Amanda had barely brought the department car to a standstill in the parking lot of Dumfries Elementary when Trent was climbing out.
“I know why I drive most of the time.”
“Hey.”
“No hey about it. You have a lead foot. You do know the posted speed limit, and that you were well above it?”
“Arrest me.” She smiled, but it faded at the sight of the school’s sign. Zoe went here, and it finally hit that she might have known Charlotte Archer.
Amanda and Trent entered the administrative offices and were greeted by the main receptionist. Flora, a robust woman in her mid-forties, was seated at her desk, back ramrod straight, shoulders pulled back, breasts front and center.
“Flora, this is my partner, Detective Trent Stenson.” Amanda didn’t need to give her name, as the woman was well aware who she was given they had prior dealings.
Flora’s gaze trailed over to Trent, and she nodded in greeting.
“We need to speak with Charlotte Archer’s teacher for a few moments. Guessing that’s Kim Brewer.” She’d been Zoe’s teacher last year.
Class had just started, and a brief grimace crossed the woman’s face. “Can I say what this is regarding?”
“Charlotte Archer.” Amanda thought she’d said as much already, but she pressed on a kind smile. It was one the woman didn’t return.
“One minute.” She picked up the phone, and a few moments later was hanging up. “Ms. Brewer will be with you shortly. You can wait over there.” She indicated a line of five chairs along a wall and had the receiver pressed to her ear again. From the sound of it, she was making a request for someone to watch over Brewer’s class for a bit.
“This brings back a lot of memories.” Trent dropped into a chair.
“You spend time here?” Amanda hooked an eyebrow, knowing most of the students who graced these seats were facing some sort of discipline.
“You could say so.”
“Surprising. You seem the type to adhere to the book.” Though that was based on her initial impression at the onset of their partnership when Trent had been quiet and eager to please.
“Do you know me at all?”
She straightened her posture and said, “Name one reason you were dragged to the principal’s office.”
“I…” He closed his mouth.
“Can’t think of one?” she challenged.
He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “I was caught making out in the hall with a girl.”
Of all the things to say, why this story? Heat flooded her cheeks. “I see.”
“Yep.”
“Ms. Steele?” Kim Brewer was in her late twenties and a thin woman, almost frail in appearance. She was wearing a skirt that billowed around her legs as she walked. It was her regular look she paired with either a semi-casual short-sleeved shirt or sweater. “Everything all right with Charlotte Archer?”
“Is there someplace we could talk that’s more private?” Students were in and out of this spot.
“Sure.” Kim took them to a teacher’s break room, which was empty.
The three of them sat down, and Kim gave Trent a shy, subtle smile.
“Oh, where are my manners? This is my partner, Detective Stenson.”
The two of them nodded in greeting.
“We believe something may have happened to Charlotte Archer.” There wasn’t any doubt the young girl in the morgue was Charlotte, but until formal ID was out of the way, she’d present the girl’s fate as an uncertainty. “When was she last in class?”
Kim worried her bottom lip. “Not this week or last, but the one before.”
Chills flushed through Amanda. “And you’re sure of that?”
“I am. That Friday.”
Two Fridays ago… Had Roy Archer lied to them about when his family disappeared, after all? Had they really “disappeared” or had he filed the report as a ruse to protect himself? Not a new thought.
“Did you try reaching her parents to find out what was going on?” Trent asked, the hint of accusation in his voice.
“I left several messages for both her mother and father.”
“And no one called you back?” The hairs were rising on Amanda’s arms. Roy Archer was indisputably an ass—beating on his wife, raping her too, thinking of the evidence. Had he killed his family?
“Nope. I ended up going by the house and spoke with Roy, the girl’s father.”
“When was this?” Amanda asked.
“Just this past Friday after school. He told me he’d filed missing person reports and had no idea where they were. I only went over there when…”
“When?” Amanda pressed.
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but I spoke to the principal earlier in the week and thought he reported it to the police. But he didn’t.”
“Did he say why he didn’t call?” Trent asked.
“He said that Charlotte’s father was a police officer, and everything should be under control.”
“No pun intended, but that sounds like a cop out,” Trent mumbled.
Amanda let what Kim had just said sink in. The Friday she spoke to Roy was pegged as the day Jill and Charlotte had died. “When you visited, how did Mr. Archer seem to you?”
“Preoccupied, flustered.”
Trent had a pulse tapping in his cheek, which Amanda recognized as his temper churning up. But the evidence was pointing back to Roy. “Any idea why he might have been that way?”
“I just assumed it was because his wife and daughter were missing. I’m guessing that you’re here because something happened to them?”
“Yes, we believe so.” Amanda continued to hide behind a veil of uncertainty. Fewer questions to answer that way, and it would plug the rumor mill some.
Kim’s eyes pooled with tears, but none fell.
“When you last saw Charlotte, how was she?” Running with Roy’s testimony, Jill and Charlotte went missing Tuesday. That meant the girl had still missed one day of school before then, on the Monday. But why?
“Shy, but that’s not new. It takes a lot to get her to interact with the other kids. It was something we were working on.”
Amanda nodded, imagining if the little girl had witnessed her father abusing the mother that could be the reason. “What was your impression of the girl’s home life?”
“I don’t like to talk candidly about any of my students and their lives at home, but…”
“It’s okay, you can talk to us,” Amanda assured her.
“I know Mr. Archer is a policeman.”
“Yes, with the Dumfries PD.” Amanda wanted to stress that, as she sensed Kim feared some sort of brotherhood retaliation. “Go ahead. Speak freely.”
Kim toyed with the frayed fabric on the arm of the couch. “I filed a report with Child Protective Services. I suspected Charlotte may have been abused at home. As a teacher, it’s my duty to report such things. But then it’s out of my hands. They decide how to follow up or if it’s necessary.”
“What made you suspect abuse?” Amanda asked. “Bruising or other injuries?”
Kim shook her head. “Nothing physical, but more in the way the girl presented herself. Quiet, as I said, but her drawings were also dark. She used very little color. And when I met her father and mother my suspicions grew stronger. Do you remember the heatwave we had this past June?”
“Oh, do I.” Amanda recalled clearly because she had to replace the central air conditioning unit in her house. It was also the month she and Trent had kissed.
“Well, I had a meet and greet with parents and students who would be attending my class this fall. That’s when I first met Charlotte’s parents. Her mother wore a turtleneck—in that heat—and she struck me as quiet and timid. Mr. Archer did all the talking. He kept putting his arm around her, and I swear she inched away from him. It wasn’t because she was warm. Something didn’t feel right.”
Amanda had learned early on if something felt off, it usually was. In this situation, Roy’s need to touch his wife when she didn’t want it was a classic sign of a controlling husband. “Was that the last time you saw Mrs. Archer?”
She shook her head. “I usually saw her when she dropped Charlotte off. So two Fridays ago.”
The last day Charlotte went to class… “And was she always alone or…?”
“Usually, but that day I saw Mrs. Archer speaking with a man in the yard. I didn’t recognize him. It’s probably the only reason I remember. Jill had run after Charlotte that day as she’d forgotten her bag in the car. It was on her way back she stopped and talked with the man.”
Amanda wasn’t struck by the fact the teacher had observed all this. People in small towns were nosier than most. “You said you didn’t recognize him?”
“No, but I got the impression they knew each other.”
“How did the interaction appear—friendly, confrontational…?” Trent asked.
“She was laughing and smiling. Both a rare sight.”
Kim not recognizing the man niggled some, but there were about five hundred students who attended the school. The man’s family could have been a recent transfer, or him a mother’s new romantic interest, called upon for a favor. Amanda stood and gave the teacher her card. “Thank you for your time, Kim.”
Once she and Trent left the school, she turned to him. “Looks like we may have another mystery man on our hands.”
“Another?” Trent looked over at her, squinting in the sunlight.
“At least one a case, it seems.”
Trent waved a dismissive hand. “Likely means nothing this time. He could be a parent the teacher wasn’t familiar with. I doubt she knows everyone.”
Amanda nodded. Same as her conclusion. But what if that man was someone they needed to worry about?