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That wasn’t strictly the truth, but Rex decided it was as good an explanation as any.
“We’ve lost touch,” Ravinia went on, “and my mother really needs him now, what with Kayla running away again and Dad leaving. It’s been hard,” she embellished. “But Uncle Ralph’s her brother.”
Rex stared at Ravinia. Kayla? He’d just chased down a runaway teen named Kayla shortly before Ravinia showed up on his doorstep.
Beth Harper looked at Rex. “Isabel said you were a private investigator.”
“That’s right. Ravinia hired me to help find Mr. Gaines.”
“Hmmm. Well, I don’t know that I can help you.” Beth’s eyes slipped over the stain on Ravinia’s jeans. “We bought the business from Ralph and Joy, but they were at the tail end of a divorce and she was just a signature on a page. We mostly dealt with him. I believe there was talk of moving to Colorado, but I can’t remember if that was Joy or Ralph or both of them. They didn’t seem like they were staying together.”
“Did you meet my cousin, Elizabeth?” Ravinia jumped in.
That caught Beth off guard and she frowned slightly.
Rex tensed, worried that Ravinia had pushed too hard and blown it, but all Beth said was, “I do recall your cousin. She was a little girl at the time. But . . . well this had to have been, what? Maybe twenty years ago.”
Rex was surprised. “But you remember her.”
“Elizabeth. Yes. I remember because her name was like mine.”
“I really want to find her, too,” Ravinia pressed.
“It’s Ralph I remember most,” Beth said. “He was proud of the business and I think he was suffering serious second thoughts about selling it, so he kept showing up long after it was sold, just to see how we were doing. The divorce forced the sale, and eventually he moved. I didn’t really know the wife.”
“So he didn’t move to Colorado.” Rex made it a statement rather than a question.
Beth frowned. “No, at least not then. Really, I didn’t keep up with either one of the Gaineses.”
“Did you meet Elizabeth?” Ravinia cut in, asking the question again before Rex could ask for a forwarding address.
“He brought her with him a couple of times.” Beth seemed to want to say more but didn’t know how, so she just shut down.
“What was she like?” Ravinia questioned.
“A little quiet . . .”
Rex gave Ravinia a look and asked Beth, “Do you have a forwarding address?”
“I’m not sure I do,” she apologized. “We bought the business outright and Jim wanted it to be just ours, so he discouraged Ralph from coming around.”
“But Elizabeth,” Ravinia pushed. “What do you remember about her?”
“It’s funny you should ask,” Beth said, then shook her head as if dispelling something from her mind.
“Why?” Ravinia asked.
“She went to Wembley Grade, which is not all that far from here. Do you know it?” Beth was looking at Rex.
“I do.” How do you remember that, and not anything else? he wondered, waiting for Beth to explain.
“I don’t want to tell tales out of school,” she said, “but there was an incident with Elizabeth that sticks in my mind. It’s one of those weird things that seemed important at the time, but maybe really isn’t.”
“What?” Rex asked.
She hesitated, and something about that hesitation made him brace himself for what was to come. Even before she spoke, he found the hair starting to lift on his arms. Rapt, Ravinia leaned forward, sensing the change in the atmosphere, too.
“Elizabeth was a pretty child. Fairly quiet, like I said. But one afternoon when she was here with Ralph, she started suddenly shrieking that the bridge was falling down. ‘The bridge is falling!’ she yelled, standing on one of the chairs in the agency. Everybody stopped and stared at her. It was just so . . . odd, all of a sudden. Ralph tried to shush her, but she was adamant. ‘The bridge is falling!’ ”
