Free THE SECRET OF CHEROKEE COVE by Paula Graves

to one of Doyle’s detectives. Ivy Calhoun, Dana remembered. With her was a taller, more slender woman with light brown hair and intelligent blue eyes.
    Ivy introduced her as Rachel Hammond, a friend. “We had lunch here in town, so I thought I’d drop by to see how the chief’s doing.”
    “Suck-up,” Doyle said with a smile.
    Ivy grinned. “I’m bucking for chief of detectives.”
    “Yeah, well, you’ll have to take that up with Antoine.” Doyle nodded toward Rachel. “Dana, you should talk to Rachel about looking up those old newspapers you were talking about. She used to be a librarian.”
    Rachel Hammond’s eyes lit up at the mention of her former job. “You need help finding something at the library?”
    “Oh, Lord, you spoke the magic words,” Ivy said with a grin.
    “Specifically some old newspapers from about thirty-seven years ago,” Dana said. Doris Kingsley had remembered the year, though not the month, that Tallie Cumberland had been a patient here at Maryville Mercy Hospital.
    She’d have been seventeen at the time, Dana thought. Within two years of losing her son, she’d married Dana’s father and gotten pregnant with Dana herself.
    But what had her life been like between losing her son and meeting the man she’d marry?
    “I can take you to the library whenever you like,” Rachel said, eagerness evident in her voice. “Or maybe I can introduce you to some primary sources.”
    “She means people, not books,” Ivy translated in a dry drawl.
    “Primary sources would be terrific,” Dana said quickly. “When do you get off work?”
    “I’m the CEO of my company,” Rachel said with a smile. “I make my own hours. I can go whenever you like.”
    “Now?”
    “Sure.” Rachel’s smile reminded Dana of a kid who’d just been let out of school for the summer. “I need a ride, though. I left my car at the office.”
    “No problem. I’ll drive you back to the office when we’re done.” Dana waggled her fingers at the others. “See you later.”
    As she and Rachel walked to the hospital parking deck, Dana briefly outlined what she was looking for, without using names or going into minute detail. “I’m not sure of the month, but I’m pretty sure of the year.”
    “You’re talking about Tallie Cumberland, aren’t you?”
    Dana stopped in the middle of the corridor. “You’ve heard the story, too?”
    “Well, yeah. I live in Bitterwood, you know.”
    “It was a bit before your time.”
    “Only by a few years. And let me tell you, it was a big deal in my neighborhood, because the way I heard it, the family whose child was nearly abducted were Very Important People.” The emphasis Rachel put on the last three words made Dana’s chest ache. Her poor mother, she thought, young, poor and swallowed up by grief, forced to withstand the onslaught of people with power and wealth who could, without question, ruin her. No wonder she had fled Bitterwood and not looked back.
    Not looked back, that was, until she’d returned here fifteen years ago on her first real vacation in years.
    Why had she come here? What had she hoped to find?
    The child she thought had been stolen from her? Had she still believed her baby was alive, after so much time and distance from her original grief?
    “It can be a pain to get access to newspaper archives from that far back,” Rachel told her as they drove out of the hospital parking deck. “But I know a guy at the Bitterwood Town Crier —he’s been there for over forty years. Started working on the presses and eventually made his way up to reporter, then editor. If anyone on earth can tell you everything you need to know about the Tallie Cumberland story, it’s T. J. Spencer.”
    They were back in Bitterwood within twenty minutes. By then, it was nearly lunchtime, and Rachel suggested they offer to take T.J. out to lunch. “He eats most days at Ledbetter’s Diner because he can walk there from the paper,” Rachel said. “But I happen to know