by Sharon Sala
Mercy sighed. Now she was dreading the trip.
Lon knew her hesitation was because of those women. It made him angry all over again, thinking of the damage they’d done. “It’ll be fine,” he said.
Mercy saw a promise in Lon’s steady gaze and sighed. “Okay, I’ll go. The cop said it’ll be fine.”
Lon winked at her.
Hope now understood that first meeting between them years ago meant more than she first believed. There was a deeper relationship between them, and she was grateful.
“Time for dessert,” Mercy said, and brought a plate of her cookies to the table.
Jack was up and refilling coffee cups when Lon’s phone rang.
Lon glanced at caller ID and frowned. “Excuse me a minute. I need to take this,” he said, and left the table.
“The life of a policeman,” Duke said.
“It’s an honorable profession,” Mercy said.
Unwilling to comment again for fear they’d get into another argument, he shrugged.
A few minutes later, Lon came back. He had his coat on and was moving fast. “I’m sorry, but duty calls. I have to get back to Blessings.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry you have to leave. You didn’t get cookies and coffee,” Hope said.
Lon’s gaze slid to Mercy. The disappointed look on her face was encouraging. At least it meant she liked him. “I’d happily take a couple of cookies to go,” he said.
“I’ll get them,” Mercy said, and jumped up.
She put half a dozen cookies in a plastic bag. “I’ll see you out,” she said, and walked him to the door, then onto the porch.
“Is it a dangerous emergency…for you?” she asked.
He paused, reading a little bit of fear in her eyes, and adored her even more. “I don’t think so.”
She handed him the cookies. “Will you do me a favor?” she asked.
He ran a finger down the curve of her cheek. “More than likely.”
“Will you text me sometime tonight, just to let me know you’re okay?”
He cupped the side of her face and brushed a gentle kiss across her lips. “Mmmm, you taste like cookies…and yes, I will do that.”
Mercy’s heart still pounded when he got into his cruiser. She watched until his taillights disappeared, and then she went back into the house and locked the door.
Chapter 16
Duke and Jack were cleaning up, and Hope still sat at the table as she walked in. “Well?” Hope said.
Mercy arched an eyebrow. “Well? That’s a pretty deep subject.”
Jack burst out laughing as Hope chuckled.
Duke eyed Mercy with new respect. She was funny when she relaxed.
Mercy slid into a chair beside her sister, and without thinking, reached out and clasped her hand. “One of my foster brothers was a smart-ass. I learned plenty of things from him, most of which I later discovered were illegal or immoral, but I was ten and thought he was funny.”
“That’s great,” Hope said. “Did you ever stay in touch?”
“He’s dead,” Mercy said. “Heard it on the news one night. He’d already aged out of the system. Couldn’t find a job. Didn’t have any skills. Robbed a liquor store and died in the shoot-out.”
“Oh my God,” Duke said. “Don’t you have even one happy moment in your life?”
Hope and Jack glared at Duke as if he’d just spit on the floor, but Mercy’s answer not only humbled him but shut him up. “Yes. Two, actually. Finding out I had a sister, and then getting to meet her and finding out I had inherited brothers.”
Duke felt like he’d just been sucker-punched. He needed to say something but was ashamed of himself for provoking her.
“Thank you,” Jack said.
“We are so blessed,” Hope said.
“I feel blessed, but I’m tired,” Mercy said. “If you all don’t mind, I’d like to end this day on a good note. I had such a good time.”
“We absolutely don’t mind,” Hope said, and hugged her close, then whispered in her ear as she kissed her cheek. “We love that you have Lon, and we love you. As for Duke, he’s oblivious, but he means well.”
Mercy returned her sister’s embrace and added a quick kiss on the cheek. “Night, Hope,” she said, and then left the room with tears in her eyes.
Hope walked across the kitchen and whacked Duke lightly on the back of his head. “Do you know what’s inside your head?” she asked.
“My brain,” he snapped.
“Then stop taking it out and playing with it all the time. Start using it for a change.”
For once, Jack stayed out of it. Hope had defended her sister, and with good reason. His brother was an ace at ill-chosen words and the times he chose to use them.
* * *
Mercy could hear their voices as she began getting ready for bed. They were quarreling again, probably about her. She wondered if they’d argued like that before she came, and then let it go. She was no expert on family behavior, but she did know they loved each other, and she was beginning to understand that they loved her.
Long after she lay in bed unable to sleep, she could still hear them moving about downstairs, locking up. From the few words that she caught, she could tell they were talking about what needed to be done tomorrow. Her phone was in her hand as she rolled over on her side.
So this was what it meant to have family, she thought, and closed her eyes.
* * *
Lon hadn’t let on about the seriousness of the phone call, but he was worried as he sped toward Blessings. A missing child was a heart-stopper—even a teenager.
He drove with his lights on, and when he got closer to Blessings, hit the siren as well. He reached the station just as the frantic parents arrived. They met him at the back door in tears. “Chief Pittman! You’ve got to help us. Kelly ran away.”
“Come inside,” Lon said. “I’ll need to get as much info from you as I can before I send out a Be On the Lookout to the surrounding counties.”
They followed him into his office, stumbling and weeping profusely.
Lon’s stomach was in a knot. He had a bad feeling about this, and the couple was hysterical.
“Okay… Paul, Betty, take a deep breath. If we’re going to find Kelly, you’re going to have to help me.”
Paul ran a hand over his thinning hair and took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure.
“Just tell me how all this started,” Lon asked.
“She has a boyfriend we don’t approve of. We told her she couldn’t date him, and then we found out just before noon today that she’d been sneaking around and seeing him anyway,” Paul said.
“We found out because she told us she’s pregnant,” Betty added, and then dissolved into tears all over again.
Lon could only imagine the chaos that had gone on in that house. “Okay, so how did you all receive the news?”
“Badly,” Paul said. “We told her she would have to give the baby up for adoption, that she isn’t through with school, and we aren’t going to help raise that boy’s kid.”
Betty wailed. “We didn’t think of anything but ourselves. We said all the wrong things. She cried and said she had expected better of us. She reminded us it would be her child too…our first great-grandchild, but we were both yelling and…oh my God, what have we done?”
“Great-grandchild? I thought she was your daughter. Who’s the boyfriend?” Lon asked.
“Jimmy Dean Sawyer is the boyfriend, and Kelly belongs to our daughter, Paula. We haven’t seen or heard from her since Kelly was a baby.”
“Do you know where Jimmy Dean is? Did he run away with her?”
“No, he’s at home with his parents. That’s where we’ve been. We went out to his family home, thinking the boy would be gone. But he seemed shocked and said he didn’t know she was goi
ng to tell us, or he would have been with her,” Paul said.
“Then where do you think she went?” Lon asked.
“We don’t know, but the last time we saw her was just after one thirty this afternoon,” Betty said. “We went to town, and when we got back, her suitcase and some clothes were missing. The money she had saved for a prom dress is gone, and her car is gone too. She graduates this coming May,” Paul said.
“Did you ask the boyfriend where she might go?”
“Yes, of course, but he said he doesn’t know, and I think he’s telling the truth. He was crying. He’s as scared as we are. We’ve been to all of her friends here in town, and none of them even knew she was pregnant. She won’t answer her phone. I don’t know what else to do.”
“I need the make, model, and license number of the car she’s driving and how much money she took with her.”
“I wrote down all the car details before we came here,” Paul said. “I’d guess she has almost a thousand dollars saved.”
“What’s her given name?” he asked.
“Kelly Ann Rogers. She’s seventeen years old. Her birthday is July 3. She’s about five-foot-two and has long blonde hair. She was wearing jeans, a blue sweatshirt, blue Nikes, and her letter jacket.”
“Okay, let me get this alert out to all the right people. We can’t send an Amber alert because she’s over sixteen and a runaway, not a missing person. Just wait here.”
They fell into each other’s arms as Lon headed up the hall to dispatch. “Hey, Larry. I need you to send a BOLO out on Kelly Rogers. This is the info.”
“Will do,” Larry said as he took the paper Lon handed him. “It’s a bad deal, isn’t it, Chief?”
Lon nodded. “I’m afraid it’s going to be unless we get really lucky. She’s been gone for hours.”
He headed back to the office. “I need to ask you another question,” Lon said.
“Anything,” Betty replied.
“Where’s Kelly’s mother? Do they communicate? Do you and Paul hear from her?”
Betty threw up her hands. “Her mother? We never heard from Paula after she left us hanging with her baby. We don’t even know if she’s alive or dead.”
Lon frowned. “What’s Kelly’s cell phone number?”
As soon as they gave it to him, he called the state police, explained the situation, and asked them to trace the location of the calls made on that phone today, then requested a log of the calls made on it this past month as well.
“What do we do?” Betty asked as Lon put down the phone.
“Have you searched Kelly’s room?” Lon asked.
“For what?” Paul said.
Lon shook his head. If he had to ask that, then they’d barely covered the basics. “We need to go back to your house. I need permission to search Kelly’s room.”
“You have it,” Paul said. “But you won’t find anything.”
“You didn’t know she was still seeing her boyfriend,” Lon reminded him.
“Point taken,” Paul said. “You can follow us back to the house.”
“I know where it is,” Lon said. “You two go home. I’ll be right behind you. I need to tell my dispatcher where I’m going.”
“Yes, sir,” Paul said, and led his wife from the office and out the back door.
Lon gave Larry further instructions then left the station on his way to the Rogers’s home. Paul was waiting for him on the doorstep. Betty was in the kitchen making coffee. Lon could smell it as they entered. “Where is Kelly’s room?” Lon asked.
“I’ll show you,” Paul said, and led the way to another wing of the house. “This is it,” he said as he held the door aside for Lon.
“Thank you,” Lon said. “I’ll just look around a bit. If I need you to answer any questions, I’ll give you a shout.”
Paul nodded and went to the kitchen to be with Betty.
As Lon began his search, he heard a house phone ring and then the sound of Betty’s voice. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but she was crying. He could only imagine how many times she would tell their story tonight. Friends just finding out would offer condolences and prayers because that’s all they could do.
Then he closed the door. Almost from the start, it was obvious Kelly was preparing for graduation. She had a to-do list on her desk and a stack of college information beneath it. That must have been from before she found out she was pregnant. Too bad all the way around.
He searched dresser drawers, her closet, her bed, under the mattress—everywhere someone might think to hide something they didn’t want found, but came up without a clue as to where Kelly would run.
Finally, he sat on the corner of her bed and looked at the room from a different perspective, hoping something new would pop up, and it did. There was a dull spot on the shiny hardwood floor just to the right of the closet. Curious, he got up to look and then realized it was visible only from the bed. It took him a few seconds to relocate what he’d seen, and once he did, he got down on his knees and felt around the edges of the planks. Within a few moments, one of the short ones moved slightly beneath his hand. Curious to see if it would come up, he got out his pocketknife and tried to get the blade beneath the wood. All of sudden, it popped up in his hand.
Lon set the board aside and rocked back on his heels, then took out a flashlight and shined it down into the space. At first he thought it was empty, and then he realized he was looking at a black drawstring bag. He pulled it up and loosened the ties, then dumped the contents onto the floor. There were at least a half dozen packets of letters addressed to Kelly at a post office box like those rented in the Box It Up store. He picked the one with the oldest postmark, realized it had been mailed about two years earlier, and then took the letter from the envelope. He saw it had been written by a woman named Paula Grimes and began to read.
“Oh man,” he muttered.
Then he looked for the last one…a letter postmarked only two weeks earlier. He scanned the contents of that letter as well, and within seconds had a very good idea where Kelly Rogers had gone. The only downside was, with no return address to pinpoint her location, he didn’t know where Paula Grimes lived. But obviously, Kelly did.
If things go bad, come to my house. I have a large home with four extra bedrooms and regret ever leaving you behind. I can’t make up for the past seventeen years, but I can help you through what’s happening now if the need arises, and will do it gladly with all the love I have to give you.
Paula
Lon tucked the letters inside his jacket as he left the room. He debated about telling them what he’d found when he walked into the kitchen, only to break up a fight. It appeared they were taking their fear and frustrations out on each other.
“Paul! Betty! What are you doing here? What purpose does shouting and screaming at each other serve? You need to be leaning on one another, not trying to tear each other apart.”
Betty was livid. “He started it. He said it was my fault Kelly was gone, just like he said it was my fault when Paula ran away. We were living in Savannah at the time and had all those foster kids in the house. We took them in because we needed extra money, and he blamed me for not giving our own daughter enough attention.”
“Only she fooled us!” Paul shouted. “She got back at us the best way possible. She left her bastard for us to raise—one more mouth to feed.”
Lon couldn’t believe what he heard. The rage on Paul’s face made his skin crawl. “But you were getting money from the state to feed and care for the foster children, right?”
Paul realized what he’d said didn’t quite hold true. “Yes, but the house was never quiet. After Paula ran away, we turned all those kids back to the state. I’d had enough. Add a squalling baby to three foster kids, and I knew I couldn’t handle all that.”
The tone of Paul’s voice and the anger in his words was shocking. �
��Does Kelly know how you feel about having to raise her?” Lon asked.
Paul was startled by the question and suddenly became quiet.
“Yes, she knows,” Betty said. “He was screaming it at her today when she told us about the baby. That’s what the fight was really about.”
“Damn it, Betty, shut up. You don’t have to tell our business.”
“Well, yes, she does, if it has to do with your missing granddaughter,” Lon snapped. “So now we have a whole new story about why she’s gone. You pretty much told her she wasn’t wanted…not by her mother, and not by you two. What the hell did you expect her to do?”
Betty sat down at the kitchen table and buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t say anything,” Betty said. “I heard him say it, and I just sat there.”
All of a sudden, Lon wasn’t feeling the least bit sorry for them. He hated what Kelly was going through, but at least he had a place to start looking.
“I’ve seen all I came to see,” he said. “I’m going back to the station. If I hear anything, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Wait, can’t we go back with—”
Lon stopped and stared straight into Paul’s face. “No, you can’t come back to the station with me. I’m going to work the rest of the night, and I have no need to be interrupted by the discord between you. If there’s news, I’ll call.”
They still argued as he left the house. Part of him wondered if they were secretly glad she was gone, and considered how much of what they felt was actually fear for her welfare, or guilt for what they’d said and done.
When he got into the car and started back to the station, he had Mercy on his mind. There had to be really wonderful people who chose to be foster parents, who took care of children with love in their hearts. But he had been given a dose of two who’d done it for the money. It made him sick to his stomach. He’d just seen firsthand part of the reason Mercy was so closed off.
He wanted to hear her voice and had promised to let her know he was okay. He was on Main Street a few blocks from the station when he parked. Instead of sending her a text, he called.