Key Lime Pie (25 page)

Remembering that her phone had rung while she’d been in the car with Joe, she pulled it out of her purse to see who’d called.

A shiver ran through her as she saw Pete’s number next to a tiny picture of him. Her daughter, Breanna, had showed her how to customize her phone so that a person’s picture came up with the number. The tiny Pete looked up at her, a slight smile on his face, and she realized that she missed him. Immediately she felt ridiculous. They hadn’t really had a relationship in the first place, they just both had really
wanted
to have one, and she’d chosen to cut it off.

He’d left a voice mail, and Sadie took a deep breath to prepare herself before she pushed the button to listen to the message. Gayle’s message was first. As Sadie had expected, she was reporting that the trailer was cleaned and ready to go—and that Eric’s neighbor, Brian, was kind of cute. Sadie shook her head, but felt a fledgling hope that maybe Brian would help distract Gayle from Pete.

Speaking of Pete, he was the next message on her phone, and she bit her lip as his voice elicited another wave of . . . what? Nostalgia? Regret? Tenderness? She focused on his words instead of his voice. “Sadie, I just received a strange call from a police sergeant in southern Florida. He had a lot of questions about you and Eric.” Pete paused and Sadie cringed. “I had no choice but to share the information about your conviction with him, but I did try to emphasize that it’s your only run-in—ever—and that you pled guilty and are nearly finished with your sentence. On a personal note, I’m not sure what to think about any of this. Please call me back.”

What Sadie wouldn’t do for a rewind button! Then she wouldn’t have looked in the box, and she wouldn’t have come to Florida and led Pete to believe she had come here with Eric. She was so embarrassed, and yet she couldn’t think of anything she could say to Pete if she called him back right now. What must he think of her? Was he wrong to think it? She
had
chased Eric to Florida, and she was in the middle of yet another investigation. But therein lay her redemption—she was on the brink of possibly finding Megan, which would justify everything she’d done so far. She couldn’t regret that entirely, no matter how much Pete’s good opinion of her mattered.

She looked out the window as she tried to be confident in what she was doing and attempted to distract herself by focusing on the city beyond her window—a city that she hoped to leave behind as quickly as possible. As soon as she did just one more thing.

It seemed she’d traveled all over Miami today, yet Joe had said it was small for a big city. To Sadie it just kept going and going and going; she hadn’t seen the beach yet, though she’d seen glimpses of ocean now and again. Gayle had said Florida was one of the most romantic places in the country. Sadie wished she could see that side of Florida. The next thought she posed to herself was if she’d
want
to see that side of Miami with Eric. She wasn’t sure she did.

Her phone rang from inside her purse, and she nearly shouted “Hallelujah,” glad to have a reprieve from her miserable thoughts—until she realized it could be Pete calling her back. When she recognized the Florida area code she almost relaxed—until she realized it could be Eric. Was he calling her from Layla’s house instead of on his cell phone? Her stomach sank as she wondered what she could say to him right now with so many whirling thoughts taking place in her brain. Chickening out wasn’t the answer either though. On the third ring, she took a deep breath and answered.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Hoffmiller?”

“Yes,” Sadie said, recognizing the voice immediately. “Sergeant Mathews?” She didn’t want to talk to him either and wished she’d let the call go to voice mail after all. Too late now.
What does he know?
she wondered. What could she say without making everything worse? Was there any way he could know she’d placed that 911 call?

“Are you still with Mr. Burton?”

She thought back to when she’d been leaving the police station and insisted that she wasn’t with Eric. She’d worried then that Mathews thought she was lying. Knowing she was still in town must make him pretty certain she had lied. She paused before deciding to tell him as much of the truth as she could. “No, I’m not.”

“Are you on your way back to Colorado?”

Sadie wished she could tell him she was about to get on a plane right that minute. “No,” she said simply.

He waited for more, but she remained silent.

“Then where are you?”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant, but I can’t tell you that.”

Mathews was quiet for what felt like a long time. Sadie shifted in her seat trying to shake off the tension that built with each second Mathews didn’t say anything.

“Mr. Burton is withholding information,” Mathews said, his voice cool. “And while he likes to think that we can’t charge him with anything, he’s mistaken. We’re giving him some space because of what he’s dealing with, but he is not in good standing with us right how. I want to make sure you understand the predicament that puts you in if you are currently acting on the information he’s withholding from us.”

Sadie swallowed. That was perhaps the most professional reprimand she’d ever heard. There was no way to argue with him about what he’d said, but neither was she inclined to tell him everything that had happened since she’d left the police station. Not yet. “I’m not acting on anything Eric’s told me,” she said. Joe had told her what she was acting on now. “Thank you for your concern, Sergeant.” She hoped she sounded confident but not snotty. She couldn’t believe she was creating problems with yet another police department. “I appreciate your concern, and you’ll be the first person I call if I learn anything concrete.”

Mathews let out a breath laced with disappointment and frustration. “That’s not good enough,” he said. “I know you understand how serious it is to withhold information, Mrs. Hoffmiller. It would be a shame to add a charge so soon after the one you received in Colorado.”

Sadie felt her cheeks heat up. “Sergeant Mathews,” she said. “I swear I’m not trying to be difficult, it’s just that what I know won’t be helpful unless I—”

“I am asking you to come into the police station as soon as possible. The case may rest upon you following this direction.”

“I don’t know where Eric is,” Sadie hedged. “And I don’t know what he’s involved in other than he really wants to find his daughter and he believes that working with the police will prevent that.”

“I need to know what you know,” Mathews said.

“I don’t know anything,” Sadie said, and it was true. She didn’t
know
a single thing, but she
suspected
several things, and she was working on confirming those details. “When I do know something, you’ll be the first person I call.”

“Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said in a warning tone.

She felt horrible doing it, and could only imagine the trouble she was getting herself into, but she pressed the end button, hanging up on Sergeant Mathews. She hoped he’d assume the call had simply been dropped at an inopportune moment.

She stared at the phone in her hand. “Did I really just do that?” she asked herself out loud.

Yes,
she answered herself silently.
I did.

Ugh, she hated being so disagreeable, but she wasn’t sure how to explain what she was doing, or what had happened with Joe.

She wished Sergeant Mathews could understand that she wasn’t being coy or trying to hide something; she had to make sure she didn’t ruin Eric’s chances of finding his daughter. Sadie didn’t know what she would do if Liliana Miriam Montez wasn’t Megan. And knowing that Megan didn’t necessarily want to come home made this meeting an even more precarious situation.

“Main doe’s?” Monty asked, and Sadie looked up to see a huge white building half a block in front of them.

“Wow,” she whispered in awe, unable to answer him directly. The sunlight reflecting off the windows and white stone—or stucco—walls made the building look as though it were glowing. There were palm trees reaching toward the upper floors, and Sadie wondered how on earth she was going to find Megan—or Liliana Montez—amid that many rooms.

Monty drove up to the main entrance and stopped in front of the large glass doors.

Sadie took a deep breath. “Wish me luck,” she said, tucking her purse under the backseat and hoping she wasn’t an idiot to leave it behind. She couldn’t pretend to be a hospital volunteer with a purse on her arm, and Monty had given Sadie no reason to distrust him—quite the opposite, in fact.

“You’ll wait here?” she asked, even though he’d already said he would.

“Yes, mum,” he said, smiling back at her.

She stepped out of the car and let her eyes travel up the front of the building. She had butterflies in her stomach as she moved forward and worked on gathering her wits about her. She hated not knowing what her plan was after she found Megan, assuming the woman in the hospital was Megan in the first place. She’d call Eric, certainly, but then what? Would she go to Mathews? Would she return Pete’s call? A glance at the clock behind the receptionist’s desk said it was a quarter after four. She would need to call Eric before he headed for the track where he would
not
be meeting Joe at six.

A pink-haired elderly woman at the front desk smiled as Sadie approached. Sadie smiled back at her. “Hello,” she said when she reached the desk, looking at the woman’s name tag that read “Volunteer.” “I’m here to visit with Liliana Montez,” she said. “She was admitted to Labor and Delivery yesterday morning.” Would she still be in Labor and Delivery, though? Having adopted her children, Sadie wasn’t sure how it all worked at a hospital.

The woman continued smiling and blinked behind her thick glasses. “I’m sorry, we don’t give out patient room information.”

“She’s expecting me,” Sadie lied. “And with the baby and all, she forgot to tell me the room.”

“We don’t give out patient room information,” the woman repeated, still smiling.

“But I just need to—”

“We don’t give out patient room information.”

Sadie tried for another two minutes to get the information she wanted, but the woman wouldn’t budge no matter how many ways Sadie tried to ask her. Where was a plate of Butterfinger cookies when she needed it? No one could resist them; Sadie felt sure that if she had some to offer, this woman would be putty in hands, privacy laws or no privacy laws.

When the woman’s smile began to fall and her eyes behind the glasses began to narrow, Sadie stopped mid-sentence and took a breath, forcing a smile she knew looked like stone. “Thanks anyway,” she said, determining that since she knew what unit Megan was in, she could find her easily enough. “Thank you.”

She headed toward the elevators before realizing the receptionist was likely still watching her. She looked over her shoulder to find she was right. The old woman’s eyes burned through her thick glasses. Were Sadie an ant and this woman’s eyes the sun, she’d have been incinerated.

She kept her smile fixed and headed . . .
right,
toward the cafeteria and emergency room. There had to be an elevator over there as well so it would be convenient for the nurses to grab an egg salad sandwich when the craving hit them.

A big sign hung from the ceiling pointing to the elevators ahead. She hurried forward, almost passing the hospital pharmacy and gift shop before she came up short. After the receptionist’s less-than-warm welcome, would Sadie simply be able to walk into Megan’s room? And what was she going to say when she got there? If Megan had left of her own accord, which it seemed she had done, then she was likely pretty uncomfortable being back in Miami.

Sadie needed a cover. She distinctly remembered Eric mentioning how Layla would brush out Megan’s hair every night before bed back when Megan was little and Layla was still well. Sadie checked her pocket, verifying that she still had her travel cash with her. Perfect.

A few minutes later, she left the gift shop with a bottle of lotion, a hairbrush, and a plain blue scrub top that she hoped made her seem more official, even if it was absolutely shapeless. With her head held high, she continued to the elevator and became even more optimistic that she could pull this off when a directory sign listed that Labor and Delivery was on the third floor. Perfect. She’d start there since it was the unit Megan had been admitted to, and then move on to Maternity if she didn’t find her.

The doors on the third floor seemed to go on forever, but as Sadie approached the nurses’ station she saw a big, dry-erase board with last names and a few columns of statistics. At the end of each row was a room number. Sadie slowed down enough to find Montez at the very end of the list, with a couple spaces between it and the next highest name on the list. She wondered why it was set apart from the others, then followed the line across to room number 323. So much for patient privacy.

She took a breath and let it out slowly, nodding politely to a nurse who was hurrying down the hall. Room 323 was at the very end of the hall, and a pink sign placed above the room number read “Surgical.”