Lemon Tart (18 page)

“And no red flags?”

“Nope,” Breanna said. “I mean, other than the drug charges he’s
an upstanding citizen in every way.”

Sadie raised her eyebrows.

“Kidding,” Breanna quickly added. “But I got his current info
as well as former addresses, school history, and criminal record.”

“And he’s not an ex-con?” Sadie wasn’t always
thrilled with her daughter’s teasing nature.

“No,” Breanna said. “But he was once part-owner of a
mall kiosk that sold “Save the Wildlife” T-shirts—he had
to get a business license. The point is that if I found Liam, I bet we could
find Anne.”

“Well, a search like that sounds perfect,” Sadie said,
finishing off her sherbet as well. Breanna seemed to have forgotten all about
calling Detective Cunningham, which was fine by Sadie now that she had a lead
on getting more information about Anne. “If I could find a family member, maybe
I could call and talk to someone. Or an old landlord.”

“Or a probation officer,” Breanna added as they put their bowls
in the sink and headed to the computer again.

“Funny,” Sadie said as Breanna slid into the office chair.
Sadie grabbed a chair from the kitchen and returned to find Breanna already
logged into her Yahoo e-mail account and clicking through the web
site that promised to put the World Wide Web at your fingertips.

It took Breanna only a minute to get logged on to
findpeople.com. She entered Anne’s name and they waited almost a minute before
the site brought up a screen full of Anne Lemmons, and Annette Lemmons, and
Andreas, Antonias, and Annabelles. There were 167 names. To the side of some of
the names were an age, and on the left were lists of possible relatives.

“How do we know which one is the Anne we want?” Sadie asked,
feeling a little overwhelmed.

“Well, we know she’s in her mid-twenties, so this one that says
she’s 67 isn’t someone we need to worry about.”

“Okay, so that rules out half the list,” Sadie said, leaning
against the back of her chair.

“Hang on,” Breanna said. She started clicking in little boxes.
“I can eliminate a lot of them.” She kept clicking and after a few minutes the
possibilities were down to sixty-four. Still daunting.

“Was Anne her full name?” Breanna asked. “Or was it short for
something else?”

“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “But we know she came from Boston.”

“Right.” She started clicking again and narrowed the list down
to twenty-one names. Sixteen of them had no cities listed as addresses,
two had addresses in Massachusetts, and three showed Boston. Breanna clicked on
“Advance Search” and a pop-up window appeared full of empty fields
for additional information.

“So you don’t know anything else? What city she was born in?
The street she lived on in Boston? Date of birth? If we have a little more it
will narrow the search for us. Of course we’ll still have to pay for the final
report, but we can be more sure it’s the Anne Lemmon we’re looking for.”

“No,” Sadie said. “But,” she paused, “she was turning
twenty-six in January.”

“Do you know the exact day?”

“No,” Sadie answered. “Let’s try putting in just the year of
her birth.”

A pop-up appeared with the warning that they needed
more information to get the correct record.

“So you knew Liam’s birthday?” Sadie asked. “How else did you
find him?”

“His full name is William Harrison Martin the third—all
us interns used to tease him about that. And his birthday happens to be on
July 4, so he brought cupcakes for those of us working that day. Apparently
there are a lot of Anne-related Lemmons, though.”

Sadie stared at the screen, thinking about the calendar on the
fridge at Anne’s house. She got up casually and went to the front window, only
then remembering she couldn’t see Anne’s house from there. Stupid tree. Heavy
clouds had moved in during the last hour, making the day seem more spent than
it really was; it was barely 5:30.

“Huh, well I still need to call Detective Cunningham,” Sadie
said, feeling defeated as she eyed the clouds and wondered if they were holding
rain or snow. She’d spent this whole day trying to figure things out, and all
she’d succeeded in doing was uncovering Ron and Anne’s relationship and making
Detective Madsen extremely mad. “Maybe he’s figured out her date of birth.”

“I don’t think he’ll tell you, Mom, he’s the detective.”

“And I’m Anne’s friend,” Sadie said, turning from the window.
She smoothed a lock of hair off her face, only then remembering what a mess she
was. Her hair was sticky and for a moment it confused her, but then she caught
sight of the jars of applesauce on the counter. She was always a sticky mess
when she put up fruit. She attempted to reshape her hair and hoped it didn’t
look too awful. “You know, they won’t even tell me what’s going on. Outside of
harassing me, they give no consideration at all to my stake in this. Trevor’s
still gone and they won’t tell me anything.”

“It’s not their job to tell you anything,” Breanna said,
turning in her chair to face her mom. “I know you cared about Anne—though
if I were you, I’d be a heck of a lot more upset about what she was doing with
Ron—but the police can’t just hand information out left and
right. They don’t know you.”

Sadie snorted. “They won’t even try to get to know me. If they
did they would know that I am only trying to help, not to mention that all the
nonprofit work I do ought to speak for itself.”

Breanna started laughing and gave her mom an are-you-kidding? look. “Mo-om,”
she said as she shook her head. “The world doesn’t work that way. They are
trying to solve a murder.”

So am I, she
thought to herself, but she knew better than to say it out loud. Breanna seemed
primed to lecture her and Sadie braced herself for it, just as a little bell
dinged. Breanna quickly turned around and began typing into a pop-up
window that had appeared on the screen. Sadie moved close enough to look over
her shoulder.

“Liam?” she asked after reading the user name of
BatmanBrit.

“Yeah,” Breanna said with a nod, suddenly distracted. She typed
some more and then looked up at her mom. “A little privacy?” she asked. “And
don’t you need to call Detective Cunningham?”

Sadie smiled and took her cell phone and Detective Cunningham’s
business card to the back bedroom. Once the door was closed, however, her smile
fell. She did not relish this at all, but she picked up the card and punched
the number into her phone.

As she listened to the phone ring, she realized she still
didn’t know what she was going to say or just how much she was going to tell
him. By the time the phone had rung three times everything she’d done seemed
stupid since she really hadn’t figured anything out. All she had were more
questions. After the fourth ring, the call went to voice mail. She was
relieved.

“Detective Cunningham, this is Sadie Hoffmiller. Could you
please call me at your earliest convenience? I have some information I need to
tell you.” She hung up the phone and stared at it. “So not fair,” she said,
throwing the phone on the bed. She was working as hard as he was.

When she returned to the kitchen Breanna was still instant
messaging on the computer and the rich chocolate scent of baking brownies was
beginning to fill the room. Sadie took a deep breath of the heavenly aroma,
rolled up her sleeves, and set about doing the dishes. After that, she
retrieved her phone and went through the messages—two from
Breanna and half a dozen from Ron—she deleted them without
listening. She stared out her window, the color of the setting sun had turned
to a more appropriate shade of gray and the already darkened sky seemed to
isolate her from the world on the other side of the glass. She thought about
everything she’d learned today. She officially admitted to herself that she’d
been wrong; Trevor wasn’t with Ron. At least not anymore.

The cold outside the window was seeping inside, surrounding
her, making her joints ache and her head throb. Trevor’s
alive, she told herself. She refused to believe he was dead—it
was impossible. Ron must have taken him somewhere, but where? Trevor was two
years old, he couldn’t be left alone. But who would Ron have asked to take his
son? One of his other kids? It seemed unlikely he’d do that when he’d been
working so hard to keep his secret a secret.

It was a hopeless circle of questions without answers and she
turned away from the window as the police car that had been stationed at Anne’s
house left the cul-de-sac. It would be dark soon, and Trevor was
still out there somewhere. It was going to be a long night.

The timer on the stove startled her and she removed the
brownies from the oven while Breanna continued typing. Sadie folded some
laundry, and paid a couple bills that had come in the mail. Finally, at nearly
6:15—the brownies sufficiently cooled enough for travel—and
Breanna still online, she told Breanna she was taking the brownies to Mindy and
she’d be back soon. She pulled her green oven mitts over her hands, then had to
take them off in order to put on her jacket. A couple minutes later, she let
the screen door shut behind her, took a deep breath of the crisp air, and began
her journey down the front steps. Amid everything else, Sadie absolutely hated
knowing Mindy was unhappy with her, and with so much heartbreak and despair,
she very much wanted to repair things if she could. There was so much she
couldn’t fix that she was glad there was something she could make better.

Sadie’s Better Brownies

24 oz. (1
¹
/
₂
bags) semi-sweet chocolate chips (using
¹
/
₂
mint chocolate chips is delicious!)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

6 large eggs

2 cups granulated sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

1
¹
/
₂
cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1⁄4 teaspoon salt

1 cup walnuts (pecans are better than walnuts though
Shawn hates both)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and melt
chocolate chips and butter in a double boiler. (Or melt in microwave in
30-second increments, stirring between each heating until smooth.) Remove from
heat and set aside to cool slightly. In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs
and sugar. Mix in the melted chocolate and the vanilla. Add the flour, baking
powder, and salt to the chocolate mixture and mix well. Pour into a 9 x 13
greased pan and bake for about 35 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out
with just a few moist crumbs. Remove from oven and let cool before cutting into
2-inch squares.

Makes 24 brownies.

Chapter 18

Sadie headed
down the walk, glancing into the windows of Jack and Carrie’s home as she
approached. It was a ranch-style home, almost a perfect square, with
a carport on the side furthest from Sadie’s house. Jack had talked for years
about buying some land and building their dream house, but Carrie had wanted
the kids to finish their schooling in the same district, then she’d wanted them
to come back to a home they’d always known, so the dream was put off over and
over again. But they had a nice house, and Jack had already paid it off. The
white aluminum siding seemed to glow in the darkening evening, the windows
shining just a little bit brighter behind the closed blinds.

Sadie really was glad Trina had come home tonight. Otherwise,
despite Carrie’s earlier lack of sympathy, Sadie would still have been trying
to find a way to comfort her. It was nice to have one less person to worry
about—though Trina wasn’t necessarily gifted in thinking about
other people. Carrie had held on tighter to her youngest child, Trina, than to
any of the other girls. If Jack hadn’t forced her to go to college, Trina would
probably have lived at home forever.

Sadie was crossing Jack and Carrie’s driveway when she heard
the squeal of tires around the corner. Her first thought was that it was Ron
tracking her down, demanding they talk about this again. She immediately
planned her self-defense—she’d throw the
still-hot pan of brownies in his face and run for home, screaming if
necessary. She looked over her shoulder long enough to see a truck, not a black
Jetta. It was coming right for her though and she turned toward Jack and
Carrie’s porch, her heart hammering as she tried to get out of the way.

She was halfway up the front steps when the truck came to a
screeching halt in the driveway. It was all she could do to hold on to the
brownies while she ran. The driver’s door opened and she imagined herself being
gunned down. She was a risk to Ron, since she’d told him she knew everything.
Would he try to silence her? For good? Would Breanna be able to find a decent
picture for the obituary?

“Sadie?” said a voice she knew all too well. She stopped and
turned, letting out a breath as she recognized Jack’s truck that had been only
a blur of headlights a moment before. She would not die today. Thank
goodness.