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The police had been notified. And were on their way to The Lemonade Stand to take his statement.
“He’s going to be fine, Grant,” Lynn said. “He’s been out and about enough lately to know to ask for help. Or maybe even recognize someplace close by. He rides on these roads with you every single day.”
They were in Lila’s office waiting for the police.
Lila was seeing to a resident in crisis. An abused, recovering drug user whose children were going to be removed from her care later that day. Just until she could get clean and find a way to care for them.
As far as anyone could tell, Darin had only been missing about an hour and a half. No one had seen him.
Lila’s landline rang, and Grant tensed as Lynn picked up immediately.
He could hear a male voice, but couldn’t make out a single word.
She looked at him and shook her head. Then said, “You’re sure?” Her tone was biting.
He heard the male voice again. The frown encompassing Lynn’s entire expression eased as she gave him a quick smile and a shake of her head. Her lips mouthed the words Not Darin.
“Uh-huh.”
More male voice. More “Uh-huh.”
She was looking at him. His tension eased a bit, but not enough.
“Okay, thank you.”
She hung up, a frown marring her brow.
“What?”
“Nothing to do with Darin,” she said. Then she picked up the phone again and dialed.
“Lila?”
She was on the phone, but staring at him intently, and Grant read that she was going to let him be privy to classified information without actually telling him what was going on.
“I just had a call from the police. No, nothing to do with Darin Bishop— We’re still waiting for an officer to come take our statement on him. Another officer, one on regular patrol, noticed someone hanging around the area. Apparently he’s been watching him for a couple of days, but the guy didn’t do anything particularly suspicious. He went for a burger across the street. Sat on a bench…”
Grant didn’t need to hear the guy sat on a bench. What in the hell was going on?
And where was his brother?
“But today he seemed to be eyeing the door to the public day care a little too closely. Not enough to arrest him, but the officer has been making extra rounds to keep an eye on him. He saw the guy go into our boutique. And then later he was hanging around our public entrance. The officer approached him for loitering and told him he’d have to move along, and the guy got belligerent so he arrested him.”
Grant was watching her, on alert. He’d stayed away from the residents as he’d promised, but he’d learned some things during his weeks at The Lemonade Stand. These woman…they were fragile. They had men in their lives who’d hurt them. Men who, by and large, seemed to think women were property—their property….
“Turns out it was Dan Cleveland, Maria’s husband,” Lynn was telling Lila on the phone.
Maria Cleveland. Grant knew that Maria was the woman who had moved in next door to Lynn. One of their first late-night conversations had been about Maria, though he hadn’t known her name then. Lynn had texted Grant at two in the morning after spending the evening in the emergency room with Maria. And had been called out another time to tend to her because she’d ripped out her stiches trying to hail a cab to get to her kids.
“I don’t know, I called you first,” Lynn was saying into the phone, apparently in response to something Lila had asked.
“Okay.”
Lynn hung up. “Lila’s sending someone over to make certain Maria’s in the group counseling session she was scheduled to attend this afternoon.”
“He was really going to try to get to her if he could.”
“Of course. This is no drama mart we run here, Grant. Do you know how many women die every day in the United States from spousal abuse?”
He did know. She knew he knew. She was the one who’d told him.
“It’s a good thing the police in this town are so observant.”
“The city allots monies for extra patrols around our block. All of the officers on this beat know what to watch for.”
“Then surely they’d have noticed if a confused-looking man was wandering around out there.”
