The lead police officer, Officer Daniels, saw her reaction and glanced back, but by then Mr. Edmonson was gone, and she knew Daniels probably wouldn’t give a dirty look a whole lot of credence. No one had ever died from a dirty look. But her mother’s tenant was obviously furious that she’d brought the police to his door.

“What did he say?” she asked.

Tall and thin, Daniels was somewhere in his thirties, with blond hair shaved close to his head and a bored expression. “Says he hasn’t seen her.”

“He would say that,” she said. “That’s what he told me, too. Did you ask if you could look around?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“He said no.”

“So that means you’re leaving?”

He frowned. “I’ve already explained this to you. We don’t have any choice, not without a warrant, and your, um, intuition doesn’t give me enough grounds to get one.”

“But he knows something! He must. Why else would he have a problem with letting you look around?”

Daniels’s partner, Officer Brown, who was about the same age but shorter and wider, with a pockmarked face, spread his hands wide. “Who knows? Maybe he’s got drugs on the premises, or stolen property, and he’s afraid we’ll find it.”

“It’s a privacy thing,” Daniels chimed in. “Could be he just wants to be left alone. Doesn’t have to mean he’s kidnapped or hurt your mother.”

“A lot of people, even those who haven’t done anything wrong, aren’t comfortable with letting the police go through their house or yard,” Brown agreed.

“So that’s it?” she asked. “We all just … believe him, whether he’s lying or not, and drive away?”

“If you’ll come down and fill out the missing person report like we discussed, we’ll follow up.”

“And that’s all you can do?”

Daniels sighed. “Look, we shouldn’t have come out here until you’d done that, but you were so worried and so convinced, I didn’t dare put it off for fear we’d miss something important.”

Close to tears again, she gazed back at the building where she’d often gone to help her father as a little girl. Had something terrible happened here at the ranch, where she’d always felt so safe and happy?

The place no longer looked the same. Now that everything had been shut down, it looked sad, neglected and even a little sinister.

“I don’t like him,” she said, speaking of her mother’s renter.

“I can see why,” Officer Daniels admitted. “But not being particularly friendly to authority isn’t a crime.”

Ada felt sick inside as she opened her car door. “I’ll follow you to the station,” she said, as though she’d let it go with that.

But she knew she couldn’t just sit back and wait for them to come to the rescue. By the time they realized what she already knew—that her mother would never go anywhere without saying something to her or one of her siblings—and began to investigate in earnest, it could be too late.