She nodded, a single curt nod. The sunshine streaming through the window sparkled in her pale blond hair. “We met about two months ago, right after I moved here. She was new to Black Rock, too, and we hit it off right away.”
Tom pulled a small notepad and a pen from his pocket.
“You have a phone number for her?”
“No, she told me she didn’t have a phone. She said she was short on money and had to cancel her cell phone and hadn’t yet gotten a landline.”
“What about a car? Do you know what kind she drove?”
She raised a trembling hand to her forehead and frowned. “I don’t know. She mentioned something about it being in the shop.”
“Do you know where she was from?”
Her frown deepened, the gesture doing nothing to detract from her attractiveness. “Chicago, I think.”
“Where’s your husband? Can I call him for you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not married. Lilly’s father lives in Wichita.”
“What’s his name?” Tom asked. Maybe this was some sort of parental kidnapping, he thought. God, he hoped so. At least then he’d know the baby was safe.
“Rick, Rick Powell,” she replied. Her eyes widened. “Surely you don’t think he had anything to do with this. He wouldn’t. He’s an assistant district attorney. He’d never be part of anything like this,” she exclaimed.
She scooted back from the table and jumped up, her slender body vibrating with energy. “We don’t have time to sit here and talk. I need to find Lilly.” She reached up and grabbed the back of her head and grimaced.
Tom wouldn’t have thought her face could get any paler, but it blanched of any lingering color. He jumped to his feet and grabbed her by the arm. “Are you all right? Do you need medical attention?”
She dropped her hand to her side, her body weaving slightly. “I sent the ambulance away. I’m all right. I just hit my head on the bathtub when she attacked me.”
She allowed Tom to guide her back into the chair at the table. He could smell her, a scent of fresh flowers and despair, and he tried to maintain emotional distance, knowing that it was possible that all was not what it seemed.
As he asked her about the particulars of the attack and listened to her answers, he assessed the kitchen which was now a crime scene.
Did she like things so neat and clean, or had she sanitized the house before calling for help? Had a terrible accident taken place here and now she was trying to cover it up?
Certainly the news was full of stories of babies who had been shaken to death or suffocated by an overwrought parent. Or was it as she said, and a kidnapping had really occurred? It was too early to know the truth.
As quickly as possible, Tom got the pertinent information from her, and then he called in two of his deputies to fingerprint and collect evidence from the bathroom and the kitchen. He called another deputy to check with the garage to see if Kathy Simon had a car being worked on there.
With the arrival of the two deputies, Tom moved Peyton into the living room, where she paced the floor and looked as if she were about ready to jump out of her skin.
Tom had placed a call to Rick Powell and had gotten in touch with his secretary, as Rick was in trial. She’d promised to pass a message to him as soon as possible for him to call Tom.
Peyton had been seated on the sofa, hands wringing and her delicate features taut with tension as Tom directed his deputies attempting to lift fingerprints from the surfaces Kathy might have touched.
Although she appeared calm, but stressed, Tom sensed an explosion coming. He saw it in the white of her knuckles as she folded her hands together, in the deepening hue of her blue eyes as she watched him.
So far she’d been patient and cooperative, but he had a feeling that that was coming to an end quickly. As if to prove his intuition, she sprang up from the sofa when the phone rang.
The tight composure she’d kept cracked as she tearfully told Rick what had happened. Rick promised to come as soon as possible, but it was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Wichita to Black Rock.
“You have to do something,” she exclaimed after she’d hung up with Rick. For the first time there was an edge of frantic anger in her voice. “Why haven’t we heard something? What’s taking so long?”
Tom had been thinking the same thing. “We should hear something from them any minute. We have the AMBER Alert out and I have a deputy checking background on Kathy. At this point there’s nothing else we can do but wait here until we have more information.” He glanced toward her phone.
She followed his gaze, then looked back at him, her eyes widening slightly. “You think maybe she’ll call?” A half-hysterical sob escaped her. “She won’t call. This isn’t about a ransom. Kathy knows I don’t have any money.”
“Then what do you think this is about?”
“I don’t know,” she cried. “I feel like this is all some horrible joke, or a terrible nightmare. I can’t imagine why Kathy did this. I just can’t wrap my mind around all of this.”
She whirled around as the door opened and Caleb and Benjamin walked in. Caleb gave a small shake of his head.
“What does that mean?” Peyton asked. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“There’s no Kathy Simon living at the Black Rock Apartments,” he said.
“What do you mean? I know she lives there. I dropped her off there several times.” Peyton looked from Caleb to Tom, then back to Caleb again.
“We checked with the manager. There’s no Kathy Simon on a lease. We also knocked on every door and asked if anyone knew her. Nobody did,” Benjamin added.
Peyton’s eyes widened in horror as she looked at Tom. “Then where is she? And where has she taken my Lilly?”
Chapter 2
Peyton felt as if the ground beneath her feet was no longer solid. The world was no longer as it should be, and she’d never felt such fear. Lilly! Her heart cried in anguish. Where was her baby?
Who was Kathy Simon, and why had she done this? Had anything she’d told Peyton about herself been true? One thing was certain: Peyton had wasted enough time sitting around waiting for something to happen.
She needed to find Lilly, and she wasn’t going to find her sitting around and answering questions. Without saying a word to the sheriff or his deputies, she headed down the hall to her bedroom.
Sheriff Grayson followed just behind her, as if afraid to let her out of his sight for a minute. “What are you doing?” he asked as she grabbed her purse from the top of her dresser.
“I’m going to find my baby.” She turned to face him. “If I have to knock on every door of this town, I’ll find Kathy and my Lilly.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he protested.
She raised her chin and embraced the anger that was so much easier to tolerate than her pain. “The only way you’re going to stop me, Sheriff Grayson, is to arrest me and lock me up.”
Despite the fact that he was easily six inches taller than her and had shoulders as broad as mountains, she shoved roughly past him and headed for the front door.
She’d gone only a couple of steps when he grabbed her by the arm. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” His dark eyes held her gaze intently. “We don’t know if this woman is dangerous. She might not harm your baby, but she would definitely be a threat to you.”
She considered his words and gave him a curt nod. “Then let’s go. I can’t sit here another minute.”
She was vaguely surprised to see that the sun was still high in the sky. It had been less than two hours since Kathy and Lilly had disappeared, but it felt like an eternity.
Even the intensity of the late afternoon sun overhead couldn’t warm the glacier that had become Peyton’s heart. She slid into the passenger seat of the sheriff’s car and was instantly engulfed by the scent of leather and, more faintly, the spicy cologne he wore.
As he got in behind the steering wheel he turned to look at her. “Do you have a plan
?”
She’d shot out of the house lit with the fire of a frantic mother seeking her child, but she realized with the question that she didn’t have a plan; she just knew she couldn’t sit still another minute.
“The pizza place on Main Street,” she said suddenly. “Kathy told me she was working there until she could get something more permanent.”
He nodded, started the car and pulled away from the curb. Peyton stared out the window, irrationally hoping that Kathy would suddenly appear on the sidewalk.
The only thing that kept Peyton from losing her mind altogether was the belief that Kathy wouldn’t hurt Lilly. “She was good with Lilly,” she finally said aloud. “She seemed to love her.”
“Did she mention wanting children of her own, maybe not being able to have them?” Sheriff Grayson asked.
“No, nothing like that. I just know she was always very sweet to Lilly. Surely the pizza place will have her address on file.”
“What I need you to do is think of all the conversations you had with her, any tidbit of information that might be helpful as to where she might go and who she might be with,” he replied.
For a moment Peyton was overwhelmed. “Sheriff Grayson, we talked almost every day, about everything and nothing.” She frowned and tried to ignore the headache that pounded in the back of her head, the continuous frantic race of her heart.
“Call me Tom,” he said. “There are four of us Graysons working law enforcement in Black Rock. First names make things easier.”
“Caleb and Benjamin are your brothers?” she asked.
He nodded. “My sister is also a deputy, then I have one other brother who doesn’t work for the town of Black Rock.” He frowned. “Did Kathy mention dating somebody here in town? Perhaps somebody she was interested in?”
“No, in fact just the opposite. I got the impression she was a bit shy and was having trouble meeting people.” She released a sigh of frustration. “God, what did I miss? What didn’t I see or hear in all those conversations, in all the time we spent together?”
“You can’t beat yourself up about that. How could you guess that something like this would happen?” He pulled into a parking space in front of the Canyon Pizzeria and cut the engine, then he turned and looked at her with his dark, intense eyes. “You let me ask the questions. I need to do my job.”
She nodded and unbuckled her seatbelt, butterflies like little kamikaze pilots hitting the sides of her stomach. Please, let us get some answers, she thought as she got out of the car.
It was nearing dinnertime and the air outside the restaurant smelled of tangy tomato sauce and baking crust. The food smells only upset Peyton’s stomach even more. The last thing she was interested in was food.
All she wanted was her sweet Lilly back in her arms. She needed to smell her baby scent, feel Lilly’s wiggly warmth against her chest.
She followed Sheriff Grayson through the front door. Inside, about a dozen people were seated at various tables and booths. Most of them raised a hand in greeting to the sheriff.
He went to the woman standing behind the cash register. “Hey, Linda, is Don in?” he asked.
“He’s in the back. You here to arrest him for spicy sauce?” The blonde gave him a saucy, flirtatious smile.
“I need to talk to him. Can you get him out here?”
Her smile faded as she apparently heard the seriousness in his voice. “Sure, I’ll go get him.”
She disappeared into the kitchen and a moment later a big burly man clad in a tomato-splattered apron walked out.
“Hey, Tom. What’s up?”
“You have a Kathy Simon working here for you?” Tom asked.
Peyton watched in horror as Don shook his head. “I’ve got a Stacy, a Katie and a Linda, but no Kathy,” he replied.
“Are you sure? Maybe she was going by another name,” Peyton said desperately. “She’s tall with red hair?”
“Sorry, nobody like that works for me,” Don replied.
Peyton staggered back outside where dusk was beginning to fall, vaguely aware of the sheriff right behind her. Nothing Kathy had told her had been true. She’d lied about where she worked, where she lived. Why?
She got back into the passenger seat and Tom slid in behind the wheel. “You okay?” he asked as he started the engine.
“Of course I’m not okay.” She reached for anger, knowing that if she didn’t hang on to something she’d lose it altogether. “Nothing she told me was the truth. Why would she lie to me about the most basic things? God, she was good. She had so many details. She told me about a man who had tipped her twenty dollars, about a little girl who wanted pizza crust and cheese but no sauce. She was so good with her lies.”
A sickness welled up inside her as she realized night was falling too quickly and she was no closer to finding Lilly than she’d been when she’d regained consciousness on her bathroom floor.
“Any other ideas?” Tom asked as he backed out of the parking space in front of the pizza place. “Or are you ready to go back to your place?”
“No, we can’t go back,” she exclaimed. She didn’t want to be there without her baby. “Just drive around. Maybe we’ll see something.”
For the next thirty minutes he drove up and down the streets of the small town. Peyton kept her gaze on the sidewalks, on the houses they passed, hoping for a glimpse of the woman she knew as Kathy Simon.
He received only one phone call during the drive. When he hung up he told her that there was no driver’s license matching what they knew about Kathy Simon.
“So that’s probably not her real name,” Peyton said flatly. She was numb; in a place where her fear was so great she couldn’t process it any longer.
“Probably not,” he agreed.
“How are we going to find her if we don’t even know her name?” Peyton wanted to scream.
“We’ll figure it all out,” he replied. “Have you had any problems with anyone here in town?”
“No, nobody. Oh, there was a young man who cussed me in the parking lot of the grocery store. I was getting Lilly into her car seat and my shopping cart accidentally rolled into his truck.”
“Did you exchange information?”
“No, nothing like that. It didn’t scratch or dent the truck. He cursed me, then got in his truck and roared off.”
“When did this happen?”
“About a week ago. Surely you don’t think that has anything to do with Lilly’s kidnapping,” she said.
“I’m not taking anything for granted at this point,” he replied. “What did this guy look like? What kind of a truck was he driving?”
“It was a black pickup, but I don’t know the year or model. He was tall with brown hair.” She sighed in frustration. “That doesn’t help much, does it?”
“Sounds like half the men around this area,” he replied.
As he once again drove down Main Street, Peyton knew this probably wasn’t standard operating procedure, that he was just indulging her need to be out looking. She also knew that there was no way she would see Kathy casually walking down the street with Lilly in her arms. She knew in her heart that Kathy had probably run out of town mere minutes after grabbing Lilly.
“I noticed you had a new patio in your backyard.”
Peyton shifted her gaze from the window to him. “It was poured yesterday. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just curious.”
She stared at him, her heart beating an unsteady rhythm. She had a feeling this man didn’t indulge in idle curiosity. There was a sharp intelligence in his sexy dark eyes that made her believe he was a man who didn’t miss much.
As the realization of what he might be thinking struck her, she gasped. “You can’t really believe that I had the patio poured to hide my baby’s body?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. I have to think of all possible scenarios,” he said without apology.
“Pull over,” she exclaimed. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
He whirled the car to the curb and she unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door and stumbled outside. She bent over, feeling the need to throw up. He thought she’d killed her baby. He thought she’d killed her Lilly and buried her beneath the patio.
She dry heaved, her stomach rolling as tears blurred her vision. She was vaguely aware of a big, broad hand on her back, and she shook it off, the need to be sick swallowed by a rage she’d never felt before.
Her rage wasn’t directed at Sheriff Tom Grayson, who was just doing his job, but rather at the woman who had pretended to be her friend and support over the past two months. The woman who had hit her in the head and stolen her baby.
She finally straightened up and stared at the sheriff. “If and when we find her, if she’s hurt Lilly in any way, I’ll kill her.” She didn’t wait for his reply but instead turned and walked back to the car and got into the passenger seat.
It was at that moment, with the fire of rage burning in her eyes, that Tom believed her. He hadn’t been one hundred percent sure what to believe up until that point. There had been far too many cases of murdered children when the mothers concocted a story to cover the fact that they’d either accidentally or purposely hurt or killed their child.
He liked to believe he was good at assessing people, at recognizing liars and criminals. He didn’t believe Peyton was either, and that meant they had a missing baby on their hands.
When they pulled up to her house, a luxury sports car was parked in the driveway. “That’s Rick’s car,” she said, emotion thick in her voice.
As she and Tom got out of his car, the front door of the house opened and a tall, well-dressed blond man stepped out.
Peyton ran toward him, and Tom would have expected Rick to open up his arms, to hug the woman who was the mother of his missing child. But she stopped just short of him and Rick shoved his hands in his expensive slacks pockets. “What exactly happened?” he asked.
Peyton began to cry as she explained to him what had occurred. When she was finished, Rick looked at Tom. “Sheriff, Rick Powell.” He held out his hand to Tom. “What’s being done to find my daughter?”
His Case, Her Baby Page 2
