Chapter 4
Daniel’s memory returned in pieces.
None of them came gently.
He remembered being in his bedroom while Claire called his name from downstairs.
He remembered Diane standing in the hallway, blocking him.
He remembered asking why Claire was crying.
Diane had told him it was the television.
Then she made him swallow two pills that she said were vitamins.
He slept until morning.
When he woke, Claire was gone.
“Mom said Claire had run away,” Daniel told Detective Ortiz. “Dad said there had been an accident.”
“Did you see your sister again?” Maya asked.
“I don’t know.”
We were sitting around our dining room table.
Mark had gone pale.
Lily was asleep upstairs with Elena, who had refused to leave us alone.
Daniel pressed his fingers against his temples.
“There was a car.”
“What kind?” Maya asked.
“Brown. Maybe a station wagon.”
“Who was driving?”
“My father.”
“Was Claire inside?”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“I remember a blanket in the back seat.”
Maya waited.
She never rushed him.
“She moved,” he whispered. “The blanket moved.”
“So Claire was alive when your father took her away.”
“I think so.”
Mark stood near the window.
“Why would Dad help Mom hide her?”
“Fear,” Maya said. “Money. Reputation. Control. Families keep terrible secrets for ordinary reasons.”
Mark turned on her.
“Our father wasn’t a monster.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You implied it.”
“I’m trying to find a child who disappeared.”
“She would be thirty-six now,” I said.
Maya nodded.
“If she survived.”
Daniel flinched.
I squeezed his hand.
“What happened to the missing-person report?”
Maya opened her folder.
“Diane reported Claire missing two days after she disappeared. She claimed the child ran away following an argument.”
“An eight-year-old?” I asked.
“The report was withdrawn six days later. Diane said Claire had been located with a relative in Wisconsin.”
“What relative?”
“That section is blank.”
Mark shook his head.
“Dad’s sister lived in Wisconsin.”
Daniel looked at him.
“Aunt Rebecca?”
“She died before Claire disappeared.”
Maya turned a page.
“Someone continued using Rebecca’s name after her death. A bank account was opened in Madison. Monthly payments came from your father for seventeen years.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“To support Claire?”
“Possibly.”
“Can you trace the account?”
“We’re working on it.”
“What about the death certificate?”
“It was filed twelve years after Claire vanished. Cause of death was listed as accidental drowning.”
“Who identified the body?”
“No body was recorded.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Yes.”
“Who signed it?”
Maya slid a copy across the table.
The physician’s name was Dr. Leonard Shaw.
Mark stared at it.
“He was Mom’s cousin.”
“He died last year,” Maya said.
Daniel hit the table.
“Everyone who knew the truth is dead except her.”
“And Miguel,” I reminded him.
Maya’s phone rang.
She stepped into the hallway.
Daniel watched her leave.
“Why would my mother try the same thing with Lily?”
“Because Lily spilled soup?” Mark asked.
Daniel gave him a cold look.
“No.”
Mark sat down.
“I don’t understand her anymore.”
“I don’t think we ever did.”
Maya returned.
“Diane has been released.”
My heart dropped.
“How?”
“The state approved charges, but her attorney requested an emergency bond hearing. She posted bail.”
“Can she come near Lily?”
“No. The judge issued a temporary protective order.”
“She ignores rules.”
“Then call us immediately.”
Daniel stood.
“Where is she now?”
“Her attorney claims he doesn’t know.”
“She owns a condo ten minutes from us.”
“We checked it.”
“She has a lake house.”
“Address?”
Mark answered before Daniel could.
“Near Fox Lake.”
Maya wrote it down.
“Any other property?”
“The restaurant building,” Daniel said.
“Technically, who owns it?”
“We all do. Mom has fifty-one percent. Mark and I each have twenty-four and a half.”
Maya glanced at me.
“And Claire?”
“Apparently nothing.”
“Not according to this.”
She placed another document on the table.
It was a copy of their grandmother Evelyn’s will.
The relevant paragraph was underlined.
Upon my death, my controlling interest in Bennett Family Kitchen shall pass in trust to my granddaughter, Claire Marie Bennett, to be managed by her parents until her twenty-fifth birthday.
Daniel read it twice.
“Mom told us Grandma left everything to her.”
“The will filed in probate said that,” Maya replied. “This version was found in a retired attorney’s storage records.”
Mark stared at the signature.
“You think Mom forged the will?”
“I think someone substituted a different document.”
“Why are you investigating inheritance fraud in a child-endangerment case?”
“Because motive matters.”
Daniel looked at me.
“My mother made Claire disappear for the restaurant.”
Maya did not confirm it.
She didn’t need to.
The front door opened.
I jumped up.
Elena hurried downstairs.
“Sarah, Lily is gone.”
For half a second, I couldn’t understand the words.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I checked the bathroom. Her bedroom window is open.”
Daniel ran upstairs.
I followed so quickly I hit my shoulder against the wall.
Lily’s bed was empty.
The window stood open.
Her favorite sneakers were missing.
On the pillow was a folded note.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Mommy,
Grandma says Claire is alive and she will show me where. I’m sorry. I need to know so Daddy won’t be sad.
Lily
I couldn’t breathe.
Maya took the note.
“How long was Elena downstairs?”
“Less than five minutes.”
Daniel checked the window.
“The screen was removed from outside.”
“Lily didn’t leave willingly,” I said.
Maya was already calling for units.
“Did Lily have a phone or tracking device?”
“Her watch.”
Daniel opened the location app.
A red dot moved north.
“She’s on Sheridan Road.”
Maya spoke rapidly into her radio.
I grabbed my keys.
She blocked the doorway.
“You’re staying here.”
“That is my daughter.”
“And I need you available if the kidnapper calls.”
“Her name is Diane.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“I do.”
Daniel held up his phone.
“The watch is moving toward the highway.”
Mark stepped beside us.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Maya said. “You’re both emotionally involved.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You can arrest me later.”
Then he ran downstairs.
I followed.
Maya cursed under her breath and came after us.
Daniel drove while I watched the red dot.
Maya followed in an unmarked car.
Mark sat in the back seat, calling every number he had for Diane.
She didn’t answer.
“Dot’s turning west,” I said.
“That leads to the expressway,” Daniel replied.
“Lake house,” Mark whispered.
Then the dot stopped.
“Why did it stop?” Daniel asked.
I refreshed the app.
Nothing changed.
“They found the watch.”
A minute later, Maya called.
“Do not continue to Fox Lake. Officers found Lily’s watch beside an alley in Evanston.”
Daniel struck the steering wheel.
“She used it to mislead us.”
“She knew Lily had a tracker.”
I heard Maya giving instructions to other officers.
Then her voice returned.
“Go home. We are issuing an Amber Alert.”
“I’m not going home.”
“Daniel, listen to me.”
“No, you listen. My mother has taken one little girl from this family. She is not taking another.”
Mark suddenly leaned between the seats.
“I know where she went.”
Daniel looked at him in the mirror.
“How?”
“Mom used to have another house.”
“You said the lake house.”
“Not that one. Dad bought a cabin under Rebecca’s name.”
“Where?”
“Wisconsin.”
“Why didn’t you tell the detective?”
“I forgot about it until now.”
I called Maya back.
Mark gave her the location.
The cabin was almost three hours away.
Police in Wisconsin were notified.
We were ordered not to follow.
Daniel kept driving.
Forty minutes later, my phone rang from an unknown number.
I answered immediately.
“Lily?”
Diane’s voice came through instead.
“You should have listened when I told you not to involve the police.”
“Where is my daughter?”
“She is safe.”
“Let me hear her.”
“You lost the right to make demands when you struck me.”
“I will apologize. I will tell the police I lied. Just bring Lily home.”
Daniel looked at me, but he understood what I was doing.
Diane laughed softly.
“You always were desperate to be accepted.”
“Please.”
“Turn around.”
My eyes moved to the road ahead.
“How do you know where we are?”
“Daniel’s car has a family tracking service. I paid for it.”
Daniel swore and pulled onto the shoulder.
Mark found the control in the dashboard and disabled it.
Diane continued.
“If I see your car cross the state line, you will never find Lily.”
“What do you want?”
“I want the restaurant reopened tomorrow.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You kidnapped my child over a restaurant?”
“I rescued my granddaughter from a violent mother.”
“She is not your granddaughter. You made that clear.”
Silence.
Then I heard Lily crying in the background.
“Mommy!”
“Lily!”
The call ended.
Daniel grabbed my phone.
He called the number back.
It was disconnected.
Maya reached us five minutes later.
She listened to the recording.
“Her demand doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“It does to her,” Daniel answered. “The restaurant is proof that she won.”
“Or she needs access to something inside.”
“The basement,” I said.
We all looked at one another.
“What if the refrigerator wasn’t the only thing she used to hide the truth?”
Maya called the officers guarding the restaurant.
No one answered.
Then dispatch reported an alarm at the building.
Smoke had been seen coming from the rear door.
Diane had not taken Lily to Wisconsin.
May you like
She had drawn every officer away from Chicago.
And now our restaurant was on fire.
