Love and Suspicion

by Marti Talbott

  “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.

  “Bottom drawer?”

  “Nope, the bottom three.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE STREET LIGHTS WERE just beginning to come on, and except for Earl who sat on his usual bench, the town was completely deserted. Wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt and carrying nothing but a small purse, he spotted the girl with long brown hair walking up Main Street and kept his eyes on her until she sauntered up to his bench and plopped down beside him.

  “Car broke down outside of town,” she blurted out. “Hope you don’t mind sharing your bench, I’m exhausted.” He didn’t answer but that didn’t bother her. Most people were wary of complete strangers and she was just as wary as anyone else. “My name is Tiffany, what’s yours?”

  Earl Woodbury slowly turned to more closely examine the girl with the same name as his kidnapped daughter. Her eyes were the right color, her hair matched and she was approximately the right age.

  “You don’t say much, do you? That’s okay. What I need is someone to tow my car into town and fix it. It’s sitting on the freeway access road and I worry that someone might steal it. Stupid car. It’s practically new, you know, and it shouldn’t be breaking down already. Geeze, I’m such a sucker. I believed the salesman when he said it only had 10,000 miles on it. Bet I’ll find out it’s more like 100,000. Oh well, nothing I can do but get it fixed.” Tiffany shut up just long enough to give the deserted street another look. “Where is everyone?”

  “Softball,” Earl muttered.

  She listened for a moment, heard a loud collective groan and guessed the stadium was only a couple of blocks away. “Oh, that makes sense. I love sports, especially football, don’t you? I mean every other kind of entertainment is predictable, but not sports. No one knows who’ll win a football game. That’s what makes it so exciting.” If she noticed he was staring at her, she didn’t let it bother her. “I guess I’ll have to wait till the game is over to find a tow truck.” He nodded. “Say a little prayer that no one steals my car in the meantime, okay?”

  Earl put his hands together as if to pray and closed his eyes.

  Tiffany’s green eyes sparkled when she grinned. “Thank you,” she said in earnest when he opened his eyes again. “I feel much better now.”

  “Where you from?” he asked.

  “Rhode Island. I’ve been saving my money for months hoping to drive clear across the US, you know, from one side to the other in the north, down the West Coast, and then across the southern states and back up the East Coast. I want to see absolutely everything.” She paused to watch the breeze push an empty pop can down the street. It rolled and rattled until it got stuck in a gutter. “My dad threw a fit when I left, but I’m of age now and wanted to do it anyway. Thing is, it’s a lot more expensive than I expected. The price of gas keeps going up from town to town and those discounted hotels...well, let’s just say I understand now why they’re discounted.”

  She took another look around. “Nice little town you got here. Don’t suppose you know anybody who needs a bookkeeper. I’m pretty good at it, at least that’s what they said at the part time job I had all through high school.” She noticed Earl looking at her white tennis shoes and lifted her legs straight out to better display the green lace on one and the red on the other. “Christmas present. My little brother made me promise to wear these laces forever. I sure hope they last forever.” Tiffany let her feet down and scooted back to make herself more comfortable. “One thing I really miss when I’m out on the road is the internet. I’ve got a laptop and I hook it up at night, but some motels don’t even have Wi-Fi, can you believe it?”

  Earl thoughtfully rubbed the new whisker growth on his chin. He was about to answer when people started pouring into downtown. None of them looked very happy. A set of twin boys playfully shoved each other and then disappeared into the fast food restaurant. People got in cars and then grumbled and honked horns when they had trouble beating other cars out of the diagonal parking spaces. Still more people continued to walk down the street in both directions and none of them seemed interested in either Earl or Tiffany.

  “Guess the game’s over,” said she.

  Just then, a red sports car pulled up and stopped in front of the bench. The driver hopped out, walked around his car and came closer. “Hey Dad, you want me to take you home?” Earl shook his head. “It’ll be dark soon and I worry.” As if he just noticed her, the stranger reached o
ut his hand. “Michael Woodbury.”

  “Tiffany Clark,” she said, giving his hand a firm shake.

  Michael briefly looked awestruck and then glanced at his father’s reaction, but Earl didn’t seem to be bothered by her name. “As I am sure you discovered by now, my father doesn’t speak to anyone. He can, he just doesn’t.”

  Tiffany hid her surprise and quickly responded, “How come?”

  “Long story,” said Michael.

  “Well, if he doesn’t speak, he must have a good reason for it. According to my mother, I don’t give people a lot of time to talk anyway. By the way, do you know someone who can tow my car into town? I barely got it off the freeway before it died. Stupid car!”

  “I can call someone for you,” said Michael.

  “That would be great.” She listened as he placed a call to someone named Lucky, made the arrangements, and hung up.

  “Hey, you didn’t ask how much it would cost me?” she complained.

  Michael shrugged. “He’s the only tow truck in town. We have to pay whatever he charges.”

  “Nice,” she sarcastically said. “You think someone will steal my car?”

  “Maybe. I could take you back and wait till the tow truck comes.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” She turned to Earl. “You think I’ll be safe with him?”

  Earl hesitated for just a moment before he nodded.

  “Alrighty then,” she said. Tiffany stood up, started for the car and then turned around to face Earl. “The good thing about having a friend who doesn’t talk, is that you can trust him never to tell on you.” She winked and then climbed into the passenger seat of Michael’s car.

  His son and Tiffany were well out of sight by the time Earl’s lips curled into a slight smile. At length, he stood up, walked two blocks away from downtown and then started up the hill to his Elizabethan style house. His sons didn’t live with him and hadn’t since before he married his second wife. Therefore, he lived alone – not counting his housekeeper.

  His fondest’ memories were of Lisa, his first wife, and the fun they had designing and building the house. His tile factory was just beginning to prosper when they married, she was happy and fun loving, and soon pregnant with Michael. For that reason, they took great care to make sure the house was arranged to accommodate little children, even putting skip proof rubber on the grand staircase. He thought wood paneling, but Lisa wanted white walls and the freedom to change the decorations anytime she wanted. Lisa won and he had to admit her skill at choosing just the right colors was magnificent.

  The great rooms on the first floor had two marble fireplaces, one in the living room and a smaller one in the dining room. It was upon those mantles that she displayed her cherished collection of glass bells. The antique grandfather clock was his special addition to the living room. Adjacent to the spacious kitchen on the first floor was a small apartment where the housekeeper lived. The second floor was for the children and the third was designed just for the two of them, with a master bedroom, bath, and nursery/sitting room.

  Lisa especially wanted the windows to have tall, triangle shaped roof eves. They were to have several square panes each and that opened outward to let in the fresh air. The largest window was designed to face east so the warm Iowa sunshine would greet them each and every morning and brighten their day. Even now, Earl could remember the way she charmed him into it. They were expensive, but he didn’t resist, how could he?

  Once the house was finished and after Jason came along, Lisa was not about to waste her time sitting around changing furniture color schemes. Instead, she started the Blue Falls Beautification Club, collected money, and started designing flower pots to run along the outside of Main Street’s sidewalks. The park and the fountain were Lisa’s idea and design too. It took months to raise the money, but she never gave up, and Earl was proud of her.

  The couple loved entertaining and the three-story, seventeen room house often seemed less than adequate. Now it was lonely, cold, and lacked the kind of charm old houses could usually boast of. Even so, he never once considered moving. It held the only happy memories he had, so he left each morning, came back each evening, ate his dinner, and then walked from room to room reviving his memories of Lisa.

  All that changed when Lisa died and he married Shelley.

  Rarely did he allow himself to remember the night baby Tiffany disappeared. This night was different – Tiffany Clark brought it all rushing back. As he stood in the doorway of the baby’s room on the second floor, he remembered every detail as though it had just happened. Long ago, the room had been converted into a normal bedroom, but that didn’t matter. He still saw the empty crib, the rocking chair and the happy animal characters on the wallpaper behind Tiffany’s crib.

  Earl lowered his eyes and stared at the floor just as he always did. He was tired the night of the kidnapping, peeked in on the baby and then went to bed. Even now, he couldn’t guess what time that might have been. Around two in the morning, he heard his wife scream. He jumped out of bed, ran to the baby’s room, found the crib empty and his wife in hysterics. His first thought was that housekeeper, Mariam Eggleston, had the baby, so he rushed downstairs and burst into Mariam’s room. The baby was not there and Mariam had no idea where Tiffany was. The next step was a complete search of the house in case an intruder was still inside. After he looked everywhere he could think of, he called 911.

  Soon, the house was filled with officers.

  While they searched the house again, Earl anxiously listened to his wife’s tearful account of what happened. She didn’t have much to say, but what she said was important. Still, it just didn’t make any sense. If what his wife said was true, why was the milk in Tiffany’s bottle still warm, and why didn’t the kidnapper take it with him or her to keep the baby quiet?

  After that, Earl’s world was filled with so much overwhelming activity and noise, he didn’t manage to mention the bottle to anyone, even the sheriff. He meant to, it just never came up. There was the ransom to borrow from the bank, the search, friends and neighbors coming to console them, and a continuous stream of people offering to help anyway they could.

  Before he had his wits about him, Shelley was dead. By then, it was way, way too late to mention the warm baby bottle. What was the point anyway? She wasn’t there to explain.

  Earl Woodbury slowly pulled the bedroom door closed and headed downstairs. He didn’t know how his world got so screwed up. It just happened and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  TIFFANY’S INTEREST was definitely piqued – an old man who doesn’t speak to anyone else just talked to her. As they drove down the freeway looking for her car, she quietly mulled the mystery over in her mind. He didn’t seem crazy. In fact, the old man seemed nice. Crazy people had a look about them, and Michael’s father didn’t have that look even if he was dressed in clothes that definitely wore out a few years ago. Nope, not crazy, just one of the most captivating people she was likely to meet in her travels. That’s what she was hoping for –friendly animals, fascinating people, and beautiful landscapes like the ones she’d seen in Iowa. Car lights sped down the freeway in both directions against a backdrop of green fields that the last rays of sunset were beginning to turn a pastel blue.

  As soon as she spotted her car still parked on the deserted service road, she drew in a deep relieved breath and exhaled. “There it is.”

  Michael slowly drove past the car, made a U-turn, pulled up behind her mid-size, light green sedan and parked. “You lucked out. Next time, just call for help.”

  “Sure, if I remember to charge my cellphone. I’ve got a charger in the car, but do I remember? Oh please.” Michael Woodbury chuckled. In her opinion, he looked a little too old to be driving around town in an expensive red sports car, but to each his own, she supposed. “So Mr. Woodbury, what’s wrong with your dad? Throat cancer?” she asked as they sat waiting for the tow truck.

  “Everybody calls me Michael.”

  “Awesome.”


  “Dad lost a daughter years ago and hasn’t spoken since.”

  “Lost her?”

  “Kidnapped.”

  “Oh man, that’s terrible.” She glanced at the side of his face, and then turned her attention back to keeping an eye on her car.

  “Her name was Tiffany too,” Michael admitted.

  Tiffany bowed her head. “Oh. My little brother died, but he’d been sick a long time and we were prepared for it – as prepared as a family can be, and that was hard enough.”

  “Yeah.”

  He said no more about it, so she changed the subject. “What do you do?”

  “I run the tile factory.”

  “Really? We probably own some of your tiles back home. My mom loves the blue ones in our kitchen. Of course, she likes all things blue. Can’t talk her out of it.” It was a sort of game with Tiffany. She liked sizing people up to see if her first impressions were right and just now she guessed Michael had a wife and at least four kids, not that she really cared, she just liked playing her game. “Married?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Tiffany giggled. “Does your wife know?”

  “Which one?”

  She tipped her head to one side. “I might be a little too young to hear about that.”

  Michael smiled. “Ah, to be young and stupid again.” Even in the diminishing daylight it was easy to see her backseat was filled to the brim with stuff. “You bring everything but the kitchen sink?”

  Tiffany sighed. “I thought of bringing that too, but I ran out of space.” If there was one thing she hated, it was tired old clichés and kitchen sink was the worst of the worst. Long ago, she realized the world just didn’t have anything new to say, but really – kitchen sink? She turned her disgruntled expression toward the window pretending to watch the traffic whiz past on the Interstate.

  “No wonder you broke down. Too much stuff,” he was saying.

  She tried never to instantly like or dislike someone, but Michael was quickly inching into the dislike column. “Kids?”