Scene – Millie Jacobson description ok
“Not my job,” she grinned. Millie’s red hair and brown eyes perfectly matched her spunky personality. She was pretty, slender, of average height, and had rosy cheeks. Millie stifled another laugh when the door opened and Rod walked back in. Even so, she was still grinning from ear-to-ear and watched his every move.
“Somebody want to let me in on the joke?” Rod asked.
“Pay no attention to Millie,” the sheriff answered as he led the way to his office in the back of the building. “Come in and sit down, son.”
“I’m in trouble?” Rod asked.
“No, but Millie will be if she doesn’t get back to work.” He chuckled at the traumatized look on her face, and then closed the door behind his deputy. “Mind you, Millie is as sharp as a tack and knows her job better than any dispatcher I’ve ever seen, but she gets a kick out of it when we screw up. In a way, I suppose we do a better job just to keep her from laughing at us.”
“I see.”
Sheriff Otis Pierce was a fastidious man who liked a place for everything and everything in its place. His desk was cleaned off except for a cup of coffee in an insulated plastic cup holder and the open file he had been working on. On the wall behind his desk hung various certificates, one of which was the coveted Officer Valor Award. He returned to his chair behind the desk and motioned for the deputy to sit down.
As he always did, Otis watched until Rod noticed a plaque next to the award. In big bold silver letters, the plaque held the number thirty-five. “The true award,” he explained. “Married to the best women in the world for thirty-five-years and every anniversary she brings in a new plaque just to remind how fortunate I am to have her.” As he hoped, his new hire finally smiled.
“Kids?”
“Yep, four. All grown, all educated and all off seeking their own identity, or so they say until they run out of money.” He turned the picture of his sons and daughters around so Rod could get a good look at them. “My wife has been a little under the weather for a few days, but she’ll be bringing in the most fattening donuts she can find as soon as she’s feeling better.”
“I look forward to it.”
“Resist, son, do your best to resist or you’ll have a belly just like mine in less than a week.”
Rod drew in a relieved breath and relaxed. “Why wouldn’t Mr. Woodbury answer my questions?”
“Yeah, well, I suppose he has his reasons. One day he closed the door in my face and as far as I know, he hasn’t spoken since.”
“Not to anyone?”
“Oh, he lets his housekeeper know when he needs a doctor or the like, but as far as I know, he hasn’t said a word, not even to his sons or his grandchildren in years. Frankly, I don’t know what keeps the man from curling up in a ball and forgetting the world even exists.”
“That bad?”
“I couldn’t have survived it.” Otis thoughtfully twirled an unsharpened pencil between his first two fingers. “Mr. Woodbury and his first wife had two sons who were in their early twenties when Mrs. Woodbury got cancer and died. Earl waited a couple of months and then remarried. His second marriage produced a little girl named Tiffany and the baby was about six months old when she was kidnapped.”
Rod’s eyes widened. “Kidnapped? By whom?”
“I wish I knew. I’ve got my suspicions, but I haven’t got one ounce of solid evidence to prove it. In a town as small as this was at the time, you know everybody, and Earl was a savvy businessman. Some say he was too harsh with his employees and some say he was not harsh enough. At any rate, the week before, Earl fired two men and a woman, and it could have been any one of those three, hell bent to get even – someone else or a complete stranger abduction. A day after the baby was taken, Earl got a call demanding a million-dollar ransom.”
“From a man or a woman?”
“He couldn’t tell. The voice sounded like it was electronically garbled. Whoever it was had his home phone number, which Earl changed often and kept unpublished. That was before everyone had cellphones.”
“Wow, so he just clammed up.”
“My fault probably,’ the sheriff admitted. “I kept trying to find the key, you know that one tiny tidbit that would blow the case wide open. I questioned him too often. He just didn’t have the key and without it I couldn’t wipe the pain out of that good man’s eyes.”
“Did you find a body?”
“Nope, no body and the whole town searched for miles around.”
“Then the baby might not be dead?”
Sheriff Otis Pierce laid the pencil down, lowered his gaze and stared at something unseen on the top of his desk. “Might have been kinder if we had found a body. How do you stop worrying about a baby that might still be alive, yet taking her last breath and you’re not there to save her? It was enough to bring me close to tears in those first few hours.”
“Can’t imagine what it did to Mr. Woodbury.”
“Exactly.”
Neither man spoke for a time until Rod asked, “But you did suspect someone?”
“Everyone at first. I still suspect Mariam Eggleston had something to do with it. She was the Woodbury’s housekeeper at the time, but it’s just a suspicion. Earl dropped the ransom off in a junkyard and that was the last we saw of that too.”
“Where is Mariam Eggleston now?”
“Oh, Mariam is still in town and as far as I can tell, she wasn’t the one who got the ransom. At least if she did, she hasn’t spent any of it.”
“Was the money marked?”
“Nope, that was part of the demand. The thing is, Earl never did think it was Mariam. He said it wasn’t in her nature to take baby Tiffany. He swore Mariam loved that little girl as much as he and his wife did. Maybe she did, but I just wasn’t convinced.” The sheriff paused before he added, “Something just didn’t add up with her.”
Rod shifted his weight in the hard, wooden chair and crossed his legs. “How long ago was this?”
“July 3, 1998. The town was full of people who normally came from miles around for the annual July 4th celebration. It’s a big deal around here.”
“I’d like to read the file, if...”
“It won’t do one bit of good to dig it all up again and you won’t find any answers in the file. I’m just telling you this so you’ll keep an eye out for Earl. He’s a good man who deserved a lot better in life than he got.”
“Is his second wife still living?”
“No. She drown her sorrow in pills, and Earl found her dead just two days after the kidnapping. It was ruled accidental.”
“Two days? Wow. Do you think it was accidental?” Rod asked.
“It looked more like suicide, but for Earl’s sake we said accidental. His daughter was gone, the money was gone and his wife was dead. You’d have done the same thing.”
“I probably would have. You notified the press about the kidnapping, I take it.”
“Right away and news crews came from far and wide. Later we followed all the known abducted child procedures and spread the word all across the country in newspapers and such, but Tiffany had no distinguishing features or marks and nothing came of it.”
Rod hesitated to ask, but he had another little girl on his mind - the one down in Texas that his collar got away with killing. “If I promise to read it on my own time, can I see the file?”
The sheriff sighed. “I suppose it won’t hurt. You’ll be stepping on some toes if you start asking questions though.”
“Do you object to my stepping on a few toes?”
“Not really. This case has haunted me for years and I wouldn’t mind having a few answers before I die. I was young and as green as they come back then, yet I had all the best training law enforcement offered, and one small advantage – I grew up here and knew the good from the bad. It just wasn’t enough.”
“Where can I find the file?”
The sheriff pointed to a large file cabinet next to the door.
“B
ottom drawer?”
“Nope, the bottom three.”
(end of sample)
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Broken Pledge
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Marti Talbott's Highlander Series 1
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Betrothed
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Marti Talbott's Highlander Omnibus, Books 1 - 3
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Marblestone Mansion, Book 1
Marblestone Mansion, Book 2
Marblestone Mansion, Book 3
Marblestone Mansion, Book 4
Marblestone Mansion, Book 5
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Marblestone Mansion, Book 8
Marblestone Mansion, Book 9
Marblestone Mansion, Book 10
Marblestone Mansion, (Omnibus, Books 1 - 3)
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Beloved Ruins, Book 1
Beloved Lies, Book 2
Beloved Secrets, Book 3
Beloved Vows, Book 4
The Viking Series
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The Viking's Daughter
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The Viking's Honor
Viking Blood
The Unwanted Bride
The Wheeler Triplets
Ondrea
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Missing Heiress
Greed and a Mistress
The Dead Letters
The Locked Room
Love and Suspicion
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About the Author
Marti Talbott (www.martitalbott.com) is the author of over 40 books, all of which are written without profanity and sex scenes. She lives in Seattle, is retired and has two children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. The MacGreagor family saga begins with The Viking Series and continues in Marti Talbott’s Highlander’s Series, Marblestone Mansion, the Scandalous Duchess series, and ends with The Lost MacGreagor books. Her mystery books include Seattle Quake 9.2, Missing Heiress, Greed and a Mistress, The Locked Room, and The Dead Letters. Other books include The Promise and Broken Pledge.
Learn more at www.martitalbott.com
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Broken Pledge Page 33