She waited, hoping he’d let another morsel drop. But she knew it was unlikely. “I’ll just have to use my imagination,” she said, letting him know where her head was going.

“Make it good,” he said. He pulled up in front of Elaine Broadstreet’s house. “I think we beat her here,” he said.

“Doug Franklin talked to Corrine Antler’s grandparents,” she said.

“Saw that in the file.”

“So what we’re doing makes all the sense in the world, especially given her criminal background and the fact that there’s some time unaccounted for. But it just feels horrible. A grandparent, for God’s sake.”

“My dad is crazy about Traci,” A.L. said. “Always has been. Acts like an idiot when she’s around, always teasing her, trying to make her laugh. I keep telling him that she’s seventeen now, not a little kid anymore. But he can’t seem to help himself.”

“And Traci is such a good kid that she plays along.”

“Most of the time. It is weird, though. He never did that with me or my sister, Liz. After Traci was born, it caught me off guard. Like I was the one with the baby but he was the one who changed.”

Rena looked out her side window. “I wish my mom was going to be here. For my baby.”

“Cancer is a fucking thief,” he said.

Her mom had been dead for three years and it still hurt. “Gabe’s mom will be over the moon.” It wasn’t the same but it would be nice. “His whole family will be.”

Elaine Broadstreet’s car turned into the driveway of her small ranch.

“My grandmother helped raise me,” Rena said. “I trusted her as much as I did my mother.”

“We don’t know that Elaine has betrayed that same trust,” he said.

“Maybe she had a mental lapse, you know, the same kind of thing that happens to a young parent who gets preoccupied on their way to work and leaves their baby in the back seat of a hot car for eight hours. Nobody can ever understand how that happens but it happens every year, to multiple kids. To good, caring parents.”

“So you’re back to she got Emma inside and then spaced out and left her there unattended? That still doesn’t explain why her signature isn’t on the sign-in sheet.”

“I know. But I want to make it safe for her to tell us the truth,” Rena said.

They gave her a couple minutes to get settled and then knocked on the door. Once inside, they saw that Elaine Broadstreet’s home was nicely furnished with leather couches and solid wood end tables. The floors were hardwood and the rugs on them looked expensive.

Milo’s Motors either paid better than he might have expected or she was luckier at the gaming tables than most. They’d get to that.