The caller was Scott.
Laurel sank down into the roller chair behind Maureen’s desk, ignoring the pleasure she felt at hearing his voice.
After following Bonnie around town that afternoon, always just missing her, Scott had finally brought Laurel back to Twin Oaks, accepting Maureen’s invitation to join them all for breakfast in the morning before he and Laurel met Bonnie Cooper in town.
There’d been nothing said about any contact before then.
“Just wanted to fill you in on what I know so you have as much time to mull it over as I do,” he said now, almost without preamble.
Good. That was good. “What’ve you got?”
“A photo of Byrd, for one. We got it from his publisher.”
“That’ll sure help when we’re talking to people.”
They’d been a bit handicapped that afternoon with only a verbal description of the man.
“Has his family been notified?”
That was something else they’d talked about late that afternoon.
“He doesn’t appear to have any.”
Laurel felt a new affinity for the missing man.
“I got a call back on the birth certificate.”
She sat up straight. “What’d they say?”
“Leslie Renwick is the daughter of Robert and Gloria Renwick of New Bedford, Massachusetts. She lives in Worcester. I have her address.”
“So why would William Byrd have her birth certificate?” Laurel asked, immediately alert.
“And why have it out at Twin Oaks?”
“Do we know if Byrd was ever married?”
“There’s no record of him having married.”
Again, Laurel felt a personal connection to the older man, a sense that finding him alive and well was important to her own ability to move on with her life.
“As far as I can tell, he’s been living alone in Connecticut for almost thirty years. I called a private detective friend of mine to check things out in Connecticut for me—Byrd’s neighbors, possible friends, his usual haunting grounds. So far, nobody’s seen him.”
“So,” Laurel finally said, “why would a man in his early sixties have a birth certificate for a much younger woman with the parents’ names whited out?”
“My guess is when we get that answer, we’ll be well on our way toward finding Byrd,” Scott said.
His voice sounded a little like Paul’s over the phone. Laurel had never noticed that before.
“It’s highly likely that certificate had something to do with why he left in such a hurry,” Laurel observed.
“There was no sign of struggle, but we should probably consider that someone could have shown up at Twin Oaks with blackmail on their mind.”
“Like maybe Byrd fathered that child, and now, thirty-five years later, someone’s going to blackmail him over it?” Laurel didn’t think so.
“Hardly makes sense, does it?” Scott said softly. “He has no family, no one to be hurt by something like that coming to light....”
“So no grounds for blackmail that we know of...”