Her Detective's Secret Intent

“His mom’s car is lost and she’s hoping some of us can drive around and help her try to find it. She can’t get to work without it.” The words came to her as though inspired.

Her son scrunched up his nose. “Huh?” he asked, the toilet brush dripping on the floor as he held it suspended above the bowl. “How does a car get lost?

”

Okay, not inspired. “I don’t know. Maybe it was stolen,” she said, taking the brush from him and wiping the floor with the towel in her hand. “But I think we can help, don’t you? Just drive around for a while and see if we see it. I’d need you to do most of the looking, since I’ll have to pay attention to the driving.”

“Okay.” Ethan shrugged. “Can I have a hamburger and french fries for lunch, then?”

“Of course.” Maybe he was playing her. Bribing her. Maybe she should teach him that doing good deeds for others meant you didn’t get paid for it. Teach him a lesson in selflessness. At the moment, though, she’d be willing to buy him ice cream for dessert, too. She just had to get out on the road.

* * *

Tad knew for certain that Danny and Marie made it safely away from T-ball practice. There’d been no sign of Devon all morning, and no cars following Marie as she left the diamond. He’d been watching.

He hadn’t followed them to lunch afterward. She’d texted, letting him know that Danny had asked for pizza and she was taking him to buy some at a place not far from home. That was the last he’d heard until he got a call from Chantel an hour later.

He was the last person to have seen the mother and son. He told Chantel that Marie had been wearing black capris and a ribbed white T-shirt, and Danny had still been in the jeans and T-shirt he’d worn to practice. He told her where they’d been headed.

She already knew both things and was just verifying what Marie’s sister, Ruby, had told her. Marie had texted her after she’d texted Tad, to ask if Ruby and her husband wanted her to bring home any pizza.

She’d never made it to the pizza place. And she wasn’t answering her phone.

He got the High Risk Team alert almost immediately after his call with Chantel. Was back out to his car and on the road immediately. She’d asked him to start from where he’d last seen Marie, to check around the ballpark, see if anyone remembered anything. And then to drive all the streets between the park and the pizza place.

Officers were going to be talking to neighbors along the route. And expanding the search farther out.

He reminded himself that they’d thought she’d gone missing once before, that she’d failed to answer her phone then, too, and that she’d eventually returned home, safe and sound.

He told Miranda the same thing when she called a few minutes later to let him know that she and Ethan were out looking for Marie’s car and would call the police if they thought they saw any sign of it.

“Don’t approach, no matter what,” he told her, instantly alert. They needed eyes on the road. He just didn’t want Miranda or Ethan out there.

But he couldn’t stop her. And probably shouldn’t. As long as she kept her distance, she was in no real danger. Devon would have no idea that a woman out driving with her son would be any threat to him. It wasn’t like he’d be shooting at every car he passed as he drove wherever he might be taking them. That would be the quickest way to get himself arrested.

If he even had them.

Marie had been told, after the last incident, to let someone know if she was going to change her schedule, told to call before she took off again. She’d apologized for the time everyone had spent looking for, and worrying about, her.

“Maybe Danny changed his mind about which pizza place,” he said now, conscious of the fact that Ethan was in the car with Miranda, making it difficult for her to speak freely.

He’d caught the “looking for Marie’s car” remark. Took it to mean that Ethan didn’t know Danny and Marie had been in it or were in any danger.

And maybe she was right to keep the news from her son. Earlier, Tad had figured Ethan would be better prepared in the event of danger in his own life if he knew. He’d since changed his mind about that. She was raising a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child.

“Could be they went to Charlie’s.” A pizza place with gaming rooms. He’d driven by it but never been inside. “She might not have heard her phone ring, or isn’t getting cell service in there,” he finished.

He was at the ball field. Had to get going. Talk to some people. He didn’t tell Miranda that, though. He just asked her to please keep in touch, assuring her he’d do the same.

“And be careful,” he told her. “No risks.”

“You, too,” she said, and he wondered if she was thinking about the time he’d gone rogue. If she was worried he’d get hurt. He had a gun on him, not that she knew that. He never took it into her home, leaving it locked in the glove box of his SUV. But he was licensed to carry and always did.

Telling himself that Ethan was his assurance that Miranda wouldn’t take risks, he exited his vehicle and headed into the park.

* * *

“There’s a red car.”