LAKE COUNTY, Fla. -- A new search was underway Monday afternoon in the case of missing 2-year-old Trenton Duckett. Police were using K-9s to search the area around The Plantation subdivision, at the Turnpike and U.S. 27 near Leesburg.

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VIDEO: Residents Asked To Check Yards In Search For Toddler

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Trenton has been missing for more than two weeks. Investigators stopped just short of calling Melinda Duckett a suspect, but they came darn close, saying it is now their leading theory that she had something to do with Trenton's disappearance.

"There is still this likelihood and possibility that Trenton is with somebody that may feel like they're doing one of these family members a favor by keeping him hidden away," said Captain Steve Rockefeller, Leesburg Police Department.

That was the best case scenario, but police admit it's less likely since Melinda committed suicide Friday. Her estranged husband passed his polygraph test, but she had refused to take one.

Eyewitness News asked Joshua Duckett if he ever thought Melinda was capable of hurting their son.

"No, I wouldn't have thought it. I mean, there's millions and millions of possibilities with everyone each day, and I never would have expected that or this to happen," he said.

Joshua said, despite the bad blood between the couple, her death still hurt, compounded by the possibility that she took any knowledge of Trenton's whereabouts with her.

Police scoured Melinda's car and seized a computer and specific papers from her apartment and her grandparents' home in Lady Lake.

"They were writings, apparently by Melinda, and whether that was in the hours or moments before the apparent suicide, I don't know," Rockefeller said.

Police said they do not believe Trenton was taken by an intruder. They are asking everyone in Leesburg and Lady Lake to search their own properties, though they admit a mother harming her own child and then faking a kidnapping would be rare, but not impossible.

"Hearing all these investigators and agents talk about this with folks with much more experience on these cases than I have, it's being characterized as very uncommon," Rockefeller said.

Police said no one can confirm seeing Trenton after about five o'clock on Saturday, August 26 and that's a good 26 hours before his mother reported the kidnapping. Police have checked store surveillance tapes and phone records, but they won't confirm what they've found.