Paternity Unknown

by Barrett, Jean

  “I guess you won’t object, Mrs. Sterling,” the Mountie said, “if we all sit down and talk about this. Because it looks like Mr. Heath here has a lot to tell us.”

  IF CHARLIE HEATH did have a lot to tell them, he was in no hurry to divulge it. He huddled in a leather wing chair situated beneath an abstract painting, looking like a trapped an imal confronted by his captors. Four pairs of accusing eyes, including Ethan’s from where he was seated beside Lauren on the sofa, stared at Heath, waiting for him to begin.

  But as deflated as Charlie was, as useless as he must have realized it would be at this stage to deny his role in the whole dirty conspiracy, he was still a lawyer. He knew better than to incriminate himself, at least not before he paved the way for his defense.

  Ethan watched him run his tongue nervously across his lips that must have been dry with fear. “All right,” he finally said, “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I want it on record that I’m cooperating in order to help Brand and Ms. McCrea to recover their daughter.”

  “Understood,” Dick Frazier agreed, pencil poised above the open notebook on his lap.

  “There’s something else,” Heath cautioned the Mountie.

  “I’m an American citizen, and this is Canada. Anything I tell you here about what happened in the States can’t be used against me back there.”

  Was that true, or was the lawyer simply going to any lengths to protect himself? Looking for confirmation, Ethan’s gaze met Dick Frazier’s where he sat near the door, but the Mountie shrugged.

  Claudia Sterling spoke up sharply from her own chair on the other side of the room. “Stop stalling, Charlie, and get on with it.”

  “Seattle,” the lawyer began. “It started in Seattle about fifteen months ago when Hilary Johnson—she was Jonathan Brand’s housekeeper—came to me about…well, she wanted my advice.”

  Yeah, Ethan thought sourly, if it was something shady, she would go to you and not one of the other lawyers in the firm. Because if it was connected with his grandfather’s estate—and Ethan realized by now that it was—then Heath, for the right price, could be counted on to supply her with informa tion. There had been rumors about Heath’s questionable practices, and Hilary could have heard about them. Talk, too, about the firm letting him go. That talk might have triggered the young lawyer’s greed.

  “Advice about what?” the Mountie asked.

  “Her nephew, Anthony Johnson.”

  This is it, Ethan thought, leaning forward with anticipation, sensing he was about to hear a major revelation.

  “Anthony was Hilary’s only living family,” the lawyer explained. “The son of her sister, Louise, who died several years ago. Louise never told either Hilary or her son who Anthony’s father was. Said it was no one’s business but hers.”

  “Hilary never said anything about a nephew,” Ethan said.

  “And no one we talked to in Elkton mentioned him, either,” Lauren added. “As far as they knew, Hilary had no surviving family.”

  “I don’t think she saw much of him while he was growing up,” the lawyer said. “Anyway, the woman was as close-mouthed about her affairs as her sister must have been.”

  “But not on the day she came to see you, was she, Mr. Heath?” the Mountie said.

  “No,” Charlie admitted. “She told me that her employer had asked her to get rid of some things cluttering up a closet. She could sort through them to make sure nothing valuable was thrown out by mistake, but she wasn’t to bother him about them unless she came across something important. There was a box of old photographs at the back of this closet. One of them—and it was labeled—was a picture of the old man’s youngest son, Mackenzie Brand, who had died years ago in a plane crash.”

  Along with my father and mother, Ethan thought, beginning to understand where this reference to his uncle Mac was going and impatient for the lawyer to get there.

  “‘People can resemble each other, and it doesn’t mean beans,’” Heath continued. “That’s what Hilary said to me that day. How she’d been aware of her nephew’s likeness to the Brands but had never thought anything about it. Until she came across that photo of MacKenzie Brand. ‘The spitting image of Anthony,’ she swore.”

  Ethan had no reliable memory of his uncle and, as far as he could recall, had never seen a picture of him, not one that had stayed with him, anyway. But the eyes! Hadn’t he been told that he and MacKenzie shared those distinctive blue-green eyes that were a Brand family trait? Sara’s eyes. The same eyes as—yeah, it had to be.

  Ethan’s insides tightened with the certainty of it even before the lawyer could tell them it was true. What’s more, he knew that Lauren also understood what they were about to hear. She had turned her head and was gazing at him, her warm, brown eyes registering her concern for him.

  But Dick Frazier was still very puzzled. “And?” the Mountie probed.

  “Hilary wanted me to find out if Anthony could be the old man’s grandson,” the lawyer said. “I told her I didn’t have any experience with that kind of investigating, but I knew someone who did.”

  I’ll just bet you did. Buddy Foley, of course. The two of them must have put their heads together, Ethan thought, and decided there was a real opportunity here for big money.

  “Who was this?” the Mountie asked.

  “Buddy Foley,” Heath said. “He agreed to look into it by going up to Windrush and—”

  “Here?” Frazier interrupted him. “Why here in Windrush?”

  “Because Hilary’s sister, Louise, was a maid at the hotel. She’d worked in this place for years. This was where Anthony was conceived and born. Actually, he pretty much grew up here, according to Hilary.”

  “Go on,” the Mountie urged.

  Heath nervously licked his lips again. “Could I have some water?” Claudia Sterling rose from her chair, went into the galley and returned with a glass of water that she handed wordlessly to the lawyer. There was a long, taut silence in the sitting room while they all watched Charlie gulp from the glass.

  Ethan was rigid with impatience. The couple who had his daughter had a head start on them, and every minute they sat here meant they were getting farther away. Lauren, close beside him, had to have sensed his restlessness and understood it. She put a restraining hand on his arm. He knew what she was silently telling him. That she, too, wanted action, but hearing everything the lawyer had to say could be vital to their recovery of Sara. She was right.

  “Are you ready now to go on, Mr. Heath?” the Mountie asked.

  Charlie nodded. Cradling the glass in his lap between both hands, he continued. “Buddy learned at the hotel that MacKenzie Brand had been a guest there before his death. They couldn’t tell him anything else, but he managed to find a woman in Kingstown who had worked with Louise at Windrush. She’d promised Louise never to share her secret with anyone, but he finally got her to admit that Louise and MacKenzie Brand had had an affair.”

  Dick Frazier, who had been taking all of it down, looked up from his notebook. “And Anthony Johnson was the result?”

  It was unlikely that the young Mountie had ever handled anything of this magnitude before. But Ethan had to admire how thorough he was being, which said a lot about the RCMP’s training of its recruits.

  “Yes, Buddy was convinced by the time he came back to Seattle that MacKenzie Brand had been Anthony’s father. I was ready to give Hilary his information and charge her for our services, but Buddy said no. This was too big, and why shouldn’t we get a cut of the fortune her nephew was bound to inherit when we turned up a second grandson for Jonathan Brand?”

  “And Hilary Johnson agreed to this?”

  “I—yes. I convinced her it was a delicate business, and she needed us to handle it. We would arrange for a blood test, a DNA if necessary, to verify her nephew’s claim. Only we needed to be patient. There was talk around the firm that the old man might cut Ethan out of his will altogether, or that Ethan himself was ready to renounce any claim to the estate, and if eith
er of those happened—”

  “Anthony Johnson would get it all,” the Mountie said.

  “That was part of it, yes. But it was also true that Jonathan Brand had an unpredictable nature. He would need to be approached with care if we were to persuade him to acknowledge Anthony as his grandson. I cautioned Hilary about this, thought she understood the risk, but…”

  The lawyer’s gaze shifted from the Mountie to Ethan. Meeting Ethan’s cold stare, he seemed to shrink into the wing chair.

  “What?” Dick Frazier pressed him.

  “She made a mistake. She didn’t wait for us to prepare her nephew. She told him who he was. He turned up at the Brand mansion, demanding to be recognized. Ethan had just stormed out of the place, and the old man was in no mood for Anthony. There was an ugly scene in the library, and…”

  Reluctant to go on, Heath lifted the glass to his mouth again. It struck Ethan then as he watched the lawyer drink. Not the realization that it was Anthony Johnson who had murdered his grandfather in some blind rage or that he had ended up stealing Ethan’s kid. These he had already accepted, even before he knew they were a certainty.

  What hadn’t registered with Ethan until now, probably because he’d been unwilling to admit it, was that Anthony Johnson was his cousin, connected to him by blood. Family. Somehow that made everything even worse.

  Lauren must have known what he was feeling. That’s why she found his hand and squeezed it. Curling his fingers around her own, he squeezed back, letting her know how much he appreciated her understanding.

  “Go on, counselor,” Ethan prompted Heath, unable to help the bitterness in his raspy voice, “tell us the rest. How Hilary covered for her nephew and how, along with her, you and Buddy Foley let me take the blame for my grandfather’s murder.”

  “I didn’t want you to go to prison!” he cried. “I was ready to speak out, but Buddy said you’d be all right. That, without better evidence, they would never convict you.”

  Ethan gazed at Charlie Heath, disgusted by his desperate pleas to look less guilty than he was. The man was weak and contemptible, deserving no sympathy. And Foley had been no better. No wonder the cop had believed in his innocence and had so falsely befriended him when he’d known all along who the real killer was.

  “And, of course, the money had nothing to do with your silence, did it, Charlie?”

  “There was all that wealth, and you didn’t want it.”

  “That’s right. Why shouldn’t another heir turn up after all the smoke had cleared? Anthony could still make a claim on the estate, only now he’d get all of it. Plenty for him to share with you and Foley and his aunt. All the four of you had to do was wait a reasonable time. Except you didn’t figure on my daughter, did you? She must have been a big surprise.”

  “It would have been all right, if…”

  “What? If her paternity had remained unknown? But it didn’t, did it? I discovered her existence. A real blow after all your watching and waiting, huh?”

  “I wanted to abandon the whole thing then and there. I did,” Charlie insisted. “But Buddy said no. That it could still work out.”

  “Yeah, we know how. By removing Sara from the scene before it could be proved that she was a legitimate heir to two-thirds of the Brand fortune.”

  “Kidnapping the baby was Buddy and Hilary’s idea, not mine, I swear.”

  “And then what?” It made Ethan sick to ask it, but he had to know. “Exactly how was she supposed to be eliminated?”

  “Not what you’re thinking. Hilary and I would never have stood for the baby being harmed in any way. And she hasn’t been. She was meant to…just disappear.”

  “By what means?” the Mountie solemnly asked.

  The lawyer cast his gaze around the room, but if he expected help from any of them, he got none. Ethan, watching his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously as he swallowed, resisted an urge to put his hands around that skinny throat.

  “It—it was Buddy who arranged for it,” Charlie said in a small voice, still trying to pile all the blame on Foley.

  The Mountie aimed the point of his pencil at the lawyer. “Arranged for what, Mr. Heath?”

  “Sara is to be sold to a baby broker.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lauren felt Ethan’s fingers around hers stiffen with rage. In the next second, he snatched his hand away, tightening it into a fist as he surged to his feet.

  She was equally appalled and angry and didn’t blame him when he started across the room toward the lawyer, shouting lividly, “You son of a—”

  “No, Mr. Brand, bad idea.” The Mountie came swiftly out of his chair to stop him. “We need to hear the rest if we’re going to get your daughter back.”

  Watching Ethan, Lauren realized just how difficult it was for him to restrain himself. But to her relief he did manage to control his fury, because Dick Frazier was right. They needed to hear all of it.

  The lawyer, cowering in the depths of the wing chair, babbled rapidly, “It isn’t as awful as it sounds.”

  Not awful? Lauren wondered how he could say such a thing when trafficking in stolen babies was a despicable practice. One of the worst she could imagine. Just the thought of Sara being handed over to an illegal baby broker sickened her.

  Heath, fearing that Ethan might still attack him, tried to soften the whole thing. “She would have been adopted by a wealthy couple. Raised with love and given every advantage.”

  Yes, Lauren thought, because only a wealthy couple des- perate for a baby, and either not qualifying for one lawfully or unwilling to wait, could afford to buy one with no questions asked. Sara would be placed with people who were not only rich but who lived so far away from the place of her birth that it would be impossible to trace her. And though she would be raised with love and care, her true parentage would never be revealed to her.

  Lauren couldn’t stand it. The thought of losing Sara forever, of never seeing her again was unendurable. They had to find her, get her back before she could be turned over to that baby broker.

  “Why?” the Mountie asked the lawyer. “Why were all of you going ahead with this thing? From what Ms. McCrea was able to tell me on the way over and from what I’ve learned here, you and Foley, along with Anthony Johnson and his aunt, must have realized it could no longer work. That Ms. McCrea and Brand were beginning to understand what was happening back in Elkton and that Anthony Johnson no longer stood a chance of claiming any part of that estate. So, instead of just pulling out while you could, why risk selling their baby?”

  “We had to,” Charlie said. “Anthony was giving us no choice. He promised not to involve Buddy and me, providing he got enough money to disappear. And if he couldn’t get his hands on the Brand fortune…well, top prices are paid for healthy Caucasian babies.”

  “You miserable—”

  Ethan started to go for him again, but the Mountie held him back.

  “I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, not after it started to come apart.” The lawyer was practically whimpering by now. “But Buddy insisted that I be on the train with him. That we both had to see to it that Anthony was able to deliver the baby to the broker as planned, because if anything went wrong and he was caught, he would bring all of us down.”

  Claudia Sterling spoke then for the first time, contempt in her voice. “Resourceful, aren’t you, Charlie? I understand it now. You used me to plant yourself here. Because the business of explaining the property transaction in person was just an excuse, something that could have waited.”

  There was something that Lauren needed to understand, too. “Why here at Windrush? Why come all this way to deliver Sara to this—” the words were loathsome, but she made herself say them “—this broker?”

  “The broker asked for a remote spot to make the exchange,” the lawyer said “Somewhere safe. But it was mostly because Anthony wanted it that way. It’s familiar ground, and that seems to matter to him. Him and that girlfriend of his, Molly something or other. He met her wh
ile she was working here at the hotel.”

  The blond companion who helped him to kidnap my daughter, Lauren thought.

  “Where are they now?” Ethan demanded.

  The lawyer shook his head. “I don’t know. Hiding somewhere out there until it’s time for them to meet the broker, I suppose.” He cringed when Ethan looked threatening again. “They didn’t tell me, I swear.”

  “What about this rendezvous with the broker?” the Mountie asked him. “Just when and exactly where is this to occur?”

  “Buddy handled all of that.”

  “He must have told you something.”

  “Nothing specific, only that Anthony and his girlfriend were to meet the broker sometime late this afternoon—I don’t know where—and that he was to fly in.”

  “This had better be the truth,” Ethan warned him, “because if you’re lying—”

  “It is the truth. Please, I don’t have anything more to tell you. That’s all I know.”

  Sometime late this afternoon, Lauren thought, her hands clenched in her lap. That gave them only hours to find An thony Johnson and his girlfriend. Because if they didn’t find them, if they were unable to prevent them from handing Sara over to the broker—

  No! That mustn’t happen!

  With a nod of his head in the direction of the passage that led to the other rooms in the car, Dick Frazier indicated his wish to speak privately to Lauren and Ethan. They followed him to the end of the sitting room, stopping just inside the passage where the Mountie could keep an eye on the lawyer in case he tried to bolt.

  Not that he would, Lauren thought. Charlie Heath continued to huddle in the wing chair, looking sad and beaten.

  The three of them conferred in low tones.

  “I wish there were other RCMP officers here to conduct a search for those two and your baby,” the Mountie said, “but as I told you before, I’m it.”

  “What about bringing in other officers from this depot in Kingstown?” Ethan asked.