On the Doorstep

by Dana Corbit

  At her nervous glance toward the other officer, Zach put his hand under her elbow to guide her to his desk. “What is it? Did you find something else at the office?”

  She shook her head. “I had to come. I wasn’t helpful before, so I want to do anything I can now.”

  He smiled, remembering that she initially hadn’t wanted him to find Gabriel’s mother.

  “Not much you can do really. I’ll be interviewing the open house committee members this afternoon. Everyone except a girl who’s on a European vacation with her parents.” He glanced down at the list and read the name. “Ashley Harcourt.”

  He looked up to see Pilar’s eyes widen at the same time that the name was starting ringing a bell in his mind.

  “Why does that name sound so—wait. Is she any relation to Barnaby Harcourt?”

  “His granddaughter. Neal and Helene’s daughter.”

  It wasn’t such an amazing coincidence that a Harcourt would attend Tarkington Academy. They were, after all, among the wealthiest families in Chestnut Grove. But in his experience, odd coincidences in investigations often didn’t turn out to be only that.

  “Do you know when the Harcourts are supposed to get back from their trip?”

  Pilar shook her head. “I don’t know them personally, but my friend Rachel does. They’re friends with her parents. Let me give her a call.” She went to the phone Zach indicated on a nearby desk and started dialing.

  While he waited, Zach scanned the list of names. Obviously, he didn’t travel in the same circles as the well-heeled because he didn’t recognize any other names.

  He glanced up to see Pilar hang up the phone, but her strange expression stopped him.

  “What is it?”

  She came back over and dropped into the chair next to his desk. “Rachel said Neal and Helene were supposed to be gone four weeks.”

  He lifted his notebook and pen. “Starting when?”

  When she didn’t say anything, he glanced at her.

  “That’s just it. Only the two of them went on the trip. Helene joked about it being a romantic getaway, but Rachel’s mom had been worried it was a last-ditch effort to save their troubled marriage.”

  That same unsettled feeling he always developed when stories and facts weren’t adding up wrapped itself around him, making him straighten. He knew Pilar had picked up on the change in him because she, too, sat a little higher in her chair.

  “If they went alone, where’s the rest of the family?” he asked as calmly as possible.

  “Samantha’s working as a catalogue model in D.C., but Ashley? She’s supposed to be at home and attending school.”

  “School’s the one place we know she hasn’t been. We’d better find out if she’s been at the other one.”

  “Do you think she’s a runaway?”

  Zach tilted his head and considered. “Could be.”

  Ashley wouldn’t have been the first teen from a wealthy but dysfunctional family to do that. It also wouldn’t have necessarily followed that just because she might have run she was also the person targeted in this investigation, but Zach sensed she was. He didn’t need more coincidences to convince him since his churning gut and his critical thinking agreed this time.

  He grabbed his keys and his notebook but paused by the door. “The Harcourt mansion, right?”

  Pilar nodded.

  “Zach, I think you’d better take this call,” the receptionist announced from the front desk.

  On the other end of the line, a small Richmond clinic—one where needs were high, resources were low and returning detectives’ telephone calls apparently wasn’t a priority—had finally checked in.

  “Detective, you were looking for births from the last few weeks,” said a harried doctor, who’d probably attended to dozens of deliveries in that time. “Our clinic had a walker on September first. Her name and address didn’t check out.”

  “Can you describe her?” Zach grabbed his notebook even though he was pretty sure a description wouldn’t be necessary.

  “Age sixteen or seventeen. Caucasian. Blond hair in braids.”

  “And the infant.”

  “Live birth on eight-thirty-one. Healthy male. She disappeared with the infant the next morning after his circumcision.”

  Zach indicated with a wave for Officer Merritt to take over the call and make up the report for him. On his way past the front desk, he slammed his fist on the counter.

  “A day late and a dollar short,” he grumbled, though it was more like two weeks.

  He still had his hand on the glass when Pilar came up behind him.

  “Are you going to the Harcourt mansion?”

  He barely gave her a nod before pushing open the door.

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  Outside, he turned back to her, ready to argue, but she looked so determined that he didn’t bother. She’d said she wanted to do whatever she could to help him. Well, maybe he should give her the chance.

  Besides, he had no idea what he would find when he reached the Harcourts’ oversize house. It couldn’t hurt to have someone with a psychology degree along with this search party.

  He unlocked his car door, and Pilar climbed in and clicked her seat belt. Neither spoke as he pulled the car out of the station parking lot.

  Maybe Ashley had run, and they wouldn’t find her at all. At least not now. Wherever she was, he just wanted her to be all right.

  This story wasn’t the same as Jasmine’s, he kept repeating in his mind. Only some mistakes ended up as tragedies. Some people got to live with the consequences of theirs. But others weren’t so fortunate.

  He pushed the accelerator a little harder.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Ashley,” Pilar called into the kitchen door she’d opened in the cavernous Harcourt mansion. Her voice echoed off faraway walls, but the only other sounds she heard were from squirrels cracking nuts at the base of a huge maple not far from the entrance.

  “Ashley, are you in here?”

  She’d often wondered what the mansion would look like up close instead of from a distance atop its mile-long driveway, but this way felt like such an invasion. She had no business being here.

  When Zach had hurried out of the police station to find Ashley, she’d been so sure she would be there, but she felt far less certain now. She didn’t even know Ashley Harcourt except by newspaper pictures for all her school awards. How had she thought she was going to be of some help when she got there?

  “Is that door unlocked?” Zach rushed around from the back of house where he’d planned to try the pool-house entrance. “That one was locked, too.”

  “It doesn’t sound like there’s anyone in there.”

  He came up beside her and pushed the door all the way open. “This place is so big that a half-dozen people could be inside, and they’d barely notice each other.”

  Pilar followed him into the huge stainless-steel kitchen. “I guess you’re right. Rachel said the house has seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms.”

  Together, they passed a dining room with a long mahogany table and a crystal chandelier, and then crossed through a mammoth living room that looked like a designer’s showroom before they reached a grand stairway. Zach took the stairs two at time, so she rushed to keep up.

  At the top, he pointed down a long hallway. “You take the east wing. I’ll take the west.”

  She followed his direction, but she’d only entered the second empty bedroom when she heard him call out.

  “Pilar, in here.”

  Hurrying toward where she believed she’d heard the sound, she stepped into a room decorated in lavender and pastel yellow.

  “Zach, where are you?”

  She scanned the room with its filmy white curtains, Victorian dollhouse in the corner and a huge lacy canopy over the four-poster bed. It was a child’s room, certainly not a place where a seventeen-year-old girl would live. Still, the bedcovers were twisted, and wrappers of food items littered the nightsta
nd, so someone had been there recently.

  “In the bathroom. Hurry.”

  In the far corner, she noticed light leading from an open door. She could hear him talking to someone in a soft voice. She rushed to the door to find him crouched down just inside it. Beyond him, lying curled up in a blanket was a young woman she could only imagine was Ashley Harcourt. She didn’t look anything like the newspaper photos. Her hair was supposed to be blond, but it was so wet with sweat that it appeared black.

  “It’s going to be all right, Ashley,” Zach crooned to the girl as he brushed hair back from her face. “I’m Detective Fletcher and this is Pilar Estes, and we’re going to get you to the hospital.”

  “So cold,” she whispered, her teeth chattering though the blanket covered her up to her chin.

  “I know you are, but we’ll help you get warm again real soon,” he told her.

  “I think I’m going to vomit.” But she didn’t jerk up and reach for the toilet. One of her hands wormed out of the covers to press against her lower back. “It hurts.” With the last she cried out, her eyes squeezed shut.

  Zach looked over his shoulder at Pilar, uncertainty clouding his face, before he turned back to the girl and patted her shoulder. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Pilar crouched beside him to lend her support. “It’s okay, Ashley. Help is here now.”

  “I want my…”

  “Mom?” Pilar filled in the word for her. Children always seemed to cry out for their mothers when they were sick, even those with mothers unworthy of that title. This poor disoriented girl probably needed her mother now more than ever.

  But Ashley only shook her head so hard that her long, loose hair whipped back and forth. “Want my baby.”

  Pilar stilled, her breath stuck in her throat.

  Zach turned and shoved his cell phone into her hand. “Here. Call an ambulance.”

  The phone felt cold on her skin, but for the life of her, Pilar couldn’t lift her other hand to dial it. Her feet seemed to be cemented to the floor.

  Zach stood and hurried to the sink, dampening a washcloth before turning back to brush it over the young woman’s face.

  He looked over his shoulder again. “Pilar,” he said in a sharp voice. “You’ve got to snap out of it.”

  Her head jerked, and she came to her feet.

  “Now try to dial.”

  She did as she was instructed, her thoughts no more clear than they’d been from the moment she’d seen Ashley collapsed on the floor. Somehow she even managed to give the police dispatcher the address of the Harcourt mansion before Zach reached out for her to hand him the phone.

  As she released it, she glanced at the nightstand a second time. Beside it, a large wastebasket overflowed with crumpled tissues, as if the person who’d rested in the bed had suffered from a terrible cold. Or had been crying her heart out.

  No, she couldn’t think about those things now. About mommies and babies and how real mothers didn’t leave. About mistakes and regrets and second chances. She couldn’t wrap her thoughts around any of it right now. She wouldn’t even let herself try.

  Everything happened so quickly after that. Sirens blared. Emergency workers converged like a military invasion. A girl was taken away on a gurney. In what seemed like only minutes, the house was empty again except for Zach and Pilar, who stood near the kitchen door.

  “Are you okay?” Zach asked the question, though the fact that he put his hand under her elbow to steady her suggested he already knew the answer.

  A shrug was the best response she could come up with. “Do you think she’ll be all right?” She couldn’t shake the image of the pale, feverish teenager, crying for her baby. Her heart ached for that broken child and her family.

  He shook his head. “Hard to tell. The EMTs said her blood pressure was dangerously low. I don’t know what that means.”

  His grim expression and creased forehead suggested that he’d at least guessed. If Ashley died, would Zach be forced to live his sister’s death all over again? For a few seconds he squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose as if he was fighting off a headache. He was reliving Jasmine’s death, all right.

  “You did the best you could.”

  Zach opened his eyes and glanced sidelong at her. “Did I?” He paused, probably turning his recrimination inward. “Do you think the Harcourts or their daughter will think so?” His words came out like the acid he must have been feeling inside.

  But Pilar couldn’t let him do this, not when he’d turned himself inside out looking for clues to lead them to Gabriel’s mother. Plenty of mistakes had been made in Ashley Harcourt’s unfortunate situation, and she refused to let Zach take the blame for all of them. He’d already accepted more blame than anyone should in one lifetime.

  “Just give yourself a break, will you?” She let out an exasperated sigh. “You probably saved her life.”

  “And if I didn’t?”

  Their gazes met, but neither spoke since there was no good answer to that question. In silence, they climbed in his car and turned back toward the station.

  Pilar risked a glance at him, but his gaze was focused on the road, his jaw tight. The situation just didn’t seem fair. Though he worked in the criminal justice system, there’d been no justice for Zach. He’d found the answers to close this case, but the answers brought him not relief but a chance to relive his darkest days. If only there was something she could do to help him.

  Father, please provide healing in this situation for Ashley and her family. And, Lord, help Zach to find peace with his past and present.

  Mouthing the word “amen,” Pilar felt her stomach clench with uncertainty. She sent out one last desperate appeal: Please let her live.

  She should have been asking for God’s will in the situation, so she hoped He would understand. This wasn’t for her but for the man she loved, the man who’d already lost too much. Though the whole situation was plagued with uncertainties, there was one thing she felt certain about: If they were already too late and Ashley died, Zach would never forgive himself.

  Zach couldn’t tell if the antiseptic odor in his nostrils was real or simply part of a memory he was fighting to block out as he waited at the Bon Secours Richmond Community Hospital late Monday night. Still, he swallowed hard to keep from gagging at the smell while the grim news played over and over in his mind like an old record, its music discordant, its lyrics interminable.

  Septicemia, they’d called her condition. The E.R. doctor had surmised that it started with a simple bladder infection from the delivery and had continued over days unchecked into a kidney infection. Left untreated in those thirteen days since Gabriel’s birth, the bacteria had spread through her whole body, causing the pain, the chills and what else he didn’t even want to imagine.

  The doctors had told him they were fortunate they’d gotten to her before her organs began to shut down. Somehow he didn’t feel very fortunate.

  Though he hadn’t seen her since the ambulance pulled away, he could still picture Ashley, lying curled up on the bathroom floor, delirious with fever. So quickly her image transformed from damp blond hair and dark eyes to the long wavy tresses and deep blue eyes that would haunt his thoughts for as long as he lived.

  Had history gone ahead and repeated itself no matter how hard he’d tried to prevent it? Would another family bear the pain and the blame of a lost life? Why hadn’t he been able to stop it?

  He shook his head hard to expel the images and the feeling that he’d failed Jasmine all over again. No, the circumstances weren’t the same as the other at all. Ashley was still in there fighting to survive. The doctors were battling the infection with hydrating fluids and IV antibiotics. God willing, this young woman might even have the opportunity to grow up and face the consequences of her mistakes instead of losing her life to them.

  “Any word from the doctors?”

  Glancing up from the floor, he saw two cups of vending machine coffee first, and then Pi
lar stretching out one of them to him.

  He shook his head. “Not in the last five minutes.” Other than a few short breaks like that one, they’d both been keeping vigil in the intensive care unit waiting room all night. His sergeant would call this going beyond the call of duty, but his shift was long since over, so it was up to him whether or not he chose to hang out at the hospital, waiting for word. That Pilar had stayed with him meant more than he could say.

  Her mouth curved in a sad smile. “I could hope, couldn’t I? I’m just waiting for God to heal her.”

  Zach made his best attempt at a smile. She was trying; he could, too. He accepted the coffee and held it between his hands for several seconds, letting the warmth seep through his fingers, before taking a sip. He should have been numb to it by now, but it tasted just as nasty as the last two cups.

  “Any word on the Harcourts?”

  Pilar took a drink from her cup and grimaced. “Rachel said their flight was to take off from London two hours ago, so they’ll make it in by morning.”

  Neither of them bothered to point out that it was almost morning already. Ashley had already held on quite a while. Now she just had to keep fighting through that first critical twenty-four hours.

  “The sergeant has assigned a squad car to meet them at the Richmond airport.”

  She nodded, still standing there. With purple half-moons shadowing her eyes, she looked as if she could sleep without bothering to lie down.

  “Here. Sit.” He patted the seat next to his.

  She dropped into the seat with a sigh. When Zach put his arm around her shoulders, she snuggled into the crook of his arm.

  “This is nice,” she murmured, her eyes closed.

  “There’s nothing else we can do for a while. Why don’t you try to rest?”

  She looked up at him from under her lashes. “Are you sure everything’s okay here?”

  He couldn’t help smiling, knowing full well he was the everything she spoke of. “Sure, everything will be fine.”

  “I guess it will be a while before the Harcourts get here. I could rest my eyes for a few minutes.”