The Burying Place

new lease on life. But it wasn't with the things we brought home from the hospital.'

'What happened to it?'

'I gave it to Marcus. I asked him to make sure we didn't lose it.'

'Did you ask him about it?'

'Yes. It was weeks later. There was so much to do with Callie being home, and she needed so much, and I was always so tired. I didn't have a chance to catch my breath for the first month. Then I started gathering up the keepsakes from her birth, and that was when I realized the little toy was missing.'

'What did Marcus say?'

Valerie shook her head. 'He told me he threw it away.'

Chapter Forty

'I threw it away,' Marcus Glenn told Serena.

They sat in the front seat of his Lexus on the dirt road near the Sago Cemetery. The night was ablaze with light — rotating red lights on the tops of the squad cars, flashlight beams intersecting the woods, and Klieg lights on tall tripods reflecting off the snow. Behind them, the road was blocked, keeping the media at bay. The windows of the luxury car were closed, leaving the interior oddly silent, despite the frenzied activity around them.

'When was that?' Serena asked.

'I don't remember.'

'Did you bring it home with you from the hospital? Did you leave it in your office? Or did you never take it with you at all?'

Glenn shrugged. 'I have no idea. It was a stupid ten-cent toy.'

'What color was it?' Serena asked.

'Do you think I paid any attention? It could have been purple, pink, red, blue, who knows.'

Glenn's patience was wearing thin after hours with the police. They had spent the afternoon and early evening at Regan Conrad's house in the north farmlands. Just as Serena had been about to cut Glenn loose, she'd received the call from Stride about Micki Vega's discovery and the impending search in Sago. So they had driven here, accompanied by a Duluth Police car on the lonely stretch of Highway 2. Glenn didn't like it.

'I don't know why you've brought me here,' he added. 'There's nothing I can tell you.'

'I'm trying to figure out how this toy made its way from your wife's hospital room to the woods outside your family cemetery,' Serena said.

'Oh, please. How many millions of those toys pour out of Chinese factories every year? You can't possibly believe that there's any connection at all between something that Micki allegedly found in the woods and a keepsake my wife had when she gave birth to Callie.'

'Did your wife blow into the horn?' Serena asked.

'What?'

'Did she use it at the hospital that night?'

'I don't remember. Everyone was using the annoying things.'

'Then she may have left DNA inside the plastic mouthpiece. We'll test it.'

'Wonderful. You do that. If you find any DNA, I'm sure it will belong to someone else.'

'Why are you so sure about that?' Serena asked.

Glenn thumped the dashboard in exasperation. 'Because I threw it away! Do you think someone went burrowing through my trash in order to plant that ridiculous thing in the woods eleven months later?'

Serena watched the surgeon fidget. His long legs were uncomfortable in the sedan, even with the seat pushed back. 'Coincidences keep piling up around you, Dr Glenn,' she told him.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, say you're right. This isn't the toy that Valerie had in the hospital. Doesn't it seem strange that Micki Vega would find a toy just like that next to the cemetery you visit every month? That she'd find it two days after your daughter disappeared? That she'd find it in the exact place where her mother saw someone in the woods on the very night your daughter disappeared? That the toy left there would be exactly like the one Valerie asked you to keep as a memory of your daughter's birth?'

Glenn stared through the windshield at the police officers gathered in clusters around the grassy field. His long, graceful fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel as if he were steering a race car.

'I agree with you,' he said. His voice was calm and scientific.

'You do?'

'Yes, you're right. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.' 'Then how do you explain it?' Serena asked.

Glenn twisted to face her. 'I can think of three explanations. First, it really is a coincidence, and that's just my bad luck. Strange things like that do happen.'

'And the others?'

'The second possibility is that Micki is lying. She may not have found the toy in the woods, or she may not have found it when she said she did. But personally, I think Micki is telling the truth.'

'You do?'

Glenn nodded. 'I don't believe she would deliberately try to do me harm.'

'Except if you were sleeping with her, if you fathered her baby and her baby died, it can play with a girl's head.'

'I never slept with Micki,' Glenn insisted. 'I wasn't the father of her child. If you want to dig up her baby to prove it, you can get a court order and do so. But you'll just look like heartless fools. Ms Dial, I freely confess to being a hard case in every aspect of my life except my medical profession. I helped Micki because I'm a physician and she needed someone. That's all.'

'You said you could think of three explanations,' Serena said. 'What's the third?'

'The third is that someone is deliberately trying to make it appear as if I was involved in Callie's disappearance. Which I wasn't.'

'You mean someone planted the toy?'

'Yes.'

Serena knew the next obvious question, but she wasn't ready to go there yet. It hung unasked between them. She wondered if Glenn wanted to hear her say it. What are we going to find in the woods? Instead, she went another way.

'How did you feel about your wife cheating on you?' she asked.

'I haven't been a model of fidelity myself, so I can't really complain.'

'Maybe so, but most men have a double standard. It's OK for me to cheat, because it's just about sex. But my wife? She better not look at another man.'

Glenn shrugged. 'I'm not saying I feel good about it.'

'When did you find out that she was sleeping with Tom?' Serena asked.

He took a long time to answer. 'I found out the same time that you did,' he told her finally. 'When Blair Rowe blabbed the news to the world.'

'And not before?' 'No.'

'You took your time deciding what to say. Were you trying to figure out if there's any way we could prove that you knew about Valerie's affair?'

Glenn didn't reply.

'I hope you didn't tell anyone,' Serena continued, 'or hire an investigator to follow her. It'll come out if you did.'

'I trusted my wife,' he replied.

'Did you have any reason to doubt that Callie was your baby?'

'Of course not.'