Deeper Than the Dead

82

According to the handsome reporter from LA, THE SIEGE AT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE was coming to some kind of conclusion. Shots had been fired. The sheriff’s department tactical squad had stormed the building.

Anne was shaking. The conclusion wasn’t guaranteed to be everyone’s happy ending. She wouldn’t relax until she knew Frank Farman had been subdued, one way or another, and that everyone else was safe. That Vince was safe.

Needing something to busy her hands, she brought her purse into the living room and dumped the contents on the ottoman. She actually managed to smile as Tommy’s gift tumbled out. This was what she needed—a sweet surprise.

The box was about the size and shape a ring might come in. Tommy had obviously wrapped it himself. Anne opened it as carefully as if it might contain a Fabergé egg.

Inside the box was a small puddle of fine gold chain. A necklace, she thought, a little bemused. Where did a ten-year-old boy get the money to buy his teacher a necklace? And what would she do if the gift was too extravagant? It would break his heart if she gave it back.

She emptied the box into her hand and carefully sorted out the ends of the chain, lifting it up and letting it unfurl like gold thread.

A simple gold figure dangled from the chain.

A figure of a woman standing with her arms raised in victory.

The necklace Karly Vickers had been wearing in her photo on the MISSING poster.

Anne’s blood ran cold.

Her heart was beating so fast she felt faint. Her hands were trembling so the small golden figure danced this way and that, catching the lamplight.

Where could Tommy have possibly gotten this? Could there be any reasonable explanation that he would have access to a piece of jewelry given only to the women who made it through the Thomas Center program and graduated to independent living?

Her brain stalled as she tried to make sense of it. Had he found it in the woods? Would Lisa Warwick have had one too? It could have fallen in the dirt and leaves. Tommy could have picked it up during that time he and Wendy had been sitting waiting outside the yellow crime-scene tape—the time between finding the body and when she had gotten there.

That didn’t ring true, but her brain wanted to believe it anyway. Funny how the mind would willingly twist itself into a pretzel trying to make sense of something using just the incomplete information it had, filling in its own blanks.

If Frank Farman was the killer, as the newspeople were speculating, maybe Dennis had the necklace, and Tommy somehow had gotten it from Dennis.

Right. Like Dennis would give Tommy anything. Dennis would have beat up Tommy to get the necklace from him. There was no version of that story that worked in the reverse.

Wendy’s father did a lot of work for the center. Maybe somehow Wendy had come by the necklace and Tommy got the necklace from Wendy.

Peter Crane donated his services to the center.

But only women who graduated the program got the gold necklace. Not even Jane Thomas herself wore a gold one.

Of course there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, she thought. There was no reason to find it troubling . . . and yet she did.

She gathered the necklace into one hand and walked around with it in her fist, as if she thought it might speak to her somehow.

She would have to ask Tommy. Or maybe she would bring it up to his father. There would be an answer.

Sooner rather than later, she thought, as the doorbell rang, and she opened the door to Peter Crane.