She shrugged. “Not living with me.”
“He moved out?” I asked, shocked.
“No, I mean emotionally. It’s like he hasn’t really been home in days.”
I covered her hand with mine. “It’s a case, Cook. Classic symptoms. I promise you.”
She nodded and went home early. I went to see a girl about a building.
The woman who’d leased the building the adoption agent worked out of lived in Taylor Ranch, so I headed that way despite the hour. Nothing sucked the life out of a day like rush-hour traffic. Fortunately, it wasn’t that bad. The woman, a Karen Claffey, lived off Montano in a small white stucco with faded plastic flowers lining the drive.
I knocked on the door and heard a small dog barking inside when a car pulled up. A woman in her fifties got out and went around to her trunk to grab her groceries.
I smiled and waved as she walked from her drive to the front door. “Hi. Karen Claffey?”
She nodded and shifted her bags to get the door open.
“My name is Charley Davidson. I’m a private investigator looking into the Divine Intervention Adoption Agency, and —”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Her brusqueness threw me, but only for a moment.
“Really?” I took out the file. “According to city records, you leased the building the agency worked out of.”
“Not me. I don’t know anything about it.”
If she had a sign around her neck, it would be flashing LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE.
“No problem. But I should probably warn you, I’m working with APD on this. I have to turn in my findings, so they might show up in the next couple of days. Just routine stuff. Nothing to worry about.” I started toward Misery. “Have a good day.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that agency.”
“Excuse me?”
Annoyance mixed with a healthy dose of fear washed out of her. “It wasn’t me. They just put the lease in my name on account of I went to their church and we became friends.”
“Who, Mrs. Claffey?”
“Eve and Abraham. The Fosters. They needed the building but didn’t want it in their names.”
I stepped back to her. “Did they say why?”
She opened her front door and stood halfway inside as though hinting she had better things to do. “Just that they were going to adopt some kids and wanted to start their own agency. As far as I could tell, no agency ever went in. The building stayed empty the whole time. I would get the mail for them and drop it off at their house. That’s all. I didn’t have anything to do with the rest.”
“Mrs. Claffey, I have to ask: What rest?”
She bowed her head in thought. Or prayer. She was down quite a while.
After enough time passed for me to have ovulated, twice, she gestured me inside.
She had a dachshund named Marley. I only knew that because she yelled at her seventeen times to shut up. But Marley continued her reign of terror, barking at me for a good three minutes before deciding I was okay. Then it was all belly rubs and toy tubs. As in a tub of toys. She had to bring out each and every toy, and we had to fight to the death for it until she got bored and went for the next one. I wondered if Mrs. Claffey would notice her missing after I left.
Karen put the bags on her kitchen counter, then started a pot of coffee. The smell sent me skyrocketing to my happy place called Coffeeland.
“There was some hubbub a while back,” she said, talking over the dog growls as we battled for a pink mouse with one ear. “An investigator came by saying he worked for a public defender and that he needed everything I had on the agency. I tried to tell him I didn’t have anything. The lease was in my name, true, but that was it. I had nothing to do with the business.”
After almost losing a hand, I asked, “Did he say what they were investigating?”
She busied herself putting groceries away. “A woman was arrested for the disappearance and murder of her child. But she says she didn’t kill her. She said that a couple from an adoption agency approached her. Then, twenty-five years later, the remains of the baby are found not fifty yards from the house she was living in at the time.”
I stood and walked to her. Or, well, hobbled. Marley took a liking to my ankle boots. Had the Fosters adopted this woman’s child only to kill it? Why go to such lengths? “Do you believe the Fosters capable of such a heinous act?”
She snorted. “Of course. The woman’s story is too… accurate.”
I bowed my head in sadness and in thought. I needed to talk to that investigator. “Mrs. Claffey —”
“Just Karen.”
“Karen, did the investigator leave a card or give you a contact number?”
“He did, but I threw it away. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I can find out. Thank you so much, Karen.” I took her hand and pressed a card into it. “If you think of anything else.”
She took my card, and I was about 90 percent certain she’d throw it away the minute I left as well.
Right before I headed for the door, I realized I needed to warn her. To let her know she could be in danger. “Karen, I don’t want to scare you or sound all dire, but please don’t say anything about this to the Fosters. I don’t want this coming back on you.”
She bit down and I felt a mixture of outrage and animosity. “I never see them anymore. I quit going to their church a while back.”
“Care to tell me what happened?”
She turned away. I’d been doing this long enough to know that I’d lost her. “No.”
Fair enough. “What is their church called?”