Page 8 of Asher's Assignment
“Well, that’s something, at least.”
He hummed, switching to a different monitor. The spidey sense that never steered him wrong had reared its head.
“What?” Edie tipped her head. “It’s never good when you make that noise. What are you thinking?”
“That it’s weird for a woman with absolutely no criminal history, not even a sealed juvie record, to marry a man with his past. Especially since he was still committing burglaries and using long after their daughter was born. She’d have been two when he was convicted the last time.”
“Can you access their marriage license?”
He moved the cursor back to the first monitor and clicked on the tab at the bottom that said, “Other records,” then on their marriage license.
“There you go.” He turned back to the other monitor.
“Huh,” she said after a moment.
Asher glanced over. “What did you find?”
“They’ve only been married five years.”
He rolled closer. That was an interesting coincidence. Rob Tyler’s last conviction gave him a two-year sentence. He’d have gotten out of jail around the same time he and Connie were married.
“Click on that.” She pointed at Leah’s birth certificate.
He did, and they both read over the document that appeared.
“It has both their names on it,” Edie said.
He hummed again, the date of her birth pinging something in his brain. Moving down the screen, he went back to the bottom tab, then looked up their address history.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking dates.” He scrolled down the list of addresses for Rob until he found the year Leah was born.
“Okay, that’s weird,” Edie said. “He didn’t live anywhere near her when Leah was born. Or the year before.”
Asher nodded. “No, he didn’t. And actually”—he switched screens again to Rob’s rap sheet, checking another date—“he was in jail when Leah would have been conceived.”
Edie’s eyes grew round. “What does that mean? Other than they lied about Leah’s father. Why would they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Leah’s real dad isn’t a good man?”
“Worse than that?” Edie gestured at the screen, eyebrows winging upward.
“There are a lot of worse crimes than those, Edie.”
She huffed. “I know that. But why would she pick Rob? Instead of someone with a clean record? When she has a clean one herself? It just doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t. But people do a lot of strange things when they’re desperate. If she thought she and her baby were in danger, she might have turned to the first person she could for support. We don’t know what her life was like at that time. Or whether she had any family to turn to.”
“But he was in jail. How is that support?”
Asher’s jaw worked, and he looked at the screen, thinking. She had a point. “I’m not sure. Look, I’ll keep digging, okay? I don’t think Esther is in any immediate danger. He either got suddenly really smart about his drug use, or he really did quit. I’ll see what I can find out about Connie before she married Rob. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find Leah’s biological father, though. Not without talking to people Connie knew back then.”
“That’s okay. I just want to be sure Esther is safe. If Leah’s bio dad hasn’t interfered in the nine years the girl’s been alive, he probably won’t now. And I don’t want to stir up trouble and possibly make it an issue for her. Whatever you can find online and through official records is fine.”
He nodded once. “I’ll see what I can do.” He tipped his head, studying her. She seemed extra worried. Anxious. “Is everything okay?”
She glanced at him with a frown. “What do you mean?”
