Читать книгу What Sarah Saw - Margaret Daley - Страница 10

A patrol car was parked on Main Street in front of Farley’s Pawn Shop. Approaching her office across the street, Dr. Jocelyn Gold shivered in the cool January air, remembering the same scene only five days before—when Earl Farley had been found dead, an apparent suicide, in his office right below his apartment on the second floor.

Was the sheriff’s department completing its investigation into Earl’s death? Sheriff Bradford Reed hadn’t been very supportive when Earl died, but then the Farleys didn’t belong to the elite of Loomis. After the deputy left, she’d call Leah, Earl’s wife, to offer to come over if she needed someone to talk to.

Jocelyn pushed her office door open and entered, hoping everything was all right with Leah, who had instantly renewed their friendship from high school when Jocelyn had returned to town nine months ago. Quickly, she crossed to the window and opened the blinds to allow sunlight to pour into the room. After being gone for two days to speak at a conference in New Orleans on counseling children who were victims of crime, she was accosted by the musty smell of the closed office.

The blinking light on her phone drew her attention. When she played her messages, Leah’s voice blared from the speaker. “Jocelyn, I need to see you. I’ve made a mess of everything. I’ll catch you when you get back tomorrow.”

Her neighbor’s frantic tone heightened Jocelyn’s concern. She placed a call to Leah’s apartment. What was going on? A new development in Earl’s death?

Please, Leah, pick up.

On the fifth ring a gruff-sounding man answered with, “Hello.”

The rough voice snatched any words from Jocelyn’s mind for a few seconds.

“Who’s this?” the man demanded.

She tightened her hand around the receiver. “Dr. Jocelyn Gold,” she said with as much authority as she could muster.

“Sheriff Reed. Why are you calling, Dr. Gold?”

“Leah’s a friend. What happened? Is she all right?”

“We don’t know. She’s disappeared.”

Jocelyn jerked up straight. “Disappeared? When? I saw her on Friday right before I left.” Her friend had urged her to go and speak at the conference, that she had Shelby and Clint to support her while Jocelyn was gone a couple days.

“She’s been gone hardly a day.”

“Foul play?”

“Don’t know. Her brother seems to think so.”

Jocelyn instantly thought of Leah’s three-year-old daughter. “Where’s Sarah?”

“Clint Herald has her.”

Leah’s brother had her daughter. Relief trembled through Jocelyn. “You might want to come listen to my recorder. She left me a message. She sounded frightened.”

“You’re at your office?”

Jocelyn sagged back against her oak desk, all energy draining from her. “Yes. I’ll be here catching up on some paperwork.”

“I’ll stop by after I’ve finished up here.”

Even after the sheriff hung up, Jocelyn held the phone to her ear for a few extra seconds. Where’s Leah? Is she okay? Does this have something to do with Earl taking his own life?

In spite of Leah’s urging, I shouldn’t have gone. If I had been here, maybe she wouldn’t be missing. I let her down.

She’d come back to Loomis to get away from crime. When she’d worked with the New Orleans police as a consultant dealing with traumatized children, the stress made her long for a more laid-back place to live and a job where she wasn’t bombarded constantly with the horrors people could inflict on children.

Memories she had previously refused to think about inundated her with the suddenness of a summer thunderstorm sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico. She couldn’t hold them at bay. Legs quivering, she slid down the front of the desk to the hardwood floor.

I let someone else down and he died. Please don’t let it be happening again. A tear slipped from one eye and rolled down her cheek. She swiped it away, determined not to revisit her past. But the images of the lost child—and of her friend Leah—haunted her.