to get back to your own life.”
In other words, Adam didn’t want her here, dogging his every step. Link couldn’t agree more.
Marisa’s shoulders stiffened. She looked very deliberately from him to Adam. “I can see why you feel that way, but I have no intention of going anywhere. I intend to stay in Springville until I know why my mother’s suitcase was inside the wall of this house.”
CHAPTER TWO
MARISA COULD SEE HOW unwelcome that announcement was to both men. With her unfortunate knack for empathy, she could easily put herself in their places.
The police chief was simplest to figure. He clearly wanted a free hand with his investigation, and he didn’t want to tell her anything he didn’t have to. Not that he suspected her—he could hardly believe that a five-year-old child would be involved in her mother’s disappearance.
But her father was another matter. Didn’t the police automatically suspect the spouse when a woman disappeared?
Or died. She forced herself to finish that thought.
“Ms. Angelo, I hate to see you do that.” The police chief sounded as harassed at the thought of her staying as she expected him to. “You’ll just be kicking your heels around here to no purpose. It’s hardly likely that we can find anything else out about what happened after all these years.”
“You found the suitcase,” she pointed out.
“Link did.” Chief Byler shot a look at the other man. “If he hadn’t been renovating the house, we wouldn’t have known anything about it.”
“But you have to investigate.” A thought struck her with the force of a blow. “You must have investigated then. Well, I mean not you personally.” He was far too young for that, probably not much more than in his early thirties. “But the police must have.”
She’d never known. She could only wonder at herself. A child accepted what she was told by the authority figures in her life, of course. But later, when she’d wanted to understand, it hadn’t occurred to her to ask her father what the police had thought.
“True, they did.” Adam Byler leaned against the rough table, seeming to resign himself to the questions. “I’ve looked into the reports, talked to officers who were working then.”
“And what did they say?” Was she going to have to drag information from the man? Ordinarily she probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to confront him, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances.
She couldn’t read anything in his square, impassive face. She suspected he was trying to decide what and how much to tell her.
As for Link Morgan—well, he’d backed away, as if trying to disassociate himself from the whole business. He probably regretted that he hadn’t thrown the suitcase on the trash heap without opening it.
“People noticed that your mother wasn’t around any longer,” Byler said. “Your father said she’d left him. That she hadn’t been able to go on living English and she’d gone back to her people in Indiana. For the most part, the police accepted that.”
Byler’s lips clamped shut on the words. Was the implication that he wouldn’t have?
“You know that your mother was Amish?” Link Morgan asked the question with a kind of reluctant concern in his voice.
She nodded. That she did know, but only because she’d pried it out of her grandmother, who was easier to talk to than her father. “I know. And my father said she’d gone back to her family because that was what he thought she’d done.”
A shiver skittered along her nerves. She believed that. She had to.
“My grandmother said my mother had talked about going back to her family,” she went on. “Grandma said my mother found it hard to give up her people and her faith the way she had.”
But how could she leave me behind? The child who lived inside her asked the question she couldn’t.
“You might want to see what else is in the suitcase,” Link suggested.
She shot a look at him. That fine-drawn face, with the skin taut against the bones—she still had the urge to draw it every time she looked at him. What made him look that way? Illness? Grief? Guilt?
Slowly she lifted out folded clothing. Her fingers hesitated when they touched the black garment. Then she lifted it, shook it out.
“It’s the kind of apron an Amish woman wears. And there’s the prayer covering they always have on their heads.” He nodded toward the object in the bottom of the case, not moving.
She picked it up, her fingers tingling a little. White organdy, a kind of small hat with long strings. She’d seen pictures of Amish women, looking almost like nuns in their dark dresses and identical hair styles, with the white covering on their heads. She’d taken a book out of the school library, she remembered, and hidden it under the mattress so Daddy wouldn’t see.
“That would seem to confirm that she was planning to leave,” Chief Byler said. “As to how that suitcase ended up here, and where she went—we’re as much in the dark as we were twenty-three years ago.”
For her father’s sake, she had to ask the question. “Is this a criminal investigation?”
Byler’s expression didn’t change, but Link Morgan’s mouth tightened, as if in pain.
“Not at this time,” Byler said. “For all we know, your mother did disappear back into an Amish community somewhere. That’s possible, even in this age of instant communication. If so, and if she doesn’t want to be found, the Amish would never give her up.”
“I know.” Her thoughts flickered to her own futile effort to find out something from her mother’s relatives in Indiana. “So, if it’s not a criminal investigation, will you do anything?” She didn’t mean that to sound critical, but she had to understand.
“We’ll pursue the leads we have.” That sounded final, and the police chief closed the suitcase and lifted it from the table. “If you’re intent on staying, please let my office know how to reach you. We’ll contact you if we find anything.”
She nodded, watching him walk to the door. He hadn’t sounded particularly hopeful.
He turned at the door, hand on the screen. “Don’t forget, Ms. Angelo. Let us know as soon as you hear from your father. We’d like to speak with him.” He didn’t wait for a response.
Her stomach tightened in apprehension as she watched him walk toward the patrol car. The fact that the police would suspect her father hadn’t occurred to her when she’d rushed off in response to the phone call.
“He thinks my father had something to do with this, doesn’t he?” The moment she asked the question, she regretted it. Link obviously didn’t want to be involved in her troubles, and she certainly had no reason to confide in him.
“Adam is a fair-minded person. He wouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”
“But the husband is always a suspect. That’s what
