She handed me that information as well.
“Thanks, Cook.”
She seemed tired, and that worried me. Cookie didn’t get tired.
“How is Uncle Bob?”
She shrugged. “Not living with me.”
“He moved out?” I asked, shocked.
“No, I mean emotionally. It’s like he hasn’t really been home in days.”
I covered her hand with mine. “It’s a case, Cook. Classic symptoms. I promise you.”
She nodded and went home early. I went to see a girl about a building.
* * *
The woman who’d leased the building the adoption agent worked out of lived in Taylor Ranch, so I headed that way despite the hour. Nothing sucked the life out of a day like rush-hour traffic. Fortunately, it wasn’t that bad. The woman, a Karen Claffey, lived off Montano in a small white stucco with faded plastic flowers lining the drive.
I knocked on the door and heard a small dog barking inside when a car pulled up. A woman in her fifties got out and went around to her trunk to grab her groceries.
I smiled and waved as she walked from her drive to the front door. “Hi. Karen Claffey?”
She nodded and shifted her bags to get the door open.
“My name is Charley Davidson. I’m a private investigator looking into the Divine Intervention Adoption Agency, and—”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Her brusqueness threw me, but only for a moment.
“Really?” I took out the file. “According to city records, you leased the building the agency worked out of.”
“Not me. I don’t know anything about it.”
If she had a sign around her neck, it would be flashing LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE.
“No problem. But I should probably warn you, I’m working with APD on this. I have to turn in my findings, so they might show up in the next couple of days. Just routine stuff. Nothing to worry about.” I started toward Misery. “Have a good day.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that agency.”
“Excuse me?”
Annoyance mixed with a healthy dose of fear washed out of her. “It wasn’t me. They just put the lease in my name on account of I went to their church and we became friends.”
“Who, Mrs. Claffey?”
“Eve and Abraham. The Fosters. They needed the building but didn’t want it in their names.”
I stepped back to her. “Did they say why?”
She opened her front door and stood halfway inside as though hinting she had better things to do. “Just that they were going to adopt some kids and wanted to start their own agency. As far as I could tell, no agency ever went in. The building stayed empty the whole time. I would get the mail for them and drop it off at their house. That’s all. I didn’t have anything to do with the rest.”
“Mrs. Claffey, I have to ask: What rest?”
She bowed her head in thought. Or prayer. She was down quite a while.
After enough time passed for me to have ovulated, twice, she gestured me inside.
She had a dachshund named Marley. I only knew that because she yelled at her seventeen times to shut up. But Marley continued her reign of terror, barking at me for a good three minutes before deciding I was okay. Then it was all belly rubs and toy tubs. As in a tub of toys. She had to bring out each and every toy, and we had to fight to the death for it until she got bored and went for the next one. I wondered if Mrs. Claffey would notice her missing after I left.
Karen put the bags on her kitchen counter, then started a pot of coffee. The smell sent me skyrocketing to my happy place called Coffeeland.
“There was some hubbub a while back,” she said, talking over the dog growls as we battled for a pink mouse with one ear. “An investigator came by saying he worked for a public defender and that he needed everything I had on the agency. I tried to tell him I didn’t have anything. The lease was in my name, true, but that was it. I had nothing to do with the business.”
After almost losing a hand, I asked, “Did he say what they were investigating?”
She busied herself putting groceries away. “A woman was arrested for the disappearance and murder of her child. But she says she didn’t kill her. She said that a couple from an adoption agency approached her. Then, twenty-five years later, the remains of the baby are found not fifty yards from the house she was living in at the time.”
I stood and walked to her. Or, well, hobbled. Marley took a liking to my ankle boots. Had the Fosters adopted this woman’s child only to kill it? Why go to such lengths? “Do you believe the Fosters capable of such a heinous act?”
She snorted. “Of course. The woman’s story is too … accurate.”
I bowed my head in sadness and in thought. I needed to talk to that investigator. “Mrs. Claffey—”
“Just Karen.”
“Karen, did the investigator leave a card or give you a contact number?”
“He did, but I threw it away. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I can find out. Thank you so much, Karen.” I took her hand and pressed a card into it. “If you think of anything else.”
She took my card, and I was about 90 percent certain she’d throw it away the minute I left as well.
Right before I headed for the door, I realized I needed to warn her. To let her know she could be in danger. “Karen, I don’t want to scare you or sound all dire, but please don’t say anything about this to the Fosters. I don’t want this coming back on you.”
She bit down and I felt a mixture of outrage and animosity. “I never see them anymore. I quit going to their church a while back.”
“Care to tell me what happened?”
She turned away. I’d been doing this long enough to know that I’d lost her. “No.”
Fair enough. “What is their church called?”
“People of the Divine Path.”
“They really like the word divine.”
“Yeah, they think they are.” She leveled a serious stare on me. “Divine. Anointed. Godly.”
“Don’t we all?” I asked with my best self-deprecating smile.
I gave Marley one last scrub, then left.
I had Cookie on the phone before I even got to Misery. “Cookie, I need you to find out who’s on trial for murdering her baby twenty-five years ago. They just found the—”
“Veronica Isom.”
I stopped. “Wow, that was fast.”
“It’s been all over the news.”
I really needed to jump on that whole evening news movement. “Thanks, Cook. Can you find out where she’s being held?”
“Sure, hon. Give me five.”
“You got it.”
I climbed into Misery but didn’t start her up. Instead, I waited for the little beastie in the passenger seat to announce her intentions.
I knew the kid. She was a blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty who’d drowned when she was nine years old. She lived with my friend Rocket and the gang at an abandoned mental asylum, so I really didn’t see her much. She had her friends and no time for boring old me.
Strawberry, a.k.a. Strawberry Shortcake based off the pajamas she wore, sat pretending to eat ice cream from a bowl. She would take a bite, then give a bite to her doll. The bald one.
Strawberry had a thing for dolls’ hair. Well, hair in general. She was always wanting to brush mine or braid it or give me a quick trim. After seeing her doll collection, I decided to go to a professional.
“Do you like dolls?” she asked out of the blue.
“I like blow-up dolls. Does that count?”
“Oh, I do, too. My friend Alex had one, and we would punch it in the face, and then it would bounce back up again.”
We were so not on the same page. “Hey, sweetness, what are you doing here?”
“I saw you driving and came over.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Have you seen Angel?” She’d developed a bit of a crush on my thirteen-year-old investigator.
“Not for a while.”
“Oh. I need you to talk to my brother.”
Her brother, David Taft, was an APD officer I liked to occasionally harass. “Yeah? Dating skanks again?”
She shook her head. “He fell, and now I can’t see him anymore.”
I froze. “Strawberry, what do you mean, he fell?”
“I don’t know. I just saw him fall, and now I can’t find him. I need you to look.”
Okay, if there was one thing the departed excelled at, it was the cryptic message. Strawberry was no different, but if she couldn’t see him …
Alarm slipped up my spine. Had he really fallen? Had he died? Had he crossed?
“Okay. I’ll look into it, hon.”
She nodded and force-fed her doll another bite. “You’ve been gone forever. I was looking for you, too. I thought you left.”
I reached over and smoothed her hair over her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d just seen me a few days prior. The departed didn’t always have the best sense of time. Maybe it was the same with her brother.
She lifted a tiny shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“Want to ride with me a while? I’m going to visit a woman accused of murder.”
After a yawn, she shrugged again. “I guess.”
Kids these days. So hard to keep entertained.
I started Misery, dragged my phone out of my pocket, and called Uncle Bob.