Page 30 of Bachelor Cop Finally Caught? (Hot off the Press! 2)

“Not that they’re admitting, anyway.”

“So you really don’t think there’s any reason to worry about him?”

“I’m taking his mother’s report seriously. But I expect we’ll find him with one of the pals who’s denying any knowledge of his whereabouts now.”

“I hope you’re right.” She watched him drive for a few moments, then asked, “How’s Polly?”

“She’s fine. Not real happy to be the subject of so much speculation, of course, but the rumors seem to be dying down.”

“Have you tracked the owner of the notebook she found?”

Dan very nearly let the truck swerve on the road. Tightening his fingers on the steering wheel, he demanded, “How the hell did you find out about the notebook?”

“I have my sources. I’ve been told that Polly found a notebook at school and asked several students if they recognized it. The next day you and she spent a lot of time together. The following Monday you went to the school, going from classroom to classroom showing something to the teachers. Some people think the notebook contained a clue to the arsons—a confession or an eyewitness report or something along that line.”

Lindsey had obviously been busy chasing leads since he’d last seen her. “There was no confession in the notebook. No eyewitness account, either.”

“But there was something?”

“All I can say at this time is that we don’t really know if we’ve found anything significant.”

She sighed. “You needn’t sound quite so cautious. I promised you I wouldn’t print anything about your investigation until you gave me official confirmation, and I won’t. I don’t report rumors.”

“But you pay very close attention to them.”

“That’s part of my job,” she answered evenly. “Just as it’s part of yours.”

Trying to ease the tension between them, he offered, “I appreciate you being so careful about what you print.”

“That’s part of doing my job well.” The coolness of her tone let him know he hadn’t made much progress in restoring harmony between them. Of course, when it came to their respective careers, they’d always butted heads. He wished he believed that was all that was going on between them now.

“Speaking of rumors,” he said, keeping his eyes focused on the road ahead, “I heard you’ve decided to put your house on the market.”

“That isn’t a rumor, it’s fact. I’m having a few repairs made, and then it goes on the market.”

The confirmation made his jaw tighten. But all he said was, “That must have been a difficult decision for you.”

“It wasn’t easy.” The words were simple, but her tone spoke volumes about how hard it had been for her to decide to sell her childhood home. He wished he could understand a bit better her reasons for coming to that wrenching decision.

He wished he could be convinced the decision had nothing to do with him.

There was no more time for personal conversation, as they had reached the somewhat isolated, ramshackle house in which Opal Stamps and her son, Eddie, lived. A rusty car sat in the rutted gravel driveway. The yard was trampled down to dirt and sparse patches of winter-dead grass. Three rickety wooden steps led up to a front porch littered with broken pieces of furniture and a few flowerpots holding dead plants.

After helping Lindsey up the broken steps, Dan knocked carefully on the front door, feeling almost as if a too-firm thump would knock the flimsy sheet of wood off its hinges. The place would have been a snap for even an inexperienced burglar to break into—but there was probably little inside to tempt anyone to try to make a quick buck that way.

Opal Stamps, a fortyish woman with bitterness etched on her face and abandoned dreams hovering like ghosts in the air around her, ushered them into her home. Some effort had apparently been made at housekeeping, but the house was still cluttered and shabby. Opal directed them to sit on a lumpy couch that was covered with a faded plaid throw.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, directing the comment to Lindsey. “I need you to find out what happened to my boy.”

“Chief Meadows and his staff will investigate your son’s absence, of course,” Lindsey replied smoothly. “My job is simply to get your information out to the public.”

“You make it clear that no matter what the police say, my boy wouldn’t have run off like this unless something happened to him. He always goes to his dad or one of his friends when he needs a break from me, but none of them have seen him since Monday.”

Trying to keep his tone patient and sympathetic, yet still reassuringly professional, Dan asked the woman to repeat the entire story, beginning with her quarrel with Eddie during the weekend.

Still directing her comments to Lindsey, who took notes as carefully as Dan, Opal explained that the quarrel had actually been building for some time, finally coming to a head during the weekend. It seemed that Eddie had become increasingly more difficult to handle ever since his eighteenth birthday a few months ago. Skipping school. Drinking. Defying authority—both hers and her ex-husband’s.

“He left here for school Monday morning without saying nothing to me,” she added. “When he didn’t come home, I figured he’d gone to his dad’s since he’d threatened to do that all weekend. I told him to go ahead, see if he had it any better over there. I decided I’d give him a couple days to cool off and then I’d tell him to come home and see if we could work things out. So yesterday afternoon when I figured he’d be home from school, I called his father’s house. Merle said he hadn’t talked to Eddie since last week.”

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