Josh expelled a breath. "Think Gumu agrees his kitten should be named Nest?"
Grace shrugged. "No way to tell unless he picks up the sign."
"What was that snake business?"
"Maybe she was telling him not to treat the kitten like a snake, but like a baby?" Grace guessed.
"Or maybe she was telling Gumu not to be mean like a snake."
Snake bad baby cry
, Neema signed.
"Well, there you have it," Josh chuckled. "Gumu learned a word from Neema, Neema's obsessed with snakes, and we have two new pets."
Grace laughed. "I think the gorillas made it pretty clear that those kittens are
their
pets, not ours."
Two cats play
, Neema agreed. Then she cuddled her ivory bundle of fluff even closer to her chest, pressing it gently to her leathery black nipple as if she expected the kitten to nurse.
"Good session. The Foundation should really appreciate that video." Grace stood up, stretching. "Time for lunch."
Neema's gaze bounced to Grace. The gorilla balanced Snow on her hairy protruding belly as she used both hands to quickly sign her list of favorites:
Jell-O lettuce yogurt banana
.
Gumu too looked up from the calico kitten.
Give banana baby
, he signed.
"How altruistic of him," Josh said.
"Right. Go ahead and feed them, but keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't actually try to make that kitten eat a banana. I'll take the others back." Grace pressed the three remaining kittens into the basket and tossed a towel over them.
Josh grabbed the basket from her. "You feed, I'll take them. I'm going out, anyway."
"Thanks," she said. "Tell the Canos that we're giving the kittens a good home. Do
not
mention gorillas."
"Will do." He snapped off a salute. "Then I'm heading into town to grab a bite to eat with a friend, okay?"
The friend, Grace knew, would be young and female and pretty. "Go for it," she said.
"I'll be back in two to three hours. Can I bring you anything?"
A winning lottery ticket? A handsome professor bearing a gourmet picnic basket and a bottle of good Chianti?
You're the Ph.D. in charge of this project, Dr. McKenna,
she told herself. Swallowing her self-pity, she answered, "No. We're good, aren't we, guys?"
Jell-o
, Neema signed.
Yogurt jell-o.
As the door closed behind Josh, Gumu grunted and signed
Banana give.
Grace sighed.
Brittany's mother was dry-eyed, but a deep furrow was carved across her forehead, and her reactions seemed slow. Sleep-deprived. Finn could identify with that.
"You stayed home from work," he observed.
"I went in this morning while Noah stayed here. Now he's out at the plant. It's hard to focus on work, but it's sort of a relief to be able to actually
do
something useful."
He nodded. That was why it was routine to post an officer with a victim's family in the first few hours—they started cleaning house, doing the laundry, cooking, and so forth, just to keep busy, sometimes mucking up a crime scene in the process. A female uniform had spent the night with the Morgans and left at dawn, reporting no unusual activities in the house.
"Brittany's out with friends posting flyers," Susan Ciscoe told him.
Finn hoped that was true. Belatedly, he realized he should have assigned someone to tail the girl. His career had been filled with moms and dads who had no inkling that their Ethan made pipe bombs with his friends, or that their Emily traded sex for the latest fashions from The Gap. In one shocking case in the 'burbs, eight teens had formed a vampire club, drinking each other's blood. The parents had gone blithely about their own lives while their seventeen-year-olds spread HIV around their intimate circle.
He detested this stage of an investigation. Dealing with the initial confusion was like wrestling an octopus. It was hard to keep track of what every arm was doing; hard to constantly juggle all the possibilities in his head. After a clear suspect emerged, building a case would be much more straightforward.
"So Brittany's out posting flyers," he repeated. There was a stack beside them on the front porch, weighted down with a smooth rock from the stone borders along the Morgans' front walk.
"I believe so," Susan said, confirming his suspicion that she really wasn't keeping tabs on her daughter.
"And your son, Danny?"
"I sent him over to our neighbors." She pointed to the white house across the street. "They have an eleven-year-old boy, too."
Eleven. Certainly old enough to get rid of an unwanted squalling niece. Another possibility he needed to check out. He made a note on his pad.
"Is Brittany your husband's child?"
The glare Susan gave him could have melted a glacier. "Of course. Danny, too. Just because a woman doesn't change her last name on marriage doesn't mean she's got a wild past, Detective. Good lord, what
is
it with this town? Is
everyone
stuck in the 1950s?"
Ouch
. He knew that the Morgans had moved to Evansburg five years ago from Denver. "I know how you feel," he said. "But I have to ask these questions."
She reached a hand up under her shoulder-length auburn hair to knead the back of her neck. "I didn't mean to bite your head off. I didn't get much sleep last night."
"Me neither," he sympathized.
"We were sorry to hear about your wife, Detective Finn."
He stared at her for a long awkward moment. Did the whole frigging county know? Had he missed an announcement Wendy had placed in the paper?
Hey, Evansburg, I'm ditching my clueless husband Matthew Finn to run off with the love of my life! –Wendy Mankin
"The police officer, last night…" Susan let the words trail off.
He'd have a word with that female uniform, but he knew it wouldn't stop the gossip. He tapped his pen impatiently on his notebook. "How does Danny get along with the baby?"
She grimaced. "It's hard to get him to notice anything that's not in a video game. Or on a plate in front of him."
Video games. He made another quick note to check out the kid's favorites for violence. "How did you feel when you found out Brittany was pregnant?"
When he looked up from his pad, Susan was frowning. "How would you feel if
your
sixteen-year-old daughter got pregnant?"
It was difficult to imagine being in that situation. Especially now.
Susan continued. "I didn't plan on being a grandmother at thirty-nine. I have an MBA, for heaven's sake; Noah has a degree in mathematics. We never dreamed we'd end up working at mediocre jobs in a small town, let alone have a pregnant teenager who has absolutely no desire to go to college."
"It must be hard," he said.
"Brittany was nearly five months pregnant when we found out, so
abortion
wasn't an option," Susan volunteered, answering his unasked questions. "I did encourage her to give the baby up for adoption, but I wasn't going to force her. We do insist that Brittany takes care of Ivy…" Her voice caught. "…took care of Ivy…oh, mercy." She raised a hand to clutch at her shirt front, and tears pooled in her eyes. "We might not have wanted a grandchild so soon, but Noah and I love that baby so much."
Both of them glanced at the stack of flyers again, where Ivy Rose Morgan's round baby face smiled at them, her right eye hidden beneath a river rock paperweight.
"I understand that Charlie Wakefield is the child's father?"
Susan nodded, and a tear spilled over from her left eye.
"Have you heard from him?"
"Never."
"Does he pay child support?"
Wiping the tear away, she shook her head. "He doesn't want anything to do with the baby. At first we decided that we simply wouldn't include him in any way in Ivy's life, keep it simpler, you know?"
He nodded again.
"But now that both Noah and I have had our hours cut back, we really need the financial support. So last week we went to the Wakefields."
Finn perked up. "And their reaction?"
"The cold shoulder. They agreed to share responsibility
if
we could prove that Charlie was Ivy's father."
Finn waited for Susan to continue.
She sighed. "Brittany thought that was insulting. She refused to bring Ivy into the clinic for the paternity test. Noah and I were talking to her, trying to bring her around, maybe just do one of those home mail-in jobs, but now…" Another tear escaped and slid down her reddened cheek.
Finn's heart rate sped up. Now that the baby was missing, there would be no paternity test. Unless the techs somehow managed to get DNA from some baby item they'd collected from Brittany's room, there would be no way to prove Ivy was Charlie's child.
A Subaru station wagon pulled up in the driveway. Brittany got out, tottering on platform sandals that curiously were now as popular as they had been when Finn was a kid. His mother had worn lime green leather nailed to stacked wooden soles.
The teen wore her long strawberry-blonde hair loose today. Her blue jean shorts were tight and she wore a yellow halter top that exposed a lot of skin.
Hot-T.
Finn made an effort to lift his gaze to the girl's face and keep it there. Her oval face was puffed and blotchy, but as she approached the front porch, her eyes were bright.
Seeing her daughter's expression, Susan shook her head. "There's no news. They're searching our neighborhood."
"Why?" The look Brittany turned on him was genuinely bewildered. "That's not going to help. Ivy didn't get kidnapped
here
. It's been
twenty-three
hours! Why aren't you searching at the Food Mart, or"—she gestured vaguely at the surrounding suburbs—"out there?"
"The department's doing that, too, Miss Morgan," Finn reassured her. He hoped the patrol officers were doing a good job. A two-month-old infant was a pretty small bundle to look for. The sergeant told him that at roll call this morning the uniforms had been surly. It was bad enough that Finn was the outsider. Now that he was calling the shots on this case, the local boys were openly resentful.
"Did you find that Talking Hands Ranch van?" Brittany's gaze was still fixed on his face.
"Not yet," he admitted. "No business named Talking Hands Ranch is registered in Washington State. There are no rules about registering a sign on the side of a vehicle. It would be easier with a plate number or a make and model."
"Isn't that your
job
?" Brittany asked. "It was gray, and it said Talking Hands Ranch on the side. How many can there be? I
still
don't understand why there's no Amber Alert!"
He stifled a groan. "We're working on finding the van, Miss Morgan. When was the last time you saw Charlie Wakefield?"
"Charlie?" She blinked, surprised. "At the end of school last year? Maybe six weeks before Ivy was born? Why? He's not going to help. Where's the FBI? Whenever there's a kidnapping on TV, the FBI is all over it." She pivoted toward Susan. "Mom, are
we
supposed to call the FBI?"
"The FBI is aware of everything we do. I am sharing all our information with them." He struggled to keep his tone even. It was aggravating to be grilled by a seventeen-year-old who learned about kidnapping investigations from television.
Unlike when he'd first seen her yesterday, Brittany's face was devoid of makeup; she looked worn out and much older than her seventeen years. Desperate mother or desperate murderer? He still couldn't tell. "Brittany," he said, "If Ivy's been kidnapped, she's probably with someone who will take care of her."
"
If
? Why do you keep saying
if
?" The girl's voice was tight.
"That's just the way detectives talk." He hooked a thumb in his belt, trying to look casual. "Where were you this morning?"
Her blue eyes were accusatory. "I was getting
help
. My friends and I are putting up flyers."
"Have there been any tips on the station hotline yet?" Susan asked Finn.
So far nothing but nutcases, according to the operator and the sergeant. "A few," he said. "We're checking them all out."
"Mom and I put Ivy on Facebook," Brittany told him. "And more pictures of her are going to be in the newspaper and on TV again tonight."
"I see." Facebook. He'd forgotten about that possibility. He'd better prepare the switchboard for a flood of calls and set Mason to somehow collecting all the emails or tweets or IMs whatever the heck all those messages were called these days. Who was going to read all that?