High Noon. Debra Webb
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gave the appearance of a nice young girl but the neighbor was not comfortable around her.”
“We’re checking with old schoolmates and any living teachers,” Simon explained, “to determine if Janet had any problems at school.”
“We learned nothing else from Janet’s neighbor in Copperas Cove who held the photo albums of Rafe’s daughters for her?”
Simon shook his head. “The neighbor knew the aunt who left the house to Janet. She and Janet saw each other occasionally as children but their friendship was more recent and, I suspect, relatively superficial.”
Were they wasting their time digging up information on a dead woman? Maybe, but they simply had no other leads. There was nowhere else to go in light of Rafe Barker’s abrupt silence.
“Would Clare turn to a sister who had tried to harm her as a child?” Seemed a more than reasonable question to Victoria. Victoria had a younger sister of her own who had proven that blood was not always thicker than water.
What exactly had happened to tear apart Clare’s family and to set her on a course to connect with Rafe Barker? Had he turned her evil or had she changed him?
“Clare may not have known about the incident or perhaps didn’t comprehend the magnitude of what actually happened.” Simon had children of his own and would certainly understand the capacity of young ones for forgiveness. “She was three when Janet was sent away. Her parents may have chosen not to tell her or she may have simply blocked the incidents from her memory.”
“Then again, Janet may have sought out Clare.” Victoria understood the need to find long-lost loved ones. “She was certainly old enough to remember a sister even if she chose not to remember certain events.” Then again, the prison logs listed no visitor named Janet Tolliver for Clare or for Rafe.
“Janet may have done more than that,” Lucas interjected. “After Clare’s parents were murdered, a couple of neighbors stated they saw a teenage girl outside the home. The lead proved a dead end. But what if it was Janet? What if she came back—she would have been fourteen at the time—and killed the parents who deserted her? Perhaps she even hoped it would be blamed on Clare as punishment for being the daughter they kept.”
“Then why would Clare see Janet again? Even after being raped and feeling utterly alone?” That part didn’t feel right to Victoria. The police reports from the time Clare’s parents were murdered indicated that she had come home and found the tragedy. Yet she had been covered in blood. From her attempts to save them, she had claimed.
So much death and devastation. Would this tragic cycle end with the surviving Barker daughters? Victoria intended to ensure the nightmare ended with this investigation.
“Clare may have blocked the horror of that evening from her mind, as well,” Lucas offered. “It’s far easier to fall back into a pattern that worked once than to stand up and face such a terrible truth.”
Her husband had a very good point. Victoria had long thought that the tragedy of her own son’s abduction and the twenty years they had lost was the worst a woman and mother could suffer. This frightening family saga had her rethinking the definition of “worst-case scenario.”
“If the two were in contact again,” Simon proposed, “Janet may have taken care of the child born to Clare just as she did her three daughters years later.”
But Janet Tolliver had taken the three girls for Rafe, not for Clare.
“That possibility, however, gives Clare less of a motive for murdering Janet,” Victoria suggested. “Why kill the person who helped her with such a tremendous burden at a critical time in her life?”
“Because she discovered that Janet had hidden her daughters from her … and then refused to tell her once she was released where they are,” Simon offered.
“Janet had even gone so far as to hide the photo albums she had saved,” Lucas pointed out. “With the woman next door. Seems to me she wanted to make sure Clare didn’t get her hands on them.”
The photo albums. All three were well-documented biographies of the girls’ lives, from their original birth certificates to current photos. All apparently recorded by Janet Tolliver.
“Assuming Weeden is, in fact, Clare’s son, he may have killed Janet in an effort to help his mother,” Simon summed up. “The flip side of that is that possibly Weeden is only pretending to help his mother. He may have an entirely different motive and agenda.”
“Revenge,” Lucas agreed. “He was the child his mother abandoned. Subsequently marrying and having three little girls.”
More theories and scenarios and no answers, Victoria thought. She banished the mounting worries. “Where are we on Laney and Olivia?”
“Hayden called in this morning,” Simon reported. “He’s making good progress. St. James is still watching Olivia from a distance.”
“Both are very good at what they do,” Lucas tacked on. “Laney and Olivia are in good hands, even from a distance.”
Victoria prayed they could keep these women safe.
And she hoped solving this puzzle would not be too late to stop an innocent man from being executed.
If he was indeed innocent.
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