"My silks even die," Emily said. And they both laughed.
The kitchen was authentic in every way. It wasn't one of those new homes that tried to look old with beat-up butcher blocks and retrofitted stoves from the 1930s. An enormous pine table commanded the entire wall of windows on the south side. Light streamed in, bending and twisting as it flooded a row of colored bottles lined on a shelf that passed through the top third of the windows. It was like a prism, sending shards of color everywhere. A wooden bowl with apples sat in the middle of the table. Not wooden apples out of a Pottery Barn catalog, but the real thing. Above all, the kitchen smelled wonderful.
"Sit, eat," Olga said as she scurried to bring Emily a bowl of the steaming soup. Then she handed her a dish of powdery grated parmesan. "Sprinkle some of that on top. And if I overdid the oregano, shoot me with the gun on your hip" She looked at Emily's gun, revealed on her waistband as she " sat down. "Just kidding."
"Thanks for that, and thanks for seeing me. I'm not too proud to tell you that I'm grasping at straws here, but, well .. She stopped and looked down at her soup.
I read about your daughter after we talked," Olga said. "Let's see if we can't sort out some of this together." She looked over at pile of file folders. "That's Angel's Nest and Dylan Walker. We'll get to that after we eat"
"Dylan Walker?" The name had come from nowhere. "What's he got to do with this?"
Olga's expression flat lined. "I'll get to that" She got up and retrieved a pitcher of ice tea from the counter and set it on the table. Emily shook her head when Olga indicated if she wanted some. "But since I'm retired, I don't ever discuss politics or work at the table. Let's eat. Now tell me all about your daughter. Did you bring pictures?"
Chapter Twenty-four
Saturday, 2:15 Pm, northeast of Meridian, Washington
While Olga cleared the old table of the lunch dishes, Emily excused herself to return the flurry of calls that had kept her phone vibrating throughout the meal. Felix followed her out to the front porch, the screen door snapping on its rusted spring.
She scrolled through the call list, Shali, Kip, David, Cary, and Candace Kane had called.
That one's not getting a call back. Neither is that one.
She called Shali first, on the off chance that Jenna had made contact with her.
"Not exactly, Mrs. Kenyon. She basically stole my car," Shali said from the school cafeteria where she was stuck eating lunch. "Borrowed it, I guess. She did leave a note"
"Oh no! When?"
"Not sure, but I think early this morning."
"What did the note say?"
"'You need to take the bus. Be back soon. Love, Jen."'
"Are you holding out? Now's not the time, you know."
"I know. And I'm not"
Emily thanked her for the information, and just before she hung up, Shali Patterson added the little piece that she was, in fact, holding out.
"My mom called the police. I guess you should know that"
Perfect.
"All right. Call me if you hear from Jenna"
"She's going to be okay, right?"
"Yes. She's going to be fine"
Emily didn't believe her own words, but she didn't want Shali Patterson running around talking to the police, the media, her mother.
Next she pressed the speed dial for David, still set at number One. Need to change that. When he didn't answer, she figured he was at the hospital in surgery or at one of those endless admin meetings. He'd never screen her calls. She left a short message.
"I'm near Meridian. Call me. Jenna took Shali Patterson's car."
She skipped most of Cary McConnell's message.
"Hey, sorry about everything. I'm in Seattle. We really need to talk-"
Delete.
When Kip didn't answer his cell, she called Gloria, the dispatcher, who told her that Kip was talking with "a herd" of reporters. An FBI profiler was coming in that day to help with the case.
"This is getting big," she said. "The stuff they are saying around here would make you puke"
Emily scanned the garden. She could see where Olga had tilled and planted. She also noticed muddy footprints on the porch. Jeesh, the country's messy.
"Try me," she told Gloria.
"It's this whole Romeo and Juliet thing. Emily, they are putting this off on Nick and saying that Jenna knew about it ahead of time or was even involved."
"That's such bullshit," Emily said.
"You don't have to tell me that. I've known Jenna since she was three feet tall. The only thing she's guilty of is having a good, trusting heart"
"Tell Kip I called. I'm with Olga now. We're going over some of her case files. Might have something later. I'll call him. Promise."
Emily looked around for the cat, but when Felix was nowhere to be seen, she went back inside without him.
"I let the cat out," she said, when she found Olga at the table, papers and folders spread out all over. "Sorry."
"That's all right. He lives for the freedom of messing up my garden"
Olga motioned Emily to sit. She pointed to the ice tea and Emily shook her head.
"Remember Dylan Walker?"
"The serial killer? That Dylan Walker?"
Olga nodded. "Is there any other?" She picked up a folder. "I'm going to give you the background first. Then we'll see if we can connect the dots with what you've got happening over there in Cherrystone. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough"
Over the next hour, Olga told Emily about the Meridian murders of Shelley Marie Smith and Lorrie Ann Warner. Although it had been years since it all happened, Emily could see that the retired detective was channeling deep, dark memories-as if she was watching a movie unwind in her mind. Everything, it seemed, was as vivid to Olga at that moment in her country kitchen as it had been back in the days when she first looked at the dead bodies of those college students, wrapped in an expensive plastic tarp on the sandbar of the Nooksack River. She talked about Dylan Walker and the other women that had crossed his path only to turn up dead. There was Brit Osterman, twelve; Tanya Sutter, twenty-four; and Steffi Miller, seventeen.
Olga sipped her ice tea and pointed a finger at one of the news clippings in the file. "All these girls murdered by him -I don't have to say allegedly now because I'm retired and I know what I know-and he turns into some kind of Lothario for the lost and lonely."
Emily let out a breath. "I remember now. My girlfriends at the UW talked about how much more handsome Walker was than Ted Bundy."
"Bingo," Olga said, no longer smiling. "I had to live with that during the trial."
Emily felt a little embarrassed. "But no one wanted to date him. It was just more like it was such a waste. Dumb, I know." Olga sighed. "You were young. Others were older and
should have known better. That brings me to Angel's Nest" "Right. That's why I'm here. I don't see the connection." Emily looked at the papers as Olga spread them out. There were many. Felix, who'd managed to let himself in, took a spot on her lap.
"He likes you," Olga said. "Does that bother you?"
Emily shook her head and massaged Felix under his chin.
"Now," Olga went on, "let's discuss Angel's Nest, which we nicknamed `Devil's Best' back at the office when the news first broke. God, we hated that place."
Olga recounted how the Seattle agency had been seen as a model of its kind, matching pregnant college students with prospective parents and generally living up to its business card motto: WE CREATE FAMILIES. No one knew exactly how many families were created through the agency, because even despite the court cases that ruined the place, such numbers were elusive.