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“Every one of you has mourned your children all these years, yet you’ve had no real closure. That’s what I’m hoping to do. Find some answers that will give you closure.”
Lois untwisted her hands and shoved them in her pockets. “What makes you think you can do what the sheriff couldn’t? Besides, whoever it was has moved on. There’s been nothing in High Ridge since then.”
“Until today,” Dana pointed out.
Lois’s face turned rice paper white. “Are you saying it’s the same man? That he’s come back?”
Dana couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere there was a connection, but she didn’t want to give voice to it just yet. People would think she was nuts.
“No, not at all. I’m just hoping this doesn’t turn out to be an unsolved case like your Bonnie’s.” She shifted slightly in her chair. “What I’ve found with all of my books is that I bring a fresh eye to an old situation. Often I can see things that other people overlooked because they were too familiar with them. And many times that leads to answers that hadn’t been available or even imagined when the original crime took place.”
“Familiar?” Lois’s eyes widened. “Do you think it was someone we know?” She shook her head violently, disabusing both of them of the idiocy of the statement. “No, no, no. That’s just not possible.”
“Why don’t you come sit down with me?” Dana suggested. “Just for a few minutes. Tell me about Bonnie. I’d really love to hear about her. Come on. I’ll bet you don’t get to talk about her too often.”
Dana had found time and again that people buried their grief along with their loved ones, then dealt with it by banishing the subject from all conversation. But once she got them to talk, it was like opening the floodgates of a dam. And all too often, the tiny missing nugget spilled out in the flow of words.
Lois barely noticed that her unwanted guest had taken a seat and was carefully guiding the conversation. Dana was sure she was the first person outside a small circle of friends who had even been in this house since the death of their child. Very often she found herself the catalyst that opened all the locked doors.
“Stan says it hurts too much to talk about her.” One tear slid down her cheek. “And he blames me for what happened. Says it was all my fault.” She dropped into the chair at the other side of the window like a rag doll, tears flowing in earnest now. “But it wasn’t,” she protested. “He was there, too. He was right there. Why didn’t he watch her better?”
Dana’s heart pinched. These people had locked themselves in this obsessively neat house, all these years living with sorrow and blame, barely existing. Maybe even hating each other. Dana had seen that, too. How many others would she talk to who were frozen in time like this?
She reached into her pocket to turn on the voice-activated recorder, then leaned over and touched Lois’s hand very gently. “Why don’t you just tell me about Bonnie? I’d love to hear about her.”
“She was such a sweet thing.” Lois pulled a tissue from her pocket and mopped at her eyes. “So cheerful all the time. Laughed at everything. Stan would come home and toss her up in his arms, and she’d just laugh and laugh. He said it was the one thing he looked forward to all day.”
Dana nodded at the photos. “She looks like a very bright little girl.”
“Oh, yes. She was smart all right. Maybe too smart. She wanted to know about everything. That’s why…” The tears welled again.
“I don’t understand. Are you saying that had something to do with what happened? I thought you were all at a picnic?”
“Yes.” Her dark head nodded. “We were at the big Fourth of July picnic out at the park. Bonnie was having such a good time. Stan pushed her on the swings, and they had rides for the little kids.”
“What happened? Can you tell me?”
“She was fascinated by the clowns. She wanted to know all about them.”
Dana felt every drop of blood in her body chill. Clowns. Oh, God. “Were there a lot of clowns at the picnic, Lois?”
“Four or five of them. Making those balloon figures and doing tricks for the children.” She balled the tissue up in her fist. “She was right next to me, sitting with her balloon animal. But she wanted another one. And she wanted the clown to show her how they were made. She kept asking one of us to take her.”
“But you didn’t,” Dana guessed.
She shook her head. “Stan had come back from the softball game and wanted a cold drink, and I was fussing around, getting it poured for him. He wanted a cup with ice, you see. And a snack. Two of the men on his team walked up and were talking to him. And I just turned my back for a minute. Only a minute.”
There was such pain on Lois’s face that Dana could hardly bear to look at her. “Are you saying she wandered away?”
Lois nodded. “There were so many people there. Almost the whole town attended that day. And when I turned around, she was gone and no one could find her.” She hiccupped. “I ran around calling her name. Stan did, too. And pretty soon other people helped. We even thought maybe she’d wandered into the woods. The park is pretty thick with trees.”
An ideal place for a predator. All he had to do was lure the child close, subdue her, and carry her to a car hidden from sight. “But you think she went looking for one of the clowns?”
Lois nodded. “That’s all she talked about. She kept repeating the word over and over.” She frowned. “But you know, the sheriff questioned every one of those clowns for a long time, and they all swore they hadn’t seen her after the balloon show.”
“All of them? You said there were four or five?”
“You know, now that I think of it, there was something funny about that.” Lois rubbed her cheek, a faint tremor in her hand, and frowned. “But I can’t remember exactly what. I think it had to do with the number of clowns. Even the chamber of commerce who hired them wasn’t sure if four or five showed up.”
