It made her once again think about Anne Pettus, how she and Mercy were very close and would sometimes take shopping trips about an hour or so out of town. She then wondered what sorts of things Mercy did before she had friends with a drivers license. She thought about the Crabtree family and how they had cared for Katherine Sanders when her parents had been unfit.

Both Alvin and Wendy worked locally here in Deton for fifteen years, Kate thought. Surely someone must have babysat her at some point…

Sheriff, in all of the records weve collected, I dont recall coming across someone that babysat Mercy when she was a child. But surely someone had to watch her after school and over the summer while her parents worked, right?

Thats right, he said, a smile touching his lips. There might not have been a babysitter on there because a lot of the parents take their kids to the little nursery and kids area of the Baptist church in town. Its not exactly a day care, but kind of like an unofficial preschool of sorts. And I am pretty certain the church is in the contacts…

Kate grabbed up the file on the table, one of many copies of the Fuller files that were circulating around the station. She scanned through the names of potential people to question and came to a name with the local Baptist churchCornerstone Baptistwritten in parentheses by her name.

Delores King, she said out loud. You know her?

Oh yeah. Sweet old lady. Shes somewhere in her seventies, I think. Shes a permanent fixture at that churchfor the little day care thing and on Sundays.

You think shed be up for a visit?

I can guarantee it, he said, his smile growing wider. But be warned…be ready to have your ear talked off. That lady is the very epitome of a small-town grapevine.

This was usually a trait that unnerved Kate but given the lack of information they had to work with, she supposed a stroll through the grapevine might be exactly what they needed.

***

Barnes had been right; even give the morbid nature of their visit, Delores King seemed thrilled to have company. She had just finished handing out a snack of Goldfish crackers and apple juice to the six children she and one helper were looking after when Kate and DeMarco arrived. After Kate had explained to her why they were paying a visit, Delores led them into a small classroom near the back of the church. She smiled the entire time, though once Kate and DeMarco had shared details of the case, there seemed to be traces of sadness there, too.

The classroom Delores had brought them to was for younger children. All of the chairs were far too low to the ground, leaving the three of them to stand.