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O nce she got back home again, Doreen followed up on her notes and then headed online to see if she could find anything about the Winters family. There were quite a few generations of them, if the news was anything to go by. There were some good and some bad stories about them, which was to be expected. The family was touted as supporting various organizations with their donations, including the local church.

She filtered her way through and came to a news article involving a Buck Winters and a domestic violence charge. She frowned, then checked out the number of years that had gone by. Sure enough, it fit right into what could be the time frame she was looking for. Of course it was a could be , not a definitive answer. Nothing was ever quite so easy in this world.

As she pondered the name, she kept searching, looking for anything that might also run along the same lines. She found several other articles, most of them more newsy than about crime. But she didn’t trust any of that either. She wasn’t sure when she came to distrust the news sources, but apparently it had already happened because here she was, looking at every article and wondering at the source, wondering if it could be trusted.

Finally she picked up the phone and called Nan.

When Nan heard her voice on the other end, she cried out, “Have you got something?”

“I’m not saying I’ve got something,” Doreen clarified, trying hard to suppress a smile, “but do you know the Winters family?”

“Winters, Winters, Winters. Oh my,” she grumbled. “If it’s the Winters family I think you’re talking about, they’re bad news, with domestic violence, battery, petty theft, you know the type.… Yet they were always in church, as if that wiped clean what they had been doing while out of church.… I don’t think they ever did anything criminal though.”

Doreen winced. “News flash, Nan, domestic violence and battery is criminal.”

“Oh, I know that,” Nan replied, “and I’m not trying to minimize it. But, in my day, men could get away with certain things, without facing consequences.”

“But this was only thirty-five years ago, not seventy-five,” Doreen pointed out, “so there should have been consequences if they were involved at that level.”

“Oh, I think they were involved,” Nan noted. “I seem to recall some court cases.… A rough bunch as far as I’m concerned.”

“And are they still in that area?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I haven’t really had anything to do with them.”

“So, this is the question,” Doreen began. “Is there anybody at Rosemoor with that name or with any connection to them? Or who would even know anything about them?”

“Wow, that’s a really good question, but I have no idea. How did that get by me?”

Doreen chuckled. “I’ll leave it in your capable hands to do a scout around to see if anybody at Rosemoor knows the Winters family because apparently domestic violence and possibly child abuse was something that they were known for.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she agreed. “I don’t doubt it. Do you really think she’s a Winters’ baby?”

“I have no idea,” Doreen admitted, “and we can’t say that either. We don’t know anything for sure yet.”

“No, but you’re getting somewhere,” Nan pointed out, her admiration coming through the phone, clear as a bell.

Doreen groaned. “No, no, not yet. I’m not saying anything along that line yet.”

“Maybe not,” Nan conceded, “but I, for one, am delighted that you’re getting somewhere.”

“I’m not sure I’m getting anywhere.” Doreen groaned. “I’m running up against quite a number of issues.”

“Of course, dear,” Nan chastised her. “That is to be expected, but you will resolve them.” And, with that, she disconnected.

Doreen groaned as she realized it was already four o’clock. When a hard knock came on her door, and the front door opened without ceremony, she realized two things. Mack was here, and she was probably supposed to cook some dinner. She frowned at Mack.

When he walked in, took one look at her face, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Was I supposed to cook?” she cried out.

He walked closer and snagged her up into a hug. “It wouldn’t matter if you were supposed to cook today. This isn’t a military camp, and you aren’t under orders. If you had something else to do and didn’t cook, that’s fine.”

She stepped back out of his arms, searched his face, and then sighed in relief. “Are you sure? We could try a new restaurant,” she suggested, “because honestly, I’ve just been so busy working on this case that cooking never even crossed my mind.” She walked over to the fridge and opened it.

He stepped up behind her and nodded. “I see you forgot to buy groceries too.”

She groaned. “I don’t know about that. It doesn’t look any different than the last time I was in here.”

He chuckled. “News flash, to have groceries in your fridge, you have to buy them. You can go get them yourself or just order them, have them delivered. Some of the guys will even put them away for you. Regardless, you still have to do something to start the process.” She glared at him, and he chuckled again. “So, either we go out to eat or we go grab some food to cook when we get back home.”

“Honest to God, I’m tired.” She looked at the fridge again and then rolled her eyes. “We could have an omelet.”

“We could have an omelet,” he agreed. He poked around in the fridge and noted, “Not a whole lot of protein in here though.”

“You’re tired and need protein,” she noted.

“It’s not just that I’m tired and need protein,” he added, looking at her, “but you look equally tired. So, before you wear yourself down on this cold case, I would feel better if you ate properly.” He chuckled and opened up the freezer. “We’ve got sausages here, and we’ve got eggs in the fridge,” he stated. “Why don’t I make a scramble—with potatoes, if you have any.” He went to the pantry and pulled out two very sad-looking large potatoes. “I’ll come up with dinner. You go sit and tell me all about your day.”

She looked at him in bemusement. “Isn’t that my line?”

“What?”

“You go sit and tell me about your day?”

He laughed. “My day was all about court, and I can tell you that, at times, I absolutely detest lawyers.” He chuckled. “Then I remember that my brother is one, so I don’t really get to go off on that tangent either.” He smiled as he washed and then chopped potatoes and tossed them into a pan.

She watched in fascination as, before her eyes, a very solid and hefty-looking meal was created out of what she would have considered nothing.

Twenty minutes later he nudged her toward the table. “Grab some forks.”

And she realized he was done. “How do you do that?” she asked, feeling vexed. “You took nothing and turned it into a meal for two of us.”

“It’s hardly nothing,” he pointed out. “You had sausage, potatoes, and eggs, plus some leftover vegetables and even cheese. So I just made a bit of a scramble. It should be enough to keep us both going.”

“I would think so,” she muttered, as she stared down at it in amazement. She sniffed the aroma coming off her plate and groaned. “I didn’t even realize I was hungry.” She took several bites, nodding and smiling as she did. “This is so good.”

“And that is something else we’ll have to watch with you,” he noted. “You tend to get so involved in work that you forget to eat.”

“I don’t think I even know what hunger is half the time,” she admitted. “It’s as if I shut off everything because I don’t have time for it.”

“Yeah, and that makes sense too, but it’s also not good for you.” She just shrugged and didn’t say anything. With a groan, he asked, “Okay, back to this case, how far did you get?”

“I got the DNA uploaded to the genealogy site.” He raised his eyebrows. “The captain gave me the DNA report, and I told him what I was doing with it, and he approved,” she explained.

“Interesting. Okay, that’s good. Probably the first time ever that you did something that was preapproved.”

She snorted. “I went to see Lilybeth in Riverdale, the old folks’ home down by the river.”

“Did she have anything to offer?”

“It took a bit, but she confirmed two families known for domestic violence issues. She didn’t really come out and say that she didn’t want to deal with them, but I got the impression that she would just as soon not .” When he raised one eyebrow, she added, “One family is all dead, per Lilybeth, so the only family name she came up with for me was Winters.”

“Winters?” he asked, frowning at her. “That’s one of our local politicians, or he’s trying to be.”

“Oh no. Really?”

He nodded.

She snorted. “He’s a politician, so, in my book, that makes him slimy.”

“That would go right along with you saying lawyers are slimy,” he pointed out, looking at her in concern, “and we both know we can’t say that.”

“No, but…”

“No,” he stated in a firm tone.

“Fine,” she muttered. “Besides, the chances of it being the Winters politician are pretty slim. After all, we are talking about a toddler found about thirty-five years ago.” He pondered that, as he scratched his chin. “I think that Winters may be in his fifties, maybe mid-fifties?”

“Right, so hard to say then. Anyway, I need to go through what I have and get a series of births and deaths for the Winters family.”

“I can run that through the database, if you want.”

“Yes, please.” Then she sighed. “Although I don’t know if you have access to data from that long ago.”

“I do, but it may not necessarily be in the online files. Thirty-five years isn’t all that long ago,” he pointed out.

“I know, but it’s scary to think of abuse and killing a child as something done at all back then.”

“It is, and there’s only so much that time can hinder,” he said. “Sounds as if you’ve gotten some things going.”

“I’ve done a lot of running around. I’ve got Nan checking to see if anybody at Rosemoor knows the Winters family, and I’m doing some groundwork, but I’m not really getting anywhere.”

He nodded. “But you do have a family name as a lead, which is something,” he pointed out.

“I have a name of someone known for domestic violence. Honestly, Lilybeth didn’t really want to talk about it.”

“If you had seen some things that bothered you, would you want to talk about it?”

“I would not only not want to talk about it, I would not want to be associated with it, particularly if I did nothing about it.” She frowned and sat back, staring at him.

“Think about what Lilybeth’s job was. Think about what she was doing and about the pressure to keep her mouth shut, say about a political family or an unwed mother or something,” Mack explained. “You can’t judge her for it.”

“No, of course not,” She picked up the fork and had another couple bites, before putting down her fork again.

Mack eyed the amount of food still on her plate and motioned to it. “At least eat a couple more.”

“Couple more what?” she asked, turning to him.

“Eat a couple more bites.”

She stared at him, looked at her plate, and shrugged. “I don’t think I’m hungry anymore.” He frowned at that. She added, “I’m not… not eating for any particular reason. I just think I’m full.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but you also haven’t eaten very much.”

“I think I’ve eaten enough though.” He let it go, but she could see he wasn’t happy. She chuckled. “See? You eat way more than I do. I’m just not that big.”

“You’ll never get any bigger if you keep eating such minuscule portions of food either,” he grumbled, “and no going after my dessert when it’s dessert time.”

She picked up her fork, then stopped. “Did you just do that?”

“Do what?” he asked, a grin on his face.

“Did you just try to bribe me with dessert?”

“No, of course not,” he quipped. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yes, you would.” But still, she shoveled several more bites of food down her throat and then stopped. “I don’t even know if you brought dessert.”

“Nope, you don’t,” he agreed, “but apparently you were still hungry because you just ate again.”

She frowned. “I don’t know if I’m hungry or not,” she muttered. “I talked to your brother.”

“How’s he doing?” he asked in a noncommittal tone, as if he already knew.

“He’s fine. I also had a visit with your mother.”

Now he put down his fork and asked, “Was that okay?”

“It was because I didn’t let her talk about the wedding.”

He laughed. “That’s one way to do it.”

“I kept her busy with my cold case, asking her if she knew of anybody, of any child who might have gone missing or anything. She didn’t seem to have any idea either, only to then mention Lilybeth’s name.”

“I think that’s fairly common. Her age for one thing, and maybe just because of the nature of the case. A lot of people don’t know how common domestic violence is, how common child abuse is. And, no, it’s not just fathers. A lot of the time it’s also the mothers.”

“And that’s just wrong,” Doreen declared, staring at him.

He nodded. “It is, but just because it’s wrong doesn’t mean that we’ll stop it.”

“We should though,” she stated, glaring at him.

He smiled, then tapped her nose. “Maybe so, but it’ll take a whole lot more than just us being outraged over it.”

“I know,” she muttered. She took another bite and then one more. With a sigh, she put down her fork and announced, “Okay, now I’m really done.”

“Oh, good. Now all the dessert’s for me.” She glared at him, and he burst out laughing. “You didn’t even see me bring a bag in.”

“What bag?” She got up and raced around the kitchen, like a two-year-old, looking for the bag. When she spied it, she admitted, “I didn’t even see you bring it in.”

“That’s what I just said,” he noted, with a laugh.

She sighed. “I have to admit that I am really preoccupied with this case.”

“It won’t be an easy one to solve,” he noted, “so don’t let a lack of progress get to you.”

She shrugged. “I think it’s already getting to me.”

“It can’t,” he declared. “You’ve only had it a few days. That is not a lack of progress.”

“Isn’t it?” she asked. “It always feels as if I’m supposed to do something immediately to get there fast.”

“Oh no,” he argued, “none of that.”

“None of what?” she muttered.

“You heard me. None of that. We’re not expecting you to solve this stuff.”

She frowned at him. “You’re not expecting me to?”

“Obviously we’re hoping you will,” he clarified, holding up a hand, “but there’s no expectation, no pressure. Nobody has been able to solve it yet. Sure, if we had a free moment, if we weren’t dealing with all these old cases that somehow ended up solved and on our plates to finalize, we would be looking at some of these cold cases ourselves.”

“But you never quite get a chance because you’re already swamped without them,” she added, with a nod. “And I understand that, but something’s so disturbing about knowing that little girl went undetected for all that time and then was only dug up and discovered because somebody wanted to grow yams.”

“And it’s a good thing he did. Otherwise she could have been there for decades more.”

“I know,” she whispered. “It’s just so heartbreaking. How could one toddler be forgotten? And, even as it is, she’s been at the morgue all this time. And she was in the garden bed for how long? She was supposedly found thirty-five years ago, but how long was she actually there?”

“Exactly,” Mack agreed.

“Let me check my notes.” She got up and brought over her notes and reread them. “Okay, so she was found in the garden bed thirty-five years ago, but no telling how long she was there.”

“Yes, that is how I remember it too,” he replied. “I’ve looked at those bones a couple times, but I can’t determine anything from them. Short of having a hit off the genealogy database, we don’t really have much to go on to find answers.”

“Isn’t that sad?” she asked.

“Yeah, but hopefully you’ll get something started.”

“I’m hoping so,” she muttered, as she put down her notes. “Found thirty-five years ago.”

“Exactly.” He nodded. “Was that confusing?”

“No, but I’m looking at a longer time spread. The coroner said up to ten years, so buried for forty-five years ago is also possible.”

“But even having a range is okay for a starting point,” Mack noted. “Part of the journey is trying to figure out just what you have for options.”

“Maybe,” she muttered.

“Just carry on knowing that she was found thirty-five years ago, and we still need to find whoever killed her back then.”

“So, was she born approximately thirty-seven years ago?”

“If the coroner was correct on lower estimation on how long she had been in the garden bed.”

“Oh, good God, I’m getting confused on the time frame.”

“Well, she was in the garden bed, found thirty-five years ago, and laid in the box in the coroner’s office all that time period since, but we don’t know when she first went into the ground.”

“That could have been a lot less time. Plus, what about the animal marks?”

“That’s something else we don’t know. It was a consideration at the time that potentially she had been buried, but not deep enough, and was dug up by animals, then over time the bones were covered over.”

“Oh, good Lord,” she muttered, staring at him in horror.

“It happens.”

“Yes, I imagine it does,” she muttered. “It apparently did.” She shook her head. “Still sucks though.”

“It absolutely still sucks,” he stated. He got up and put on a pot of coffee. “Are you ready for a treat?”

“I’m absolutely ready for a treat,” she replied, jumping to her feet.

“Let’s get the dishes done first, and then we can sit in the living room,” he suggested.

By the time they settled into the only two chairs in the whole living room, he looked around and smiled. “Have you thought about getting furniture?”

“Yeah, every time you suggest we go sit in the living room,” she teased, with a laugh. He grinned at her. “One thing I did want to mention…” She stopped to consider how she should ask this, but she did need the question answered. “How in love with your house are you?”

His eyebrows shot up. “It’s just a house to me. Why?” She nodded but didn’t say anything. “What’s going on in that brain of yours now?” he asked.

“After we’re married,” she began.

“Yes.” He leaned forward. “After we’re married, what?”

“I want to live here.”

He looked at her, then slowly nodded. “I’d already assumed that’s what you would want to do, so it never occurred to me that there would be another avenue.”

“That’s good because I really do want to stay here.”

“Understood,” he said, “and I don’t have a problem with that. Besides, you’re on the river, and that’s pretty darn nice.” He stared out the window and frowned. “You do have weird neighbors though.”

She burst out laughing, and he grinned at her. “I’m sorry about Richard,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He is definitely different.”

“Richard and who else lives there in his house?” he asked, staring at her.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s just Richard. Nobody ever mentions a wife, but I do hear voices.”

“I’ve heard a couple different voices,” Mack shared, “but I’m not sure exactly what I’ve heard. Sometimes it seems to me it’s just him talking to himself or maybe it’s a radio or something.”

“I know. I’ve had the same thoughts.” She laughed. “I don’t know whether he’ll be happier or will feel worse about your moving in.” Mack stared at her, and she shrugged. “I think he considers me a nuisance, and maybe having a cop as a neighbor would make him feel as if I won’t be a bigger nuisance.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that, so he just shook his head and smiled. “Anyway, I’m happy to move here,” he replied. “This house is closer to your grandmother too. And my mother’s place.”

“It absolutely is,” she murmured. “And I know Nan put so much time and effort into this place.”

“She put a lot of time and effort into filling this house,” he pointed out. “I don’t know that she put any time or effort into fixing it up.”

“You’re probably right there,” she muttered, as she looked around. “And I guess we could do some things to fix it up.”

“Maybe one of the first things would be to buy some furniture.”

She burst out laughing and nodded. “I guess when it comes to people your size, it’s a little hard to sit in this furniture.”

He looked at her with a mock-injured expression. “My size?”

She shook her head. “You won’t pull me into that argument,” she muttered. “All I’m saying is that you’re big enough that you probably want a full-size couch.”

He nodded, then he hopped up to take a look at one of the walls closest to the dining room.

She walked beside him. “What are you thinking?”

“We could take out this wall,” he noted. “It’s not structural. That would open this all up.”

“Do we need the dining room?”

“I don’t know, do you?” he asked, turning to look at her. “It’s one of those things that was in older houses but is much less common in newer homes.”

“Right,” she muttered. “I guess I never really thought about it.”

“And we can leave it if you want, but this room isn’t used very much.”

“No, but I get the feeling that maybe it should be my office.”

“Or we can turn it into an office for two, since I might need a home office myself,” he suggested.

“Oh, right. Hmm , so much to think about.”

The next hour was spent discussing options on how to set up any new furniture in the house. By the time he left, after explaining he needed to turn in early because he had a very early morning tomorrow, she was left wondering how much these renovations might upset Nan.