nothing had changed with Adams, Richard decided that he might as well broach the question he came to ask.
“What can you tell me about the local gambling scene?”
“Gambling scene? What gambling scene?”
“People gamble everywhere, and I’m not talking about the lottery or bingo.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Adams already shaking with amusement at what he was about to say.
“McComb’s motive for drugging your lady friend, right? He owed money to the mob and they were going to whack him if he didn’t come up with the cash? That’s it! He tells them that he can’t get the money, but he’s got this cute little baby that they might be interested in.”
Richard ignored the ridicule.
“Where would a guy go to bet on games?” he asked.
“Gambling and prostitution are run by the same guy in charge of white slavery and the opium dens,” said Adams, warming to his routine. “The local capo is Clem Kadiddlehopper Muzeroni.”
Richard pressed on despite the inanity.
“I hear that a certain has-been athlete who runs a sporting goods store supplements his income by booking bets. Anything to that?”
“I’m not sure,” said Adams carefully. “If there is, I imagine that the IRS will get him one of these days.”
“So you guys just let it slide, huh?”
He wished he hadn’t said it, but Adams didn’t seem to take offense.
“A vice squad in a town this size? Got better things to do. Besides why begrudge the middle class gamblers a little play. The state sponsors a lottery for the poor, and the rich go to Vegas or to the boat-in-a-moat casinos to get their pockets picked. Us Catholics got our bingo. Betting on the games and playing poker should be illegal?”
“I thought it was,” said Richard dryly as he got up to leave.
“Wait a minute, Carter. Since you brightened my day with that little tidbit about the mob connection, the least I can do is set you straight. McComb could have lost his shirt---or his business or whatever---but no one around here is going to send an enforcer around to bust up knuckles or anything like that. Certainly not Benny Fortner.”
“The former star athlete?”
“All-star QB. Blew a knee in his last regular season start for the Jayhawks. Would have had a chance to showcase in the Orange Bowl. Everyone around here had him going to the pros. Leave him alone. He’ll end up in trouble soon enough. Everybody knows what he’s doing. Some day the wrong person will lose too much and the IRS will get a tip.”
The small town attitude didn’t really surprise Richard. He was small town too. As he reached the door, he thought of something else that might have put McComb into debt---some one, that is. The vindictive little woman at the bar definitely had something going with him, and she looked like she might be expensive to maintain. If the Lexus was hers, maybe McComb had bought it for her.
“You couldn’t run a license plate for me, could you?”
Adams smiled good-naturedly. “No way in hell,” he said.
“Okay,” said Richard, thinking that he could get JR to run it for him.
“Wait a minute,” called Adams. “Who are you bothering now?”
“No one. I just saw this car with vanity plates a couple of times out at McComb’s. I was curious because he claims not to know the driver. The plates said ‘Charity.’”
Adams roared.
“What’s so funny?”
“Detective Carter, you’ve got to be the only one in town who doesn’t know Charity!”
“So who is she?”
“Just the only damned celebrity in town. If we had them paparazzi or whatever, they’d be following her everywhere she went and trying to take her picture.”
The huge hairdo fit Richard’s stereotype of a country music star.”
“Famous singer, huh?”
“Nah. Wannabe singer. She’s a famous wife. Married Rennie Peele.”
“The music show guy down at Eureka Springs.”
“That’s the man.”
“She’s Lyla Peele?”
“AKA Honeybunch, AKA Charity.”
“What’s she doing hanging out at McCombs?”
“I don’t know. He used to be her manager.”
Richard frowned.
“I thought her manager was a guy named Chandler.”
Adams shrugged.
“Maybe she got a new guy. Not that she needs one now.”
No, thought Richard. And she didn’t need Bobby McComb to buy her anything.



October 30
He was in the grease pit about a week later struggling with a bunged up transmission fluid plug when the wrench slipped smashing his knuckles against the frame. When he bent to feel for the wrench he had dropped, he heard a familiar voice above him asking someone about the seven-point special they were advertising that week. He couldn’t place the voice, but the mystery was solved when he came up later for a bathroom break and found Jerry Chandler sitting in the waiting room, thumbing disinterestedly through a car magazine.
“What brings you to town,” Richard asked him.
Chandler looked up, eying Richard’s soiled coveralls and blackened fingers.
“Doris had to come back to settle the estate, such as it is. I’m taking care of the car while she’s at the lawyer’s.”
When Richard came out of the bathroom, Chandler was standing at the window, looking impatiently toward his car.
“Mr. Chandler,” said Richard. “Didn’t you say your brother was Lyla Peele’s manager?”
“That’s right.”
“Then what about this McComb guy? I heard he was her manager.”
Chandler laughed.
“McComb is my brother---well, half-brother, but I don’t like that term. Different dad’s, that’s all. Mom never had his name changed when she married my dad. It always confuses people.”
Chandler found the look on Richard’s face amusing.
“You’re thinking that we’re not much alike? Gospel singer and bar owner?”
Actually Richard was thinking that he felt like a fool for not having discovered it before now.
“No. I was just thinking about name changes,” he said. “How many has Lyla had?”
“Only one legal name until the old man married her,” replied Jerry Chandler, “but I guess you mean the stage names. ‘Honeybunch’ went back to just plain ‘Lyla’ and then to ‘Mrs. Peele.’”
“And now she’s ‘Charity,’” said Richard.
“She should have stuck with “Honeybunch.” It’s an honest, cheap, trailer trash name. Fits her,” he sniffed before laughing again. “Actually a fish sits on a bicycle better than Charity sits on her.”
Remembering the incident with the waitress, Richard tended to agree.
“I only helped her get an audition as a favor to my brother. I didn’t think she stood a chance of landing a position. Turns out she landed the biggest one of all. Now she owns half the show.”
“So what’s she doing here?” asked Richard.
“There’s a divorce in the works. The old man’s sixth, I think. As sharp as he is, he can’t seem to find himself a good woman. He keeps making the same mistake. Honeybunch,” he said sarcastically, “will be his latest ex as soon as the lawyers can agree on how much she gets out of the old man.”
“There’s a problem?”
“You bet. The old man’s got enough money to burn a wet mule, but he didn’t get it because it didn’t mean anything to him, if you know what I mean. I think there’s some kind of prenuptial agreement and both sets of lawyers are looking for loopholes.”
“So who’s divorcing who?”
“Mutual. Both are claiming infidelity. He’s pushing a negotiated settlement before they take it to a judge---kinda like buying out a contract, you know. Wants to keep it out of the news. Bad for his image.”
“What’s the problem? He’s been divorced five times already, right?”
Chandler shrugged.
“Divorce is one thing, lurid details another. He sells family entertainment so he wants it discreet.”
The door opened, and the boss stuck his head in.
“We got business to do, Carter,” he said pointedly.
As if on cue, the pay window slid open.
“Your car’s ready, Mr. Chandler,” said the office girl.

On the way home Richard saw Molly’s car parked at the café. They hadn’t scheduled a meeting. He hadn’t even spoken to her for several days. Feeling guilty, he parked across the street and went inside. An old couple occupied the table where he and Molly usually sat. Thinking he had mistaken someone else’s car for hers, he was about to leave when his eyes adjusted from the bright autumn sunlight to the relative gloom and he spied her in the back.
“So what’s going on?” he asked as he slid in across from her.
“It’s been over a week since we talked,” she said, adjusting the blank tablet unconsciously.
“I haven’t found out anything new, Molly---at least nothing new to you.”
Her brow knitted in question.
“You knew that Bobby McComb was related by marriage to Katie Nash, didn’t you?”
“They’re not really. Her sister is married to his step brother.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
She looked surprised.
“Is it important?”
“It’s just something I should have known.”
“Katie never mentioned Bobby, and I don’t remember him ever talking about her. I don’t know if they ever even met. She talked about Doris and Jerry all the time though, and they live down by Eureka Springs. Bobby lives here and Katie never talked about him. She always talked about the people she knew, especially the ones she liked.”
“Like who?”
“Like her sister, Doris. And she was always going on about Lyla even though she didn’t really know her real good. She was a fan. She was sure Lyla was going to be a big star some day.”
“So where exactly did she meet Lyla?”
Molly frowned.
“I’m not sure that she ever did meet her. She probably heard about her from Doris and Jerry. It was kind of a hero worship thing. Lyla was like everything Katie wasn’t: beautiful and tiny and glamorous. That’s how Katie saw her. Lyla’s just showy and kinda mean. Katie had real beauty. She was sweet and good.”
Richard discounted Molly’s post-interment eulogy. Every half-decent person dying prematurely tends to rise on the sanctification scale.
“How did you get along with Lyla?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” she answered without hesitation.
“You had trouble with her?”
“No. She looks right through people like me. We don’t matter. So I ignored her. I mean, who needs her trouble?”
“Trouble?”
“She throws a royal fit if somebody does something she don’t like, and it don’t have to be something big. Just a little thing like getting her order wrong can set her to screaming. Come to think of it, it was a good thing Katie never actually met her. She would have been sure to say or do something that rubbed Lyla the wrong way.”
Molly stopped and looked intently at Richard.
“Why are you so interested in Lyla?”
He shrugged.
“I’m just trying to get a complete picture of the situation back then,” he said with a grimace. “I’m not very good at this, Molly. I keep finding out stuff that everyone else seems to have known all along.”
“You’d have a hard time finding it out if somebody didn’t know it already,” observed Molly.
Despite his disclaimer, Richard’s position as “godsend” was secure.
“Tell me,” he said. “Did she ever seem . . . let’s say ‘put out’ with Bobby for . . . paying attention to you?”
“Was she jealous of me?” asked Molly with a laugh. “No way. And Bobby didn’t pay any attention to me. He was just my boss.”
“Did you ever ask him for favors like preferential work hours?”
“Sure. I had Mancie, and things come up. I usually told him in plenty of time when I couldn’t be in like if I had to take her to see the doctor.” She stared past him out the window as if offered a view into the past. “I was going to have to find her a new doctor.”
“Why?”
“Doctor Wilson burned up in his house about two weeks before they took Mancie.”
“Yeah. Mr. Dillard down at the paper mentioned something about that. They thought it might have been arson, but I guess nothing ever came of the investigation.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Molly. “Then again, I was out of it after Mancie disappeared. They’re wrong about the arson though. Doctor Wilson was a nice man. No one would want to hurt him and he didn’t set the fire himself.”
She looked across at him a long moment.
“We’re not doing too good, are we, Mr. Carter?”
“No, Molly, we’re not,” he said, reaching across the table impulsively to cover her hand with his. “I promise you that I’ll do what I can though.”
She bobbed her head in small little jerks as she squeezed his hand.
“I know that, Mr. Carter,” she said in a breaking voice. “I’d apologize for being such a bother, but I can’t. Mancie needs us too bad.”

“How was your day, dear,” asked Jill when she came into the house.
“Enlightening,” said Richard glumly.
She smiled, but not tightly the way she usually did when he talked about his efforts on behalf of Molly. He didn’t notice.
“I keep finding out stuff I should have known from the first. No wonder Adams thinks I’m a putz.”
Jill winced. That he noticed.
“What?”
“Don’t use words that you don’t know,” she said tersely. “Especially Yiddish.”
“Oh, you mean ‘putz.’ It means a stupid bungler. That pretty well describes me.”
“That’s not all it means. It’s vulgar.”
“Okay. I’m a vulgar bungler,” he said, passing it off with a shrug, “today I find out that Bobby McComb and Jerry Chandler are brothers. He’s the agent for Lyla---you know, that singer who married Rennie Peele, the music show guy. And I find out that Lyla is not only ‘Honeybunch,’ the name she auditioned under down at the music show, but she’s also ‘Charity’ who hangs out at the Honeycomb. By the way, what do you think the chances are that the bar is a combination of her first stage name and Bobby’s last name?”
“It’s a logical conclusion,” she said, “but what does any of that have to do with a missing child?”
“I have no idea if it has anything to do with anything,” he admitted. “The point is, a real detective would have known this stuff all along. And that’s not all. Remember the doctor who died in a house fire?”
“Doctor?”
“Yeah, the one they thought might be arson. Remember? We read about it. It was such a big deal that the paper didn’t report Mancie’s disappearance very much.”
“I don’t remember you saying anything about that.”
“Well anyway, it turns out that he was Mancie’s pediatrician.”
“So?”
“So the fire happened not long before Mancie disappeared.”
“Meaning what?”
“I have no idea. I keep saying that, don’t I? It’s just that I should have already known all this stuff.”
“What does Mr. Adams think it means?”
“He thought it was hilarious that I didn’t know who Charity was. Apparently her marriage to Peele was a coup for the whole town. Local girl catches big fish! That’s almost as good as a local boy making the big leagues. By the way, they’re in the middle of a nasty divorce.”
“Well, at least you have a better picture of Molly’s world today than you did yesterday. You at least have the milieu in which the disappearance took place.”
“I’m not writing history,” he said slightly irritated. “Colorful details might spice up a report, but they don’t do much for an investigation.”
“Research is research,” she said. “There are two rules: first, you never have enough information to stop looking, and second, never lose information once you find it. What appears insignificant at first may prove otherwise when you learn more. The more you know, the more you can know. You are closer to discovering what happened even if it doesn’t appear so.”
Richard suddenly realized that Jill was actually discussing his investigation with him rather than avoiding it.
“You usually don’t want to talk about this,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“It’s important to you,” she said. “And you’re important to me.”
“Jill, am I just fooling myself and setting Molly up for a fall?”
“Nothing could be worse than what has already happened to her, Richard. If anyone can find out what happened, you can.”
“I’m not that smart.”
“Smart enough,” she said, coming forward to give him a hug. “And no one is more persistent.”
He held her tightly. She squeezed him in return and then she patted his back as a signal to break the embrace.
“Come help me fix dinner.”

October 31
In an effort to get a clearer appreciation of the “milieu,” if nothing else, Richard decided to see what he could find out about Molly’s late pediatrician. Had he worked for the sheriff’s department it would have been simple, but without court authority Richard had to rely on persuasion to get the information. Doubting his ability in that regard, he brought Molly along, hoping that feminine sympathy would open the door. He anticipated doctor-patient confidentiality objections, but not reckoned on R. N. Myra Lampkin’s loyalty.
The middle-aged woman cut him off in mid explanation.
“You’ll need a court order for that, sir,” she said coldly.
Earlier she had exchanged lukewarm greetings with Molly, and now ignored her, setting her slightly fleshy jaw as she directed a red-eyed gaze challengingly at Richard. He wondered if the woman’s loyalty sprang from something a bit more intense than a strictly professional relationship.
“We aren’t asking for sensitive information,” he said, “nothing about patient medical histories or Dr. Wilson’s finances. We simply want to know who else might have been a regular client. We need to know who brought their children to him.”
She began shaking her head as soon as he started talking.
“Myra, can’t you help us?” added Molly. “Please.”
“Miss Randolph, I’d like to help you, but what happened to Dr. Wilson was terrible too. I was his nurse ever since he came here. During that time I always took care of things professionally. He appreciated me, depended on me. He was always concerned about his patients’ privacy. He was an honorable, compassionate man. You know that.”
“If he was compassionate then he would want to help Molly find out what happened to her daughter, don’t you think?” asked Richard.
Myra gazed at him indecisively, her resolve not really weakened by his argument or Molly’s plea, but seeming to wane from a lack of energy. She seemed profoundly disillusioned and weary. Wilson’s death had hit her hard.
“I can’t do what you want,” she said. “It’s neither professional nor ethical. I’m tired of telling people that.”
So someone from the sheriff’s department had asked her for the client list. No surprise there.
“Did the sheriff’s people come with a warrant?” he asked.
“What?”
“When they investigated the fire?” he said. “Isn’t that what you’re talking about?”
“What? No. The police never bothered with that. I meant the woman who came to the clinic about a month ago.”
“Woman?”
Myra nodded. “From Family Services,” she said.
“Child abuse, I imagine,” said Richard.
“She didn’t say. Come to think of it, that’s odd. She should have given me a specific name to ask about, but she didn’t. She just wanted Doctor Wilson’s office schedule and logs.”
“Did you let her see it?”
Nurse Myra gave him a “duh” look.
“She was official,” she said.

“What exactly were you hoping to find out?” Molly asked when they were back in the truck.
“Who his other patients were.”
“I don’t see how he could have had anything to do with my baby being taken. He died before it happened. What are you thinking happened, Mr. Carter?”
“I don’t know. Molly, right now I’m just trying to understand as much as I can about the people you interacted with. I don’t have any theories. To be honest with you, I don’t really know any more about what happened than I did to begin with.”
She was silent a long moment, looking out the window as they drove through town back to the café where her car was parked.
“It’s okay, Mr. Carter. The police run into the same thing, only they quit on me.”
“I won’t quit on you, Molly.”
As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t, because in all likelihood he would be forced to do just that if things kept drying up.
“I know you won’t want to, Mr. Carter. But you may lose hope. I won’t ‘cause hope’s all I got.”
He shook his head, trying to reassure her.
“I’m going to get me a job again,” she said. “Then I’m going to start paying you. It ain’t right you doing all this for nothing.”
“You don’t have to pay me, Molly. And you don’t have to call me ‘Mr. Carter.’ Call me ‘Richard.’”
They had arrived at the café.
“No. You’re wrong,” she said as she opened the door to get out. “I owe you, so I got to pay you something. And I owe both you and your wife respect, so I got to keep this professional and respectable. Okay, Mr. Carter?”
“Okay, Molly,” he answered with a smile. “Or should I call you ‘Miss Randolph?’”
“Don’t be doing that. I’d be turning around all the time to see if my momma just walked into the room,” she said giving him a weak smile.

The car parked across the street escaped his notice until he saw the driver get out at the same time he stepped down from the truck.
“Carter!”
The shout almost covered the sound of the slamming car door. A red-faced man stamped toward him.
“Tinsley?”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you better put an end to it or I will!”
“What are you talking about?”
Tinsley told him.

After Molly’s erstwhile suitor had vented and threatened at length, Richard got back in the pickup and drove downtown for some venting of his own.
“I may have mentioned your name,” replied Adams calmly, the hint of a smile playing at the edges of his flabby jowls.
“In what context?” demanded Richard.
“In the context of my investigation into the murder of Miss Nash.”
“You told him that I accused him of that?”
“Not exactly. I just gave you your due credit for the theory that Nash’s death was related to the kid’s disappearance. That is your theory, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say Tinsley did it.”
“Cheer up. I’m doing what you wanted, taking another look at what might have happened with Molly Randolph that night. Don’t get all incensed. You put yourself in the middle of all this, not me.”
Richard didn’t like taking Tinsley’s heat, but Adams had only employed a tactic investigators had been using forever.
“So. How did he react?” he asked.
“Angry, not guilty. Said he didn’t even know Katie Nash.”
“Are you going to try the same thing with Bobby McComb?”
“Maybe,” said Adams with a grin. “You’ll know when he shows up at your door.”
“Very funny. Are you making any headway at all on the case?”
Adams stared at him a moment before answering.
“Oh yeah,” he began with his customary sarcasm. “I forgot to keep you informed. We’re supposed to coordinate our efforts, aren’t we? I’m about to make a coordinated raid---you know, to round up all the conspirators.”
Adams obviously couldn’t take him much less seriously, so Richard figured he had nothing to lose in asking about another mysterious death.
“What do you make of what happened to Dr. Wilson?”
“Wilson?”
“The pediatrician Molly took Mancie to---you know, the guy who died in a fire around the time the baby disappeared.”
“Wilson? You gotta be kidding. Why don’t you just round up all the traffic deaths in the county and see if there’s a connection there.” Adams shook with laughter. “That’s the thing about conspiracies, Carter. Once they get going everybody wants a piece of the action. People were just dying to get involved. First Katie Nash and then the good doctor.”
“The doctor died first,” Richard reminded him.
Adams grinned.
“This is why I look forward to your little visits, Carter. You come up with things I would never think of. I see it now. Wilson was killed because he was operating a black market baby operation. One of the other conspirators killed him to keep him from spilling the beans, right?”
The ridicule was the price for maintaining his police contact, but Richard was beginning to wonder if it was worth it.
“Molly and I went to talk to his nurse today,” he said. “She wouldn’t let us see a list of his other patients, but you could probably get it from her.”
“And I would do that because I have such a high regard for your investigative instincts?”
“I wasn’t the first person to ask her about for the client list.”
Adams smiled.
“And now you’re fishing to find out if I already got it. You want me to share it with you.”
“She said it was a woman. Do you have a female investigator in the department?”
“No women,” said Adams, turning serious. “You sure about that---about the woman, I mean?”
“That’s what she said. She said the woman claimed to be from Family Services, but I don’t think she was. She asked for the client list, not a specific medical record.”
Adams was grinning and shaking his head dismissively, but Richard’s last remark gave him pause.
He picked up the phone and punched in a number.
“Marge? This is Sergeant Adams. I need a favor. One of your caseworkers may have gone to check out something at Dr. Wilson’s office.”
He listened and nodded.
“Yeah, I know, but this would have been after he died.”
“I see. Then could you tell me if you all would ever have an interest in something more general than that, like a list of the patients he might have seen?”
“Okay. I’d appreciate it if you could try to find out for me. Thanks, Marge.”
Adams rocked in his squeaky swivel chair. When he spoke it was as if he was speaking to himself.
“I know you’re trying to be helpful, Carter. And getting all the pieces of a puzzle together would help, but you just keep bringing me pieces of a bunch of different puzzles. That don’t help.”
He turned to Richard.
“I’m going to be sorry for asking this, but what do you think Wilson’s death had to do with Molly Randolph’s baby?”
“No idea, but someone else seems interested in him, and it seems from the telephone conversation I just overheard that they lied about being from Family Services. Sounds like maybe there’s something there we should know about.”
“Don’t get carried away with that ‘we’ stuff,” said Adams softly.
He seemed deep in thought.

The next day, Richard was called up from the grease pit to take a call. He wiped the oil from his hands as best he could before taking the cell phone.
“It’s the Sheriff’s Department,” said his boss. “You in trouble?”
“Not that I know of,” Richard said before answering the phone.
“Carter.” It was Adams. “I got someone I want you to meet. Call it professional courtesy. Can you get down here by twelve-thirty?”
“No problem. What’s it about?”
“I already told you.”
The phone went dead.

“Miss Rafferty and I have been having a nice chat about you, Carter,” said Adams as Richard entered his office.
The young blonde frowned at the words, stood, and extended a hand.
“Sarah Rafferty,” she said, gripping his hand firmly and releasing it quickly.
She was a trim, athletic woman, not model thin, more gym sculpted. She looked like she could take care of herself if push came to shove.
“Richard Carter,” he said, unconsciously putting his black-nailed hands in his coverall pockets before sitting down.
“Miss Rafferty is a real investigator, Carter,” said Adams.
She gave Richard a ‘don’t look at me; it’s his show’ shrug and smile.
Sarah Rafferty was striking, with long hair and the sort of startlingly intelligent dark brown eyes that made men stare, avert their glance, and look back again.
“This is your mystery woman,” said Adams.
“Mystery woman?”
“The lady who enquired about Doctor Wilson’s appointments list.”
“Why did you do that?” Richard asked her.
“It was for a case I’m working,” she said without pause.
“Malpractice?” asked Richard.
Adams roared. “I told you he had a theory for everything.”
“No,” she said. “Not malpractice. If Dr. Wilson was culpable for anything you might call it alienation of affection.”
“You can sue for that?” asked Richard. “I thought that was nineteenth century stuff. Whose affection was he alienating?”
“My client’s wife.”
“I called you in because you need to understand the situation here,” said Adams, breaking in. “Miss Rafferty’s client is involved in a delicate legal situation. Your stumbling around could complicate it.”
Something wasn’t right.
“I’m trying to find a missing baby,” Richard said to Rafferty. “Why should I worry about stirring things up with some divorce suit?”
“Wilson had nothing to do with the kid,” said Adams angrily. “And this isn’t just some divorce proceeding. Her client is Rennie Peele.”
Like most blue-collar people Richard instinctively disliked people who used their wealth to leverage special treatment.
“This is about money,” he said distastefully. “How much is Lyla in line for if you can’t prove infidelity?”
“You’re out of line, Carter,” warned Adams.
“I’m always out of line,” he snapped. “So Peele doesn’t want Lyla to know what he’s looking for. Is that because he’s afraid she’ll countersue. He’s got an affair of his own to hide, right?”
“Carter, the specifics of Mr. Peele’s divorce are none of your business,” said Adams.
Richard waved him off.
“I already know they had a prenuptial agreement,” he said, still addressing Rafferty. “Evidently infidelity might alter the settlement. So how much money are we talking about?”
“Why in the hell do you need to know how much money is involved?” shouted Adams.
“Because I want to know how much Molly’s baby is worth! You’re telling me to quit before I screw up this money-grubbing legal contest. So tell me, Miss Rafferty, how much money does it take to supersede finding out about a missing child?”
“It’s a shame about the child, but frankly, Mr. Peele is not concerned with that one way or the other. I’m here because Mr. Peele specifically told me to talk to you,” she said.
“To me?” asked Richard in surprise. “Why?”
“Because I reported to him that your . . . investigation was crossing my own, and that being untrained you were not . . . shall we say, ‘discreet’ in your inquiries.”
“Damned bull in a china shop,” inserted Adams.
“So you don’t want Lyla to know that he’s looking for loopholes in the agreement.”
“She violated the terms of the agreement. I’m just looking for confirmation.”
“So now she’s entitled to how much less?”
“That’s difficult to calculate and not really my concern, but unless I do my job right she gets half of everything that he’s made since they’ve been married.”
“I understand that he made most of his money before they were married.”
Rafferty cocked her head. Richard flattered himself with the idea that she was impressed.
“There’s a complication,” she said. “A technicality. Since they’ve been married he’s sold a lot of his real estate and reinvested. The lawyers say that can be interpreted as income by the terms of the agreement. It’s a lot of money.”
“Mr. Adams,” a secretary called from the doorway. “The sheriff wants you.”
The swivel chair squeaked and groaned in protest as the grumbling Adams levered himself from behind his desk. While he was leaving the room, Richard thought of a productive way to placate both Peele and the obviously nervous Adams.
“I’ll do what you want,” he told Rafferty. “If you go across the street to the diner with me.”
“You want to buy me lunch?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t afford it, and my wife wouldn’t approve. I just want you to talk to me a little longer.”
“We can talk here.” she pointed out.
“No. Mr. Adams is upset. I don’t want to upset him further.”

The waitress gave them the small town fish eye when she brought water and took their order.
“So let me guess,” said Rafferty. “You want me to give you the list you went to Wilson’s nurse for.”
“Exactly.”
The waitress came back with their coffee.
When Richard asked for separate checks, she rolled her eyes and walked away.
“What makes you think that I’ve got the list?”
“Because you’re good.”
“How do you know that?”
“Peele hires only the best. Someone once told me that he’s a good judge of talent, if not wives.”
“Do you know why I’m even here with you, much less considering what you’re asking for?”
“You want to be rid of me.”
“Partly, but call it professional courtesy.”
“Don’t tell me that you actually consider me a real detective, Rafferty. You don’t consider me your peer because I’m not.”
“I was talking about our former professions,” she said. “I was in the Marine’s too.”
Richard wondered why she was trying so hard to make a connection.
“If I had the list, just why should I give it to you?” she asked.
“Because I’ll keep blundering around in your way unless you do.”
She stared into her coffee as if considering and then looked into his eyes speculatively.
“I need to make a call,” she said, getting up and taking her purse with her.
Richard sipped his coffee and watched her disappear into the restroom. Ten minutes later she emerged, walking purposefully toward him. She stopped at the table but didn’t sit.
“I’ll mail you a copy,” she said, as she picked up her ticket. “Just stay away from Foxwood Pointe and stop following Lyla.”
“I’m not following her. Foxwood Pointe is where she lives, I take it?”
“Give me your word.”
He nodded his agreement.
“And what about Bobby McComb?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“He was her manager when she was trying to become a singer. Was she having an affair with him too?”
She gave him a look that could have meant anything or nothing before turning to leave. Then she turned back.
“Jerry Chandler has a big mouth,” she said. “Remember that when you talk to him again.”
Then she was gone.




November 1
It had been a bad day in the grease pit. Missing tools, muddy undercarriages, a crabby boss, and an insipient head cold made worse by the dank work bay left Richard both tired and glum. The unstamped manila envelope in the mailbox when he got home made up for it. Ripping it open for a quick look confirmed that Rafferty had come through on her promise. He took it inside, his anticipation growing like that of a child getting a long expected present. He reluctantly set it aside and went to the kitchen to put on coffee. He wanted it ready for Jill when she got home. Knowing that she would get little of his attention once he immersed himself in the logs, he decided to do up the unwashed breakfast dishes as well.
His calculated measures to forestall her displeasure accomplished, he finally settled down on the couch to examine Wilson’s appointment logs. Immediately something about the logs made him vaguely uneasy. Nevertheless, he quickly became engrossed, so much so that he failed to hear Jill come in.
“What have you got there?” she asked, startling him.
“Wilson’s appointments log,” he said, looking up only briefly. “I never knew doctors saw so many patients. I mean I know you have to wait forever when you have an appointment, but there are over three hundred names for just one week. Do you have any idea how much money that is?”
She looked sourly at the multipage document.
“I thought you were going to work today.”
“I did. Rennie Peele’s investigator got this for me. It was in the mail box when I got home.”
“Why?” she asked, setting down her books.
“Why what?”
“Why would he do that for you?”
“Peele wants me out of the way as soon as possible,” he said softly without looking up. “What do you think about entering all this in a database?”
“I think it’s a lot of work at the keyboard.”
“Yeah, but then I can try different sorts . . . maybe find a pattern or something. It’s like this whole thing. I’ve got a bunch of pieces, but have no idea how they fit or even if they fit. I need something to start snapping together. It’s frustrating.”
“Molly’s pressuring you,” she said edgily.
“What? No, not really. I mean no more than I could expect being a ‘Godsend’ and all.”
Jill came behind the couch and massaged his shoulders.
“You can’t demand success anymore than she can. You both must accept the possibility that you may never find out what happened. It may be impossible for her to accept that, but not for you.”
“Too bad Rafferty didn’t move in next door to her,” he said as he reached up to cover one of her hands on his shoulder.
“Who?”
“Peele’s investigator. Sarah knows what she’s doing.”
“A woman?”
“Yeah. I think she’s pretty good. She even knew that I spoke with Jerry Chandler. I can’t imagine how she found that out.”
“Impressive, huh?”
“I’ll say. She’s got it all: looks, poise, intimidating intelligence---kind of like you, only not so bookish.”
“Bookish?”
“Poor choice of words. I mean she’s not an academic. She’s . . .”
“One of the guys, only with jugs?” she suggested.
He turned in surprise, his mouth open. Jill’s serious expression gave way to an amused smile.
“You had me going there,” he said.
“You mean I actually got my husband’s attention for a moment?”
Richard slipped the pages of the log back into the envelope and pitched it onto the coffee table.
“I made coffee,” he said. “What say we have a cup in the kitchen before I help you get supper up?”
“You don’t have to cater to me, Richard,” she said. “Do what you want.”
“I am doing what I want,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her onto his lap. “I want to be with this woman who has it all: looks, poise, intimidating intelligence.”
“What else do your investigator friend and I have in common?” she asked, holding back.
“Great jugs,” he said with a laugh as he pulled her to him. “But seriously---she’s not a friend. Not my type. Too manly.”
“Manly? So she’s like . . . one of the guys?”
“You not jealous.”
“You admire her. It’s plain to see.”
“I admire her competence---especially compared to my bungling. I’m not physically attracted to her.”
She avoided his eyes.
“Hey. You’re putting me on, aren’t you? You’re not serious.”
“You don’t seem too physically attracted to me either,” she said looking at him challengingly. “Do you know---”
“Over a month and a half,” he said, cutting her off. “I’m well aware of my . . . shortcomings.”
“Is it me, Richard? Am I doing something that . . .”
“You!” he said with a bitter laugh. “Is it you?”
For a moment the only sound was that of a car going by outside. Richard was angry, partly at Jill, but mostly with himself and with fate, or whatever it was, that made things turn out the way they had.
“What have I done to you, Jill? I’m too old and . . . damaged for you. If I had left you alone then you could---”
“Be dead,” she interrupted impatiently. “We both know that.”
“You didn’t have to marry me though.”
“I did! I love you, Richard. I’m not sorry . . . I’ve never been sorry for that, but it’s . . .”
She pushed up and stood with her back to him.
“Whatever it is just go ahead and say it, Jill.”
“Damn it! It wasn’t gratitude. I didn’t rescue you. I fell in love with this strong man. That’s who I married, and that’s who I want.”
“Okay. But just how long can you put up with this strong man who can’t even give you a normal sex life?”
“As long as it takes. Don’t you dare quit on me. That you do owe me.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said miserably.
“What’s wrong is that you can’t accept what happened as just chance---but it was, Richard. It was. You insist on taking responsibility for something that was not your fault, and as much as I hate that, I don’t think I could love you so much if you could just let it go. What happened does matter, and you will never be free of it. It isn’t fair, but we’ve got to find a way to live with it.”
“But what does it have to do with my . . . being a man?”
“The doctor thinks---”
“I know what the doctor thinks,” he interrupted impatiently. “My subconscious connects the violence with sex. That’s bull!”
“It makes sense. Your subconscious is shutting down your libido because of guilt. The linkage is unnatural so you reject it.”
“He told you all that too? That’s crap. He’s not in my head. They just makes up stuff like that for a living. I don’t enjoy thinking about the stuff I saw, and it never enters my mind when I’m . . . in bed with you. I think of you Jill, nothing else. My problem has to be physical, maybe something to do with circulation because I never had it before Mic sliced up my back.”
“Maybe, but I just wish you would resume the sessions.”
“We can’t afford the sessions. I’ll be all right. I know it’s been a long time, but I did all right not long ago. When we get more settled and I can stop worrying about financial stuff, start getting more rest and stuff, things will get back to normal.”
Jill realized that his denial was intransigent. Further argument would only anger him and frustrate her.
“We get things back to normal by doing normal things,” she said. “Let’s both stop brooding.”
“You’ll tell me if we’re in trouble, won’t you?” he asked softly.
“In trouble? What do you mean?”
“Like if . . . you . . . want out.”
“I won’t want out, Richard. Don’t make me say that again. And don’t doubt me. I’ve never doubted you. I trusted you when things were much harder for me than they are for you now. Remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Good,” she said. “Now, let’s have our coffee.”
“Right.”
“And that little matter of helping with dinner.”
“A promise is a promise, I guess,” he said, affecting a light mood.
“Yes. And we keep promises.”

Sleep came early for once, but Richard awoke at three with a stiff back and a restless mind that refused to either shut down or remain focused. It flitted from one inconsequential to another, settling at last on a line from a song he had disliked since adolescence. He gave up at four, stealthily gathered clothes, and then went to the kitchen to dress and put on coffee. It was becoming a ritual.
Carrying a cup to the living room, he booted the computer and began entering Wilson’s patient log into a database. The donkeywork had him yawning until he found a two-hour skip in a Wednesday’s appointments on the first week of January. He dismissed it, figuring that doctors had personal business to take care of like everyone else. The first week of February had another two-hour gap on Wednesday. A quick scan revealed monthly gaps, always from one to three in the afternoon.
Not enough time for a round of golf, he thought.
Then he realized what it was about the logs that had made him uneasy.
Typed?
The logs had been word-processed, not hand-written, meaning that they could have easily been amended. Lacking a way to verify authenticity, however, he decided to take the document at face value for the time being because broadening a possible conspiracy to include both Peele and Rafferty approached the ridiculous. Yet he couldn’t shake the suspicion that the gaps were deletions, not personal business appointments. Perhaps Wilson’s nurse used a computer. If they were computerized, they could be archived on CD or simply kept on the hard drive. Either way, however, it would still have been simple for Rafferty to delete a particular monthly appointment before running him off a copy.
Paranoid, he thought. If she wanted to deceive me, then why not fabricate names to fill the spots rather than simply delete them? And if there were deletions why do you think Rafferty did it? Why not Wilson’s overprotective nurse? Besides, the guy was working twelve and fourteen hour days. Maybe he scheduled himself some down time. Or maybe he had sessions with a shrink or hospital staff meetings.
A staff conference could take two hours, especially if run by paper-shufflers instead of doctors. Administrators were fond of two things: paperwork and meetings. An officious bean-counter might like nothing better than cracking the whip over a bunch of highly-paid physicians.
He noticed that one of the pages with a gap had text not quite square to the edge. Momentarily excited, he checked to see if that were true of all such pages. It wasn’t, but faint images on the upper left corner told the story.
Staple holes.
He double-checked and found none on the pages with appointment gaps.
You went to a lot of trouble, Rafferty. Why? You suspect Wilson and Lyla had an affair. Okay, but how does passion become a once-a-month clockwork thing?
November 2
A pink slip was waiting for him when Richard got to work. He wasn’t sure why, and the boss would only say that he didn’t need him anymore. Dreading having to tell Jill about yet another failure, he drove aimlessly, wasting gas they couldn’t afford to delay going home. Jill wouldn’t be there until four, but home just didn’t seem like a good place to be at the moment. He considered visiting Adams to suggest that Rafferty might be concealing evidence, but he didn’t feel up to the man’s wit after getting canned again.
Finding himself in the area, and ticked off at Rafferty’s duplicity, he decided to drive through Foxwood Pointe where Lyla-slash-Honeybunch-slash-Charity rented a house with her estranged husband’s money. At a convenience store, he borrowed a phone book to look up Lyla’s address. He found the subdivision, drove the loop at the end of a cul-de-sac and parked to study the house in his side-view mirror. The neighborhood was not nearly as posh as it pretended, but with his oil-stained hands, grungy coveralls, and beat-up pickup, he was conspicuously out of place. He expected a security patrol to arrive at any moment.
The truck idled roughly, shuddered, and coughed to a stop. A quick look at the gage assured him that he still had gas. As he reached for the ignition, deciding to head home, he heard someone trying to start another vehicle to no avail. The sound didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Then he spotted it: old Grand Prix on the street near Lyla’s drive. Intent on the house, he had driven by without noticing its oxidized paint, peeling Landau roof, and the diminutive driver. The door creaked open and a small, dark teenager got out. Her carriage and posture bespoke trepidation as she cut across the lawn to Lyla’s house.
“Don’t expect sympathy there, kid,” he said softly as he watched her ring the bell.
After a moment, the door jerked open and the girl recoiled. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was strident, incredulous, annoyed, and undoubtedly Lyla Peele. The girl gestured toward her car, but held her ground instead of retreating as Richard had expected.
The door slammed, which didn’t surprise him, but the girl didn’t leave as he expected. Then the garage door slid up, and Lyla stalked out and flung something at the girl’s chest. She failed to catch it, and quickly stooped to pick up. By the time she arose Lyla was in her face. All he heard was, “Got that!” The girl nodded quickly and averted her eyes. Lyla stamped back into the garage and the girl followed. A moment later, the Lexus backed slowly out, brake lights blinking as it backed jerkily down the drive. Short-cutting the turn, it hopped the curb and made a short but deep rut in the newly-lain sod.
“You’ll catch hell for that too,” said Richard as he watched the girl swivel her head, trying to maneuver the unfamiliar car.
She drove around the loop and went past without glancing his way. When she neared the corner he started the truck and followed her to a nearby mall where she parked near the edge of the lot, perhaps to avoid having to park the car in close quarters. He parked between her and the building, waited until she passed, and then followed her inside. When he saw what she purchased, he understood both her relationship with Lyla and also what the monthly two-hour blocks in Wilson’s appointment log were all about. Doctors apparently still made house calls to the rich and famous. Rennie Peele bought personal pediatric care for his only offspring.
He could understand Rafferty doctoring the appointment log before turning it over. She was trying to nail down a Wilson-Lyla affair, and didn’t want him tipping Lyla to it. Simply telling him the truth would have accomplished that, but of course, Rafferty didn’t know that. He decided that he might as well go home and shred Wilson’s logs.

“Why did he have to let you go?” asked Jill.
Phrasing the question to absolve him irritated Richard. It shouldn’t have. Jill was just being Jill, loyal and understanding. That was the problem. She was always understanding because he always gave her something to have to be understanding about.
“He didn’t say,” he said listlessly. “I was the last hire and the first to be let go, so that’s the name of the tune.”
She gave him a pained smile.
“You’ll find another job. Maybe things will be better for us in the spring.”
“Spring? What’s happening in the spring?”
“I thought maybe you could apply for that military college program again. You can---”
“I’m not interested in college,” he interrupted.
“You’re interested in criminology. I know you are,” she insisted. “You could study it and we could have some income too.”
“What’s the point, Jill? I can’t work in law enforcement, not with a felony charge hanging over me.”
“You received a pardon.”
“No one could take me on, Jill---not with the load I’m carrying. Taking government money to study criminology would be . . . well, it wouldn’t be right.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she said irritably. “You deserve it. You earned it. My God, how you earned it! Besides, you can’t tell me that you’re not interested anymore. I know better.”
“I’m not,” he said sharply.
“Then what’s all this with Molly about?” she asked, her tone matching his.
“I’m just trying to help her because . . . she just laid that on me.”
“It’s not just obligation. I’ve watched you, Richard. You don’t care about your jobs. You do them, but you don’t really care. Even now. The only reason getting fired upsets you is that you have to explain it to me.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is! All you really care about, all you think about is the case you’re working on.”
“I don’t have a case, Jill. I have a missing kid I’m trying to find out about.”
“I’m not going to argue semantics with you, Richard. This is what you care about. It’s what you want to do. You haven’t given it up, so why pretend?”
He turned his back.
She was right about how he felt, but wrong about what he should do. Before Mic Boyd walked back into his life with all his nightmare craziness, Richard had dreams of degrees in criminology and accounting, followed by application to the FBI. Felony homicide, pardoned but not resolved, had barred that door forever.
“It’s just this one time, Jill,” he said without turning around to face her. “I’m going to do what I can for Molly and then it’s through forever. I swear it is.”
Her silence said she wasn’t buying it.
“I’ve got a plan,” he ad-libbed, trying to sound convincing. “Tomorrow I’m going to see about starting my own business.”
“Doing what?”
“I’ve got the truck . . . some tools. I like carpentry---handyman stuff. I’ll have to work in the county though. You need a license to do most stuff in the city.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“It’ll probably be pretty slow at first,” he said. “I’ll put an add in the paper tomorrow.”
“We’ll have to get an answering machine,” she observed. “I’ll take care of that tomorrow at noon.”
And so the issue was resolved with both of them trying to show more enthusiasm for the venture than they possessed. Richard did like carpentry work, and had some facility at it, but had no enthusiasm at all for the financial side of the business, making estimates, negotiating deals, and least of all collecting debts. For her part, Jill knew that the business would almost certainly fail if not be stillborn. If it did, however, it would not be because she failed to support her husband’s efforts.

Jill awoke in the dark, felt gingerly toward Richard’s side of the bed, finding it both empty and cool. She rolled to her side and raised her head to look at the closed door. A faint line at the bottom told her that the computer was on in the living room. She got up, pulled on her robe, and went to see what he was doing.
Over his shoulder she saw Mancie Randolph smiling sweetly from the monitor.
Jill hated what was happening. Although not prone to raging against fate, she felt unjustly treated by the obsession afflicting him. Real investigators were like doctors, counselors, and family service workers. They developed objectivity as armor against the misery that was often their work. They left their problems at the office. Richard would never be able to do that, which was why she had been secretly glad that his law enforcement career had come to an end with the pardon.
She stood in the dark wondering what he was thinking as he stared at the dead child. Surely after all this time the baby was dead---dead to everyone but her mother and Richard. Then a terrible realization struck her. She could either have Richard like he was now, or have him the way she had found him when she came home from the funeral. There was no thought of not having him. He was her life now.
No matter how much it rends your heart and makes you miserable, you need this. She thought. I don’t know why, and I don’t understand it, but you do.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” he said softly without turning. “I tried to be quiet.”
“What are you doing, Richard?”
He realized that her question referred to more than his present insomnia.
“Family is the most important thing in the world, Jill. That’s what Alberto told me. He said that it might be the only important thing.”
She thought of her Aunt Mirabelle, the only family she had ever had until Richard.
“It is,” she said.
“Don’t you see why I have to do this?”
“Yes. I understand. I just wish you could get some sleep.”
“So do I,” he said, punching off the computer without shutting it down properly. “I suppose Godsends are supposed to get by without it.”
“Come lay with me anyway,” she said.
November 3
On his way to the newspaper office the next morning Richard passed The Honeycomb and noticed a computerized sign at the entrance. Figuring it advertised an act, he wondered if Lyla was making a come back. Then he saw that it was a high tech realtor’s sign. Worrying that McComb might sell and leave town before he had a chance to talk to him again, he stopped at the corner and went back.
An aproned man at the bar flicked him a glance as he entered, but quickly returned his attention to the diminutive blonde behind the bar with her back to the door. Despite standing a head taller, the man’s body language was all subservience. Lyla spoke in low tones. He mutely returned quick periodic nods. Richard scanned the bar for Bobby McComb, but didn’t see him. Lyla Peele turned, dismissed Richard with a glance, snatched her purse from the bar, and walked briskly past.
He waited until the door shut behind her, and then took a seat at the bar.
“What’ll it be?” asked the bartender.
Richard ordered a beer.
“Where’s Bobby?” he asked as the young man, perhaps a college student, wiped down a bottle from the cooler.
“Who?” asked the bartender.
“Mr. McComb, the guy that owns the place.”
The young man looked confused. Then he shrugged.
“I don’t know the guy. Charity---I mean, Mrs. Peele hired me. I don’t know no McCollum or whatever.”
Whether general or only situational, the young man’s ignorance seemed genuine. Richard sipped in silence. Perhaps the bartender was a good listener, but he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Casting about for someone who might know where McComb was, Richard recognized one of the barmaids. He went over.
“Hi,” he said. “Know where I could find Bobby?”
“Hasn’t been here for almost a week,” she said. “I think he’s like sick or something.”
“Sick?”
“Yeah. One day I come to work, and the place is locked up. Then Mrs. Peele shows up and says she’s gonna run things until it’s sold.”
“Did she say where Bobby was?”
“No.”
In her place he would have been curious.
“Didn’t you ask her?”
She snorted.
“You don’t ask Mrs. Peele nothing unless it’s what she wants you to do.”
“She comes in every day then?”
“Yeah,” she said, glancing at the door nervously.
“You know what Mr. McComb was asking for the place.”
“You have to ask Mrs. Peele or the real estate guy,” she said. “Look, I got work to do. I don’t know nothing about the business.”

Placing his ad forgotten, Richard looked up an address in the phone book, and then drove over to find McComb. McComb’s vinyl-covered, assembly line house was fronted by a postage stamp of immaculate sod. A for sale sign sat in the middle of the lawn. There was no garage and no car in the drive. Richard rang the bell anyway, receiving no answer just as he anticipated. Before leaving he jotted down the real estate agent’s name on the back of an envelop from the glove box. He stopped at a convenience store and borrowed their phone book to look up the Realtor’s address.
Kirsten Lance looked just like her billboard near the 65 exit. Enthusiasm flared and then died from her eyes when she realized Richard only wanted information, not property.
“Did Mr. McComb tell you why he wanted to sell both his house and his business?” he asked.
“We don’t discuss things like that,” she said. “Our clients personal affairs are . . . ” She paused, perhaps searching for a synonym. “. . . their own affairs,” she finished with an unsatisfied frown. “Basically we only discuss the features of the property . . and the price of course. Anything else is confidential. We respect our clients, both sellers and buyers.”
“Sure. That’s the way it ought to be,” he agreed. “I just need to see him. Is he ill or something?”
“He seemed fine when he and Mrs. Peele came in to list his home and her business.”
“Her business? I thought it was his.”
“She owns it now.”
“I was sure that he owned it.”
“I think they had some sort of informal arrangement. He transferred his share to her last week. Good thing. It would have complicated a sale.”
He mulled that over.
“But he came in with her to list the property?”
“They came in to list his home last week,” she corrected him. “Mrs. Peele came in to list the business earlier this week.”
“So she bought him out. Do you know---”
“Look,” she said, cutting him off. “All I know is that she has clear title and is asking a reasonable price for an establishment with excellent location and good business. You aren’t interested in buying it by any chance?”
“I doubt that I could get together the financing,” he said as he tried to imagine a reason for Bobby McComb to make the sudden, and seemingly drastic, move.
“I might be able to put you in touch with someone who could help with that,” she said eagerly. “The banks are always interested in facilitating people wishing to make wise investments.”
“I’d need more than facilitating I’m afraid,” said Richard absently. “You said that Mr. McComb came in to list his home last week?”
She sighed irritably. Going to a desk she punched a keyboard a few times before looking up.
“The week before last actually,” she said. “Wednesday.”

Ten-thirty was too late to get an ad in the day’s paper, but Richard bought two weeks worth of a small general listing that included a hastily concocted business name and his phone number. With the caller id and an answering machine he hoped to get a few jobs from people who might call while he was away working on other jobs. He hoped that not many of them would do as he did and simply hang up when they couldn’t speak directly to a person.
The task done, and with nothing to do until Jill came home, he decided to take a trip to Eureka Springs for his other “job,” the non-paying one he was doing for Molly Randolph. Luck was with him, and although it was early afternoon when he arrived, he found Doris Chandler at the music show. She had no idea where her brother-in-law might be, but told him where he could find her husband. Rafferty was of the opinion that Jerry Chandler talked too much. Richard thought that not a bad characteristic for someone you were trying to get information from.
Bobby McComb’s brother was sitting on the upper level of a touristy café at a table where he and two men of his generation could overlook the street below while they solved the world’s problems. His face lit as he recognized Richard.
“Mr. Carter,” he said, full of good cheer. “Have a seat and let me introduce you to a couple of old friends. This guy trying to stem the jail-break of his remaining hair is Tom Vincent, and this is Howard Greonfeld. They’re two of the best Bluegrass men you’ll find this far from Nashville. Banjo, mandolin, guitar, dobro, you name it. If it’s got a string, they can make it sing.”
Richard exchanged firm handshakes with first one then the other.
“This fellow is Richard Carter, a sort of detective, I guess. Is that how you would describe yourself?” asked Jerry Chandler, a glint of humor in his eye.
“Hardly,” said Richard. “I’m just trying to help a friend find her baby.”
The remark sobered Chandler.
“You say a baby?” asked the one Chandler had introduced as Howard. “What happened?”
“No one knows,” replied Richard. “She just disappeared one night.”
“I remember hearing about that. Bad business,” said the other, standing up. “We gotta get going, Jerry.”
“Nice meeting you,” said Howard as he stood also. “Hope you all find that baby.”
Chandler watched his friends leave and then returned his attention to Richard.
“Did something come up that you needed to see me for?” he asked.
“Nothing came up. I was just wondering if you know where I could find your brother.”
“At his bar. He’s there every day.”
“Not for the past week. He sold his share to Lyla and she put it up for sale. You didn’t know?”
“No. I wonder what that’s all about. Are you sure?”
“There’s a for sale sign. The real estate agent told me about the transfer of ownership, and Lyla was at the bar giving orders this morning. By the way, his house is for sale too.”
Chandler’s puzzled expression gave way to a pained one.
“Not again.”
“He’s done this before?” asked Richard.
Chandler shrugged.
“Close enough. My brother cuts and runs when things get too comfortable.”
“You mean uncomfortable?
“No. Comfortable. He sees himself as some kind of rambler and rover---know what I mean? Things get stale he wakes up one morning and decides to leave and get a fresh start. We’ll hear from him sooner or later. Hell, I’m the musician in the family. I’m supposed to be the impractical Bohemian, not him.”
“I guess that’s okay if you don’t have property or people tying you down,” offered Richard. “You say he’s done this before?”
“Like an A-rab,” said Chandler, intentionally overstressing his hillbilly pronunciation. “Folds his tent and disappears into the night. He’ll show up in few days or weeks or months. I stopped worrying about him a long time ago. No use.”
He frowned into his coffee cup.
“I’m going to amend my statement, Mr. Carter. Maybe this time he did leave because it was getting uncomfortable. Lyla finally cut him loose.”
“So their relationship wasn’t just an agent thing?”
“You need to know that?” asked Chandler.
Richard shrugged. “Your boss has a private investigator trying to find out if they’re having an affair.”
“Bobby’s crazy about her, but if they were they were pretty discreet. The old man would like to be able to prove it, but I doubt that he will.”
“Would it void the prenuptial agreement?”
“He wouldn’t want it known for any other reason. Fact is, he doesn’t want it known at all. He wants to settle out of court to keep it out of the papers.” Chandler laughed. “Funny. The old man is about as sharp as anyone you hope to meet, but he got more than he bargained for with Lyla.”
“How so?”
“As long as the old man went childless, my guess is he thought he was shooting blanks. Then he marries Honeybunch and boom---he gets a kid.”
Richard scanned the room looking for Rafferty. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see her within earshot, but he didn’t.
“How sure is he that the child is his?” he asked.
Chandler laughed again. “Real sure after the DNA test he paid for. Renay is his all right. He thinks the test is what made Lyla sue for divorce, but I don’t think so. She kicked in the incentive clause in her contract and decided it was time to cash in and become a free agent again.”
“That’s pretty cold,” said Richard.
“She’s a cold babe,” replied Jerry Chandler frowning. “Mind telling me why you think all of this can help you?”
“It can’t. I just need to talk to Bobby.”
It wasn’t a good idea to give information rather than get it, but he wanted to keep on the talkative Chandler’s good side.
“I believe someone at the bar slipped Valium into Molly’s drink that night. I figure he might remember who had the opportunity---you know like who chatted her up, who she might have had a drink with, that sort of thing.”
“You’ve got a suspect you want him to confirm?”
“Nothing that definite.”
“I’ll tell you what. If my brother contacts me I’ll let you know where he is unless he asks me not to.”
Richard left his number.

On the way back to James Mill the obvious occurred to him. The realtor would have to have a contact address should someone make an offer on McComb’s house. He went there and she surprised him by giving it to him. It was a post office box in a town he had never heard of. When he got back to the car, he took a Missouri map from the glove box. Blue Creek was a small town on highway 60, no more than a hundred miles to the east of James Mill.
What kind of fresh start can you get in a town that size? he wondered. A “Bohemian” one, I guess.




November 4
The early morning had been an emotional salad of worry, self-pity, self-loathing, and anxious curiosity as Richard waited for Jill to express her exasperation at his procrastination in starting his handyman business. She even seemed to take it in stride when he asked her to go out of town with him instead of waiting for calls. He wondered how long would her patience hold, how long until she decided to write him off like a bad debt. Could she really reconcile herself to supporting an emotional cripple? She had already admitted that he was no longer the man she thought she had married. Richard knew he should suck it up and stick with one job so that he could bring in a steady income even if it was only a pittance.
By mid-morning the recrimination slid away after doing its damage, and his mind returned to Molly. Molly was the one constant on his mind, not Jill. He didn’t understand how that could be. If Jill left him, his life truly would be over---no cliché, that, and no exaggeration. He clenched the wheel fiercely causing the car to swerve.
“What’s wrong?” Jill asked in alarm.
“Nothing . . . I was just thinking and . . . kind of jerked. Nothing.”
He had expected irritation when he broached the possibility of making the trip on Saturday. She had surprised him by suggesting that she could go along.
“This Blue Creek is in the middle of the karst area,” she said.
“The what?”
“The karst. There are many caves and natural springs there. Porous limestone underlies the entire area. It has an interesting history.”
“Like Eureka Springs, medicinal waters and all that?”
“Maybe, but I think mainly just reliable sources of good drinking water. Of course the streams were invaluable power sources.”
“Mills?”
“Yes. Today they attract sportsmen and tourists. The settlement period was quite interesting, not at all what most people imagine.”
“Ah. History. You wanted to see it firsthand. A field trip.”
“I wanted to be with you, Richard,” she said sliding a hand to his thigh.
He wondered if her unspoken question was, Why don’t you want to be with me?
“Hopefully I can find Bobby McComb and finish all that up early,” he said. “Then maybe we can do some sightseeing.”
In reality, he hadn’t figured out what to do with Jill while he was tracking down McComb. The prospect of her tagging along irritated him. It shouldn’t have. After all, he wasn’t a real detective, and it was she that was humoring him, not vice versa.
“Would it be out of your way to drop me off at the college while you’re going wherever it is you’re going?” she asked as if she had read his mind.
For a moment he thought she meant at SMSU, but they were already fifty miles east of Springfield.
“There’s a college on the way?” he asked.
“There is a community college in Blue Creek. I’m sure that I could use their library. You go about your business and pick me up when you’re through.”
He wondered what real work she could do at what he was sure would be an extremely limited small school library. He felt guilty at pushing her aside like a kid sister, but at the same time was relieved at her suggestion.
“You can come along if you wish,” he said half-heartedly.
Of course she picked up on it.
“Just take me to the college,” she said irritably. “It shouldn’t be difficult to find.”

The community college had been easy to find, likewise the post office where he now stood in the lobby looking at the single bank of boxes. There were fifty of them, each keyed and covered with an embossed glass door decorated with worn nineteenth century gilt. Number 34 was empty. When Richard went to the counter occupying the right half of the small vestibule, a thin, vested man looked up through wire-rimmed bifocals. He lacked Victorian visor and armbands; otherwise he could have stepped out of a movie.
“Can you tell be about the post office boxes?” Richard asked.
The clerk quoted a price.
“I see,” said Richard. “And how often are they filled? I mean how often is mail put in? Is it at a particular time of day or as they come in and get sorted?”
“Once a day. Most people pick up their mail before they open.”
“Before they open?”
“Yes, most of our box clients are businessmen. Overnight deliveries are in the boxes by nine. That’s when we open by the way.”
Richard thanked him and left considering the usefulness of a stakeout from the car. But if McComb had already checked his mail it would be pointless. Thinking morosely that his legwork had resulted in little more than working his legs, he failed to notice the woman walking toward him.
“What are you doing here?” she challenged when they were close enough that no one nearby could overhear.
Sarah Rafferty looked at him with a neutral expression, eyes flitting unobtrusively in a sweep of the street.
“I could ask you the same question,” he said, trying to sound professional.
Why he needed to impress her, he couldn’t say.
“You’re going back on our bargain,” she said.
“We had a bargain?”
“You promised to quit blundering around in my case. Remember?”
“Oh yeah. That was when you gave me the list of Wilson’s clients, the---shall we say, redacted list. Anyway, I didn’t follow you. McComb is selling his house. I got the PO Box from his real estate agent.”
“You’re looking for him,” she said, pulling a face.
“I thought he might be able to help me figure out who slipped Molly Valium at the bar the night her baby disappeared. His leaving town suddenly makes me think that he might have done it himself.”
“McComb left James Mill because you made him and Lyla nervous.”
Richard’s pulse quickened.
“They took the baby?” he asked.
“Of course not! It’s because they’ve got something to hide and now they know that someone is looking into them. You confirmed that.”
He shook his head.
“McComb knows that I’m only trying to help Molly. Lyla doesn’t even know who I am.”
“He knows that you told him you were trying to help Miss Randloph. That doesn’t mean he believes you. They’re real close to getting their hands on half of everything that Mr. Peele owns and you’re making them nervous. If you don’t quit what you’re doing, they might just get away with it.”
“You mean if I make them nervous then they might be more cautious and you won’t be able to catch them in---what’s the term---flagrant delecti?”
“Flagrante delecto,” she said in disgust. “You’ve seen too many movies. I won’t catch them playing hide the salami, but I might be able to establish that they’re living together.”
“Maybe you can get the nanny to testify,” he suggested. “I don’t think there’s any love lost between her and Lyla.”
The look of surprise on Rafferty’s face was quickly replaced by one of annoyance.
“You’ve been poking around Lyla’s place too,” she said. “I should have known. Just tell me that you didn’t tell Jerry Chandler about me.”
“How do you know I talked to him? Were you following me?”
“You did. Dammit!”
She shook her head in disgust.
“So you think Lyla will join Bobby here?” he asked.
“I’m not telling you anything. You got all you’re going to get from me. You can’t live up to your bargains.”
“Bargain? You edited Wilson’s appointments before sending them,” he reminded her. “He was going on housecalls to Lyla’s, right?”
“I should have made up some names,” she muttered.
“Why did you try to keep that from me?”
“I didn’t want you barging in! You’re a genius at screwing things up. You know that?”
“Well if McComb is here I still need to talk with him,” he said.
“No you don’t,” she said almost desperately. “He’s probably not even out there.”
She winced almost, but not quite, imperceptibly. Richard pretended not to notice.
Rafferty looked pained as she reached out to touch his upper arm.
“Look. Give me a chance to do what I’ve got to do without screwing things up for me. Please.”
“Will you let me know where Bobby McComb is?” he asked.
“If you go on back to James Mill, I’ll let you know---I promise.”
“I have to wait for my wife to get through with some business at the college here,” he said. “After she’s though I’ll trot on home. Fair enough?”
“That would be great.” Rafferty actually batted her eyes.
Richard let her think that her “feminine wiles” had worked their magic on him, but he had no intention of leaving before he found out where “out there” was. He drove to a filling station near the highway, watching surreptitiously as Rafferty passed. He pulled to a pump and got out as she waited for the light. Pretending to pump gas, he noted which way Rafferty turned onto the highway. When she was out of sight, he hung up the nozzle and followed at what he thought was a discreet distance.

The Blue Creek campus was a small cluster of new brick buildings surrounding a metal gymnasium that was the obvious centerpiece of the college. Next to it, newly-constructed athletic dorms fringed an ample parking lot. Further up the hill behind the athletic center were academic and administration buildings and the library where Richard had dropped her off. Absent, of course, were fraternity houses. The privileged class did not attend JUCO. The student body was a mix of small town and rural kids from the immediate area along with a sprinkling of athletes whose grades precluded attendance at a more prestigious school. The common sense motto on a billboard advertising the school hit the proper note: “BCCC, a good place to start.”
Jill examined the austere collection of reference books, surprised to see a complete, although dated edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. She picked up one its heavy volumes and saw neatly printed on the flyleaf: “These volumes are presented to Blue Creek Community College by Irene Chronister, once called ‘teacher,’ a true lexiphile, and amateur learner.”
Initially the term “lexiphile” hit her as intellectual pretension, as she was sure it would any reasonably sophisticated student. The incongruity of the last phrase, however, made her reconsider. She opened the volume to the appropriate page and found what had been intended to be discover. The word came from her native tongue, and had she been thinking in French rather than English, she would have understood what Irene Chronister had meant. She laughed aloud in appreciation.
Yes, Ms. Chronister. The only good reason to do anything is for the love of it.
That thought came to her again later when she read a public notice in the county bi-weekly newspaper. She put the paper aside and glanced around at the nearly empty tables. A scattering of students sat in various stages of concentration, reading, taking notes---one had fallen asleep. She got up to take a second look at the bulletin board. Then she went to one of the computers and called up the Hawthorn County web page.

Within two miles he lost Rafferty and pulled over to study the map. McComb probably lived in the county, and there were only four roads leading off the highway, so that probably meant that he either lived on one of them or on the highway itself. The first road only led to the county landfill. The second took him past ramshackle trailers to an abandoned sawmill. While driving down the third, this one paved, he tried to imagine what Rafferty had been doing at the post office if she already knew where McComb had holed up.
He pondered that puzzle as he passed the county ambulance shed. He thought it odd that it was so far out of town, but figured there was probably another on the other approach to Blue Creek. The ostentatious sign for yet another gated community appeared within a mile. In the distance a handful of new multi-storied, multi-gabled houses stood cheek to jowl on a low range of wooded hills. Yellow bones of roof trusses poked skyward evidencing continuing construction. He drove through the gate and took the meandering pavement past the new colony of the privileged expecting to see Rafferty’s car or the vehicle that had always been parked near the door at The Honeycomb, the one he assumed was Bobby McComb’s. He looped through the development without seeing either. Construction workers took no note as he went buy and turned back onto the road he had taken coming in.
He stopped at the gate again to study the map. The last of the four roads off the highway before leaving the county was graveled, and led off to the left. Dust billowed behind him as his tires cut noisily through recently graded gravel. Passing through a stand of second-growth timber, he emerged into rolling grassland overgrown with sprouts and brambles, the sort of scrub badly in need of bushhogging. As he topped a low hill, a stretch of water came into view down to his right, a small lake or large pond. On the far side, a log house---it was too large to be termed a “cabin”---sat at the water’s edge. Descending the hill toward a curve, he lost sight of it. He slowed uncertainly and then stopped. The road probably curved around the lake and ran past the isolated house. Rafferty obviously thought Lyla was with McComb. Peele’s investigator hadn’t played it strictly straight with him, but if she was surveiling the place, he didn’t want to blow it for her. It seemed ungentlemanly after her clumsy attempt to use of her femininity on him.
“Call it professional courtesy from one jarhead to another,” he muttered.
The truth was that Rafferty intimidated him. He didn’t want to mess up in front of her again. Besides if McComb was there, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to barge in just yet.
The house was certainly isolated enough for a hideout, and if Lyla and Bobby were about to come into a sizeable fortune, they could certainly afford it. He could see nothing from where he was, so he eased forward, still undecided as to whether he should drive to the house or even just drive past it. Still trying to decide, he slowly rounded the curve and came upon Rafferty’s car parked just off the road near a cedar glade. He caught no sight of her. Embarrassed to have blundered into her surveillance for the second time in one day, he kept driving.
Figuring the road led to or past the cabin, he looked for a turnaround. Instead the road turned left, crossed a hill, and came to a dead end at a barricade with a sign advising that the bridge ahead was out. He turned around and drove past Rafferty’s car, again without catching sight of her, and went back to the highway. Consulting the map again, he could find no other road leading off toward the cabin, nor one coming in from the other side. A quarter of a mile down the highway he came to a turnoff with mounds of rocky spoil either side evidencing recent construction. Two orange, black, and white signs stapled to railroad tie gate posts advised prospective visitors, “Private Property. Keep Out.”
Richard was in the process of turning around when he saw Rafferty driving toward him. He waited for her to pass, hoping she wouldn’t recognize him. A foolish thought.
She stopped and slid down her window.
“At least you’ve got enough sense not to just drive on up there I hope, ” she said.
“McComb and Lyla are at that house across the lake, aren’t they?” he asked.
She gave him a sour look.
“You sure find out a lot for someone who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to blunder in again,” he said.
Rafferty closed the window and drove off, leaving him feeling like a child caught playing with his father’s tools. Her remark made him reluctant to go up to the house, something that felt awkward anyway given his unofficial and unprofessional status. He wanted to talk to McComb, but didn’t want to queer the surveillance. After all, Peele had been decent enough to have Adams clue him in about Rafferty and the divorce investigation. He hesitated. Rafferty hadn’t even confirmed that McComb was at the place on the lake. Today was a microcosm of his effort so far. He had discovered something, but couldn’t fit things into any kind of a coherent picture. It might begin to make sense if he went up and talked to McComb, and then again it might not. And McComb might not be there. Whether he was or not, going to the cabin was sure to tip whoever was there that someone was watching them.
“She’s right,” he muttered. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
By the time he got back to Blue Creek his failure to visit the cabin felt more like dereliction of duty than mere incompetence. Rafferty had intimidated him. As he turned past the courthouse, however, he thought of an unintrusive way of discovering if McComb owned the cabin. He glanced at the dash and saw that it past time to pick up Jill.
At first he thought she was upset with his tardiness, but then realized that she was preoccupied. He explained what he wanted to do at the courthouse. When she offered to help he assumed it was to speed him up so that she could get back to James Mill. After all she was neck-deep in work trying to finish her degree and handle her grunt work as a graduate assistant.
The lobby was cold and mausoleum-like except for the mingled aroma of stale tobacco smoke and a weird disinfectant odor.
“Did you see this?” she asked, her voice echoing from the marble-faced walls.
She indicated a notice tacked up inside a glass-paneled bulletin board.
“Deputy applications,” he muttered. “Probably pays less than minimum wage. Not exactly awash in money from the look of the place.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much of an economic base.”
“If there ever was one,” he said distractedly as he studied the directory by the stairwell. “The Recorder’s Office is on the third floor.”
“Looking up the property records should be easy.”
“If they’ll let us,” he said as they started up the worn stone stairway.
“They are public records, Richard.”
A map on the wall of the Assessor’s office showed each parcel of property in the county.
“More than half the county is national forest land,” she observed.
He located the road running past the lake with his finger
“Only the one house on the whole place,” he said.
“Perhaps,” said Jill.
She went to the counter and got the attention of the secretary.
“Can you tell us how old this property map is?” she asked.
“That’s pretty current. I think it was drawn up about six months ago,” she said. “Are you looking for a particular parcel?”
“Yes,” said Richard. “The property records are on the third floor, right?”
“Right there with the Recorder’s office,” she said. “But you’d better hurry. Everything will close in about fifteen minutes.”
Richard could have found the information, but not with the facility that Jill did.
“Here it is,” said Jill. “The current owner is some sort of business.”
“What? Let me see.”
He took the book from her and read.
“Some sort of business all right. ‘Charity Corporation’ is Lyla Peele. Her current stage name, if she ever gets on stage, is Charity. How in the world did she get the money to buy that much land?”
“Credit is all about ability to pay, Richard. Didn’t you say she’s supposed to be getting a large divorce settlement soon?”
“Not as much as she’d like if Peele and Rafferty can help it,” he said. “This is why Rafferty is here. If McComb is holed up out there, then there probably is something pretty heavy going on between the two of them.”
“And that means what as far as you’re concerned?”
“Nothing. I don’t care about that crap one way or the other. I just need to talk to him. You’ve got to get back though, don’t you?”
He hoped that she would take the hint and say she didn’t.
“I have an early class, and there’s always work to do.”
“Let’s go then,” he said trying to hide his irritation. “I need to call Rafferty and get her to confirm that he’s out there before I go barging in anyway.”
“She gave you her number?”
“No. But I know how I can get her.”

They sat at a booth in the McDonald’s at Mountain View where they had stopped to let the sun set so that they could avoid driving into the blinding glare.
“What did you think of Blue Creek?” asked Jill.
He shrugged. “One dying town in the middle of nowhere is about like another.”
“The college didn’t give the appearance of a ‘dying town,’ as you put it.”
He snorted dismissively. “‘College’ is a bit grandiose, don’t you think? JUCO is like . . . what? Remedial college, right?”
“It’s still a place of learning,” she said seriously.
“Yeah, Harvard of the Ozarks. I’ll bet the local kids don’t even go there if they have decent SAT scores.”
“What was your score?” she asked.
“I didn’t take the SAT,” he said defensively. “I went into the Marines, remember?”
“But surely you had scholarships when you graduated from high school?”
“My academic record wasn’t all that great.”
“So if you didn’t choose to go into the armed services, where would you have been able to go to college?”
“My folks were poor working class, and I kind of fell off the academic boat after dad died. So I would probably have had to choose a community college. What’s your point?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t want to argue with you.”
“You never did like snobs,” he said with a grin. “Heaven knows I don’t have anything to be snobbish about.”
“That’s the definition of a snob, dear.” She covered his hand with here. “Only pretenders have to . . . what is the term they use . . . put on of airs. Let’s not do that. You attended Pere Marquette and I obtained my degree there. It is hardly a world-renowned university, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Nevertheless, it offers an excellent education. The same can occur in a community college. The students deserve no less.”
He laughed.
“Try giving them an excellent education and see how much appreciation you get. A lot of kids go to JUCO because they can’t cut it in good schools.”
“And many go because they are financially distressed like you were.”
“Speaking of which, if I don’t get my business going, and keep at it this time, we’ll stay financially distressed.”
Jill’s wan smile plunged him into instant gloom. Everything he was doing seemed not only futile, but irresponsible.
It must have shown on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Me,” he said. “You don’t need this.”
“I need you,” she said earnestly. “You are having a difficult time. How could you not? But it will be okay. You and I . . . we can do this as long as you don’t lose faith in me.”
“Me lose faith in you?”
“Yes. You must believe that I will be here for you. And I will because I must have you here for me. We are one, Richard. Remember?”
“Wedding vows?”
“The commitment came long before that. I’m holding you to that promise. Hold me to mine.”
“Hold you to your promise? How can I do that, Jill? I mean how can I really do that?”
“You can do it in your mind and in your heart. We owe each other because we are one. These are not just words.”
Dusk had come. They went to the truck and headed back.
Jill’s attempt to reassure him had only fed his guilt. People who loved each other shouldn’t be where he and Jill were now, and the blame was all his. Jill was the steady one, the working one, the understanding one. He couldn’t keep a job or even let her do hers without dragging her away on quixotic quests. Yet, there was Molly, pleading and armed with the certainty that he---Richard Carter, of all people---was her daughter’s savior.
I can’t even help myself, Molly.
Jill put her hand on his thigh again.
“It will be all aright, Richard. We will be all right.”
He nodded.
But how much more can you take? he wondered. How long until you see how much better off you would be without me?
The thought left a dead spot in his chest. She would be better off without him, but without her there would be no point for him to try and go on.
So what are you doing? he asked himself.
It occurred to him that perhaps he was trying to justify his further existence. After all, twice now he should have been killed, first in Somalia, and the second time in Cartier. Maybe that was it. Maybe he owed God, or the cosmos, or humanity something in return for the mercy, or luck, or whatever. It didn’t feel that way though. All he knew was that Molly had turned to him in her misery, and her hooks had sunk deeply. He was as inextricably joined to Molly as he was to Jill.
“I can’t walk away from this,” he said softly. “I know I should, but I can’t.”
“I know that, Richard,” replied Jill.
She looked steadfastly through the windshield. “I wish none of this had happened. I wish you---no, I wish we were free of it. But that’s useless. You do what you have to and don’t worry about me. We have each other and we’ll be okay.”
“I wish I could just quit,” he said.
“You made a commitment, Richard. It may not have been a wise one, and Molly may not have had the right to ask it of you, but you have to honor it. It would cost too much to do otherwise.”
“You want me to continue?”
She shrugged. “You have no choice. We both know that.”
That should have settled it, but within minutes he began wondering what her remarks really meant.
Is she really okay with it, or is just resigned to living with it? She probably thinks that telling me exactly how she feels would push me over the edge or something.
He tried to go with the surface appearance and assume that everything was all right, or at least almost all right. Then, as if Molly had tugged the reins to correct his path, he thought of the missing child. Heaving an audible sigh, he closed his eyes momentarily.
“Are you okay?” Jill asked in concern.
“Oh . . . I’m . . . fine. Just thinking.”
“About the baby?”
“Yeah. Know what a backlash is?”
“Yes. It’s a violent counter-reaction when a person or group thinks something has gone too far. I think it must mean to strike back at.”
He laughed. “An academic answer.”
“I was being pedantic. Sorry.”
“Not at all. Your fascination with words makes what you say interesting. You’ll be a great professor.”
She gave him a dubious look.
“I was referring to a different kind of backlash,” he said. “I went fishing a lot as a kid. I had this old bait-casting reel that would get hopelessly snarled if you didn’t cast it right. It could take all day to untangle the mess.”
“Like the Gordian knot?”
“Exactly. It was like a complicated knot with all these loose loops. One was the key to unsnarling the mess, but there were a bunch of them and if you pulled too hard on a wrong one then you just tightened the snarl.”
“This is about your investigation.”
“It’s what it has become. I’ve got all these loose ends but I can’t see that any of them leads anywhere or is connected to any of the others. I’ve got Mancie’s disappearance to work on and now this high dollar divorce thing is going on. Bobby McComb may be involved in both of them, one of them, or neither.”
“We should have taken the time for you to go and talk to him?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure that he’s at the cabin. I could have gone up there to find out, but I didn’t want to mess up Rafferty’s work. So I dragged you over here for nothing, I guess.”
“The trip wasn’t entirely wasted,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
She almost told him what she had done, but lost her nerve. She rationalized the omission by telling herself that nothing might come of the applications.
“We got to spend some time with each other, didn’t we,” she said instead.
“I haven’t been much company,” he replied, patting her hand. “I’ll try to do better on the way home, dear.”
Of course, you weren’t supposed to have to try. They used to not try, and they always had things to say. She remembered the way he used to look at her and the way he always found excuses to touch her. Could it really be over so quickly?

They heard the phone ringing while still on the porch. Jill hurried in and took it.
“Some people are so difficult to find,” said a heavily accented feminine voice.
“Marta! I’ve been meaning to call you ever since we got here. That’s not much of an excuse, is it?”
“Como estan los maridos viejos?”
“The old married couple are just fine. How are you and Alberto? By the way, Richard mentioned just last night something that Alberto once told him about the importance of family. So, is your family getting larger any time soon?”
“That is why you think I call you? No, but one hopes. And you and Richard?”
“We may postpone having a family until we are more established,” said Jill.
It was better than telling the truth.
“For what would you become more established than for a family?” chided Marta. “You tempt God by waiting. He only gives a woman so many years to bare children. You know this.”
Richard came into the bedroom with a questioning look.
“It’s Marta,” said Jill.
“Tell her ‘hello’ for me,” he said. “And send my regards to Alberto. I’ve got to run to town for a second.”
Jill nodded, dividing her attention between him and the mile-a-minute update Marta was giving on her family in Merida. She heard the front door close, and wondered absently what he needed in town. She hoped whatever it was wouldn’t cost too much. Marta had a large family, and although Jill had met and come to know many of them, she had to remind Jill occasionally who this cousin or that niece was.
Jill and Marta had met and become close friends in college before Richard. Marta’s Hispanic heritage and extended family contrasted starkly with Jill’s tiny family and Gallic-American upbringing, but they shared unfashionably old fashioned views of family, morality, and personal ethics. Marta had also shared the nightmare when Richard had been forced to kill Mic Boyd. In fact, Boyd had used her in a feint to draw Richard away before attacking Jill. Neither of them referred to that now, however. Both wished for it to recede into a forgotten past---something that would never happen.
“There’s a good chance that we’ll be moving again, Marta,” she Jill when she got a chance to speak again. “I’ve applied for a teaching position.”
“So soon? I thought it takes longer for getting a doctorate degree.”
“I have a masters,” said Jill. “That’s all I need for this job. I may forgo the doctorate.”
“Why?”
Good question. The answer involved Richard’s well-being, but she didn’t want to tell her friend that. So she gave Marta the one answer she knew would be acceptable.
“The sooner we settle down, the sooner we can have children.”
“Maybe then that is not such a bad idea,” said Marta with a laugh. “You are already with child?”
Jill tried to make her delayed laugh believable. The sudden question had brought home the current state of their sex life. Jill shook off the thought by insisting to herself that it was only a temporary thing, which they would overcome. Sometimes things were quite normal in that regard. Not often enough, but sometimes.
“Not yet,” she said. “At least I don’t think so.”
Marta picked up on the tone of her reply. “Something is wrong?” she asked.
Jill recovered quickly. Marta was nothing if not intuitive.
“I haven’t told Richard about the application yet. You know how he is. I’m afraid he’ll take it the wrong way when he finds out that I’m not going to continue with the doctoral thing right now.”
“He will think you have no confidence in his ability to support the family,” said Marta with certainty. “Yes. That is the way a good man thinks. But women know what is best sometimes, no? How will you tell him?”
“I must convince him that it is what I want to do. I’m just afraid he will think that I’m being forced to do it.”
“Yes. That is a problem.”
It wasn’t the only problem.
“I’ve also applied for a job for him,” said Jill, wincing. “He doesn’t know that either.”
Silence told Jill all she what Marta thought of the admission.
“Marta, all he wants to do is be in law enforcement. You know that was always his dream. He won’t apply because he thinks he has no chance. So I had to take the initiative.”
“Hija mia,” said Marta with a sigh. “Ojala que . . . I just hope that your man is not so . . . I hope this does not hurt his pride too much.”
“He will thank me if he gets the job,” insisted Jill. “He may be angry at first, but . . . I think he will be glad later on.”
“Maybe you are right,” said Marta dubiously.

By the time she finished talking with Marta, Jill had resolved to tell Richard about the applications as soon as he got home. She wavered, hesitated, and lost her nerve. It had been a pleasant day, and she didn’t want to end it with an argument. Richard’s mood when he came home reinforced her decision to delay telling him.
They had just gone to bed when the phone rang. Jill answered it, frowned, and handed it to Richard.
“Carter,” said Rafferty. “I thought I’d give you a heads up on McComb. I don’t think he’s at the cabin in Blue Creek. His car isn’t anywhere around there and he hasn’t picked up his mail.”
“You sure you just don’t want me blowing your surveillance?” he asked testily.
“Well I don’t, but what I’m telling you is the truth.”
He didn’t respond.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll turn up. Tell you what. If I see him over here I’ll let you know.”
“Right,” he said sarcastically.
“Maybe I won’t bother.”
“Sorry. I appreciate the information,” he said before handing Jill the phone to hang up.
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you today,” she said.
“Well, maybe McComb will turn up like Rafferty says.”




November 6
Two days later Bobby McComb turned up at a motel in James Mill. For some reason known only to the mercurial policeman himself, Adams gave Richard the essence of the scene: Clad only in underwear, and with slits running parallel to the bones of his wrists, McComb sat in a tub of bloody water. There was no note. Adams refused to say more.
Shocked, Richard tried to fathom McComb killing himself. He knew depression, but the temptation to not be had never entered his mind. He had always supposed that people killed themselves to escape something they thought worse than death. The timing suggested that he had done it because the soon-to-be financially independent Lyla was pulling the plug on him. Maybe she had told him that she no longer needed him as a manager or in any other capacity. Of course, McComb may have had a cocktail of reasons making further existence intolerable: business failure, romantic disappointment, gambling, even drug dependence. Who really knows anyone’s personal demons?
Call us Legion, for we are many, he thought.
Richard considered his own chief demon.
Could remorse for his part in whatever happened to Mancie have been the reason?
It might have been if Mancie was dead. If that were the case, then Richard was left with---and no pun intended---the ultimate dead end.
Bobby McComb has checked out and will not be returning, he thought. Why didn’t I talk to him when I had a chance?
Was there no end to his incompetence? Richard wanted to wash his hands of the affair and just walk away. Not that he could. Molly had set the hook. It was an unkind way of putting it, but accurate. Her distress coupled with her misplaced confidence obligated him.

Kirsten Lance looked none too happy to see him.
“I came to enquire about---” he began.
“Bobby McComb is dead,” interrupted the realtor. “I don’t know anything about him. I didn’t even know him actually. Besides I’m busy.”
“I came to ask about a house actually.”
“You’re in the market?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes. I presume that Mr. McComb’s house is still for sale.”
“Not now. It’ll be in probate,” she said. “I have several others in the price range. Maybe I could show you one of those.”
Her manner had changed now that a fish had risen to the bait.
“I’d really like to see that one.”
“It will be withdrawn until after the estate is settled,” she said.
“It’s still got to sell sometime,” he said. “Someone has to buy it, and someone has to make a commission on it. Since he assigned that job to you, won’t the court let you sell it?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then why don’t you show it to me?”
“I haven’t been officially notified,” she muttered, weighing the possibility of a sale. “Frank!” she called out.
A young man of perhaps twenty-one or two came eagerly from the back. Although immaculately attired in an expensive suit, he looked unsure of himself in the way people new to a job often do.
“Yes, ma’am?”
Lance rummaged through a drawer and extracted a key with a large tag attached.
“I want you to take Mr. Carter out and show him the McComb property.”

Richard had the young man go out to the listing, telling him that he would be along within just a few minutes. On his way, he quickly swung by home to get what he needed. Adams would throw him in jail if he found out what he was about to do. Technically, McComb’s house was not a crime scene, but it should be treated as one. Suicides are by definition homicides and should never be taken at face value. They are all suspicious deaths, especially in the absence of an explanatory note.
Richard was relieved to see no tape or official seal on the door to the house when he arrived. Frank was still waiting in his car, but got out when Richard did.
“Good neighborhood,” observed Frank.
Real Estate 101.
“There’s an excellent school two blocks away.”
“No kids,” said Richard.
Frank nodded uncertainly. “Small yards, both front and back,” he continued. “Not much maintenance needed. Just the thing for a single man.”
“Married,” said Richard, looking up and down the street, pretending to admire the neighborhood of small track houses and equally small lots. There wasn’t a tree in sight.
“Let’s take a look inside,” he suggested.
“Oh . . . uh sure,” said Frank, fishing in his pocket. Giving Richard a chagrined look, he shrugged. “Left the key in the car.”
He went back to retrieve them and then trotted back across the yard. He opened the door after some difficulty getting the key to work.
“What’s that?” asked Richard.
“What?”
“I thought I heard someone. There’s no one living here, is there?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Frank.
“Go check. I’ll wait here.”
Frank hesitated uncertainly, obviously faced with a situation he had never encountered and which he hadn’t anticipated.
“Go on,” encouraged Richard. “If there is someone here, you can explain. After all, you’re the owner’s representative. I’m a stranger.”
“Is there anyone here?” called Frank, moving obediently, but reluctantly into the living room. “I’m from the real estate agency. I’m here to show the house. Hello.”
While Frank was occupied checking out the phantom noise, Richard slapped a piece of duct tape over the latch before easing the door closed.
“There’s no one here,” said Frank, coming back into the living room.
“Sorry. I could have sworn I heard someone,” said Richard.
The small house was still furnished, and although an undercurrent of stale smoke suffused the air, it was clean, ready for showing. Personal items had been removed to packing boxes stacked neatly in the bedroom closet and beside the bed where Richard noticed a box of music and game CD’s. A monitor with a keyboard atop it sat on the floor of the closet below a few remaining clothes on the rack.
“What’s the asking price, Frank?” he asked.
“Only fifty-eight thousand. That’s a real bargain considering the location.”
Richard wandered through the remainder of the rooms trailed by intermittent effusions from the young agent trying valiantly to wax enthusiastic. The superficial tidying up suggested a hasty departure. On the other hand it could have been a typical male swipe at cleaning.
“Did someone from the agency clean the place up?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Frank uncertainly. “That’s the seller’s responsibility.”
Richard wondered if someone bent on suicide would bother to list his house, much less tidy it up for showing. Maybe McComb’s life had come apart after he listed the house, or maybe the accumulated weight of whatever disasters had overtaken him just gradually brought him to the ultimate impasse.
“Frank, do you think there’s any wiggle room on the price now that the courts are involved?” he asked.
“Man, I don’t know. I’ve never been involved in a sale like that. You better ask Mrs. Lance.”
“I’ll do that, Frank. I like the place, but the price is a little steep,” he said looking at his watch.
“I think I’ve seen enough for now,” he said, leading the way through the living room briskly to be sure of arriving at the door first. He opened it quickly, shielding the edge from view with his body.
“What are the closing costs going to run me?” he asked, giving Frank something to wrestle with as he motioned him through the door.
“I . . . could give you a ball park figure, but it would be best to go through it at the office where we can get all the figures together. I wouldn’t want to tell you wrong.”
Turning the latch on the inside, Richard stepped outside, pulled the door closed, and rattled the knob to demonstrate that it was secure.
“No hurry,” he said. “My wife needs to see it first anyway.”
Frank took a card from his wallet.
“Here. Just call me any time you want to see it. I’ll be ready. Any time at all, Mr. Carter.”
“I won’t ask for anyone else, Frank.”
Richard followed the young agent to the corner, waving as they turned in opposite directions. Two blocks away he pulled into a small city park and parked near the entrance. The day was clear, but cool and windy, and the park was deserted. He pulled on his jacket, got out, and locked the doors. The receding sun told him he had about two hours of bright daylight, which should be all the time he would need.

He balled up the duct tape and put it in his pocket as he stood surveying the living room. He took a deep breath, wondering again what the sentence for breaking and entering was. On the far side of the room stood some sort of table thing with dual shallow drawers at about waist level. The left drawer came open about two inches, and jammed on faulty slides. He coaxed it open enough to get at the contents, a jumble of papers, mostly receipts that had been either thrown in carelessly or dug through and left disorganized. He examined enough to determine they were common household, rather than business, expenses: lube jobs, convenience store purchases, credit card stubs from service stations. The other drawer contained more of the same along with a collection of loose batteries of various sizes and, incongruously, a pair of mismatched socks.
He moved on to a closer inspection of the living room. Between the television and the window sat a closed roll top cabinet that he expected to be locked down. It wasn’t, but every cubbyhole and niche was empty. An ample layer of dust, absent from some places, showed where items had been removed. He wondered what they were and if McComb had taken them with him when he vacated the place or if they were packed in the boxes in the bedroom.
“Probably in a storage shed somewhere,” he mumbled aloud. “What do you expect to find anyway, Richard? A suicide note? A receipt for Valium? Maybe a bill of sale for a baby?”
What he hoped to find, of course, was something to explain the suicide.
Just let me know if it was because you did something to Mancie or because Lyla was dumping you. It’s got to be one or the other. A Bohemian guy like you doesn’t kill himself just because his business tanks.
Richard found no sign of the items that had been removed from the roll top. One packing box contained a jumble of CD’s, the other, only the meager household accoutrements bachelors tend to accrete: a few dishes, cheap flatware, and two clocks. He took the box of CD’s to the kitchen table where he could stand and where the light was better. Bending over had stirred his back spasms into action.
The disks were mostly country music, although there were a few games along with a tutorial on music notation, and three unlabeled writeable CD’s.
He took the box back to the closet and set it on the floor. The top shelf was bare. He pawed through the clothes, a mixture of summer and winter shirts, pants, jackets, and an expensive suite in a dry cleaner’s bag. The dressers had been cleaned out, making him wonder how many suitcases McComb had taken with him to the motel and what he had taken with him. The chances of Adams telling him more were iffy at best. The fickle detective might or might not be in the mood to give him the information.
“Why in the world have you shared as much with me as you have?” he mumbled. Had their roles been reversed, Richard would have shared nothing.
Richard looked out the window. The light had faded more quickly than he had expected. How long have I been here? he asked himself as he glanced nervously at his watch. It was only four. Going to the window and looking west, he noted that the sun had gone behind a cloudbank. Staying much longer would require turning on the lights, which he couldn’t do lest he be observed. He was ready to write it off as a bust because he didn’t want to be seen leaving after dark. Then he remembered the computer. Kicking himself for not considering it earlier, he took it to the only place where the light from the monitor wouldn’t be seen from outside should he stay past dusk, which looked like a good bet now.
As he waited for the computer to boot up, he sat cross-legged with the keyboard in his lap. The Monitor balanced precariously on the curved seat of the commode and the tower sat on the side opposite the bathtub next to the box of CD’s. Luckily there were two outlets in the tiny bathroom although both were near the door, behind him. Consequently, wires snaked on both sides, enclosing him in an electronic spider web. A careless movement could knock the monitor from its precarious perch.
The Windows logo finally finished its promo and the desktop icons appeared over Bobby McComb’s wallpaper. Lyla-slash-Honeybunch-slash-Charity looked with intense eyes from the screen, an almost perfectly alluring smile on her smooth, high-cheeked, face.
You weren’t just her agent, Bobby. That’s for sure.
The picture was an extreme close-up, cropped so that not all of her voluminous hair showed. It was a good edit. In person, the elaborate coiffure miniaturized her features, lending them an unflattering but apt shrewishness. McComb had apparently seen something else.
Maybe you thought you had tamed her, he thought as he checked the log of recent documents.
To his surprise, the whole list consisted of eight digit numbers which it took him a few seconds to realize stood for dates. Of the fifteen, the last was dated only a week ago. He clicked on it. “INSERT TUNEPRO,” popped up.
He was about to close it out, but changed his mind. Careful not to snag a wire, he crawled from the bathroom and went to get the music tutorial he had left on the bed with the game disks before taking the box to the bathroom. It was nearly dark outside. Back in the bathroom, he carefully closed the door and inserted the disk, figuring all the while that he was wasting his time. The drive whirred and the screen went through a convulsion of changes that some programmer must have visualized as a light show. When the scales began sounding loudly, he winced and quickly clicked the sound icon to turn it down. No one outside could have heard, but the sound jangled his nerves.
Thoroughly confusing instructions for retrieving previous “sessions” scrolled across the screen. It would clearly take more time than he had to understand how to use the program and longer still to look through the files. Richard shut it down, wondering why he had wasted his time with it in the first place. What he really wanted was to examine the e-mails and any financial data that McComb might have kept. Finding both, he popped in a writeable disk and clicked on the CD icon.
Fifteen minutes later he thought he finally understood how to create a CD copy. Selecting the most inclusive folder he could find, he gave it a go. The program informed him that the file was too large. Deleting a subfolder seemed to satisfy the program. When the monitor informed him that the task had been achieved, he put in a second blank disk and copied the subfolder he had removed. When the tray slid open again he reached for it disk. Suddenly the monitor slid sideways. He lurched forward to steady it, snagging a wire with his thumb. Before he could reach it the monitor tumbled into the bathtub with a horrendous crash, the keyboard flew from his lap, and everything went dark. He heard the tower, fall to the floor and CD’s skittering across the tiles.
He gritted his teeth, hoping that the monitor had simply pulled the plug from the wall when it fell into the tub. The whirring of the fan in the tower told him otherwise. Untangling himself, he got up and finally found the light switch. He picked up the monitor, relieved that the CRT wasn’t broken and that the power cord had merely become disconnected. He picked it up, balanced it on the stool again, set the tower upright, and reattached the power cord connecting them. He waited in vain for the monitor to light again.
Cursing under his breath and feeling like a fool, he carried the various components of the computer back through the dark house to the closet. As he wiped each down carefully, he wondered what additional charges his unintentional vandalism would add to breaking and entering and interfering with a crime scene. Maybe it wasn’t too bad. He didn’t think he had destroyed any evidence. Neither the hard drive nor the data on the disks had been damaged. At least he hoped not. With the monitor out, however, he had no way of confirming that. He almost left without putting the CD’s he had created in his pocket.
“Now you’re only guilty of petty theft, breaking and entering, and interfering in a criminal investigation,” he said sourly as he checked the street to make sure that no one was outside.
He slipped out and walked quickly toward the park, with each step he felt more and more convinced that he was getting away unobserved---until he got to the park. Through the dim twilight he saw someone leaning against his truck and watching him. As he got closer, he saw that it was woman in a jogging suit.
“Do you have any idea how many laws you’ve just broken?” asked Rafferty calmly as he got within comfortable speaking range.
“What? Did I leave my vehicle in a no parking zone? Or is the park closed after dark?” he bluffed. A sinking feeling hit the pit of his stomach.
“Probably,” she said softly, no hint of rancor in her voice, only curiosity touched with incredulity. “Add those to your list. You could actually do time for this, Carter.”
Rafferty hadn’t just recognized his truck while jogging.
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s see: tampering with evidence, hindering an investigation, obstructing justice, not to mention breaking and entering---and at a crime scene, no less.”
“Crime scene? McComb killed himself at the motel.”
“His house still contains evidence that might shed light on a suspicious death.”
“It was suicide,” he said as he unlocked the truck, preparing to leave. “Nothing suspicious there.”
“Don’t think you can just brush me off, Carter.”
So she hadn’t called Adams yet, which meant that she probably only wanted to know what he had discovered.
“Did you take anything?” she asked.
He winced, but didn’t respond.
“Why were you inside so long?” she persisted.
“How do you know how long I was wherever you think I was?”
“I’ve been following you since you left the realtor’s office. I’ve got you logged. I could turn my notes over to Adams.”
The threat was delivered matter-of-factly. When he turned, she shifted her weight slightly. He recognized the movement as preparation for a sudden move on his part. It didn’t surprise him. Martial arts training was only prudent for a woman in her profession. Besides, Rafferty was Corps. The baggy jump suit probably concealed a weapon too.
“Relax, Rafferty,” he said. “I’m not going to try anything anymore than you’re going to turn me in to Adams. What do you want?”
“I want to know why you were in the house so long? What did you find so interesting?”
“It takes time to conduct a search, especially if you don’t want to just toss the house. You should know that. I’m sure you’ve done it more than once.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Did you find anything probative as far as the missing kid is concerned?”
“If McComb had answers, he took them with him. Do you know why he killed himself?”
“No idea. It’s the last thing I would expect considering the circumstances.”
“Circumstances? Oh, I see. Peele was about to give up trying to prove an illicit relationship between him and Lyla.”
“We know it. I can prove it to Mr. Peele’s satisfaction. We just can’t get it court-ready.”
“How much were they about to get?”
“About forty percent of Mr. Peele’s net worth.”
“I though she was going to get half.”
“Half of everything he gained since they got married.”
“Too bad about the land transfers,” he said. “Capital gains being counted as new wealth, how unfair and how unlucky?”
Rafferty shrugged. “Switching assets seemed like a good idea at the time, but technically it put Lyla in line to get a lot more than she deserves.”
“So he’s going to settle out of court now?”
“The lawyers are working on it.”
Rafferty wasn’t just passing the time, and despite her apparent candor, she wasn’t treating him as a colleague out of admiration for his investigative skill. She thought he had something, and she wanted it.
“Tell me about the house,” she said.
“Are you going to search it?”
“Just tell me what’s there.”
Since there was no good reason not to, Richard told her about the layout and the meager amount of possessions still there but boxed up. He mentioned the computer in the closet last as an aside, as if it were something that had almost slipped his mind. If she booted it up and found a dead monitor, she would assume that he couldn’t have examined it either. When finished, he hazarded a question of his own as a quid pro quo.
“Rafferty, why did McComb sell his interest in the bar to Lyla?”
“I got no idea, Carter, but if he was in a financial bind, she put him there. That woman spends money like a sailor coming off a six-month tour.”
He smiled at the analogy as he studied Rafferty. The physical confidence, her apparent comfort in what was traditionally a man’s profession, her get-the-job-done approach, and her masculine toughness all came from her Marine experience.
“Were you G-2?”
She shook her head.
“Intelligence? No. Shore patrol. I got out because it was too much routine and not enough pay. Why did you get out after only one tour?”
He wished he hadn’t brought the subject up.
“I wasn’t very good at it,” he said.
“You’ve got an interesting biography, Carter. Care to tell me the real story of what happened up in Michigan?”
It shouldn’t have surprised him that she had uncovered his recent past, but it did, perhaps because he had tried successfully to push it out of his own thoughts.
“You’re the detective. Find out for yourself.”
“He was a pretty bad guy, wasn’t he? A real piece of work.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Rafferty,” he said, getting in and starting the truck.
She pecked on the window, and he rolled it down reluctantly.
“Look, Carter. If you know anything or find out anything that I can use to prove an illicit relationship let me know, okay. I’m running out of time here.”
“Why should I?” he asked tersely.
She smiled. “Because jarheads stick together.”
He thought about the redacted logs she pawned off on him. “We’re not in the Corps anymore.”
“You know better than that,” she said, still smiling. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
He rolled up the window and started to back out. Then he changed his mind. Rafferty had gone out of her way to establish rapport. Of course that was only because she wanted to know what he had found in McComb’s house. It could work both ways, however. He stopped and rolled down the window again.
“I’ll let you know if I run into anything that might help you.”
“If?” she said, picking up on the idea that he wanted something.
He thought about it only a minute. “You could lose your license if you got caught doing what I did, couldn’t you?”
“Breaking into a house that could be a crime scene? Sure.”
“But talking to me about what I found there is a different story, as long as you had nothing to do with me going in there in the first place, right?”
“What are you getting at, Carter?”
“I copied some stuff off his computer,” he said.
“What?”
“His computer has a CD burner. I burned off copies of his files. Would you like to have a look at them?”
She was wary. “Why are you offering?”
“Because I want to know about Bobby McComb as much as you do, only for a different reason. I’m looking for Mancie Randolph, remember?”
“I wish I could tell you something, but I honestly don’t know anything about that.”
“Then tell me what you do know about him.”
“The same as you. He contacted Lyla kind of frequently, but they didn’t say . . .” Rafferty paused for only a moment before continuing. “I have no knowledge of anything related to your missing kid.”
“You were about to say that they didn’t say anything about a child, right? You had a tap on their phones.”
Rafferty shook her head. “They used cell phones. You don’t need a tap. With the right equipment you can just listen in if you’re close enough. We never heard anything about a child, at least not your missing child. She had a kid of her own, but come to think of it, I don’t remember them saying anything about her either.”
We? Then Rafferty had someone helping her. That wasn’t surprising. “How was their relationship going?” he asked.
“Bobby and her had a long standing affair, but they kept their distance lately. We recorded enough to show what they were up to, but you can’t use that stuff in court.”
“Looking back on it---was there anything that would indicate that he was about to kill himself?”
“She was brushing him off a lot, and he wasn’t taking it real well.”
“So they were in regular contact?”
“Actually, she spent more time talking to her agent. She was in like daily contact with him. She wants him to get a recording studio ready for her.”
“Wait. I thought McComb was her agent.”
“History. Got a professional now,” she said impatiently. “Are you going to let me see those files you copied?”
“Get in the truck and I’ll take you to the house.”
“Your house? No. I’ve got a car. I’ll just follow.”

“Where have you . . .” Jill stopped in mid query as Richard held the door open for the athletic young woman accompanying him.
“Jill this is Rafferty, the detective I told you about.”
“I see,” she said, trying to process the situation.
“Sorry to barge in on you, ma’am,” said Rafferty, extending her hand. “Glad to meet you. Call me Sarah.”
“Would either of you mind telling me what is going on?” she asked, making no move to shake hands.
Taken aback, Richard didn’t respond immediately. Rafferty took charge.
“I ran into your husband about fifteen minutes ago,” she said. “He told me he had something I should see.”
Jill nodded as if the explanation were perfectly reasonable.
“Let’s just see what it is he has to show you then,” she said with an icy smile before turning to Richard again. “You found something linking the Peele’s nasty divorce with Molly baby I take it.”
“I really don’t know. I copied some computer files from McComb’s computer,” he said. “Rafferty and I are going to look through them to see if there’s anything that will help either of us. It probably wouldn’t interest you, dear.”
“I’m interested in everything my husband does,” she said without budging.
Richard smiled foolishly at each of them in turn, wondering if a catfight was about to break out. He wished he hadn’t brought Rafferty to the house.
“Maybe I should just let you have the disks for the night,” he suggested. “You can give them back to me tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Rafferty said quickly.
“No,” said Jill. “Let’s go through them together. That way nothing will get accidentally deleted.”
“These disks can’t be edited, Jill,” said Richard. “They’re writeable, not rewriteable.”
“Oh, you mean someone would have to deliberately remove information and then save a redacted version?”
“I shouldn’t have done that with the appointments log,” said Rafferty. “That was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” said Jill. “How can you call that a mistake?”
“It was a mistaken . . . tactic. I didn’t want your husband tumbling to the fact that Lyla and Wilson were having an affair. I was afraid he would tip Lyla to the fact that I suspected it.”
“Well let’s just look at the information here anyway,” said Jill. “Richard, let’s let Miss Rafferty get started while we go to make some coffee and maybe some cookies or something in the kitchen.”
“I don’t need anything,” said Rafferty, taking the disks as Richard handed them over.
“Me neither,” he said.
“I do,” insisted Jill. “Come and help me, Richard.”

When they got into the kitchen, Richard whispered, “Good grief, Jill. There’s nothing going on between me and Rafferty. Why are you acting like this?”
“Of course not,” she said, waving him off. “How did you get those disks?”
“Oh. I sort of . . . broke into McComb’s house,” he mumbled.
“You what?” she said, keeping her voice low.
“I got a real estate agent to show me the place and fixed the door so that I could get back in.”
“Did that woman talk you into this?”
“She had nothing to do with it, but she followed me. I figured she could help me make sense of the stuff from the computer if there is anything there.”
“I don’t like this,” she said.
“You mean her. Look, you know there’s nothing going on between us.”
“I know she’s not interested in you, if that’s what you mean.”
Jill’s confident pronouncement surprised him. Then he thought he understood it’s root.
“You mean she’s . . . like not interested in . . . men in general?”
“How would I know that?”
“I thought maybe you picked up on something that I didn’t. Like maybe the way she looked at you or something.”
“No. She’s just not possessive of you. She’s only interested in those disks.”
“She’s really not a bad sort, Jill,” he said with relief.
“She’s using you,” she said flatly. “Find out what’s on the disks, and then get her out of our house.”

Rafferty was taking a disk out of the tower when they came into the living room.
“You copied some files created by a music program of some kind,” she said without turning, “You need a program disk called Tunepro to open them. Probably a bunch of lousy lyrics. Lord save us from amateurs . . . present company excepted.”
“What?” asked Richard. “Were there any markings on it?”
“You mean on the disk?” Rafferty examined the disk. “No, why?”
“Never mind,” he said irritably. “Check the other one.”
She was already in the process of doing so. He pulled up a chair and sat to read over her shoulder. Jill stood behind them, arms folded. Rafferty and Richard, concentrating intently on the screen took no notice of her.
“That’s what ate up so much memory,” said Richard as Rafferty opened a photo of Lyla.
“I’ve seen pictures like this before,” she said. “She wore her hair like that when she first met Mr. Peele.”
She quickly opened and closed half a dozen similar JPEG files so rapidly that Richard had no time to examine them other than to see that they were all of Lyla and that no one else was in the photos.
“Rats! Not even a nude shot. It would have been nice to get something really compromising---not that we could ever get it into court,” she said.
She closed the folder and opened one labeled “H-C” that contained four databases, a spreadsheet, and a subfolder labeled “old.”
“Let’s take a look at the money,” she said as she opened the spreadsheet.
Rafferty scrolled to the right and then down rapidly, stopping momentarily to read something before moving on. Apparently she knew what she was doing, but it was too quick for Richard. Eventually he understood that she was looking at monthly balances.
“He was doing a decent business,” he said, trying to elicit confirmation from Rafferty, but she didn’t respond.
Reaching the end of the file, she closed out before he could catch the date of the last entry.
“When does the record stop?” he asked,
“A week ago,” she said distractedly as she opened the first of the databases.
“Sports’ stats?” he asked.
“Win-loss and who beat who by how much,” she said. “Looks like he was trying to calculate spreads. Good idea, but you can’t beat the line. Chumps lay bets. The only way to win is to take them. He didn’t.”
“He didn’t win or he didn’t take bets?”
“Neither. Bobby McComb was your basic loser,” she said as she quickly opened and closed the other databases. “I’ll say one thing for him though. He was a thorough loser, at least until he lost interest. He had division one foot and round ball as well as NBA and NFL.”
“What are the chances that he was using Lyla’s money to gamble with?”
“I’d say none. Lyla’s a taker, not a giver,” she replied as she closed out the folder and sat staring at the screen. “Are you sure you copied everything on the drive?”
“I copied everything,” he said.
“Then you wasted your time, and I’m wasting mine,” she said. “Got a spare disk so that I can burn a copy?”
“No problem.”

Jill went to the door to watch Peele’s investigator leave.
“So what do you think of her?” asked Richard.
“That she’s task oriented and rude,” replied Jill without turning.
“That’s military. Mission oriented. She knows what she’s looking for and knows how to find it.”
The admiration in his voice irked her.
“No, she does not. That woman would not be wasting her time following you if she knew how to find what she wants. She’s the professional. That she hopes you may find something for her tells me that she can no more prove Mrs. Peele’s infidelity than you can find out what happened to Molly’s little girl.”
“I never thought of it that way,” he admitted.
She turned around. “You can’t go back to that house, Richard. Promise me that you won’t.”
That she knew what he was thinking stunned him. “What makes you think I would go back?”
“You asked if anything was written on the music disk. I noticed and she probably did too. You picked it up by mistake, didn’t you?”
“I turned over the damned computer and stuff went everywhere. I think maybe he recorded one of the disks and forgot to mark it. I assumed all the unlabeled ones were blank. So, one of the ones I recorded may still be at the house, but this could be the one I recorded. I just don’t know.”
Jill quickly went to the computer and slipped the disk into the drive.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Finding out if you wrote to this today,” she said. “There. See. The disk was last written to a week and a half ago.”
“Do you think Rafferty knows that?”
“Of course.”
“Then why didn’t she say something?”
“Because, like Lyla, she’s a taker, not a giver. She’s going back to get the one you left.”
“I don’t think she would do that without telling me.”
“She’s paid to find information, Richard. She’s the professional investigator. If she is charming or helpful it is because that is the best way to get what she wants. She doesn’t consider you a colleague anymore than Mr. Adams does.”
Jill was right, of course. Now he felt foolish because he had begun to think that both Adams and Rafferty had accepted him as an unofficial partner in their investigations.
“Well don’t I feel like an idiot?” he said.
“You’re not an idiot, just an enthusiast. Just play her game, Richard. Get whatever you can from her and give whatever you want her to have.”
“You think that’s ethical?”
“I think what she is doing isn’t really all that important.”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “Just millions of dollars.”
“A rich couple fighting over more money than either of them need is the essence of pettiness. What you are trying to do is . . . it’s ‘noble.’”
“You really feel that way?”
“Finding out about that little girl is much more important than what she is doing.”

The photo file Rafferty had flipped through so quickly was labeled “H-Days.” Richard wondered if the “H” stood for “Happy,” “Halcyon,” or simply “Honeybunch” since all were photos of Lyla. Unlike McComb’s wallpaper, these were amateur shots taken when she was just past the cusp of adolescence. With sensible hair and minimal makeup she had been more attractive back then to Richard’s mind. Though certainly alluring, Lyla lacked the startling beauty he associated with stage presence. Yet her beauty had been sufficient to ensnare both McComb and Peele. He thought a moment about the possibility that Lyla and McComb had cooked up a plot to get their hands on Peele’s money from the start. Probable, since McComb would have learned from his brother Peele’s habit of collecting ex-wives. Useless speculation. That was Rafferty’s business.
He closed out the picture file and opened the spreadsheet, scanning it at his speed to see if anything would pop out. Nothing did. The business seemed to be in the black, just barely. McComb had paid himself four hundred each week, hardly excessive. No suspicious expenditures were apparent, but a bar is primarily a cash business and a lot of stuff could be kept off the books. He thought wistfully about the accounting degree that had been part of his master plan to get into the FBI.
Don’t go there, he told himself. Nothing deader than a dried up dream.
He needed McComb’s e-mail files, but if they existed they were on the disk left at the house. Rafferty was probably reading through them right now. Despite what Jill had said about her, he doubted that she would withhold information about Mancie if she found it. He’d sound her out the next time he saw her.
“Richard. Are you coming to bed?” Jill called from the bedroom doorway.
He turned to see her dressed for comfort rather than enticement, and felt relief rather than disappointment. Then came the inevitable pang of guilt.
“I’ll be there as soon as I close this out and hit the shower.”
“Good. You need some sleep. By the way, you had a call from a lady wanting some carpentry work done. I told her you’d be by tomorrow. I hope that was all right.”
He found no enthusiasm for the prospect.
“Did she say what she wanted done?”
“Something about a door. She was not very precise. I think she is quite elderly.”
“I hope the job isn’t too expensive for her,” he said. “Old folks lose track of what things cost.”

Sleep eluded him as usual, so as soon as Jill’s breathing settled into her sleeping rhythm, he got up and went back to the computer. Worried that the light from the monitor might waken her, he went back and softly closed the bedroom door. An hour’s examination told him only what he knew already: the first disk contained nothing useful or suggestive. He ejected it and popped in the second, which immediately demanded the Tunesmith disk. He tried using Quicktime, Acrobat Reader, and a couple of utilities in a fruitless attempt to open the files. Then he went to Walmart and bought the Tunesmith program, rationalizing the expense by figuring that the job he had lined up for tomorrow would offset the forty-dollar price.
When he got back home, he was relieved to find Jill still asleep. He put the disk in the top drive. Immediately the Tunesmith logo lit the screen, thankfully without a cheesy tune blaring forth. After going through the rigmarole of installing and registering he inadvertently closed the program. It said goodbye, and a moment later the drawer slid open. He pushed it closed and recalled the program. A new screen asked him if he wanted to continue the previous session, start a new one, or review earlier compositions.
Richard put the disk he had recorded at McComb’s into the other drive, and chose the last option. A whir produced a list of song folders. Scanning the first of what he judged poorly-written poetry, he noted the requisite themes of country music: love gone wrong, old time virtue, go-to-hell defiance, patriotism, reverse snobbery, telling off the boss, doing your own thing, and loving grandparents. There were six other “Songs” folders, but he’d had about all he could stomach for a while.
He idly clicked ‘Continue’ from the main menu, and then called up McComb’s last song-writing session hoping for a clue as to why he had killed himself. When the new screen informed him of the date it had been recorded. He calculated that it had been the night before McComb listed his house. Richard’s pulse quickened. He didn’t expect a suicide note in iambic pentameter, but the lyrics might hint at the man’s state of mind. The session had a curious title: “Break-through.” Richard quickly scanned the incomplete lyrics.
“Break through what?” he murmured. “The floor?”
Left to lie alone
With all my aching fears
Forever searching for my angel
With cold, cold tears
The icy grip that took her
Only laughs and jeers
Oh the cold, cold water
Oh my cold, cold tears.
“Oh, I see you got it to work,” said Jill from the bedroom doorway, startling him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Come here and look at this. Tell me what you think.”
She leaned over his shoulder. “It needs work,” she said. “That’s only the chorus. Is there more?”
“Not in this session. Maybe another folder has an earlier version,” he said. “What do you think of the mood? Could this have been like a metaphor for his losing Lyla?”
“‘Searching for my angel’ . . . ‘the icy grip that took her?’ I don’t think so.”
“Just a morose song then?”
“Probably. Is there music to go with it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know how to run the program. Besides, I’m not a talent scout.”
Jill shook her head. “Perhaps an unsophisticated audience would like it, but ‘cold tears’ strikes me as antithetical to grief. I suppose it’s parallelism: ‘cold, cold water’ . . . ‘cold, cold tears.’ It just doesn’t work for me.”
“In a way it kind of suggests that McComb killed himself because Lyla was leaving him,” he said. “The cold tears thing could be his way of expressing despair. A good number of the rest of his work is of the love and love gone wrong genre.”
Jill yawned. “Richard, it’s three o’clock. You need some sleep. Come back to bed.”
“You go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

An hour later he was still at the computer. McComb hadn’t been much of a poet. The lyrics had a semblance of emotion, but didn’t ring true. Maybe a good tune could save them. Nothing in any of his songs seemed genuine. Worse, they were transparently derivative, some even plagiarized. Even to Richard there didn’t seem to be an ounce of creativity.
What happened? Did you write this for Lyla? Was that what “break through” was about? Did she not only reject it, but finally wrote you off as well? With the money coming in she decided to get a professional. How many years did you put into her? Five or six? And then she decides that you’re just excess baggage?
It seemed a reasonable motive for suicide.
For a moment he contemplated the possibility that the “angel” in the break-through lyrics referred to Mancie. Could whatever happened to the baby be what caused McComb kill himself? It didn’t wash. People hitting rock bottom grief didn’t boot up the old computer to write a song about it before offing themselves. McComb had written the song for Lyla’s breakthrough. That had to be it, and that was Rafferty’s concern, not his.
He tried on the idea of the two of them taking Mancie for financial gain. It would have to involve shaking down the grandparents because Molly had no money, and no way of getting any. But McComb and Lyla were involved in a totally different scheme. Next to half of Rennie Peele’s net worth, any ransom the Allsops could come up with was chicken feed.
Disgusted, he turned off the computer. On the way to the bedroom he wondered if the store would take back the Tunepro disk. Since the cellophane was gone, he doubted it.



November 7
It took longer to return the music program than he anticipated. Because the cellophane had been removed, he got store credit rather than a cash refund. At ten-thirty he finally got to the clapboard house in the county where he met Mrs. Crawford, a tiny widow who reminded him of his grandmother. True to the custom of her generation, she offered him coffee before showing him to her “door problem.”
Except for a loose knob, the door itself was sound, but a combination of poor initial construction, dry rot, and termites had rendered the entire entrance in need of replacing. His estimate brought silent tears, but no protest. In the end, he spent the entire cold day cobbling together a fix from seasoned barn wood, eating most of the price of the jamb kit he bought at discount building supply store. At the end of the day his pay came to a princely two dollars an hour for the six hours it took to finish.
He left with a free lunch, effusive thanks and twelve dollars taken from the widow Crawford’s cookie jar, and arrived home after dark feeling tired and virtuous. Before he turned off the headlights, he saw Molly’s door open and shut quickly. She came across the yard in a rush, obviously intent on intercepting him before he could get into the house. He had been avoiding her for the last few days, which was understandable if not laudable because he had nothing to tell her. Her importunity was as poignant and painful as ever.
“Can I talk to you, Mr. Carter?” she asked.
“You can always talk to me, Molly. Want to meet at the café tomorrow?”
“It’s been over a week, Mr. Carter. Can’t we talk a little bit before you go inside? I’m sorry to be such a bother, but . . . I don’t know . . . it’s just that if I know something about what you’ve been doing, it . . . it helps, you know?”
“Get in the truck,” he said. “We’ll drive around a bit and I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been doing, although it’s not much.”
They were near the end of the block before either of them spoke.
“I heard about Bobby,” she said. “I never thought he was the kind of person who would do that, but if anyone could make a person kill himself, I guess it would be Lyla.”
“So you think they were having an affair and she wanted to end it?”
“It wasn’t no secret,” Molly said, bitterly. “I just don’t know what someone as nice as him ever saw in a woman like her. Maybe what women see ain’t so plain to men.”
“Maybe she didn’t treat him like she treated other people,” he suggested.
“Maybe. She was always good at playing guys.”
“Always? How long have you known her?”
“Since high school.”
Without looking at her, Richard made the confession he had dreaded making.
“Molly, Bobby was our best shot at finding out who may have put something into your drink that night, and I didn’t get around to asking him in time. Now I don’t know what else to do. Everything has just dried up.”
“You’ll find her,” she said stubbornly. “You’ll think of something. I know you will.”
“Molly, you may never know what happened to Mancie. I tried. I’ll continue to try but maybe you just put your trust in the wrong guy.”
She turned to him. “You care, don’t you?”
“Of course I care Molly. I just don’t know what else I can do, and to be honest with you, the longer this goes on without anything turning up . . . then---”
“The more likely it is that she’s dead,” she finished. “I know that’s the theory, Mr. Carter. But I also know that whatever chance she has will be gone if we quit.”

“Where did you go?” asked Jill when he got home.
“To Walmart,” he replied as he hung his jacket by the door. “And then out to that job in the county. I didn’t make much on it, though.”
He fished out his wallet. “Here. They gave me credit for something I returned.”
She took the credit slip but her eyes remained fixed on his. “Where did you go after you got home?”
“Molly came out. I hadn’t talked with her for a while, so I drove around and filled her in on everything. Are you upset that I was talking with her?”
“She’s claiming you. You know how I feel about that.”
“What else I can do, Jill. It’s not in me to tell her to get lost. I won’t do that.”
“I know. I’m not asking you to. It’s just that I had something important to discuss with you and then you drove away again.”
“Okay. What about?”
She shook her head. “Dinner is reheating. Let’s go to the kitchen. We can talk while we eat.”

He waited patiently for her to tell him whatever it was, but they were nearly through with dinner before she finally said, “I’m going to take a job---a position.”
“You mean the doctoral thing?”
“No. A teaching position. I’m tired of being just the amanuensis for another professor. I want to teach on my own.”
He studied her a moment. “And it would bring in more money for us, right?”
“That’s not the reason I’m doing it.”
“Where can you teach with just a masters degree?”
“Lot’s of places.”
“High schools maybe,” he said sharply. “You’re not doing that.”
“Since when do you tell me what I can and cannot do?”
“Since I know that you have a promising career and want to be a real historian. You can land a full professorship in a few years if you stay on track.”
“People change, Richard. Allow me that right. I’ve decided that I don’t want to be a perpetual student.”
“It’s the money,” he said. “Or do you just want to get me away from Molly.”
She turned to stare at him. “Give me credit for being more honest than that. If that were my motive, I would find a job further from here than Blue Creek.”
“Blue Creek! You can’t mean that Podunk junior college?”
She returned a stubborn look. “I already signed a contract. Are you coming with me or not?”
“You already signed a contract?” he spluttered. “Then what the hell is there to discuss?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “There’s sort of something else.”
It wasn’t like her. She should be angry and adamant, not apologetic.
“What else is going on?” he asked.
“I sort of . . . arranged a job interview for you,” she said with a wince.
“A job interview?”
“With the sheriff’s department there.”
He laughed grimly. “They’ll be thrilled to learn about my felony charge.”
“Mr. Shively knows about it already. He still wants you in for an interview tomorrow.”
“Mr. Shively! You talked to him about me already? What possessed you to do that? It won’t work, Jill. You know it won’t.”
“It won’t work unless you try it. Please go to the interview, Richard. It’s what you want to do. I know it is.”
“No. I’m through with all that. I’ve accepted it, and I’m moving on with my life. You shouldn’t have interfered.”
“I had to ‘interfere’ as you put it.” she said, finally giving vent to her frustration. “I’m sick of seeing you lose one job after another because they don’t interest you. This is the sort of job you want to do. Why don’t you try for it if you have a chance?”
“For two very good reasons, Jill. I don’t have a chance. I have no idea why that idiot sheriff even listened to you once he found out about the thing up in Michigan. The other thing is that if I do get the job, it won’t be what you think it is. I worked in a sheriff’s department before, remember? It’ll just be running the roads at night on rural patrol. The hours will be odd and less than full time, and the pay will be miserable. It’s not real police work.”
“I’m not stupid, Richard. You’re never going to do real police work. Can’t you get that through your head? You cannot be a criminologist with your record. It is not fair, but that is the way it is. And you cannot become a private investigator either. I looked up the requirements. Unless that felony is somehow expunged from your records, you are technically a felon. You cannot get a license.”
“Don’t you think I know all that?”
“In your mind, yes, but not in your heart.”
“Yeah, well I’m sick of being psychoanalyzed. So let’s just drop it.”
“No,” she said loudly. “I will not just drop it!”
Her sharpness took him aback. Neither said anything for a long moment.
“Why are you making me do this?” he finally asked softly.
“Because I’m scared, Richard. I’m scared and I don’t know what else to do.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“That you’ll go back to the way I found you when I got back from the funeral.”
He shook his head dismissively. “That was . . . an anomaly. I just kind of fell off the edge for a while. I was okay as soon as you came back. Now I’ve got myself together. It won’t happen again as long as you’re with me.”
He was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “It’s not because of me,” she said.
“Sure it was. It is. I’m okay as long as I’ve got you. I don’t need anything else.”
“Molly saved you.”
“Molly? You can’t believe that. I’m not . . .”
“In love with her? Of course not. But tell me something, Richard. What is the one thing you think of every day?”
He shrugged. “You think about that little girl and what could have happened to her.”
“Of course. How could I not?”
“It’s what keeps you going. That depressing horror keeps you . . . sane. I don’t understand that, but I know it.”
“That’s not true, and even if it was, what does it have to do with this crazy job thing you cooked up?”
“This will end. I don’t know how or when, but I do know that you need to be doing this sort of thing.”
“There’s no chance that I’ll be an investigator for the sheriff’s department, Jill. If I get the job I’ll just be a part-time flunky at best.”
“But you’ll be closer to it than you could be any other way I can think of. And it will give you structure.”
“You mean a schedule.”
“Maybe duty is a better word,” she said bitterly. “You’re good with duty.”

Before they went to bed, he promised to go to the interview she had arranged. Not that he had any illusions about even being offered a job, but the junior college job was a done deal. When it didn’t work out the way she expected, he had no doubt that Jill could land a doctoral position somewhere.
Just before he fell asleep he resolved to do a better job of concealing his moods from Jill. He would weather the dark moods alone and keep her from having to worry about him. He’d be the sort of man she thought she was marrying.

The smell of rifle fire was heavy on the air as unseen gunfire nearby echoed through the streets. He bent forward trying to present a small target as he tugged a buddy toward a gutted building. Mogadishu. Empty streets? Look to the roofs. A snap passed his ear followed a split second later by a rifle crack. A dark doorway beckoned a few feet away. If he made it he would live.
Almost there, but the body seemed heavier. Straining forward, he kept his eyes locked on the doorway. The body seemed stuck on something. He turned to free it.
A bedstead sat in the middle of the street and the wounded soldiers hands were locked tight upon the bedrails. He crouched to free them and saw the oozing wrists. Slits ran lengthwise between the bones of the forearm. He felt a tickle between his shoulder blades and knew that someone was taking aim.
He awoke with a gasp and sat up. He lay back, waited until his pulse slowed and then got quietly from bed wondering why his subconscious had decided to transport Bobby McComb to Somalia. The only answer he could think of was that the mind was a pattern-finding thing, and sought ceaselessly to connect things in order to make sense of a chaotic world. Maybe none of it made sense. Maybe all the existentialists that he hated were right. Maybe everything that happens does just happen---no pattern---no plan---no meaning.
Richard shook his head. That was Mic Boyd’s world, not his. If it’s all a dream, I’ll just dream on, he thought as he made coffee. He took the first cup to the computer and set about to see if he could discover a pattern that made sense.
Okay. We’ve got two things going on here that may or may not be related. Bobby McComb and Lyla were a definite thing and may have been working on a long term plan to separate Rennie Peele from a sizeable chunk of his money. That’s all Rafferty’s problem. Molly’s baby disappeared and I don’t really have any idea about how that happened other than that someone probably drugged Molly in order to pull it off.
The only thing connecting the cases had been Bobby McComb. He connected them, that is if Richard was right in thinking that he either knew who drugged Molly or had done it himself. Of course Adams could be right in thinking that Molly was responsible for the Valium-alcohol cocktail that she consumed that night. Undeniably, three people connected to Molly, McComb, and Lyla Peele were dead of unnatural causes. Wilson had died in a suspected arson, Katie Nash had been murdered, and McComb had killed himself.
It wasn’t that Richard had no idea as to what may have happened. To the contrary; he had too many. He suspected the newspaper editor of deliberately downplaying Mancie’s disappearance, and Adams of deliberate foot-dragging. Adams and Rafferty were also being too “helpful” probably at the behest of Rennie Peele. And what about Molly’s erstwhile in-laws?
“Right,” he said sarcastically. “They’re all involved in a vast conspiracy to steal Molly’s baby and drive me insane.”
Okay, he thought as he set up a database on the computer. Let’s look at the timelines.
“Make that timeline,” he mumbled aloud, changing his mind. He set it up in what he thought was the proper sequence, incorporating every event that he knew of pertaining to everyone involved in both cases.
Lyla auditions for Peele. (Bobby McComb gets brother to set it up.)
Peele marries Lyla. (Prenuptial property agreement.)
Lyla has a baby.
Peele gets a DNA test proving it is his child. (This causes estrangement.)
Pat Allsop leaves Molly. (For another woman, or just for a freer lifestyle?)
Dr. Wilson dies in house fire. (maybe arson?)
Mancie Disappears. (man seen carrying her away?)
Lyla files for divorce.
Peele gets Rafferty to investigate Lyla/McComb connection.
Molly arrested/released. (suspected dope addiction.)
Molly begins using meth.
Molly asks me to investigate.
I interview Katie Nash.
Katie Nash murdered. (staged as sex crime?)
I go to Wilson’s nurse for patient logs.
Peele gets Adams to introduce me to Rafferty who explains her investigation. (so I won’t mess it up?)
Rafferty gives me a redacted client log removing house calls to Lyla’s. (another affair?)
McComb sells business to Lyla, and lists his house.
Lyla moves to Blue Creek.
I go to Blue Creek because that’s the address McComb had mail forwarded to.
Rafferty is surveilling Lyla’s house.
McComb commits suicide.
I search his house. (and Rafferty knows because she is following me.)

Ordering of the data told him nothing, so he turned his attention to motives. Molly’s obsession with continuing the search, if he ruled out delusion, eliminated her from consideration as anything but a victim. McComb had obsessed on Lyla, and perhaps on getting his hands on his share of Peele’s money. Lyla wanted as much money as possible and, apparently, a singing career. Pat Allsop was obsessed mainly with himself. Katie Nash had loved babies.
“What are you working on?” asked Jill.
He turned to see that she was dressed for work already. “I didn’t hear you get up,” he said.
“I didn’t try to be quiet,” she said, coming over to him. “Want another cup of coffee?”
“No. I’ve had enough.”
She studied the screen over his shoulder. “You think it’s all related?” she asked skeptically.
“Not really, but there’s some puzzling stuff. For example, Peele arranged for the house calls and then had Rafferty check into the pediatrician. Why would he assume that there was an affair between Wilson and Lyla?”
“Maybe he didn’t arrange it,” Jill suggested. “From what you tell me she sounds like an over indulged woman. Maybe she arranged it to spare herself the inconvenience of office visits.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to send the nanny with the baby?”
“Not if she was image-conscious. Are you sure you’re not getting sidetracked? This doesn’t seem germane to the missing child.”
“I know,” he said closing out the file. “I guess I’m just having trouble believing that there can be this much random perversity in the universe. Two guys connected to both Lyla and Molly die within a few months.”
“One was a suicide and the other an accident,” she pointed out.
“Wilson’s fire may have been arson, which would make his death a homicide.”
“Oh, I see. You think that Mr. McComb and that woman killed him. Why?”
“Maybe he was about to compromise Lyla’s big divorce settlement.”
“How?”
“Yeah. How?”
She rested her hands on his shoulders, felt his tension, and begin kneading the muscles at the base of his neck.
“That feels good,” he said.
“Richard, about your interview at Blue Creek,” she began softly, continuing to massage his shoulders.
“I’m going, but don’t expect much. I doubt that I’ll be given serious consideration.”
“Are you still upset with me?”
“No,” he lied, patting her hand. “You were just trying to do what you thought best. If I don’t get the job promise me you’ll reconsider the doctoral thing.”
“I’m committed for next year. Then we’ll see.”
“Don’t do it for me. I don’t want to hold you back.”
“Then don’t try to stop me. This is what I want to do.”
“Have you ever thought how this will look on your resume? When you apply at a good school don’t you think having a job like that might be some sort of red flag? Academia is chock full of the worst kind of elitists. A job history like that could kill you.”
He was right of course, but Jill wasn’t about to admit it.
“Emerson said that a man who trims himself to fit others’ opinions will soon whittle himself away. If a school looks askance at my community college experience it will be a sort of litmus test for me. I don’t want to work at such an institution.”
“You’re rationalizing, Jill. Don’t take this job.”
“I have taken it, Richard.”
“End of discussion?”
“I certainly hope so,” she said, gathering up her materials. “I’m taking the afternoon off. I should be here at twelve-thirty. I laid out your suit.”
“Suit? You mean the interview’s today?”
“Yes. Please be ready. I need time to go by the college while we are there.”
“I’ll be ready, I guess,” he said glumly.
“Good,” she said, ignoring his petulance.


With nothing to do for the morning besides dread the interview, Richard decided to try his luck getting Adams to give him more details about Bobby McComb’s suicide. Adams’ smile at seeing him seemed genuine. The man seemed to have discovered a way to turn bipolar disorder inside out, inflicting it on those around him rather than suffering through the mood swings himself. Richard had arrived at the upswing of the pendulum. Better to be the butt of jokes than the recipient of vitriol.
“If it ain’t my favorite amateur private dick,” said Adams jovially. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Got a new theory for me, don’t you?”
“Nope. Just here to pester you.”
“Well have a seat and have a go. I’m in a good mood. The price of donuts just went down.”
The detective’s over the top mood made Richard wonder if maybe it was the price of alcohol that had gone down. The thought inspired a question he hadn’t intended to ask until that moment.
“Did McComb have anything in his system?”
Adams’ smile disappeared. “Why?” he barked.
“I was just thinking that it would help to be kind of out of it if I guy intended to open his veins and let his life bleed away.”
“Why are you asking?”
“It’s just a logical question, isn’t it?”
“Bullshit! Who told you?”
Richard didn’t intend to lie, but he thought he knew how to elicit the information he wanted.
“No one, but I’ve been discussing things with Rafferty and---”
“She told you about the Valium?”
It didn’t surprise Richard that Adams had revealed information to Peele’s investigator. Wealth bought privilege. It’s the way the world worked.
“What else did she tell you?”
“I didn’t say she told me anything,” he said. “The first I knew anything about it was just now.”
Learning that he had been maneuvered into giving Richard the information didn’t improve Adams’ mood.
“Get out!”
“Come on, Adams. Talk to me about the suicide scene. You already told Rafferty, so---”
“Leave!”

The phone was ringing when he came in the door. When he answered he was greeted loudly.
“Why did you tell Adams that I filled you in on the McComb case?”
“I didn’t,” he said mildly. “I just asked a question and he assumed the rest. By the way, how much Valium did he have in his system?”
A long silence was finally punctuated with a sigh.
“Maybe enough to kill him without bothering to slash his wrists. He was determined to do it right.”
It wasn’t unheard of. Richard remembered reading that Hitler had taken cyanide and shot himself when the Russians were closing in.
What had been closing in on McComb? Prison? Or simply life without his Honeybunch?
“You still there, Carter?”
“Yeah.”
“Then tell me something. Why are you still poking around this thing? McComb can’t tell you anything now.”
“You mean why am I still screwing up your investigation.”
“No. That’s over. The old man is cutting his losses. Lyla wins.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“Because I had a good working relationship with Adams until you gave him the idea that I was spilling things he told me in confidence.”
“Peele’s influence will still buy you what you need from him.”
“Peele’s not my only client. I just want to keep things going with Adams for future use.”
He thought a moment.
“Sorry, Rafferty. Unlike you, I don’t have any influence. So I just get information however I can. I didn’t mean to screw things up for you.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, since the damage is done, mind telling me what else he told you about the suicide scene?”
“Why should I?”
“Professional courtesy, remember---one jarhead to another?”
She laughed.
“The scene is pretty much what you already know: dead man in a tub with no going away note. The M. E. found the beau coup Valium in his system plus a minor blunt trauma injury to the side of his head. Don’t get excited. It was consistent with a slip in the tub. Probably hit the wall or railing.”
“Enough to render him unconscious?”
“Inconclusive. Most likely scenario: the dope made him woozy and he fell.”
“That it?”
“It’s all I know.”
“You mean about the suicide scene or everything?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to find out about Molly’s kid. Do you know of anything that could help me?”
“No, Carter. I wish you well. I really do, but I can’t help you.”
“I guess a pro bono assist is out of the question.”
“Time is money, Carter. I don’t pour mine down a rat hole.”
“You think I’m on a fool’s errand?”
“I think it’s a shame the world works the way it does,” she said softly, her voice more feminine than he had ever heard.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Hey, I gotta go, Carter. Semper fi.”
Jill came in as he was hanging up.
“Who was that?” she asked. “Someone with a job for you to do?”
“It was Rafferty.”
“What did she want?”
“Just saying goodbye. Lyla and Peele have reached a settlement.”

It had been unseasonably cold for over a week, and today seemed even colder. A quartering tailwind whipped loudly around the car as they headed east toward what he was sure would be a futile interview.
“They may want me to teach summer semester,” said Jill.
“That good or bad?” he asked.
“Good. We need the money, and I’m ready to have my own classes.”
Making lemonade from lemons, he thought while keeping his mouth shut. Jill had been on the fast track but this job was a poison pill. A major college post was now out of the question. He was sure of it despite her protests to the contrary. Talking wouldn’t help---not now. Of course the hick college had snapped her up as quickly as the hick sheriff was getting ready to dispense with the formality of his own application. Not that he cared. His enthusiasm for the job just about matched his chances of having it offered him.
When she dropped him off at the Hawthorne County courthouse, however, he was surprised to discover that he actually wanted the dead end job. He went up the steps thinking that that was really pathetic. He remembered an auxiliary deputy from Lake County. The victim of a bad former marriage and self-pity, the man had embraced excesses including overeating, archconservatism, and misogyny. Richard was thin, moderate, and enjoyed the company of women, but like the man they all used to make fun of, here he was, vying for the consolation prize.
Even if this comes through, it’s as close as you’re gonna get.
The Sheriff’s Office was sparsely furnished and squared away, shipshape. A graying man in khaki stood as he entered and met him at the office door with a firm handshake. He was a good foot taller than Richard and had a formerly athletic physique rounded with age and declining physical activity. They exchanged names, the sheriff’s being Shively with some sort of southern-sounding nickname that Richard didn’t quite catch.
“I read your resume,” said the sheriff.
Richard hadn’t sent one, but of course, Jill had.
“Your experience is a bit thin, but the criminology classes are a plus. Do you intend to finish your degree?”
“I haven’t decided,” said Richard. It was a lie, but telling the sheriff that he had no intention of wasting the time and money on a useless degree wouldn’t help land the job.
“Tell me about the felony homicide,” said the sheriff, coming straight to the point as he stared Richard in the eye.
Richard blinked, looked away, shrugged.
“The guy killed several people. He was playing games with me, and he intended to kill the woman I eventually married. I was only trying to restrain him when it happened. He pulled a knife and nearly killed me. I killed him.”
“Was it self-defense?”
“I think it was. Technically though, I attacked him first. He may have only pulled the knife in self-defense. I had him in a chokehold, but I wasn’t trying to kill him. He probably didn’t know that.”
Shively nodded as he studied Richard for a long, silent moment.
“So who did you know with enough clout to swing a pardon for you?”
“No one. The pardon wasn’t about me. It was about him. He collected women---‘harvested them’ would be a better term. I guess the Prosecutor just didn’t want to do his duty.”
“What?”
“The Prosecutor went to the Governor on my behalf. Crazy, huh?”
Shively nodded again. Then he got up, signaling an end to the interview.
“Mind if I ask you a question?” Richard asked.
“Not at all.”
“Why did you take the time to interview me? I mean, what department could afford to take on someone like me.”
“You do carry a lot of baggage---too much if what you did was some sort of vigilante thing. But good help is hard to find. You have the right training: Marines and then the criminology classes. I thought you were worth a look.”
Shively’s use of the past tense confirmed what Richard had suspected, that the interview had been a formality, granted no doubt only because of Jill’s importunity on his behalf. He ought to be angry with her, but instead he was only profoundly disappointed that her efforts had failed.
“Thanks for you honesty, sir,” he said, offering his hand again.
“Life’s too short for anything else,” said Shively. “I wish you well, Mr. Carter.”
“Thank you, sir.”

He was okay with it until he saw Jill’s face. It was obvious to him that she expected good news, and how could she?
“How did the interview go?” she asked as she got in the car.
“He didn’t offer me a job,” he said, looking over his shoulder to check traffic before pulling back onto the street.
Richard was angry with her for putting him through it, but more angry with himself for being stupid enough to hope that something would come of it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. I knew I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being hired.”
He didn’t say it to hurt her, but it did. She realized that by arranging the interview she had opened an old wound. She had added to his torment by giving him the illusion of hope. Richard wanted the job more than he had admitted to her or even to himself.
“It was a stupid idea,” he grumbled.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she looked away to hide them from him.
“Sorry,” she choked out.
“Hey,” he hurriedly said. “I was talking about me, not you.”
She shook her head, dismissing his attempt to redirect his thoughtless remark.
“I was talking about something I did in the interview,” he improvised. “I . . . I tried to impress him with my . . . knowledge in criminology. All the while he had my college transcript so he knew how many hours I’d taken.”
Given the circumstances, Richard thought that it was a pretty good lie, and an acceptable expedient since it harmed nothing and spared Jill’s feelings. Jill knew it was a lie, but pretended to believe it. It would do no good to point out how much he had hurt her. For his part, Richard pretended to believe her pretense. So they paved the problem over with mutual lies.
“This won’t work,” Richard said after they had driven some ten miles in silence.
“What?”
“I was mad at you for making me go to the interview, and I was mad at myself for wanting the damned job. That’s why I said your idea was stupid. I love you, and I appreciate that you were trying to do something for me, and I’m sorry for hurting you like that.”
“And I’m sorry for . . . interfering,” she said. “I won’t do it again.”
“Well some good came out of it,” he said. “I think I’ve got my head on straight again. This should just about finish off any of that foolishness about a career in law enforcement. You know what that cracker sheriff thinks? He thinks I was a vigilante.”
Despite it being her second language, Jill’s English was better than Richards. Every now and then, however, a word or allusion puzzled her.
“Vigilante? In Spanish that means watchman. What am I missing?”
“I don’t know where the term comes from, but they’re people who take the law into their own hands to right a perceived wrong.”
“He accused you of that?”
“Not in so many words, but that’s what he thinks. He also seems to think I was pardoned because of my connections---like I’ve got any.”
“No wonder you’re upset. When I spoke to him he seemed like a nice man.”
“Oh I think he’s decent enough. I’m just carrying the wrong kind of baggage for the job.” He looked across at her. “Are we still mad at each other?”
The argument ended with a velvet lash, the soft but firm placement of blame.
“I was never angry with you, Richard,” she said solemnly.
November 8

A bitterly cold wind buffeted the truck as Richard drove out in the county to give an estimate on a sagging porch. More upset over the job interview than he thought he should be, he resolved to lose himself in physical work. This morning at least he could forget both the Blue Creek job and his quixotic campaign on Molly’s behalf. The chill had awakened an irritating road cricket, so he turned on the radio to drown it out.
The dream from Mogadishu popped into his mind like a movie trailer, followed quickly by flash images of Katie Nash lying disheveled and askew of a bed and McComb slumped in a tub of pink water. Official theory held that his head injury had come when, weakened from loss of blood and the effects of the Valium, McComb fell while getting in or perhaps when trying get out of the tub after changing his mind about suicide. It was possible, just as Nash being the victim of a sexual predator, but the combination was difficult for him to believe.
Come on, Richard. What do they have in common?
Molly.
“Yeah, right. Throw in that they were both kind of hefty too. Which means their killer was athletic, probably a weightlifter,” he grumbled sarcastically, his breath visible in the cold cab of the truck.
Each was with Molly on the night Mancie was taken.
The blacktop to Walnut Grove came up just as an old song he used to like began, a haunting refrain about the singer-songwriter’s dead son. He had always thought that the song had begun as a therapeutic catharsis for the grieving father. The lyrics brought to mind McComb’s dilettantish efforts. “Cold Tears” probably was meant to signify enduring grief, the kind that wrecks the rest of one’s life. It seemed odd that he had picked a theme like that for Lyla’s breakthrough song.
“Only a crocodile has cold tears,” he muttered. “Hot tears are more like it---the kind your Honeybunch would have cried had Rafferty been able to foil her grab for Peele’s money.”
Listening to the lyrics, he suddenly remembered something he had forgotten to include in the timeline he had worked out earlier. Lost in thought, he drove past the address without realizing it. Then things started falling into place and he just looked for a place to turn around. He could be wrong---ridiculously wrong, but he knew one sure way to find out. He drove seventy-five and eighty on his way back to town.
“Mr. Carter,” gasped Molly, going white. “What’s wrong?”
Pent up dread loomed in her face. He smiled reassuringly.
“Nothing. I just came by to see if you could help me. I should have called first. I’m sorry.”
“Oh . . . uh, come in. It’s cold out,” she said, sagging with relief. “You want me to help you with what?”
“I need to talk with Lyla. You know her, right?”
“Sure, but she don’t like me. But then again, I don’t think she likes nobody.”
“But she doesn’t know me at all. If I go alone it’s like a complete stranger had come to bother her.”
Molly was clearly skeptical, but he didn’t think she could turn her godsend down.
“You mean now?”
“Yeah. She lives over at Blue Creek. You know where that is?”
She nodded and turned toward the bedroom. A moment later she came out, pulling on a jacket as thin and worn as she was.
“What can she tell us?” she asked.
“I think McComb confided in her. Now that he’s dead, she might be decent enough to tell us.”
“I wouldn’t count on her decency,” said Molly dryly as she buckled in.
“I’m not really,” he replied as he hit the defroster to clear the windshield, “but maybe I can read her actions . . . her body language while we’re talking.”
“You really think this is going to do any good, Mr. Carter?”
“You never know until you try, Molly. All I know is that you look everywhere you think of and you ask every question that comes to mind.”
Cold front clouds slicing in from the northwest overtook them before they got twenty miles. The windows steamed up as a gusty tailwind shoved them toward Blue Creek.

“What now, Mr. Carter?” asked Molly, eying the locked security gate.
“We go around,” he said, as he steered to the right.
Dry weeds scraped loudly on sheet metal as the old truck wallowed diagonally across the ditch and past the gate riding down thumb-sized saplings. Molly gripped the dash until they reached the driveway on the other side.
“Can’t be trespassing if there isn’t a keep out sign,” he joked, trying to ease her tension.
Trespassing wasn’t the cause of her anxiety, however. He felt her eyes on his face.
“You know something, don’t you?” she said.
He kept his eyes on the drive as if he were having trouble following it.
“I wish I did, Molly. But no, I don’t. We just need to talk to Lyla.”
A sudden snow shower all but obliterated the view as the sharp wind sent giant flakes hurtling into the windshield. The furious spate ended as quickly as it had begun, but the wind continued unabated, whistling loudly and buffeting the truck. They made a sharp turn around a cedar glade and the cabin appeared sitting well back from the water’s edge. A dock ran what appeared to be fifty feet or more out into the lake.
A bundled up woman stood motionless near the end of the pier, staring out across the lake. She turned and began to walk back. Then her head came up and she stopped. For a frozen moment she stood staring at them. Then she sprinted up the dock, waving her arms and ran toward them as Richard drove up. Richard had to stop abruptly to keep from hitting her. He rolled down the window.
“Thank God you showed up!” gasped Lyla. “The nanny fell into the lake and I don’t know where my baby is. Oh God! Oh God! You’ve got to help me find her!”
“Call 911!” Richard said to Molly as he threw open the door almost knocking the woman down.
Without waiting for a response from either of the women, he bolted toward the pier. A floating log near the end of the dock was a person floating face down. He tore off and tossed aside his jacket, and then leapt feet first from the end of the dock, intending to land as close to the body as possible. Only when he was in mid-air did he wonder how deep the water was. The shock of the cold water was no less severe than he anticipated, but somehow he managed not to gasp when he hit it. The cold almost made him exhale as he plunged totally beneath the surface without reaching the bottom. Somehow he managed not to inhale water, and came up directly beside the body.
When he turned the slight woman to her back, sightless black eyes stared skyward. A bloodless gash gaped in the hairline, oozing no blood. He had seen enough in Somalia not to wonder if she were alive. Pulling against the cold water and weighed down by jeans, flannel shirt, and work boots, he finally reached the shallow water near the base of the dock. Shivering in the biting wind, he dragged her up onto the dry grass where Molly and Lyla stood.
“I got an ambulance on the way,” said Molly breathlessly. “I’ll give CPR. Find the baby.”
Richard knew CPR would do no good, but didn’t say so.
“She must have slipped on the dock and hit her head,” said Lyla as if in a trance. Then she shuddered and fell to her knees. “Where’s my baby?” she shrieked. “Where’s my angel?”
Hair prickled at the back of Richard’s neck. He pushed the feeling aside. He had no time for it.
He had to think. The baby was in the frigid water, but where?
No boat. So it has to be near the dock.
“Find my angel,” wailed Lyla. “Bring her back to me!”
“Be careful, Mr. Carter,” grunted Molly, busily trying to resuscitate the dead woman.
The water should have felt warmer than the wind. It didn’t. He waded out quickly until he was chest deep, braced himself against a piling, went under, and opened his eyes. Surprisingly, the water was clear enough to make out the dark shape of the next piling. With no sun, however, visibility was a mere two or three blurry feet. Making his way to the end of the dock, he searched with numb hands along the bottom on the left side. Lungs bursting, he broke surface at the end where the water seemed to be about eight feet deep.
No current so the baby has to be near where it went in.
He went under again, intending to search back along the right side, but changed his mind.
Too shallow. It’s off the very end of the dock, he thought just as sunlight broke through clouds to light the water.
There!
Something pale appeared beyond and below for a split second before the sun went dark again. He went up for air, and then surface-dived, fighting downward through the pressure in what he hoped was the right direction.
Nothing. A mirage.
Something appeared just to his left, darker this time. He touched it, and knew immediately. There was no feeling of triumph, just desperation, determination, and a profound feeling of loss. He wanted to hope, but dread pressed in on him heavier than the pressure and colder than the life stealing water.
Why? If you brought me here, why couldn’t you let me get here in time? Why did you let me get so close if this was the way it had to be?
Richard pulled toward the surface holding the dead child to his chest as if to comfort it. He broke surface to find Lyla kneeling on the dock, a blanket draped over her shoulder. Beyond her he saw the flashing lights of an ambulance speeding up the drive.
“Give me my baby,” said Lyla.
“I’ve got it,” he replied, gaining his feet as he made his way alongside the dock toward the bank. “Get them over here, Molly!” he yelled.
The ambulance was making straight toward them already.
“Give me my baby,” Lyla repeated as she spread the blanket open to receive it.
He waded out and snatched the blanket from her, threw it to the ground, and fell to his knees clutching the child. He cleared the airway and stripped the zip-up jumper from the limp body. Its eyes were closed which was good, but he felt no heartbeat. A woman dropped to her knees beside him.
“Let me,” she said, shoving him aside. “How long in the water?”
“Lyla?” asked Richard when she didn’t respond.
“I came outside to look for the nanny about fifteen minutes ago I think. At least that long,” said Lyla. “She shouldn’t have brought my angel out here. I don’t know how many times I told her not to do that.”
Richard stood, seeing that another EMT had taken over for Molly. He licked his lips, tasting something sweet. Puzzled, he looked at the lake, wondering if antifreeze could have gotten into the water. Molly came over and put a comforting arm around Lyla. Lyla stiffened, and then turned to embrace her.
“You’re must be freezing in that cheap jacket,” said Lyla. “They don’t need you now that we have professionals here. Why don’t you go up to the cabin and warm up?”
“I’m okay,” said Molly, staring solemnly at the EMT kneeling over the baby.
“No, let’s go get you something heavier. The wind’s terrible. Come on up to the house, dear,” said Lyla, trying to shepherd her toward the cabin.
The EMT suddenly scooped up the baby and wrapped her in the blanket.
“You aren’t going to do CPR?” asked Molly in concern.
“Got to get her to the ambulance,” said the young woman.
“You mean she’s alive,” said Molly excitedly.
“Jess, how you doing over there?” she yelled.
“No good,” he replied.
“Then come on. It’s ALS for this one. Call in. Let’s go!”
As she turned toward the ambulance, the blanket slipped aside and the unresponsive child’s head lolled into view. Molly stumbled to follow, but Lyla caught her by the arm.
“Come dear,” she said. “Let them do what they have to do. We shouldn’t interfere.”
Molly slapped her hand away. Catching up with the hurrying EMT, she craned her neck for a better look at the child.
Richard hurried to catch up with her.
“No!” she screamed. “Oh God---Oh no! No!”
“Keep her away!” barked the paramedic as Richard caught up to them.
“She’s the mother,” he said.
“Keep her back. I’ve got a job to do and I don’t need the distraction,” she said as she stepped up into the ambulance.
“Is she alive?” asked Molly plaintively.
“Maybe,” she said. Then she turned to her partner. “You sure about the status?”
“Rigor. Long gone,” he replied in the matter-of-fact tone that becomes second nature to first responders.
Richard put his arms around Molly. She clutched at him, twisting her hands into his cold shirt.
“You’re going to freeze,” she mumbled.
Disengaging, she ran to the dock and picked up his jacket. She came back and draped it over his shoulders.
“Thanks,” he muttered as they stood beside the closed ambulance.
Until she had called his attention to it, he hadn’t realized how cold he really was. His feet were numb and his hands ached. The male EMT opened the door and threw him a blanket.
“Here,” he said before closing the door.
From inside came the sounds of muted communication.
“I should have figured it out sooner, Molly,” said Richard. “I just couldn’t see it in time.”
“But you---”
She stopped abruptly as the ambulance door cracked open.
“We’re going to the hospital,” said the woman, “Someone’s on the way to pick up the . . . the other.”
“She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?” gasped Molly. “Mancie’s going to be all right?”
The paramedic met Richard’s eyes. You tell her, they seemed to say before she shut the door.
He looked away and saw Lyla surveying them coolly with her arms crossed. There were no tears, cold or otherwise.
Molly pulled the door open again.
“You have to tell me something. Please,” she pled.
“There’s a faint heartbeat,” said the EMT reluctantly. “We’re doing what we can. Now shut the door.”
The ambulance started moving and she shut the door. Richard and Molly ran to the truck to follow.
“How did you know?” asked Molly as soon as they were in.
“I just thought she might be here,” he said as he spun the truck in a circle, heedless of the gravel his spinning tires were throwing up. “I brought you, hoping we could get a look at the baby. I couldn’t tell though because I wasn’t sure.”
“She tried to kill my baby,” said Molly numbly. Then more stridently, “She tried to kill Mancie! Why, Mr. Carter? Why?”
He couldn’t tell her. He knew. But there was no way to tell her.
“They wouldn’t be trying to save her if there wasn’t a chance,” said Molly. “She’s going to be all right, Mr. Carter. I know she is. She has to be. This wouldn’t have happened like this if she wasn’t going to be all right.”
Her words were so much whistling in the dark. Mancie couldn’t be all right. She was technically alive, but she had to have suffered severe hypoxia. How much brain damage had fifteen minutes without oxygen done? Richard looked straight ahead as he tried to catch up with the ambulance.

Richard’s wet boots squeaked on the waxed floor as he stepped back into the hot waiting room after giving his statement to the deputy. The borrowed scrubs and jacket felt good, but he was still chilled. Shively had stood silently nearby, listening and watching intently. Richard had no idea what had been going through the sheriff’s mind, and wasn’t sure he cared. He wasn’t sure he cared about anything. Molly was with Mancie and Lyla was on her way to the courthouse in custody. The last three hours were a blur. Snippets of conversation and images ran through his mind as if it were in fever mode.
“It was Bobby’s idea,” he heard Lyla telling the sheriff. The paramedic bending intently but with cool efficiency over the baby. “He and Jerry set it up to get their hands on Rennie’s money.” Lyla smoking calmly, throwing him a dead-eyed glance. “He killed my baby and said we had to find another one.” The dead weight of Mancie in his arms. “He used me. I don’t know why he killed himself.”
He felt dead inside.
“You warm enough to go for a ride?”
Startled, he turned to see the Shively staring at him grimly.
“Where are we going?”
“Out for coffee and a little talk if you’re up to it. I’ll have someone tell your friend where you’ve gone.”
“My wife’s coming.”
“I know. You called during the interview. She’s coming from James Mill, so she won’t be here for another hour or so. I’ll have you back by then. She knows you’re all right, doesn’t she?”
“I told her, but she won’t believe it until she sees me.”
“Sounds like my boss,” said Shively. “Come on. I got the cruiser idling, and we’ve got some things we need to talk about.”
“I gave a statement,” Richard objected.
“That was about what happened today. What I want to know is what happened before today.”
When Richard didn’t respond Shively continued.
“You know what she said to me when I asked her how she could kill an innocent child? You can’t prove I did, she said.”
“She’s like some kind of reptile,” said Richard woodenly.
“Right,” said Shively. “Look, Mr. Carter. We’re going to have a high profile trial on our hands. I’d kind of like to have some idea of what in tarnation happened.”
Richard had a task. He focused on it.
“Believe it or nor, Lyla told you the truth,” he said, “except for her part. I can tell you what happened, but your prosecutor and the one in James Mill will have to come up with more than me or they’ll lose. She’s gonna get the best lawyer money can buy. Let’s go get that coffee and we’ll talk about it.”

Provisioned with coffee from the local McDonalds, they drove out into the county.
“So after Mrs. Peele’s baby died she got this McComb to steel her a substitute so that they could still get Peele’s money, and what? He started killing potential witnesses?”
“I make him good for the abduction,” said Richard, “but he may not have killed anyone, not even himself.”
“That little thing killed them all?”
“She killed the nanny and did her best to drown Mancie. Tell me she’s not capable.”
“Yeah. Well, our problem is that her version is more believable. The nanny slipped on the dock, hit her head, and fell in while holding the baby.”
“Not if you were there when we got them out,” said Richard.
“The jury won’t know anything about that,” said Shively. “Run me through it again---from the start.”
“Well, start with the fact that they needed another baby after Peele’s baby died. I don’t know if that was accidental homicide or not. They killed Wilson because he was familiar with both babies and would have recognized the switch, or maybe because she called him over the night they did whatever they did to her baby. Unless she confesses we’ll probably never know. Katie Nash probably saw McComb in the neighborhood that night.”
“That’s a lot of probablies,” said Shively. “And this McComb fellow?”
“He may have killed himself, but I doubt it. After Lyla knew she was getting a good chunk of Peele’s money, McComb lost his usefulness---became just a loose end. Maybe she just didn’t want to share the money with him. So she got rid of him. You know what happened out at the lake today.”
“How much of that can you prove?”
“None of it. DNA will prove who the babies are. Maybe that will be enough.”
“She just doesn’t look the part,” said the sheriff. “Ordinary people might have trouble believing that that little thing could kill six people, including her own baby, just for what? A little money.”
“A lot of money,” Richard corrected. “But it wasn’t the money she was really after. It was ego gratification. She wanted to be country music star.”
“You’re kidding.”
“She tried to kill Mancie in a way that could be useful to her. She wrote a song about the accidental drowning of her baby. I think she thought that sympathy would help make her a star.”
Shively shook his head. “No one will believe that she did it all just for that.”
“I don’t think it started out that way. Abducting Mancie might have just been an attempt to salvage the divorce settlement. Then she had to find a way to get rid of her before the switch was discovered. An accidental drowning and closed casket funeral, insisted on by the devastated mother, would take care of that.”
“If we can verify that she wrote a song about her baby drowning, it might prove premeditation.”
“She’ll say McComb wrote it. And, as you pointed out, a good defense lawyer will have a more believable explanation of the whole thing.”
“A woman without natural affection,” mused Shively.
“A psychopath,” Richard corrected.
“The contemporary word for it,” said the sheriff. “We used to just call it ‘evil.’ I’d tell you that we must be living in the last days, Mr. Carter, but I think we always have been.”
Richard understood that Shively was referring to a biblical passage, but didn’t quite get his point.
“I wonder about Mancie’s last days,” he said. “Fifteen minutes under water. What did that do to her?”
“I don’t know,” said Shively. “But maybe it wasn’t that long. The Peele woman would have had to put that poor Hispanic girl in there first. By the way, that poor girl’s name is Gertrudis Zamora. She was from Guatemala. Anyway, that would have taken some time, and then she probably went back to get the baby. So maybe she wasn’t in the water that long.”
Richard wanted to believe that it had happened like that. Suddenly, he was back on the dock, reliving the whole thing.
“She was dry,” he mumbled.
“The baby?”
“No. Lyla. When we drove up she was standing on the dock, just looking out over the lake. The wind was howling, so she didn’t hear us coming.”
“Suggestive but not probative,” said Shively. “A lawyer would say she was stunned by the tragedy.”
He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. Then he handed his cup to Richard.
“Bitter. Could you get a packet of sweetener from the glove compartment and put it in here for me?”
Richard found the pink packets, tore one open, and poured it into Shively’s cup. Watching it fall into the black liquid brought back the memory of the sweet taste he had experienced after pulling Mancie from the lake. Then he knew its source.
“Sheriff,” he said in a preoccupied tone. “You need the jumper the baby was in when I pulled her out. The EMT left it on the ground out there, I think.”
“I’ve got a deputy out there securing the place, but we haven’t processed it. Why do we need the jumper?”
“I tasted something sweet. I thought at the time that antifreeze had gotten into the lake, but it would take a tanker load to flavor the water. It was sugar.”
“Sugar in the water?”
“No. I think maybe Lyla weighted the jumper with it before she threw Mancie in. She expected it do dissolve by the time the body was recovered.”
“But the water was too cold and you got there too soon? Who would think of such a thing?”
“Someone who doesn’t know what tears are,” said Richard. “Someone cold.”

Epilog

Maybe you believe in miracles. On the other hand, perhaps you think that once in a great while the random perversity of the universe just comes up three of a kind, making a lucky few winners for a brief moment. Mancie Randolph awoke with no apparent brain dysfunction. Maybe it was the cold water, her age, the quick arrival of the ambulance, the presence of a paramedic able to begin advanced life saving procedures in time, or the conjunction of all those factors. Whatever the reason, it firmly established Richard Carter as an official godsend in Molly Randolph’s mind and heart.
For Richard the scales of judgment tilted more favorably, but the save-a-life to make up for a life taken didn’t quite reach the balance that would allow him absolution. Then again, he never really thought they would.
Once the story was out people demanded justice for Lyla Peele, forgetting that we have a legal system, not a justice system. The Hawthorne and Greene County prosecutors wisely chose to begin what was sure to be a lengthy campaign to hold Lyla Peele to account for her crimes by concentrating on the death and disposal of her own baby and the abduction and attempted murder of Mancie. The DNA made some sort of conviction a slam-dunk. The defense strategy was predictable: blame everything on Bobby McComb. Already her legal team was waging a press campaign to paint him as a Svengali. To anyone familiar with Lyla, it was laughable, but the jury would know only what she showed them in court. When she killed Gertrudis Zamora and tried to drown Mancie McComb had been dead for over a week. Richard wanted to believe that no jury in the world would believe that McComb could control her from beyond the grave.

The place was larger than he had expected and in much better shape than he imagined considering the rent. They still wouldn’t have been able to afford it on Jill’s income had the landlord not reduced the price in return for Richard’s promise to do repairs, including an urgently needed reproofing job. He carried the last of the boxes up the steep steps of the cabin built as a summer home. It was eight miles from town on a hard surface road, but secluded. Jill had fallen in love with the view out back, but he worried about the drive she would have to make and about the times when she would be alone. Mostly, he worried that she wasn’t really as happy to be taking the job at the community college as she assured him that she was.
“Put that in the bedroom,” she said as he came into the kitchen where she was putting away things.
When he went into the bedroom he saw that she had already made up the bed. There were no curtains yet, but the house, although still cold was on its way to becoming homey. Jill’s imprimatur was already apparent. She always made the best of what she had, which of course is what she was trying to do with her life with him.
“That was the last of it,” he said, coming back into the kitchen.
“Good, could you build a fire in the fireplace? It’s a little chilly.”
Before he could answer there was a knock at the door.
“Who could that be?” she asked as she went to see.
“Well, not a welcoming committee,” he replied. “Our nearest neighbor is a mile down the road.”
Jill opened the door to find a large man towering over her, his hat in his hand.
“Mr. Shively,” she said. “Come in.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Richard when the sheriff came inside.
“Nothing,” said Shively. “I just came to ask you if you still want that job.”
Richard had given up on the job. He wanted it, but not if it was offered out of pity.
“As long as it’s not just charity,” he said.
“I spend my own money for charity, not the county’s,” said Shively tersely.
“Sorry. I do need the job.”
“Let’s go outside and talk about it then.”
They went out on the front porch.
“Mr. Shively, I appreciate your offer, but I wouldn’t want to take the job on false pretenses.”
“False pretenses?”
“I just got lucky finding the kid,” said Richard. “I’m not all that experienced in police work.”
“I’ve got an investigator. You’ll run patrol.”
Richard felt foolish. He tried to recover by asking a question.
“Night work mostly?”
Shively nodded. “The pay’s not good.”
“I do handyman work. Any rules against moonlighting?”
“Paul made tents on his off time. If it’s good enough for the Lord’s employees, I guess it’s good enough for the county.”
Being what amounted to an auxiliary officer was as close to real police work as Richard was likely to get, which was to say it was both too close and not close enough. Yet, pathetically, he wanted to take the position.
“When could I start?” he asked.
“Monday too soon?”
“No. Do I need to buy uniforms or are they supplied?”
“The county supplies two. You can either wash one every day or buy more out of your own pocket. I expect a good appearance. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”
“No.”
“Something else,” said Shively. “I don’t mind my people drinking on their own time, but you can’t do it in public.”
“That’s kind of hypocritical, isn’t it?”
“It’s my game and I make the rules. You don’t have to play.”
“Given the culture, I don’t suppose it’s unreasonable.”
“Glad you condescend to approve.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Good. Then maybe the other rules will go down as well. Conduct unbecoming a member of the department will not be tolerated.”
“I’m not sure I even know what you mean by that.”
“Sure you do, Carter. You were in the Marines. Think of it as the conduct expected of officers in the Corps.”
Richard hadn’t been an officer, but he did know what Shively meant.
“Okay,” he said, thinking that it was all a bit of overkill for what was essentially an auxiliary position. “Anything else?”
“Finances,” said Shively. “If you get in money trouble I want to know about it.”
“Like what?”
“Like not being able to meet your obligations. I won’t have any of my deputies getting their pay garnished. You have trouble, we can work something out with the bank.”
Richard grimaced.
“I’m not trying to be unpleasant, Mr. Carter, just honest. You need to know up front what I expect of you. From top to bottom I want a department people can look up to. It makes the job a lot simpler.”
“Okay, what does it pay?”
“Only minimum wage to begin with, but I can give you forty hours a week, bare bones health insurance, and a week’s paid vacation after you’ve been with the department for a year. We don’t have paid sick days, but there’s flexibility in workdays. For example, if you’re sick and miss a day one week, you can make it up the next.”
“I’ll be patrolling in what?”
“Your own vehicle, I’m afraid. But you get county gas and maintenance based on a log book you’ll keep.”
“I’d like the job,” said Richard.
Shively held out a large hand. “Come by tomorrow morning and we’ll take care of the paper work.”

Later that afternoon as Richard was taking empty boxes out to the truck to be run into the recycling center a black Crown Victoria pulled into the drive. He saw only vague shapes through its heavily tinted windows. Then the passenger door opened and Molly Randolph stepped out. She stood uncertainly holding the door.
“Hi, Mr. Carter. Is Mrs. Carter around?”
“She’s in the house unpacking. Is Mancie with you?”
“Yeah, but she’s asleep and I don’t want her to get out in the cold. Mrs. Allsop just brung me over so I could say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?”
“We’re moving up to Kansas City. I got a cousin we’re going to stay with until I’m on my feet.”
“Can you come in for a bit? I’m sure Jill would like to see you.”
“I’d like that,” she said before bending down to tell her former mother in law what she was doing.
“So I guess things are patched up between you and your mother in law,” he said softly as they went up the steps to the porch.
“Patched up is a pretty good way to put it. I’m trying to forgive her for thinking I wasn’t good enough for Pat and she’s trying to forgive me for him leaving me.” She spoke without rancor and with just a touch of humor. “We ain’t ever gonna be close, but we can be civil for Mancie’s sake. She only has one grandma and I don’t want to take that away from her. Living a good distance away will make it easier on all of us. A person can only do so much pretending.”
“Getting a clean start then,” he said as Jill came into the living room.
“Molly told me that she and Mancie are moving to Kansas City, dear.”
“I don’t imagine James Mill holds too many good memories for you,” said Jill.
“No, but I was tempted to stay. Everybody’s being real nice, even Mr. Adams. Mr. Peele offered me a job and he was even going to give us a house. I had to think long and hard about that before I turned him down.”
“You turned him down?” said Richard. “Why?”
“Well, a house would have been real nice, but it didn’t feel right. Besides, we needed to get away from James Mill. I don’t want Mancie being too . . . special. There she would always be the baby Lyla stole and tried to kill. I want her to grow up ordinary.”
“How is your little girl?” asked Jill.
“She’s just fine. She remembers me now. I’m not sure she did at first.” Molly blinked away tears and composed herself. “We’re just fine, Mrs. Carter. I had to come over to say goodbye to you, and kind of apologize for . . . for everything, you know.”
“Richard, could you bring in the rest of the boxes from the truck?” asked Jill.
There were no more boxes outside, but he took the hint.
After he went outside Jill said, “It must have been a difficult decision to turn down Mr. Peele’s help.”
“Not really. Mrs. Allsop thinks I’m making a mistake, but I’m not. I don’t intend to let what happened to Mancie . . . define who she is. You know what I mean? I’ll tell her about it, of course, but I don’t want her to be like a celebrity or nothing, just normal. Besides, it seems like that poor man was . . . like still trying to take her in a way---you know, to make up for his own little girl. I know he wasn’t, but it just didn’t feel right.”
Jill nodded, but didn’t say anything. Telling Molly that she was right would have been condescending.
“I know his heart’s probably in the right place. I did let him set up a trust fund for Mancie’s education. I want her to go to college so that she can be something better than her momma.”
“Better than you,” said Jill, shaking her head wistfully. “Don’t sell yourself short, Molly. Everyone but Richard sold you short, including me, I’m afraid. I’m ashamed of the way I treated you. I’m very sorry.”
“You didn’t do nothing wrong. I knew that you didn’t like what I was doing because you were worried about Mr. Carter. But all I cared about was my baby. When I found out he really cared about her too, I wasn’t about to let go of him without a fight. I’m sorry you was worried, but I ain’t sorry that I done it.”
“I’m not sorry either. I think you helped him as much as he helped you.”
“Me? I didn’t do nothing.”
“You believed in him. That’s something I forgot how to do for awhile.”
Molly was obviously embarrassed by the personal nature of Jill’s remark.
“I didn’t do nothing,” she said awkwardly, “nothing but be a bother to you both. I just wish I could do something to pay you back, Mrs. Carter.”
“Well there is one favor you could do for me.”
“Anything,” said Molly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call me ‘Jill,’ and phone us once in a while to let us know how you and Mancie are doing.”