“Or was it a parent, somebody who had a good reason to be there, a reason nobody would question. They drop off their own kid and then wait for the opportunity to take Emma. Or maybe any child would have done?”

“That scenario makes me want to lose my lunch,” A.L. admitted. “But it doesn’t seem too likely given that Elaine is so confident that she handed Emma off to Kara. If not Kara, it had to be somebody who looked an awful lot like Kara.” He paused. “You know my uncle Joe and my dad look an awful lot like one another. People still get them mixed up.”

“You think Kara Wiese’s sister was there?”

“Her sister, her mother. An aunt possibly. I think we need to figure out if any of those people exist and are in the area,” A.L. said.

“We could simply ask Kara,” Rena said.

“I don’t think so. Let’s do this on the QT. Alice included her Social Security number in the information she provided to us on each staff member. That should be enough.”

“I’ll get it in play,” Rena said.

On the way to talk to Kara, Rena’s phone rang. “Detective Morgan,” she answered.

“This is Michael Purifoy, returning your message.”

“Thank you for calling, Mr. Purifoy.” Rena dug into her bag and pulled out her copy of the sign-in sheet for Kara Wiese’s room. Then put the phone on Speaker so that A.L. could hear. “Mr. Purifoy, I want to talk to you about yesterday morning at Lakeside Learning Center. I’ve reviewed the sign-in sheet and you signed your son Jake in at 7:18. Is that correct?”

“That sounds right.”

“Do you recall, Mr. Purifoy, if there was a teacher in the room?”

“Kara was there.”

“You’re absolutely confident of that?” Rena asked.

“She’s a baseball fan and we talked about the Brewers’ chances to make the playoffs. Yeah, she was there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Purifoy. I appreciate you calling me back.”

“No problem, Detective. Goodbye.”

“Well, that’s that,” Rena said, putting her phone down on the console.

“Good to know before we got to Kara’s,” A.L. said.

“Again, you sound almost positive. It’s starting to scare me,” Rena said. “Like you’ve made a pledge to look for the silver lining.”

“I don’t make pledges.”

“We’re almost going past the learning center. Even though they are closed, I have a feeling that Alice is probably there. I’d like to talk to her about the phone call from Brenda Owen. That would have been a pretty startling call to get.”