The Truth About Comfort Cove

He was there to find out what he didn’t know. First thing being whether or not Davenport was being straight up with him.

“How serious was your father about the work logs you gave me?”

“Very,” Davenport said without a moment’s pause. “Reliability is what built East Coast Meats, both in the quality of the meat and the timeliness of its delivery. Meat isn’t something that can sit outside and wait for someone to get home. People plan their schedules around the time their meat will arrive so that they can be there to take it in and get it in the refrigerator. If we’re late, we make them late. We could ruin an entire day by upsetting someone’s schedule, which is not convenient. If we aren’t convenient, our customers might just decide to stop in at the local butcher to buy their meat. Even today, if a man doesn’t log in, allowing us to verify every delivery, he doesn’t work for us.”

Amelia Hardy had led him to believe that Jack’s job depended on his timeliness.

“Jack Colton made an unscheduled stop for gas the day that Claire Sanderson went missing. I can find no record of him making that stop at any other time that he worked for you.”

Frowning, Randall Davenport stood to his full five-footeight and reached for the book that was still on his desk from the previous day when Ramsey had been there to collect copies of the twenty-five-year-old records.

Randall turned the pages with the ease of someone who was completely familiar with them. Ramsey recognized the page when Randall found it. There was a scribble in the upper left-hand corner. Like someone had been trying to get an ink pen to write.

With his pudgy finger running down the page, line by line, Randall appeared to read every bit of information there. He turned back a week and forward a week. Ramsey had done the same thing.

Then he went for another book. For the next fifteen minutes, Randall Davenport spot-checked time pages for all Wednesdays in 1987. And then he went to the basement and came back fifteen minutes later with another book of records.

“I’m looking at finance records, here,” Davenport finally told him. “Colton’s unscheduled gas stop is logged, with a request for reimbursement. There is no request for gas reimbursement at the end of the day, which was usual for him.”

Davenport turned the book around.

“He probably got a truck that hadn’t been filled the night before,” Davenport said. “We frown on guys turning in trucks before filling them, but it happens sometimes. A guy has somewhere to be, a function that he’s rushing off to…”

Ramsey was impressed with the man’s record keeping. It rivaled the department’s evidence room.

And he was pissed, too. There went his prime suspect. Most likely. Unless he could figure out how the man could steal a two-year-old child, stop for gas, get rid of the child and make all of his usual deliveries, too.

Or…steal the child, stop for gas—a well-planned alibi— make one more delivery with the child in the car and then get rid of the child during his lunch break in time to make all his afternoon appointments on schedule.

Colton would only have to have kept the two-year-old quiet and hidden long enough for one delivery.

Was it so hard to imagine that he’d done so?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T he box wasn’t that big. Maybe two feet square. A little bigger than a book-size moving box. It had the name of a popular kids cereal on the outside. Probably picked up free from a grocery store. It was not a box that someone went out and bought.

“You ready?” Amber Locken stood on one side of the island countertop in the evidence room at the station house. Lucy, in black wool slacks and jacket and her power red blouse, stood on the other.

“Yes,” Lucy said, staring at the strip of brown packing tape sealing the box.

The handwriting on the top, addressing the box to their care, was obviously feminine. Flowery. Young.

Wakerby was fifty-five. He’d said he didn’t go for babies.

Just women young enough to be his own baby?

Pulling a utility knife from a drawer in the island counter, Amber handed it to Lucy. “This one’s yours,” she said.

Surprised, Lucy glanced at the woman who’d brought her up in the business—back when Lucy had been a cop on the beat. Amber was watching her.

“It takes a special woman to be a cop, Lucy. Where men are natural tough guys, we’re nurturers. Think of little boys. They figure cutting up worms is cool. They laugh at bodily functions, and consider blood and gore entertainment. Girls, on the other hand, stereotypically, play nurse and house, where they’re taking care of people. They like movies with animals in them—preferably horses—and happy endings. They’re embarrassed by bodily functions.”

Lucy got the point.

“You’re a natural at this job. And you deserve this,” Amber said, nodding toward the box.

Taking the knife from the other woman’s hand, Lucy put the tip of the blade to the tape and sliced with one sure motion.