When the Bough Breaks (Rose Gardner Investigations #6) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,86

to talk? What if they were in the clutches of that evil man?

“Rose,” Dermot said, “there’s a whole lot we don’t know. Speculatin’ might help us figure out what to do next, but it won’t do much good beyond that. Hell, we don’t even know if that’s Calista and Pat out there on the side of the road.”

“Except we do,” I said softly.

“If I were a betting man, I’d say there’s a ninety percent chance it’s them. But that doesn’t mean the same thing happened to your ex-brother-in-law and the kids.” He paused. “We’re gonna find ’em, Rose. Which leads me to another piece of information.”

“Okay.”

“The construction workers I spoke with said that Mark Erickson was livin’ with a woman. They didn’t know her name, but we tracked down Mark’s brother in Baton Rouge, and he told us he thought it was Riviera Pullman.”

“That’s an unusual name,” I said. “That should make her easier to track down.”

“It might be more difficult than you’d think. The construction guys figured Mark for a prepper livin’ out in the hills.”

“Like the Collard boys?” I’d had a couple of private run-ins with the family, both of them contentious.

“Yeah.”

“Would they know where Erickson and his girlfriend live?”

He took a second before he responded. “You want to go ask the Collard boys?”

“Well, not their daddy,” I said with plenty of attitude as I stuck out my elbow to brace my right hip with my hand to help ease my lower backache. “But I do have someone I can ask. I just need to figure out how to contact him.”

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” he said.

“Got any other ideas on how to track down his girlfriend? The guys didn’t know where she works?” I asked just as another Braxton Hicks contraction hit. I started a breathing exercise to try to control it.

“They didn’t know anything. They said he never spoke about her…” His voice trailed off. Then he asked, “You okay?”

I realized I’d been holding the phone too close to my mouth, so he had heard my breaths.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying not to tense up and make the contraction hurt worse.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” I forced out, losing the war on tensing and now my stomach was a tight ball squeezing the breath out of me.

“You sound like you’re workin’ out at the gym.”

“Well, I’m not,” I snapped again. Looked like Dermot was meeting the evil me that popped out when I had intense contractions. Lord only knew what I’d be like in actual labor. Maybe having Joe with me in the delivery room was a bad idea after all.

After a few seconds, the contraction began to ease enough for me to speak. “Which leads me to part two of my own three-part information session,” I said grimly. “I received a message from Vera, the woman with the station wagon. It was hand-delivered to my office a short while ago.”

“She came to see you?”

“No.” I told him about noticing the station wagon parked on the square before I saw Stewart, and then how the teenage boy had shown up at my office with the message. “There was no name on the envelope, and inside was a birthday card for a two-year-old. I’m guessing it was for her son because she had a little boy with her in December. She’d scratched out the name signed underneath the birthday message.”

“That was risky on her part,” he said. “If we can make out who signed it, it could lead us to her. What did her message say?”

“She claims she can tell me where the kids are. She wants me to come to Shute Creek Park, alone, at four.”

“Are you sure the guy who brought it to you was on the up and up?” he asked.

“If he wasn’t, he’s an even better actor than Stewart. He seemed pretty confused by the whole situation, but I got his name and number. I told him it was a prank, and that his information would help me retaliate.”

“And he didn’t ask for any kind of response?”

“No, although he did try to pick me up.”

“He tried to kidnap you?”

“What? No! He told me I was hot for a pregnant woman and wanted to get a raincheck for coffee.”

“Oh.” Perhaps realizing he shouldn’t have sounded so surprised, he hastily added, “And you are.”

I snorted. “Please. That’s the least of my concerns right now.”

He was quiet for moment. “So we need to be careful if we contact him,” he said. “We don’t want to