Jemma continued to surf around. “I found a link to some old sermons on the webpage, and it does look as if Pastor Watts tended toward subjects relating to fire and brimstone. If I had to guess, Rosalie’s father was conservative in his approach to religion. It’s clear that he cared about his parishioners, and both he and his wife lived a life of service, but that doesn’t mean he would have taken kindly to his only daughter having a baby out of wedlock.”
“So maybe she ran away, or maybe her parents kicked her out. She was seventeen when she came to Gooseberry Bay that summer. She might have turned eighteen, and her parents might have set her loose to sink or swim on her own.” I paused and then continued. “There’s no way to know why, even if Rosalie Watts actually is Ellery’s biological mother, she made the decision to abandon her baby the way she did.”
“Unless we find her and ask her,” Jemma pointed out.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Unless we find Rosalie and ask her.”
Jemma continued to look for additional information while I decided to call Ellery. While I was on the phone with my client, Parker called to let Jemma know that she’d picked up Kalen’s video game console from Kalen’s mother since she never had made it to the Rambling Rose and would bring it by in about an hour. My client was excited about the progress we’d been able to make, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that Ellery was getting nervous now that we had a name. She shared that while she really did want contact information if we could find it, she didn’t want us actually contacting Rosalie. She wanted to give the situation some more thought before reaching out. I agreed to this, and I also agreed to let her know if we came up with anything concrete like an address or phone number or even a married last name.
“My client would like us to try to obtain an address or phone number, but she doesn’t want us to actually contact the woman at this point,” I shared with Jemma.
“I get it. Looking for answers that seem impossible to find is a different decision than actually acting on those answers.”
“Do you think we can find anything current for this woman?”
Jemma nodded. “Assuming that she remained in Seattle and didn’t move to another town or state, I should be able to track down a marriage certificate, if one exists, through the county records. Just give me a few minutes.”
“If we can get a current name, we can do a search for a current address or at least a current email. That sort of thing seems to be widely available on the web.”
“Exactly.”
Jemma continued to type, and I stood next to her and waited.
“It looks like Rosalie Watts married Jeremiah Langston in August of two thousand and five.” She continued to type. “I found a wedding announcement which tells me that Jeremiah was a native of Spokane, Washington and that he worked at a welding shop with his father.” She talked and typed at the same time. “I found a phone number for Langston Iron Works. If nothing else, you should be able to track Rosalie down through that. I’m going to look for something more specific to her, however, so give me another minute or two.”
Jemma continued to type, and I continued to wait.
“I got it.” Jemma sat back. “Rosalie is a real estate agent. She has her cell number and her email listed on her website. I’ll forward everything to you, and you can pass it on to your client.”
To say that Ellery was thrilled with the information we’d been able to dig up was putting it mildly. She still wasn’t sure if she would use the information to reach out, but at least she had a place to start. I asked her to call or email me if she ever contacted Rosalie. I felt pretty confident that we’d tracked down the right person, but until someone actually spoke to Rosalie, we wouldn’t know for sure. Ellery agreed to stay in touch, and I wished her well.
By the time Parker arrived, Jemma and I were ready to switch gears and focus on the missing boys. Josie had come home as well, so she grabbed a snack and joined us at the dining table.
Luckily, Jemma was able to easily access Kalen’s video game console. It was a newer model, and like Zane’s, there was a window for messaging as well as access to various files relating to a variety of different games. The user log showed that End Days was the only game Kalen had been logged into for the past couple of months. It also showed that, like Zane, he’s spent a lot of time climbing through the levels.
“So, how can this help us?” Josie asked. “I get that this proves that two of the missing boys seemed to be obsessed with a specific online multiplayer game, and it’s reasonable to assume that we’d find a similar pattern on Trevor’s video game console if we had access to it. But how does this help us figure out what happened to them or where they might be now?”
Jemma sat back in her chair. She didn’t speak, but she did seem to be considering Josie’s question.
“Okay, so we know that Zane, Kalen, and Trevor were all into this game big time,” Parker said. “It looks like they began working together as allies of some sort after climbing to level fifteen, where presumably the game changes in some way. Do we
