The Truth About Comfort Cove

Lucy’s throat was dry again.

“Are you getting fresh with me, Detective?” she said back, in a voice she didn’t recognize. At all.

“Depends.”

“On what.”

“On what you’d do if I was.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what she’d do. What in the hell was going on? Ramsey Miller had no more interest in a relationship with anyone than she did.

But she was dying to sleep with him. Had she given herself away? Or was he fantasizing about her, too?

“I’ll talk to you tonight, okay?”

“Yeah. Talk to you tonight,” she said, but he’d already disconnected their call.

L ucy stopped in to see Sandy and Marie. The two women were sitting at the table playing cribbage. Sandy was winning. Of course. Her mother was great at cards. Luckily Marie enjoyed playing and didn’t mind losing.

She’d called Ramsey. She’d seen her mother. She wasn’t expected at work until Monday. Which left her with the unaccounted-for time she needed.

Time to do what she had to do without having to answer questions. Or listen to lectures about protocol, safety, cop smarts or her lack of professional detachment.

She drove across town, out of town, to the grocery store where Sandy had stopped for baby food that fateful day so long ago. The store had been remodeled, the parking lot repaved, but the basic structure was still the same.

Today’s market bore security cameras at every outside corner and interspersed throughout the store, as well.

Parking where her mother had parked, Lucy walked into the store, collected a basket and walked around the store, stopping for a time at the baby-food aisle, looking for diapers. And milk. She continued on through an empty checkout and back outside, without picking up a single item. Pushing the basket with the metal child seat inches from her body, she imagined Allie sitting there, propped up with her blanket because she had just started sitting up completely by herself.

As she stood outside the store, people passed her, going into the store. Coming out. Car tires swerved as they pulled into parking places.

It had been a Saturday, just like this one. Almost the same time of day.

How had Wakerby gotten her mother and a baby into his car without anyone in the busy parking lot noticing?

What had Sandy been thinking about? And when Wakerby showed up, how had she felt? Had she known right away that she was in danger? Had she been stronger then?

Reports said that there’d been debris under her fingernails, as though she’d fought back.

The Sandy Lucy knew would have fallen apart, but had her mother always been that way?

Would a woman with no ability to cope have been able to have a baby alone, and work and care for the child?

Sandy had done so.

And what about Allie?

“Are you okay, dear?” A gray-haired woman, sixty-five or so, stopped with a basket full of bagged groceries on her way out of the store. Her brow was creased with concern as she looked at Lucy.

“Oh, yes, I’m fine,” Lucy said, moving over a couple of feet with her basket, out of the way of the door. “I’m…waiting for someone,” she said with a smile.

The woman didn’t look quite convinced. But she went on her way. Lucy watched her load her groceries into the back of a Cadillac sedan and then waved as the woman drove past.

So how had Allie felt that awful day? Had the baby sensed danger? Had she had any idea that her life was about to change irrevocably?

Talk to me, Allie. Tell me about that day. Take me to you.

Closing her eyes, Lucy focused on the young woman Sandy would have been. On the baby in the cart. She focused so hard she could almost see them there. And she waited.