Her Sister (Search For Love series) (2 page)

Trying
to prepare herself for the meeting, she shored up her courage and asked,
"Did Detective Grove say whether this lead means Lynnie's alive or
dead?"

A sharp
intake of breath met her question and then her mom answered, "He didn't
say, and I didn't ask.  I still have hope, Clare.  I always have."

Yes,
her mother had held onto the hope that Lynnie was still alive, that some
misguided woman had taken her and raised her for her own.  But a misguided
woman didn't steal a child from someone's house in the middle of the night.

False
hope was worse than no hope at all.  Clare and her dad understood each other on
that one point, at least.

"I'll
be there tomorrow, Mom, but please don't—"   She wasn't sure how to say
it.

"Please
don't believe in the best rather than the worst?  Oh, Clare.  Maybe as you get
older you'll learn that believing in the best is the only way to get through
some days.  I'll see you in the morning, honey."

Clare
and her mother weren't on the same wavelength...would never be on the same
wavelength.  Just like her and Shara?

She
said goodbye, hung up the phone and went to her daughter's room.  Arguing with
Shara would postpone thinking about the meeting tomorrow morning...a meeting
that could shake up all of their lives once more.

****

Amanda
Thaddeus stood before the 1930's hutch, staring through the glass door, barely
noticing the ornate gridwork, hardly aware of the Belleek cup and saucer
inside.  Turning away from the hutch and the 1930's collection—the maple
rocker, the oak desk, the European armoire—Amanda understood her search for
antiques to fill her shop had been an ongoing quest to find Lynnie.  Not that
it made any sense.  But she'd always looked everywhere, no matter where she
went.

Couldn't
her little girl be around that street corner?  Hidden in a doorway?  In the
backseat of that car?  She'd practically driven herself and Max crazy...until
he'd spent less and less time with her...until they'd searched
separately...until he'd started drinking.

Until
he'd
stopped
drinking and found a cause.

Her
cause
had been a little different—to make a life for her and Clare without Lynnie,
and then without Max.  Oh, he was there for Clare when he wasn't working on an
important case.  He never shirked his financial responsibilities.  But Amanda
had found purpose in succeeding on her own.

The
search for Lynnie had almost bankrupted them.  Fortunately her own mother's
legacy, a farmhouse filled with antiques, had given her the chance to make a
living.

Yesteryear
mattered.

When
the door to her shop opened and Detective Grove stepped inside, she felt almost
dizzy with anticipation, both dreading and craving whatever news he'd brought. Her
hands became clammy and that piece of toast in her stomach felt like it was
jumping around.  Trying to hold onto her composure, she concentrated on the
detective, seeing  immediately the evidence of the passage of years around his
eyes, his mouth, his thick jowls, his receding hairline.

"Detective
Grove," she said in what she hoped was a composed, even tone.

"Mrs.
Thaddeus."  His gaze appraised her, probably noticing the difference the
years had made in her, too, particularly her strawberry-blond hair.  As a young
mother she had worn it long.  Now it framed her face in the natural waves she'd
once despised with gray mixed into the strawberry blond.  At fifty-six she'd
come to terms with how her appearance had changed, how her body had changed and
how her life had changed.

Before
she could voice even one of her many questions, the ding of the bell sounded
again and her ex-husband stepped over the threshold.  She couldn't look at Max
without remembering everything—the good, the bad and the ugly.  Still, when she
looked into those intense brown eyes—Clare's eyes and Lynnie's eyes—she
couldn't quell a stirring deep inside of her that remembered intimacy with this
man.  His thick brows once as dark brown as his hair were laced with silver
now.  His angular face had an almost gaunt look this morning and she knew that
was probably because he hadn't slept all night, just as she hadn't, thinking
about what Detective Grove was going to tell them.  In jeans, running shoes and
a red windbreaker, Max looked less like the juvenile law attorney he was than a
man ready for a weekend of whatever might come his way.  But then, Max had
always been prepared for anything.

Except
for losing a daughter.

"Clare
was pulling in as I came in."  His deep voice resonated in the room.

No—
It's
nice to see you, Amanda.
 No—
How are you, Amanda?
 No hug just to
let her know he knew what she was feeling.  But then she wasn't rushing toward
him with an embrace, either.

The
bell over the door tinkled again as Clare came into
Yesteryear,
hugged
Max and didn't let go for a long time.

Amanda
could feel all of her daughter's anxiety, as well as her own.  Clare didn't
confide in her.  That hadn't changed from when she was a teenager.  But the
deep down sadness and the fear that had been with Clare ever since Lynnie was
taken from them, Amanda could feel, too.  She'd been so lost in the search for
Lynnie, in the absence of Lynnie, that she hadn't realized for a long time how
deep that fear
was
in Clare—the fear that she'd not only lose her
sister, but her mother and her father, too.

After
Max released his daughter, Clare came to her.  When Amanda put her arm around
Clare's shoulders, her daughter stiffened and Amanda wished, as with so many
other things, that this would be different, too.

"Do
you want to do this in your office?" Detective Grove asked gruffly.

Leading
the way, taking a deep breath of the past as well as potpourri, Amanda motioned
to the open door at the back of the store.  The space was small—a hutch with a
computer, file cabinets, a set of bookshelves for all her reference books on
antiques.  Her swivel desk chair and the captain's chair always resided there,
but she'd tugged in two ladder back chairs from the shop, so they'd all have
someplace to sit.

"I'll
be right back," she told everyone now.  "I need to put the
Closed
sign on the door."  She could have had one of her salesclerks come in
today.  But she hadn't wanted the distraction.  She hadn't wanted chatter and
laughter in the store.  She hadn't wanted anyone else around after the
detective left, no matter what he had to say.  Composure was everything now, at
least when others were around.

When
she returned to her office, no one was speaking.  Detective Grove sat with his
hands clasped between his knees, staring at the floor.  Max was watching Clare
as she stared out the window.  Clare and Lynnie had looked so much alike as
children.  If Lynnie was alive, would she and Clare look alike today?  Probably
not.

Amanda
perched on her desk chair and waited.

Grove
looked up, saw that she and Max were seated across the room from each other and
didn't seem to know which one of them to address.  Finally his gaze locked to
Max's.  "I know you want me to cut to the chase, so here it is.  Luther
Brown is on death row in Texas, awaiting execution for the murder of two little
girls."

Amanda
heard Clare's sharp intake of breath, saw her daughter wrap her arms around
herself as if in protection for whatever came next.

"His
sister," Grove went on, "was charged as a co-conspirator.  But she
made a deal, led the authorities to the bodies and got life without the
possibility of parole.  It turns out she was diagnosed with cancer about four
months ago—pancreatic cancer.  It's moving fast and she doesn't have long to
live.  Apparently she held something back during the deal-making.  No way to
tell why.  No way to tell whether loyalty to her brother was still important to
her.  But what she held back was a journal Brown had kept."

Amanda's
heart pounded now and her gaze met Max's.  Over the years, they'd learned more
than they'd wanted to know about child abductions, kidnappings, pedophiles and
anything else that might help them find their daughter.  When Lynnie had been
taken, there had been a minimal knowledge of all of it.  Some police
departments had been more well-informed than others.  There hadn't been a
Missing Children's Act or Amber Alerts then.  Everything had been different. 
Everything had been disorganized.  Everything had been a guess and a hope with
little or no strategy and no organization.

From
the research, she knew not all pedophiles were killers.  But she also knew that
in some pedophiles, their propensity for violence increased with each child
they abused.

Tearing
his gaze from hers, Max asked Grove bluntly, "Are you telling us Lynnie is
dead?"

"No. 
That's not what I'm telling you.  Hear me out before you jump to
conclusions."

"Hear
you out?  Like you heard me out when Lynnie was abducted?"

Amanda
could still hear the old anger ringing resoundingly in her husband's voice.

Only a
day or so into the investigation, Grove's suspicion had fallen on Max.  But Max
had passed a lie detector test.  And once they had finally listened to Clare jabber
about a blue car,
everything
had changed.  Still, Grove had never apologized
to Max for the hell he'd put him through.

Ignoring
Max's question, Grove took a small notebook from his shirt pocket, flipped it
open and studied his scribbles.  "Brown's journal started in 1980.  He's
not an educated man but he
is
a smart one.  He was trained as an
electrician.  My guess is he worked on your new house.  He saw you when you
came through with your family, checking it out from foundation to carpet
laying.  I suspect he was there the day the doorknobs were set.  Either he
stole a key or managed to rig the lock on that basement door that went
outside."

"All
the locks were the same," Amanda murmured, knowing one key unlocked them
all.

"Convenient
then and now.  Some people still do that today who aren't security conscious. 
But in a little burg like Pine Hill, where no one even locked their doors back
then, even just picking the lock wasn't a problem for somebody like him."

"Was
Lynnie in his journal?"  Clare's voice was small and she sounded more like
a child than an adult.

"This
is how it goes," Grove said with the lines around his mouth cutting a deep
frown.  "The journal had details, dates and places.  When Brown first
started doing this, the kids seemed to vary in age from three to seven. He
snatched them, kept them somewhere for a while, then abandoned them."

Amanda
knew there was a world of information the detective wasn't giving them.  But
she didn't care right now.  She just wanted to know what that journal said
about Lynnie.

"Abandoned
them where?" Max asked sharply.

"He
drove them three to four hours away, left them at a church, or a school or a
shopping center."

"What
did he do with Lynnie?"  Amanda couldn't keep the question inside.

"That's
the thing, Mrs. Thaddeus.  There was no Lynnie from Pennsylvania in his
journal.  But there was a Winnie, though.  And another little girl, Barbara. 
He listed both of them as abandoned near Pittsburgh."

"Lynnie
has a lisp and couldn't say L's," Clare told the detective.  "They
always came out as W's.  She couldn't even get out Thaddeus most of the time. 
It came out as 'Saddees'."

Everything
Clare remembered about Lynnie was right and apparently she hadn't forgotten
even the smallest detail about her sister.  Amanda watched the former detective
assimilate Clare's information which might have been in the original report.  
After all these years, Amanda wasn't sure what the police still had on file.

"There
are a couple of things I want you to keep in mind," Grove counseled them. 
"When Brown's sister told the authorities about the journal and they obtained
a warrant and confiscated it, she also told them that her brother changed the
little girls' names.  During the time they were with him, he gave them a new
name—a name from Louisa May Alcott's
Little Women
.  So looking for
Lynnie Thaddeus was a lost cause.  What I did have were the Pittsburgh
destinations and the possibility of four names—Beth, Meg, Amy and Jo.  I
checked dates of foster children coming into the system from Pittsburgh and
surrounding locations.  Although Brown's journal listed both drop-offs as June,
I could only find one child who matched Lynnie's statistics—age, hair and eye
color, height.  Her name is Amy.  No surname was recorded until after her
adoption.  She was placed with a foster family after she was abandoned at a
shopping center.  They eventually adopted her.  The FBI is involved and I have
legal roadblocks to deal with, sealed records, that kind of thing.  But I'm
making progress and I wanted you to know that.  What I
don't
want to do
is raise false hope.  This might not be Lynnie.  A DNA test will be the only
way to find out.  But it's something we've never had before.  Something solid. 
And I thought you should know."