I nodded to myself and switched the phone to my other hand. He was probably wondering if I was sticking around San Diego after showing up unexpectedly. Wanting to know if I was going to continue to be a thorn in his side. Part of me wished I was there, just to irritate him.

“He said something like he just wanted to make sure you were okay after everything with Chuck,” she said, not hiding her disgust. “I told him the bullshit was leaking through the phone.”

“That sounds like you.”

“I just wanted him to know I still hate him.”

“Mission accomplished.”

“I guess. He never ended up saying what he really wanted. Just kind of stumbled around and ended up hanging up. But I thought you’d want to know.”

“He talked to Mike, too,” I told her. “Same kind of crap. I think he’s a little worried I might be sticking around Coronado to bother him. Think he just wants to be clear of me. Again. But thanks for letting me know.”

There was a clicking in the line. “You won’t forget to send me the picture?”

“I’ll do it as soon as we hang up,” I said. “And if there’s anything else, I’ll call you.”

“I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

“Me either.”

“But you always do,” she said. “You always do.”

TWENTY-TWO

I walked back to the apartments and twenty minutes later, I’d scanned the photo and sent it to Lauren’s email address, using the computer in Isabel’s office. I thought about just snapping a picture of it with my phone, but I wanted Lauren to see the same clarity that I saw when I looked at Elizabeth’s face.

“You’re on good terms with your ex?” she asked, after I’d pushed back from the computer and thanked her for the use of it.

“Good as can be expected.”

“You talk. That’s more than a lot of people.”

I nodded. “Our divorce wasn’t about us, if that makes sense.”

“It does. But there’s usually still lots of raw nerve endings.”

“There are,” I said. “But we’ve somehow managed to learn how to navigate around them.”

Isabel nodded and smiled. “That’s nice. For both of you.”

I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought that sometimes Lauren would’ve preferred to never hear from me, to never provide any sense of hope or information about Elizabeth. That’s why I’d always left it up to her to initiate contact. If she ever decided that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore, I wouldn’t push her. I’d let her have that peace if she decided she needed it.

“What are you going to do today?” Isabel asked, settling into the chair behind the desk.

“Going over to the school to start,” I said. “See where that leads.”

“School can’t release records,” she said.

“I know. I’ll need to be persuasive.”

“How?”

“Don’t know yet. Probably have to be a jerk or something.”

She shook her head, smiling. “Hang on a sec.”

“Not anxious to go back out in the cold, so okay.”

She tapped at the keyboard, stared at the screen, her lips scrunched together in concentration. She squinted for a moment. “Okay. Don’t go to the school.”

“I’m going to the school, Isabel.”

“Go to the district office,” she said, scribbling on a piece of paper and glancing at the screen. “And ask for Tim Barron.”

She slid the piece of paper to me. A number and address were scrawled beneath the name.

“And since you didn’t wait to talk to Tess like I asked, I’m emailing him now, telling him you’re coming to see him.”

“He’ll talk to me?”

“Should,” she said, tapping again at the keyboard. “He’s a pretty good guy. He’s helped me out before. He’ll have access to records that are probably more thorough than the school’s anyway.”

I folded the piece of paper and slipped it into my pocket. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, then nodded at her screen. “Email sent. He’ll know I sent you.”

“Can you get us an address for Codaselli?” I asked.

She pursed her lips, then sighed. “Yeah, probably.”

“We should talk to him. Today.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Come back after you talk to Tim. I’ll find the address by then. And we can go.”

“You don’t sound excited.”

She shook her head. “To talk with Peter Codaselli about his missing son? No. I’m not.”

TWENTY-THREE

“Isabel’s been quiet lately,” Tim Barron said, leaning back in his chair. “She doing alright?”

The district office was an easy find with GPS. I’d asked for Tim at the front desk and he showed up in an elevator less than two minutes later. He took me up the elevator to the third floor and I followed him to his office, where everything appeared to have been organized by a professional organizer. No piles of paper, no overstuffed file drawers. It was the antithesis of what I expected to see in a public information officer’s office.

“I actually haven’t known her that long,” I said. “But she seems okay, yeah.”

He nodded. He had close-cropped orange hair and a flurry of freckles on his face. Somewhere in his thirties, he was slightly built. He wore standard office attire, his blue-striped tie loosened at his neck.

“She tries not to abuse me,” he said with a soft smile. “Which is why I like her so much. She only comes to me if she really needs me.”

“She seems sharp,” I said.

“She is,” he said. He crossed his legs and folded his hands behind his desk. “Now. She said nothing about why you’re here. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for my daughter,” I said.

“She’s a student in our district?”

“I believe she was at one time,” I said. “But I’m honestly not sure what name you’ll find her under.”

He raised both eyebrows. “You lost me.”

I gave him the briefest explanation I could, an explanation that ended up not being very brief at all. Trying to explain how I’d gotten to the place I was at was never an easy task and it often made the listener more uncomfortable than it did me.

“Wow,” he said, when I finished. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“So we aren’t looking for a girl with the last name Tyler,” he said.

“Pretty sure that’s the one thing that’s certain. I don’t see any way possible that she’d still have her real last name.”

“Of course.” His mouth twisted for a moment, then he rocked forward in his chair and grabbed a yellow legal pad. “Tell me again the name of the girl. In the picture with her?”

“Bailey Detwiler.”

“And which school did she attend?”

“Hawkins Elementary.”

He scribbled on the pad. “She still a student in the district?”

“No. Believe she’s moved out of state.”

“What grade do you think she would’ve been in?”

“Fourth or fifth is my best guess,” I said. “But I have no idea where she was in the educational process. But her age would put her about there.”

“Right.” He tapped his pencil against his notepad. “I’m not sure class rosters will do us any good if we don’t know her name. I’m not exactly sure what we’d look for.”

“Okay.”

“But I’ll pull them anyway and see if anything shows itself,” he said. “But what I think we really need are yearbooks. You need to see faces, pictures. I think that would be your best bet, correct?”

My heart skipped a beat. “Yeah.”

He laid the pencil down. “Okay. I need at least a day to put this together.”

“A day?” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment.

He nodded. “I’ll need to find the yearbooks, may even have to go to the school to get them. I’ll need to have a legitimate reason to loan them out. I’ll also need to print the rosters, which I’m not doing here at my office. I’ll need to do that at home.” He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t mind helping Isabel, but I need to be discreet in doing it. That’s the best I can do for you.”

I chewed on my thumbnail for a moment. I felt like I was close to finding something. I wasn’t sure what, but for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I was on the verge. I didn’t want to wait. But I also appreciated the fact that Tim was willing to help and I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.