Not Without Her Child, page 8
Yeah, maybe not. The intensity had died out in him long ago. Determination to make a difference had been left in its wake.
He welcomed the change with gratitude.
But if it meant he could escape any more alluding to attraction...he’d gladly wear the intensity label. Remembered clearly how it had felt—in high school, feeling desperate, and without answers. Or anyone to turn to...
“I’m alive, too.” Her voice snapped him to present day. And words he’d said moments before. A guy would have to be dead not to find you attractive. Followed by his I’m alive.
I’m alive, too. Her voice reverberated through his head.
Three soft words. Aimed at clearing the air. Letting him off the hook.
But hitting him straight in the groin.
Chapter 10
Birds of Paradise looked more dilapidated, forlorn and forgotten than it had in the photo Brian had shown her that morning. Graying wood, boarded windows and, on the backside, a small section of roof missing.
She’d told Brian she hadn’t recognized the place when he’d presented her with the picture he’d taken the day before. Standing in the deserted gravel parking lot, noting the weeds that were doing a good job of taking over, she knew for certain she’d never been to the café before.
Had Brooke?
Eighteen months before? Or more recently. Was it possible that buried somewhere beneath the weeds, in the gravel, were size one or two footprints belonging to her daughter?
Had her carrier sat on one of the scarred wooden tables or red-leather booth seats she imagined inside?
“I looked up property records and this place is owned by a woman named Harriet Lichen,” Brian said, coming up beside her as she stood before the boarded-up front door.
Feeling better since they’d gotten their mutual attraction out in the open and out of the way, Jessica glanced up at him, fully in the moment. Not worried about the fact that she was glad he was there. They shared an understanding. Of the fact that adults who were alive found other adults attractive.
And more, an understanding of how a missing child made everything else in life fade in significance.
“You have an address for her?” A flash of excitement speared through her. Why hadn’t they gone there first?
“Just a PO box.”
Of course. She should have known he’d have been on anything that could connect them to someone who actually knew something.
“But look over there.” He pointed to an old but well-kept, two-story white house set back on a mowed-grass lot across the street. The driveway was covered in gravel, like the ground upon which they were standing. And the mailbox at the road...
“H.A.L.” She read the bold black letters, her gaze rushing from the box to Brian and back. “You think that’s her?”
“I think it’s worth finding out,” he said, pulling her keys out of his pocket and heading back toward the SUV. She was in place, door shut, before he’d started the engine. Trying to remain calm as she watched them turn around, leave the café lot, cross the street and enter the drive, bringing them closer and closer to the house. The front window was large, antique-looking floral curtains open.
No sign of life inside that she could see.
“You want to stay here?” Brian asked, his hazel gaze warm as it landed on her.
“Hell, no!”
She wasn’t sure, but thought she might have seen a hint of a grin on his face as, expression professionally bland, he opened his door and waited for her to reach him before heading up to the porch.
While she worried that the homeowner was not going to welcome two strangers on her porch out in the middle of not much on a Sunday morning.
There was no bell. He knocked twice, pulled a leather envelope out of his back pocket and flipped it open in front of him, revealing his private investigator credentials so they were clearly visible. Jessica straightened her shoulders, glad she’d chosen the friendly-looking—she hoped—yellow, short-sleeved button-down shirt with puffy sleeves to go with her skinny black pants and black tennis shoes.
When she’d stepped out of the shower before dawn that morning, she’d had no idea what the day might bring. Had wanted to be prepared for physical exertion, hiking if necessary, but also wanted to look feminine and kind.
In case she came face-to-face with her two-year-old who wouldn’t know her.
She’d worn her hair in the loose ponytail she’d had it in every day of the six months she’d had her daughter. She’d needed it back for breastfeeding. And, later, so that little fingers didn’t tangle in it and pull it.
No one was answering.
Staring straight ahead, willing the door to open, she saw Brian’s fist as he knocked again. Two short raps.
Followed by the sound of a lock clicking on the other side of the heavy wood.
The door opened about two inches, enough that she could see a floral housedress that hung down almost to two swollen ankles.
Mostly what she saw was the tip of a gun. “Yes?”
Moving slowly, Brian pushed his credentials into the crack. “I’m Brian Powers, ma’am. This is Jessica Johnson. We’d just like to ask you a couple of questions about the restaurant across the street. Property reports say that it’s owned by Harriet Lichen. Is that you?”
“Yes.” The door opened no further.
It didn’t shut in their faces either.
“If you’re looking to buy the place, I’m afraid the answer is no,” the elderly woman said, her face still behind the door.
“No, we’re interested in finding out about someone who might have eaten there.” Brian still held his leather envelope up at shoulder height, in the small opening.
And the door pulled open, revealing a wrinkled face with assessing blue eyes accentuated by gray curly hair and pink-and-yellow earrings that matched the housedress.
Harriet’s soft-sided, slip-on shoes were yellow...endearing Jessica to her. The dress, the shoes, the earrings—out in the country with no one around.
Having the thought that maybe the woman was hosting Sunday dinner, and would soon have guests, she itched to get their information and leave her to her day.
“Thank you for talking to us,” she started in, meeting the woman’s gaze with a smile that faded into tremoring lips. “My baby girl was kidnapped months ago, and we have reason to believe that she might have been in your restaurant.”
“Oh, my!” Eyes grown wide, Harriet stared at both of them, opened the door wide and ushered them into her living room. Old, paisley-upholstered, claw-footed furniture and accent tables adorned the room. Jessica sat beside Brian on a settee, as indicated, and tugged out of her back pocket the laminated photo she showed everywhere, to everyone. Brooke, in her baby carrier, partially wrapped with the blanket Clint had taken the day he’d stolen their daughter.
“Do you recognize anything about this?” she asked. Babies looked the same. She’d had the response more times than she could count over the past fifteen months. Had honed her question.
Harriet studied the photo. Hard.
Hope swirled inside Jessica.
Until the woman shook her head. “I’m so sorry, honey, but I don’t.”
“How about this man? Do you recognize him?”
Jessica hadn’t known he was carrying a photo of Clint. Hadn’t seen him pull it out.
Taking the photo, Harriet gave it the same attention she’d given Brooke’s likeness. Picked up glasses off an end table by her chair. Turned on the light.
And shook her head.
With lead in her heart, Jessica wouldn’t let herself sink. Dead ends only meant they hadn’t found the right person to talk to yet.
“I want to say I don’t recognize him.” Harriet’s words came slowly. Jessica’s heart rate sped up enough for both of them. Open-mouthed, she stared. “I want to say that because I don’t want to know that my little place was the site of anything as hideous as part of a kidnapping and you’re about to tell me this man was part of it, aren’t you?”
What? Oh God. Oh God. Breathe. What was she supposed to do next? Taking a deep breath, Jessica felt Brian’s thigh press against hers.
Him telling her to let him handle things?
She was willing to give that a try. Welcomed his expertise, since she was finding it hard to curtail the rush of emotion that was threatening to overwhelm her.
Fifteen months and she finally had a yes to something? A clue that panned out?
Blinking, she refused to let herself cry. Leaned toward the older woman, hoping she exuded empathy, not desperate alarm as she heard Brian say, “Unfortunately, yes.”
* * *
Aware of Jessica beside him, getting her hopes up, and maybe fears, too, Brian knew the first thing he had to do was to establish the credibility of his witness. In the Johnson case, the starting point was a no-brainer.
He asked if Harriet minded if he recorded their conversation. With her approval, and his phone mic pointed in her direction, he asked, “Have you seen him recently?”
Jessica stiffened beside him. He pushed away the awareness. Waiting for the critical answer.
“No,” Harriet said as Jessica seemed to deflate beside him. And then sit up straight again.
Harriet had passed the first test.
“Can you remember the last time you saw him?”
“Yes, of course. I only saw him a handful of times.” Harriet’s confident tone, the concern on her face, spoke to Brian. He could only imagine what it was doing to Jessica.
“Tell us about them,” he said then, realizing that he needed to know everything she had to say on the matter.
“It was all in one week,” Harriet began, her hands folding in her lap as she sat, legs together, on the edge of her chair, looking back and forth between Jessica and Brian.
Intently listening, he waited to hear the one thing that would rule out the validity of her testimony. And at the same time, to hear every single detail in the event her memory was accurate and Clint Johnson really was the man she believed she’d seen.
He’d have the recording. Could and would replay it. But Harriet wouldn’t always be sitting there in front of him, ready to answer or clarify anything her memory might raise within him.
“A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, year before this one. So...eighteen months ago or so. I know because I start cooking turkey dinners two weeks before the actual day and the first time he was in, he ordered one. And caught the attention of my granddaughter, Bonnie, who was also my only waitress, when he told her that he was ordering it because he had something to be thankful for. Bonnie’s in culinary school now, but she hadn’t started yet then, and didn’t agree with me selling traditional holiday dinners two weeks before the holiday. That man—” she nodded toward the photo Brian still held “—changed her mind.”
He waited for the tell, the thing that would prove to him that she wasn’t remembering the right guy.
If he got lucky, and they made it through the interview without one, then he’d be gladder than hell that he’d noticed that dilapidated little sign along the side of the road the day before.
“You remember anything else about him?” he asked, keeping his tone calm. Warm. Just casual conversation that tended to flow more accurately than tension-laced interviews.
“That dinner, that’s not what I remember most,” Harriet said, her tone growing in strength as her expression sharpened. “I remember him because of the way he parked.”
Expecting his tell, Brian hoped Jessica was ready. Knew in his heart of hearts that she wasn’t. And couldn’t do anything to spare her.
In more than fifteen years of investigating people, an individual’s parking habits had never, not once, been high on anyone’s list of memory signifiers.
Feigning patience, when he was biting to get back on the road, to get back to tracking Clint Johnson’s activities from eighteen months before because they’d lead him to Brooke, Brian just nodded.
“The first time I noticed him...he was in a truck. Blue. With one of those short beds. And it wasn’t one of those working trucks. It was fancier. Like something one of those kids on the college baseball team would drive.”
A sports edition? Exactly like the truck he’d left parked in Jessica’s driveway that morning? Her thigh pressed against his. He left his leg right there, holding strong against her weight. She’d hired him to be there for her.
He didn’t react otherwise. Didn’t want to lead his witness. He was more eager than ever, though, for her to get her full story out.
“He pulled into the lot, drove around the front of the building and then stopped in the back of the lot and waited. I thought maybe he was meeting someone, and went about my business. Then ten minutes later, I’m waving goodbye to Conner—he’s a young farmer down the road, used to be a regular at Birds—and as he pulls out from the spot in front of the big window, that blue truck pulls in. I thought the guy was long gone. And when he came in, I expected him to be looking for someone. And maybe worrying a little bit that he’d used my parking lot for some kind of pass-off and was coming in to get a bite, you know, before heading back down the road. That’s when he ordered the turkey dinner.”
He had a blue truck.
Appearing to wait for someone.
Then parking.
“And you didn’t see any other vehicle meet up with him? Anyone passing through the lot? Or coming in to meet him?”
“No.” With sad eyes, Harriet shook her head. “I was right, wasn’t I? Him waiting on someone? Did he hand off...?” With a glance toward Jessica, Harriet sucked in a breath in lieu of finishing her sentence.
“We don’t know that,” Brian quickly assured her, needing her mind as calm and clear as the situation would allow. “You said you saw him a handful of times...”
“Yes, that’s right. He came in three days in a row...”
“Did you notice if he waited out in the parking lot to meet someone?” Jessica’s question blurted from beside him.
A good question.
“No. The second time, Bonnie saw his truck pulling into the lot and she nudged me. I think he kind of got to her, all lost and, she said, ‘trapped inside himself,’” the grandmother disclosed with distress in her voice. “Anyway, I watched him carefully, ready to call the sheriff. Birds was my late-in-life promise to myself and no way was I letting someone conduct wrong business there...”
And yet, as it turned out, it appeared as though she had.
Possibly.
She had Brian’s acute interest at any rate.
“He didn’t even seem to look around the lot that second time,” Harriet continued. “Just pulled right into the same spot he’d been in the day before.”
Pressure from Jessica’s leg came again. He couldn’t look at her, let himself get distracted, even for a second.
Not while he had a witness in front of him.
“He ordered the turkey dinner again...”
“Did Bonnie visit with him at all, do you know?”
“I know she did not. After us talking about how weird it was out in the parking lot the first day, and him keeping a watch outside, she took orders, delivered food, and otherwise stayed in the kitchen the whole time he was there. Thomas, our busboy, watched over the register. Bonnie was always bugging me to let her do the cooking and, truth be told, I was getting tired a lot more quickly back there than I’d expected to...”
Harriet’s sigh sounded painful, though she looked healthy. “Now, hearing that he was...oh, my... Bonnie will be horrified...”
“Did you notice this man speaking with anyone else?” Brian asked, mindful of the woman’s expressed fatigue and his strong desire to know every frame stored in her brain where Clint Johnson was concerned.
“No.” Harriet’s response was solid. Sure. “He sat in that same booth by the window and kept looking out at his truck. Like he thought someone was going to hurt it somehow. Way out here...” She shook her head.
The second Jessica’s thigh plowed into his, and her foot covered his on the floor, he was being hit mentally with the strong possibility that Clint had left Brooke sleeping in his truck when he’d gone in to eat.
A possibility.
One to look at.
After he had all the facts.
“And he came in the next day, too?” he asked, keeping his thigh pushing against Jessica’s but otherwise not acknowledging her at all.
“Yeah. Ordered the turkey again. I remember because it was kind of weird. Me and Bonnie have a difference of opinion about serving it early, and then him coming in for it three days in a row.”
“Did you see him speak with anyone that third day?”
“Nope.”
“Did you notice where he parked his truck?” Jessica asked.
“Right in that same place, in front of the window.”
“Could you see inside the truck?”
“I’m sure I could. It was parked right in front of the window. But I don’t remember anything specific about it. I’m sorry. I so wish I could be of more help. Oh, my...when I tell Bonnie...”
Brian stood, eager to get Jessica out of there, to give himself a moment to catalog and calculate while his first impressions were still fresh.
“And you’re sure, that last time, he still didn’t talk to anyone?” Jessica’s question sounded desperate as they headed toward the front door behind their hostess, and Harriet turned to her, laying a hand on Jessica’s forearm, then sliding it down to grab her hand.
“I’m positive, sweetie. I wish I could tell you different. Give you something—anything—but that last day, he picked up a newspaper from off another table on the way to his same place by that window and, other than checking on his truck regularly, like he had before, he read the paper the whole time. Took it with him when he left, too. I remember because it wasn’t his to take. And that was the last time I saw him. Never knew where he came from, where he went, or why, for those three days he stopped at my little country place.”
