Pushing Up Bluebonnets

decade ago? Apparently she'd been abandoned there.'

Shauna's features changed from warm and welcoming to troubled. 'How could I forget?'

Oliver raised his head, looked at Shauna and whined.

'What can you tell me about her?' I said.

Shauna licked her lips and reached for her tea with a shaky hand. 'Medicine makes my mouth so dry.' After she took a sip by holding the glass with both hands, she said, 'God, that was an awful night—raining like hell. The child was soaked and I wondered if those blue lips came from being cold or from being sick.'

'You thought she was sick?' I said.

'I did. And after I took her to medical and we stripped off those wet clothes, we saw that big scar down her chest, so I thought I was right. She sure didn't like getting a physical—cried through the whole thing, which sure brought her color back. The doc said all the crying was probably because she'd seen the inside of one too many hospitals. She'd had recent heart surgery.'

'Did she talk about being sick?' I said.

'That girl wouldn't talk about anything. Someone left her alone, chilled to the bone, in that hellhole bus station, so I couldn't really blame her. At first, anyway.'

'She wouldn't talk? Are you saying she had a choice?' Back to that choice thing again, I thought.

Oliver relaxed, again resting his head in Shauna's lap. 'I remember thinking when I went home after that night shift, after spending hours with the child and getting nothing but a wide-eyed stare, that she knew her name, knew her parents, knew it all—and she'd been told to keep her mouth shut.'

'Really?' I said. 'That didn't come through in the report.'

'Because I had nothing to support my conclusion. I'd questioned hundreds of kids by that point in my career and they always gave something away, but not her.' She shook her head. 'Not her. I heard later some shrink said she had amnesia. Bullshit, if you ask me.'

'I understand no local hospital had treated her heart condition,' I said.

'True. I went to every Houston-area hospital myself, carried her picture with me. Questioned doctors and nurses. That child became my mission. No one had reported her missing. No one cared that she'd be going into the system. Made me sick, to be honest.'

'Did you ever get any leads?' I asked, realizing I was glad I came here. Shauna was right about face-to-face interviews. She cared about JoLynn. No police report or foster-care file could have conveyed this woman's concern.

'Leads?' Shauna said. 'Well, her clothes and shoes were from Kmart, could have been bought anywhere. We sent her picture and description to every major lawenforcement agency including the FBI, and I personally checked databases for more than a year after we found her. Nothing came up. She wasn't wanted. She'd been . . . discarded. That makes me angry to this day.'

'And this little girl helped erase her own past by keeping quiet,' I said. 'Why? Was she afraid?'

'Probably. It was so frustrating. Even the necklace was a dead end,' Shauna said. 'I had this gut feeling it would lead me somewhere, but I never caught a break.'

'The necklace?' I said.

'I'm not sure I even mentioned it in my report. I was afraid a superior might accuse me of wasting time on an investigation that was going nowhere. She was already safe in foster care. But I did some digging around on my own, knowing how important the necklace seemed to the girl. The night I picked her up at the bus station? She wouldn't let go, kept twirling her finger in the chain. Cheap chain, but attached was a beautiful silver piece— a tiny owl sitting on an open book. I'd never seen anything like that owl. I sent the picture with her wearing it all over the place.'

'Where did you send it?' I asked.

'Faxed it with the information I sent to the FBI, sent a copy to all the missing-children organizations. We're talking eleven years back, so we weren't quite as connected to the Internet then. Especially patrol officers like me.'

'What about local jewelers?' I asked.

'I didn't have the time or authorization to pursue something like that, but every time I went to the mall, or to a Sam's Club or even Target, I checked the jewelry cases. I haven't looked in several years, though. I don't get to those places much anymore.'

Oliver whined, rolled his head so Shauna could stroke under his chin.

'This picture of the necklace? I didn't see it in her file.'

Shauna smiled. 'Not the necklace alone. Her wearing the necklace. If you have any of her foster-care pictures, you've seen it. I enlarged several photos and circled the necklace when I sent off info about her.'

A clue had been right there all the time and I hadn't even noticed. 'Would you like to see a picture of the girl you worked so hard for? She's twenty now, uses the name JoLynn.' I reached into my bag for that photo Roberta Messing placed on a missing-persons Web site a year ago.

Shauna's dark eyes brightened and Oliver's head popped up. 'Are you kidding? I'd love to see what she looks like.'

I brought her the picture.

She stared for several seconds and her eyes filled. 'She's a beauty, isn't she?' Then Shauna met my gaze. 'You never said why you're asking about her after all this time. Two years ago, the cop in me would have asked that question right up front. But now? I suppose I'm simply grateful someone cares.'

'A man tried to kill her . . . and now he's been murdered. And don't worry—JoLynn has a solid alibi, so she didn't retaliate. But both the police chief I'm working with and I believe the answers to this case—why that man wanted her dead and why he in turn was killed— may lie in JoLynn's past, the same past she refused to share with you.'

'Oh my God. After all these years, she's in danger again? Because I got the sense her fear was more com plicated than being lost.' Shauna rested back against the cushions. 'I should have tried harder. I should have —'

'Choices, remember?' I said. 'Even children have the right to make them. She shut you out.'

Oliver was on alert now, sitting on the sofa with his total focus on Shauna. God, what a wonderful dog.

She looked up at me, her eyes brilliant with emotion. 'Promise you'll finish this job, Abby? The one that I couldn't?'

'I give you my word. And you and Oliver will get a full report.'

Oliver barked when I said his name, and before I left with a Ziploc full of cookies, I hugged Shauna and shook his paw.

27

I returned home after dark to a house that smelled like teriyaki. Jeff, Doris, Cooper, Kate and even Aunt Caroline were sitting around the kitchen table. If Cooper Boyd didn't have my aunt's complete attention, I might have heard what a terrible niece I was, how I never gave her a first thought, much less a second. After all, I'd failed to call and check up on her.

But Aunt Caroline was all smiles, as flirty as any seventy-five-year-old woman can be—in other words, a seventy-five-year-old in complete denial. Did she think she had a chance in hell with Cooper?

A new jigsaw puzzle was laid out on the table and Jeff was sitting close to Doris to help her look for pieces to fit into the barnyard scene. Doris fell in love with cows after coming to Texas, so I was guessing that's why she chose this particular puzzle.

Cooper smiled at me sheepishly—sheep, cows . . . it was a regular farm in here—and I got the feeling he was guilty about not accompanying me to visit Shauna.

'Did Officer Anthony help?' he asked.

'Maybe.' I hung my bag on its hook by the utility room door. 'She gave me a small lead, as well as some insight into JoLynn. Don't know if I can get any further than she did with the lead—which went nowhere for