Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn #6)- Lisa Regan Page 0,106
I wasn’t. I shouldn’t have said the things I said to her the other day. I didn’t mean them. And now… I might not get to tell her that.”
“You don’t know that,” Josie said. “She might pull through. Then you can tell her anything at all that you need to tell her. Right now, we need to keep our focus on Lucy. The sooner you’re ready, the sooner we can get back to mobile command and start planning for the press conference.”
With a nod, Colin trudged up the steps. Josie walked into the kitchen to start cleaning up when her phone rang. Trinity. “Hey,” she answered. “Did you find something out?”
“Martin Lendhardt—the other Lendhardt who died—I talked to the neighbors where he used to live. No one remembered him.”
“That’s not helpful,” Josie said.
“Just wait,” Trinity said. Josie could hear the excitement in her voice. “One of the neighbors bought his house from an elderly lady who is still alive and residing at a nearby nursing home. I talked to her. She remembered Martin Lendhardt. She said he was mean as the day is long. Moved into the house next to hers twenty-six years ago with a young wife.”
“A young wife?” Josie echoed.
“Yes. A young wife named Tessa.”
“Please tell me you’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
Josie did calculations in her head. “Wait, twenty-six years ago, Amy would have been fourteen years old. This woman said they were married?”
“That’s what she said. They were new to the neighborhood. The wife never spoke to anyone. She said they often heard her screaming. They were sure he beat her, but whenever the police were called, Martin would make up some story like he had the television on too loudly, and Tessa would speak only long enough to tell the police her husband hadn’t laid a hand on her.”
“Jesus. I wonder if there are any police reports.”
“I doubt it. He was never even arrested. Well, not for domestic violence.”
“For what then?”
“Well, that’s where it gets really interesting.”
Josie’s heartbeat sped up. “Tell me,” she said.
“Tessa and Martin Lendhardt had a baby.”
“What?”
“My source says that when they first moved in, she often heard a baby crying. She says eventually she worked up the nerve to go over when Martin was at work. She knocked on the door and asked Tessa if she needed help, but that Tessa closed the door in her face.”
“But there’s no record of Tessa Lendhardt even existing,” Josie said. “How could she have had a baby?”
“Maybe a home birth? It sounds like Martin didn’t let her out of the house very often—if at all.”
“Was the child a boy or a girl?” Josie asked.
“She didn’t know. They never let the child leave the house.”
“Then how does she know that there was really a child?”
“Well, I guess she doesn’t know. Not for sure. But there’s something else.”
“Besides a baby that may or may not have existed?”
“We’ll come back to that,” Trinity said. “My source thinks that Martin killed Tessa.”
“Based on what?”
“About five years after they moved in, Tessa disappeared. She says she used to see her pass by one of the windows facing her house just about every day. Then one day, Tessa wasn’t there anymore, and Martin was meaner than ever. She asked him where his wife went, and he said it was none of her damn business. She thought because of the way he used to beat her, he must have killed her and was hiding her body in the house. She says she called the police but that they came, went inside his house for a while and then left. She tried to get information out of them, but they wouldn’t talk to her. She asked them if they’d seen the child inside the house, but they told her to mind her own business. Nothing ever came of it.”
“Probably because Tessa never existed in the first place. There’s no record of her. So what happened?”
Trinity drew in a breath. Josie heard papers rustling. “She’s not sure what happened after that. She got put into a nursing home by her kids. Her house was rented out multiple times after that. I left her son a message, but I don’t know that he’ll have the information for all the tenants or that any of them would remember Martin.”
“It couldn’t possibly be that easy,” Josie groused.
“But I checked out Martin Lendhardt, and he was convicted of child endangerment in 2002.”
Now Josie’s heartbeat was a series of thunderclaps in her chest. “So there was a child.”