What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(8)

Which was exactly what a good father would tell his daughter, but again, it was a factor that the investigating detectives could not ignore. The couple married because the woman got pregnant. Had the father felt trapped? Obligated? Not long after, the father was in debt, with creditors pursuing him. He had the financial strain of a new baby, a failed business, a wife with autism with whom he was fighting, and he had taken out a life insurance policy on his wife.

“I know how this probably looks,” Childress said, as if reading Tracy’s thoughts.

“Then you know it doesn’t look good,” Tracy said.

“But my father didn’t take the insurance money and buy himself a fancy car or a boat,” Childress said. “He used the money for a down payment on a house in West Seattle, and to get out from under the debt. When he moved to Medina, he gave the house to me.”

“Outright, or did you assume the mortgage?”

Another frown. “I assumed the mortgage, but he gave up what equity he had in the house.”

“What does he do now?”

“Now? He’s retired.”

“And his partner?”

“I’m going to just tell you this, so you don’t think I’m hiding anything. She comes from money. A lot of money. My father dated her in high school. They were high school sweethearts.”

“But they’ve never married?”

“He hasn’t told me this, but I think it’s because her parents don’t approve.”

“Because of the suspicions surrounding your mother’s disappearance?”

“Yes.”

Tracy left unsaid that giving up what equity her father did have in the house might possibly go a little way toward easing what guilt he also felt for killing his daughter’s mother, or toward convincing his partner’s family of his innocence.

“Are you and your father close?”

“Very. He was both mother and father to me. I felt bad for him when I got old enough to understand that he was a pariah. He lived a monastic, lonely life until I graduated high school.”

“Does he talk about your mother?”

Another headshake. “It was hard for him. What do you tell a little girl when you don’t have an answer? Do you tell her that her mother is dead? Do you tell her that her mother just took off one night and never came home? Is that somehow better?” Childress’s eyes again watered. This was painful.

“What did your father tell you happened to your mother?”

“He always said my mother loved me, and if she could be with me, she would. He said no one knew what happened to her, but wherever she was, whether she was in heaven looking down on us, or living someplace else, she loved me very much. She always had and she always would.”

It was a nice sentiment—enough, maybe, for a young girl to hold on to, for a while at least, until she grew up and wanted her own answers to her own questions about what happened to her mother.

Just as Tracy had sought answers about her sister.

“You sound like you love your father very much. Does he know you’re pursuing your mother’s cold case?”

“He does, but not the extent. He doesn’t know I’m meeting with you. I don’t believe he killed my mother, Detective. I don’t believe him capable.”

Tracy had known many people who had said much the same thing about someone they loved, only to be proven wrong. She also knew she’d have to speak to the father and make an assessment for herself.

“And what if, upon reopening your mother’s cold case, I find evidence to the contrary? Could you handle that?”

Childress dropped her gaze to the tabletop for a moment, then reengaged Tracy. “I want the truth, Detective. Whatever that may be.

Even if finding out what happened to my mother means losing my father.”





C H A P T E R 3

Tracy hurried up the porch steps, anxious to get home to Dan and Daniella. She stepped inside the front door and dropped her car keys in the bowl atop the pony wall. The sound prompted Roger, her cat, to pounce atop the wall, purring and looking to be fed. She picked him up and petted him as she called out, “Anyone home?”

That set off the home security system—a chorus of deep barks from Rex and Sherlock, the two Rhodesian-mastiffs Tracy inherited when she and Dan married. Roger squirmed free and shot from her arms. A thud, followed by a second thud, came from upstairs. The dogs had been on the bed—against Tracy’s rules. Nails clicked on the hardwood floor as the two dogs rushed to the landing at the top of the steps. They looked down at Tracy, tails wagging, but tentative.

“You know you’re not supposed to be on the bed,” she said. Rex shifted his eyes back to the master bedroom. An admission of guilt.

Sherlock, apparently deciding to seek forgiveness, lumbered his 140

pounds down the steps to greet her. “Good boy,” she said. “You’re in the will. Rex, you get a lump of coal.”

Rex whined and trudged back into the bedroom.

The two dogs had taken to Tracy, and she found great comfort in their presence, especially now with a daughter. She thought of Anita Childress, just two years old when her mother had disappeared. What a tragedy, on so many levels, for a young girl to grow up without a mother, compounded by the specter that her father might have been responsible.