“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.