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what I need to know. I’m not going away.”
Clare didn’t know Ryder and couldn’t gauge his feelings about the town’s reaction to Beth leaving him. Was he basking in the sympathy of the town as the poor jilted husband or had his pride taken a hit and all he really wanted was to put the incident behind him? If the dust was just beginning to settle on the gossip, she supposed it was unlikely he would take kindly to the prospect of having it stirred up again. Not her problem. At this point, Clare had nothing to lose. Though she had no wish to cause him more hurt, she didn’t have the time to get to know him, to ingratiate herself to him, if it were possible to do so, in order to enlist his cooperation.
She waited a little longer but Ryder didn’t come to the door.
She went back to her car. Behind the wheel, with the air conditioning on high blowing cool air across her face, she considered her next step. She knew the names of Beth’s adoptive parents. Hank and Gladys Linney might still be in town. Their daughter may have confided in them.
If she’d had her laptop with her, she could log onto the Bureau’s database and find out if the couple still resided in Farley. She hadn’t brought it with her, however. She’d planned a reunion, not an investigation.
Clare consulted the diagram of Farley and located Main Street, which she assumed would be like most other towns and house the business district.
Main Street was wide with a row of shops on the east side and a tidy park on the west. A bronze statue on a pedestal presided over an assortment of bushes and lush flowers in a manicured garden. The plaque beneath the statue identified it as town founder Walter Farley.
Driving slowly, Clare read the signs above the shops in passing. Potter and Sons Pharmacy. Main Street Diner . The Pizza Place. Main Street Hardware and Bait. Farley Army Surplus. There wasn’t much activity. A man sat on a bench, fanning himself with a newspaper. Two preteen boys stood beneath the striped canopy of the army surplus, taking turns looking through a pair of binoculars. Though the residents were undoubtedly accustomed to the heat, apparently they had the good sense to stay out of it.
She was looking for a gas station and came to one across from an intersection. And it had a telephone booth. Clare flipped through the directory there looking for Hank or Gladys Linney. She came up empty and went back over the names. It was possible that the parents were deceased, but what about nephews or nieces or other relatives? There were no listings for anyone named Linney.
County records would reveal if the Linneys had died. The county seat was a forty-minute drive out of town. Clare figured it could be faster to visit the local churches and speak with the resident pastors about the Linneys. In a town the size of Farley, how many churches could there be?
Two were listed in the phone book, and both located on a street called July Road. One was Lutheran and the other Methodist. The listing for the Lutheran house of worship also featured a map. Clare tore the page out of the directory.
She reached the Methodist church first. Small residences had been built around it. Two young girls spun a skipping rope on the sidewalk while a shaggy dog leaped beside them.
Clare entered the small structure. There wasn’t anyone inside. She went to the house next door that had been built on the church property, thinking it might be the pastor’s residence and rang the bell. No one came to the door. She rang again. Moments later when there was still no response, she drove on, down the street.
An old station wagon was parked in the gravel drive of the rectory built beside the Lutheran church. Clare parked and walked to it. A round woman answered Clare’s knock. Spectacles dangled from a silver chain around her neck. She lifted them to her eyes and they widened for an instant. The look she gave Clare wasn’t friendly.
Clare attributed the woman’s hostility to her resemblance