by Kathi Daley
Bea Tiddle might not be as physically spry as she once was, but I had a feeling she was still as bright and alert as she’d been in her prime. After Patrice introduced us, Georgia explained about the letters, the photo, and the answers we hoped to find.
“Sure, I know who this is,” Bea said.
I glanced at Georgia, who was grinning. “Do you mind sharing her identity with us?”
“What exactly do you want with her?” Bea asked.
“If she is the daughter of Victor and Ursula, and if she is still alive, we’d like to pass along the letters her parents wrote to each other,” Georgia said.
Bea began to rock back and forth in her chair. “I see. I guess that she might like to have the letters. The girl in the photo was the daughter of the family who lived in the next house over years ago. Her name is Anabelle. Anabelle Winter. After she married, she was Anabelle Rosemont.”
“Does she still live in Holiday Bay?” I asked.
“No. She moved away at least thirty years ago. We exchanged Christmas cards for a while, but it has been a few years since I last communicated with her. Maybe five or six, now that I think about it. The last address I have for her was in Hartford, Connecticut. I’d be willing to give you the information if you would like to try sending her a note. I can’t say for certain that she still lives at the same address, but it is as good a place as any to start.”
“And her parents?” I asked. “The couple who adopted her? Are they still alive?”
Bea shook her head. “Both are deceased. Anabelle’s mama, Dotty, passed in 1997, and her father, Joe, passed in 2004. They were good people, both of them.”
“Do you have any idea why Ursula chose them?” Georgia asked. “Did she know the couple she gave her baby to?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t know Ursula, but I did speak to Dotty and Joe on occasion. They shared with me that they had adopted a baby girl after trying for years to have a child of their own. I think they were happy. At least when they lived here they appeared to be. As I said, I never met Ursula, but I think she made a good choice when she decided who would raise her daughter.”
I was happy to hear that. I could see that Georgia was as well. Even though we had never met anyone directly involved in this saga, I think we both felt we had a vested interest in it. We visited with Bea and Patrice a while longer and then left with the last address Bea had for Anabelle and a promise to let her know if we managed to track her down. While we were on the property, Patrice offered to show us the cabin that was currently unoccupied. It was a simple home but would be adequate for the Baxter family. There were three bedrooms, a modest kitchen, a single bath, and a small living room. There was a huge lawn on the grounds away from the formal gardens where Patrice said it would be fine for the children to play. I couldn’t say for certain, but I suspected that Brady would be thrilled with the place should we be able to arrange for him to be released and his children to be returned to him.
“Do you want to grab a bite to eat before we head home?” I asked Georgia.
“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather just make us some lunch when we get back.”
“That is fine with me. I know we have the makings for beef dip sandwiches.”
“I was thinking that same thing. We should stop by the pet supply store to grab that cat box we talked about before we head out of town, however.”
“That’s a good idea. Do we need anything else? Dog or cat food?”
Georgia shook her head. “I think we are fine on both. I was thinking of inviting Tanner and Nikki over for dinner. Colt too, if he isn’t busy. Would that work for you?”
I shrugged. “Fine by me. Why don’t you call Tanner to see if he and Nikki are free? If they are, we can stop by the market after the pet supply store.”
As it turned out, Tanner and Nikki were free and pleased to be invited over for some of Georgia’s cooking, so I called Colt while Georgia ran into the pet store to get the cat box.
“Hey, Colt, it’s Abby,” I greeted when he picked up. “Tanner and Nikki are coming over for dinner this evening. Would you like to join us?”
“I’d like that quite a lot. That roommate of yours sure does know her way around the kitchen.”
I chuckled. “Tell me about it. She is going to be famous when the inn opens and people get a taste of her slow-roasted prime rib. I think she’s planning something simpler for tonight, though. She mentioned pork chops. We plan to eat at around six, so why don’t you come by at about five?”
“Sounds good.”
“Before you hang up, is there any word on either Mark’s murder or Karen’s fall? Anything new, I mean?”
“Not really. I am waiting for a call from a friend who might have additional insight into who might have pushed Mark in front of the bus, so I may have something to tell you by this evening. I don’t suppose you found anything in your husband’s notes that would explain why he went to see Mark before he went to his training in Maryland?”
“No. I haven’t had time to go through everything more, but I’ll keep looking. How are things going with Brady’s case? Any chance the plan we hatched will actually work?”
“I ran the idea past a few people and I think it might fly. I am running an in-depth background check just to make sure there are no skeletons in his closet that we don’t know about. If it comes out clean, I think we should be able to work out a deal that includes repaying the money he stole, community service, and probation in lieu of time behind bars. I spoke to my contact at child protective services who is open to the idea as well, as long as Brady has gainful employment and a place to live prior to the children being returned to him.”
“Have you discussed all this with Brady?” I asked.
“I have, and he is, of course, all for anything that brings him back together with his children. He has held a variety of jobs in the past and seems like a handy guy. I think we should be able to work out the employment requirement.”
“I took a look at the cabin on the Hamilton grounds just a short time ago. It has three bedrooms and a tiny but adequate kitchen and living area. I think that would work well. If the background check comes back clean and it looks as if the rest of the plan will be a go, she’ll talk to her son.”
“I hope to have a definite answer by tomorrow. If things come together the way I hope, this will be the last night Brady spends in jail, and his children will be out of foster care soon after that.”
Chapter 16
By the time Wednesday rolled around, I felt that things were finally beginning to come together.
Georgia had written to Anabelle at the address Bea had given her. She explained who she was and why she was trying to get hold of her. She gave her both her snail mail address and her cell phone number, and Anabelle had called her just this morning, excited at the idea of receiving letters written by her birth parents. She was aware she was adopted but knew nothing about them other than the fact that they felt she would be better off with the loving couple who raised her. Georgia chatted with her for a full hour, ending the call with the promise to get the letters in the mail to her right away. We still didn’t know who Harriet was, or why Victor didn’t want her to know about the baby’s existence, but maybe that wasn’t really all that important.
Colt had received back all the information he was waiting for about Brady Baxter. Once he was able to confirm that Brady had a job, Colt was able to work out the plea deal and Brady was released from jail at the end of Tuesday afternoon. It had taken Colt a bit longer than he’d hoped, but the important thing was, he’d gotten it done. Patrice had somehow managed to talk her son into giving Brady a shot at the groundskeeper job, and he was moving into the cabin today. Someone from child protective services was going to do a site visit tomorrow, and as long as that went well, the children should be back with their father by the weekend.
The mama cat I had rescued was beginning to settle in, so I no longer had to keep her locked in the bedroom. She seemed content to have
a warm, dry place to raise her babies, so I no longer feared she’d freak out and run away. I had no idea how Rufus had come to know there was a mama cat under the deck, but they certainly seemed like old friends. I didn’t know a lot about Rufus’s life before he came to live with me, but I was imagining they’d lived in the same household or at least had been neighbors at some time. I’d put flyers up in town, but so far, no one had claimed the mama cat as their own. Lonnie was hinting that if the owner wasn’t found, he might surprise the kids with the adult cat once the babies had been weaned and rehomed.
“Is something wrong?” Georgia asked when she came in from walking Ramos.
I glanced up and frowned. “No. Why do you ask?”
Georgia pulled off her gloves. “You were scowling at your computer as I walked in. Have you started another manuscript?”
I leaned back in my chair. “No. It’s not that. I was just checking my email.”
“Was there bad news?” Georgia hung up her coat.
“More like no news. I’ve sent four emails to Annie since she sent me that short email on Ben’s birthday, but she hasn’t answered any of them. I knew that reestablishing a relationship with her would probably take time, but I hoped that the one email she sent was a sign that a door had been opened.” I clicked off my computer. “I guess not.”
Georgia sat down across from me. “I’m sorry. I know how hard this has been for you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yeah. It has been tough, but I’m fine. I have endured disappointments and heartbreak in the past and have somehow managed to survive them, and I will survive this as well. My situation with Annie and the total frustration I have experienced regarding it has caused me to reevaluate things with Velma, though. When I first thought about finding her sister, I was coming off the high of having received that one email from Annie. Now that I have had the chance to revisit the bitter side of the fence, I realize that you were right all along. There is no guarantee that my looking for Reggie won’t simply anger Velma. She mentioned that Reggie has known where she is all this time, and if she wanted to mend fences she knew right where to look. If we told Velma about Reggie and Reggie rejected her, that could really hurt her, which was never my intention.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I think I should sit tight on what we know for now. If in the future the opportunity arises for me to provide Velma with her sister’s current whereabouts, I can tell her what we know. In the meantime, I am going to leave it alone.”
“I do think that would be best. But if the opportunity does present itself, you should definitely tell her what we know.”
I stood up and walked into the kitchen. “Okay, so we are in agreement. We will file the address your friend dug up for another day.”
“What are your plans for today?” Georgia asked.
“I am going to work on Ben’s files. I still think that he may have left behind a clue about why he went to see Mark and didn’t tell me about it. I still think that if I can answer that question, it could give us some insight into who might have pushed Mark in front of the bus. In my mind, solving Mark’s murder is the first step in finding out what really happened to Karen, providing, of course, that she didn’t fall after all.”
“Do you need help?” Georgia asked.
I poured myself a cup of coffee. “I appreciate the offer, but I think that I would be more likely to recognize a clue if there is one.”
“I’m sure you’re right. I wanted to help if I could, but I had no idea what I was looking for the other day. I’m fairly sure that even if I found something important, I wouldn’t recognize it as such.”
I walked across the room and sat down on the sofa and Rufus climbed onto my lap. “I agree that I am more likely to notice any inconsistencies in Ben’s notes, and I am fine going through the files on my own. Besides, isn’t today the day you told me you were going to help Nikki with arts and crafts at the preschool?”
Georgia nodded. “Yes, that is today, and I really should keep my commitment to Nikki, but helping you when I can is always going to be my first priority.”
“I’m fine. Go have fun with the kids.”
Georgia got up from the table, crossed the room, hugged me, and then went into her bedroom to get ready. I ran my hands through Rufus’s fur as I glanced at the files that we’d stacked in one corner of the room. Today was the day, I decided, I was going to find the message that I felt in my heart Ben had left for me to find.
I grabbed the stack files closest to the top and set them on the table. I chose the first file in the stack and opened the cover. The file was for a cold case relating to an unsolved murder that took place in San Francisco in 1991. Three woman had gone out barhopping on a Friday night, and all three had ended up with their throats slit. The women were all found in different parts of town, but the medical examiner had determined that they were all killed within a few hours of one another and, most likely, by the same person. The killer had never been found. I didn’t see what that could possibly have had to do with either Stinson, so I set that file aside and picked up the next one. It too was a cold case murder that had left the San Francisco police department stumped. After that I found files relating to a kidnapping, a mass shooting, and a series of arson fires that resulted in seven deaths. None of the files looked to me to pertain in any way to Mark or Karen, so I set that stack aside and grabbed the next handful of files.
In a way, I guess it did seem odd that Ben would spend time working on these cases. Most of them had been opened in the nineties and all had hit dead ends. As a homicide detective, he was knee deep in current homicide investigations all day, every day, so why had he wanted to spend his free time digging around in cases that had nothing to do with him?
I had been working for about ninety minutes when I came across a file that stood out as being different from the others. This murder had occurred fifteen years earlier. The unique thing about it was that while, so far, the other cases Ben had been digging around in had all originated in San Francisco; this file dealt with an incident that had taken place in a small town in Indiana. “Indiana,” I said aloud. This couldn’t be a coincidence. I quickly did the math and realized that the murder covered in the file could very well have occurred when Ben was in Indiana visiting Mark and his family for the summer.
I pulled out the summary report and began to read. Isaac Dumbarton was found shot to death in his home in July 2004. A neighbor, Mark Stinson, found him dead on the floor when he went by to return a chainsaw he had borrowed. My heart began to beat faster as I read. Mark Stinson! He would have been around twenty, and Karen seven at the time of the incident.
I continued to look through the file. Isaac’s daughter, Isabella, had been staying with her father for the summer. The Dumbartons were divorced and the custody arrangement had Isabella living with her mother during the school year and her father during the summer. Isabella’s mother was initially considered a suspect in the death of her ex; the divorce was a messy one, and she had fought hard for full custody with no scheduled visitation with her ex-husband. According to the report, Isabella was visiting a friend at the time of the murder, but the name of that child wasn’t mentioned.
If Ben had been visiting Mark when the murder occurred, it made sense that he would be interested in resolving the matter, but why hadn’t he ever mentioned it to me or told me he was going to see Mark? I still didn’t know whether the reason he went to see Mark shortly before his death had anything to do with this cold case. Still, considering the location of the murder and the timeline, a case could be made for thinking that Ben had found out something about it, that his research had led him to Philadelphia all these years later.
The file Ben had amassed on the Dumbarton murder was the thickest of all the ones he had been working on. There were supplemental reports, photos, copies of interviews, witness statements, and, of course, pages and pages of notes that had been made during the course of the investigation. Toward the
back of the file, I found an additional incident report, this one involving the death of a senior citizen who’d been run down and killed while crossing a street. The hit-and-run had not been witnessed and as of the time the report was made, the guilty party had not been found.
I put my hand to my chest. Another hit-and-run incident came just a bit too close to home. I took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, and willed my heart rate to slow. Once I had my emotions under control, I went back through the file and looked at every single piece of paper in it. The fact that Mark had been the one to find this man’s body and then ended up being killed himself didn’t seem to be a direct, causal relationship given the years between the events, but given the fact that Ben had been looking in to the matter, I was willing to bet a causal relationship was what we would eventually find.
I read every word on every page in the file, looking for a clue of any sort. It seemed to me that the most logical explanation for Ben meeting with Mark was that he had discovered something. Perhaps something that no one else had found. Not being familiar with the family or the case, it was likely that I might not notice what Ben had, even if it was right in front of my face to see. Still, I felt that I needed to try. I was halfway through my second pass when I saw a notation in the margin of one of the reports. It appeared to be a date and it looked to have been written by Ben: “7/18.” The hit-and-run had occurred in June and the Dumbarton murder in July, but according to the police report it was on the tenth, not the eighteenth of that month. Something else could have occurred on the eighteenth that stood out to Ben. But what? And how on earth would I recognize the significance of whatever it was even if I stumbled across it?
I decided to start over again a third time from the beginning and read through every single piece of paper in the file, keeping an eye out for that date. It was eight days after the murder, so the investigation would have been well underway. It was more likely than not that I would come across a lot of references to that date. The trick would be in knowing what Ben had seen that had caused him to make a note of it. Of course, Ben had jotted down a month and a day but not a year, so I didn’t know for certain that he was referring to July in the same year as the murder.
