He was in Dawsonville proper now, getting close. He had to pay attention to his GPS. Anyway, his reaction to Trey’s story would not help him find Lexie, so screw it. It was a problem for tomorrow, or the next day. When Robert was safe home.

Bickford Independent Living Community was three long, slightly run-down buildings full of single-floor apartments, each with its own door. There was a shabby clubhouse and a small pool, but no office where he had to check in. The parking spaces were numbered, but every five slots or so there was a space marked visitor. He found an empty one close to Mariah Denton’s place and went to knock on her door.

It opened almost at once. She’d been waiting for him. He recognized her from the picture. Clearly the same woman, but shorter and rounder. Her brown hair had thinned and silvered, but it was still long, wound up in a crown of slender braids. She wore a hot-pink lounge set that could have been pajamas or a tracksuit and had bright green reading glasses on a string around her neck.

“Mrs. Denton? I’m Marshall Chase,” he said, holding out his hand to shake. Instead she grasped his forearm and pulled him in, smiling.

“Come in, come in, young man. Anything I can do to help Lexie and Coral Lee! I’ve been racking my poor brains, trying to think where they might be staying. I’m sure I don’t know.”

A disappointment, but not a huge one. He hadn’t expected it would be that easy. Just hoped. Mariah Denton was assuming that the two of them were together, though. They weren’t. Coral, who read mysteries and thrillers, would be too smart to let her daughter stick a toe inside the room or house where she was holding a kidnapped infant. Lexie was a felon, with fingerprints and probably DNA logged in the system. Coral wouldn’t want Lexie anywhere near Funtime tomorrow either. She had no way to know if Bree would bring Trey or the cops to meet her.

Mrs. Denton was still talking. “Oh, the bad luck that family has had, I tell you. It’s so nice a good thing is happening, and with Coral Lee so sick, I know they could use the money.” She was a chatterbox. That could be good or bad, depending on how well he could keep her on topic. He let himself be tugboated to the small kitchen behind the breakfast bar while she nattered on about the fictional inheritance. Gabrielle had prepped her well. A three-seater table with a floral plastic cover was pushed against the wall. She deposited him by one of the ladder-back chairs, and he obediently sat down. She hovered by him. “I was thinking I might make myself some cocoa, if you give me the excuse?”