The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(39)

Jared got Kelly another brownie from the top of the fridge, and then one for himself. He picked at it with a fork, still standing up.

“Did you talk to Carrie yourself?” I asked. “When she called for Kelly?”

“Just for a moment. She was very insistent that she wanted to talk to Kelly. I told her I wanted to talk to her afterward, but she didn’t wait.”

“What did she say? Did she say where she was or if she planned to come back?” If she was struggling with depression, then that was an excuse for leaving her daughter behind, I suppose. But at some point, wouldn’t she want to come home?

“All she said was that she was fine and she wasn’t hurt.” Jared’s fork was halfway to his mouth and he held it there for a long moment before putting it back to the plate.

“I want Mommy to come back,” said Kelly. “Make her come back, Daddy.”

Jared looked at me.

“You have to tell the police,” I said. “Think of all the money and labor hours being spent on this case when they could be spent on another.” How many days ago was it that I had convinced the Westons to go on television to make sure the whole world knew their daughter was mysteriously missing? And now what was I doing?

Jared swallowed hard and looked down at the plate.

Kelly was eyeing his brownie as if she were ready to plead for a third.

I reached over and swiftly lifted her father’s plate from the counter to the sink, dumping the brownie and then rinsing it down the disposal.

Kelly looked sad for a moment, then brightened. “Will Mommy be coming home soon?” she asked.

Jared patted her fluffy head of hair, as messy as ever. “I hope so,” he said.

Would he take back a wife who had run off with another man, if she came back and asked him to? The letter the Westons had read seemed to indicate not. “Do you want me to sit with Kelly while you talk to the police?” I asked.

“Yes, thank you,” said Jared. “I’d appreciate that.”

In the end, he didn’t have me make the call for him. Only five minutes after he’d hung up, the doorbell rang. The real detectives had arrived.

Jared spoke quietly to the police in the next room while Kelly and I played with some toys she’d brought down to show me. I murmured pleasant things to her while trying to listen in on the other conversation. I only caught occasional snatches and those brought me no new information.

It wasn’t until the police were nearly finished that it occurred to me to follow up with Kelly on what she had said about dropping her mother off in the car. If that car ride had happened in the middle of the night, as the gas station footage seemed to suggest, then what did it mean that Carrie had called Kelly this morning?

“Kelly, come here for a minute,” I said, and pulled her onto my lap. “Do you remember when you told me about saying goodbye to your mommy?”

She nodded.

“Did she sound the same to you then as she did today on the telephone?”

“She didn’t talk before. She won’t talk when she’s mad at Daddy,” said Kelly.

“And today?” I asked.

“She was happy today,” said Kelly. “She said she would come back, that she was bringing me a new doll, the one with the blue hair like I told her I wanted. But last time, she said I couldn’t have it. She said she didn’t want me to have a doll with a belly ring.”

A crass way to buy forgiveness—if it really was Carrie Helm.

I concentrated once more on the footage of the family car at the gas station at 3:00 A.M. “Kelly, I want you to think hard about this. Why did your father take you in the car with him the morning your mother disappeared?”

“He didn’t want to leave me home by myself,” said Kelly. “Mommy leaves me sometimes by myself, but Daddy never does.”

And now I wondered what kind of a mother Carrie Helm had been. “Where was your mother sitting?”

“In the front, by Daddy.”

“Did you see her?” I asked.

Kelly thought for a long moment. She shook her head. “I was sleepy,” she said.

“But you know she was there?”

Kelly nodded.

“How do you know that?”

“Daddy kept talking to her,” she said.

“One last question, Kelly. Do you remember where your daddy drove to? Was it any place familiar?” The gas station he had stopped at had been several miles north of Draper, just off I-15, but that didn’t say much. He could have been coming back and forth from almost anywhere north or west.

Kelly closed her eyes, thinking hard. “It was dark out,” she said. “I sawed a big moon.”

So that was that.

The police left a few minutes later and Jared came in to thank me for watching Kelly.

“What did they say?” I asked.

“That they would look into it. I can only hope they find her and this all ends.” He gestured at the news vans outside.

“Do you want her to come back, then?” I asked.

“Of course I do. More than anything,” said Jared. And of all the things he had said, this sounded the most true.





CHAPTER 14




It took two days for the police to find the cell phone that had called Kelly Helm from Las Vegas, but by the time they had tracked it, it had been thrown in the trash of a casino. There was no sign of Carrie Helm or the mysterious man named Will who had answered. The phone itself was prepaid and had been bought with cash in St. George, Utah, two weeks before Carrie’s disappearance.