“Fast-pitch softball?”

  “Yes.”

  “That brings back memories,” the detective said. “I played on my high school team for a couple of years, but we weren’t very good.”

  “You should come.”

  “I’m busy tonight, but text me the schedule, and I’ll check it out another time.”

  They left the conference room. As they did, Gracie got a better view of the detective’s boots that looked like they were made from some kind of lizard skin.

  “We’ll talk soon,” Mayleah said. “Reagan’s case will stay on my desk until I have something to report.”

  * * *

  Buddy was in the middle of drafting a contract for a business client when his phone buzzed.

  “Deputy Reynolds is calling,” Jennifer said. “He says it has to do with the Ford case. Do you want to talk to him?”

  Buddy hesitated. He was under a strict deadline for completion of the contract. “Okay,” he said.

  “I’m at Boyd Lipscomb’s residence,” the officer said. “He says he’s willing to talk to you about Jackie Ford.”

  Buddy sat up straighter in his chair. “Put him on the phone.”

  “I tried that, but he wants to do it in person. If you can drive out here, I’ll wait for you. It should take about fifteen minutes from your office. Otherwise, I can try to set something up another day when we can both be here.”

  Buddy didn’t want to miss the opportunity. The contract would have to wait.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “You’ll see my patrol car in the driveway. We’ll be sitting on the back porch. Come around the house. Don’t worry about the dogs. They bark but don’t bite.”

  Buddy told Jennifer where he was going. “I have a client scheduled for an appointment in forty-five minutes,” he said. “Call and see if he can reschedule for tomorrow morning.”

  Buddy drove west from Clarksburg on the road toward Atlanta. He knew the area where Lipscomb lived. Four miles from town he turned right onto a narrow two-lane road and traveled a little over a mile. He slowed when the road crossed a narrow stream on a one-lane bridge. Three hundred yards farther he turned onto a dirt road for another half mile. A mailbox sitting at a crooked angle announced the number for the residence. As Buddy drove up a short hill, he could hear dogs barking as they ran toward him. He parked behind the deputy sheriff’s vehicle.

  Three large brown dogs and an even bigger black dog circled Buddy’s car like wolves around a wounded caribou. Buddy was a fast runner but doubted he could outrun the pack. With no option except to trust Officer Reynolds’s word about the dogs, he opened the door. One of the brown dogs leapt into his lap. Before Buddy could knock him away, the animal licked him on the chin. All three brown dogs seemed friendly. Buddy got out of the car. The black dog eyed him suspiciously from a distance.

  Boyd Lipscomb lived in an unpainted wooden house perched on top of the hill. A low-roofed shed as big as a barn stood to the right of the house. Inside the shed Buddy could see a collection of cars and pickup trucks. Two dump trucks were parked beneath the trees next to the shed. With the brown dogs bouncing alongside him, he made his way to the rear of the house. A screened-in porch rested on exposed wooden posts. He could see Officer Reynolds and another man sitting in rocking chairs. Reynolds stood as Buddy approached and held open the porch door.

  “The dogs aren’t welcome inside,” Reynolds said.

  Buddy climbed three steps and let the door slam shut behind him. The dogs whimpered on the ground below. Boyd Lipscomb was a large man in his mid- to late forties. He was wearing a dirty white T-shirt, jeans, and an orange ball cap. A bulge in his right cheek and a Styrofoam cup beside his rocking chair announced his use of chewing tobacco. He didn’t get up when Buddy entered. Instead, he picked up the cup and spat in it. There was no place for Buddy to sit. Given the environment, he didn’t mind standing.

  “I don’t want no trouble,” Lipscomb said.

  “I told Boyd that he could get charged with aiding someone in the commission of a felony if he chooses not to cooperate,” Reynolds said. “He has a prior conviction on his record for selling stolen property and doesn’t want anything else tacked on.”

  “A car I had no way of knowing was stolen,” Lipscomb objected. “I lost the $6,000 I paid for the car and served three years on probation.”

  Buddy wasn’t sure about the legitimacy of Officer Reynolds’s threat of prosecution, but it was enough of a gray area that he didn’t have a problem using it as leverage to dislodge information. He got straight to the point. “Where did Jackie Ford take his little boy?”

  Lipscomb glanced at Reynolds. “What if I don’t know exactly where he’s at? That ain’t a violation of the law, is it?”

  “You admitted that you knew Ford was going to take off with the kid,” Reynolds replied. “Then you sold him a car with fake plates on it.”

  Lipscomb extracted a massive wad of chewing tobacco and dropped it into the cup. Like most of his teammates on the high school baseball team, Buddy had sampled chewing tobacco but never got past the queasy stomach phase. The amount of chew Lipscomb had forced into his cheek was impressive. He spat into the cup, and any remaining bits of tobacco flew from his mouth.

  “I know he was on his way to Oklahoma,” Lipscomb said. “He was going to stay there or go on to Montana. It all depended where he could best hook up with folks living off the grid.”

  “Do you know who and where?” Buddy asked.

  “I got ideas, but you can’t let nobody know where you got this information. These are some heavy-duty dudes who don’t want the government knowing anything about them. If Jackie drove on into Montana, I swear I’m not sure where he landed. I just heard him talk about going there a couple of times.”

  “What’s the name of the place in Oklahoma?” Reynolds asked.

  Lipscomb rubbed his jaw before answering. “It’s near a little town called Red Oak or Red Pine, something like that. I heard Jackie say it was an Indian settlement where most people don’t want anything to do with the feds.”

  “Do you know how to contact him?” he asked.

  “Nope. I already showed Officer Reynolds the number I had for Jackie in my phone. We tried to call, and it ain’t in service.”

  “What kind of car did you sell him?”

  “A white 1998 Ford Taurus. It had a salvage title because it got flooded in a hurricane, but it ran good. Jackie worked on it off and on for a couple of months.”

  “Where did the license plate come from?”

  “I didn’t have nothing to do with that,” Lipscomb said as he turned to Reynolds. “That was all Jackie. I keep my junks back in the woods. He went in there and took off a plate.”

  “When did you first find out that Jackie was going to leave town with his son?” Buddy asked.

  “I don’t recollect. He didn’t talk much about anything. A month or so ago, he asked if I was interested in buying five cars all at once. He said his old lady was getting on his nerves, and he was thinking about moving away with that boy of his.” Lipscomb looked at Reynolds again. “That shouldn’t be no crime if it’s his own young’un.”

  “How much money did you give Jackie for the five cars?” Buddy asked.

  “Over $40,000 with the Taurus thrown in. One of them was his favorite piece, a 1968 Pontiac Firebird. That tipped me off that he was serious about a change in locale. He was getting rid of all his stock.”

  “Cash money?” Buddy asked.

  “Always.”

  “Where are the cars now?”

  “I only have one left. It’s a Fiat ragtop. Not many people around here want to mess with one of those. If you want, I can show it to you.”

  Buddy looked at Officer Reynolds. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I owned a Fiat when I was younger and swore never again,” the officer answered.

  Boyd Lipscomb laughed out loud. “That’s good,” he said. “I didn’t see that one a-comin’.”

  Reynolds spoke to Buddy: “Let’s take a recess on this conversation and see if Boyd’s been on the level with us.”

  “Hey, everything I’ve said is the gospel truth!” Lipscomb protested.

  “Is there anyone else who could give us information about where Jackie might be?” Buddy asked.

  “Not that I know of. Like I said, he mostly kept to hisself. I done told you everything I know. I got nothing to hide.”

  Buddy and Officer Reynolds walked together away from the porch and toward their vehicles. The brown dogs followed. The black dog stayed behind at the bottom of the steps.

  “Thanks,” Buddy said as soon as they were out of earshot. “You went way beyond serving the order.”

  “Hey, I’m in law enforcement,” Reynolds replied with a smile. “And working over Boyd Lipscomb was my afternoon entertainment. I have two boys and a girl of my own. My kids are my life. I hate what this Ford guy did running off with his son. It’s not right, even if it’s his own kid.”

  They reached the officer’s patrol car.

  “Do you think Lipscomb told us everything he knows?” Buddy asked.

  “Probably not. My biggest worry is that he has a backdoor way to get in touch with Jackie and tip him off. With that much money changing hands, there could have been a side deal for extra money down the road. I’ll write up a report as soon as I’m back at the department.”

  “Give it to Detective Harkness. When Lipscomb mentioned Oklahoma, I immediately thought of her. She’ll have contacts there.”

  “Yeah, but she may still consider this a domestic matter, not a criminal case.”

  “Talk to her. You convinced the tobacco-chewing guy on the porch that it could be a criminal case.”

  Reynolds grinned. “Boyd was easy to bluff.”

  Nine

  Buddy stayed late at the office so he could finish drafting the business contract. He then drove directly to his mother’s house to continue his search for clues. Beatrice didn’t respond to his text letting her know he’d arrived, so he unlocked the door. He immediately began calling out to let her know he was there. “Hello! It’s Buddy!”

  There was no answer. He stopped at the base of the staircase in the foyer. His mother’s bedroom was on the second floor. He called out again: “Mom! I’m here!”

  Still no answer. The Mercedes was parked next to the house. Buddy called his mother’s cell phone. It went to voice mail. He went up the stairs two at a time. Inside his mother’s bedroom he saw the wallet where she kept her driver’s license. Going back to the main floor, Buddy looked in the backyard to see if she was watering any flowers or bushes. The garden hose was neatly wound up where she normally kept it. Stumped, he concluded his mother must have gone out for a late-afternoon walk.

  Taking a glass from a kitchen cabinet, Buddy opened the refrigerator. A high-pitched shriek caused him to drop the glass, which shattered on the floor. He spun around and faced his mother, who was standing in the doorway that led to the basement.

  “Why didn’t you let me know you were here?” she demanded. “You had your back to me behind the refrigerator door, and I didn’t know it was you!”

  “I texted, dialed your cell phone, and have been calling out all through the house,” Buddy answered calmly. “I thought you’d gone out for a walk or a friend picked you up to go someplace.”

  Beatrice patted the pocket of the faded gray slacks she was wearing. “Oh, I must have left my phone here in the kitchen.”

  Buddy looked at the round table in the corner. His mother’s cell phone was lying next to a magazine.

  “Let me clean up that broken glass,” Beatrice said.

  “No, I dropped it,” Buddy answered. “What were you doing in the basement?”

  “I’ve been down there most of the afternoon. I’ve gone through ten boxes looking for anything else that might help you find Elise.”

  “I was going to do that,” Buddy said as he opened the utility closet and took out a broom and dustpan. “It’s why I stopped by.”

  “I wasn’t sure when you’d be able to do it, and I couldn’t keep from wondering what was there.”

  “Any luck?” Buddy asked as he began to sweep up the broken glass.

  Beatrice took a folded piece of paper from the other pocket of her slacks and handed it to him. “Less than five minutes ago I found this.”

  Buddy leaned the broom against the kitchen counter and unfolded the single sheet of notebook paper. Written in Amber’s handwriting was a short letter:

  Mr. Smith,

  Thanks for the check. We had to move again, and it came exactly when I needed it. I’ll call you next month with a new address.

  Amber

  Buddy read it three times. “Was there an envelope?” he asked.

  “No, it was stuck in the middle of one of those charts your father used to make about how to manage the rental property.”

  “Was there a date on the chart? That might give us a clue.”

  “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Show me.”

  Leaving the kitchen, they descended the steps into the basement. Beatrice took the lid from a box and rummaged around in the contents.

  “There are a bunch of charts in here,” she said. “Now I’m not sure which one it was. They all look alike to me.”

  “Let’s take the box upstairs.”

  They returned to the kitchen, and Buddy placed the box on the round table.

  “I’ll finish cleaning up the glass while you look,” Beatrice said.

  Buddy took everything from the box and inspected it. Several papers and pieces of business correspondence were dated. His mother dumped the broken shards of glass into a trash can.

  “Most of this stuff is from the years I was away at college,” he said.

  “Your father saved everything.”

  “Which is good now.”

  “Who knows?” Beatrice sighed. “But finding the letter made me more sad than happy.”

  Buddy stopped and looked up. “Why?”

  “Because it’s another example of him keeping a secret and me not knowing. I mean, I’m sure he believed he was doing something good. And Amber appreciated it. But he didn’t tell either one of us about it. And now he’s gone—” Beatrice stopped.

  Buddy wasn’t sure how to respond. His mother’s words mirrored his thoughts. Instead of speaking, he stepped over and put his arms around her shoulders. He held her for several seconds.

  “I’m going outside,” Beatrice said. “The hydrangeas are drooping. When it gets as hot as it did today, they need an extra drink.”

  “Would it be okay if I continue looking?”

  “Yes. But it’s too much for me.”

  Downstairs in the basement, Buddy saw the boxes his mother had opened but went through them again. In addition to charts and graphs, they contained invoices, letters to tenants, copies of dispossessory petitions, and bundles and bundles of canceled checks from the era when banks mailed them each month to the account holder. None of the other checks were made payable to Bearer, Amber Melrose, or Amber with another last name.

  Toward the bottom of one box he found a sheet of paper with three phone numbers scribbled on it. One of the numbers was marked with a star and the initials “AM.” The area code was unfamiliar. There was nothing on the paper to indicate the date, but most of the documents in the box were about five or six years old. That was about the time Amber cashed a check in Tennessee. A quick search on his phone revealed that the geographic region for the 423 area code included Chattanooga, Tennessee.

  His heart beating faster, Buddy debated whether to call the number. The possibility of hearing his daughter’s voice caused an involuntary shiver to run down Buddy’s spine. Taking a deep breath, he dialed the number. It rang twice before a recording announced it was no longer a valid number. Deflated, Buddy stared at his phone for a moment, then glanced at the sheet of paper and realized that in his haste he’d incorrectly transposed two of the numbers. He slowly entered the correct number. This time it rang several times.

  “Hello?” a female voice answered.

  Buddy instantly tried to discern from a single word whether Amber was on the line. After seventeen years, he wasn’t sure.

  “Amber?” he asked tentatively.

  “No.”

  “Elise?” he quickly added.

  “You must have the wrong number,” the woman responded and hung up.

  * * *

  Attendance at summer softball league games wasn’t limited to the family members of the players. Fast-pitch softball in Milton County had a long history of success. Winning attracts fans, and residents of the community followed the program year-round. As the team trotted onto the field for the first inning, Gracie glanced into the stands and saw the faces of people who’d come to the games during her playing days. At the end of one of the bleachers she was surprised to see Mayleah Harkness. The detective was talking to someone, and they didn’t make eye contact.

  The score after six innings was a nail-biting 1–0. The visiting team loaded the bases with two outs in the top of the seventh inning, but the batter at the plate hit a line drive straight at Laura Anselm, who jumped into the air and snagged it. Postgame celebrations after a win lasted longer than postmortems following a loss. It was several minutes before Gracie could make her way to where Mayleah was sitting.

  “Glad you were able to make it,” Gracie said.

  “Me too. My other plans fell through, and I remembered your invitation. That was an exciting game.”

  “The team played great. Would you like to grab a bite to eat? A lot of the girls go to a local drive-in after a game. Coaches and adults are welcome.”

  Mayleah hesitated for a moment. “I bought a bag of peanuts at the concession stand, but that’s not a real meal,” she said.

  “The Southside Grill gives a bit more variety,” Gracie said. “Do you know where it is?”

  “It’s the place that still offers drive-in service?”

  “Right, but we’ll eat inside. I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes. It’ll be neat for the girls on the team to meet you. You’re the only female detective working with the sheriff’s department, right?”