Rena’s phone dinged. She picked it up. Studied it. Made that weird face she always did when something wasn’t quite right.

“What?” A.L. asked.

“We got Kara Wiese’s phone records.”

“And?”

“There’s something odd. Well, maybe odd,” Rena qualified. “I had asked them to specifically look for outreach to banks or financial institutions, based on the fact that Claire Potter thought she might be trying to buy a house.”

“Good call. Follow the money.”

“Well, there were seven calls to Baywood Bank in a two-week period about two months ago. And then nothing after that.”

“Maybe the deal fell through,” A.L. said.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“But when Claire was talking about Kara stepping out to take a telephone call, it seemed as if that was recent. Not months ago.”

“It’s time to talk to Kara Wiese again,” Rena said.

“She’s the other major player here. If we believe Elaine Broadstreet, then we can’t believe her.”

“You believe Elaine? Even after we know she lied to us once.”

“I understood her motivation to lie about where she went before work,” A.L. said. “We should be able to easily verify her arrival at the casino. Nobody walks in those doors without being on camera. Same for leaving. We know she spent the rest of the day at work. So if we can account for her time, it seems unlikely to me that she’s a bad guy here.”

“Kara Wiese was at work all day yesterday. How can she be the bad guy?” Rena asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe there are no bad guys. Maybe Emma just took off.”

“Not if Elaine is right about signing her in on the clipboard,” Rena said.

“Devil is always in the details,” A.L. said.

“It’s been almost thirty-four hours,” Rena said. “A long time for a five-year-old to be wandering about undetected. She’d be hungry, cold, missing her mom and dad.”

A.L. didn’t answer. There were no answers. “I’ll ask Ferguson to help with verifying Elaine’s time at the casino. Now, let’s go see Kara Wiese.”

“Want me to call first?” Rena asked.

“Nope. We’ll take our chances that she’s home.”

She put her hand on the door handle. “You know, if we believe Elaine and we also believe Kara, and we don’t think Emma simply wandered off, somebody who was inside the day care took Emma.”

“A stranger? Are we back to crime of opportunity? Stranger walks into a day care, the office is unmanned because Alice is covering a classroom, and sees an opportunity to abscond with a child?”

“Would a stranger be detected?” Rena asked.

“Not necessarily. The teachers are all in classrooms. The cook has yet to arrive. Parents are coming and going but not everybody knows everybody else.”