In Ben’s mind there was no question Janey had been here. The only questions were, where had they gone and had the child been in the house when Cummings was murdered? The idea made Ben all the more furious at the man Brenda had married. Ben just didn’t understand how a man could put his own child and her mother in such jeopardy.
Brenda closed the cabinet door and turned to him. “Why isn’t the Jenner family dealing with any of this fallout? The accounts you and your colleague found are in my name. Maybe Tate Jenner did the same with his wife’s name. And why did his wife decide to get an attorney—the same one the cartel guy, Lanier, is using?” She shook her head. “The Tate family cannot have been exempt from this.”
Before Ben could go into his theory about the Jenners, there was a firm series of raps on the door. “We’ll talk about this when we’re out of here.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Okay.”
Shelton and the other detective, Truss, waited at the door. Behind them was a line of other official personnel. Ben had no idea how the man rallied a team together in such a short time. Most cops had to wait for the various elements of the investigative team to arrive on scene. Not Shelton; he came locked and loaded.
He and Brenda were deposed to the living room while Shelton and Truss rushed upstairs to have a look at the body and the primary scene. Ben could see Brenda’s anxiety growing. She wanted to discuss her concerns related to the Jenners. She was anxious to move forward. To do something. Her child was missing, and she was beside herself. But the uniformed officer who’d been left in the room with them prevented any such discussions. No need to give Shelton a heads-up on their thoughts or their plans.
When Shelton descended the stairs and came into the living room, the other officer took his leave. The detective sat down in a chair closer to Brenda than to Ben. She was the one he hoped to learn the most from. He took out his notepad and started his questioning.
“How did the two of you end up here?”
Brenda looked to Ben, and he said, “Since Brenda has been unable to reach Mallory, I felt it was imperative that we visit her home to see if she was here.”
Shelton grunted a sound of acknowledgment or something of that order. “Why didn’t you do that before?” Again, he directed this query at Brenda.
“In case you’ve forgotten,” Ben intercepted, drawing the detective’s attention back to him, “we’ve been a little busy. We were actually headed here when Brenda was called to speak with Lanier.”
His gaze narrowing with mounting suspicion, Shelton asked, “Have either of you had contact with Special Agent Cummings since he found you trespassing at the home of Scott Devers?”
“No,” Ben said honestly. “Not until this evening. Since you had no updates from him during our last meeting, Brenda was eager to know if the agent had discovered anything new that might help with the search for her daughter.”
“Have you heard anything?” Brenda demanded, her hands clasped on the handbag in her lap. “Surely there’s been some response to the Amber Alert.”
“We’ve had no credible responses so far, ma’am,” he assured her, which Ben doubted was any assurance at all. He turned to Ben then. “You were saying Ms. Devers called Agent Cummings. In my office you suggested I should call Cummings’s superior. Well, I did that, and guess what?”
Ben assumed this was a rhetorical question.
“There is no Agent Jarrod Cummings.” Shelton harrumphed. “But you knew that, didn’t you, Mr. Clark?”
“I had my suspicions.”
Shelton glanced at Brenda then. “You called Agent Cummings.”
“She did,” Ben responded. “Her child is missing, and we’ll take any help we can get to find her.”
Since phone records were all too easy to obtain, Ben saw no reason not to divulge the information. Giving Shelton a reason to suspect them of something related to Cummings’s murder would prove problematic. When it came to moments like this, omissions were the same as lies.
“And he asked you to meet him here,” Shelton said, looking from one to the other.
“No.” There the detective went hoping to trip them up. “During the call,” Ben explained patiently, “Cummings agreed to a meeting at Brenda’s home at eight. Since we had some time before his arrival, we decided to come by and see if perhaps Mallory might be here hiding for some reason.”
“We,” Shelton said pointedly, “were scheduled to come here. We were only waiting for the warrant. You see, Mr. Clark, unlike private investigators, we have rules and procedure to follow. We can’t just bust in and claim the door was open.”
“We couldn’t wait,” Brenda spoke up. “My child is missing. Rules and procedure were not on my mind.”
Shelton cleared his throat, glanced at his notepad. “Did either of you do any searching of the house, in particular the room where the body was found?”
Ben gave a confirming nod. “We walked through every room looking for any sign Janey had been here.” Their prints would be found, no need to deny this.
“Did you find anything?” Shelton asked. He looked from Ben to Brenda.
Her fingers tightened on her handbag where she had tucked Janey’s purple-haired Barbie. “Her favorite pizza and juice are in the refrigerator, and the goldfish crackers she likes are in the cabinet. That suggests to me that she was here.”
“Had you ever allowed your daughter to come to Mallory’s house in the past?” Shelton shot back.