Page 14 of The Hanging Dolls
He fumbled for words, scratching the back of his neck. “I… I don’t know. I just said hi and asked if she was feeling better. I asked her who she was with, she said her sister, and I told her to say hi to her parents from me. That was it.”
“She was sick?” Zoe didn’t recall seeing anything about that in the statements from the family.
“Tim said she’d been throwing up a few days before. Food poisoning, I suppose. But it was just chitchat.”
“And where did Lily go from there? Which direction?”
He gave it some thought. “She said something about howhe’scalling her so she has to go and say hi.”
A zing of surprise pulsed through Zoe. She jerked upright and drew a sharp breath, her eyes catching Scott’s.
“He?” Scott arched an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t see. She just ran off and there were so many people?—”
“You didn’t see who she met?” Zoe pressed.
“No! I thought she was referring to a friend. It was a sunny day. We don’t get many of those here, and the park was teeming with people.”
“So which direction did she run off in?”
“The opposite direction to the one she came from. I had to get home so I thought nothing of it and drove away…” Andy licked his lips. “Am I in trouble? Should I have done something else?”
They didn’t answer. Zoe was preoccupied trying to trap the gloom that was cresting inside of her.He. Could be a boy. But could just as likely be a man. Lily must know him and that’s why she went to say hi to him. Unfortunately, Zoe had come across one too many cases of children being groomed and lured by adults. And the possibility of worst-case scenarios skyrocketed when the adult was a male.
After asking him for his alibi, they emerged from the building to a windy day. Zoe’s curls whipped around in all directions in a frenzy and she almost slipped on the weathered boards slick with rain and sea spray.
“This doesn’t bode well,” Scott finally said, huddling further into his coat. “If a man took her. Literally calls her over and then she goes missing for five days.”
Zoe’s gaze drifted to the boats moored along the sides, bobbing gently on the waves, their hulls scuffed and battered. “Okay, we should confirm Andy’s alibi and do a preliminary dig into his financials. Maybe spare a patrol officer or two to interview the coworkers to confirm that Andy and Tim weren’t on bad terms.”
Scott nodded. “Already on it.”
She tried to focus on the sound of water slapping against the dock piles. The likelihood of the grim outcome they dreaded lay quietly between them.
SEVEN
Zoe’s eyes darted across the wall adorned with nautical memorabilia—faded maps, old fishing nets, and a large, mounted fish that had seen better days. She sat at the long, polished bar that ran along one side of the room, behind which shelves lined with bottles of whiskey, rum, and a few local brews stood in neat rows.
She connected to the VPN on her laptop and was busy going through all the reports from the sheriff’s office and WSP. Lily’s details had been recorded on NCIC, but nothing. Frustration clawed at her. An information net was pointless without information. She looked out the window at the harbor.
How did a little girl go missing in a small town like this and no one knew anything?
“Here you go.” The waitress placed a hot chocolate in front of her.
She was guzzling it down when she heard a deep, throaty voice say to the waitress, “When you get a chance, check the stock in the back, we’re running low on the local brew. Thanks, kiddo!” It was the bartender, a grizzled man with a weathered, narrow face and long, straggly, gray hair.
“Sure thing, Keith.”
Zoe’s heart dropped to her stomach like a thick boulder rolling down a hill. The bartender looked like he was in his sixties. She stared at him as he wiped down some glasses at the other end of the bar with a rag, trying to find cracks in her memory where he would fit. But she was coming up with nothing. And yet there was something about him.
She pulled out a faded picture from her wallet; one of the few things she had found among her mother’s belongings and kept all these years. A picture of Rachel and the man who was tending the bar across from her. It was taken in 1977. The two of them, much younger and barefoot, sitting on a beach and smiling against the sun. His arm was around her shoulders.
Her heart did a little flip. Slightly unsteadily, she approached him. Why was she trembling?
“Can I get you anything, miss?” Keith asked, not really looking at her.
She bit her lip and then decided to just rip off the Band-Aid. She placed the picture in front of him when his back was turned.
