For an instant Jean thought that Jack Emerson would physically attack Robby Brent. Emerson bolted up, slapped both hands on the table, and stared across at Robby. Then, in a visible effort to control himself, he clenched his teeth and slowly lowered himself back into the chair. “There is a lady present,” he said quietly. “Otherwise, I’d be using the kind of language you understand best, you miserable little toad. Maybe you’ve made a good living ridiculing people who managed to accomplish something in their lives, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re still the same birdbrained dope who couldn’t find his way to the bathroom at Stonecroft.”
Dismayed at the exchange of raw hostility, Jean’s eyes swept the room to be sure there was no waiter present to overhear Jack Emerson’s outburst. When her gaze reached the door, she could see that it was partly open. She had no doubt as to who was on the other side, taking in every word of the conversation.
She exchanged glances with Sam Deegan. Sam stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’d better skip coffee,” he said. “I have a phone call to trace.”
51
Peggy Kimball was a generously sized woman of about sixty who emanated an air of warmth and intelligence. Her salt-and-pepper hair had a natural wave; her complexion was smooth except for the fine lines around her mouth and eyes. Jean had the immediate impression that Peggy was a no-nonsense person and that it would take a lot to faze her.
They both waved away menus and ordered coffee. “My daughter picked up her kids an hour ago,” Peggy said. “I had cornflakes and cocoa with them at seven o’clock, or was it at six-thirty?” She smiled. “You must have thought you were listening to Armageddon on the phone last night.”
“I teach a college freshman class,” Jean said. “Sometimes I think those students sound younger than toddlers, and they certainly can be noisier.”
The waiter poured the coffee. Peggy Kimball looked directly at Jean, her bantering demeanor gone. “I do remember you, Jean,” she said. “Dr. Connors handled many adoptions for young girls in your position. I felt sorry for you because you were one of the very few who ever came to the office alone. Most of the girls were accompanied by a parent or some other concerned adult, sometimes even by the baby’s father, who was usually just another scared teenage kid.”
“Be that as it may,” Jean said quietly, “we’re here because I am a concerned adult worrying about the nineteen-year-old girl who is my daughter and who may need help.”
Sam Deegan had taken the original faxes, but she had made copies of them along with the DNA report, which verified that the strands of hair on the brush were Lily’s. She took them out of her bag and showed them to Kimball. “Peggy, suppose it was your daughter,” she said. “Wouldn’t you be upset? Wouldn’t you construe all this as a threat?” She looked Peggy in the eye.
“Yes, I would.”
“Peggy, do you know who adopted Lily?”
“No, I do not.”
“A lawyer had to have handled the paperwork. Do you know what lawyer or law firm Dr. Connors used?”
Peggy Kimball hesitated, then said slowly, “I doubt there was a lawyer involved in your case, Jean.”
There’s something she’s afraid to tell me, Jean thought. “Peggy, Dr. Connors flew out to Chicago a few days before my due date, induced labor, and took Lily from me hours after she was born. Do you know if he registered her birth in Chicago or back here?”
Kimball stared reflectively at the coffee cup she was holding, then looked back at Jean. “I don’t know about you specifically, Jean, but I do know that sometimes Dr. Connors registered a birth directly to the adoptive parents, as though the woman had been the natural mother.”
“But that’s illegal,” Jean protested. “He had no right to do that.”
“I know he didn’t, but Dr. Connors had a friend who knew he was adopted and spent his adult life trying to track his birth family. It became an obsession with him, even though he was deeply loved by the adoptive parents and was treated exactly as they treated their birth children. Dr. Connors said it was a damn shame that he ever was told he was adopted.”
“Then you’re saying that maybe there was no original birth certificate, and no lawyer involved. Lily may believe that the people who adopted her are her natural parents!”
“It’s possible, especially since Dr. Connors flew to Chicago to deliver your baby himself. Over the years he sent several girls to that nursing home in Chicago. It usually meant he was bypassing registering the birth with the natural mother’s name on the certificate. Jean, there’s something else you must realize. Lily’s birth may not necessarily have been registered either here or in Chicago. It might have been treated as an ‘at-home birth’ in Connecticut or New Jersey, for example. Dr. Connors was well known throughout the area for arranging private adoptions.”
She reached across the table and impulsively grasped Jean’s hand. “Jean, you talked to me at that time. I remember that you said you wanted your baby to be happy and to be loved, and you hoped that it would grow up with a mother and father who were crazy about each other and who also thought the sun rose and set on their child. I’m sure you told Dr. Connors the same thing. Maybe, in a way, he thought he was carrying out your wishes by sparing Lily the longing to find you.”
Jean felt as though huge metal doors had slammed shut right in front of her face. “Except now I have to find her,” she said slowly, the words catching in her throat. “I have to find her. Peggy, you did imply that Dr. Connors didn’t treat all his adoptions that way.”
“No, he did not.”
“Then he used a lawyer for some of them?”
“Yes, he did. That would be Craig Michaelson. He’s still practicing, but he moved to Highland Falls years ago. You know where that is, I’m sure.”
Highland Falls was the town nearest to West Point. “Yes, I know where it is,” Jean said.
Peggy took a final sip of coffee. “I have to leave—I’m due at the hospital in half an hour,” she said. “I wish I could have been more help, Jean.”
“Maybe you can be,” Jean said. “The fact remains that somebody found out about Lily, and maybe that happened at the time I was pregnant. Is there anyone else who was working in Dr. Connors’ office who might have had access to the records?”
“No,” Peggy said. “Dr. Connors kept those files under lock and key.”
The waiter laid the check on the table. Jean signed it, and together the women walked into the lobby. Jack Emerson was sitting in a chair near the front desk, a newspaper on his lap. He nodded to Jean as she stood at the door saying good-bye to Peggy, then he stopped her as she passed him on the way to the elevator.
“Jean, any further word from Laura?”
“No.” She was curious why Jack Emerson was in the hotel. Surely after that ugly exchange at the dinner table last night, he wouldn’t want to run into Robby Brent. Then when he spoke she wondered if he could read her mind.
“I want to apologize for that exchange with Robby last night,” Emerson said. “I hope you realize that was a lousy insinuation he made. I didn’t ask Laura for that picture. I had written asking her to be an honoree at the reunion, and she sent it with her note of acceptance. She probably mailed out a thousand of those publicity pictures and inscribed all of them with hugs and kisses and love.”
Was Jack Emerson studying her to see if she bought that explanation of the picture in his den? Jean wondered. She couldn’t be certain. “You’re probably right,” she said dismissively. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run.” Then she paused, her curiosity getting the better of her. “You look as though you’re waiting for someone.”
“Gordie, I mean Gordon, did ask me to take him around and look at some property after all. He didn’t like anything the hot shots from the country club showed him yesterday. I have exclusives on a couple of sites that would be perfect for corporate headquarters.”
“Good luck. Oh, here’s the elevator. See you, Jack.”
Jean walked rapidly to th
e elevator and waited as some people exited. Gordon Amory was the last to get out. “Did you hear any more from Laura?” he asked hurriedly.
“No.”
“All right. Keep me posted.”
Jean stepped into the elevator and pushed the number of her floor. Craig Michaelson, she thought. I’ll call him the minute I get to the room.
Outside the hotel, Peggy Kimball got into her car and fastened her seat belt. Frowning in concentration, she tried to place the man who had nodded to Jean Sheridan in the lobby. Of course, she thought. That was Jack Emerson, the real estate guy who bought the property after our building burned down ten years ago.
She put the key in the ignition and turned it. Jack Emerson, she thought contemptuously. There had been a suggestion at the time that he might have had something to do with that fire. He not only wanted that property, but it had come out that he knew the building like the back of his hand. In high school he had made his spending money working a couple of evenings a week on the cleaning crew there. Was he working in the building when Jean was seeing Dr. Connors? Peggy wondered. We always scheduled girls like her in the evening so that they wouldn’t run into other patients. Emerson might have spotted her and put two and two together.
She began to back out of the parking space. Jean wanted to know about anyone who might have been working in the office, she thought. It might be worth mentioning Jack Emerson to her, even though she was absolutely certain that neither he nor anyone else could have gotten into those locked files.
52
Sam Deegan’s subpoena for the telephone records that would show the area where Laura’s phone call to Jean had originated produced exactly the same results as the one he’d gotten a day earlier. The second call from Laura had been made from the same kind of cell phone—the kind that could be purchased with one hundred minutes of available calling time and did not require a subscriber’s name.
At eleven-fifteen on Tuesday morning, Sam was in the district attorney’s office giving him an update. “It’s not the same phone Wilcox used Sunday night,” he told Rich Stevens. “This one was purchased in Orange County. It has an 845 exchange. Eddie Zarro is out checking the places in the Cornwall area that sell them. Of course, it’s been turned off, just like the one Wilcox used to phone the Glen-Ridge desk clerk Sunday evening.”
The district attorney spun a pen in his fingers. “Jean Sheridan can’t be one hundred percent certain she was talking to Laura Wilcox.”
“No, sir, she can’t.”
“And the nurse—what’s her name, Peggy Kimball?—told Sheridan that Dr. Connors may have arranged an illegal private adoption for her baby?”
“That’s what Mrs. Kimball thinks.”
“Have you heard anything from the priest at St. Thomas about baptismal records?”
“So far they’re drawing a blank. They’ve been pretty successful reaching people who had baby girls baptized within that three-month period, but they haven’t come up with one single instance of anyone admitting that their child had been adopted. The pastor, Monsignor Dillon, is smart. He called in some of the long-timers on the parish council who were around twenty years ago. They knew of families who had adopted children, but not one of them has a girl who’s nineteen and a half now.”
“Is Monsignor Dillon still working on it?”
Sam rubbed his hand over his head and thought again of how Kate used to tell him that he was weakening the roots of his hair. He decided it was a sign of his fatigue that from thoughts of Kate his mind jumped to Alice Sommers. It seemed more like two weeks than two days since he had seen her. But then, since early Saturday morning when Helen Whelan was reported missing, everything had been spinning out of control.
“Is Monsignor Dillon still searching through the files, Sam?” Rich Stevens asked again.
“Sorry, Rich. I guess I was woolgathering there for a minute. The answer is yes, and he’s also called some of the neighboring parishes and asked them to do a discreet check on their own. If they think they have anything, Monsignor Dillon will let us know, and we can subpoena their records.”
“And is Jean Sheridan following up on Craig Michaelson, the lawyer who handled some of Dr. Connors’ adoptions?”
“She’s seeing him at two o’clock.”
“What’s your next step, Sam?”
They were interrupted by the ringing of Sam’s cell phone. He grabbed it from his pocket, glanced at the ID, and the fatigue suddenly dropped from his expression. “It’s Eddie Zarro,” he said as he pushed the talk button. “What have you got, Eddie?” he snapped.
As the district attorney watched, Sam’s mouth dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding me. God, I feel so dumb. Why didn’t I think of that, and what is that little weasel up to? Okay. I’ll meet you at the Glen-Ridge. Let’s hope he didn’t decide to take off today.”
Sam closed the phone and looked at his boss. “A cell phone with one hundred minutes on it was bought at the drugstore on Main Street in Cornwall a few minutes after seven last night. The clerk remembers distinctly the man who made the purchase because he’s seen him on television. It was Robby Brent.”
“The comedian? Do you think he and Laura Wilcox are together?”
“No, sir, I don’t. The clerk in the drugstore watched Brent after he left. Brent stood on the sidewalk and made a phone call. According to him, it was at exactly the same time that Jean Sheridan received the call supposedly from Laura Wilcox.”
“You mean that you think—”
Sam interrupted. “Robby Brent is a comedian by some standards, but by everyone’s standard he’s a first-class mimic. My guess is the guy was imitating Laura’s voice on that call to Jean Sheridan. I’m on my way to the Glen-Ridge. I’m going to find that jerk and make him explain to me what he was up to.”
“Do that,” Rich Stevens snapped. “He’d better have a damn good story, or else let’s slap him with a charge for hindering a police investigation.”
53
How long had it been? Laura had the sense that she was lapsing in and out of something that was more than sleep. How long had it been since The Owl was here? She wasn’t sure. Last night, around the time she had sensed he would be coming back, something had happened. She’d heard sounds on the stairs, then a voice—a voice she knew.
“Don’t!” Then he had shouted the name she had been forbidden to even whisper.
It was Robby Brent who had shouted, and he sounded terrified.
Did The Owl hurt Robby Brent last night?
I think so, Laura decided, as she willed herself to slip once more into a world where she didn’t have to remember that The Owl might come back and that one of the times he returned he would pick up the pillow, hold it over her face, press it down, and . . .
What had happened to Robby? Some time after she heard his voice last night, The Owl had come to her and given her something to eat. He had been angry, so angry that his voice had trembled as he told her that Robby Brent had imitated her voice.
“I had to sit through dinner wondering if somehow you had gotten to the phone, but then my common sense told me that, of course, if you had been able to reach the phone, you would have called the police, not Jean, to say that you were fine. I was suspicious of Brent, Laura, but then that nosy kid reporter was there, and I thought maybe he was up to some trick. Robby was so stupid, Laura, so stupid. He followed me here. I left the door open, and he came in. Oh, Laura, he was so stupid.”
Did I dream that? Laura wondered hazily. Did I make that up?
She heard a click. Was it the door? She squeezed her eyes shut as raw panic raced through her body.
“Wake up, Laura. Raise your head to show that you’re glad I’m back. I must talk to you, and I want to feel that you care about everything I tell you.” The Owl’s voice became hurried, high-pitched. “Robby suspected me and tried to set a trap for me. I don’t know where I let my guard down, but I took care of him. I told you that. Now Jean is getting too close to the truth, Laura, but I know what I can do
to lead her astray and then ensnare her. You do want to help me, don’t you?
“Don’t you?” he repeated loudly.
“Yes,” Laura whispered as she tried to make her voice audible through the gag.
The Owl seemed appeased. “Laura, I know you’re hungry. I’ve brought you something to eat. But first I have to tell you about Jean’s daughter, Lily, and explain to you why you have been sending Jean threatening notes about her. You do remember sending those notes, don’t you, Laura?”
Jean? A daughter? Laura stared up at him.
The Owl had turned on the small flashlight and laid it on the bedside table facing her. The light was shining across her neck and penetrating the darkness immediately around her. Looking up, she could see that he was staring back down at her, motionless now. Then he raised his arms.
“I remember.” She mouthed the words, trying to make them audible to him.
Slowly his arms lowered to his sides. Laura closed her eyes, weak with relief. It had almost been the end. She had not responded quickly enough.
“Laura,” he whispered. “You still don’t understand. I am a bird of prey. When I have been disturbed, there is only one way I know to make myself whole. Don’t tempt me with your obstinacy. Now tell me what we are going to do.”
Laura’s throat was parched. The gag was pressing against her tongue. Beneath the numbness in her hands and feet, the throbbing was intensifying as every muscle tightened with fear. She closed her eyes, struggling to concentrate. “Jean . . . her daughter . . ..I sent notes.”
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