by Metsy Hingle
“It’s true, you know.”
“Yes,” she said, giving him a weak smile.
“Margee, I need you to think back to that night in the chapel. Do you remember seeing anyone else, another woman hanging around after the service? She might have been in another pew or at the back of the church.”
“No,” she began, then stopped. “Wait. There was someone. A woman in the confessional with these fabulous black Prada boots.” As though recognizing his blank look, she explained, “Great shoe designer and very expensive.”
“Margee, the woman,” he said, steering her back on track.
“Anyway, I remember thinking at the time that it was odd for her to be waiting in the confessional since Father doesn’t normally hear confessions on Sunday.”
“Anything else you remember about her?”
She shook her head. “Just the boots. The rest of her was screened by the confessional box. All I saw were her shoes.”
“Thanks,” he said, and gave her a hug. “I appreciate your being straight with me about the adoption stuff. And for what it’s worth, I think Sister Grace gave you good advice. You’re Margee Jardine. Nothing’s going to change that.”
“I know,” she said, and hugged him back.
When he started to leave, she said, “Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Good luck.”
“Jack, what are you doing here?” Kelly asked when Jack showed up at her apartment the next day—only a few hours after he’d left her bed that morning to go home. “I thought you said you were going to use your day off to Christmas shop.”
“Christmas shopping can wait. My mother called me a few minutes ago. She struck pay dirt. She found a Lianne Tompkins in the archived records at St. Ann’s that coincide with the dates on the entries in Sister Grace’s journals.”
Kelly sat down on the couch, tried to absorb the information. Lianne Tompkins, the woman who was probably her mother, had grown up at St. Ann’s just as she had. “She’s Evelyn’s daughter, then,” Kelly said more to herself than to him.
“Leon’s still working on trying to find a birth certificate. The only thing they had on the records about her at St. Ann’s was that her mother was a sixteen-year-old white female who had been residing at a home for unwed mothers. She gave birth to a healthy eight-pound girl and signed over the infant to St. Ann’s so that she could be adopted.”
“Only she wasn’t adopted,” Kelly said, recalling the journal entry where Sister Grace had feared Lianne would discover the truth about her birth. “It was because of the incest. The nuns must have had to reveal that she was the result of incest.”
“That could explain it,” Jack said. “I did a background search but couldn’t find anyone using the name Lianne Tompkins in the current databases. Not even a tax return. What I did find was a piece of property in Pass Christian, Mississippi, that’s owned by Evelyn Tompkins. Guess who owned that property before Evelyn?”
“Lianne Tompkins.” She paused, let that sink in for a moment. “But where is she now? Why would she have signed over the property to her mother—assuming we’re right and that Evelyn was her mother.”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. Since I’m off duty, I thought you might like to take a ride with me to Mississippi and meet Evelyn.”
Meet the woman who was probably her grandmother. A grandmother, Kelly thought, not quite able to grasp the concept of having any family.
“Kelly, if you’d rather not come, it’s all right.”
“No. No,” she repeated. “I’d like to go with you. Just let me get my camera and jacket,” she said. And after locking up, Jack led her downstairs to his car and they headed for the interstate.
Nearly an hour later, they took the interstate exit for the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Jack recounted his conversation with his mother, his own search for Kelly’s birth records and Leon’s conversation with the retired CPA who’d handled Gilbert’s tax returns. “The tax guy told Leon that Gilbert stopped using him for tax work a good five years before he sold the accounting firm and retired, but he did remember that Gilbert’s nurse/office assistant was named Evelyn. He didn’t remember anyone working there named Lianne, though.”
“Jack, I know all of this stuff to do with the investigation is classified. How many rules are you breaking by telling me?”
“A lot.”
“And what happens if your captain finds out? What happens if someone learns you took me with you today to see a witness?”
“Let me worry about it,” he told her.
She reached across the seat, touched his arm. “I want to know.”
“It’ll probably cost me my badge.”
“Oh, Jack. You shouldn’t have put your career at risk because of me.”
He glanced at her, his blue eyes serious. “You mean more to me than my shield, Kelly. This is important to you. So it’s important to me.”
Because she didn’t know what to say, she said nothing. She simply listened as Jack ran his theory of the chain of events by her.
“Evelyn Tompkins gives birth to a baby girl, Lianne, and signs her over to St. Ann’s so that she can be adopted. And the nun she deals with at St. Ann’s is Sister Grace. Sister Grace takes Lianne under her wing. In the meantime Evelyn goes to work for Gilbert and becomes his lover.”
“Then Lianne shows up, looking for her mother,” Kelly added, following his line of thought. She tried to imagine Lianne doing so, imagined how she herself might have felt searching for her own mother and finding her.
“One of Gilbert’s acquaintances falls for Lianne. They have an affair. Lianne gets pregnant, has a baby, but the guy is married and not willing to leave his wife. Lianne tries to make it on her own for a while, but something happens and she decides she can’t do it. So she turns to the one person she knows she can count on.”
“Sister Grace.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “It would make sense, Kelly. If you’re Lianne’s child, she would have taken you to the one place where she thought you’d be safe. She’d have taken you to St. Ann’s to Sister Grace.”
“But what happened to Lianne?” Was it possible that all these years she’d been wrong in believing that her mother was dead?
“I don’t know. Maybe she changed her name, married and made a good life for herself. Then Gilbert finds out where she is, that she has money now or a position to maintain, so he blackmails her, threatens to expose her past unless she pays him.”
“So she murders him and Sister Grace to keep them quiet?”
“If she married well, has a family to protect, she might have felt she had no choice,” Jack offered.
“Then how do you explain the DNA from the hair? The woman is supposed to be late twenties or early thirties. And what about what I saw?”
“Maybe the DNA test was wrong. Maybe you made a mistake,” Jack offered.
It was, Kelly told herself. She’d made mistakes before. It also brought to full circle the connection between Sister Grace and Gilbert, because the man would have known about Evelyn’s daughter’s ties to the orphanage. Yet it didn’t feel right. She remembered the watercolor Lianne had given Sister Grace, the depth of emotion and sensitivity in the painting. And she also recalled Sister Grace’s journals, the way she’d described Lianne. Kelly shook her head. “I don’t know, Jack. It sounds plausible, but it just doesn’t feel right.”
“Why?” he asked as he turned off on the exit that led to Pass Christian.
“Because I don’t think Lianne’s a killer. And even if the DNA test was wrong, I don’t think I am.”
Jack was silent for several minutes. “Then there’s another possibility. If Gilbert’s ex is to be believed, the not-so-good doctor liked to ingratiate himself with important people. If Lianne’s married lover was a prominent citizen, Gilbert could have used that information for his own benefit.”
“That would explain Gilbert being able to skirt all those lawsuits against him, but why would he contact Sister Grace? He could
hardly blackmail her. She didn’t have any money or influence.”
“But she knew who you were, what your name had been changed to and where to find you,” he pointed out.
Kelly went still. She didn’t want to believe it, hadn’t wanted to believe it for weeks now, that Sister Grace had lied to her all these years. Worse, that she had died in her attempt to protect her.
Jack pulled the car off to the side of the road, shifted into Park. He touched Kelly’s arm. “Kelly, think about it. If the father of Lianne’s child—your father—was powerful enough to keep Gilbert out of jail all those years, he probably couldn’t have afforded the scandal of an affair. He certainly would have tried to keep news that he had a lovechild quiet. Maybe he convinced Lianne to give up the baby. And, you said yourself, that since Lianne herself had been at St. Ann’s, it would be logical for her to bring you there to Sister Grace.”
Was that what had happened to her? Had her father been ashamed of her and convinced her mother to abandon her? Had that memory of a woman singing to her been just wishful thinking on her part? And what about the dreams about the fire? The smell of the smoke, the sound of her mother arguing with a woman, and then a man’s angry voice threatening her. She thought about the woman in the chapel with Sister Grace and the DNA link to her. Her father’s legitimate daughter? A daughter who didn’t want to be tainted by the scandal of her father’s mistake?
“Kelly? Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Something hardened inside her. “I want to see Evelyn Tompkins. If you’re right and the woman is my grandmother, maybe she can give me some answers.” Like who was her father? And where was her mother? And who was responsible for killing Sister Grace?
“All right,” Jack told her, and pulled the car back out onto the road.
Twenty minutes later they turned off onto a gravel road lined with magnolia trees. At the end of the road sat a large white stucco house that looked in need of a good coat of paint. As they drew closer, she could see ramps had been added on to accommodate wheelchairs. Several rockers and wheelchairs lined the front gallery and the occupants didn’t seem to notice that the sun had dipped behind the clouds.
After clearing things at the front desk, she and Jack were led to Evelyn’s room by one of the nursing staff. “She’s had a good morning. So she might be of more help to you today, Detective.”
“Thank you. We won’t be long.”
“Ready?” he asked Kelly as they stood outside the room.
Kelly nodded and they stepped into the room. Fueled by anger during the last part of the drive, Kelly hadn’t given much thought to how she would feel about meeting her grandmother. But as she stared at the frail-looking woman with her head bent, sitting in a chair knitting a baby’s bootee, what she felt was sadness. Sadness and regret.
“Hello, Evelyn. Remember me? Detective Jack Callaghan?”
Evelyn looked up, smiled at Jack. And Kelly’s heart skipped a beat. She recognized that dip in Evelyn’s chin as her own.
“Of course I remember you,” Evelyn said, and rocked in her chair as she continued to knit. “I was hoping you’d come back to see me.”
“I’ve brought a friend with me.” He urged Kelly forward. “This is my friend Kelly Santos.”
“Hello, Evelyn,” Kelly said, and extended her hand.
“Ladies don’t shake hands,” she admonished. “Is Jack your beau?”
Caught off guard, Kelly fell silent a moment, but Jack stepped in. “Yes, I’m her beau.”
“I have a beau, too. He’s very handsome and smart.” She leaned closer. “He’s a doctor and he and I are going to get married as soon as his wife gives him a divorce.”
Kelly’s heart ached for this woman who had obviously been lied to and used by Martin Gilbert. “That’s a lovely bootee you’re knitting, Evelyn,” she said, stooping down in front of her. “Who is it for?”
Evelyn looked around, as though searching for prying eyes, then she whispered, “It’s a secret. Promise not to tell?”
“I promise.”
“My daughter’s going to have a baby. But we can’t tell anyone yet.”
Kelly held her breath a moment, got a grip on her ricocheting emotions. Then she noted the framed photograph in the woman’s lap beneath the skein of yarn. “Is that a picture of your daughter, Evelyn?” Kelly asked, pointing to the photo.
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”
Evelyn picked up the photograph, clutched it to her breast. She eyed her warily out of faded brown eyes.
“I promise to be careful.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she handed the picture to Kelly. Kelly held the simple frame, hoping to feel some connection, but the images and impressions were all confused just as Evelyn’s mind was confused. She stared at the photograph. The professional photographer in her saw that the photo was poorly centered and a filter should have been used to soften the brightness of the direct sunlight. But the girl in her who had always wondered what her mother looked like took in every detail of the slim, smiling blonde who stood on the porch. She was young, Kelly thought. Her brown eyes looked bright, eager and happy. There was a freshness about her, a joy in her smile that said “I’m happy. My life is beautiful and perfect.”
Kelly shifted her gaze to the tow-headed child on the woman’s hip whose little fingers she was waving at the camera. Dressed all in pink, the baby had straight pale blond hair like her own, not the caramel-colored waves of her mother. But her eyes were brown—just like the mother’s.
Is that child really me?
Struggling to keep her emotions in check, Kelly studied the rest of the picture. The yellow-and-white wood-framed house. Oh, God, the house in the watercolor, she realized, and drank in every detail. The buckets of flowering plants on the porch. The sandbox with a red plastic pail and shovel off to the right of the house. The two huge magnolia trees that sat off to the left of the house with a swing strung up between them. Kelly drew her finger over the face of the woman in the photograph.
Are you Lianne? Are you my mother?
“Kelly?” Jack placed his hand on her shoulder. She stood, showed him the photograph.
“Evelyn? Is this Lianne?”
Evelyn snatched the photograph from him. “It’s mine. Can’t let anyone know I have it.”
Jack looked at Kelly, then back to the older woman. “Evelyn, do you know where Lianne and the baby are now?”
“They’re gone,” she said, a sadness in her voice.
“Gone where?” Kelly demanded.
“With the angels and saints. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust,” she began, reciting the words from the burial ritual.
“Evelyn, what about Lianne’s baby? Do you know what happened to the baby?” Jack asked.
Evelyn stopped the singsong recital, looked up at Jack. “Won’t tell. You can’t make me tell. I promised never ever to tell.”
“Evelyn, who did you promise you wouldn’t tell?” Kelly asked.
“Shh. Do you hear her? It’s my baby. My baby’s crying for me,” Evelyn said. “Where’s my baby? Sister, do you know where they took my baby girl?”
“It’s all right,” Kelly told her, and touched her shoulder to comfort her.
But the moment she touched her, she was surrounded by Evelyn’s grief. They’d taken her baby from her. She had a flash of a stern-looking man and woman standing over a young girl with tears streaming down her cheeks, of the man cruelly crushing the girl’s fingers around a pen and ordering her to sign the papers.
“Kelly. Kelly.” Jack reached for her hand, pulled her back from Evelyn and the heart-wrenching memories. As though he understood, he said, “She won’t be able to tell us any more today. We should go.”
Once he led her outside, he took her in his arms. Kelly held on to him and explained, “They forced her to sign away her baby, Jack. Her father nearly broke her fingers, he crushed them so hard around that pen. And he forced her to give Lianne away.”
“I know,” he murm
ured, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“I’d like to come back again—later.”
“We will,” he promised, and led her to the car.
“I don’t know,” she said when they reached the car and he opened the door for her.
“You don’t know what?”
“I don’t know who Lianne’s lover was. Evelyn’s thoughts were all jumbled and I couldn’t make sense of what was real and what wasn’t. But I can tell you that I recognized the house.”
“You’re going to have to explain that to me.”
“It’s the house in the watercolor that Lianne sent to Sister Grace, the one that Sister Grace left to me in her will.” When he slid into the driver’s seat of the car, she turned to him. “Do you have the address on that property that you said belongs to Evelyn?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to go there.”
Worry clouded his blue eyes. “Kelly, are you sure you want to do this? You’ve had a lot to deal with today already. I can check it out another time by myself.”
“I need to see it, Jack. I need to find out what happened at that house and why someone was willing to kill two people to keep me from learning the truth.”
“All right,” he told her, and reached across the seat for her hand. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later, they turned down a small road about a mile from the beaches. The houses were mostly shanties and all were worn, weather-beaten and in need of paint. Every few houses there was an empty, overgrown lot with remnants of what had once been a house. Probably lost in one of the hurricanes that swept through the Gulf Coast and wrecked havoc each year. Many people rebuilt while others gave up the fight and moved on to less hostile turf.
“This is it,” Jack said, pulling the car to a stop in front of a lot upon which only a cement slab remained. The pretty little yellow-and-white house was gone. So was the porch with its blooming pots of flowers. The green lawn upon which she’d seen the sandbox had given way to broken tree branches, dirt and weeds. The two big magnolias were still there, but one of them was tilted and the top half of its trunk dangled like a broken arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Jack asked.
