The Truth About Comfort Cove

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Something happened to Claire Sanderson, Ramsey. The answer is out there, waiting for you to find it.”

  Which was exactly why he kept looking.

  “Hey, unrelated question for you…”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “Are you at all worried that I’m losing it?”

  “No.” He was worried about her, but not about that. “I scared myself.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you done that? Have you ever scared yourself?” He was scaring himself right then by the way he was reacting to her. And the fact that it was the middle of the night, he had to work in the morning and he wanted nothing more than to be on the next flight to Indiana. “Yes.”

  He had to get her into bed with him. And be done with this. Assuming she wanted to go to bed with him.

  He’d never had a problem with that before.

  “Pushing yourself like you did tonight is how you know how much you have in you to give.” He started to talk to shut himself up. “It’s like working out. You go until you drop and then you get up and go some more and somehow the process makes you a stronger athlete. You were exercising your strength as a detective.”

  She sighed. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” It was time to hang up. To separate from her and get on with the business of his life.

  At least until she was actually in town…

  “By the way, are you staying here with me next weekend? When you come for the wedding.” He might as well get a start on things. “Since I’m your ride…” The tag-on was his pathetic attempt to pacify the part of him that knew better than to make the offer in the first place.

  “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Turnaround is fair play.” He had to offer. Because he’d accepted her offer and stayed with her in Aurora. His mother had taught him manners. “It’ll save you the cost of a hotel.”

  “The hotels in the tourist district are rather expensive.” She’d stayed there before.

  “There aren’t any decent hotels anywhere else in this town.” The city had grown tremendously in the past twenty years, but it just wasn’t big enough to support an upscale economy hotel for nontourists.

  “And I sure can’t have you driving back and forth to Boston.” She’d stayed in Boston during her first trip to Comfort Cove. She’d rented a car at the airport to drive herself back and forth.

  He’d let her do that—even though she’d been in town to help him with a case.

  The second trip, she’d rented a car and stayed in the tourist district. He’d let her do that, too, without offering his hospitality.

  “We don’t know how late the reception is going to go.” He continued to kid himself that there was an altruistic bone in his body.

  “That’s right.” She sounded as though she was falling asleep. Maybe, with any luck, she wouldn’t remember this conversation in the morning. After the drugs wore off. “Thank you, then. Yes, I’ll stay with you.”

  “Good. Now get some rest.”

  “I don’t think I have any choice.”

  She sounded like a petulant child and he chuckled. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “’K. Night, Ramsey.”

  “Night, sweetie.”

  The blood drained from his face. His hands froze.

  Where had the endearment come from? He didn’t use them.

  And Ramsey prayed that Lucy had already been asleep before he’d made that last mammoth mistake.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  L ucy didn’t stay home on Sunday. She couldn’t risk her mother noticing a light on. Or watching for her car to leave. Or seeing the television flashing through the blind. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t prepared to handle Sandy.

  Getting up at her normal time, thanks to the alarm clock on her cell phone, she bathed instead of showered—keeping her chin dry—and with very tender fingers dressed in slacks and a crew-neck top and the navy jacket that went with the slacks, slipped on black loafers, strapped on her gun and left the house as usual.

  Driving hurt her fingers, but if she gripped the steering wheel with her palms instead of her fingers it wasn’t so bad. Not eager to lose her job, she bypassed the station and went down to the river. Something about the Ohio River, even on a cool November Sunday with only the big black cargo barges out on the water, gave her a feeling of strength. The river ran no matter what. Had for many more years than she’d been alive. And would for many years after she was gone, too.

  The water put life into perspective.

  She pulled into one of her favorite spots—a roadside parking lot with a few picnic tables scattered along the raised bank. She was exhausted. Didn’t feel like walking. Or even getting out. She wanted safety. Security. She wanted to be at home without having to answer to Sandy. She wanted to sleep. And so she reclined the seat of her Rendezvous and went to sleep.

  Her cell phone woke her. She knew immediately where she was, but had no idea how much time had passed. A lot, based on the position of the sun in the sky.

  The number had a Comfort Cove exchange.

  “Hello?”

  “Lucy? It’s Emma. Sanderson.”

  “Emma!” She leaned forward, bringing her seat to its upright position. “How are you?”

  “Good.”

  “And plans for the wedding? Are they driving you nuts?”

  “Nope. Everything’s under control,” the high-school teacher said. Lucy wasn’t really surprised. Emma Sanderson was the most organized, think-ahead person Lucy had ever met. And she’d thought she was bad.

  But she understood. Completely. Emma had to control her environment for her mother’s sake. Just as Lucy did.

  “I got your RSVP. And Detective Miller’s, too. I’ve put the two of you at the same table for dinner, if that’s okay.”

  “It’s fine. He offered to drive so I didn’t have to be down at the docks at night.”

  “Good. That takes care of one of the reasons I called,” Emma said, a lighter tone to her voice than Lucy was used to. “Since you’re unfamiliar with the docks, I didn’t want you down there after dark by yourself. They’re safe enough during the day, but it’s never good for a woman to be down at the docks alone, and not good for a woman to be alone outside at night, period. I’m arranging rides for all the female guests who are attending alone.”

  Emma and her mother, Rose, had a lot of close associates from the education field, and from all of the work they did to promote child-safety education. And Emma was Emma. Always careful.

  “I’m really glad you’re going to be here, Lucy.”

  “There’s no way I’d miss being there. I just wish I had some good news to bring with me. Some closure for you. I swear to you, I won’t give up on finding Claire, Em. And neither will Ramsey.”

  “I know. I take it there’s no news on the missing evidence they retrieved? I figured Detective Miller would call if there had been, but…”

  “Not yet. It’s still at the lab in Boston. I have my lab here looking at the sample of Claire’s DNA found in the Buckley home as well as comparing Claire’s DNA against a sample from someone of interest, but still no answers there.”

  “I figured you’d call if you knew anything. I just… With the wedding so close…”

  “How’s your mother doing?” Would Rose be a blessing at the wedding, or a nightmare?

  “Better than I expected. She likes Chris.”

  “How could she not?”

  “He’s a fisherman.”

  Emma and Claire’s father had been a fisherman, too. He’d run out on them when Claire came along. And had been killed in a bar brawl not long after—by the husband of the woman he’d just slept with.

  “So how about you? Any doubts?”

  “Not about Chris.”

  “What, then?”

  “I heard from Cal this morning. He’s bringing his father to the wedding.”

  Frank Whittier. Instinctively, Lucy got excited. A wedding would be a p
erfect opportunity to observe the only other suspect in the case, to eavesdrop, to see others’ reactions to him, to watch him around the mother of the child he possibly stole. She had to call Ramsey.

  And then she thought about the wedding. About Emma. And was ashamed of herself.

  “Does your mother know?” she asked softly. Rose and Frank had been engaged until Claire went missing, and after the police started looking at Frank, Rose blamed Frank. They’d broken up and neither of them had ever dated again.

  “Apparently, though I haven’t heard that from her yet. Cal just called. And I…I don’t know. I called you.”

  Lucy smiled. “I’m glad you did.” Glad to know that Emma held her in such high esteem. Because Emma filled an empty place inside of her, too. Allie’s place? Or the place she imagined an older sister would have filled? “You said your mom knew but you didn’t? How did she find out? What did Cal say?”

  “Mom and Frank have talked and she agreed that it would be appropriate for him to be at my wedding as long as it was okay with me.”

  “Is it?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Emma’s tone dropped. “I can remember a time before Claire was gone—I was about four so it must not have been long before that—I was playing Cinderella with my plastic high-heeled shoes and elasticized lace skirt. Frank came in from work just as I was making Cal stand at one end of the living room while I did my model walk toward him. Cal told Frank that I was making him be my prince. And Frank said that a girl as pretty as I was couldn’t even think about getting married without a man to walk her down the aisle. He set his briefcase down and offered me his arm and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Not because I was getting married, but because I somehow sensed that I finally had a full family. I didn’t have to be afraid anymore like I had been after Claire was born and our biological father left us.”

  Lucy couldn’t connect the picture Emma painted with the man she suspected of ripping that family irrevocably apart. And she couldn’t encourage Emma to invite the man to her wedding, knowing that he might very well turn out to be the cause of all of her heartbreak.

  “Do you want him to give you away?”

  “No! Of course not. I’m not walking down any aisle and no one is giving me away. Good Lord, Chris and I have been doing all we can to make certain that Mom knows that I’m not leaving her—she’s just gaining a larger family.”

  The thought of dealing with Sandy were Lucy to ever get married gave Lucy a headache. She didn’t know how Emma was holding up so well.

  “I just… I loved Frank. And then spent so many years hating him. It’s all mixed up, you know?”

  Lucy thought about her trek through the woods the night before. “Yeah, I do. And that’s the time you have to listen to your heart, Emma. That’s all I know. Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s all you’ve got. And you’ll always have it. If you act contrary to what your insides are telling you, you’ll live to regret it.”

  So she’d dug in the dark until her fingers were blistered and bleeding.

  “My heart tells me to tell Cal he can bring his father.”

  “Then I guess that’s what you need to do.”

  For whatever reason.

  “I think I knew that all along.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  Lucy watched a barge make its way slowly up the river. In days past, those barges were the center of commerce in the Midwest. Times had changed, but they still floated. Still delivered.

  “How are you doing?” Emma’s question brought her focus back.

  “There’ve been some developments on my sister’s case.” She said what she could, which wasn’t much due to the fact that they were dealing with an ongoing investigation. “We made an arrest a few weeks ago.” That was really saying too much. Aching, alone by the river, Lucy wished she could tell Emma about Wakerby. Emma would understand Lucy’s craziness the night before.

  “Does your mother know about the arrest?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Lucy told the other woman about her scare the week before, the night she’d spent in the hospital at her mother’s bedside.

  “At some point your mom’s going to have to deal with what happened. She’s not the only woman who’s ever been raped. Or even lost a child. She has to take some accountability for herself.”

  Lucy had heard the words more times than she could count. And always discredited them because the speakers couldn’t possibly know…couldn’t possibly understand.

  But this was Emma. Who did know.

  Rose grieved. Emma’s life had been hell in many ways. But her mother worked, too. She’d provided.

  But Rose hadn’t been raped…

  “I don’t see how you can stand it,” Emma said. “It’s like she doesn’t even try to handle things.”

  “I guess I’m just used to it,” Lucy said, leaning back in her seat to stare at the white clouds in the mostly blue sky. “Once when I was about six, I’d been chosen to be the narrator in a Christopher Columbus play. I had a special suit I had to wear—black pants and white blouse and a vest—and I felt so…important, you know? I could read and I had a piece of paper with my lines on it, but I memorized them all, anyway. I knew everyone would be looking at me and I had to be one hundred percent completely perfect.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s like you have to make up for that which is glaringly imperfect about you. Because everyone knows about that, too.”

  “Mama was there,” Lucy said now, speaking slowly as she relived that day. “Front and center, like she’d promised she would be.”

  She paused. Emma didn’t speak.

  “She was so proud of me.”

  Lucy knew that. Sandy lived and breathed for her.

  “And she was so drunk that she couldn’t put her two hands together to clap. At the end, we got a standing ovation, and Mama fell over a couple of chairs, causing this crash… .”

  Her face was hot. Just like it had been then.

  “Oh, Luce. I’m so sorry.”

  “I got over it,” she said. “And she tried so hard to make up for it. That was the first time she went into rehab. Marie stayed with me and when Mama got home she was better for a while. She was always there for me, Emma. I never for one second doubted that I was loved. She just couldn’t handle the big moments.”

  Not any of them. Sandy had been present during every important event in Lucy’s life, until Lucy had quit telling her when they were. She’d been present—and she’d been fallingdown drunk.

  Which was one reason Lucy would never dare to have a wedding. But she could still have sex. She was a normal, healthy woman. And Ramsey was all male.

  “I’m glad that your mom is willing to have Frank at your wedding,” she said, thinking about Emma’s situation from a different angle. “It means that she’s made a conscious decision to move on.”

  “I thought so, too. I just don’t like to get my hopes up, you know?”

  “Yeah, well, the important thing about that is to know when it’s time to let hope soar.”

  She believed what she said. She just wasn’t sure that time would ever come for her and Sandy. Her mother wasn’t like Rose. Sandy was too damaged to recover.

  And Lucy had to know why. What had happened to Allie the day that her mother had been raped?

  Parked in his sedan down the street, Ramsey watched the regal set of her body, her head, as she went about her task.

  Every few minutes she stopped and looked around and then went back to painting.

  Ramsey recognized the action. She was watching her back. A common trait in someone who’d been victimized.

  The woman was Rose Sanderson. She was fifty-six, not sixty. And still a beauty.

  Ramsey had met the woman weeks before, when her daughter’s ex-fiancé had threatened Rose’s life, among other things. Just as Emma had claimed, Rose was fragile where her personal life was concerned. He didn’t want to see her again until he had some answers t
o give her. He had to know what happened to Claire Sanderson.

  Waiting until Rose finished her task and went back inside, leaving whatever she’d been working on to dry on the pavement, Ramsey finally exited his car. He didn’t care if the neighbors saw him accessing the sewage tunnel that ran beneath their road, he just didn’t want Rose Sanderson to know he was there.

  He’d dug up city blueprints and knew that the tunnel he was interested in ran from a mile east of the Sandersons’ street to two miles west, where it dumped into an underground city holding device. And it wasn’t really sewage. It was a runoff for rain and melting snow. The access Jack had mentioned was a hundred yards down from the Sanderson home and could be reached by jumping down from a retaining wall that ran on each side of the ditch, separating two properties.

  Ramsey could easily see how a ball might roll down into the ditch and on into the tunnel. He could also see how a boy might jump down there to play. He doubted a two-year-old girl could make the jump without seriously injuring herself. He doubted she’d even be tempted to try.

  But she could have been forced. Or carried.

  With a quick glance at his loafers, topped by the brown cuff of the suit he’d put on that morning, Ramsey jumped down the four feet to the bottom of the ditch and made his way slowly toward the storm-sewer opening.

  It hadn’t rained in a while and they hadn’t yet had their first dusting of snow for the season. The water at the bottom of the tunnel was barely enough to keep the cement damp. Ramsey stepped carefully around the occasional puddle.

  Jeans might have been a better choice for the day. He hadn’t wanted to afford the time to stop back at home to change again before going into the office.

  It wouldn’t be the first time he showed up to work with dirty feet.

  He turned on his flashlight about ten feet into the opening, shining it all around him, taking in the aged, rough cement completely circling him—the graffiti-strewn walls and debrislittered floor. Looking down as his foot crunched something hard, he saw the syringe he’d just smashed. Empty bottles— some beer, some hard liquor—an empty can or two, lay haphazardly around the space. As did chip bags and candy wrappers. He saw a couple of disposable lighters. A cracked pipe. An empty matchbook. Some were soggy. Some hadn’t yet been damaged by water. What caught his attention were the empty plastic bags, sandwich-size, the kind with resealable openings, bearing white dust. And others, same size, with a telltale green hue.