Page 29 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

“Kate Campbell.”

Charlie repeated the name and took my phone, studying the senior photo of Kate I’d taken at her mother’s house.

Kate’s hair was shorter and her face was rounder, but there was something missing, that sense of confidence and possibility when a high schooler stood on the verge of graduation.

She leaned against a tree, arms crossed and smiling closed-mouth at the camera.

Everything else about her was closed, too.

Guarded, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Do you know what she was running from? Why she used another name?” Blake stared at the phone over Charlie’s shoulder.

We sat in the dining room of the bakery after closing time, the air heavy with coffee grounds and cleaning products.

The music was off, the only light filtering in from the late-afternoon sun.

Both of them had become lost in the photo, in the glimpse of one of Kate’s other lives.

“We think so.” Max and I had debated how much to tell them. It wasn’t just Kate’s secret; it was Valerie’s, too. And Kate had started a brand-new life to keep that secret. Ultimately, though, Charlie was our client. He needed to know we’d found at least a piece of her.

I told them the basics about Valerie and Kate, the single mother and her teenage daughter. Then I told them about Ted.

“He abused them?” Blake’s energy went from shocked to murderous in a heartbeat. Charlie wasn’t far behind.

“There’s no record of charges being brought against him.

” We’d looked, thoroughly, but Theodore Kramer had come up completely clean in the background check.

He’d worked as a quality manager for various manufacturers in central Illinois, pulling a low-six-figure salary before he’d been fired from the last position a year ago.

Several of the HR departments divulged that his performance had been “unsatisfactory,” but wouldn’t say anything else for legal reasons.

We couldn’t find record of him working in the last year, even though his credit remained spotless.

He’d been active in his church, a place called Divine Light that took over a bankrupt office supply building and boasted a website made of sixty percent adjectives.

There was no phone number, only an email address that auto-replied with a generic blessing and the assurance that they’d get back to us as soon as possible. They hadn’t.

He popped up in a few local newspaper stories, one about the church and another profiling “lovely lawns” in the area.

His parents were dead, his first wife had left him, and his son lived alone in an apartment in the Chicago suburbs.

Our attempts to contact the first wife and son had gone as well as the church.

“She was trying to get away from her stepfather?” Blake took the darkened phone out of Charlie’s hand and gave it back to me.

“No. Things came to a head with him years ago. Neither Valerie or Kate had any contact with him. Until this spring.”

I pulled up the media story about the body being exhumed in the woods behind Ted Kramer’s house and pushed the phone back across the table.

“Oh my god.” Charlie shoved out of his chair, full of nausea and fear. “Is it Kate?”

“No. The remains are too decomposed. She’s only been gone a few weeks. This body was, well, it had been there longer.”

“Oh.” Blake’s face went pale as she made the connection. “Oh, shit.”

I braced against the force of their emotions, breathing deep. Yoga breaths. Max had offered to come with me for this meeting, but he would’ve had to cancel a follow-up appointment with an infidelity client. I told him I could handle it. And I could.

“We don’t know whose body it is yet. Identification could take a while, and the authorities might not share information with us.”

“Have you talked to Ted Kramer?” Blake narrowed her gaze.

“No. We haven’t been able to locate him.” Above ground, anyway. Blake seemed to understand the implications.

“Good.” She nodded. “But that still doesn’t help us find Darcy. I mean, Kate.”

Charlie hadn’t leapfrogged to the Kate-and-her-mother-might-be-murderers conclusion. His energy had stuttered on the article about the body, and now worked its way into confusion. He’d started pacing again.

“What is it?”

“I . . . nothing.”

I closed my eyes, waiting for the image to bloom on the back of my eyelids. A low building with a flat metal roof. Even reflected in Charlie’s head, the place didn’t look in great shape. It was missing windows and boards, with weeds chewing in on all sides.

“You’re thinking about a building. Somewhere near your house.”

“It’s just that—”

“He’s right?” Blake cut in. “Holy shit, do me next!”

Charlie ignored her and I tried to focus as a bizarre parade of meme-worthy scenes spilled out of Blake’s head.

“I’ve been going to Silas’s the last few nights,” Charlie admitted. I moved as far away as possible from the table where Blake was grinning and thinking comically hard.

Charlie claimed he went to talk to him—which felt mostly true—but changed his mind when he heard Silas yelling inside his house.

Maybe at his grandkid or the TV. Charlie tried listening in, but Silas came outside and walked to one of the outbuildings on the property, the same stubborn, neglected structure I’d seen in his head.

“He stayed there for a half hour, maybe, before going back to the house. I went again the next night and just waited. He came out later, after the news, but he went to the same building and stayed the same amount of time.” Charlie stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“He doesn’t farm anymore—hasn’t in years.

There’s no reason for him to be out there.

And I thought, maybe, you know, that Kate—”

I picked up my phone and the box of pastries I’d bought for Earl. “Stay home tonight. Don’t trespass on the property of an angry gun owner. Max and I will check it out.”

Charlie agreed and the two of them walked me to the Evolution parked out front. Blake looked at me like she was in a staring contest only she knew about. I sighed and shook my head, unlocking the car.

“It’s dangerous to ride a unicorn bareback. Even for young Rob Lowe.”