“With working and going to school, that doesn’t leave time for much of anything else,” A.L. said.

“Not really.”

“Kara mentioned that you were recently looking at refinancing your house but decided not to pursue it. That can be a pretty time-consuming process,” A.L. said.

Sam shook his head. “We’re not refinancing.” He didn’t sound concerned. Probably just thought A.L. had his facts mixed up.

“Really? I thought for sure that it was Kara who’d mentioned that. But we have talked to a lot of people.”

“Yeah. Not us. We just bought our house a couple years ago when we got married. We got a really good rate. We’d be fools to refinance so soon.”

“Okay.” A.L. looked at Rena.

She smiled at Sam. “Thanks for your time. Good night.”

Once they were back in their car, Rena turned to A.L. “What are the chances that Kara was pursuing a refinance without her husband’s knowledge?”

“Possible but not likely. Couples talk about things like that. Maybe one person does all the work to gather the documents but it’s with the other person’s knowledge.”

“Agree. What’s the likelihood that Sam is going to tell Kara that we came to see him tonight?”

“Pretty high. He knew our names. Maybe Kara had warned him that we might want to talk to him. He’ll tell her we came to his work. She’ll want to know what we asked him and he’ll tell her about the refinancing questions.”

“I think so, too. So she’s going to know that we now have doubts about what she told us.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence, both pondering what the next best step would be.

“Did you see the yellow ribbons?” Rena asked.

Up and down the main street around the trees. They’d gone up this morning. “Yeah.”

More silence.

“You know who I want to talk to?” Rena said.

“Claire Potter,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“She’s the right one.”

“Okay. Tonight?” Rena asked.

“No time like the present.” He didn’t need to add that tomorrow was Sunday and it would be four days since Emma had been seen.

It was past eight when they arrived at Claire’s door, getting dark. Lights were on in the back of her house. They rang the bell.

Then A.L.’s cell phone rang. “McKittridge,” he answered.

“Are you at my door?”

He recognized her voice. “Yes, Claire. It’s me and Detective Morgan. Can we have just a few minutes of your time?”

“Sure. Hang on.” Then she disconnected. In fifteen seconds, the door was opening. She smiled at them. “I thought it was you but I scratched one of my contacts and so my vision in that eye isn’t good. I didn’t want to open the door to a stranger.”

“Good thinking to call first,” A.L. said.