Her Sister (Search For Love series) (10 page)

"This
could be useless," Max said.  "She could have buried it outside for
all we know."

"No,"
Clare mused.  "That's too noticeable if she wanted to fetch it.  It has to
be in this room.  She wouldn't want it very far from her computer."

Amanda
gazed upward and suddenly realized the ceiling in the closet, unlike the ceiling
in the bedroom, which was drywall or something like it, was composed of ceiling
tiles.  She gestured to it.  "Those push up, don't they?"

Max
looked up and then down at the floor.  "They certainly do.  That's so the
electricians can get to the electrical work."  He clasped Amanda's
shoulder.  "You're a genius."

The
touch of Max's hand through her sweater sent warmth through her, warmth she
hadn't felt in a very long time.  His praise shouldn't mean so much, but she
found it still did.  That feeling unsettled her.  She'd moved well on from
their marriage.  She'd become a different person and she suspected he had, too. 
So there was no place for that tightness in the middle of her chest, that
little giddy tummy-twirl, that chemistry they'd both felt when they were
teenagers.

Already
he was moving into the bedroom, heading for the desk chair.

Amanda's
shoulder brushed Clare's as they moved to the side for Max to push the chair in
and then climb up on it.  It was unusual to be this close to Clare.  Usually
her daughter shrugged away.  She just hated that the price of the closeness was
these circumstances.

Max was
an organized man, a lawyer, and he knew how to do a search.  He started in the
right corner, lifting one tile at a time, carefully feeling around the raised
tile, and along the metal strips.

"Damn,"
he muttered at one point and Amanda suspected what had happened.  She rushed
from the closet, went to the bathroom, and grabbed a box of bandages.  She knew
Clare always kept a filled box out of habit because Shara had been a rough and
tumble kid, always scraping something.  Little Shara had been a joy—open,
friendly, loving.  But as she'd become a preteen and then a teenager, she'd
become more sullen, more alienated, more stand-offish.  Amanda had always felt
that her granddaughter loved her, but as a developing young woman, just didn't
know how to show it.  At that age, hormones could take the place of good
sense.  At any age, really.  Sometimes she wondered if the lack of them now in
her own body caused overreactions as much as the over-abundance of them when
she was a teenager.

When
she tapped Max's arm, he looked down.  Seeing the bandage in her hand, he shook
his head.  "I'm fine."

"You
don't want to bleed all over Clare's ceiling tiles.  Take thirty seconds and
put it on."

She
could see he was about to refuse, about to lift the next ceiling tile, when his
gaze settled on hers and they both went perfectly still.  He reached down and
took the bandage from her fingers.  She took the wrapper from him as he applied
it.

"Thanks,"
he said, looking as if he meant it.

She
didn't say anything as he went back to his search.  But when she glanced at
Clare, she saw her daughter looking at her with curiosity, as if maybe she
sensed that something unusual had happened.

After
readjusting the chair three times, Max felt in the farthest left corner up
above the shelf.  "I've got something," he said, and Amanda's heart
thumped wildly.  First, he pulled down a pale pink diary that had one of those
clasps with a small lock.  He handed it down to Clare.

"I
gave her this when she was ten," Clare said.  "I doubt if she writes
in it now.  It's not locked."  Without hesitating, she opened the clasp
and shuffled to the last page.  "The last entry's three years ago."

She
closed it again as Max felt along the wider side strip at the edge of the
closet ceiling.  Triumphantly he pulled out a small Rolodex and held it up for
them to see.

"Now,
we're making progress."

Amanda
hoped that Rolodex held the answer to their prayers.

****

Chapter
Six

Once at
Shara's desk, Clare stepped aside and let her dad sit at the computer.  After
all, she should have been doing this before now.  She should have monitored
Shara better.  She should have known what was in her daughter's head.

He
flipped through the Rolodex quickly, getting an overview of the type of
passwords Shara used and the sites she visited.

 "Do
you know anything about
Branches
?"  Max asked, looking up at Clare.

"No,
I've never heard of it."

"She
doesn't have an icon for it on the desktop which makes me think she didn't want
you to see it.  But there's a password.  Let's see what we can find."

"Do
you know anything about this site?" she asked.

"It's
come up."

With
her dad's association with family law, she imagined it might be relevant in lots
of ways.  "Is it something bad?"

"It's
what the kids make it.  It's a social media site that's grown in
popularity."

From
the search engine, he accessed the site.  From the information on the card in
the Rolodex, he signed in with Shara's user name and password.  Her page came
up.

Max
whistled through his teeth.  "Our granddaughter thinks she's twenty-five
instead of sixteen.  Unfortunately she doesn't have the good sense to know the
difference.  My God, what was she thinking?"

Clare
was almost afraid to look, but she did.

There
was a photo of Shara in a bathing suit Clare had never seen.  Actually it
couldn't even be called a bathing suit.  It was definitely a skimpy bikini. 
The poses weren't sweet, but rather suggestive.  Whatever she was trying to do,
she was absolutely giving off the wrong message.  That was obvious by the
comments on her page, most of them from guys.  Clare wasn't naïve, and she
suspected many of the males behind the messages were a lot older than they
pretended to be.

    
She was still looking over her father's shoulder, becoming more and more
appalled, listening to her mom's equally upset comments, when her father said,
"One guy here is commenting more than the others.  He doesn't seem to be
as sleazy, but my guess is that's just a pretense.  I don't trust male motives
on a site like this.  Who knows?  His name's Justin.  Ever heard Shara mention
him?"

"No,
she's never mentioned anyone but Brad."

"This
back and forth has been going on for a while.  From what I can tell from her
timeline, maybe about ten months.  It's sporadic at first, but they're
definitely flirting, bantering back and forth, like high schoolers do.  Yet he
sounds more mature than a high schooler.  He mentions here that he would e-mail
her.  Let's check her e-mails."

"Dad."

"Max's
reaction was quick and repudiating.  "You want to find out where your
daughter is, don't you?"

Her
mother laid a quieting hand on her father's shoulder, and Clare just stared at
them in a flash of insight struck by the history they shared.  What was it like
for her mom to touch her dad when they'd been divorced for so long?  What was
it like for them to be here in the same room, worrying again, when they weren't
even together for holidays any more?

"Of
course I want to find her," she murmured.  Then she added, "But I
keep hoping she'll call or something.  Why would she let me worry like
this?"

"She's
rebelling and she's angry," Amanda responded.  "She's probably angry
at the world as much as at you.  There had to be some kind of incident that
made her run.  We have to find out what it was."

Clare
hadn't realized how wise her mother had become over the years.  Maybe it was
all the counseling she'd had.  Maybe it was the sheer experience of losing a
daughter.  Whatever it was, Clare was grateful for her insight now.

She
added some of her own.

"It
must have been something to do with Brad."

Max
exited
Branches
, clicked on the icon for Shara's e-mail program and
found her user name and password in the Rolodex.

Her
father seemed to know exactly what he was doing, so Clare asked, "Have you
done this before?"

"Try
to find someone's daughter or son, husband or wife?  Usually I have a private
investigator to do this kind of thing, but I've learned a trick or two myself. 
Everyone sloughs off e-mails as if they're disposable, and they are if you do
it right.  But most people don't.  They just delete them from their in-box and
think they're gone, or delete them from their trash and don't clean out their
recycle bins.  Real criminals, frauds or perverts are more careful about it.  But
Shara doesn't fall into any of those categories, so my guess is she wasn't
careful.  She thinks she hid her passwords, but the truth is, even those can be
broken with the right programs.  Let's see what we've got."

As they
all peered at the monitor, Max dismissed the e-mails from classmates.  After he
went through the In-box list, he switched to the Trash.  "Here we are. 
Justin.  His handle is  1234.  But I don't recognize the server.  One of my
paralegals at the office is good at this kind of thing.  I'll put her on
it."

Taking
out his phone, he sent a text message, got a quick response, and went back to
what he was doing.  Clare had already been looking over the last e-mail.

"Oh
my gosh, Dad, he sounds so sympathetic.  He's telling her everything she wants to
hear."

"Yeah,
that's what predators do."

Clare
felt her heart practically stop.  A predator luring her daughter.  That just
couldn't be.

They
swiftly went through more e-mails and then Max spotted the one that gave them
the information they needed.

"Sandia
Peak.  That's Albuquerque.  He's telling her she should come to Albuquerque for
a break."  Pushing himself away from the desk, Max announced, "I'm
going to Albuquerque."

Although
Clare was glad they'd found a lead and her dad was doing something, she
exchanged a look with her mom.  "But you don't know where to go.  You
don't even know his last name."

"Hopefully
I'll get his last name when we trace his IP address."

Amanda
said quietly, "But what if he's using a fake name?  It's like all the
leads with Lynnie—"

"Don't
even say it," Max snapped.  "Do
not
say it."

After a
strained moment of silence, Amanda said off-handedly, "If you're going to
Albuquerque, I'm going with you."

"Amanda—"

"Don't
use that authoritarian voice with me, Max.  Don't argue with me.  I won't
change my mind."

"I
should go, too," Clare stated.

But her
father disagreed.  "No, you shouldn't.  You need to stay here in case
we're all wrong about this.  You need to be here if Shara comes back home.  You
need to be in touch with the police department here."

She
wanted to fight what her dad was saying.  She wanted to go searching for her
daughter.  Was it a wiser strategy to stay here and wait?

The
doorbell rang.  Amanda suggested, "Maybe that's the detective."

Clare
rushed to the front door.  Amanda was on her way there, too, when she
recognized the sound of the visitor.  It was Joe.  Maybe he could be some kind
of consolation to Clare.  She doubted if she and Max could be.

Max
must have recognized his voice, too, because he turned back to the desktop,
studied the e-mails once more and took out his cell phone.  "I'm going to
get us seats on the next flight out."

"We
don't know what we're doing," Amanda said calmly, having her own ideas
about what they should do.  She had to make Max listen.

"We
know this Justin is in Albuquerque and he invited Shara to visit him.  By the
time we get there, maybe we'll have more information about him."

"And
maybe we won't."

"What
are you suggesting?  I'm not staying here when I have a lead."

"I'm
suggesting we call Gillian Bradley."

Max
went perfectly still.  "You're not going to pull me into that woo-hoo universe
again.  She couldn't help the last time we called her."

After
Lynnie had been taken, and no leads panned out, Amanda had consulted a couple
of psychics.  None of them had provided useful information though they were
willing to take money for trying.  Then year before last, still desperately needing
to know what had happened to her daughter no matter what that was, Amanda had found
a blog online.  Gillian Bradley had found a child who had been lost while the
family had been camping near Big Sur.  Full of hope, Amanda had told Max about
her.  Still leery about treading in those murky waters, he'd agreed to consult
with her and they'd flown to California.  In spite of Gillian's impressive
success rate, she'd come up blank.  She'd gotten nowhere.

   
"This situation with Shara is different," Amanda insisted.  "Even
if Shara ran to Albuquerque to be with this Justin, hopefully nothing has happened
yet.  She's just running.  Now's the time to find out if Gillian can get a bead
on her."