Chapter Ten
After leaving the Greene home, Midge stops at her own, a three-bedroom cape where she and her brothers and sisters grew up. She bought it from her parents a decade ago, when they retired to Myrtle Beach, but they continue to spend summers here with her.
Ordinarily, they’d head south right after Labor Day, but her father had hip replacement surgery a few weeks ago, and they’ll be here through at least October.
Their car isn’t in the driveway when Midge parks and heads for the house. Her mother is out, but her father is definitely here. She can hear screeching tires and wailing sirens blasting from the television through the closed windows.
Bobby Kennedy—not that Bobby Kennedy—was Mulberry Bay’s police chief for decades before Walter assumed the position. Now he enjoys watching old cop shows and reading crime fiction.
“I’ve got to keep my mind sharp,” he says, often. “And you know what? I always figure out whodunit.”
Midge finds him in the living room, snoring in front of a televised car chase. He’s in the recliner, leaning all the way back, with her tabby cat, Charles, curled up alongside his legs.
“Dad?”
Charles opens his green eyes, looks at her, and yawns before closing them again.
Her father doesn’t stir. He suddenly seems like an old man, wearing a robe and slippers, with a walker alongside the recliner, and what’s left of his hair gone from ginger to gray.
“Dad!” She grabs the remote and mutes the volume. That does the trick.
He starts, looks around, and grins. “Hey, kiddo.”
Ah, perhaps not such an old man after all, she thinks, noting the sweat-beaded beer bottle on the table beside him as she pats his still-muscular arm. “Hi, Dad. Feeling okay?”
“Feeling great for an old coot.”
“Good. Where’s Mom?”
“Picking up Chinese food for dinner. She should be back soon. She’s getting that soup you like. The hot and sour kind, is it?”
“It is, but soup? In this weather?”
“Is it warm out?”
She laughs, shaking her head. “This is one day you can be glad you’re laid up inside, Dad.”
“You don’t have to have soup. There will be plenty of other stuff.”
“Thanks, but I can’t stick around to eat. I’ve got dinner plans later, and I’m on a case.”
“Yeah? What’s going on?” He sits up straighter with an intrigued expression and a wince.
Charles awakens and jumps off the chair, coming to rub against Midge’s legs.
She picks him up and strokes his soft fur as she tells her father about Sarah Greene.
She’s brief but includes the connection to the Klatte family.
He knows she’s investigating Gordy’s death as a homicide, but not the details.
“Wait, Midge, you think that has something to do with this?”
“I don’t think that at all. It’s just, I met this girl at the Klattes’ in June. She was very sweet, but even the sweetest teenagers can run into trouble. They aren’t where they say they are, they don’t come home when they’re supposed to, they don’t answer their phones when their mothers call . . .”
“I raised five kids,” he says. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
“Right. Though I don’t think anyone would have called any of us Kennedy kids ‘sweet.’”
He grins. “Good point.”
Charles squirms in her arms, and she sets him on the floor, telling her father, “I’m going to go over to the church. Maybe she’s still there.”
“At church? Doing what?”
“Praying? Hanging around on the steps smoking weed? Who knows. I’ll see what I can find out.” She hesitates. “Hey, do you remember that girl who disappeared from Elizabethville last spring?”
“Junia Stanton?”
“Wow, Dad. Pretty sharp memory for an old coot.”
“It’s only on the tip of my tongue because Annie stopped by to see me this morning.”
Annie . . .
Ah, Ann Webster, a close friend of her father’s, is a police detective in Elizabethville.
“You discussed the Stanton case?” Midge asks.
“We did. Ann’s got new information that’s making her lean more toward runaway. According to Junia’s best friend, she recently found out that she was adopted as a baby.”
“And the Stantons kept it from her?”
“It seems they kept it from everyone. They never even mentioned it when she went missing.”
“It didn’t turn up in the background check?”
“If it was a private adoption, the records are sealed. But they didn’t volunteer the information, and they didn’t tell the investigators that they were having trouble with Junia before she disappeared. They claim everything was fine.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“Not according to Junia’s friend. She claims there was a lot of friction in the household because Junia wanted to find her birth parents and the Stantons were against it. She says Junia had gone behind their backs and was looking for them anyway.”
“Are the Stantons under suspicion?”
“No. Ann says they checked out okay. No domestic incidents, nothing like that. It’s just strange that when Junia disappeared, the parents didn’t mention any of this.”
“The discord or the adoption?”
“Both.”
“Well, a lot of people feel that it’s best to keep messy household incidents to themselves, even when it might help in an investigation.”
He nods. “One of the most frustrating aspects of the job. Anyway, Junia’s friend says she was planning to lie to them about going on a hike that day, and that she was supposed to be going to meet someone.”
“Her birth parent?”
“Or maybe just someone who had a lead. The friend didn’t know the details. And Junia had sworn her to secrecy, so she kept what she knew to herself for four months, even though her friend was missing.”
At that, Midge’s breath sticks in her throat.
She clears it and asks, “Does the friend—Junia’s friend—does she have any idea where she might be?”
“She says she doesn’t, but who knows?”
I know, Midge thinks.
She knows because she did virtually the same thing for Caroline.
She lied to her father, to the investigators, to the Winterfields, to everyone who cared about her.
She went through the motions of participating in the search efforts, of mourning when Caroline was presumed to have drowned during a midnight swim.
She, Kelly, and Talia knew the truth—maybe not about where Caroline was going, but why.
They’d vowed to Caroline and each other that they’d never share her secret.
In return, Caroline promised to meet them back at Haven Cliff exactly one year after her disappearance.
It was wrong. So wrong. All of it.
But at that age, you do what you have to do to protect your friends.
Maybe you do the same at this age.
Midge continues to hold the secret. Not just for Caroline’s sake, but for Kelly’s and Talia’s.
Her father goes on, “The thing is, Junia turned eighteen a few months ago. She’s a legal adult. There’s not much anyone—including her parents—can do if she’s chosen to live somewhere else.”
Midge shakes her head, thinking of the girl, her parents . . . her best friend. Exactly what Junia shared with her—that she was in touch with a birth parent, or that she was planning to run away—might never come to light.
“I’d better get going, Dad.”
“Sure you don’t want to stick around and eat?”
“No. I need to get over to Congregational Memorial, and then I’m going to Kelly’s, so please don’t wait up.”
“I won’t.”
“Yes, you will.”
“Yes, I will,” he agrees. “Old habits die hard. Isn’t Congregational the same church your friend Caroline Winterfield belonged to?”
“It is. And Junia Stanton’s parents belonged, too, years ago.” Seeing his raised eyebrow, she adds, “It’s hardly a staggering coincidence. A lot of people go to that church. Junia Stanton hasn’t been there since she was a baby. And you just said yourself that she’s presumed to be a runaway.”
“Let’s hope that’s the case. Because if not—if something happened to the Stanton girl—then we’re talking similar victimology. Congregational aside, they’re teenage girls in the same geographical area.”
“Victimology means that there’s a victim. And I’m going to bet that Sarah’s heading home right now.”
“Well, I’m going to pray that you’re right and that she turns up soon.”
“She will,” Midge says, hoping her words sound more confident to him than they do to her own ears.