in his creaking desk chair and surveyed Amanda with a speculative look on his square, honest face.
“So you claim you might be the Winthrop girl’s child, I hear from Trey.”
Amanda perched on the edge of her chair, looking wired enough to dart from it at any instant. “I’m not making any claims, Chief Carmichaels. I just want to know the truth. It came as such a shock to learn that I wasn’t who I thought. There must have been some relationship between my mother—between Juliet Curtiss—and Melanie Winthrop. I’d have been two months old when Melanie died. You can see why I might wonder if that’s the answer to who I am.”
Mike’s expression softened, and Trey saw he’d been moved by Amanda’s words. So maybe it hadn’t been a mistake for her to talk to him.
Carmichaels cleared his throat. “I get that. Trouble is, I don’t see any way of proving it one way or another—not unless someone from the family agreed to DNA testing.”
Amanda slid back on the chair, sending Trey a look that might have contained a little triumph. “That would be the only definitive answer to my parentage, but I’d want to feel more sure of the facts myself before I’d even ask them to do that. So I hoped you might help me.”
“How?” The chief’s gray eyes became guarded. He might be sympathetic to Amanda, but he wouldn’t be eager to alienate Elizabeth Winthrop.
She hadn’t mentioned the need to find out whether or not she’d been legally adopted, but Carmichaels didn’t need to know the importance of determining that. He couldn’t know anything.
“Just tell me anything you remember about what happened when Melanie died. For instance, were you able to find out when Melanie had arrived back in town?”
He seemed to look at that question from every angle before deciding to answer it. “No, we weren’t. That was odd. We couldn’t even find out how. She hadn’t come on the bus, and there was no abandoned car that might have belonged to her.”
So the police had been more thorough than Trey had thought. Mike would have been a patrolman then, and Clifford Barnes the chief. Too bad Clifford wasn’t around any longer to answer any questions.
“Strange,” Trey said while Amanda seemed to digest the chief’s words, sifting them for anything useful. “It almost sounds as if someone drove her to town and dropped her off. But if so, you’d expect them to come forward when she died.”
Carmichaels moved as if he’d suddenly found his chair uncomfortable. “Unless she’d been hitchhiking and was dropped off by a stranger. That was what Chief Barnes decided must have happened.”
“You didn’t agree?” Amanda was onto the doubt in his voice in an instant.
But he stiffened. “It wasn’t my business to disagree with the chief.” He shrugged. “Besides, I wasn’t in on any of the decision-making. Too high up for me at that stage.”
To forestall Amanda making another remark about toadying to the powerful, Trey broke in with a question. “What about the person who found her? I never did hear who that was.”
“An Amish kid from one of the nearby farms, it was. Course there weren’t any cell phones then, even if he’d been allowed to have one. Way he told it, she was partly in the water at the base of the falls. He pulled her out.”
“She was dead already?” Trey asked.
Carmichaels nodded, his face grave. “As I recall, he realized pretty quick it was too late, but he ran all the way to the nearest place with a phone. You can imagine how long it was until we actually got on scene.” The chief fell silent, staring down at the green blotter on his desk as if he saw again that tragic image. “The chief and I got there first, but the rescue crew wasn’t far behind. I could hear them crashing through the woods with their gear while we were standing there looking down at her, all broken...”
He stopped abruptly, probably realizing he might be talking to Melanie’s daughter.
Amanda drew a shaky breath. She was probably trying to think what else to ask. “Do you know his name? The boy who found her, I mean.”
“Let me think a minute. It was one of the Miller kids, I believe, but I don’t remember which one.” He shook his head. “It’ll come to me. I’ll let you know when I think of it.”
“Why wasn’t there a postmortem?” Obviously that was still bothering Amanda.
“Like I say, that wasn’t my decision. Besides, it was obvious what caused her death.” His face tightened. “If you’d seen her...well, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. That’s a long way down, and nothing but rocks and water at the bottom.”
That shook Amanda visibly. He suspected she was finding it impossible to hold on to the detachment she’d had initially. It was probably coming home to her just what kind of Pandora’s box she was opening with her search.
The silence that fell was his cue to get her out before she had a chance to push too hard with Chief Carmichaels. He stood, holding out his hand.
“Thanks, Chief. It was good of you to answer my client’s questions.”
He shrugged it off. “No problem. After all these years, I’d think it’s impossible to find out much of anything, but I can understand why Ms. Curtiss wants to know.”
Amanda stood, managing a smile. “Thank you. If I have any other questions, I hope I can come to you.”
Carmichaels’s expression stiffened, but he nodded. He went to the door and opened it, obviously just as glad to see them out.
A wave of sympathy swept over Trey as he walked beside Amanda out of the office. Amanda was still grieving the loss of the woman who had always been her mother. Now she had the challenge of mourning a birth mother, as well. How did anyone cope with that load of trouble?
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