Stranger in Town - By Cheryl Bradshaw Page 0,18

it used to be. Still, I believe I would have at least heard Kris if she’d said something.”

The problem with their theory was the connection to the second missing child; there was none. Not that I knew of, anyway. I started to think they’d been watching too many episodes of 48 Hours. But a lead was a lead, nonetheless.

“Have you spoken to anyone about this?” I said.

Sylvia nodded. “Oh yes. Detective Whittaker. He’s been trying to find out what happened to Olivia since the day she disappeared. He’s a good man.”

Mildred blushed when Sylvia mentioned his name.

“What did the detective say?”

“Nothing,” Sylvia said.

“Not one word?”

“Now that I think of it, Sylvia, he did say one thing,” Mildred said. “He said, ‘I see.’”

“And we’ve been waiting to hear back from him ever since,” Sylvia said.

‘I see’ was the polite way of letting them know he didn’t take anything they said seriously. So…should I?

Kris had a look of bewilderment on her face when I arrived on her doorstep for the second time in one hour.

“I have a few more questions about Terrence,” I said.

Her left eye twitched, and she crossed one arm over the other in front of her. She’d been through so much already. I thought about phrasing my questions so they didn’t sound so direct and invasive, but tact didn’t make the top-ten list of my most admirable qualities. Hell, it didn’t even make the top twenty.

“You said Terrence was fine with Olivia as long as the two of you didn’t have any more children,” I said. “At any time did he try to get you to get rid of her?”

The look on Kris’s face answered the question for me. “What do you mean?”

“Did Terrence ever suggest that Olivia go to your parents’ house to be raised by them instead of you?” I said.

“Who told you that?”

“You said he was tolerant of her,” I said, “but from what I understand, it sounds like he wanted to pawn her off so the two of you could be together with no distractions.”

“It’s hard enough to grieve, but to be put through the same questions over and over again until you have the answers memorized. It’s too much.”

Kris stepped back, slowly closing the door on my question and me. I allowed it. The pain in her eyes kept me from probing any further.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

CHAPTER 13

Thanks to Sylvia and Company, I learned Terrence worked as a night manager at a fancy restaurant inside a resort-type place by the lake. A row of a dozen or so cabins lined the left side of the street, with the lodge sitting majestically on the right. The accommodations were far superior to the hotel I was currently in, making me glad Maddie wasn’t with me.

I stood at the lake’s edge, taking in the glassy stillness of the water’s surface. It didn’t take long for my mind to wander to a place where others’ didn’t. A quiet, unsuspecting lake, the perfect place for a murder. I imagined two young girls hogtied and weighted down, maybe with a piece of hardened concrete, or maybe to a cluster of rocks that had been secured inside a netted bag. After the restaurant closed and the resident visitors were asleep in their beds, a man would paddle the girls to the center of the lake. He wouldn’t worry about them making noise, because he knew they were too terrified to cry. Once he reached the deepest part of the lake, he’d tell the girls to stand, and after they did, he’d shove them both from behind, watching their bodies sink into the cold darkness below.

I blinked back to reality, wondering why I couldn’t see what everyone else did—it was a lake, just a simple, innocent body of water. What was wrong with me?

Outside the restaurant, a couple sat across from each other at a table on the veranda, holding hands and staring into one another’s eyes like they were the only two people in existence. They reeked of young love, and for a moment I felt a smidgen of jealousy. Just a bit. Nothing more. After a moment the feeling was gone. I pushed open the door to the restaurant and walked inside.

It didn’t take long to locate Terrence. He was the only one not dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt with pea-sized black buttons. He was older than I thought he’d be, possibly in his late thirties, or early forties, and he