by Beverly Long
Rena leaned forward. “Elaine Broadstreet, Emma’s grandmother, says that she dropped Emma off at the day care yesterday into Kara Wiese’s care. Kara is denying that. Would you have any reason to think that she would be lying about that?”
“Of course not. Why would she? If that had happened, she would have brought Emma back to our classroom.”
“Have you and Kara had any conversation about this?” A.L. asked.
“We saw each other last night. Both of us volunteered to search. But she didn’t tell me what to say, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Not suggesting anything,” A.L. said, holding up his hand. “Just trying to get an understanding of the situation. Would you say that you and Kara are friends?”
“Yes. We’re coworkers. We’re friends. We both like California rolls and chocolate cake. I’m really not sure what else I can tell you except that we’re all just sick about this.”
A.L. stood. “We are, too. Can you tell me what time you got to work yesterday morning?”
“I start at 7:30.”
“I know that’s your start time. But were you early yesterday? On time? Late?”
“I’m not generally late. Not generally much early, either,” she added with a quick smile. “I usually arrive about 7:25. I park and walk into the classroom, ready to work.”
“No stopping in the break room for a cup of coffee? Or to put away your lunch?” Rena asked.
Claire shook her head. “Don’t drink coffee and the cook at the day care is really good. I eat lunch there.”
“So you’re confident that you were in your classroom by 7:30?” A.L. followed up.
“Yes.”
“Was Kara in the room?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Do you remember how many kids?”
Claire’s bracelets clinked as she used her fingers to silently count. “Six or seven, I think. That’s pretty normal.”
“Did you see Emma Whitman?” Rena asked.
“No.”
“Did Kara leave the classroom at any time in the morning?” Rena asked.
“I’m sure she did. She probably used the restroom. There’s one in the classroom for the kids but we don’t generally use that one. There’s one for staff in the hallway.”
Rena had seen that when they’d searched the building. “Do you recall when she might have used the restroom?”
Claire shook her head.
“When she leaves for the restroom, does somebody come in to cover her absence?” A.L. asked. “So that you maintain the right teacher-to-student ratio.”
Claire looked uncomfortable. “It’s what we’re supposed to do,” she said. “But really, it’s just such a short absence. We just...do it. I mean, Alice must know but she never says anything.”
“You’re not aware of any other reason why Kara might leave the room other than these short bathroom breaks?” Rena asked.
“Well, she might have if she needed to make a personal call. Kids can be magpies and you don’t necessarily want them repeating parts of your personal business when they go home at the end of the day.”
“Does she have lots of personal calls to make?” A.L. asked.
“No. People text mostly now.”
“But sometimes she would step out to make a call?” Rena asked.
“To make or take. Like all of us.”
Take, as in incoming. “Do you happen to know who called Kara?” Rena followed up.
“I don’t really know. I mean, I think she was about to close on a new house so she was talking to her Realtor or maybe her banker a lot.”
“Very good. Thank you again,” A.L. said.
He and Rena left the apartment building. When they were back in the car, A.L. turned to her. “New houses cost a lot of money.”
“I’ll get her phone records,” Rena said, pulling out her own phone. “Now to Milo’s Motors?”
“Yeah, but I don’t necessarily want Elaine to know that we’re talking to her boss. So I’m going to call Leah Whitman because one, I want to check in with her and two, it might give me a chance to see if her mom is with her. If she is, this is a good day to drive to Milo’s Motors.”
A.L. dialed and the call was answered on the second ring.
“Hello,” Leah said, almost sounding breathless. He had the call on Speaker and Rena gave him a look that needed no explanation. She thinks you’re calling with news.
A.L. nodded. “It’s Detective McKittridge. Just checking in to see how you’re doing,” he added quickly.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I didn’t get much sleep.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Is there any news, Detective?” she asked, her tone sharp. She wasn’t interested in his platitudes. She wanted her daughter back.
“No, I’m sorry. But know that we will not rest until we find Emma.”
“Troy went back to search this morning.”
That meant she still had a house of people. Blithe from their department. A couple FBI geeks helping to watch the phone. “Is your mom able to be with you?” A.L. asked.
“Yes. She called in to work. I didn’t ask her to. But they understand...that she wants to be here.” She paused, sounding discouraged.
“This is really hard, Leah. We know that. But hang in there. Either my partner, Rena, or I will check in with you later today.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Goodbye, Leah.”
A.L. put his phone down. “Christ, that sucked.” He sounded weary.
“Yeah,” Rena said. “I really want to be able to call her with good news.” She looked at her watch. “We need to be back for the ten o’clock meeting in Faster’s office.”
It was a good news, bad news kind of thing. Good news in that resources were plentiful. It was raining cops. Federal, state and county. Bad news was that resources were plentiful. Keeping everybody on the same page was a substantial undertaking with a case like this and they needed to be careful not to trip over each other.
A.L. likely didn’t think Faster would be up to the task. She was willing to reserve judgment.
A.L. keyed an address into his GPS. “Nine minutes to Milo’s Motors. Let’s see what he has to say.”
Twelve minutes later, they were inside Milo’s office, sitting in the two guest chairs, while Milo sat behind his paper-laden desk. There was a computer on the desk but Rena didn’t think it was turned on.
“Good to see you, A.L.,” Milo said. “I haven’t seen your dad or your uncle for a while. Bowling doesn’t start for another couple weeks. How are they?”
“Good,” A.L. said.
Rena wondered if he actually knew. He didn’t talk about his family much. Just his sister, Liz, who lived in Madison.
“I was wondering if you could answer a few questions about Elaine Broadstreet,” A.L. said.
“Of course. Hell of a situation with her grandchild. I got four of my own and I think I might lose my mind if something like this happened.”
“We understand that Elaine has worked for you for a number of years.”
“That’s correct.”
“And how would you characterize her work?”
Milo looked surprised. “She catches mistakes that the sales guys make all the time. Catches some of mine, too.” He stopped. “Of course, she isn’t perfect. Lately there’s been some things that might have been a problem for us.”
“Like?”
“Errors in spreadsheets. Documents that promised terms that we quite frankly never promise. That sort of thing. It’s okay. We’ll get past it but I did tell her she needed to be careful. I don’t like to say too much. She’s a real nice lady and everybody makes mistakes.”
“You said ‘lately,’” A.L. pushed. “Does that mean that her work has slipped noti
ceably in the past few weeks, months?”
“A month or so. But not everything. There’s just been a couple things that, quite frankly, surprised the hell out of me. It’s things she’s done for years without any problem and suddenly we’ve got a hell of a screw-up going on.”
“Any change in her personality?” Rena asked.
Milo shrugged. “She’s a good person. Like most good people, she gets frustrated when there are mistakes. Claims that she doesn’t know how they happened, that she knows how to do the work.”
“Is she dependable?” A.L. asked.
Milo shrugged. “Sure. I mean, she’s here every day. Not really a morning person but she stays late and that helps us because we don’t have much traffic on our lots until midafternoon usually.”
Rena shifted in her seat. “What time does her workday start?”
“I think she’s here most days by 9:30 or 10:00. I’m not a clock watcher. I wouldn’t want to work for one and I figure most other folks feel the same way. We don’t have a time clock or anything like that. People get paid for forty hours. I’m confident that they’re going to put the time in.”
“Of course,” Rena said. “But do you happen to recall what time she arrived for work yesterday?”
“I don’t but I suspect Portia knows. She works the service desk and everybody has to walk past her. Want me to call her and ask?”
“That would be helpful,” A.L. said.
Milo picked up his phone and they listened in to his side of the conversation. When he hung up, he said, “Portia said it was about 10:00.”
“Are you and Elaine friends outside of work?” Rena asked.
Milo looked at A.L. “I think Susie might have something to say about that.” He turned toward Rena. “My wife of forty-three years.”
“I suspect she would,” A.L. said. “But any feel for how Elaine spends her time outside of work?”
“Well, I don’t think she bowls. She’s always teasing me about that. I guess she spends a lot of time with her family. And a couple times a year, she takes a week off and goes to Vegas.”
“She likes to gamble?” A.L. asked, his voice the same tone as if he was asking if she liked chocolate chip cookies.
“Blackjack is her game. From what I’ve heard, she’s pretty good.”
“Lucky, then,” A.L. said.
“Yeah, well, I hope her luck holds out and they find that little girl.”
“We do, too,” A.L. said. He stood up and Rena followed suit. “If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate you keeping our visit here just between us.”
“No problem. Always happy to help Baywood’s finest. Tell your dad I bowled a 259 the other night.”
Rena waited until they were in the car before speaking. “I specifically asked Elaine Broadstreet what she did after she dropped Emma off at the day care. She said she went to work. If she was at the day care by 7:30 and it’s a fifteen-minute drive from there to here, there’s more than two hours of time that is unaccounted for.”
“We need to ask her about that. And about her criminal record. And try to get a feel for whether she’s failing cognitively,” A.L. said.
“I want to turn the clock backwards,” moaned Rena. “Yesterday, my most pressing issue was Laurie Cannon and a disappearing Volkswagen.”
A.L. turned his head. “Your Volkswagen disappeared?”
“Not mine. Mrs. Cannon’s. She’s a widow in her seventies who has reported her car missing six times this summer.”
“She loses her car?” A.L. said.
“Well, that’s what responding officers thought. Because they would always find it, within a block or two. They didn’t ignore the possibility that it had been moved but it got dusted for prints and there were never any besides Mrs. Cannon’s. They evidently suggested to her one too many times that perhaps she forgot where she parked it. She was so furious that she called in and complained. That’s when it got kicked over to me.”
“This is what I have to look forward to,” A.L. said morosely.
“Complaints from irate old women?” Rena asked.
“No. Forgetting where I park my car.”
“Cheer up,” Rena said. “She didn’t forget. Six sophomore boys from Baywood High were arrested early this morning. They were caught picking up, literally, a MINI Cooper four blocks away from Mrs. Cannon’s house and admitted that they’ve also been moving Mrs. Cannon’s vehicle. So I get to be a hero and tell Mrs. Cannon that the situation is resolved when I really did nothing.”
“That’s how it works sometimes. Other times, we bust our hump and we get nowhere. Enjoy the easy ones. Where was this?”
“Mrs. Cannon is on Kingview Street.”
She didn’t have to say more. A.L. would understand how this could happen six times without anybody being the wiser. The houses on Kingview didn’t come equipped with external security cameras. And the city didn’t have a street camera within three blocks.
“Never any damage to the vehicle?”
“Nope. Nary a scratch,” Rena said.
A.L. snorted. “Kind of refreshing, actually. It’s like a prank from a 1970s sitcom.”
“I know. Far cry from a missing five-year-old.”
A.L. nodded. “We’ve got enough time to swing by and give her the good news.”
The drive to Mrs. Cannon’s house took seven minutes. It was located at the far north side of town, where the houses were small, the yards big and worn-looking, several with rusted swing sets forlornly perched upon a field of thistles.
Rena picked her way across the grass with A.L. a step behind her. She noticed that half of the railing on the small front porch looked freshly painted. Her gaze went up, around. Pre-paint, the railing had been in better shape than the rest of the porch. Like it had gotten a coat of paint not that long ago.
She suspected Mrs. Cannon wasn’t able to reach the other areas as easily. She took care of what she could.
She knocked and a woman opened the door. Midseventies, wearing loose jeans and a flannel shirt with a pack of cigarettes in the pocket. She was holding a paintbrush in one hand. “Yes,” she said.
“I’m Detective Morgan. We spoke on the phone.” She held out her badge. “This is Detective McKittridge.” A.L. also had his badge out.
Mrs. Cannon didn’t look at either. “I recognize your voice,” the woman said. She had a smudge of dark green paint on one wrinkled cheek.
“I wanted to let you know that you shouldn’t have any more trouble with your vehicle. We arrested a group of boys who are responsible. They were caught in the act of moving another person’s car. They admitted doing the same with your vehicle.”
“I knew I hadn’t forgotten where I parked my car,” the woman said. “Figured it had to be something like this. I tried to catch them. Stayed up all night but nothing happened. You can’t do that every night,” she added. “Not at my age, anyway.”
“Of course not,” Rena said.
“I’m grateful to hear something. I didn’t figure my concerns might get much attention right now. With that little girl missing.”
Rena looked over Mrs. Cannon’s shoulder and saw a newspaper spread out on the kitchen table. Knew that below the fold was an article about Emma Whitman, with a picture of her at her recent birthday party. “We’re doing everything we can to find her.” Rena extended her hand. “I won’t take up any more of—”
“It’s just like what happened in Dover all those years ago,” Mrs. Cannon interrupted.
Rena lowered her hand. Felt the back of her neck get clammy. “Dover, Wisconsin?”
“Yes.”
She knew the town. Maybe twelve thousand people, roughly a quarter the size of Baywood. About a hundred miles north. She turned to look at A.L., who shook his head. She turned back to Mrs. Cannon. “I guess I’m not familiar with that case.”
“Well,
I remember it. My granddaughter, who lives in Chicago, was five, the same age as the little girl who went missing. It made me sick to think that something like that might happen to her.”
“How long ago was this?” Rena asked.
“Well, my granddaughter is fifteen now, so I guess about ten years. I don’t think they ever found that child. I hope that’s not what we’re dealing with here. As a parent, I’d want to know. Even if it was bad news.”
A.L. stepped forward. “You don’t happen to remember the child’s name, do you?”
Mrs. Cannon shook her head. “I don’t.”
Looking up crimes in Dover would be enough for them to find it. “It was a pleasure to meet you in person, Mrs. Cannon,” Rena said.
“You, too, Detectives. Don’t touch the railing on your way out,” she added.
A.L. was pushing buttons on his phone by the time Rena got into the passenger seat. To whoever answered, he said, “We need info on what is likely a cold case from about ten years ago. Dover, Wisconsin. Missing five-year-old. Similar circumstances to Emma Whitman. We’ll be back in the office in ten minutes.”
He hung up his phone. Neither of them said anything.
He drove and she tried to quiet her head, which was roiling with this new information. They parked in the lot and quickly walked inside. Then it was up the elevator. By the time they crossed the threshold of their office, they were practically running toward the manila folder that was on A.L.’s chair.
He opened it. Just one sheet of paper. He held it so that they could both read.
“Holy shit,” he said after another minute.
Indeed. Corrine Antler, age five, had been dropped off at a day care and discovered missing approximately ten hours later. No ransom. She had never been found.
Rena gripped the back of the chair. “So similar,” she said softly.
“Too fucking similar,” A.L. said. “We’re going to Dover.”
