Ellery stood next to Dorie by the wall of the Lockharts’ pristine living room, careful not to lean against the wallpaper lest she leave a sweat stain on it. The number of bodies in the room, combined with the camera lights, had raised the temperature on what was already a humid summer day and Ellery regretted her long-sleeve shirt. Teresa Lockhart sat on the gray couch with her husband shoulder to shoulder. Her face was pale and her eyes fixed and unblinking. “I love Chloe with all my heart,” she said to the bouquet of microphones in front of her. Her monotone was hard to hear even in the otherwise silent room. “We miss her and we want her to come home. If someone saw her playing in the park and wanted to spend time with her, I understand their motivation. Chloe is a beautiful, loving girl. But she needs to come home now. We won’t ask questions. We won’t point fingers. We just want Chloe to be safe. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, even parents. Even children. This mistake is not too late to fix if Chloe can just come home.”
Ellery released her breath when Teresa finished. Reporters asked questions, but Wintour shut them down, with an assist from Captain Conroy. “Is it just me,” Dorie muttered to Ellery amid the chaos, “or was that kind of terrible?”
“She’s no actress,” Ellery murmured back.
“I get more emotion from the teenager giving me my cheeseburger in the drive-thru.” She jerked her head in the direction of the back of the room. “Come on, I see the nanny’s here. We can ask her about the boy with Chloe in those pictures.”
Ellery threaded her way through the bodies in the room, glancing back to see Teresa shrug off Martin’s hand from her shoulder. Yes, she’d been robotic in front of the cameras, but Ellery didn’t share Dorie’s disdain. Dorie hadn’t ever been under those bright lights, blinded while the cameras flashed away at your moment of weakness, like jackals closing in for the kill. We just want your story! the reporters always shouted. You need to tell your side! They persisted until you gave in to their questions. You’d try to set the record straight. Only then, too late, you’d realize your mistake. Once you gave it up, the story was no longer yours.
Margery did not look thrilled to see them headed her way. “I heard about the text,” she said, her voice bitter. “You’re not here to accuse my husband of sending it, are you??”
“Did he?” Ellery asked, just because.
Margery’s mouth fell open. “No.”
“Did you?” Ellery didn’t believe this possibility, either, but as she said the words it occurred to her that Margery was both the last person seen with Chloe and the only outsider to have an up-close view of Teresa Lockhart’s parenting.
“Of course I didn’t. I can’t believe you would even suggest such a thing.”
Ellery nodded. Margery was a fifty-something granny with stretch pants, sensible shoes, and a pristine white cardigan. She did not look the part of a child kidnapper, and Ellery couldn’t imagine her using text-speak in any case. “What did you think of Teresa Lockhart’s TV appearance?”
Margery glanced over her shoulder before answering. “I pray that works to bring Chloe home,” she told the detectives. “Mrs. Lockhart doesn’t even like having her picture taken. This must be torture for her.”
Ellery wondered if that was part of the point, if the person who texted the request knew Teresa well enough to understand the special agony of forcing her to appear on television. No doubt the woman had endured a hungry press once before when her first child was murdered. “We have a couple of additional questions for you,” Ellery told Margery. “Is there someplace quiet we could talk?”
Margery looked around at the houseful of people. “The greenhouse,” she said at length. “It’s attached at the back.” She took them to an enclosed glass room off the kitchen where riotous plants unfurled giant leaves all the way to the ceiling.
“Is that a banana tree?” Dorie asked with incredulity.
“Theoretically, yes. I’m not sure it’s ever borne fruit.” She eyed the closed door behind them. “What is it you want to ask me?”
“You know that the video we’ve found so far shows that Chloe left the fair on her own.”
“I still can’t quite believe it. But yes, that’s what her parents told me.” Her worried gaze slid to the door again as though she feared who might walk through it and catch them talking. “I don’t know that I’ll have a job when Chloe comes home. They blame me for her running off.”
“Who do you blame?” Ellery asked.
A furrow appeared in her brow. “Do you have kids?” Ellery and Dorie both shook their heads. “Well, I’ve raised three of them. All good kids, but let me tell you, there were some years in there … My oldest once told me she was saying the night at a friend’s house, only it turned out they drove to Quebec, got drunk, and had to be fished out of a canal by the local authorities. My son, he went six weeks without saying more than two words to any question I asked him. I know because I counted. Chloe was turning thirteen in a few weeks, which I suppose makes her ripe for this sort of behavior. They drive you up a wall so that you’re not sorry when they move out.”
“You think she was reacting to her home life,” Dorie said.
“She found her parents to be too strict. Especially Mrs. Lockhart. Truthfully, so did I, but no one could really blame the woman after what happened the first time.” She bit her lip. “Mrs. Lockhart loves that girl, of that I have no doubt. But she was more comfortable giving her rules than affection. Almost like she didn’t want to get too close. She’d come into the room, ask Chloe about her day, and then find some reason to leave again. It wasn’t as bad when Chloe was younger because she’d just grab her mother’s legs or climb into her lap. These days, they seemed to communicate more by text than anything else.”
“What about Mr. Lockhart? How does he get along with Chloe?”
“Oh, he dotes on her. They go for bike rides together on the weekends. Whenever he travels for work, he brings her back chocolate or a stuffed toy.” She paused. “Of course, the last one she threw in the trash.”
“When was that?” Ellery asked.
“About a month ago. He went to Japan and brought her back a Hello Kitty. She said it was for babies and threw it away. I could see on his face that she about broke his heart. He’s been working longer hours lately—something about a big new client—and I think Chloe took it kind of personal.” She took a deep breath and folded her arms across her chest. “This house gets awful quiet sometimes with only me and Chloe in it. Maybe … maybe she went looking for some noise.”
“Where would she go?”
“I keep asking myself that same question. I guessed she’d be off with McKenna or one of her other friends, but they all seem accounted for.”
Ellery pulled out her phone and called up the picture of Chloe and the unidentified young man. “Do you recognize this boy?”
The creases around Margery’s eyes scrunched together as she studied the image. “He looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t say I know him. Where was this taken?”
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
Margery examined the photo again, taking in his patched-up army jacket, the chain around his neck, and the ink across his hands. “This boy looks like he’s high school or older. I don’t know how Chloe would’ve run into him.”
“Could he be related to one of her friends? The son of one of her tutors?”
Margery’s lips thinned and she handed back the phone with a firm gesture. “No. We don’t know anyone who looks like that.”
Like what? Ellery wanted to ask her. Black? Poor? “Street”? But Dorie had been teaching her that the most important part of being a detective was to keep your mouth shut and your ears open, to remain neutral or even sympathetic when people confessed their worst thoughts and deeds. People will share their whole story, she’d counseled Ellery, but you have to give them the space to do it. You’ve got to be willing to buy a murderer a donut and cup of coffee, to hold his hand while he explains how he used his neighbor’s chain saw to dismember his wife. Tell him he’s not such a bad guy after all.
Dorie had the rep to back it up; her wide blue eyes and friendly, open face had wrung out more confessions than any grizzled male cop with the urge to put the perp’s head through a wall. Ellery just found the head-through-the-wall scenario more personally satisfying. “Okay, if you think of where you might have seen him, let us know,” she said to Margery. “If we can figure out where she met him, we can identify who he is.”
“If you send me the picture, I can ask around. My younger two kids are closer to his age. Maybe they would recognize him.”
“Your kids, do they know Chloe?”
“Of course. She used to come over to my place a bunch when she was smaller. She loved to help in my garden, and she was crazy about Miss Piggy, our guinea pig.”
“She still visits your place?” Ellery asked.
“Not anymore.” She paused. “Mrs. Lockhart asked me to stop bringing her over there a few years ago, and so I did.”
“Any idea why she’d ask that?” Dorie wanted to know.
Margery glanced toward the main house. “Chloe asked if she could move in with me. I said no, of course. She has a lovely home here. But she must have repeated the request to the Lockharts, and they didn’t take kindly to it.”
“How did Chloe take it when you said no?” Ellery asked.
Margery smiled sadly. “She didn’t kick up a fuss. She never did. She said, ‘Tell the sunflowers that I miss them.’ They’re blooming now, almost five feet tall. I look out my kitchen window and see them at different times, moving their heads around this way and that. I know in my head they’re just following the sunshine, but I can’t help feeling like they’re looking for Chloe.”
“Okay, well, thanks for your time. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.” Margery left them in the greenhouse.
“More questions?” Dorie asked. “I have about a thousand of them.”
“Me, too.” Ellery’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she drew it out to study the latest message. “Apparently, the tip line got something interesting enough to forward up the chain. Someone who didn’t care to leave their name phoned a few hours ago to say that Martin Lockhart is having an affair.”
Dorie sighed. “Yet more questions. Did they say who with?”
“Amanda McFarland.”
“You mean that cool drink of water from his office who made up some excuse to drop by yesterday?”
“It has to be. How many Amanda McFarlands can he know?”
“We can go in there and hit him with it now. See what he says.”
Ellery checked her watch, feeling time slipping away. “Give me a second. I want to consult an expert.” She walked off behind the banana plant and dialed Reed’s number. He answered straightaway.
“I saw Teresa’s plea,” he said. “Hopefully whoever has Chloe saw it, too.”
“Did she look contrite enough to you?”
“She looked terrified.”
Ellery hummed a reply. “Maybe that will be enough. Listen, we’ve uncovered a new wrinkle. Someone phoned the tip line to say that Martin Lockhart is having an affair with a woman at his office named Amanda McFarland. I’d say it was nothing, but she made up a pretext to drop by the house yesterday to see him. Teresa wasn’t pleased.”
“You think she knows?”
“What do you think?” Reed’s family had spent decades ignoring his father’s serial infidelities.
“In my experience, the wife’s radar is rarely wrong. What does Martin Lockhart say about it?”
“We haven’t asked him yet. We were just on our way to talk to Chloe’s best friend again. The nanny couldn’t ID the boy from the photo, so we thought McKenna would be our best shot.”
“That does seem to be the more pressing lead.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to see how Martin Lockhart’s inability to keep his pants zipped could be related to Chloe’s abduction.”
“It’s probably not. Except…”
He didn’t finish his thought. She waited and then prodded him. “Except?”
She heard a long exhale. “Where there’s one secret, you’ll find others. There’s something hiding in the middle of that family, something they’re not telling us.”
Ellery agreed the Lockharts seemed haunted, but she didn’t see any mystery to it. “Maybe it’s just the ghost of Trevor Stone.”
“Maybe. I can talk to Martin Lockhart if you like.”
“You would? That would be great.” Ellery peeked out from behind the plant and signaled Dorie that they could go. “If Martin Lockhart was boning his younger colleague while his daughter got kidnapped, let me know. At least then he’d have a solid alibi.”
“Wasn’t he playing golf with the lawyer? Stephen Wintour?”
“Like you said—where there’s one lie, you’ll find others.”