Chapter 12 - The Picture on the Refrigerator

At the hotel, Poppy refused to sleep. Beth had moved her to a guarded guest room while detectives photographed the lounge and interviewed the employee who tried to take her. Adrian sat beside the bed, his tuxedo replaced by a borrowed sweater.

"Is Mommy scared?" Poppy asked.

"I think she is. I think she's being very brave, too."

"I told her I would be brave when I started first grade. But I wasn't today."

"You knocked on a door when everybody else was pretending not to hear. That's bravery."

Poppy studied his face. "You didn't believe her before."

The words hurt because they were true.

"Not enough," he admitted. "I should have listened more carefully. And I'm sorry."

She put her small hand over his. "You can listen now."

Beth brought Adrian's phone. Marisol had traced the threat to a prepaid phone near the hotel. The blocked voicemail had been forwarded, but technicians heard a boat engine, gulls, and a fog signal behind the voice.

"It could put her somewhere on the coast," Marisol said. "It's not enough to search every property. We need a name, an address, something concrete."

Poppy looked up when she heard the fog signal played over speakerphone.

"That's the horn from the red lighthouse," she said.

Adrian covered the microphone. "What lighthouse?"

"The one where Simone took me for pictures. There was a house with funny windows and pine trees. She said someday we might have a party there."

Adrian remembered a photograph from Simone's refrigerator: Poppy standing beside a weathered white fence, a small red lighthouse across the water. Simone had called it a charity retreat.

"Can you draw the house?" he asked.

Poppy nodded. She drew three tall windows, a steep roof, and a little boathouse with one dark green door. On the fence she drew a crooked sign with a bird.

"The bird had a long neck," she said. "Simone said it was a heron."

Marisol asked for the drawing immediately.

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A property search brought back a waterfront parcel owned by a company called Heron Reach Holdings. Its mailing address was the same as one of the foundation's supposedly independent suppliers.

"We've got the house," Marisol said. "And there is one more thing. The company was formed by your friend Miles."