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W hen Doreen got home, her mind was racing in circles. She opened up the rear kitchen door to let the animals out in the backyard for a few minutes, but it had turned blustery and cold, so not exactly welcoming weather. They quickly did their business, then came inside almost immediately. She smiled at them. “I hear you. It’s not quite the weather we’re used to, is it?”

Yet she and her animals were safe, warm, and had a beautiful cozy house, so everything in her world should be perfectly fine. Yet it wasn’t, and now the captain was on it. Still, she knew that it would be a challenge, given the information in the letter. She had left the letter with him, but he had made a copy of it for her. She took it to her kitchen table and sat down again to reread the information that Lilybeth had revealed.

She had definitely pointed the finger at the Winters family, the one with the political influence. Doreen wanted to roll her eyes and say, Of course it was , but didn’t have any reason to believe that this particular politician had anything to do with that unnamed toddler’s disappearance. She certainly had to be even more mindful than usual as to who and what she proclaimed about them, since one of the Winters family members was in the public eye. It was tempting to just blame the entire family, but that wasn’t fair either. Yet Doreen’s focus right now had nothing to do with saving the Winters family name and everything to do with this little girl who’d been treated so terribly in her very short life.

Once she had a warm cup of tea, Doreen sat down and researched a bunch of history on the Winters family. She went through it all, finding article after article. They were fairly well known and appeared to be highly sought after in business deals. They were movers and shakers in the world and dominated the field where they had made millions, and everybody else was left to play their penny-ante games.

She didn’t want to think that the Winters family had something to do with this, but somebody knew something. Plus, that little girl’s bones had been held in the coroner’s office all these years, and nobody had spoken up about it, which bothered Doreen more than she could say.

She continued researching the Winters family, getting to know the ins and outs. They were prolific in business, but less so in children. There appeared to be two brothers still living, with one sister passing away about ten years ago, and another sister passed about twenty years ago. Doreen got an urge to check her email and found a response from her genealogy request. As the file opened, and she began to have a look, she realized it contained exactly the name she was looking for.

She whistled as she sat back, reaching for her phone and calling the captain.

“What, already?” he asked.

“The genealogy just came in from the DNA upload of the toddler’s bones,” she noted. “It came back as a partial match to some cousin, second cousin, whatever. It’s within the same family, the Winters.”

Dead silence came on the other end. “Good God,” he muttered, taking his time. “We’ll have to get into the thick of it now.”

“Except, from what I’ve just found, and I’m sure you have better records than I do, two brothers are still living, but the two sisters passed away ten and twenty years ago, respectively. Clarence is the would-be politician from the news articles, and Carl appears to be running the big business side of the Winters family around the whole world.”

“Yes,” the captain confirmed. “We’ve had all kinds of dealings with them. They’ve skirted the law but never really technically crossed it. Of course we already knew that, but, as to their two sisters who have passed away, we don’t know if someone in the family was involved in that.”

“Right,” she replied, “but no way somebody in that prominent family had a baby for eighteen months before it disappeared, not with nobody knowing anything about it.”

“No, this is the mother of all cover-ups,” he acknowledged, “but trying to figure out how to proceed will be a challenge.”

She frowned at that. “Not really.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, first it’s a matter of figuring out which direct family member could be connected.”

“And you’ve got an answer for that?”

“We’ll have to get DNA from the siblings,” she stated, “and we’ll just have to start matching.”

“We can’t just ask them for it because they have every right to refuse,” he pointed out.

“Sure, but Clarence Winters, the politician, he smokes, so if we get to a political rally or someplace where we can pick up a cigarette butt—”

He laughed. “I think you’ve been watching too many movies.”

“And you’re right. I probably have,” she admitted. “But does that work or not?”

“Yes, if you can get something that has his saliva, we can run the DNA on it,” he confirmed, “but that’ll take a little bit longer.”

“That would at least give us an idea of who we’re dealing with because we don’t have an exact match in the system, only that we have the familial link. I’m forwarding you the results,” she said, rummaging around in her phone. “It targets the family, but all kinds of half sisters or half relatives are here, hence the different names. I’m not seeing anything that’s a full match. We should check birth and death records though.”

“No, of course there’s no match,” he muttered. “That would make it way too easy.”

She laughed. “We at least have something, and we know we’re on target as to what family it is, which is a whole lot more than we had.”

“You’ve got that right,” he agreed, his tone gaining in assurance. “Now that we’ve got this far, there’s a very good chance we can close it.” He seemed surprised.

She laughed. “It sounds to me as if you didn’t really expect that.”

“I should have,” he noted. “Of course, having the DNA makes a huge difference.”

“It absolutely does,” she replied, “but it won’t be the closing evidence, and unfortunately we now have a current murder on top of it.”

“I’ll talk to Mack about that when I can,” the caption shared, “but he’s tied up in court and will be for a while.”

The captain didn’t tell her that he would follow up or would get back to her, but she understood. She was the minion in this case, and he was the boss. When she disconnected, she looked down at the notes she had taken and phoned Nan.

“What’d you find out?” Nan asked by way of a greeting.

“Wow,” Doreen muttered. “I don’t even get a hello?”

“No, I called you earlier.”

“Did you?” she asked, as she looked at her phone’s call history and winced. “I didn’t even see the missed call. I’m sorry.”

“No, I figured you were off hunting, and we know better than to disturb you because that’s when all kinds of stuff happen.”

“Yeah, it happens all right,” she muttered. “You know anything more about the Winters family individually?”

Nan asked, “You mean the politician?”

Such a wealth of disgust filled Nan’s tone that Doreen had to laugh. “I think he’s trying to run for office or something.”

“Yes, that would be him,” Nan confirmed. “There are a couple brothers, and there were two sisters, but both have passed on.”

“So the brothers are here?” Doreen asked.

“I’m not sure about the brothers. Maybe there are secondary cousins or other family members nearby. We still probably wouldn’t find them here at Rosemoor. This is one of the less hoity-toity places. We’re getting a heck of a name now though,” she muttered. “Still, for a lot of people, this isn’t exactly a place that anybody with money would come.”

That was the first Doreen had ever heard of that. “So why did you go there?”

“I wanted to be close to you,” she declared.

“Oh, do you want a change to another one?”

“Good God, no,” she exclaimed. “Can you imagine? A new place would just be crying to kick us out.”

Doreen winced at that, and then she laughed. “You could be right.”

“You know I’m right, and it would be an absolute nightmare. They would be begging us to leave in no time.”

“You could behave, instead of terrorizing people.”

“I could,” she teased, “but where’s the fun in that?”

“I’m not sure fun is exactly the way we’re supposed to be looking at this either,” Doreen stated in a dry tone. “Anyway, it would help a lot if we could find out any information there is to be had about the Winters family.”

“Sure enough,” Nan confirmed. “I’ll talk to the gang.” Then she asked, “Did you ever talk to Lilybeth?”

“Yeah, I did,” she said, with a snort. “That’s the other half of the problem I’m dealing with right now.”

“Oh, I heard she wasn’t a very friendly person.”

“It doesn’t matter how unfriendly she was,” Doreen noted. “She died this morning.”

After a long silence on the other end, Nan, her tone thoughtful, even contemplative, replied, “I guess that’s one of the problems when you’re dealing with our age group as witnesses. You only have so much time with any of us.”

“That’s true, and I won’t argue that point. However, I also think Lilybeth was murdered.”

And then she disconnected.