“What?” A.L. asked.
“We got Kara Wiese’s phone records.”
“And?”
“There’s something odd. Well, maybe odd,” Rena qualified. “I had asked them to specifically look for outreach to banks or financial institutions, based on the fact that Claire Potter thought she might be trying to buy a house.”
“Good call. Follow the money.”
“Well, there were seven calls to Baywood Bank in a two-week period about two months ago. And then nothing after that.”
“Maybe the deal fell through,” A.L. said.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“But when Claire was talking about Kara stepping out to take a telephone call, it seemed as if that was recent. Not months ago.”
“It’s time to talk to Kara Wiese again,” Rena said.
“She’s the other major player here. If we believe Elaine Broadstreet, then we can’t believe her.”
“You believe Elaine? Even after we know she lied to us once.”
“I understood her motivation to lie about where she went before work,” A.L. said. “We should be able to easily verify her arrival at the casino. Nobody walks in those doors without being on camera. Same for leaving. We know she spent the rest of the day at work. So if we can account for her time, it seems unlikely to me that she’s a bad guy here.”
“Kara Wiese was at work all day yesterday. How can she be the bad guy?” Rena asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe there are no bad guys. Maybe Emma just took off.”
“Not if Elaine is right about signing her in on the clipboard,” Rena said.
“Devil is always in the details,” A.L. said.
“It’s been almost thirty-four hours,” Rena said. “A long time for a five-year-old to be wandering about undetected. She’d be hungry, cold, missing her mom and dad.”
A.L. didn’t answer. There were no answers. “I’ll ask Ferguson to help with verifying Elaine’s time at the casino. Now, let’s go see Kara Wiese.”
“Want me to call first?” Rena asked.
“Nope. We’ll take our chances that she’s home.”
She put her hand on the door handle. “You know, if we believe Elaine and we also believe Kara, and we don’t think Emma simply wandered off, somebody who was inside the day care took Emma.”
“A stranger? Are we back to crime of opportunity? Stranger walks into a day care, the office is unmanned because Alice is covering a classroom, and sees an opportunity to abscond with a child?”
“Would a stranger be detected?” Rena asked.
“Not necessarily. The teachers are all in classrooms. The cook has yet to arrive. Parents are coming and going but not everybody knows everybody else.”
“Or was it a parent, somebody who had a good reason to be there, a reason nobody would question. They drop off their own kid and then wait for the opportunity to take Emma. Or maybe any child would have done?”
“That scenario makes me want to lose my lunch,” A.L. admitted. “But it doesn’t seem too likely given that Elaine is so confident that she handed Emma off to Kara. If not Kara, it had to be somebody who looked an awful lot like Kara.” He paused. “You know my uncle Joe and my dad look an awful lot like one another. People still get them mixed up.”
“You think Kara Wiese’s sister was there?”
“Her sister, her mother. An aunt possibly. I think we need to figure out if any of those people exist and are in the area,” A.L. said.
“We could simply ask Kara,” Rena said.
“I don’t think so. Let’s do this on the QT. Alice included her Social Security number in the information she provided to us on each staff member. That should be enough.”
“I’ll get it in play,” Rena said.
* * *
On the way to talk to Kara, Rena’s phone rang. “Detective Morgan,” she answered.
“This is Michael Purifoy, returning your message.”
“Thank you for calling, Mr. Purifoy.” Rena dug into her bag and pulled out her copy of the sign-in sheet for Kara Wiese’s room. Then put the phone on Speaker so that A.L. could hear. “Mr. Purifoy, I want to talk to you about yesterday morning at Lakeside Learning Center. I’ve reviewed the sign-in sheet and you signed your son Jake in at 7:18. Is that correct?”
“That sounds right.”
“Do you recall, Mr. Purifoy, if there was a teacher in the room?”
“Kara was there.”
“You’re absolutely confident of that?” Rena asked.
“She’s a baseball fan and we talked about the Brewers’ chances to make the playoffs. Yeah, she was there.”
“Thank you, Mr. Purifoy. I appreciate you calling me back.”
“No problem, Detective. Goodbye.”
“Well, that’s that,” Rena said, putting her phone down on the console.
“Good to know before we got to Kara’s,” A.L. said.
“Again, you sound almost positive. It’s starting to scare me,” Rena said. “Like you’ve made a pledge to look for the silver lining.”
“I don’t make pledges.”
“We’re almost going past the learning center. Even though they are closed, I have a feeling that Alice is probably there. I’d like to talk to her about the phone call from Brenda Owen. That would have been a pretty startling call to get.”
“Okay.” Five minutes later, they pulled up in front of the day care. The police tape from the previous evening was gone. Earlier that day, he and Rena had gotten a text that they were moving the command center for the search team to the city park that was three blocks away. That would allow this neighborhood to get back to some semblance of normalcy.
They found the woman in her office. “How’s it going?” Rena asked.
“Any news?” Alice asked immediately.
Rena shook her head. “Nobody is giving up.”
“I heard there were still many, many people searching,” Alice said.
“Yeah.” Rena had heard hundreds. There were feet on the street, both human and canine, and there were drones in the sky. A hotline had been established and publicized. So far, there had been six calls about possible sightings. Each had been meticulously followed up on by other officers. Each had been disappointing. “We thought you might be here.”