Chapter 6 - A Car at the Curb
Lena ran to the nurses' station and showed Detective Sloane the messages. Within minutes, officers located Margaret Bell's phone near a shopping plaza six miles away.
There was broken glass in the parking lot, but no Margaret.
“Could she have been taken?” Lena asked.
“Maybe,” Mara said. “Or she left before the officers arrived. Either way, we're not assuming she's safe.”
Graham stood by the hospital window, watching traffic crawl past the entrance. His lawyer had been calling for twenty minutes, warning him to stop speaking to police without counsel.
He silenced the phone.
“I paid attention to quarterly reports,” he said to Lena. “I knew every vacancy in every building we owned. But I didn't know my daughter was afraid to go downstairs.”
“Knowing it now is only useful if you do something,” Lena replied.
He nodded. He didn't ask her to make him feel better.
Ellie woke from a nap and asked for crayons. She drew a blue house with three windows, then a little girl standing beside a woman in a yellow coat.
“Who's that?” Lena asked.
“Mommy. That's how she looks in my picture.”
“Where's the picture?”
“In the dollhouse upstairs. Victoria threw Mommy's things away, but she didn't find the tiny door.”
Lena glanced at Graham. He knew the dollhouse: Claire had built it while she was pregnant, painting each small room by hand.
Before either adult could answer, a black sedan stopped at the hospital curb. A woman in a pale medical coat climbed out and spoke to the security guard.
Mara watched from the window.
“Did you authorize a private pediatric transfer?” she asked Graham.
May you like
“No.”
“Then why is someone here to take Ellie away?”
