What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(24)

Dan looked to the pot of boiling water and changed the subject.

“I thought we could have my famous pasta—”

“Infamous,” Tracy said, trying to get him to smile.

“Open a good bottle of wine to go with it, get Daniella down early, and watch a movie.”

“Whew,” she whispered and ran a hand dramatically across her forehead. “For a minute I thought you were going to end that

sentence with and make love.”

“That’s not a bad option either.”

“Unfortunately, Little Miss Dog Feeder needs her bath, and after we both eat your infamous sauce, we won’t be able to stand being in the same room together.”

“Garlic’s a little overpowering?”

“Like a stake through the heart of Count Dracula.”

“Well, we still have option A.”

“I’ll get Daniella a bath and open the door for the hounds to clean up her mess,” Tracy said. She got a whiff of Daniella and lifted her up to smell her diaper. “Speaking of odors . . .”

Forty minutes later, Daniella was in her crib, and Tracy cleaned up what remained of the sauce on her plate with a piece of garlic bread.

“Nothing like garlic and garlic,” she said.

Dan refilled her wineglass. “How was your day?”

“You want to get more depressed?” Tracy asked.

Dan smiled. “Helps me to change the subject.”

“Okay.” Tracy set her plate aside, picked up her glass, and sipped her wine, a Barolo from the Piedmont region of Italy and generally considered the finest of Italian reds. Dan had talked of putting a wine cellar in the basement, and he had been trying different wines to stock. She told him about Anita Childress and about what Tracy had learned about Anita’s missing mother. “It was originally considered a missing person case, not a homicide.”

“And how are you considering it?”

“Homicide. I don’t have any doubt she’s dead.”

“Has anyone considered otherwise?”

“It’s statistics, Dan. Unless a missing woman is found within forty-eight hours, the odds of her being alive are greatly diminished.

After twenty-five years . . .”

“What if it was neither of those?”

“Neither of what was neither of those?”

“That was a mouthful. Maybe we should cut off the wine.” He moved the bottle to the side. “I meant, what if Childress wasn’t abducted. Then maybe she isn’t dead.”

“The odds strongly favor that she is dead.”

“But odds are only created if a probability exists that there is an alternative.”

“Speaking of cutting someone off . . . Did you open a bottle of wine before I got home, Dan O’Leary? The probability she is alive is extremely low.”

“If she was abducted. What if she just walked away?”

“And left her child? Her daughter? I’ve considered it, but I’m having a hard time believing it.”

“It would increase her odds of getting away with it, then, wouldn’t it?”

“How?”

“Because people would think just as you’re thinking—that a mother would never leave a daughter.”

Tracy considered Dan’s reasoning—circular, for certain, but tough to refute. “Maybe. But the evidence strongly indicates Larry Childress killed her.”

“Maybe you’re right. I’m just saying her walking away is another possibility to consider. Doesn’t sound like anyone ever looked at it seriously.”

Tracy knew that it was a possibility, particularly if Childress’s autism affected the way she related to being a mother. She didn’t know much about autism, but she wondered if perhaps Lisa Childress thought her daughter would be just fine without her, as Anita had intimated happened when her mother pursued a story.

Still, she didn’t think it likely.

“It’s a possibility, but not a probability.”

“So then why are you concerning yourself with her investigative files if you think the husband killed her?”

Tracy knew why. “Honestly, because I don’t want to tell a woman who lost a mother that she’s also going to lose a father. I don’t think she fully understands the ramifications of what that might mean.”

“You’re protecting her.”

“I don’t want to give her the false hope that her mother might be alive. I thought maybe if I could find enough evidence to indicate it could have been someone other than her father, that would at least be something she could take solace in.”

“Everyone who buys a lottery ticket has false hope, Tracy, even the person who actually wins. People figure, What can it hurt to buy the ticket and entertain that false hope? ”

“Again, maybe I’ve had a glass too much, but not following . . .”

“What can it hurt Anita Childress if you run it up the flagpole that maybe her mother took off?”

“Once again, Dan O’Leary, you are the eternal optimist, but I get your point.”

“Maybe I am. I’d rather be the guy actually holding that winning lottery ticket, but . . . even I’m not that eternal of an optimist.”





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