Craig prepared himself for the blast, and as expected, it came.
"You went where?!" Kara was calmer than he had thought she might be, probably because Zach was in the room, doing his homework at the standalone counter; homework at Briar Point began the second week of school, apparently. The youngster looked up to see what the disturbance was about.
"Tumwater," he said, leaning casually—his ease was a façade—against the wall that divided the den from the hallway. "I went back to the office where we got Zach's birth certificate and picked up Rhonda Lerwick's death certificate."
"You picked up—Craig Herbert, don't you ever drive that far without letting me know first!" She back-handed him in the belly perhaps a little harder than she should have and certainly more gently than she would say he deserved.
He grunted, but he had known the scolding would come, and the slap, too. He handed her the tall envelope in his hand. "Want to see it?"
She snatched it from him angrily, but he could see the curiosity in her eyes. "I guess it's better than skipping work to play golf, at least," she conceded grudgingly. "Was it worth it?"
"Derek and I didn't have anything more to do today, anyway. We finished early and didn't have time to start the next job."
"But was it worth it? Did you find out anything?" Opening the envelope, she slipped the paper out of its sheath and scanned it. Her eyes flicked back up to him. "We already knew all of this."
Craig coughed into his hand. "We didn't know her Social Security number."
"A lot of good that will do us," Kara snapped back.
"She was born in Florida…"
"Great. She might not have any family nearby, then." She rolled her eyes. "Or maybe they're spread all over Seattle, who knows? Maybe they moved here right after she was born."
She thrust one hand onto her hip, continuing to read the sheet. "Mm-hmm. So we have confirmation that she was single, which probably means she was divorced… It has her last address in Mount Vernon, but that's not going to help—if her family had lived there, the paper wouldn't have said the police couldn't locate them. It lists her parents as James and Elizabeth Verone. Can we track her down through them?"
"I checked that already," Craig told her. "In Seattle, anyway. They're unlisted, if they live around here, if they're even still alive. If they're somewhere else, maybe we could find them, but—"
"But they could be anywhere in the country. Or the world. Hmph. No names of children, if she had any… It doesn't list her ex-husband… You drove all the way down there and back, without telling me, for this?" She shook the paper at him.
"Well, I thought it would have something helpful for sure. I didn't think—"
"Didn't think I'd approve, I get it. Go get ready for dinner," Kara ordered. "And you," she declared, spinning to glare at Zach, who was still watching them, "finish your homework." He ducked back to his paper obediently.
After dinner, Craig returned to the computer and located a satellite photo of Rhonda Lerwick's last residence. It was nothing remarkable—just a small house near the edge of Mount Vernon. He considered it for a few minutes, then moved on to search for her parents.
"Hey, Dad," Zach said, interrupting his thoughts, "want to play catch?" He was tossing his baseball into his glove, which was now nicely broken in.
The boy's enthusiasm tugged at Craig, but he wanted to finish a little more searching first. "Uh, sure. Give me just a few more minutes, all right? I'm trying to narrow down whether any of these folks might have been Rhonda Lerwick's parents."
"Okay," he responded. "I'll be in the back." He walked through the kitchen and out the side door.
Craig followed another link, but it led to people by the wrong names. He was finding plenty of individuals named James Verone and Elizabeth Verone, but not the two together. Hopefully they were still alive and married and would appear as a couple in some record. He followed a few more links, but to no avail. Another search engine offered a few new possibilities, but none of them led to anything definite, either.
With a long exhale, he pushed his chair back from the computer and walked to his bedroom to fetch his glove. Still working the problem of how to track down the Verones, he wiggled his fingers into the glove and wandered back to the kitchen and outside. "Zach?" he called. But the boy wasn't in the yard.
And it was dark. How had dusk fallen so quickly? Of course—it was mid-September, and the days were growing shorter. The sun went down around 7:30 now. Had he really sat at the computer another whole hour?
Guilt aching in his belly, he came back inside and walked the length of the hall to Zach's room. The door was half open. Zach, stretched out on his bed to read, looked up when he knocked.
"Hey, pal," Craig said, stepping across the room. "I, er…" He opened his hands apologetically. "I meant to come out sooner. I guess I got caught up in what I was doing, and—"
"It's okay, Dad," Zach said dismissively. "I played soccer with Mom instead."
"You did?" Craig ran a hand through his hair. "Oh…all right. Next time then?"
"Okay, next time," Zach agreed, and immersed himself in his story again.
Craig nodded and stepped out of the room, feeling like he had been sent to the principal's office. But if Zach wasn't upset about it…
Kara had brought a bucket of green beans from the garden inside to clean and snap, and she sat in the den, watching TV as she worked on them. The show she was watching didn't interest Craig, so he sat down at the computer again and resumed his search.
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 80