The Little Grave (Detective Amanda Steele)

might as well have been a stab wound. She hadn’t been able to save Lindsey, just as she wouldn’t be able to save Casey-Anne, but maybe she could save some of the other girls.

She didn’t want to return to the database on the mainframe, but it could be one way of confirming if Phoebe was Casey-Anne. She opened the catalogue of girls and found a search option and looked for eight-year-olds. Several came back, but the nickname of the third one down had her attention. The name was Colonial. As in Colonial Williamsburg? And she was marked as “Sold.”

Amanda took a jagged breath and clicked on the picture. She gasped but forced herself to focus only on the face, not the lurid act the cameraman had her performing on herself. She closed the image, having seen all she needed—and more than she wanted. Colonial was Phoebe Baldwin, a.k.a. Casey-Anne Ritter.

She returned to the internet browser, opened another window, and typed in Phoebe Baldwin, Rhonda Osborne, Williamsburg, Virginia. Suspicion always fell first on the person who had last been with the child or tasked with their care. In this case, the babysitter.

Pages of results returned. Phoebe’s disappearance had made nationwide headlines. The most recent article was one that had been written on the tenth anniversary of the date she went missing. That put it just a few months before Casey-Anne Ritter’s death.

Amanda clicked the article and before she could read a thing, she was arrested by the photo of a young Phoebe with an artist’s rendering of what she’d look like present day. That being about six years ago.

She changed windows and brought up the image of Casey-Anne Ritter as photographed in the morgue. Even in death, it was plain to see Phoebe Baldwin and Casey-Anne Ritter were one and the same.

Her eyes fell to her half-masticated burger and the smells that had originally enticed her now tossed her stomach. She wrapped it back up, tossed it in the bag, and put it in her garbage can. The pile of grease left on her desk would require soap and water.

She got up to get what was necessary to clean it and dried off the area quickly. She didn’t have time to procrastinate. It might have been too late to save Phoebe Baldwin, but she could bring her justice and her parents closure.

She sat back down and read the anniversary article.

Phoebe Baldwin went missing from a park where her babysitter Rhonda Osborne had taken the girl.

“I just looked away for a second,” Osborne claimed while in tears.

Amanda scanned down further and plucked out tidbits such as no ransom demands were made and that it was like little Phoebe had just disappeared into thin air.

She went on to wade through several other articles and none came out with suspects, but there was an opinion piece written about Osborne.

She was new to the family, only working with them for a couple of months before Phoebe went missing, but she came with good, solid references. Police say they’ve investigated Osborne but have cleared her of involvement in the abduction.

Amanda scribbled Osborne’s name on a notepad and scratched a circle around it.

She pulled a brief background on Osborne and found she didn’t have a criminal record. Conveniently if Amanda wanted to speak with her—and she did—her current address was in Woodbridge. But she’d prefer to start by speaking with the Baldwins. She wanted to know what they had to say about Osborne firsthand. While some of the articles had alluded to a man passing through having taken the girl, the Baldwins may have their own opinion on what had happened to their daughter.

A quick search told her the Baldwins were still married and living in Williamsburg. It was a two-hour drive and she was certain would be well worth her time. Her dad had drilled into her that solving cases often required starting at the beginning. While Phoebe might not have been the first victim of the ring, she could get Amanda closer to Phoebe’s and Webb’s killer.

She shut her computer down and grabbed her jacket. The clock on the wall told her it was 3:45 PM. If she left now, she’d be at Williamsburg about six.

Forty

Amanda had forgotten to account for traffic when she was thinking about the straight run from Woodbridge to Williamsburg as two hours. Before running out, she’d updated Malone on her findings, and he’d approved her travel to see the Baldwins and Osborne. He suggested that she take someone else from the unit with her, but that’s all she viewed it as: a suggestion.

She’d called Patty on her way and told her to flag “Colonial” as a priority in tracking down who’d purchased her. Thinking of a person being bought and sold was outside the realm of humanity and tread upon the path of demons as far as Amanda was concerned.

She pulled into the Baldwins’ driveway closer to seven thirty and found the house was lit like a showpiece. A Jaguar and a BMW were parked in the triple-wide lane. She had called Wes and Tanya before leaving—that was an order from Malone—so they were expecting her arrival.

The front door opened before she reached it and she was greeted by a handsome couple in their late fifties.

“Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin?” Amanda said.

“We are. Detective Steele?” Wes studied her and his gaze settled momentarily on her badge, which was clipped to her waistband.

“Yes. You can call me Amanda.”

Wes’s lips twitched in an attempted smile. “How about Ms. Steele instead?”

Very formal but… “Sure.” She smiled at him, and let the expression carry for Tanya.

“Please come in,” Tanya said. Her voice was high-pitched, but her demeanor pleasant and slightly more casual than her husband’s, which was surprising as she was the aristocrat and he went to work.