Page 24 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

Other than paying for the privilege of driving on the freeway every ten miles, western Illinois wasn’t that different from eastern Iowa.

The hills rolled easy and long into the horizon, punctuated by cattle, crops, and the occasional church steeple or truck stop sign on the horizon.

Jonah drove, which meant it took a lot less time than it should have to reach Peoria, a tidy city on the banks of the Illinois River.

We hadn’t said much on the drive and nothing about the two hundred thousand dollars of illegal money I’d accepted and used for the business. It was probably better we weren’t talking.

He’d texted this morning with a photograph of Kate’s license plate, which came up as being owned by a Katherine Barker.

I’d gotten excited about the name until I pulled the record and found it belonged to a ninety-five-year-old woman living in Peoria.

Still, it was a lead, the first solid lead we’d gotten into Kate’s past, and neither one of us was letting the other take it solo. Fifty fucking fifty.

It starting raining as we pulled onto a narrow residential street lined with oak trees and aging brick duplexes.

We parked and walked up the sidewalk to a front door crowded with pots, their flowers dipping under the weight of raindrops.

Jonah rang the bell and we waited until the door was opened by a woman who looked about as substantial as crepe paper origami.

Huge red glasses perched on her tiny, wrinkled face.

“I’m not buying any.” She thwacked the No Soliciting sign taped up in faded letters on her door.

“We’re not selling any.” I flashed my PI license. “Are you Katherine Barker?”

She made us stand out in the rain while we explained we were looking for the owner of a gray 2008 Mazda.

“I sold that car. She said she’d take care of all the paperwork.”

“Who?”

Jonah was already turning around, peering through the rain.

“The girl across the street.”

We were two yards short of the door to the opposite duplex when Jonah slowed. He looked apprehensive.

“What?”

“She’s watching us.”

I didn’t know if he meant the old lady behind us or whoever lived inside this place.

Was it Kate? Could she have left Iowa City and fled back here?

For all the technology and resources we had, sometimes it was as simple as tracking a license plate.

I didn’t have to wait long. Before we could knock, deadbolts clicked and the door opened two inches—another thick chain still attaching the door to the frame.

A slice of a petite woman with short dark hair and a single blue eye peered out at us.

She didn’t speak and something about her face made me want to see her hands, to reach for my nonexistent holster. Instead, I went through the same spiel.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’re looking for someone.” Jonah held up his phone, showing the woman the picture of Kate on the couch. “She may be in trouble.”

The woman’s eye lingered on the phone. Her voice, when it came again, was unsteady. “I can’t help you.”

Jonah kept the photo in her line of sight. “We might be able to help you.”

“Are you the police?”

“No. We just want to make sure Kate’s all right.”

The woman slammed the door. Jonah took a deep breath and shook his head. “Just wait.”

Almost a minute passed before the latch scraped against wood and the door opened. The woman wore sweats dusted with flour and a faded pair of slippers. In her hand she held a knife.

The house was small and bright, with framed abstract art prints on every wall.

Knickknacks and plants spilled over the shelves and the whole place smelled of cinnamon.

It reminded me of the bakery, and within five seconds I was convinced Kate either was here or had been at one point.

There weren’t any photographs in sight, but every instinct told me we were on the right track.

Jonah flashed me a look as the woman led us through the house to a covered patio table in the backyard. It said, clearly, shut up and let me handle this .

And he was right. The woman fidgeted, unwilling to meet our eyes as she glanced across the fence to the other side of the duplex, where an older Asian couple worked in their garden, despite the rain.

Her weapon, an efficient-looking carving knife, lay on the table a few inches from her fingers.

She was saying volumes, none of it spoken.

There were only two chairs for the table.

I let Jonah sit next to her and hung back in the corner of the patio, trying to seem as unobtrusive as possible.

I’d already run property records as we crossed the street.

The entire duplex was owned by a Mr. and Mrs.Le, who I assumed were the couple weeding next door.

“Who do you work for?”

“Ourselves.” Jonah laid a business card gently in front of the woman. “We run a PI agency out of Iowa City.”

“You’re really not the police?” Her words and tone were excruciatingly careful. She still didn’t want to look at us, but chanced a glance at Jonah.

Jonah jerked his head in my direction. “He used to be, but he got over it.”

Another long silence as Jonah read everything in her head. It was starting to drive me crazy, being the only one on the outside of this nonverbal conversation.

“Why do you think Kate’s in trouble?” the woman asked.

Jonah twitched suddenly, like a seizure. His hands fisted under the table and he started breathing hard and fast. The woman jumped up, taking the knife with her. “What’s wrong with him?”

The truth wouldn’t make sense—that the thing twisting Jonah up right now was whatever was wrong with her . I stepped forward and laid a hand on Jonah’s chair. “He has episodes. Don’t worry; he’ll be fine.”

She looked more worried than ever. “I think you need to go now.”

“Are you Kate’s mom?” It didn’t take a former cop to mark the resemblance between them, and the tone in her voice when she asked if Kate was in trouble all but confirmed it.

She looked at me as if weighing her options before answering. “Yes.”

Briefly, I explained our case and how Kate had disappeared a week and a half ago without a trace. She sank back into her chair, staring blindly at the patio tile.

“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

The woman shook her head tightly, tears filling her eyes. Jonah looked better—the color was coming back into his face—but like a masochist he stayed at the table instead of giving himself a break and taking a lap around the block.

“Is there anyone in her life who might have wished her harm?”

Kate’s mom wiped her eyes. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

Jonah leaned in, waiting until he caught her gaze and held it. His breathing was still ragged.

“Why don’t you tell us about the man you and your daughter buried?”

It took another hour of coaxing, explaining Jonah’s abilities and sharing pictures of my family, before Valerie Campbell was comfortable enough to tell her story.

“I raised Kate on my own. I was young when I had her—twenty-three—and her dad didn’t stick around long.

We got by, though. I worked in daycare centers where I could bring Kate to work with me and then for the school districts so I could have summers off with her.

We never had much, but she never needed much.

She was always grateful for the littlest things.

A trip to McDonald’s, a bus ride to see a rose garden in bloom.

It was so easy to raise Kate. Sometimes I worried it was too easy, that the universe would tip the other way and there’d be a difficult phase ahead.

I was right, I guess. It just wasn’t how I expected it. The worst things never are.”

“You taught her to bake,” Jonah said.

We’d moved inside the house, holding steaming mugs of coffee around a small peninsula in Valerie’s kitchen. The knife was back in its place in the knife block. She glanced at Jonah like he was a zoo animal, something he got a lot, and eventually she nodded.

“It was cheaper to make our own bread and cook a pot of soup that could last a week. Kate loved baking. The chemistry of it, turning one thing into something else. She would sit in front of the oven and watch every pan of cookies until they were perfectly done.”

The summer Kate turned sixteen, they went to a county fair and Valerie met Ted Kramer.

He was at the fair with his son and the four of them were paired up in the same Ferris wheel car.

They started talking during the ride and afterward Ted invited the Campbells to join them at a contest he was judging for their church booth.

“I told him I was raised Catholic but hadn’t attended in decades. He laughed and said, ‘That sounds like every Catholic I’ve met.’ He promised his church was more welcoming. He said it was a good community, a place he’d relied on after his wife left and he had to raise his son alone.”

Ted seemed open and charming, buying the Campbell women food and souvenirs as they spent the rest of the day together.

He asked Valerie questions about herself, but didn’t pry.

He pointed out mud puddles around the carnival games so they wouldn’t get their shoes dirty.

And he offered his sweater to Valerie after the sun set and he caught her shivering.

When he asked for her number at the end of the night, she didn’t hesitate to give it to him.

“I’d had a few other relationships over the years, none that turned into anything long-term, but I always hoped I’d meet someone like Ted. He was handsome and well-spoken. He mentioned his job, but didn’t drone on about it, and was clearly family-oriented.”

Valerie went to the living room and pulled a box of photos off the shelf. Finding one at the very bottom, she stared at it, her mouth working.

“There were no red flags, or at least none I wanted to see. He owned a beautiful house with no mortgage and kept it nice, not like some disgusting bachelor pads I’d seen.

He took me to good restaurants and sent fresh flowers to my work every week.

Even Kate seemed to like him in the beginning.

His son, Theo, was a little older than her, and quiet.

I didn’t realize how quiet at the time, or think about why a teenager almost out of high school would be so quiet.

I hardly saw him after that day at the fair, but I never wondered about it, not at first. Ted filled those spaces.

He kept you focused on the things he wanted you to see.

” She kept talking to the photo in a measured monotone, the story carefully, painfully stripped of any emotion.

“We’d been dating a few months when Ted suggested the trip to Las Vegas for the two of us.

It was a spontaneous getaway, or so I thought.

We stayed in a suite at the Bellagio overlooking the fountains.

And when we were walking by a chapel, he pulled me aside and said we should get married.

He didn’t ask. I remember thinking, Shouldn’t he get down on one knee?

Shouldn’t I need to say yes to something?

But he pulled a ring out of his pocket and I was dazzled, I guess, by the idea that he’d planned this.

He swept me off my feet. I didn’t realize that was on purpose. He took my ability to walk away.”

She crossed the living room and handed me the photo.

In it, Valerie stood in an alcove with a tall, dark-haired man.

He had black eyes, a precise mustache, and a thin smile—the kind of guy who ironed his sheets.

He’d wrapped an arm entirely around Valerie, somewhere between her sternum and her throat, holding her against him.

“Kate was furious when I told her we’d gotten married.

It was the worst fight we ever had. She begged me to get the marriage annulled, and when I refused she said she’d never accept him as a father.

I told Ted, of course, because I thought we could work through it together, that we were a family now.

I assumed he’d say something like ‘Give her time, she’ll come around.

’ But he didn’t. His face went hard and blank.

I remember how disturbing it was that first time, like he’d turned into a different person right in front of me.

He told me not to worry, that he’d take care of Kate. ”

Valerie rocked back and forth, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, still staring at the wedding photo.

“I think I knew then. Part of me deep down went cold when he said that. But I talked myself out of it. I told myself he meant he would talk to Kate, that he’d work on the relationship.

” She shook her head as her eyes flooded.

“Kate should never forgive me for not listening to her.”

Valerie and Kate moved into Ted’s house, a two-story colonial that backed up to a wooded preserve. Ted’s son, Theo, left for college shortly after they arrived, leaving just the three of them in the last house at the end of a quiet road.

Ted’s behavior began changing after the wedding.

He convinced Valerie to quit her job and take care of Kate and the house.

He complained about his work—he didn’t like his new boss, a recent hire who happened to be Chinese—and started spending more time online.

He brought his men’s group from church over for dinner without warning, and got upset afterward—always afterward, when no one else was around—if the house wasn’t cleaned to his standards or the meal wasn’t large enough to feed eight men.

If she made extra food in case they had company, he said she was being wasteful.

“He never physically hurt me. I think he avoided it just so he could throw it in my face. ‘What, do I mistreat you? Do I hit you? Is the house and clothing and food I provide for you not enough?’

“Everything was about Ted. Our lives had to revolve around him. He demanded constant attention; he needed praise, sympathy, sex, gifts. And even with all of that, somehow nothing I did was enough. By our first anniversary I knew I had to leave him. But I was scared. He’d told me once, when I still thought he was being romantic, that he’d always find me.

I belonged to him, and he would never let me go. ”

Jonah glanced over periodically as Valerie talked, but I didn’t need a psychic’s confirmation to see she was telling the truth. I’d interviewed enough victims to know what trauma looked like. “What happened then?”

Valerie went still and her voice became distant. “A lot of things.”

“Where’s Ted now?”

“In the woods behind his house.” She looked up, suddenly calm. “This past spring, I killed him, and Kate and I buried the body.”