Looking for Sophie. Roz Fox Denny

But I’m on vacation. The truth is I have absolutely no official status in your case.”

      She stared at him from teary eyes.

      Julian shifted under her gaze. “Uh, my parents live in a small town about thirty miles outside Atlanta. Pop’s a postman nearing retirement. Part of his job…” Julian hesitated before continuing. “Part of his job is delivering cards that feature pictures of missing children. Pop loves kids, so he takes it very seriously.” Julian sawed off a piece of steak and stabbed it with his fork. He had no idea how fiercely he glared at it until Garnet reached across and tentatively touched his hand.

      “The sergeant handling my case contacted the organization that does the postcards. We worked with them and the FBI for several months. I’m told they never close the book on a case until a missing child turns up safely…or dead,” she whispered, punctuating her obvious worry with a sob.

      “Stop that,” Julian pleaded. “I’m trying to say my dad has a file box full of those cards. He sees any new families on his route, he keeps an eye open. But here’s the kicker. Once, a long time ago, when my brothers, my sister and I were in school, Pop was sure he’d found a boy on one of those cards. He was dead wrong, and a lot of people got real upset.”

      “Are you trying to say that your father saw Sophie’s card and…and thinks the child in this photograph is her?”

      Julian heard the hope in her voice, and tried not to encourage it. “What I’m telling you is that Pop was way off the mark the other time he thought he was right. A lot of people in our town, my family included, were adversely affected. I’m older and wiser now, and in a better position to protect him from making another mistake. Do you understand what I mean?”

      “Yes, of course.” She made the appropriate response, but Julian could tell she’d grabbed on to the notion and had already let it grow by leaps and bounds.

      “Eat,” he ordered, pointing at her virtually untouched salad with his steak knife. Scowling, he dug in to his baked potato and vegetables.

      Garnet grabbed her fork and began spearing lettuce like a dutiful child. She even managed to swallow some, despite finding it difficult to remain still.

      Her hopefulness kept Julian from bringing out the second photo—the one of a happily smiling Lee Hackett dancing around his garage with his equally joyous daughter. The little girl this lovely woman across from him wanted to be her missing Sophie.

      “Before you get too invested in this,” Julian said seriously, “there are other questions that need to be considered. For instance, does your husband, uh, Sophie’s father, have relatives or friends living in the south?”

      Her face fell, but she rallied to say coolly, “Dale is my ex-husband, and I’m not aware if he has family outside of Washington, but I’ll call his mother. His parents live in an assisted-living center in Washington State. An older brother farms in the Skagit Valley, also in Washington. What friends he has live here in Anchorage. But I’m the custodial parent and Dale took Sophie against a court order allowing him only supervised visits. If you know where he is, isn’t it your duty as a law officer to arrest him for kidnapping?”

      “Yes. If it’s your daughter in the snapshot. That’s a big if.”

      For the first time, Garnet realized this man had her at a disadvantage. Other than claiming to have come from Atlanta, Detective Cavenaugh had been very careful to give nothing away. Nothing Garnet could use to track Sophie on her own.

      “I officially finish work for the summer next Wednesday,” she said. “I’ll book a flight tomorrow if you’ll tell me where I can see her for myself.” She stared at the photograph, as if willing the picture to sharpen.

      “Oh, right,” Julian drawled. “And if it is her, what’s to stop your ex from murdering you and taking off with her again?”

      “Dale would never do that.” She lifted her chin defiantly and drilled him with her eyes.

      “Excuse me, I thought you told me he had a temper.”

      “A… One coworker said she saw him lose it after I petitioned for divorce. I only ever saw moodiness. That started after he was laid off from his job and couldn’t find work. I was pregnant with Sophie at the time.”

      “So, you two didn’t fight?”

      She fiddled with her knife. “That depends on your definition of fighting. Dale thought we should pack up and go to Washington. Move in with his brother. But he had no job prospects there, so I balked at quitting my teaching job. I have tenure, plus my job provided us with insurance, and we had a baby due.”

      Julian finished his potato while contemplating her last statement. “I wish you’d eat,” he said, making it clear he intended to clean his plate. “If this is all you normally eat, you won’t last a day on the hunt. Georgia is three thousand miles from here.”

      “Then…you’ll tell me where to find this little girl?”

      When Julian didn’t answer immediately, Garnet hurriedly ate what she could. “Now you’ve clammed up. Talk to me,” she begged, knuckles white around her fork. “Tell me everything you know about her, please.”

      “That’s not much,” he muttered. “The mother in the household and one of two school-age boys supposedly told a neighbor that their sister suffers from asthma. I wasn’t able to verify that.”

      “Sophie was never sick a day in her life. And…there’s a mother?” Garnet held her breath and let it out slowly. “Are you saying Dale has remarried? Did you look for a marriage certificate?”

      “You’re jumping to conclusions. First of all, this family isn’t using the name Patton. Second, the boys have yet another last name. They haven’t been in town long.” He picked up his beer. “I did check. There’s no record of this man and woman being issued a marriage license in Georgia. Tell me, does it bother you that your ex might have a new woman? One of your teacher friends said you and he were mismatched and that your marriage was a mistake from the get-go.”

      Garnet stared at her plate. “Dale and I met at a housewarming party seven years ago. We were twenty-two. I’m an only child and my parents both had demanding careers that took up a lot of their time. You could say we had a chilly household. One day, shortly after graduation, my college roommate, Jenny, suggested we send résumés to Alaska. I was beyond ready to leave Chicago. I met Dale during that…exploratory phase in my life.”

      She balled up her napkin. “He was the antithesis of any man I’d dated before. I can’t deny we shared some good years—before he began saying I was obsessive about wanting a healthy savings account to ensure Sophie’s security.”

      Garnet’s tone tightened. “I wonder if he knows I emptied that savings account in six months searching for him. I doubt he’d care that I had to sell the house and move to an efficiency apartment. In the move, I kept Sophie’s favorite toys, but gave her clothes to a local church. Mostly, I couldn’t bear the reminder that at the end of a year she would’ve outgrown everything.”

      Julian polished off his beer and waited to see if Garnet would volunteer tidbits that would ring any bells. Apparently, she’d reached her limit. And it bothered him to see the raw emotion in her haunted eyes.

      “Did you keep any pictures of your ex-husband?”

      “I’m not sure. I threw a lot of stuff away. What about this man in Georgia? Can you describe him?”