Lost and Found: (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella) Read Online Free

Lost and Found: (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella)
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first.”
    “Sounds like a plan,” Lydia said with a smile. Oh boy, she was cute. Blake was in trouble.
    They rented a midsize sedan and left the airport behind them. Over an early dinner at a teal and chrome diner, they made a more formal plan.
    “I went to the address my Grandpa had for Gladys,” Blake said, “but there was a young family living there. They bought the house six months ago, and they didn’t know Gladys. A lot can happen in a year.”
    She drew her brows together as she took a drink of lemonade. “Did you check with the neighbors?”
    “I knocked on the houses next door, but no one was home.”
    “Sounds like we’d better go canvas the street she lived on.”
    Blake smiled. “Canvas the street? You said you’re a teacher, right?”
    “I teach fifth grade. And I’ve read every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys book there is. Hurry and finish your fries, and let’s start sleuthing.”
    They drove to a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Charlotte. Belmont Street was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Trees lined the streets, their old, thick roots having their way with the sidewalks. The houses were small bungalows, built by sensible people who’d just survived the depression, nothing like the excessive houses in the suburbs with their equally bloated mortgages.
    “That’s the one she lived in,” Blake said, pointing at a small yellow house with a tricycle in the front yard. “I knocked on both of those houses, but no one was home.”
    They knocked again on the white house next door. A pimply teenage boy with no shirt answered the door.
    “Sorry, man,” he said after Blake asked about Gladys. “I noticed she was gone, but I have no idea where she went.”
    “Do you think your parents would know?” Lydia asked.
    “There’s just my dad, but he’s at work. He’s working a double so he won’t be home until early tomorrow morning.”
    They thanked him and walked to the gray house on the other side. The sidewalk to the door was lined with rose bushes. A chorus of yapping dogs answered their knock, but no one came to the door.
    “Excuse me,” said a young woman from the front yard of the home that had belonged to Gladys. She held a diaper-clad baby. “Are you the one who was looking for Gladys Baker?”
    “I am,” Blake said as he and Lydia walked back to meet her in the narrow driveway.
    “After you left, I was talking to Beulah Edwards. She lives in that house right there.” She pointed at a brick house across the street and near the corner. “She said that she and Gladys knew each other and if you came back to send you her way.”
    “Thank you,” Blake said and shook her hand. “I really appreciate it.”
    “No problem. Good luck.”
    Beulah’s doorbell was chimes playing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” slightly off key, which didn’t fit with the sweltering heat and humidity of the August afternoon. “Maybe no one’s home,” Blake said after they’d waited more than a minute.
    “I thought I heard something.” Lydia knocked and they waited a little longer.
    Finally, an elderly woman opened the door and looked at them through the screen. “I hope you’re not selling anything.” She lifted her thick glasses from her eyes to her forehead and looked back and forth between Blake and Lydia. “See. It says no soliciting right there.” She pointed her elbow at a handwritten sign taped below the doorbell.
    “We’re not selling anything,” Lydia said. “Are you Beulah?”
    “I was last time I checked,” she said and chuckled at her joke.
    Lydia smiled. “My name is Lydia, and this is Blake. We’re looking for Gladys Baker, and your neighbor said you might know where she lives now.”
    “Of course I do. Gladys was my dear friend. We used to go walking together almost every day. How do you know her?”
    “She and my grandfather were friends many years ago,” Blake said.
    “Hmm. Well, come on in, and I’ll get you her address.” She pushed the screen door
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