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have I done?” she breathed.

    3
    “Y ou’ve done what? ” Grace asked.
    Madeline held the phone to her shoulder as she rinsed her coffee cup and placed it in the dishwasher. Morning had come too soon. After a restless night, her eyes stung with fatigue. It didn’t help that the coffee she’d drunk to get her going churned sourly in her otherwise empty stomach. “I hired a private investigator.”
    There was a momentary silence. “You’re kidding.”
    “No.”
    “From where?”
    “California.”
    “But…it’s been so many years since Dad went missing, Maddy.”
    “I know. That’s why I did it.” Sophie fol owed her as she hurried to the bathroom. She needed to finish her hair and makeup and head over to the office. She couldn’t avoid work this morning. She would sit down and write the article she should’ve written yesterday—and she’d finish it before the paper had to go to press. Maybe her resolve had come a little late, but she was Stil water’s only official reporter.
    She’d reveal the unbiased details of the Cadil ac’s discovery, regardless of her personal connection.
    “But Al ie used to be a cold case detective,” Grace said.
    “If she couldn’t find anything, aren’t you afraid hiring someone else wil be a waste of time and money?”
    Madeline didn’t want to talk about Al ie—not with Grace.
    Once Al ie had begun to feel romantic interest in Clay, she’d no longer seemed ful y committed to the investigation. Had she been afraid of what she might find if she real y looked? Considering what everyone else believed, probably. Madeline doubted Al ie was stil worried about that now that she knew Clay as wel as she did. But they both seemed determined to move forward and not dwel on the past.
    They could move forward, Madeline thought. They didn’t feel the same responsibility to Lee Barker that she did.
    Al ie’s father had had his own problems before he moved away, problems that had included an affair with Irene. But Chief McCormick was stil part of Al ie’s life. How could Al ie understand what it would be like not to know where he was or even whether he was alive? And Clay had only lived with Lee for three years.
    “Before she could dig too deep, her father fired her for taking Clay’s side,” Madeline said, trying to smooth over the issue. If she started pointing fingers at others for not doing enough, she knew Grace would feel guilty by association. And Grace had always had her own demons to deal with. It wasn’t until she came home eighteen months ago that she’d had much of a relationship with her family.
    Before that, she’d been emotional y remote and completely immersed in her work as an assistant district attorney in Jackson.
    The past had been difficult for them al .
    “She would’ve continued to dig,” Grace said. “She just didn’t find anything that gave her any indication of where Dad might’ve gone.”
    “Or who might’ve harmed him,” Madeline added.
    “Or who might’ve harmed him,” she conceded.
    Madeline pul ed her hair back so she could apply concealer to the dark circles that came from a week’s worth of restless nights. “It’s something I’ve got to do.”
    “This might not solve anything,” Grace said again.
    “I know, but seeing the Cadil ac lifted out of the quarry made me sick.” She paused, her hand on the blush she was going to apply next. “I felt as if I’ve let my father down by not doing more. I’ve let myself down, too. Even you and Clay, Grace. They almost prosecuted Clay last summer, for murder. ”
    “I don’t think they’l go after him again,” Grace argued.
    “Last year, it was political pressure that caused al the trouble. The Vincel is have backed off since then.”
    “My aunt and uncle, maybe. Not my cousins. You saw them at the quarry.”
    “Joe and Roger are vultures. We’re safe as long as we’re stil moving.”
    “They have a lot of powerful friends.”
    “But there’s no solid evidence. There