Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Lorelei got home, she couldn’t pick up Lucy because Mark and Francine had taken her to the birthday party of Francine’s niece.
Returning to an empty house was a letdown, but she’d had a great time with her sisters.
Already, she couldn’t wait for Tahoe. She’d take Lucy with her when she went to California, and Reagan would bring her daughter, Summer, too.
“Tahoe’s only four weeks away,” she said aloud, to encourage herself. Finn had also texted her to confirm he’d be there. She was more excited to see him than ever.
As soon as she let herself in, she turned on the air-conditioner. It was sweltering inside, since the house had been shut up for four days. She wished she could move closer to Serenity—which would put her closer to Finn, too—but she couldn’t leave Florida, couldn’t take Lucy away from her father.
She was wheeling her luggage into the bedroom when her phone went off.
Leon Rutledge. It’d been almost two months since she’d hired him.
Other than a weekly email updating her on his progress, and the call she’d placed to him from Mississippi, telling him about her visit with Greenstone, she hadn’t heard from him.
“Thanks for letting me know what he had to say, but I didn’t think Greenstone had anything to do with it,” he’d said when she told him about the conversation she’d had at Parchman Prison.
Slightly offended that he could dismiss her attempt to learn more so easily, as if he’d known all along it would be a waste of time, she’d attempted to explain why she’d felt the trip was necessary.
“I was hoping he could tell us something. I didn’t know he was already in custody when my mother was killed. ”
“I did,” Rutledge had said. “I checked that first thing.”
Then why hadn’t he put it in one of his updates?
She didn’t ask. She supposed he was doing more than he said and had gotten off the phone quickly after that.
Now it was time for her to send him another check, but she was thinking she’d made a mistake hiring a private investigator for such an old case.
Should she just let the past go? As much as she craved answers when it came to Sarah Ryan, as much as she believed the poor woman deserved justice, some things simply couldn’t be fixed.
Maybe she had to accept that. Rutledge had tried to tell her she’d be wasting her money and, five thousand dollars later, she was beginning to believe him.
When she answered, she was prepared to tell him she’d changed her mind.
There were so many other places her money needed to go, most notably saving for Lucy’s college education.
But when she answered, he started out with, “I might have something for you,” and she was so surprised she nearly dropped her phone.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I managed to track down Mitch Ryan.”
She sank onto the bed. “In Canada?”
“He’s no longer living in Canada. Hasn’t been there for more than twenty years. He’s on his third wife and living in Chicago.”
“How did you track him down?” She’d done some rudimentary searching herself—on the internet—to no avail.
“I have access to certain databases you don’t, and it certainly took some time,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been doing all month. Haven’t you been getting my emails?”
She had, but his emails were full of bullet points and long shots, no conclusions—nothing that gave her much hope. “I guess I just…talked myself out of expecting anything.”
“No doubt I had a hand in that. I wasn’t optimistic when I took on this case.”
“And now?”
“I’m feeling a lot more hopeful about it.”
Excitement raced through her. “Why? Did you talk to Mitch?”
“I did,” he responded. “I was in Illinois while you were in Tennessee.”
“You didn’t say anything about that when we spoke on the phone.”
“You were dealing with enough already. I figured if it didn’t amount to anything, I’d just put it in my weekly email.”
“But it did amount to something.”
“I think so.”
Rutledge never overstated anything, which imbued his words with more meaning than she would otherwise ascribe to them. “What did you learn?”
“He claims he had no idea Sarah was murdered, let alone that someone had left you to wander the streets. Told me Sarah moved to Florida after they split. He’s never even been there.”
“Can you prove otherwise?”
“I don’t know about that yet. There’s still a lot of work to be done. But I ran across something that makes me believe we’re on the right track.”
Lorelei caught her breath. This was way more than she’d expected. “What was that?”
“Most murders are committed by someone close to the victim. In an investigation, you look at every person connected to the deceased and try to rule them out, which was why I was so eager to find Mitch.”
“Wasn’t he out of the country when the murder occurred?”
“That’s what he says. But I’m hoping to prove otherwise—because it’s a strange coincidence that his second wife went missing under very mysterious circumstances. He was and still is a suspect in her disappearance, but the Chicago police haven’t been able to prove anything.”
“He may have killed another woman?”
“Yes. She disappeared fifteen years ago. No one’s heard from her since. Her family claims she’d never just drive off into the sunset and leave her two children, which she had from a prior marriage. But her body has never been found, which makes it hard for the police to build a case against him.”
“Wow,” she said on a long exhalation.
“Not only that, but I’ve spoken to two other women who’ve been romantically involved with Mitch.”
“And?”
“They both say he was controlling and sometimes violent and abusive. They were afraid of him.”
“He killed Sarah.”
“That’s my guess. From what I’m hearing, he’s not a man who takes kindly to rejection. One woman told me she had to move out of state in order to feel safe after she broke up with him.”
“She might’ve gotten lucky,” Lorelei said.
“I agree.”
“But…in Sarah’s case, would he leave the two-year-old child he’d adopted to wander around on her own?”
“A man that narcissistic could do anything,” he replied. “He certainly couldn’t have taken you with him even if he felt bad about it.”
“True.” Lorelei combed her fingers through her hair while trying to think. “This blows me away. Will-will we ever be able to prove it?”
“That, I can’t promise. But even if we can’t prove he killed Sarah, we might be able to prove he killed his second wife. There’s a lot more evidence in that case. I know it wouldn’t be quite the same, but it would put him away for good. That’s what’s important.”
She didn’t know what to say. She was struggling to take it all in.
“Lorelei?”
“I’m still here. After so long, I just…can’t believe we might have the answer. Thank you,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“So you want me to continue?”
“Absolutely! I’m putting another check in the mail today.”
“You got it.”
After Lorelei pressed the End button, she let herself collapse onto the bed. Mitch probably thought he’d gotten away with murder. But she was going to see to it that wasn’t the case.
“Bastard,” she muttered. But then she smiled.
If she had anything to say about it, he was going to prison.
“This is for you, Mom,” she whispered to Sarah as she got up and wrote Rutledge another check.
Even though she knew Sarah couldn’t hear her, she was glad to be giving something back to the poor woman who’d tried to take her in, love her and raise her.
She’d just finished unpacking when she heard a knock. Assuming it was Mark and Francine bringing Lucy back, she stepped over her empty suitcase and hurried to the door.
But it wasn’t Lucy. It was Finn.
“You said I should come to Florida,” he said with a grin. “So…here I am.”