Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(85)
Raegan scanned shelves for anything personal she could talk about to form a connection with the older woman and cut the tension. Maybe if she could get Mrs. Kasdan reminiscing or talking about family she would open up a little more.
Raegan moved through the room, professionally decorated with spendy furnishings and trinkets that looked as if they’d come straight from the pages of Pottery Barn. There were no personal photos on the shelves or the walls. None of the Kasdan family or Mrs. Kasdan’s son. None even of Mrs. Kasdan’s professed loves—the ballet company or the children’s museum.
Raegan found that odd. If this were her home, she’d have pictures of Emma and Alec all over those shelves. Her heart rolled when she thought of Alec again, but she drew a breath and kept scanning. At the end of the library, she spotted a heavy wood door that made her stop.
Common sense told her Mrs. Kasdan would be back at any moment and that Raegan shouldn’t snoop, but she was curious. Glancing over her shoulder toward the hallway, she waited and listened. No voices or footsteps echoed her way. Closing her hand around the knob, she twisted. To her surprise, the knob turned all the way, and the door pushed open.
A personal office sat before Raegan with a long cherry desk occupying the center of the room, the surface spotless but for a Tiffany lamp and gold pen. A plush chair was pushed up against the desk. Another wall of windows behind the desk looked out across yet another immaculate lawn, and on the far side of the room, a trio of chairs was grouped to form a sitting area. But what captured Raegan’s attention hung on the walls. Over the fireplace and along both sides. Rows and rows of small black frames, each holding a heart-shaped scrap of fabric in a rainbow of different colors.
There were dozens of hearts. At least forty that she counted. Turning, she spotted more framed hearts on the walls near the windows, so many they made her blink as if she were seeing stars.
“I see you found my collection.”
Raegan startled and glanced toward the door where Miriam Kasdan stood with a blank expression on her perfectly made-up face. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop. I just . . . I was looking for a restroom.”
She winced because the excuse sounded lame to her own ears.
Mrs. Kasdan stepped into the office and glanced over the walls. “I suppose to an outsider it may seem silly. To me, though . . .” A look of profound pride spread across her features. “Some old women knit, others quilt. I find relaxation in framing objects I find beautiful.”
Raegan wasn’t sure about the beautiful comment, but as she looked to her right where a heart-shaped piece of faded, pinstriped denim sat on a small table, surrounded by several lengths of picture frame molding waiting to be snapped together, her stomach pitched because she realized these were more than just beautiful objects.
“It’s . . . really amazing,” Raegan said, fighting back the heat prickling her spine. All these hearts . . . All those missing kids . . . The image of that scrap of fabric Gilbert had left in the plastic bag on her porch flashed in front of her eyes. “H-how many hearts have you framed?”
“Fifty-eight, Ms. Devereaux.”
Raegan froze.
Miriam Kasdan tipped her head. “That was the head of my security team on the phone, wondering why Raegan Devereaux, the mother in a high-profile missing-child’s case, was caught on surveillance video entering my property.”
Raegan slowly turned to face the woman. She was at least thirty years younger than Miriam Kasdan, but the woman outweighed her by a good twenty pounds, and blocking Raegan’s only door of escape, the woman looked like someone who’d not slowed down at all in her later years.
Think, quickly. She had to get out of here before Miriam Kasdan knew what she suspected. “I . . . I lied about my name. I’m sorry for that. I didn’t think you’d see me if you knew my real name, given that I no longer work for KTVP.”
“I’m well aware you no longer work there.” All pretense of friendliness fled Miriam Kasdan’s voice. “What are you doing here, Ms. Devereaux?”
Sweat slicked Raegan’s spine. If this woman knew she no longer worked at the station, and she knew about Emma’s disappearance, lying wasn’t going to work. The only play she had was to pull the mother card and hope Miriam Kasdan could empathize, considering she was a mother herself. “My daughter went missing three years ago. We looked everywhere for her but never found her.”
“I remember hearing about your daughter’s abduction on the news. I’m sorry for your loss. It has nothing to do with me, however.”
The words were crisp and terse, and they made Raegan’s stomach roll because she didn’t believe them. “I know. And thank you. I apologize for bothering you like this, but I saw you at the station the other day, and after I got home, when I realized who you were, I thought”—come on, lie to her—“well, I thought someone like you, with such a high-profile status in the community and with all your charity work, might be able to help me out.”
“Help you out,” the woman said speculatively.
“Yes.” Heat spread up Raegan’s neck as she grabbed hold of the lie and ran with it. “Starting a charity. I want to start a charity to help families of missing children. Searching for a child is time-consuming and expensive. Not to mention emotionally taxing. Families in those situations need counseling, they need time off from their jobs, they need money to continue their search. Before I left KTVP I was looking into a case where a two-year-old disappeared from his yard, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what the family was going through and how—”