The quick shake of her head wasn’t very reassuring.
“You worried yet?”
“No.” She looked him straight in the eye. “There’s nothing to worry about, Chris,” she said, and he began to wonder if she was trying to convince him, or herself. “I have your phone number now so I can call you and let you know when you’re off the hook.”
“It’s not just me on the hook,” he reminded her.
“I know. I didn’t mean… I just… I’m not your concern and there’s no reason why I should be and—”
He didn’t like her brush-off any better than he liked the fact that she had showed up tonight.
“What do you mean, you aren’t my concern? I’m very concerned about the effect any repercussions from our night together would have on you.”
Her silence shut him out. He didn’t want her to shut him out.
“Are you playing in the competition tonight?” she asked, motioning toward the dais. “Have you been up already?”
“No. I was late tonight. Missed getting a number.”
“You’re just here to drink?”
I’m here because I’d hoped you’d show up. “I’ll play as soon as the competition wraps up. It’s kind of a standing arrangement.”
She grinned. “You get the piano anytime you want, you mean.”
Shrugging, Chris took another sip of beer. She felt good. Being with her felt good.
Just for the moment.
The door opened and a tall, thin man entered. He had short dark hair and was wearing a business suit.
Chris’s first instinct was to grab Emma’s hand and head out the back way.
“What?” she asked, and glancing back at her he saw her looking between him and the stranger who’d just walked in.
“I thought I recognized him, but I was wrong.”
“I think I feel sorry for whoever you thought he was,” Emma told him, her brow furrowed.
Chris sipped his beer, sized her up and said, “That’s actually what I called you about.”
“I thought you called to find out what my doctor said.”
“Someone was waiting for me at the dock this evening.”
“Excuse me?”
“Rob Evert came to see me.”
Emma stiffened, her expression changing her into a woman he hardly recognized. “Rob came to see you? Whatever for?”
“He says you’re engaged to him.”
“He’s lying.” The words were unequivocal.
“I had a feeling he was,” Chris told her. “But I’m guessing it’s his ring that left that white mark on your finger.”
She took her left hand off the bar and slid it under her thigh. “Yeah. He’s the guy I told you about.”
“The one you found fooling around that first day we met?”
“Right.”
Chris hadn’t liked the guy even before he’d known who he was. Hadn’t liked the ego that preceded him by about two feet. Once the guy had introduced himself, his dislike had turned to disgust.
“He warned me to stay away from you, Emma.”
“He had no business doing that.”
“I figured as much. But he wasn’t in any frame of mind to be reasonable.”
“What did he do?”
“It’s not so much what he did as how he did it. He was clearly agitated and he let me know, in no uncertain terms, that if I didn’t stay away from you, he’d make certain that you stayed away from me.”
Frowning, Emma asked, “How did he even know to find you?”
“At first I thought you told him where I worked. But he said something about watching you and your house. Like he’s appointed himself your bodyguard.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. There was something not quite right about him. Like he wasn’t quite stable. And it sounds as if he’s been following you, or having you followed, since you broke it off. He knew about both the times I’d been at your house.”
“I can’t believe this. Rob was possessive, but not like this. It doesn’t even make sense to me. He’s never shown any signs of being…unstable.”
“Maybe because you’ve never broken up with him before. I’m telling you, to hear the guy talk, you all have set a date and are sending out invitations. If things are as you said, if you’ve told him you want nothing more to do with him, then I think you should call the police.”
* * *
“ON ROB?” EMMA could hardly believe what she was hearing. “I figured he wouldn’t give up easily,” she said. “Rob has a hard time letting go of what he believes is his. But I’ve never been afraid of him.”
It was an odd thought that her ex-fiancé was watching her. She would never have guessed he’d waste his time that way.
“I should have called the cops immediately,” Chris said, “but I didn’t think you were in any immediate danger, as long as I kept away from you, and I wanted to speak with you first. I called you as soon as he left and I’ve been waiting for your return call. But now you’re here. He probably knows that we’re together, and I won’t feel right about you walking out of here. I really think we should file a report.”
She thought of calling Lucy Hayes. She was comfortable with the detective. Trusted her not to overreact. But they were way out of the female detective’s jurisdiction.
Besides, Lucy was heading back to Aurora that weekend.
“I’m telling you, this wasn’t just a fit of jealousy,” Chris said. Emma loved his voice. And the concerned look in his eyes as he watched her. She didn’t want to be afraid.
She was tired of being afraid.
“He just doesn’t know how to take rejection.” Emma tried to explain the man she’d spent many years with—the man she’d planned to marry. Rob had his faults, but he’d had some really good qualities, too. “He’s not used to losing at anything.” Neither was he a violent man.
Or a vindictive one.
“I got the sense that this was about more than jealousy or ego,” Chris continued, “although he had more than his share of the latter. He said he’d put in five years and had too much at stake to let you walk away from him. He said he isn’t going to let someone else collect what he’s earned. It didn’t sound as if he was referring to your heart.”
“That makes no sense to me. I’m a teacher. My mother is a principal, and her salary was recently cut. We do fine, but any extra money we have is spent on our efforts campaigning. We have no savings at all. Rob knows all of that.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard,” Chris was saying. His serious expression, the tone of his voice, was scaring her. “I can’t make you go to the police, but if you don’t, I’m going to call and make a report.”
“Okay, I’ll contact them,” Emma said. At least that way she’d have some control. “I’d like to give Detective Ramsey Miller a call, if you don’t mind. He’s with the Comfort Cove Police Department.”
“Is he working on your sister’s case?”
“Yeah. So maybe this is out of his jurisdiction, but he’ll know who we should talk to.”
“Fine.” Chris’s chin jutted as he gave a short nod. “Can you call him now?”
“Tonight?”
“This guy could be outside right now. Or at your house. Waiting. I’d feel better if the cops knew where he was. Especially now that we’ve disregarded his warning.”
Emma pulled her phone out of her purse. Calling the police on Rob? She couldn’t believ
e she was doing this.
And wondered if there was something the matter with her that she couldn’t seem to say no to this fisherman.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DETECTIVE RAMSEY MILLER was okay with following leads that led to dead ends. Leads that forced him to considerate alternate paths. He was okay with questions that came without obvious answers. With working every hour of every day that God gave him.
He wasn’t okay with little girls disappearing without a trace.
“What we have here is missing forensic evidence and forensic evidence turning up in a black-market baby ring in Aurora.” Lucy Hayes looked at him from across the conference table in the squad room after-hours on Friday night and summed up the day’s progress. Folders and transcripts and scraps of paper covered the scarred old table.
She was due to fly out of Boston on Sunday. They had a lot to do between now and then.
Claire Sanderson was not one of Walters’s victims. For that he was thankful.
“Let’s say whoever took the evidence also planted it at Mrs. Buckley’s place,” Ramsey supposed out loud. The seventy-year-old woman who’d been locked up for eight years had sworn to them by conference call that evening that she knew nothing about a toddler girl in her home twenty-five years before.
“I dealt only with newborns,” she’d insisted, confessing only that much off the record, even after they’d hinted at a deal—giving her a chance at a lesser sentence, and maybe some immunity—if she was able to help them solve this crime.
“You think whoever took the box of Claire’s evidence from your vault also knew about Buckley’s operation?” Lucy grabbed their copies of the baby photos that had been confiscated from the Buckley mansion, studying them again.
Ramsey had had their sketch artist play around with the photos they had of Claire Sanderson to see if he could find any evidence of a likeness to Claire among the Buckley photos.
“Maybe the thief wants us to think that Claire was adopted.”
“Maybe she was adopted,” Lucy said, staring at Ramsey. “Maybe what we have here is a baby who was stolen, adopted by Rose Sanderson, and then taken back. For whatever reason.”
“Like maybe a biological father who didn’t know he had a daughter until too late and then wanted her back.” He ran with the theory.
“Or a mother who was young, or even not so young, whose circumstances changed, who regretted giving up her baby, knew she had no legal recourse since she’d sold her child illegally, but felt she had a right to raise her own child.” Lucy watched him.
“And if Rose Sanderson knew she bought the baby illegally, she wasn’t likely to put the police on Buckley’s trail.” They could have something here. “Do you know if anyone actually saw Rose pregnant with Claire?”
“It’s not on record but I doubt the question was ever asked.”
Lucy’s expression changed from wide-eyed anticipation to disappointment. “But if she wasn’t putting the police on Buckley’s trail for fear of being found out, why would she put the police on any trail at all?”
“Because she fell in love with the baby she adopted? Because she sees Claire as her own?”
The woman across from him riffled through the piles of paperwork on the table and came up with a legal-looking document. “A copy of Claire Sanderson’s birth certificate.”
Ramsey produced a folder. “Copies of all of the forged birth certificates.”
Lucy smiled. “Claire’s could be fake.”
“And this whole theory could easily be disproven,” Ramsey realized.
“With the DNA sample from Emma Sanderson,” Lucy finished for him. Too bad the detective lived a few states away. She thought enough like him to be a damned good partner.
Shawn had called with the results of the test, telling them only that Claire hadn’t been a match for Walters, but he’d offered to fax a full report over that evening. Ramsey went to see if it had come in. Lucy was studying the Buckley report when he returned.
“That theory’s dead,” he said. “Claire Sanderson’s DNA was a close match to Emma’s. Shawn says there’s no doubt that the two are closely related.”
“Okay, well, Mrs. Buckley had clients as far south as Florida and as far north as Maine,” Lucy said. “She also had several from Massachusetts, which means that the people involved in this kind of thing in Massachusetts knew about her, right? Maybe the guy who took Claire didn’t realize that Buckley only dealt with newborns. Maybe he took Claire to Buckley, but, ultimately, didn’t sell her there.”
“Or maybe he knew, but hoped to persuade her otherwise and failed.”
“Buckley was pretty adamant that she’d never seen Claire.”
“She could be lying, but why?”
He shook his head.
“Could be that Claire’s abductor found out about Buckley’s arrest, knew about the DNA samples that police were able to get from the woman’s house and was afraid those samples would lead police to Claire Sanderson.”
Ramsey dissected the theory on the spot. “That would be motive for stealing the box of evidence from our vault,” he said. “Buckley’s been in jail for years, but we have no idea how long the box of evidence has been missing.”
“Do you have a record of everyone going in and out of the storage room here? As you’ve said all along, chances are good that whoever took that evidence had an inside connection.”
Ramsey dug through his piles and came up with the folder.
Lucy took it from him. “I’ll go through the report from the Buckley case and we can compare the two. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
She smiled as though her team had just scored a home run.
Ramsey studied her. “All of this work, the years of searching—and other than the original police report on your sister, you’ve found nothing. Don’t you ever want to give up?”
Lucy looked him in the eye. “Would you?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had a sibling, or a child, to know what losing one feels like.”
“You lost your wife, Miller, when she left you. That counts.”
He’d seen Hayes’s determination to get to the truth. And he wasn’t going to find himself on the other end of that. “Then, no, I wouldn’t quit until I had my answers.”
His phone rang. He was glad for the diversion.
“Miller.”
He glanced at Lucy as he recognized the name of his caller. And when he heard the reason for the call, he knew it was going to be another long night.
* * *
“I DON’T LIKE this.” Lucy Hayes, dressed in plain clothes in Emma’s living room Saturday afternoon, directed her comment to Detective Miller.
Chris was siding with her. He didn’t like Miller’s plan at all.
“Are you objecting on the grounds that the plan doesn’t have merit or because you’re feeling protective?” Miller said to the other detective.
Lucy raised her chin. “I’m objecting because I don’t like it,” she said. “We have an overjealous ex, who must be watched, I agree. But to use Emma to get him to incriminate himself? I don’t like it.”
Chris had received Emma’s message regarding this meeting when he’d returned to shore that afternoon. He’d come straight from the docks, without taking the time to change the shorts and T-shirt he’d worn under his coveralls all day.
“You saw how he was last night,” Miller said, leaning away from Chris and Emma. “We each took our s
hot at him and came up empty.”
After he’d received Emma’s call the night before, Miller had picked up Rob Evert for questioning on a possible harassment charge.
Miller faced Emma and Chris, who were sitting on opposite ends of the couch. “Last night wasn’t the first time Evert was uncooperative. We approached him after we met with Emma and Cal on Monday. Because he was close with the family, we wanted to talk to him. To see if he could shed any new light or perspective on the work Emma and her mother do, or provide us with any leads as to who could have taken that box of evidence. He refused to speak with us.”
“Rob wouldn’t talk to you after Cal and I met with you?” Even now Emma seemed surprised by the man’s actions. Which made her that much more vulnerable as far as Chris was concerned.
“He said not to bother him again unless we had a warrant or subpoena,” Detective Hayes said softly. “I assumed he reacted that way because you’d recently broken up with him, but now I’m not so sure. Why would he think we’d want to get a warrant or subpoena?”
“And considering Chris’s account of his interaction with Evert, combined with Evert’s uncooperative behavior when we picked him up for questioning last night, I believe we should use all available means to find out what this guy’s up to,” Miller said.
“Rob didn’t have anything to do with Claire’s disappearance, that’s for sure,” Emma said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail and wrapping it with an elastic band from around her wrist. “He was only six at the time.”
“We already had him checked out,” Hayes said. “We had someone on that on Tuesday and nothing turned up.”
“Rob grew up in Idaho,” Emma said. “He moved to Boston on a basketball scholarship and ended up settling here in Comfort Cove.”
The female detective nodded. “And every bit of that checks out.”
“There’s something the guy doesn’t want us to know,” Miller said to the room at large. “Am I the only one here who wants to find out what that is?”
“No.” Emma rubbed her hands along her jeans. “I’ll do whatever it takes to figure out what’s going on. I’m shocked that he refused to speak with you earlier in the week. He’s always been completely supportive of our efforts to find Claire.”
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