Stranger in Town - By Cheryl Bradshaw Page 0,3
to do with money. But Mr. Tate didn’t appear to have money problems, and he didn’t seem like the unfaithful type either. Then again, the best cheaters never did.
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
I shrugged.
“How do you know what I think?”
“You wrinkled your face just now like I’ve done something wrong,” he said. “I haven’t.”
“I’d like to know why I’m here.”
He leaned back in the chair, laced his fingers together, and rested them on the edge of the table. “A couple years ago a young girl named Olivia Hathaway was kidnapped a few hours from here.”
The name seemed vaguely familiar. “Where was she taken?”
“From a grocery store in Pinedale.”
“Is Pinedale in—”
He nodded. “Wyoming, yes.”
“What happened?”
His shoulder bobbed up and down.
“No one knows for sure. They were shopping at the time, the girl and her mother. Her mother remembers telling Olivia to hold on to the side of the cart while she looked at something, but when she turned back around, Olivia was gone. She searched every aisle with the store employees, but found no sign of her anywhere.”
“They never found her—dead or alive?”
He shook his head.
“Police combed the area, formed search parties, and put her picture up on every post, billboard, and store window. By the time they were through, they’d gone over every inch of Pinedale at least once. There wasn’t a soul in the state of Wyoming that didn’t know the girl was missing.”
“And there were no witnesses?” I said.
“None that lived to talk about it.”
I sipped my water.
“So there was someone who saw what happened?”
“A store employee discovered an elderly woman dead in the parking lot right after Olivia was taken. She’d been stabbed once, and then run over.”
“By a vehicle?”
He nodded.
“A car.”
“She must have seen something,” I said.
His demeanor conveyed much more than a person who was sharing a story. He was connected somehow.
“Is Olivia your daughter?”
He swallowed hard and glanced out the window.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose a child.”
A single tear formed in the corner of his eyelid. He quickly swept it away. “Olivia Hathaway is not my daughter.”
I set my glass down and looked up. “If she’s not your daughter, why are you here and why tell me this story?”
“My daughter’s name is Savannah,” he said. “Savannah Tate.”
CHAPTER 3
“Savannah Tate—of course,” I said.
He perked up.
“You’ve heard the story then?”
“Everyone has,” I said.
Savannah’s abduction took place at a preschool in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, six months earlier. Once the media got a good whiff of what had happened, things spun out of control. Finger-pointing and blame spread in all directions, most of it resting on the shoulders of the daycare itself. No one working that day understood how they had managed to lose a child—from an enclosed play area, no less. Even more bizarre was the fact that Savannah hadn’t been outside alone. She had been playing with another child who was the same age, leading to even more speculation. People wondered why they weren’t both taken, why one had been chosen over the other.
The daycare employees were interviewed on WNN, Wyoming’s nightly news, each one tearing up on camera, but an unsympathetic public didn’t care. A toddler was missing because of the daycare’s mistake. It might have been an honest one, but it didn’t stop parents from pulling their children out of A Place to Grow Child Care Center until no children remained. Soon after, the child-care center was forced to close. A rumor circulated about a twenty percent decrease in daycare attendance across the nation. Mothers from every walk of life clutched their children a little closer that week, opting to find what they felt were more “suitable” arrangements. Many turned to in-home child care, thinking their children were much better off in the comfort of their own homes.
Two weeks after Savannah was kidnapped a new website sprung to life called All Kids Safe. It was a place where parents could hand-pick quality nannies in their area. All employees had to undergo a background check and adhere to a code of ethics. The idea of children getting personal care made parents feel safe, making All Kids Safe a huge hit.
“I hope you understand now why I wanted to wait until I could speak to you in person,” Mr. Tate said. “My wife doesn’t even get out of bed anymore. She’s tired of…well—everything. The media coverage, the constant interviews by the police, the ladies on the street bringing casseroles over every night. She can’t take