Grounds To Believe. Shelley Bates

we can get on her.” Harry leaned out the door a second time. “Hey, Kurtz! C’mon back in here, would you?”

      Jenny Kurtz smiled as she did so, perching on the edge of the desk to be sure that Ross got a good view of her legs. “What’s up?” she asked.

      “You’ve lived here all your life, right?” Harry said. “You know the folks in town pretty well.”

      “Sure. What do you need to know?”

      “Do you know the Blanchards?”

      Jenny shrugged. “Madeleine was a couple of years ahead of me in high school. I don’t know her husband. But I graduated with her sister Julia.”

      “What can you tell us about her?”

      “That stick-in-the-mud?” Jenny looked amused. “What do you want to know about her for?”

      “Because she’s connected to this case Investigator Malcolm’s here for. Tell us about her.”

      “I don’t see her much anymore, thank goodness.” Jenny giggled with a sudden memory. “She was such a Goody Two-shoes in high school. Some of the boys thought it would be funny to write her phone number up on the bathroom wall—you know, ‘for a good time, call…’ A couple of the crazy ones actually did it. She wouldn’t know what to do with a guy if she had one. She probably tried to save their souls.”

      Ross eyed her with distaste. There was nothing quite like the cruelty of the “in” crowd to the outsider, all the more amazing when he reflected that high school for Jenny had been a good many years ago. Some people matured. Some just stayed stuck at seventeen forever. “How do you think she felt about it?” he asked in spite of himself.

      She shrugged. “Who knows?” And who cared, from the tone of her voice.

      “Do you know where she lives?” Harry asked, bringing them back to the matter at hand.

      “No, but she works at that bookshop downtown. Quill and Quinn. I never go in there. They don’t stock anything good.”

      “What about her religion?” Ross asked. “Know anything about that?”

      “Only enough to know it gives me the creeps,” she said, making a face. “Nothing but black to their ankles and high-maintenance hair. I went once, for a joke, when they had some kind of meeting at the hall downtown, but—”

      “Where’s the hall?” Ross interrupted.

      “Fourth and Birch, right next to the post office. It’s easy to miss, though. No signs, no cross, no nothing. Boring.”

      “Thanks.”

      Harry glanced at him and took his cue. “Thanks for your help, Jenny. Shut the door on the way out, would you?”

      She slid off the desk. At the door she looked over her shoulder. “Anything else you want to know about old Julia McNeill, you give me a call.” With a toss of her hair, she swiveled around the door and closed it behind her.

      “We need to talk about my cover story,” Ross said. “You dragged me in here with the clothes on my back. I’ve got a good pair of jeans and a shirt outside on the bike. At the moment I’m not very convincing convert material.”

      “I don’t know. I don’t think they’re too fussy.”

      “I don’t want to take the chance. I need an image, and I need a good reason to join.”

      “Why do people usually get religion?” Harry waved his hand. “They get in a car accident, they lose a loved one. Take your pick. Have a revelation on me.”

      They lose a loved one. He’d gotten a revelation over that, all right. The law made a great weapon, even if he sometimes felt he was fighting alone, spurred on by his fear and his memories. He’d find Kailey some day. One assignment at a time. One prayer at a time.

      First, the persona—a grieving husband escaping his loss. Talk to the informant. Then, track down Miss Goody Two-shoes.

      Chapter Two

      The woman had called herself Miriam for so many years that she’d pretty much forgotten her real name. The only entity her real name mattered to was the government, and she didn’t have anything to do with them.

      Or hadn’t, anyway. Until now.

      She looked at the child sleeping on the orange plastic bench at the bus depot and sighed. She’d signed up to do the right thing, so she had to go through with it. Moses had told her where they were going after they’d buried Annie, and she’d just have to meet them there when she was done.

      Minus the child.

      She picked up the pay phone’s receiver and dialed Information.

      “What listing, please?”

      “The sheriff. And could you put me through to the number?”

      “That will be a dollar twenty-five, please.”

      Miriam put the quarters in the phone, and the number rang through.

      “Inish County Sheriff’s Department.”

      “I’m looking for a deputy named Ross Malcolm. Could you transfer me, please?” The formal language, the politeness, felt stilted on her tongue.

      The woman rang her through, and Miriam dared to feel a little hope threaded through the mass of her built-up distrust and fear.

      “Human Resources.”

      “I’m looking for a deputy named Ross Malcolm who works there.”

      A clicking sound rattled in the background. “The only person by that name who’s worked here since I’ve been here transferred up to Seattle several years ago.”

      The flicker of hope died. Seattle was on the other side of the state. At the ends of the earth.

      “Did he go to a sheriff’s department there?” she asked faintly.

      “Nope. Seattle P.D. Anything else I can help you with?”

      “No.” Dispensing with politeness, Miriam hung up the pay phone a little harder than she had to.

      Seattle. Talk about finding a needle in a haystack. It would be less trouble to take the girl back with her. She was small, but even the little ones paid their way. She might make a good shill. God knew those eyes had made Miriam herself act completely out of character.

      Had forced her to make a promise she no longer wanted to keep.

      Rita Ulstad had agreed to meet Ross near a drooping Japanese maple on the hospital grounds. In front of them was the parking lot, scattered with cars. Ross turned as the petite nurse slid onto the bench beside him.

      “Ms. Ulstad?”

      Her face was so immaculately made up she could have passed for thirty. Fashionably mussed, her hair was tinted taffy-blond. “Call me Rita.” She looked him up and down. “You’re Ross Malcolm? The cop?”

      He crossed his denim-clad legs, and his heavy riding boots sank into the lawn. “A lot of my work takes me undercover.”

      “Wow. I guess I’ve never met anyone in plainclothes before.”

      “I clean up when I have to.” He smiled at her. “Harry Everett says you can tell me about Ryan Blanchard.”

      “Whatever you need to know. I’m past the point of professional discretion here. All I want is to see justice done and those people exposed for who they are.”

      “Okay…who are ‘those people’?”

      “The Blanchards? Or the Elect in general?”

      “Start with the big picture and work in. What’s your history with this group? What are they called—the Elect?”

      “As in