The Truth About Comfort Cove

“Do you know where Colton lived when he was at UC?” She forced herself to think about things that mattered.

“No idea. I’m hoping a dorm.”

She was thinking the same thing. Thank goodness. Back on track. “We’d have more chance of finding someone who knows him, that way. There’d be records of resident assistants. Dorm managers.”

“We could get lucky and find that his dorm manager is still working there.”

“And if he had a roommate we’d have another possible witness. There could be a suite mate, too. Or even a floor mate who remembers him.”

“Things happen for a reason,” Ramsey said, almost to himself. “Any good cop knows that.”

“And?”

“When I called Caleb Whittier this summer to tell him about the box of missing evidence in Claire Sanderson’s case…”

Because some of the missing evidence had pertained to Cal.

“…he told me about the book he’d written, putting events from his life in chronological order. He told me for a reason. He gave me Jack Colton.”

“He told you about the book because he was trying to get you off his father’s back.”

“Knowing about the book gave me the ammunition to bribe him. Either he let me read what he’d written or I’d go hard on his father. He put himself in that position by telling me the book existed in the first place.”

“Maybe, unwittingly. But you said that he didn’t even realize the information about the delivery truck on the street that

day was in the book.”

As a traumatized teen, Cal had written about the day Claire Sanderson had been abducted. Cal remembered that morning as the day his father had made him go to school against his wishes. He’d hidden behind Jack’s truck in order to find his way undetected to the backyards in the neighborhood to gain access to his own backyard without being seen. He’d planned to stay there until the coast was clear—meaning Claire’s mother, Rose, and Cal’s father, Frank, had both left for their jobs at their prospective schools—so that he could go back into the house with the spare key he always carried.

It was the first account that had been given of the delivery truck. And Cal’s father, who’d spent twenty-five years as the only suspect in the case, had been exonerated by things Jack had said when he’d finally, twenty-five years later, been questioned.

“Just because Cal Whittier said he didn’t realize that mention of the truck was in the book, doesn’t mean that he was telling the truth.”

Ramsey’s fatigue sounded loud and clear through their cellular connection.

“You think Cal was handing you Jack?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“Cal couldn’t have known that Colton had anything to say that would clear his father’s name.”

“Unless he knew exactly that.”

“You’re saying you think that Cal and Colton have been in contact? That a deal was struck for Colton to clear Frank Whittier?”

“It’s possible.”

“You checked phone records.”

“They could have used prepaid cell phones. Or snail mail. Or…maybe I’m digging up dirt where there is none.”

“Jack Colton was driving a delivery truck on the street where an abduction took place at about the same time it happened,” she reminded him.

“Just as he did every other Wednesday before and after that. A guy’s not a criminal for doing his job.”

“Could be someone knew about his route and purposely chose the date and time so there’d be a suspect.” She played Ramsey’s theory out because that’s what good cops did for each other. And because being Ramsey Miller’s sounding board was a good part of her life.

“‘Someone’ being Frank Whittier?”