Pawsitively Secretive

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Life insurance?” Edgar asked. “And if he needs Chloe to be eighteen, does that mean money from the policy isn’t released until she’s legal? Can you even name a minor as a beneficiary? I’m guessing this isn’t the first case where something like this has happened: a parent names their kid as the beneficiary, but then the parent dies before the kid can legally claim the money. Are there contingencies in place for stuff like this?”

  Amber propped one leg on the bed and pulled her laptop in front of her. The image of Lake Lirkaldy filled the screen. She could still hear the sound of Sean’s car slamming into the back of Lilith’s. The deafening silence as the car seemed to be suspended in air after it went off the incline before careening into the lake, the splash loud and jarring. She closed the tab.

  Several searches about life insurance told her that even if a child was named beneficiary to a life insurance policy, there needed to be an adult custodian and/or guardian named—someone who would be the keeper of the money until the minor was of age, as well as someone who would be the child’s caretaker if the parent were to die before the child was legal. Often the custodian and guardian were the same person.

  “If Chloe had been named the beneficiary, who was named guardian? Frank seems clueless. Sean wouldn’t have been keeping tabs on Chloe all this time, only to snatch her when she was a week from being legal if he had been named the guardian,” Amber said.

  “What about her aunt … Lilith’s sister?” Edgar asked.

  “Karen Reed,” Amber said slowly. “But as far as I’ve been able to tell, Chloe didn’t even know she had an aunt—and if she did, she figured that out very recently. Why would Karen stay out of Chloe’s life if she’d been named guardian?”

  Edgar shrugged helplessly. “Maybe that PI friend of yours would know. If the lady was just a callous jerk like Sean, she wouldn’t put in all this money to help find Chloe, right?”

  Amber grabbed her cell phone off her bed and dialed Alan.

  He answered almost immediately. “Peterson.”

  “Hi. It’s Amber Blackwood.”

  “I know,” he said. “What’s up?”

  She told him her life insurance theory, as well as dropping the name “Sean Merrill” to see if Alan had ever heard of him. He hadn’t.

  “Has Karen given you any indication that she’s been named Chloe’s guardian?” Amber asked.

  Alan sounded truly perplexed as he said, “No. The impression I got is that someone got in contact with her about three weeks ago—so a little over a week before Chloe went missing—and said, ‘You should keep a better eye on your niece. She’s not safe in Edgehill.’ Karen hadn’t ever heard of Edgehill, let alone know anything about her niece. Then a week later, she goes missing. She called me the day of and said something like, ‘Someone in Edgehill, Oregon, kidnapped Chloe Deidrick. I need you to find her. I was warned a week ago that something would happen to her and I thought it was a hoax. Now she’s missing.’ Then she muttered something under her breath to the effect of, ‘Dang it, Lilith. This is a lot of responsibility for someone I’ve never met.’”

  “What does Lilith have to do with it?” Amber asked.

  “Karen has been very sparse on the details. Without you, I probably still wouldn’t know her name,” Alan said. “There’s more she’s not telling me, but I don’t know what. Maybe she’s as scared of Sean Merrill as Frank is. If Sean was the one who put in the warning phone call to Karen, he did it for a reason. He wanted Chloe on her radar. We have to figure out why.”

  Amber mulled that over for a moment. “Oh! I have one more thing for you. I know a kid who’s active on Scuttle and he thinks he’s narrowed down the Sean handle to four. I figured you could do your own research into those to see if there’s one that sticks out to you as suspicious?”

  “That would be great,” he said.

  She disconnected the call after she rattled off the four names. When she looked at Edgar, she found him watching her, his head cocked.

  “What?” she asked, her cheeks heating for some reason.

  “You aren’t a relentless pest with just me, huh?” Then his expression softened. “Chloe is lucky to have someone like you looking out for her.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I just hope we can find her.”

  Edgar went home half an hour later and suggested that they skip Sunday’s breakfast next week since he’d need at least two weeks to recover from today’s double venture into town. Amber hadn’t told him yet, but she planned to get him out of the house on Saturday for the Hair Ball. She would need to do it soon; she couldn’t imagine Edgar Henbane had anything in his closet that remotely resembled “formal wear.” Neither of them was skilled enough at glamour spells to create something that could last him all evening, either.

  Amber shuddered at the thought of having to escort Edgar on a shopping trip. If he was grumpy now, how awful would he be after trying on his third pair of slacks?

  The following day, Amber dropped by the station during her lunch break to give the chief the license plate number she found in her vision, as well as tell him about her life insurance idea. She could have called him last night but didn’t want to bug him so late at night when there was a new baby in the house—especially when his wife had heard the affair rumors.

  Amber waved at Dolores as Amber walked past her desk, but stopped dead in her tracks when she heard, “He’s in a meeting.” She slowly turned toward Sour Face; these were the first words she’d ever said directly to Amber. Without looking at her, nor halting her typing, Dolores said, “Wait in the lobby and he’ll be with you shortly.”

  Immediately turning around, Amber plopped down on the saggy couch in the lobby. The water cooler gave a gulg in greeting. Twenty minutes later, the chief, Carl, and Garcia emerged down the hall from the chief’s office. The trio talked for another minute, then the two officers headed for the front door, waving at Amber as they went.

  The chief made eye contact with Amber, squinted slightly, and said, “C’mon back, Miss Blackwood.”

  Once they were in his office and he closed the door behind him, Amber started in right away. “Are you in contact with Karen Reed? Alan thinks she’s hiding—”

  “Who is Alan?”

  Amber winced, forgetting that the chief didn’t know about her alliance with the PI. “What?”

  “Amber, don’t play coy. You know I don’t like that.”

  “Alan Peterson the PI?” she said, one eye squinting slightly. “We’re kind of … sharing intel.”

  The chief just stared at her.

  “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d get mad!”

  He released a slow, controlled breath out of his nose. “Coronary.”

  “Karen Reed is who hired Alan,” Amber said, explaining what little Alan knew about his client. “What we can’t figure out is why Sean essentially warned Karen about the kidnapping. Why did he want her to start looking into Chloe’s disappearance?”

  The chief chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, then slid his attention to his computer and keyed in a few things. Then he plucked his phone out of its cradle, dialed a number, and pressed the receiver to his ear. After a minute, he said, “Hello, Karen Reed. This is Owen Brown, chief of police in Edgehill, Oregon. I have a few questions I wanted to ask you. If you could call me back at your earliest convenience, that would be greatly appreciated.”

  Once he had relayed his number and hung up, Amber told him about her vision and fished a piece of paper out of her purse that had Sean’s license plate written on it. “It’s from eighteen years ago, so who knows how many other cars he’s had since then, but maybe this will help get you DMV records?”

  The chief nodded, picking up the paper. “Thanks, this could be really—”

  He was interrupted by his phone ringing. He hit a button and said, “Hi, Dolores.”

  “I have a Karen Reed on the line for you, sir,” came the woman’s gravelly reply through the phone’s speakers.

  “Put her through.” After
hitting another button, he said, “Hi, Karen, this is Chief Brown. Thank you for calling back so quickly.”

  “No problem,” the woman said, her voice ringing out in the room. “I was glad to hear from you. Is … is there any news about Chloe?”

  “We’re chasing down several leads,” the chief said. “What I wanted to ask you about is related to your sister Lilith. Would that be okay?”

  The pause was long. “Sure,” came the soft reply. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be, though.”

  “What can you tell me about Sean Merrill?”

  Karen let out a sharp, short laugh. “Wow, I haven’t heard that name in years. He was someone Lilith dated for a while in her twenties. A cop, if I remember. I think he may have been abusive, but Lilith didn’t really talk to me about him. She’d never been very good about keeping up with family. Once she left after high school, it was a miracle if she showed up for holidays. Just a really flighty person. Years went by without me knowing where she’d been—and then I get a call that she was … that she’d died.”

  However bitter Karen was, the fact that she still loved her sister was evident in the way her voice broke on that last word.

  “When did you find out she’d had Chloe?” he asked.

  “Not until after Lilith died,” Karen said, bitterness creeping back in. “I got a letter in the mail letting me know I was both the custodian and personal guardian of Chloe Deidrick and her assets, as Chloe was the sole beneficiary of a life insurance policy, but she couldn’t make a claim on it until she was eighteen. Lilith left me in charge of Chloe’s money, yet I didn’t know until that letter that Chloe even existed.”

  “Why haven’t you tried to find her if you’re her guardian?” Amber asked before she realized she was going to say the words out loud. Her eyes widened.

  The chief shot her a pointed look. “That’s my associate, Cassie Westbottom. She’s a consultant on the case.”

  “I don’t mean to sound judgmental,” Amber said now in Cassie’s voice. “We’re just trying to figure out who Chloe’s inner circle is and who she’s been in contact with.”

  “Lilith had a will in addition to the life insurance policy. In it, she asked that I not contact Chloe until she was eighteen,” Karen said. “She said Chloe was safe with her adoptive father, Frank Deidrick, and she didn’t want Chloe’s childhood to be tainted with the truth of her parentage. That was her phrase, not mine: ‘truth of parentage.’ She said it was vital that I let Chloe live her life blissfully unaware, and that if I ever cared about her, then I would do this for her. She didn’t explain herself beyond that but that was just how Lilith was—very private until she needed something. Even when it was her family.”

  Amber mulled this over.

  “If I can ask …” Karen said, “what does Sean have to do with Chloe and her disappearance?” The slight quaver to her voice made it clear she already had a pretty good guess.

  “Sean is Chloe’s biological father,” the chief said. “And he was, in fact, abusive. So much so that it’s what made Lilith change her name and essentially go into hiding. She distanced herself from family to protect them and Chloe from Sean.”

  Karen let out a choked sob. Her voice was very soft when she asked, “Did he kill her? Lilith, I mean?”

  Amber watched the chief’s face as he clearly debated how to answer this.

  “We think so, yes,” he finally said.

  Another sob. “And is he who has Chloe now?”

  The chief sighed. “He’s on the top of our list of suspects, yes.”

  “Oh my God,” Karen whimpered. “That poor girl.” Then she gasped. “Is that who called me to tell me Chloe was in trouble?”

  “It’s possible,” he said. “Do you have any idea why he would have called you to tip you off?”

  “I didn’t have any clue until just now …” Karen paused for so long, the chief looked up at Amber and shrugged. “If Sean really did kill Lilith, my guess is he thought he was on the policy as the beneficiary. You can’t name a minor without there being a guardian listed, and by then, Lilith had cut herself off from family, so he probably thought he was a sure bet as to who was listed—maybe she told him he was the beneficiary and he was operating under incorrect information. When she died, he wasn’t notified about benefits—I was—so he must have realized then that he hadn’t been named. When he called me, he asked, ‘Are you Chloe Deidrick’s guardian?’ He’d sounded so formal, I thought maybe it was the police—I mean who else would know I was Chloe’s guardian, when Lilith made me promise from the great beyond that I would keep this secret to myself? So I said yes and asked where she was and if she was okay. He said, ‘She’s in Edgehill’ and from my reaction, it was clear I had no idea where that was. Then he told me she was in danger and hung up. Do you suppose he knew I would try to find her once I knew she was in trouble?”

  “Maybe,” Amber said. “Perhaps he’d been hoping you’d come to Edgehill personally so he could go after you instead. It seems like he’d figured out along the way that you’re the one listed as Chloe’s guardian. He could have been trying to lure you here—you’re unfamiliar with the town; you confirmed that for him. Maybe he assumed you would have been worried enough that you’d drop everything to come find her, possibly leaving your family behind. You’d be in a new place without your support system. Hiring a PI might have been a really good call for your own safety.”

  “Is it … it my fault he took Chloe?” Karen asked, her voice strained. “He called me several days before he took Chloe. Did he take her instead of me because she was a closer target?”

  “None of this is anyone’s fault but Sean’s,” the chief said. “Do not blame yourself for any of this. You abided by your late sister’s wishes and you made a really smart call in sending in someone experienced to investigate the situation. Sean is not the type of man a civilian should interact with.”

  The chief shot a pointed look at Amber when he said that last part. As if Amber wanted anything to do with the man. The snippet of memory she’d seen of Sean with his flat eyes had been more than enough for her.

  Karen cried softly.

  Frowning to himself, the chief said, “You’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Reed. If he contacts you again in any way, please let me know. Or if you think of anything that might help us find Chloe.”

  “I will,” she said, sniffling. “Thank you for calling me.”

  The chief cradled the phone and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. He and Amber sat in his quiet office, each staring off in different directions. The reality of the situation sunk in. A father had kidnapped his own daughter because of money. He didn’t care about her well-being, nor did he care that the man who had raised her was worried sick about her.

  “Even though Isabelle is only days old, I already know I would move heaven and earth for that girl,” the chief said softly. “I knew it the moment I saw her. How can Sean do this to Chloe? How could he even think it, let alone do it? I’ve seen horrible things on this job, but the crimes parents inflict on their children are always the hardest to wrap my mind around.”

  What Amber feared most was what Sean would do once he got the money he wanted. He’d run Lilith off the road when he decided that she would be more beneficial to him dead than alive. A woman who had helped him get back on his feet after he’d been shot, had dropped out of school, and given up on her dreams when his medical bills had overwhelmed them, and who had given him a beautiful little girl.

  What would he do to his daughter once she’d served her purpose?

  Chapter 19

  The next two days were filled with so many Hair Ball preparations that Amber only had time to worry about Chloe in the evenings, and even then, she was often hard at work on the remainder of her tiny plastic cats. By the time she flopped into bed, she was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  The Here and Meow Committee, even with Francine Robins on board, was made up of five people trying to do the job of ten. They were in char
ge of everything from making sure they had everything the Best of Edgehill participants needed—while also keeping them on schedule—answering emails from gala attendees, ordering all the decorations, finding enough help to set up the day of, coordinating with all the volunteers—many of whom were high school students—to making sure they knew what to do on the day of the gala, and planning the rehearsal gala for Friday night so they could perfect everything before the actual gala on Saturday.

  Amber, Kim, and Francine had to make a road trip into Salem on Wednesday to pick up the new tablecloths—eggshell white this time—which saved them a small fortune in delivery costs. After they stuffed the back of Francine’s SUV with the correct cloths, they went out for dinner. Kim and Francine got quite toasted on appletinis and were such a goofy, giggly mess, Amber suggested they walk it off a bit before getting back into the car.

  Kim and Francine had an arm linked on either side of Amber now, the two women chatting about their failed love lives.

  “I have a confession!” Kim said. “I’ve been in love with Nathan since high school.”

  Amber was so shocked by the news that she came up short, causing Kim to whirl around a few inches. Kim laughed.

  “Wait. Our Nathan?” Amber asked. “Married to Jolene, Nathan?”

  Kim tossed her head back, staring at the dark sky. “Yes. Ugh, that Jolene! She’s so cool and perfect for Nathan and a total sweetheart. I want to hate her, but I can’t.” Kim tugged on Amber’s arm to get the three of them moving down the sidewalk again. “Did you know that the night they met, Nathan was supposed to go out with me?”

  “No!” Francine said with a level of indignation only possible after four appletinis.

  “Yes!” said Kim, leaning forward a bit so she could look at Francine. “I had the hugest, hugest crush on him in high school. We were also best friends for most of junior and senior year. Like hang-out-most-nights kind of best friends. I was sure we were both just too scared to ruin our friendship with romance, so we were holding back. But, ladies? I pined for him so hard. Wrote poetry and everything. Ugh. So much poetry. Thankfully he’s never seen any of it.