Close to Home

  “Could have met him at the diner.”

  “Or, as the mom suspects, online. Lately Rosalie had been making a lot of noise about moving to Denver to be with her dad, and Sharon thinks this Leo has something to do with it.” The light turned, and Bellisario hit the gas.

  “We didn’t give the Colorado cops much to go on,” Cooke muttered.

  “I know. I’m still waiting for the info on her iPad and cell.”

  “Doesn’t her phone have a GPS on it?”

  “Disabled. Seems as if Rosalie didn’t want her mother tracking her down.”

  “Perfect,” he said, with more than a trace of sarcasm.

  “I should hear from the carrier soon and get all the info off it. If he exists, she probably texted or called him.”

  “Let’s hope. We need a break.” The sheriff leaned against the passenger window and pointed at a small coffee kiosk located on the edge of a parking lot. “Pull in here. I could use a cup. Large or venti or whatever the hell they call it. Sixteen ounces. Coffee. Black.”

  “Sure.” The windshield was starting to fog, so Bellisario flipped on the defroster and rolled down her side window as she drove up to the single window as a dirty silver van pulled away. “Two grande coffees,” she said to a barista who looked to be about fifteen. “One black, the other with cream and sugar.”

  “Grande,” the sheriff repeated from the passenger seat as the wipers scraped against the windshield. “Why the hell can’t they go with small, medium, and large and make it easy?”

  “Cuz we’re living in enlightened times.”

  “Shee-it.”

  She grinned, and he shot her a disparaging glance but handed her some cash.

  “My treat, smart-ass.”

  Minutes later, after dispensing with the exchange of dollars for cups, she was driving off again, the interior of the vehicle filled with the aroma of hot coffee.

  “What about knowns?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “As in known sex offenders?”

  “To start, but we may as well lump in the ex-cons who haven’t walked the straight and narrow. You know, our A-listers.”

  “Pretty big list, but we’re winnowing it down. Williams is on it,” she reminded, referring to Tallah Williams from their office.

  “Good. Let’s check with her when we get back.”

  “Will do.” She was already one step ahead of him and had asked Williams to pull files on several of the area’s worst offenders. Jay Aberdeen, Calvin Remick, and Lars Blonski were the first to come to mind; all had alibis that had yet to be double-checked. And then there was Roger Anderson, a local man who just couldn’t keep his nose clean. He wasn’t in the same category as the first three, all of whom had been convicted of serious crimes against women, but Anderson was like the proverbial bad penny; he kept showing up, getting into trouble, claiming his innocence, and either doing time or fading away for a while, only to appear yet again. Trouble usually ensued.

  At the parking lot for the lab, Bellisario nosed the Jeep into an empty spot and cut the engine. Hoping to high heaven that the techies inside had found something that would help them locate Rosalie Jamison, she grabbed her cup and kept up with Cooke as he strode toward the wide glass doors. She had the unwelcome feeling they were running out of time.

  CHAPTER 13

  “I figured since you’re playing the part of a pioneer woman, you might not know what they’re saying about that girl who has gone missing,” Dee Linn said, and Sarah, glancing out the window, felt chilled to the bone. It was early evening, and twilight was darkening the land; a few lights on the main floor of the old house gave off just enough illumination to keep the nearest shadows at bay.

  “They still don’t know what happened to her?” she asked her sister.

  “Not that I know of, but it’s been all over the news today. I think she went missing on Friday, but there was an initial thought that she was a runaway. I saw the AMBER Alert on the news yesterday but didn’t think about calling you until I realized you don’t have a television and probably don’t get the paper.”

  “Not yet.” Sarah was worried and walked into the living area, where Gracie was huddled over her laptop and Jade was walking down the hallway from the bathroom. “Cable’s supposed to come the day after tomorrow, I think.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s something to be too concerned about. At least not yet. As I said, it’s still undetermined if the girl left on her own or not, but I thought you should be aware.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll see you on Saturday,” Dee Linn said. “Aunt Marge told me that Caroline and Clark are definitely coming.”

  “Good to know,” Sarah said, though she and her cousins had never been close. Caroline, an outrageous flirt, and Dee Linn had been classmates, so they’d had a closer bond, while Clark, nearly ten years older than Sarah, was a little more reserved than his younger sister and one of the few people in the family who had connected with Roger.

  As if reading her mind, Dee Linn said, “I asked Clark if he knew how to get hold of Roger, not that I really want him there, but he is family, and Clark said he hadn’t heard from him, which is a little odd as he’s the one person in the family Roger would try to reach, I think. I swear, Walter told me one of his patients had seen Roger in town.”

  “I, um, I thought that Roger had disappeared again and that even his parole officer couldn’t locate him.” The thought that Roger was anywhere nearby was worrisome, and not just because of the incident on the widow’s walk all those years ago. No, there was more, a lot more. Roger’s whole life, after Theresa had disappeared, had spiraled downward to the point where he’d become a felon. Roger was the last person Sarah wanted around Jade and Gracie. Jade had already had her share of run-ins with the law for truancy and underage drinking, and Gracie was too young and impressionable to have to deal with an uncle who was a criminal.

  In a way, Sarah blamed Roger and Theresa for her own disconnect with her mother. It was as if Arlene had lost both her children with Hugh Anderson when Theresa had disappeared, and her relationship with her other four children—and with their father, Franklin Stewart—had deteriorated as well. Of course, it wasn’t really Roger’s fault, but Sarah had always felt that if he’d pulled himself together after Theresa had disappeared, Arlene too would have been less emotionally shut down and perhaps had a closer kinship with the children she’d had with Franklin.

  Then again, maybe not.

  “Oh, well,” Dee Linn was saying, “Maybe the patient was mistaken or Doctor Walter misheard. That happens, you know, more often that he’d like to admit. It’s difficult for a patient to keep a conversation going when the dentist has mirrors and fingers and equipment in his mouth. Walter, bless him, never has understood that.”

  Along with a lot of other things, Sarah thought, but kept it to herself.

  “Anyway,” Dee Linn said cheerily, “I’m hoping it turns out to be a fun party.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Sarah said, though she didn’t believe it for a minute. “So is there anything I can bring?”

  “Just the girls!”

  “Okay. It’s at seven, right? I’ll see you then.” She hung up, and Jade, hearing the tail end of the conversation, announced, “I’m not going!”

  “To Dee Linn’s party?”

  “That’s right. No way.” Jade was emphatic as she stood in the archway leading to the parlor. She folded her arms across her chest, almost daring Sarah to thwart her.

  “Of course you’re going,” Sarah said, as if there were no discussion to be had. She could match her older daughter’s stubborn streak with her own. “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “It’ll be boring.”

  “No excuse. It’s a family get-together to welcome us to Stewart’s Crossing. Since we’re the guests of honor, we have to attend. Besides, your aunt has been working on it for weeks.”

  “I barely know any of them, except for Becky, and I don’t really like her.”
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  “It’s time to change all that. I’m sorry we didn’t keep in better contact with all of them, but that’s water under the bridge. We can make up for lost time.”

  “Save me,” Jade said, leaning against the pillar.

  “Have a positive attitude for once, and look at this as an opportunity to get to know your relatives.”

  “You don’t even like any of them.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You think Dee Linn’s husband is some kind of monster or pervert or something.”

  “I said ‘male chauvinist’,” Sarah declared.

  “And what about Aunt Danica? You’re not exactly BFFs with her, either.”

  Jade’s assessment of Sarah’s relationship with her sister-in-law wasn’t far off. Jacob’s wife was a snob as well as a drama queen. Danica wore her superior attitude with the flair of a self-involved, has-been movie star.

  “It’s just that they’ve had some rough patches in their marriage,” she hedged. Jake and Danica were currently “back together,” though they’d recently been separated again over rumors of Jake’s infidelity and Danica’s excessive spending. Who knew the truth? Sarah tried to stay out of it and had learned long ago to keep her mouth shut each time Jake swore he was getting a divorce because inevitably he and Danica made up and got back together, rekindling their passion for each other, then acted as if they were the poster children for being “in love.”

  “I know you’re not cool with Uncle Roger. You said yourself that he can’t stay out of prison, but you and Aunt Dee were talking about him.”

  “Yes. Yes, we were,” Sarah admitted; her true feelings for her older half brother were murky. She hadn’t seen Roger for a long while and found that oddly comforting. “I don’t think Roger will be there,” she said to Jade. He’d been out of prison for six or seven months; his most recent run-in with the law was for domestic abuse, though the woman who’d called 911 had appeared less harmed than Roger, whose lip had been split from a punch and cut from her ring. He hadn’t fought the charges, which Jacob had said “was an idiot move” and had instead worked a plea deal. The woman had landed in prison six months later for a drug charge, and Roger was now out, supposedly walking the straight and narrow—aside from not keeping in touch with his parole officer.

  He was definitely under the radar, so who knew?

  Jade hadn’t finished with her list of complaints about the family. “Then there’s Grandma. Wow. She’s a lot of fun.”

  After their last visit to Pleasant Pines, Sarah couldn’t argue about her mother. “Point taken. But give her a break, okay? Grandma’s ill, and she had a hard life.”

  “Haven’t we all?”

  It wasn’t the same, Sarah thought, knowing her mother had been an orphan who had married twice, never happily, buried both husbands, and lost a child.

  “Fine,” Jade said, arching an eyebrow that silently called her mother a hypocrite. “I’m just saying they’re all weird. Everyone in the family.”

  Sarah actually laughed. “You mean weirder than us?”

  “Oh, Mom!” Jade was not amused. “You want me to go to a costume party, really?”

  “It’s almost Halloween.”

  “Big freakin’ deal.” Jade’s face was pulled into a serious pout, and she looked absolutely miserable, but Sarah was having none of it.

  “Look, I don’t even like to dress up. You know that. But it’s Aunt Dee’s thing.”

  “Well, it sucks.”

  “Maybe so, but too bad. Besides, I thought you were into the whole Goth thing.”

  “That’s different, that’s my style,” Jade said, scowling.

  “Okay.” Tired of the argument, Sarah left Jade digging into her jeans pocket for her phone and headed into the kitchen.

  Sarah understood how her daughter felt. She too would have liked to have opted out of what was sure to be an over-the-top extravaganza. Sarah’s sister didn’t know the meaning of small, quiet get-together. In Dee Linn’s estimation, a party was a P-A-R-T-Y, with several exclamation points following the capital letters.

  Though Sarah would never admit it, she didn’t blame Jade for not wanting to go to the party. The last thing they needed to do was gear up for a big event when they had barely begun to find their pajamas, dishes, or bedding. No one here was in the mood for Dee Linn’s Halloween gala.

  The kids had been going to school, Gracie with a little enthusiasm, Jade with zero; she’d also complained about her car still being in the shop, but there was nothing to be done about that until her Honda was operational, and Hal, if not speedy, was meticulous.

  The family’s belongings had shown up in a portable moving container that had been dropped off near the guesthouse, so finally they were officially out of Vancouver. Now if only they could move into the guesthouse. “Soon,” she told herself, crossing her fingers that the meeting with her contractor would confirm what he’d promised before they’d moved.

  Leaning over the sink in the kitchen, she peered through the window into the darkness beyond. The smaller house, like its larger counterpart, seemed dark and forlorn. Abandoned. She’d already walked through it without the contractor. The real tour of the main house was scheduled for later in the week, but at least she now knew that the guesthouse was close to being livable. The plumbing and electrical adjustments had already been completed; now it looked like they were waiting for a heating inspection.

  Probably from Clint, she reminded herself.

  No big deal. Right?

  Then why did the thought of seeing him again make her nervous? She knew the answer to that one, of course. She just dreaded the meeting.

  She started to retrace her steps to the living area and was skirting a stack of boxes marked KITCHEN when her cell phone jangled. Scooping it from the counter where she’d left it, she eyed the small screen. Evan’s number appeared.

  Her heart sank.

  She did not want to speak to him. Not now. Not ever.

  But Gracie had made a good point earlier. It was time to quit being a coward by dodging his calls. She picked up on the third chirp. “Hi, Evan,” she said.

  “Wow, a real voice,” he said, and she inwardly sighed at his sarcasm. “I was beginning to think you weren’t alive.”

  “Still kicking,” she said, sitting on the second step of the staircase. She glanced through the long windows flanking the front doors. Outside, night had descended completely beyond the glass, a dark void. She felt, rather than saw, that someone was watching her, which was of course nuts. “Just busy.”

  “So you say.”

  “What’s up?” She conjured his image in her mind. Over six feet, with the body of a football running back, Evan was handsome and fit, his eyes a frosty blue, his gaze hard and sharp. He could turn on the charm when he wanted, then have it disappear in a flash; his temper was quick, hot, and deadly. He’d grown up rich and privileged and was used to getting his way.

  Now he was turning on the charm. “I thought I’d take you to dinner.”

  “I’m in Stewart’s Crossing.”

  “I realize that, but I was heading across the mountains to Sun River anyway. I planned to spend the weekend there, what with it being the holiday and all.”

  “It’s too far out of your way.” Sun River was a resort south of Bend on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains.

  “I’ve got some suppliers in The Dalles, you know, so lots of times I shoot down 84 all the way to The Dalles before hitting the road south. I can do some business in The Dalles and also avoid a lot of the skiers heading to Mount Hood Meadows.”

  “It’s not winter,” Sarah pointed out.

  “I’m just saying, I’d like to see you again.”

  Here it comes, Sarah thought. The blame. She braced herself and felt her back muscles tighten.

  Evan didn’t disappoint. “Listen, honey, I know we didn’t leave on the best of terms, and I want to change that.” She heard the bit of a wheedle in his voice, and she ignored it.

  ??
?Not a good idea, Evan. And I’m not ‘honey’.”

  “You are to me.”

  Her insides ground. Why had she ever caved and dated him?

  “I thought I made myself clear. It’s time for me to move on. You too. It’s over, not that there was anything to begin with.”

  A beat.

  Was he angry? Seething? Hurt?

  “I love you,” he said with the barest undercurrent of anger in his words. “You know that. I wanted—well, still want—to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “Evan, seriously. We went out . . . what? Three, maybe four times? It wasn’t a relationship.”

  “So I was right,” he said with a little less restraint, his trigger-quick anger sparking. “There’s someone else.”

  “Someone else,” she repeated. “Where did you get that? There’s no one.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?” His voice was cold.

  She felt herself growing angry. “Even if there was someone else, that’s my business. I think it would be best if you didn’t call me again,” she stated firmly. “And don’t stop by. We’re done, Evan.” She hung up just as Gracie cruised by on her way to the kitchen.

  Immediately the phone started ringing again. Evan’s name and number flashed onto the screen. She clicked her cell off as she knew he wouldn’t give up. He’d call back over and over again, leaving messages, each a little more demanding, and inevitably he would end up reminding her of all he’d done for her while she was an employee at Tolliver Construction. He’d already twisted history enough to believe that it was because of him, not her own abilities, that she’d been promoted by his father before Bill retired and made his son president.

  “Evan?” Gracie asked.

  “Evan,” she agreed.