Page 36 of The Liar's Wife

As my eyes trailed the corners of the photo, I froze, the hairs on my arms standing up as my body went cold. “Dani…”

“What is it?” she asked, her voice hesitant.

I swallowed, my throat dry again as I looked up at her and held out the phone. The words I said next sent chills down my spine as we both stared at the tiny, blue and white blanket in her background. She’d missed cropping it out by just a bit, but I’d know it anywhere. It was custom and, if I flipped it over, his name would be sewn on the bottom left hand corner. “She has Gray.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Dannika searched the picture, looking for any other clue as to where she might be, while I called Officer Kessler to let her know what we’d discovered. She swore to look into it and ended the call quickly, a new urgency in her voice, and for the first time, I realized she might truly believe me. For the first time, I was allowing myself to hope. Gray was alive, and we were going to find him.

When we’d given up on the picture, I moved back to my online banking, searching through the transactions the police still hadn’t given me any updates for.

I dialed my bank, trying to get to the bottom of it once and for all.

“Midwest State Bank, this is Deb, how may I help you?”

“Deb, hi. My name is Palmer Lewis. I have a few accounts with you, and it looks like I have a transaction per month for the last several months that I don’t recognize.”

“Okay,” she said, her tone professional and sharp. “Let’s take a look. Do you have your account number?”

I recited it to her from memory and listened as she typedit in. “Can you verify the last four of your social and your birth date?”

I did as she asked and waited.

“Okay, now, which transactions are we talking about?” I heard her typing again.

“There is one a month for a thousand even and, from what I can see, it goes back six months.”

She was quiet for a moment, then clicked her tongue. “I see what you mean. It looks like…yes, they’re being sent out of your account to another bank via your online banking.”

“Is there a way to see who the account belongs to?”

“Hmm…did you not authorize the transfers?”

“I didn’t, no. I’m not sure what they are for.”

“They would’ve had to be done with your credentials…” She trailed off. “I can’t see any information on it—it looks like they were done through our third party, person-to-person pay service—but I can put in a request to be able to get more information from our back office. It may take a day or two. If you didn’t do it, we can do a dispute for you, but you’d lose access to your online banking, and there’s no guarantee we could get your money back. It would have to go through an investigation, especially since it isn’t connected to your card. Visa disputes are a bit easier.”

“Okay, that would be fine. I totally understand.” I scrolled back down, noticing something else I didn’t recognize. “Can you look at one other thing for me?”

“Of course,” she said, noticeably less enthused to help me than before.

“On September ninth, there’s a charge for one hundred nineteen dollars to a store called FunnyFuzzy. Can you tell me what that is?”

I heard her typing. “One nineteen…there it is. Okay, that was on your card, but you’re past the point of disputing it. You only have six months.”

“I don’t need to dispute it. I just want to know what it was,” I snapped, growing irritated with her attitude.

I heard her click. “There’s a website and a phone number here. Do you want both?”

“Yes, please.” She recited them, and I pointed at the pen in front of Dannika, holding out my hand. She passed it to me, and I jotted the information down on a scrap of paper. “Thank you so much. Listen, is there a way to close the card that the charge came from? I think it’s possible we’ve been hacked.”

“That’s definitely possible. Do you want to lock it or just close it?”

“Close it, please. And thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll close it out here in just a moment and I’ll get this request put in for more information on the transfers, too. Once we have that, someone’ll give you a call. Is this still a good phone number for you?” she asked, reading it off.

“Yes, that’s perfect. Thank you again.”