Carla Cassidy - His Case, Her Baby

“Peyton told me you’re an assistant D.A. in Wichita,” Tom said.

“That’s right.” He leaned forward and ran a hand through his short hair. “I can’t believe this has happened. Peyton’s a terrific mother. She would never intentionally put Lilly at risk.”

“You have no idea who this woman might be? You never met her? “

“No, but I have to confess that since Peyton moved here I’ve only been to visit a couple of times,” Rick replied. “With my work schedule it’s been difficult getting back and forth. In fact, I’m in the middle of a big trial now. I got the judge to call a continuance until day after tomorrow, but I’ve got to be back in Wichita first thing Thursday morning. Hopefully we’ll have Lilly back long before then.”

“Why did Peyton decide to move here?” Tom asked.

Rick leaned back in the chair and unfastened the buttons of his suit coat. “When our relationship fizzled out, she decided she wanted a new start someplace else. She started shooting out résumés, and when Black Rock Elementary School made an offer, she jumped at the opportunity.”

“Your breakup was amicable?”

Rick released a small sigh of impatience. “Look, Sheriff, I know how these things go. I understand that you have to look at all angles, but let me save you a little time. Peyton and I dated for six months. We had a good time together but eventually realized we wanted different things from life. The split was amicable. In fact, it was the night we decided to call it quits that Lilly was conceived. Even though we weren’t going to be together as a couple, we were both excited to be parents. We’ve had no problems, no issues since Lilly’s birth. Peyton is one of the greatest women I’ve ever known. She would never do anything to hurt Lilly, and neither would I.”

Tom fought back a sigh of frustration. He knew Rick was trying to be helpful, but there was nothing worse than investigating somebody who knew the system from the inside out. “You know I have to go through all this,” Tom said.

Rick nodded. “I was just trying to cut to the chase by letting you know that there’s nothing to investigate except the woman who stole my daughter. There’s no point in wasting time speculating about Peyton or myself.”

“I appreciate your help, but you know I’m going to do this investigation my way,” Tom said. He kept his voice friendly but firm.

“Understood,” Rick replied. “I just want my little girl back.” For the first time since he’d arrived, emotion cracked his voice.

“Is it possible this has something to do with a case you’re working on? An enemy you’ve made through your work?” Tom asked.

Rick frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. Very few people knew about Peyton and the baby. I wanted it that way for their own protection.”

At that moment, Benjamin and Peyton came into the room. “We have a sketch,” Benjamin said. He handed the paper to Tom, who looked at it closely.

Benjamin was a talented sketch artist, a talent he’d kept hidden for many years. The sketch showed a woman with a slender face and long hair. Her eyes were slightly deep set and her chin square.

Tom looked up at Peyton. “This looks like Kathy Simon?”

“It could be a photograph of her.” For the first time her eyes shone with a hint of hope. Tom was struck again by her prettiness.

He handed the sketch to Rick. “Have you seen this woman?”

Rick studied the sketch with a frown, then shook his head. “No, I’ve never seen her before.”

Tom looked back at Peyton. “You have a recent picture of Lilly?”

“I do. I just had her pictures taken at that little studio on Main Street a couple of weeks ago.” She went to the desk in the corner of the room and opened a drawer. She withdrew a large envelope and from it pulled a 5×7 photograph.

She gazed at the picture for a long moment, her eyes filling with tears, then she handed it to Tom. Lilly was a doll, one of those exceptionally pretty babies with bright blue eyes and a tuft of curly blond hair.

Tom turned to his brother Caleb, who had returned to the house moments earlier after interviewing more of the people who lived in and around the apartment complex. “Take these to the office and get them over the wires,” he said as he handed the photo and sketch to him. “Make up flyers and get them distributed around town.”

When Caleb went out the front door, Tom turned back to Peyton. “Somebody will see them. Somebody will know where she is,” he said in encouragement.

“I hope so,” Peyton exclaimed.

The next couple of hours passed in agonizing slowness. Peyton sat on the sofa looking as if a loud noise might shatter her. Rick sat next to her, but at no time did the two touch in any way.

Tom found their relationship rather intriguing. Was their lack of physical touch an indication that their relationship hadn’t had the mutual easy ending that both of them had implied? And what, if anything, might that have to do with the case?

Throughout the evening, Tom coordinated efforts to find the baby, speaking to his deputies by cell phone to keep updated. As night fell, Tom didn’t expect anything to happen. People were in their homes, getting ready for bed, and wouldn’t see the flyers until morning.

Rick must have recognized the same thing. At ten-thirty he stood. “I checked into the hotel downtown when I arrived. I think I’ll head over there for the rest of the night. I’m in room 112. Somebody will let me know if anything happens?”

“Of course,” Tom replied, vaguely surprised by his decision to leave.

Rick reached down and grabbed Peyton’s hand. “Stay strong,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll have her back tomorrow.” He dropped her hand and with a nod to Tom left the house.

Almost immediately, Peyton got up from the sofa and went to the front window. She stared out with her back to Tom, and he was struck by how alone, how achingly fragile, she looked.

“Do you have children, Tom?” She didn’t turn to face him but remained staring out the window into the darkness of the night.

“No wife, no kids,” he replied. He stepped closer to her, close enough that he could smell the pleasant scent of her perfume.

“So you can’t know what this feels like.” She turned to face him and raw pain radiated from her eyes.

“No, I can’t know exactly what it feels like,” he said softly.

“I feel like Kathy reached inside my chest and ripped my heart out.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Nothing matters except Lilly. I need her back, Tom. I need her back in my arms.” A deep sob exploded out of her and she nearly crumpled to the floor.

Before she could, Tom reached out for her and pulled her tight against his chest. She sagged against him and buried her face in the front of his shirt while she cried.

He wrapped his arms around her and held tight, knowing it was the only comfort he could offer her at the moment. As he held her he went over it all in his mind, satisfying himself that everything that could be done was being done.

Now it became a waiting game. Hopefully somebody knew this woman who had called herself Kathy Simon, somebody who would call with information that would lead them to her and the baby.

But the last time Tom had held a weeping woman in his arms, everything had ended badly. Tragedy had pulled her away from him, and he’d nearly been destroyed.

He hoped at the end of all this that Peyton would have her baby safely back in her arms. He hadn’t been strong enough to help one woman deal with grief, and he prayed he wouldn’t have to help Peyton.

Peyton didn’t realize how much she’d needed to be held until Tom’s strong arms surrounded her. The fact that it was a relative stranger’s arms that brought her some comfort wasn’t lost on her. But his arms were solid and warm and the clean, slightly spicy scent of him was comforting, making her reluctant to leave his embrace.

She finally raised her face to look up at him. “Thank you. I needed somebody to hold me for just a minute or two.” Reluctantly she dropped her hands from around his neck and stepped back from him. “As you probably noticed, Rick isn’t very good in the hug department.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Why don’t you make some coffee for us?” he asked as he took her by the elbow and led her back into the kitchen. “You should probably try to eat something, too,” he said as he leaned against the counter.

She shook her head. “I can’t even think about food right now, but if you’re hungry I have some sandwich stuff.”

“Sure, I’d take a sandwich,” he replied.

As the coffee began to fill the air with its fragrance and Peyton got out the lunch meat and cheese to build a sandwich, she realized he was keeping her busy, trying to keep her mind off the reason he was here, the reason Lilly wasn’t in her bouncy chair on the table.

When she finished making the sandwich she set it on the table in front of Tom. She poured them each a cup of coffee and joined him there.

She still wanted to weep and wail, to walk the streets and rip open each and every door she came to in order to find Lilly, but she knew in all likelihood that Kathy was long gone. She also knew Tom had set in place the means that would hopefully find her baby.

“It’s going to be a long night,” she said aloud as her gaze drifted toward the window where the darkness was profound. “I can’t believe she’s out there somewhere and not here with me.”

“Tell me about your relationship with Rick,” he said.

She looked back at him and knew he was once again trying to take her mind off Lilly—as if that were possible. Still, she wanted conversation. She wanted to talk about everything and anything so that she wouldn’t hear the screaming voice inside her head that said her baby was gone.

She wrapped her cold fingers around the warmth of her coffee cup and frowned. “There isn’t a whole lot to tell. I met Rick in a coffee shop where I was working near the courthouse in Wichita. He was handsome and charming, and when he asked me out I was thrilled. We got close really fast, but it didn’t take me long to realize I would never be first in Rick’s life. I’d always be a distant third behind his work and his colleagues. For a while I was okay with that. But toward the end I realized that for once in my life I wanted to be the first priority in somebody’s life, and it wasn’t going to happen with Rick.”

She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “Anyway, we both agreed that we weren’t right for each other and had one last fling that resulted in Lilly.”

“A surprise?”

“Definitely,” she replied. “But, the minute I saw the test result and knew that I was pregnant, I also knew I wanted the baby more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.”

“And what about Rick? How did he feel about it?”

She frowned thoughtfully. “Initially I think he was a little bit upset. Any man would be. Neither of us had planned to become parents so soon, but he quickly came around. He was one hundred percent supportive through the pregnancy and was right there with me when Lilly was born.”

“What about support and visitation rights? Did you work those out legally?” His chocolate-brown eyes seemed to see everything that was inside her soul.

“No. I know Rick will do the right thing where Lilly is concerned, and if he doesn’t then I’ll be fine on my own.” For the first time since this horror had begun, she noticed that Sheriff Tom Grayson was a very handsome man. The warmth of his dark brown eyes tempered the stern, stark lines of his face.