Page 13 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)
“Yes, and it’s also terrible,” Doreen pointed out, “that another family doesn’t know about their daughter.”
“Oh my, yes,” they cried out, almost as one.
“So, we have a couple big issues here,” Doreen said.
Immediately they all straightened up to listen to her.
She sighed. “First, we need to know what happened to the senator’s daughter. We need to know who was buried in that lavish ceremony, and we can’t forget that we have an over-six-foot-tall male body that was just found in Rutland.”
“Ooh,” the newcomer, Danny, added, staring at her. “I don’t know if you can handle all of these at once.”
“We’ll take them one at a time,” Doreen replied in a reassuring tone. “And we’ll probably find that they all dovetail into being connected.”
At that, everybody asked, “How?”
“Think about it,” Doreen replied. “How many times do we get that many different cases that aren’t connected?”
“That’s true.” Nan nodded. “Yet this is definitely not our norm.”
“Nope, it’s not,” Doreen agreed, “but I won’t get fazed by it.”
“Of course not,” Nan declared, with a nod. “You’ve got way-too-much experience in this now.”
“I don’t know about having enough experience, but we do have a crisis here because the department will also be put on the spot now.
They have to find the senator’s missing daughter—the one case that everybody thought was already solved.
And, of course, we still have to solve our current case involving the very tall man.
Plus, we need to know the identity of the missing woman who was cremated by mistake by the senator and his wife. ”
“I think that’s the part that hurts me the most,” Maisie shared. “To think that somebody lost a child, and somebody else buried it as their own.”
“It definitely won’t be easy. On the other hand, we can’t let it be something that really ruins this. We’ll just take it one step at a time and be careful.”
“In the meantime, does anybody remember anything about this senator’s daughter’s case?” Nan asked.
Danny nodded. “I think that’s why Richie brought me over here,” he suggested. “Back then, I was working as a newspaper reporter.”
Doreen gazed at him with interest, as he preened in front of her. “You remember anything?” she asked.
“I remember that case quite well. However, nothing really came of the investigation. She went missing, and nobody had any idea where she was. I guess she’d gone to a party somewhere local.
Various people stated she’d gone into the water, while other people were certain that she had taken off, but nobody knew for sure, and she was never seen again.
It stayed in the public eye for quite a while, just because of who she was, being a senator’s daughter, and then after that,…
it just got buried with other news, as it so often does. ”
Doreen nodded. “They do. It’s hard to keep the momentum when working on cases where nothing is there to work with.”
“Exactly,” Danny confirmed. “We had our orders at the paper too. Everybody was to stay on it as much as we could, and then it got to the point where there was just… nothing else to report. What do you say, except there’s been no new development ?
” Danny shrugged. “You can only say that so many times before that phrase takes on the meaning of, Hey, we failed . So, everybody dropped it, hoping that something would come out of it eventually. Unfortunately, so far, there has been nothing to report.”
Doreen nodded. “So, do we know who was with her at the time she went missing?”
Danny shook his head. “Nobody saw her leave.”
“ Somebody saw her leave,” Doreen noted, with a groan. “But it’s been so many years, it’s hard to find witnesses that have something to say.”
“I know, and that’s part of the problem,” Danny replied.
“What about the people who were partying with her? Were they all interviewed?”
“Oh my, yes. I’m sure many of them would say that we hounded them. I mean, obviously, if anybody knew anything, it should be them. So, they had both the police and the media after them for details.”
“In theory, yes,” Doreen conceded, “but I presume nothing came out of it?”
“No, nothing came of it, and then somebody found this body.” Danny frowned.
“I do remember hearing about that. It was maybe… a year or two ago. It was identified as the senator’s daughter, and everyone cheered because another cold case had been solved and was done. And now they’re saying it’s not her.”
“That’s one of the questions I had for Mack.
Is it that it wasn’t her or is it that the father realized he’s not the biological father of this daughter?
So, my instinctive thought,” Doreen began, looking around the room, “was that her mom had an affair and didn’t tell her dad, then brushed the child off as his.
That has certainly been done more than a few times back then. ”
“Absolutely,” Nan agreed.
“However, because of the samples the coroner still had, they were able to be tested. That has proven that it’s also not the mother’s DNA either. Thus, everybody is now sure that it’s not their daughter. So, of course, everybody is outraged.”
“But did the parents not identify her?” Richie asked.
“They did. Supposedly the remains were identified as her.”
Nan suggested, “So most probably she had some stuff on her, jewelry or something that belonged to the senator’s daughter. I mean, there had to be something to connect this found body with the senator’s daughter.”
Doreen shook her head. “It wasn’t that. Mack mentioned something about teeth.”
The journalist stared at her. “That doesn’t add up. Teeth should have been definitive.”
“Should have been,… yes, but now the questions I have are, who ID’d the teeth?
Did anybody follow up and check the report, or did the dentist just say it was her?
Could we be looking at a scenario where somebody got paid to say it was her?
” When they stared at Doreen, she shrugged.
“It must be devastating to have no answers for so long. I’m sure these parents want closure so badly that it may be a relief to believe that a body might be their child and the end of their search. ”
The journalist looked at her and slowly nodded. “Unfortunately that is very true. I mean, I would hate to see that in this instance, but we do know that it happens.”
Richie asked, “What if the mom is the one who didn’t want the DNA tested and was absolutely positive it was her daughter, and that was the end of it?”
“Sure, but then what?” Nan asked. “Was she the one who had the change of heart and wanted the DNA tested, or was it something else? Someone else?”
“I don’t know,” Doreen replied. “Those are all good questions, and we’ll have to work our way toward getting answers. But that still doesn’t change the fact that we need to know the real identity of this body, and we still need to know where the senator’s real daughter is.”