With the police unable to publicly identify Glynis, the two crooks had likely hit a dead end in their search for the diamonds.
If Perry Weller and his buddy ever learned that Hank had been staying with Glynis, whatever danger the woman had tried to escape would land right smack on Kate’s own doorstep.
Chapter Twelve
Her mouth as dry as day-old toast, Kate stared at the phone for several minutes before she could get her head around what she needed to do.
Finally she prayed out loud. “Dear Lord, give Glynis Maddock and Hank Weller peace in your loving arms. Lay your healing hands on the officer who was injured in the accident and help him to make a full recovery. Help the children—”
Her voice broke, and she swallowed the lump of sorrow she felt for the children. “Please comfort Megan, Gwen, and Beck, and help them be strong in the knowledge that you are with them even though their mother is no longer here on earth.
“And please, dear Lord, help me and Paul to ease their pain and grief, and give us the strength to support them as they face an uncertain future.
“I ask this in your name. Amen.”
As Kate raised her head, she felt strengthened and ready to face what was to come.
First, she had to call Paul. She wanted him there when she brought the children home from school. Breaking the news of their mother’s death would require them both to be strong and compassionate. That was Paul’s forte.
She tried to call the sheriff, but he wasn’t in. She left a message.
It was several hours before she’d have to pick up the children from school. She decided to use that time to search for the diamonds herself. If she could find the stashed loot and turn it in to the authorities, then Hank’s brother and his partner would have no need to harm the children.
Moving quickly, Kate drove to Smoky Mountain Hollow and parked in front of the trailer where the car could be seen from the road. If the criminals came by, she didn’t want them to think the place had been vacated.
Somehow the derelict trailer looked even more forlorn than it had the last time she’d been there. A shroud of grief seemed to have descended over it, making the decay more pronounced. The shadows in the silent woods that surrounded the place stood witness to the breakdown of both a home and a family.
If Hank Weller had a stash of diamonds, Glynis certainly hadn’t benefited, and her connection to the man had cost her her life.
Cautiously, Kate climbed out of the car. Her heart lodged in her throat. What if Perry Weller had already tracked his brother back to Glynis’ home? It had, after all, been nearly two months since the accident. But it still seemed unlikely that the men had found the trailer, since the children had been living there until recently and surely would have noticed two dangerous lurkers.
The sight of the turned-over trash can near the clothesline drew her attention. No one had cleaned up the soggy mess, now partly dried by the sun.
Keeping alert for signs that someone had been there, she walked over and picked up a few scattered sheets of paper that had fallen from the can—a discarded test from school, a picture of a horse cut out of a magazine, an empty egg carton. There were also several wrappers from a fast-food drive-thru in Pine Ridge.
She tossed what she’d picked up back into the can, which was empty except for some coffee grounds and a soccer ball that had gone flat.
Shaking off the eerie feeling the silent woods created, she stepped up onto the trailer porch. The uneven wood creaked under her feet and shifted slightly.
Tentatively, she tried the doorknob. It turned in her hand. Megan had been right; the door didn’t lock.
The living room was just as she and the children had left it. She was pretty sure no one had rummaged around inside since she’d taken the youngsters home with her.
Kate stood quietly for a moment considering where she might hide a stash of stolen diamonds. Not in the living room where the children might stumble across the loot. More likely the master bedroom. She headed down the narrow hallway to the back of the trailer. She bet that Hank would have hidden the loot on a high shelf in the closet, where the children wouldn’t see it, and disguised it so that Glynis wouldn’t know it was there.
The bed was made, an old blue quilt pulled up to two pillows. A pile of dirty laundry lay in a corner. Kate used her foot to shove the garments aside. No stash of diamonds there.
Opening the closet, she found only a few dresses hanging from the rack and a couple of men’s shirts. Standing on tiptoe, she pulled down a shoe box from the top shelf. She checked the contents—old bills and receipts that she quickly flipped through.
Another box contained photos—family snapshots of Glynis, the children, and a man she took to be their father. There was even a photo of Glynis standing in front of a rustic cabin with another man whom Kate assumed was the late Hank Weller.
As Kate glanced through the photos, she smiled to see Megan as a towheaded toddler and later with cute pigtails and missing front teeth. She set the box aside to take with her. The children would want to keep the memories of their parents alive.
Not finding the diamonds in the closet, she checked the drawers in the built-in dresser. Once again she came up empty.
She tried the bed next. She looked under it, lifted the mattress to look underneath for a hiding place, and even pulled off the bottom sheet to see if someone had cut a hole in the mattress.
She tried the bathroom, looking inside a jar of cold cream, behind the toilet, and inside the water tank. The virtually empty freezer in the kitchen produced no diamonds in the ice-cube tray either. She tried to recall every crime show she’d seen on TV and every mystery novel she’d read, trying to remember where crooks hid evidence. Apparently she hadn’t watched enough of those shows or read enough books because she found nothing incriminating. She discovered that Glynis’ housekeeping wouldn’t pass a white-glove test, but she drew a blank for stashed diamonds.
With a quick glance at her watch, she realized it was time to pick up the children. She dreaded telling them the news about their mother, but she had no choice. She prayed that God would give her the right words to bring comfort to the youngsters.
Picking up the box of snapshots, she left the trailer, closing the door firmly behind her.
As she reached her car, she got a prickly sensation on the back of her neck as though someone was behind her. She turned around, searching the woods for any sign of life.
Something cracked, a sound as loud as gunfire. She froze.
“Who’s there?” she called.
No answer. Not even a bird stirred in the treetops.
Her heart thundering in her ears, she yanked open the car door, tossed the box of photos onto the passenger seat, and got out of there as fast as the Honda would take her.
AT THE SCHOOL, Megan claimed the front passenger seat while the younger children banged their way into the back.
“Hey.” Megan picked up the box of photos so she could sit. “I recognize this. It’s our pictures. Ma’s gonna put ’em in a scrapbook someday.”
Gwen poked her head between the two front seats. “Let me see.”
Megan ignored her sister. “How’d you get these?”
“I was out at your trailer,” Kate admitted.
“How come?”
“Buckle up everyone.” Starting the car, Kate pulled away from the curb. “I wanted to see if anyone had been there.”
“Was Ma there?” Beck asked hopefully. “Has she come back?”
Kate glanced into the rearview mirror. “I’m afraid not, honey.” His down-turned lips and the way his gaze slid away nearly broke Kate’s heart.
Megan sensed something was wrong. “What’s going on?” she asked quietly.
“We’ll talk when we get home.”
The girl continued to stare hard at Kate, her blue eyes accusing, making the drive feel interminable. In the backseat, Gwen and Beck chattered away about a child who’d fallen off the climbing toy at recess and hurt himself. Mega
n remained sphinxlike.
To Kate’s relief, when they arrived home, Paul’s truck was in the garage. He met them at the door.
“Hey, gang,” he said in greeting as the children went inside.
Kate reached up to give him a quick kiss. “Thanks for coming home early.”
“The kids are going to need us both.”
She nodded, her heart heavy in her chest. “Put your things away children, then come into the living room. We have something to tell you.”
Megan was wide eyed. “It’s bad isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
Tears immediately sprang to Megan’s eyes, but she blinked them away and straightened her shoulders. “Come on, you guys. Put your stuff where it belongs.”
Like a mother hen with her chicks, Megan rounded her siblings up and sat them down on the sofa, one on each side of her, her arms around their shoulders. She looked up at Kate with dread in her eyes.
Wanting to be near the children, Kate perched on the arm of the sofa by Gwen. Paul stood nearby.
Kate took a deep breath and began. “This morning I learned that your mother was in a serious car accident near Nashville.”
“Is she all right?” Gwen asked.
Megan tugged the younger children even closer to her.
Kate’s throat was tight with unshed tears for the children. “No, honey. I’m afraid your mother isn’t all right. She was badly hurt, and she died.”
Gwen and Beck turned to Megan, pleading with their eyes for her to deny the truth of Kate’s pronouncement.
“Ma’s gone. We won’t ever see her again,” Megan said.
The younger children burst into tears and buried their heads in Megan’s chest. She held and petted them, stoically looking straight ahead and not shedding a single tear herself.
It was painful to watch the grief pouring out of the children and Megan’s valiant effort to remain strong.
Kate reached across Gwen to stroke Megan’s golden blonde hair. “It’s all right to cry if you want. You don’t have to hold it in.”
Paul crouched down in front of Beck and placed a reassuring hand on the boy’s back. “I’m sorry, buddy. You know, when something like this happens, I like to say a prayer. It helps me to not feel so alone or bad if I know God is with me. Would that be okay with you kids?”
The children appeared too stunned to respond, so Paul took their silence as acceptance.
“Dear Lord in heaven, it’s hard to understand why you’d take a mother away from her children, but we know you had a good reason. Help Beck and Gwen and Megan to accept your solace and love as your Son urged children to come unto him.
“Make them strong in the knowledge that you will never desert them but will remain at their side to help them carry the burden of their grief. Be with them in the days and weeks ahead. We ask this in Thy name. Amen.”
Megan’s eyes filled with unshed tears, and her chin quivered. “What’s going to happen to us?”
“For now, you’re going to stay right here with us,” Kate said. “Things will work out. You’ll see.”
The children continued to sob in Megan’s arms. “We don’t have anyplace to go,” she said.
“Do you know how to reach your father?”
“Ma didn’t want us to write to him or anything.” The young teen swallowed hard. “When he went to jail, Ma divorced him. Said he’d be in prison for so long that we’d be grown up before he got out, and she’d be an old woman.”
“Do you know which prison?” Kate asked.
Megan shook her head.
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Wyn. He went to prison so long ago, Gwen and Beck don’t even remember him.”
“I’ll find out where he is,” Kate promised.
Even if he was a killer who’d been locked up for life, he might lead Kate to a relative who could take the children in and care for them. She might have tried to locate the children’s father earlier, but she’d been too focused on Glynis’ whereabouts...not the search for a convicted murderer.
Now the situation had changed.
DINNER WAS A SUBDUED AFFAIR. No one had much of an appetite. When bedtime rolled around, the younger children went willingly, their eyes still red-rimmed from crying. Megan was about to go to bed too, when Kate asked her to come sit with her on the sofa.
“I’m so sorry about your mother.”
Exhaling a long sigh, Megan lifted her shoulders in a defeated sigh. “I prayed, but I guess God didn’t hear me.”
“Oh, honey, it’s so hard to explain why bad things happen. The Lord must have wanted your mother up in heaven with him, but we may never understand the reason why.”
Megan didn’t look any more convinced now than she had been when Paul had prayed with the children.
“Megan, I need to ask you some questions about Hank Weller. Did he ever seem secretive?”
“Sometimes, I guess. He’d go off for a day or two and come back smelling like booze.”
“Did you ever see him hiding anything that he didn’t want you to see?”
“Like what?”
“Something small. A bag or a small box.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I just tried to stay away from him as much as I could. The other kids too. He gave us the creeps.”
Kate could understand that, but it didn’t help her locate the missing diamonds. Only when she did that and turned them over to the authorities would she feel confident that the children were safe from Hank’s brother and his associate.
Later that evening, Kate logged onto her home computer, with its slow dial-up connection, to do some Internet sleuthing. Surely the Tennessee prison system had a way to locate a prisoner.
Two hours later, she turned off the computer without having discovered Wyn Maddock’s location. She’d typed his name on a form at the Department of Corrections Web site, but all she’d gotten was a Not Found response. She didn’t have his TOMIS ID number, which seemed to be the key to tracking down an individual prisoner among the nineteen thousand incarcerated in the state.
It was possible, of course, that he’d already been released from prison, but she didn’t think that would have happened if he’d been convicted of murder.
More than likely, she had his name spelled wrong. Maybe like Hank, Wyn was a nickname. But a nickname for what?
Kate turned off the lights and crawled into bed beside Paul. Resting her head on his shoulder, tears leaked out of her eyes for the sweet children she’d come to love. She brought her husband up to date on what she had learned—and not learned—about Hank Weller and his criminal partners, and the missing diamonds.
“You’d better leave things to the sheriff, Katie. These men you’re talking about could be dangerous.”
“I know. But with the children involved, I don’t think I can stop searching for answers.”
Chapter Thirteen
The children were late dragging themselves out of bed for breakfast. They looked completely worn out, their eyes still puffy from crying and their faces pale. Kate hadn’t slept well either and had risen early to spend time reading her Bible. That had comforted her.
Sitting at the head of the table, Paul was just eating his last bite of the pancakes Kate had made as a treat for them all.
“Looks like you had a long night,” he commented gently to the children.
Megan managed a shrug. Gwen and Beck simply stared glumly at their glasses of orange juice.
Kate carried a plate of pancakes to the table and sat down. “Would you like to stay home from school today?”
“Can we?” Enthusiastic about the idea, Beck reached for the pancakes.
Hearing no objections from the others, Kate proposed an idea that had come to her during the night. “I think it would be a good day for you to remember the happy times you and your family had together. I have a scrapbook I was going to use for one of my grandchildren, and I’ve never gotten around to putting anything in it. You could use t
he snapshots I found at the trailer and draw pictures about the fun things you did together.”
“It wouldn’t change anything,” Megan said. “Ma’s still gone.”
“Yes, she’s gone,” Paul said. “But as long as you hold her in your hearts, she’ll be alive to you. Remembering the good times will ease the hurt you’re feeling.”
Kate hoped that would be true, but she had an ulterior motive too. She wanted a chance to ask more questions about their past and their father without alerting them to the fact she hadn’t been able to locate him. The pictures themselves might hold some clue to his whereabouts.
Breakfast didn’t improve the children’s somber mood much.
After Paul helped Kate clear the table, she brought out the scrapbook, crayons, colored paper, scissors, and glue. Megan got the box of photos.
“There’s an ecumenical luncheon today in Chattanooga I’m supposed to attend,” Paul told Kate. “If you need me here, I can skip it.”
“No you go ahead. We’ll be fine. I’m going to call the school principal to let her know what’s happened and that the children are here with us.”
“Good idea.”
A few minutes later, dressed in a dark suit and tie, he told them all good-bye and promised to get back home as early as he could.
The children didn’t seem to know how to begin on the scrapbook, so Kate made a suggestion. “Why don’t you put the pictures in order, the oldest ones first and then the newer ones spread out across the table.”
Megan dumped out the pictures and spread them around like domino pieces.
“Here’s one of Becker when he was a baby. He’s bald!” Gwen giggled.
“I wasn’t bald,” Beck insisted.
Megan glanced at the snapshot and sent a superior look toward her sister. “That’s you, squirt. You’re wearin’ pink pajamas. They dress boy babies in blue.”
“That’s me?” She seemed astonished to see her own baby picture.
Reaching across the table, Kate checked the back of the photo, noting the date stamp. No other identification was listed.
For the Least of These Page 10
