No One Saw

by Beverly Long

  “We talked to Milo,” A.L. said. “He would know.”

  “He doesn’t know shit. I know. I know because I’m the one who changed the spreadsheets. I did it.”

  It was a what the fuck moment if there ever was one. A.L. looked at Rena. She was staring at Leah, like the woman might have two heads.

  “You wanted Milo and others at work to think poorly of your mom?” he asked.

  “That and I wanted to drive her a little bit crazy,” Leah said. “It felt good to know that she might be losing some sleep over it. God knows there were plenty of nights I couldn’t sleep when I was in foster care. But nobody cared then and nobody cares now.”

  “Does Troy know what you’ve been doing?” Rena asked.

  “No. Listen, I’m tired. I need to rest,” Leah said.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” A.L. said.

  They were at the door when Leah spoke again. “You think I’m a horrible daughter, don’t you?”

  “We have absolutely no opinion about that,” A.L. said.

  Rena waited until they’d pulled away from the curb. “I do sort of think she’s horrible. A video of her mother gambling at her lawyer’s office already is one thing. But tampering with her computer, altering work, that’s another whole level of maliciousness. She needs therapy.”

  “I think there’s a lot of suppressed rage there. But at least now we know that Elaine isn’t slipping. Maybe she did sign the sheet.”

  “And whoever took Emma also took the sheet,” Rena said. “It makes it harder to see this as a crime of opportunity. I think somebody planned to take Emma Whitman. The questions is, why her?”

  Ten

  Why Emma Whitman?

  The question bounced around in his brain as he drove away from the Whitman house. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I just don’t know.”

  “All we can do is get back to basics. While I can’t see Leah making up any of that story since she looks bad, we should at least talk to Leah’s employer. Verify her work hours on Wednesday,” Rena said. “Also verify her presence at the casino.”

  “Too late to do that tonight. I suppose we’re going to have to call it a day.” They’d been at it since early morning, after just a few hours of sleep. The two-hundred-mile drive there and back from Dover in the warm September sun hadn’t helped.

  “You’re probably right. We’ll hit it hard tomorrow,” Rena said. “By then, Emma will have been missing forty-eight hours.”

  He understood what she wasn’t saying. If the searchers hadn’t managed to find her in that amount of time, it wasn’t looking good. “You think it’s weird that Perry and LuAnn Whitman aren’t camped out at Leah and Troy’s house?”

  “You don’t buy Leah’s explanation that they didn’t want to be a bother?”

  “Family unites at a time like this. I think we need to talk to them.”

  “Equal opportunity police interrogations for all grandparents,” Rena said.

  “You and I both know—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Family gets looked at hard for a reason. It’s just so damn hideous.”

  “It is what it is,” A.L. said.

  They were both quiet as he drove Rena back to get her car. Once in the parking lot, he turned to her. “See you tomorrow.”

  She opened her door, stood and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Are you going to see Tess?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I might call her.”

  “I don’t think you do your best work on the phone,” Rena said. “You should go see her.”

  “You should go home,” he said.

  Before she shut her door, she said, “I know what I’m talking about. You should listen to me.”

  He watched her walk to her car, get in and then pull out of the lot. He took his foot off the brake and was right behind her.

  His first instinct was to let things settle a little bit.

  But Rena probably was smarter about these things than he was.

  He picked up the phone and called Tess.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No. But I did read in one of my magazines that a man doesn’t necessarily respect a woman who responds to late-night booty calls.”

  She was teasing. The tension in his chest eased. “How do you know this is a booty call?”

  “Hmmm. I guess maybe it’s just wishful thinking.”

  His heart sped up in his chest. “We can talk about Traci,” he said. “And California.”

  She giggled. “Oh don’t worry. We will. Probably afterward but definitely before I tell you where I hid your pants.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, he knocked on her door. She opened it, gave him a look of mock confusion, and said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were my Uber driver.”

  “Where you going?” he asked.

  “Some place very fancy. Very expensive. Fourteen-dollar glasses of wine.”

  He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. She looked good. She was wearing blue-and-white-striped pajama pants and a small, strappy blue shirt. No bra. “Those kind of places have a dress code,” he said.

  “No worries. I’ve got a little black dress laid out on my bed.” She leaned in and kissed him. “I missed you,” she said. “How’s the case?”

  “Frustrating.” She wouldn’t expect any details.

  “I keep thinking of Marnee at five. How frightened she’d be.” With the palm of her hand, she gently stroked his face. “There’s no way for Emma Whitman to know this, but she’s lucky to have you working on this.”

  “You think so?” he said.

  “Oh, yeah. I know you won’t give up. I’ve had some personal experience with your tenaciousness. You found me even when I didn’t want to be found.”

  “And you cooked Rena and me dinner. Shrimp and pasta as I recall. It was good.”

  “No dinner tonight but a little snack.” She led him into her living room. There was a plate of cheese and crackers and some red grapes. Also a bottle of wine and two glasses.

  “Is this the fourteen-dollars-a-glass wine?” he asked.

  She smiled. “It may end up costing you a great deal more than that,” she said suggestively.

  He smiled. “I’ve always been a fool with my money.”

  He took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie and sat down. Patted the spot on the couch next to him. She sat and snuggled close. Her skin was soft and she smelled good.

  “This was a crappy thing to come home to after a really good week in California,” she said.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell Traci that you were going, too.”

  “I’m not asking for an apology, A.L. It’s your decision who you tell what. I only sent the text because I didn’t want you to be blindsided by your daughter.”

  “But you were probably curious as to why I failed to mention it.”

  She had her head in the crook of his arm. She looked up with a smile. “Didn’t curiosity kill the cat?”

  “You have a right to ask,” he said. “I should have told her. But... I couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t,” she repeated.

  “This,” he said, waving his hand at the two of them, “is new to me. I haven’t had this for a... Hell, maybe I’ve never had this. I think I’m not ready for questions about the relationship. I want to keep everybody outside the fence right now. It’s so new, so good, that it feels weird to talk about it. Like I’m not protecting it enough.”

  She sat up. “Who needs a fourteen-dollar glass of wine when you say things like that?” Then she leaned in and kissed him. Hard. And he felt the response roar through him.

  “I want you,” he said.

  “Take me,” she answered.

  He slipped his hands under her shirt and pulled it over her head. Th
en her pajama pants and panties came off. She was gloriously naked in his arms.

  “You have too many clothes on,” she said. “And I’m not able to help much.”

  Yeah, things like buttons and zippers were a challenge with one hand. “No worries,” he said. “Just keep kissing me.”

  And she did. And somehow, they made it down the hallway to her bedroom, dropping his clothes in a path along the way. They fell into her bed and when he was finally inside her, he knew he was exactly where he needed to be.

  Where he wanted to be.

  It was the first peace he’d had in days.

  * * *

  Rena was eating a doughnut when he approached her desk the next morning. “Chop,” he said. “Let’s go. We got a psychic to talk to.”

  She licked her bottom lip. “Words I never thought I’d hear A.L. McKittridge say.” She deliberately looked at her watch. “It’s seven o’clock. No self-respecting psychic is at work yet.”

  “She will be,” he said. “I sent an email to her very late last night, asking if we could meet this morning. I got a response right away. She said okay but that it would need to be early. She’s doing a group reading and won’t be available for most of the day.”

  “What’s a group reading?”

  “Not something I want to be part of. That’s why we’re going now.”

  “So you were working last night. You didn’t go to see Tess.”

  “I only did a little work last night and for your information, Ms. Nosy, I did go see Tess.”

  He’d stayed the night. After they’d had sex, they’d finally had a little wine and enjoyed some cheese and crackers. It was only after she’d fallen asleep that he’d gotten around to sending the email to the psychic.

  “She’s not pissed at you, then?”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not.”

  Rena narrowed her eyes. “Okay, then. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, since Ferguson was already working on verifying Elaine’s time at the casino, I asked him to also make sure that Leah was there when she said she was.”

  “Very good,” A.L. said.

  Rena swallowed the last of her doughnut and took a big drink of her coffee. “And Kara Wiese has no siblings. Her parents died four years ago. Car accident. And her mother’s only siblings were two brothers. Her father had a sister. She’s alive and lives in Utah. I saw the photo from her driver’s license—looks nothing like Kara.”

  “It was worth a shot.”

  “Absolutely.” She balled up the napkin her doughnut had rested on and threw it in the trash. “I’m ready for the psychic. Maybe I’ll get my fortune read while I’m there.”

  * * *

  While the day care and the house next door to it had probably been built in the 1950s, the house that the psychic saw the future from was probably thirty or forty years older. It was a tall and narrow two-story, all brick, with leaded glass windows, and a big, heavy wood door that had an actual knocker. A.L. used it to announce their arrival.

  It took about a minute for a woman, maybe midforties, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt to open it. She had long brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail and a nice face.

  “Genevieve Louis?” he asked.

  “Yes. Sorry it took me a minute, I was upstairs.”

  She didn’t much look like a psychic. Although to be honest, she was the first one he’d actually met. “Detectives McKittridge and Morgan,” he said. They both held out badges but she barely glanced at them.

  “Please come in. Would you like a chair?” she asked.

  That would leave her standing, since there were only two. The group readings must occur elsewhere.

  “We’re fine,” he said.

  “We want to talk to you about Emma Whitman,” Rena said. “She’s the missing five-year-old.”

  “From the day care.”

  “Yes,” Rena said.

  “I’ve been thinking about her 24/7,” Genevieve said.

  “Why’s that?” Rena asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Genevieve admitted. “I mean, it’s a horrible story. But it seems to have consumed me. Maybe because it happened so close to here.”

  “Were you here on Wednesday morning? Around 7:15, 7:30?” A.L. asked.

  “Not here,” she said, motioning to the space around them. “I don’t open until 10:00. But I would have been upstairs. In my apartment.”

  “Convenient,” Rena said.

  “The reason I rented this location,” Genevieve explained. “I like to have all my energy centered, not spread too thin.”

  “Right,” A.L. said. “You didn’t happen to see Emma Whitman walk away from the day care?” he asked, knowing it was all but impossible. If she had, she’d no doubt have come forward right away.

  “No. I slept until almost 9:00 that morning.”

  “No unusual noises? No dogs barking?” Rena asked.

  “Sometimes people hear things but they don’t realize the importance at the moment,” A.L. added.

  Genevieve smiled. “I’m pretty attuned to any stimuli.”

  “And you didn’t see or hear anything unusual?” Rena said.

  Genevieve shook her head. “But I don’t think she walked away.”

  A.L. stared at the woman. “Why do you say that?”

  “I told you, it’s been consuming me. I see her in a car.”

  “See?”

  Her glasses had slipped down her nose and she deliberately pushed them up. “Yes. See.”

  “Do you see anything else?” Rena asked quickly, probably afraid to let him speak.

  “She’s not unhappy.”

  No one said anything. For a very long minute.

  “Uh...can you describe the car?” Rena asked.

  Genevieve shook her head. “I’m not sure it’s even a car. But I think it’s a vehicle of some kind.”

  “The driver?” Rena asked. “Male? Female?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s always just her. Little Emma.”

  “What was she wearing?” A.L. asked.

  “I’ve read the description in the newspaper. I could recite that and maybe you’d believe me more or less. I don’t know. But I’m not seeing clothes. Just her sweet face with her brown hair blowing in the wind.”

  “When did you first have this...uh...vision?” Rena asked.

  “When I first woke up. It was at least an hour later that I heard what had happened at the day care.”

  She looked directly at A.L. as she spoke the last sentence.

  “And have you had any other visions?” A.L. asked, as if finally finding his voice.

  Genevieve shook her head. “I’m sorry, no.”

  “If anything comes up that might be helpful to us, we’d appreciate a call,” Rena said, handing the woman her card.

  “I’ll do that. I hope you find her. I really do.”

  “Have you ever met Leah or Troy Whitman, the child’s parents?” A.L. asked.

  “Not that I’m aware. I suppose it’s possible. The day care will have a bake sale every couple of months to raise money for activities and I try to support them.”

  “So you know Alice Quest and perhaps some of the staff?” A.L. asked.

  Genevieve nodded.

  “Got any feelings one way or another about them right now?” A.L. asked.

  “As if whether or not they’re involved in Emma’s disappearance?” Genevieve clarified.

  “Any feelings?” A.L. said, keeping it broad.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t. All I can tell you is that I’m confident that it was Emma that I saw, her hair was blowing in the wind, and she didn’t seem scared or unhappy.”

  “Thank you,” Rena said. She opened the door and motioned for A.L. to precede her out. When they were far enough from the door not to be heard, she turned to him. “I thought for a minute you
were going to ask her to help with the investigation.”

  It wasn’t unheard of. But definitely not generally his thing. But they were into the third day. This was excruciating. “If I’d thought she had more to offer, I would have,” he said.

  “Not unhappy,” she repeated. “If we believe in this vision, that supports our theory that it wasn’t a stranger.”

  “Agree,” A.L. said. “For what that gets us.”

  “I really didn’t get the feeling that she’s a crackpot,” Rena said.

  “You believe in psychics?” A.L. asked.

  “I believe that there are people who are better connected to what’s going on around them than others. And that maybe they have the ability to feel things, hell, maybe even see things, that the rest of us can’t.”

  “If, and this is a big if, she’s right, then Emma was in some kind of vehicle but not unhappy about it. Hair blowing in the wind,” A.L. said.

  “Multiple people have looked at street camera video. Nobody has picked up a little girl being driven in a vehicle.”

  “I know. We’re back to crackpot.”

  Rena started heading back to their vehicle but he stopped her. “There’s one more thing we need to do now that we’re in this neighborhood.”

  “What?”

  “Remember Coyote Frogg? I asked Ferguson to try to find him. He would be twenty-nine years old. There’s no record of him being employed since 2017. Yet he never collected any federal or state assistance after that. And there’s been no electric bills, gas bills or telephone bills in his name since around the same time.”

  “So he dropped off the grid.”

  “We all know that’s almost impossible to really do. But he’s been pretty much a shadow. He did seek some medical treatment about six months ago in Milwaukee for a chemical burn. Told the doctor that he was a student and he’d been doing an experiment in his basement.”

  “Cooking meth?” Rena asked knowingly.

  “Good a guess as any. But we were able to get a recent photo out of his medical record and I had Ferguson scan it and send it to me. I want to show it to Mr. Gibacki at the Panini Playground.” He held out his phone and let Rena see the photo.