Ivy knew Sheriff Dunst was visiting some of the outlying area, inquiring as to whether anyone knew Gabriella or could identify her. What leads could Joel possibly have?
“The piano, downstairs.” Ivy spun around to explain to Joel, but her sleeve caught on the windowsill. The rip of her cuff stilted her turn. “For heaven’s sake,” she muttered, and inspected her dress.
Joel pushed up against her, and she jerked her head up in surprise at his close proximity. But his attention wasn’t on her. He reached for the jagged edge on the windowsill, the wood beginning to rot from moisture and age. When he pulled his hand back, there was a small piece of material in his fingertips, no larger than a penny.
“Here.” Joel handed it to her as if she would be able to piece it back onto her dress.
Ivy frowned and reached for it, but her fingers stilled as they reached his. “That’s not mine.”
Joel looked closely at the scrap of material in his hand, then gave her dress a cursory glance. The faded gray calico was nowhere near the same shade as her serviceable blue.
A thousand prickles met her skin again, but this time they had nothing to do with Joel. Ivy carefully took the calico from him and pressed it into her palm, lifting it so they could both see. There it was. The tiny piece of material. Proof that Gabriella had been in Foster Hill House.
“It’s Gabriella’s. This is from the dress she was wearing when she was found.”
Joel’s voice dropped a few bars. “You’re certain? No doubts?”
“None.” Ivy couldn’t help the slight upturn of her mouth as she locked eyes with Joel. Gabriella had been one of the secrets the house on Foster Hill concealed. A definitive starting point was identified. It was one painfully small step toward finding out who Gabriella was and, most important of all, what had happened to the little baby she had birthed only weeks before her death.
Chapter 9
Kaine
He was here. He had followed her. Kaine’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. She should have told her sister, but Leah would have insisted Kaine come home. And why couldn’t she? Because she didn’t want to. The memories, the grief, not to mention the most blaring reason: Her leaving San Diego was to get away from this terror.
She braked as she rounded a corner in her Jetta, casting a glance at the picture of Danny that lay on the passenger seat where she’d tossed it. The picture that had been sitting in the middle of the barren floor was an 8-by-10 print from a color ink-jet printer, stolen from one of her online photo galleries. She’d thought she deleted them all, but apparently not. Danny’s smile ripped into Kaine’s heart. She stifled a sob and adjusted her grip on the steering wheel, staring at the road ahead.
Who was this dedicated to playing such horrific psychological games? Why had they taken Danny’s life? Now they were pilfering pictures of him off the internet? Kaine needed to find a coffee shop with Wi-Fi and do a Google search of her name again to find which online photos still existed in cyberspace. She’d already changed her email, ditched her original cellphone for a new one, and erased her Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.
Oak trees whisked by her car in straight lines, like soldiers. Had her stalker driven past them? Kaine was no stranger to stalkers. Her entire career as a social worker for abused women had her shielding, defending, and helping women escape the beasts in their lives. Some of the women were victims of sex trafficking, bound to a pimp who valued their worth only in a monetary sense. Escape was never easy and too often ended badly. Kaine’s fervor to save had ended abruptly with Danny’s death. Her life was surrounded by violence, and she’d reached the end of her tolerance for it.
“God, please.” She begged the Lord through clenched teeth as she rounded a corner. Why would this elusive unknown follow her across country? She’d been more than happy to dismiss the daffodil on day one as Joy’s daughter’s accidental token of greeting. But now? Kaine blew out a puff of air. She hadn’t been paranoid after all. Once again, circumstances proved to her she wasn’t suffering from PTSD any more than Elvis was actually alive.
Her car brought her into view of downtown Oakwood. Her phone GPS called out her next turn, and she rounded the corner to pull into her destination. Tilting her head, Kaine peered through the windshield at the Oakwood Police Department building—a tan brick structure with a glass door and two windows on either side. Not at all like the San Diego precinct.
She closed her eyes. The memories of past police interviews filtered through her mind. The doubt written across the detective’s face, his reminder that she had just lost her husband in an accident, and the implication that her stress caused her to forget she had moved the items, not some stalker. Kaine squeezed the steering wheel. If the San Diego Police Department didn’t believe her and couldn’t find substantial evidence to support her claims of break-ins, then what would the Oakwood Police do? In a rinky-dink town whose worst crime in the last fifty years was probably an elementary student stealing bubblegum from the local grocery store.
Still. Why take chances?
Within minutes, Kaine pulled open the station door, Danny’s copy-paper picture clutched in her hand.
A window of plexiglass separated Kaine from the officer at the desk.
“Can I help you?”
“I need to file a report.” Kaine prepared herself for the all-too familiar barrage of questions. Soon she was seated across from a robust detective holding a spiral-bound notebook and clicking a pen against his teeth.
“Detective Carter.”
“Kaine Prescott.” She wanted to scream. Her foot tapped a nervous cadence against the leg of the wooden chair. Detective Carter glanced at it. Kaine stopped.
“So, you experienced a break-in?” he inquired.
“Yes.” Kaine explained the location, the circumstances, and ended by placing Danny’s picture on the desktop. She had to avoid looking at it. His grin lit up the room from the paper and drove the knife of guilt deeper into her soul. He’d died not knowing how much she really did love him. “This picture was left in an upstairs bedroom. It’s of my husband, who died two years ago.”
“And there was no vandalism?”
“Not that I could tell.” But really, it was Foster Hill House. Someone could bust down a door, and unless Kaine had made mental note of it standing, she’d venture it matched the rest of the dilapidated structure.
“Huh,” the detective said. “Do you know anyone in the area? Anyone who would think leaving a picture of your husband would be . . . a bad joke?”
A bad joke? “No.”
“And your husband, how did he pass away?”
What did she say? Her husband was murdered two years ago? The nice detective would contact the San Diego Police and find out it’d been an “accident.” She was being stalked? Oh, yes, the police would identify her as exhibiting symptoms of an anxiety disorder and tell him she’d been warned she could be charged with making false claims.