Cottage on Gooseberry Bay: Charmed Summer by Kathi Daley (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

summer. She lived in Seattle but came to Gooseberry Bay for the season. I seem to remember that she came with a church group that brought teens to the area to work at the summer camp just outside of town.”

“Summer camp?” I asked.

“It was a church camp serving underprivileged kids who were brought in for two-week stays. Teens from the city lived on-site and worked as counselors. Most of the teens who worked the camp also had part-time jobs in town, so they’d have spending money. The church group provided housing for the counselors, but not a wage, so Rose worked part-time for me.”

“This could be her,” Jemma said. “What can you tell us about her?”

“She was a quiet little thing. Shy. Sort of skittish. She worked at the camp in the mornings, but then she was free from mid-afternoon until the following morning. She worked about twenty hours a week for me. She didn’t seem to have a lot of friends, but she did participate. She volunteered for the movie nights, and I think she helped out with some of the local fundraising events. I seem to remember that she worked the carnival when it was in town. She stayed busy.”

“Did Rose have a boyfriend?” I asked.

He slowly shook his head. “Not that I remember. Like I said, she was the quiet sort. I do remember this one guy. I think he was just a friend and not a boyfriend, though. He was about her age. Maybe a year or two older. He came in a few times looking for Rose.”

“Do you remember a name?” I asked.

He paused. It appeared he was thinking over my question. “I think his name was Noah. I’m pretty sure he’d graduated high school the previous spring. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure he was only in Gooseberry Bay for a short time before joining the Navy.”

Rosalie, like Caroline, seemed to check all the boxes. The question was, if Rose didn’t live in town and hadn’t been seen since nineteen ninety-six, how on earth were we going to find her now?

“I don’t suppose you have contact information for Rose,” I wondered.

“I have an address in Seattle, but it’s over twenty years old. I doubt Rose still lives with her parents. She’s probably married by now, so I doubt she even has the same last name.”

“At this point, Rosalie Watts is the only lead we have,” I said, hoping that the man believed our story and didn’t think us to be stalkers. “If you’d be willing to share the address you have on file, maybe we’ll be able to use that as a starting point to track her down.”

He hesitated.

“I know giving out employee information is probably frowned on, even if that information is a quarter of a century old, but if we can help my client find her mother…” I let the thought dangle.

“Are you sure the mother of this woman wants to be found? It seems to me that if the mother of this girl left her in a church and never once reached out after that point, she probably wants to stay anonymous.”

“Then why leave the bracelet?” Jemma asked.

The man shrugged. “Okay. I’ll give you what I have. I doubt it will be useful after all these years, but I guess if the mother of this woman, whether she actually is Rose or someone else, must have wanted to keep the door open for some future meeting, or she wouldn’t have left a clue.”

Once Tony had provided me the last known address he had for Rosalie, Jemma and I thanked him and left. We headed to lunch, and after ordering, I took a moment to call Ellery and let her know what we’d found. She was excited that we had a name, although I think even she realized that finding the woman with little more than a name and a twenty-five-year-old address would not be easy. I promised her that once we got back to the cottage, Jemma would get on the computer and see what she could find, and I also promised to call her with the results of our search no matter what we did or didn’t find.

Chapter 13

As it turned out, Jemma was able to do quite a lot with the information we’d received that afternoon. Based on the address provided, Jemma was able to determine that Rosalie’s parents were named Edward and Anna. Edward was the minister at a small church in Seattle, and Anna served the congregation by visiting the elderly and sick and helping to feed those in need. Edward and Anna Watts had five children. Four boys, two older than Rosalie, the only girl, and two younger. As Tony had indicated, the church ran a summer camp for underprivileged youth in Gooseberry Bay during the nineteen nineties. The counselors were mainly teens, aged sixteen to eighteen, who volunteered to help out. There were four paid staff members: the camp administrator, a woman named Lora Wilder, the cook, a woman named Elise Crenshaw, a male head counselor, a man named Elroy Winters, and a female head counselor, a woman named Polly Bolton.

There were group photos from each of the eight summers the group ran the camp. The photo for nineteen ninety-six featured, among others, a woman with dark hair and a shy smile, who really did look an awful lot like Ellery.

“I think we found your client’s mother,” Jemma said.

I gently nibbled on my lower lip, a habit I often retreated to when I felt nervous or uncertain. “Maybe.” I looked at the photo closely. “The question in my mind is, why would this young woman abandon her baby in a church? Rosalie was part of an intact family who looked to be close. Her parents were obviously religious, so I can understand that if and when Rosalie