Where Shadows Meet(35)

She glanced down at the picture in her hand. The little girl smiled up at her, but the gap-toothed grin failed to move her. This couldn’t be her child. The wind ruffled Hannah’s hair, swirling it around in her face as a sign that she shouldn’t go in.

Confusion gripped her. She retreated to the car and put her hand on the door handle. The best thing was to get back in the car and not draw attention to herself.

“Hannah, what the heck? I thought you wanted to talk to Matt.”

“I probably imagined the whole thing. Now that I think about it, I’m sure it was an accident. And this whole daughter thing is probably a mirage.”

Angie pointed her red-tipped finger at her. “You get right back in there and talk to him. We haven’t come all this way not to pursue every avenue.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Hannah turned and forced herself to march to the door and yank it open.



THE JAIL SMELLED like someone’s roast beef sandwich. Matt walked past the deputy manning the front desk and proceeded down the narrow hallway to his cramped office, last room on the left. Blake followed him. The guy whistled through his teeth, and the annoying ditty set Matt on edge.

“Hey, Beitler,” a young deputy called. “The Rockville police reported a big heist from the Ace Hardware store. The alarm wasn’t triggered and we’ve got nada.”

Great. The rash of breakins was getting worse. He wondered—for the umpteenth time—if it was an inside job. Someone smart had been pulling the robberies. He pushed away his doubts about Blake and stalked on to his office.

Attending the funeral had been a waste of time. He’d seen nothing suspicious and caught only one glimpse of Hannah. She hadn’t seen him.

He dropped into the chair behind his overflowing desk and pulled his keyboard to him. Calling up the files, he ignored Blake, who was pacing the room.

“The white powder at Trudy’s was insecticide dust, nothing lethal to a person,” Matt said. “But the flowers that were delivered to Nora Honegger were loaded with poison. So far we haven’t been able to discover what florist delivered them. The box they came in was in the trash, but it was plain white cardboard with no business name.” Leaning back in the chair, he flipped open the file containing the printouts of what they knew so far. “The funeral was this morning. I went for a little while. Some people from town came, but it was mostly Amish.”

Blake finally quit pacing and came to sit on the other side of the desk. “I think it’s a family member.”

“Of course you do,” a female voice said from the doorway.

Matt looked up to see Hannah standing in the hall. Her cheeks were flushed, and her golden brown eyes sparked with fire. Her hair looked wet, and so did her clothes. With that titian hair, she probably had trouble hanging on to her temper. “You have something to say?”

She advanced into the room. The black dress only partially concealed her figure, and he wondered if it shamed her that she was so beautiful. He realized he was enjoying seeing her agitation.

“You’ve trained your partner well,” she said. “He’s just as quick to jump to conclusions as you.”

“The murderer is generally someone close to the victim,” he said.

“We are Amish. We abhor violence.” She pointed to the computer. “If you look through your files, I doubt you’ll find a single case of one of us breaking the law. No one in our community killed Moe or my family.”

“Are you okay?” he asked when he realized she was shaking. He thought more than anger lay beneath her nerves.

“Someone tried to run me down in the buggy.”

He stiffened. “Why didn’t you call me? What did the vehicle look like?”

“It was during the storm, and the rain was coming down too hard for me to tell.” She gripped the back of a chair, and her voice grew steadier. “Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. It could have been an accident, but I tried to move out of the way and the vehicle matched me.”

“The next time something like this happens, call me!”

Blake’s cell phone rang. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He disappeared through the door.

Matt kept his gaze on Hannah. “There’s not much I can do without a description of the car, but you need to be careful.”

She nodded, the hectic red in her cheeks draining away. “I—I came for another reason too.” She swallowed hard.

There was something so vulnerable about her that Matt wished he didn’t have to question her. His job was to push and prod until he got at the truth, and he knew there was a lot she held back. Getting at it might hurt her. “So what’s up?”

She blinked, exhaled, then slowly opened her bag. Rummaging inside, she withdrew a photo and held it out. “I wonder if you’ve seen this little girl.”

A child? Matt took the slick paper. His sweet daughter’s face looked back at him, and he almost smiled. “Where did you get this?” He tried to think of what Caitlin might have done. Thrown rocks? Darted in front of her? He lifted his coffee cup to his lips.

She bit her lip. “Reece sent it. He says it’s our daughter.”

Matt choked on the sip of hot liquid. “Wait, let me get this straight. You’ve never seen this girl before, yet you say it’s your daughter? How is that possible?” He looked down at Caitlin again. It was Caitlin, wasn’t it?