“Is the birthing center still there?” Tracy asked.
“As far as I know, it is. It’s over there on Westheimer in Montrose. It’s a house and it’s very homey. Let’s see…the midwife’s name was Matthews.
“I wish I could remember the nurse’s name.” We were all silent while she thought but she couldn’t come up with a name.
Mark arrived later and we had supper together. Tracy and I decided to go try to find the birthing center. Jake was against it but Tracy outranked him so we went.
Mimi had told us that she believe the cross street next to the center was Riddle and we found it right away. It was a big frame house with a wrap-around porch. It was painted bright pink and trimmed in white.
There was a sign out front that said, “Matthew’s Birthing Center.”
We rang the doorbell but no one came. Tracy tried the door and it was open. We entered a hallway and we could hear crying farther down the hall and someone saying, “Come on baby, just one more push and we’re there.”
There was a scream and Tracy looked at me and grimaced, “I remember this,” she said.
“There, there, it’s all over and you have a beautiful baby boy.”
We waited, knowing someone would come out soon. The baby was born and whoever had delivered him was finished.
A gray haired woman with her hair pulled into a knot on top of her head came out drying her hands on a white towel. She was overweight and was wearing a long cotton print dress with an apron over it.
She shook our hands “Hi, I’m Ms. Matthews.” She said. “How can I help you?”
We introduced ourselves and, as soon as Tracy flashed her badge, Ms. Matthews held out her hands like she was expecting to be cuffed.
“It took you a long time to catch me. What tipped you off?”
“Are you confessing to something, Ms. Matthews?” Tracy asked.
“I…I thought you were here to arrest me.”
“Why would you think that, Ms. Matthews?”
“I don’t know. What did you want?” Now she was getting belligerent.
“About thirty seven years ago you delivered triplets but the mother left here with two babies. What happened to the third baby, Ms. Matthews?”
“How did you find out about that? I want a lawyer.”
“I’ll just bet you do,” Tracy said. She took her cuffs out and Matthews held out her hands. I got a sense that she was almost relieved that it was finally over for her, that she had been looking over her shoulder for all these years.
Another woman came from the back holding the newborn but when she saw Ms. Matthews being handcuffed, she laid the baby down in the nearest chair and ran. Tracy handed me her gun and took off after the other woman. I told Ms. Matthews to sit down and I laid the gun down on the floor against the wall and picked up the baby. He had started crying.
I rocked him in my arms and looked at Ms. Matthews. She was sitting with her head down and she was crying. She wasn’t going anywhere.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue and blew her nose and then she spoke. “It was the only time in my life I did something I knew was bad. I needed the money. I was in danger of losing the center.
“My nurse, Rena, knew a couple who wanted a baby so badly and had plenty of money. They were unable to have kids and they were willing to pay me five hundred thousand dollars. They were oil people who lived out in Tulsa.
“I thought it would be all right and no one would ever know. Jennifer had a hard time giving birth and was so out of it she didn’t know if she had two or three.
“When she woke up she asked me if she had had triplets and I told no, that she had had twins. We kept the other one here until the couple could fly in on their private jet from Tulsa.
“Your parents had already left with you two when the other couple came for the other one. Yes, I know you are one of the triplets. When you and Julia were kidnapped when you were three, it was in all of the papers. When you two were united with your grandmother, when you were sixteen, it was in the papers too.”
She quit talking and I sat there in a state of shock. Tracy came back pulling Rena with her. “Did you call for backup, Judith?”
“No,” I said. I was listening to Ms. Matthew’s confession.”
Tracy groaned. “Judith, first you call for backup, then you wait until her Miranda rights have been read, then you take her confession.”
She looked around, “Where is the gun?”
I laid the baby down on the floor and picked up the gun and handed it to her. Tracy shook her head. She held the gun on the two who were seated on the sofa while she picked up the phone and called for backup.
CHAPTER 8
The two women were put into two separate cars. After notifying Huck and waiting for him to arrive, Tracy left for the agency and Huck and I stayed with the mother and newborn until the mother’s husband and mother came to take him home.
Huck was mad at us for going off on our own without backup but he didn’t say much until his boss was gone. I had to bear the brunt of his anger alone but I didn’t mind and promised him it wouldn’t happen again.
When I got to the agency, Tracy was coming out of an interview room. “They both confessed,” she said. “I interviewed each of them separately and I think they’re being upfront. I believe them when they say this is the only time they’ve done something like this.
“Ms. Matthews said that about a year ago a woman who looked like you came to see her and demanded to know all about you and Julia. She had seen the announcement about your involvement in helping bring down the pedophile ring the year before.
“She had gotten the truth out of her parents and she was furious. When she got the truth out of Ms. Matthews, she pulled a gun and robbed them. She told them that if they called the cops she would tell them what they did, how they sold her to the Limicks in Tulsa.”
“I’m worried about how Mimi’s going to take this,” I said. “And I’m still so worried about Ben.”
She took my hand and squeezed it, “Why don’t you go on home, Judith. We can handle this here.”
I took her up on her offer and Huck took me home. I needed to get all my tires fixed and called AAA. They took care of it right away and by mid-afternoon I had my wheels. The problem was that I didn’t have any direction as to where to go. I spent the rest of the day with Mimi, Brad, and Jesse. We watched a cartoon together on TV until Mark came in and Tracy right behind him.
We waited until after supper to have a meeting. Jesse took Brad upstairs to get him ready for bed and we settled in the front living room where we always gathered for adult talk.
“I think you and I should go to Tulsa, Judith,” Tracy began, “Along with Huck, of course. We’ll leave Jake here to guard the rest of the household. I want us to question the Limicks and see if they have any idea where their daughter could be.”
I was torn between staying in Houston, in case Ben came back, or going with them. I didn’t know where to look so I decided going with them would be my best choice.
We left early the next morning and flew into Tulsa. After checking into a hotel Huck drove us in the rental car. Tracy had the address she had gotten from Ms. Matthews and had picked up a map at the rental company at the airport.
The nice young lady who rented the car to us had highlighted our route in red. The house was a ways outside of Tulsa and there were no neighbors around for miles.
It was a medium-sized white frame house with a wrap-around porch. It looked run down and didn’t look like a house someone would live in who had bought a baby for five hundred thousand dollars.
There were Dickybirds in the field out back but they weren’t pumping any oil. As Mark would say, “The Dickybirds weren’t singing.”
We got out of the car and a woman came out and stood on the front porch with her arms folded. She looked like she had worked hard all of her life and was one solid muscle.
Her hair was platinum blonde and was cut in a spike. She had on black
shorts and a man’s white dress shirt. She had steel blue eyes and was barefoot.
She folded her arms across her flat chest and said, “Just keep on going. You’ve robbed us for the last time. We have nothing else for you to take.”
Tracy and Huck looked at me and I realized she thought I was the other one. When we continued toward the steps, she pulled a small handgun out of her shorts pocket.
She started screaming obscenities and a man came out on the porch rubbing his eyes like he had been asleep.
“Nadine, honey what’s going on?” He looked at least fifteen years older than she. His hair was gray and thin and he was very thin but tall. He was trembling.
Before he could say anymore, Tracy pulled out her badge and handed it to the man.
“If you’re the FBI, why don’t you arrest her?” Nadine asked, motioning towards me.
I reached in my purse and then realized the other woman impersonating me had my ID.
“My name is Judith McCain, Ms. Limick. Your daughter stole my wallet and has been impersonating me. She has my husband.”
She looked from one of us to the other and then put her gun back into her pocket. “Well you might as well come on in. Honey, if she has your husband, then God help him.”
She led us into a small living room. Everything in it was brown and looked old. She saw me looking around and said, “Christina sold everything. This was what was left. Our wells have dried up and she stole everything we had. Even took the car.”
We all sat down and she looked closely at me, “You look much better than Christina.”
“Do you have any idea where she could have gone, Ms. Limick?”
“You can call me Nadine, everyone else does. No I don’t. She has been a problem child since she could walk and talk, always having to have her own way. Puberty seemed to hit her harder than it did me or anyone else I know. She became even more restless than before and started stealing from us and running away.
“She has been in and out of more treatment programs for behavioral problems and for alcohol and drug abuse than I can remember. We have spent thousands and thousands of dollars trying to get her straightened out, but nothing has worked. She only went to the eighth grade. We couldn’t keep her in school.”
The man, who introduced himself as Kenneth, spoke up. “We had been trying to have a baby for a long time but we couldn’t. I bought Christina. I know it was wrong but we were desperate. We were told that the mother was a teenager who didn’t want her. It wasn’t until Christina was sixteen, and we saw your story in the papers, that we realized we had bought one of the McCain triplets.
“We tried to keep the information away from Christina but she found the newspaper in the garbage. She confronted us and we had to tell her she was adopted. That’s when she got so out of control we were both afraid of her. We started sleeping with our bedroom door locked and Nadine started carrying a gun.
“Christina started coming and going when she pleased and we didn’t try to get her into any treatment anymore. She got to where she would have her friends come here with her in a truck and load up with whatever she thought she could sell.
“About a week ago, a woman came here, with Christina, who called herself Jupiter. I don’t know where she met her but she packed Christina up in her car and they left. We haven’t seen her since.”
So, we had hit a dead end, or so I thought until Tracy asked her, “Are there any local friends or boyfriends who we can talk to?”
“Well, there’s Rudy,” Nadine said. “He was crazy about Christina. He has kept in touch with her.” She got up and went into the kitchen and came back with a slip of paper.
“This is his name, address, and phone number, and the name of his school. It’s just around the corner.”
Rudy turned out to be a shy teenage boy of around fifteen or sixteen. He had black hair that he kept attempting to get out of his eyes by throwing his head back. He was extremely skinny. His eyes were the most attractive thing about him. They were blueish-green.
“I haven’t seen her for about two weeks. I wish someone would help her. She’s a good kid underneath all the bull shit, excuse me.”
We had gone to his address and no one was home and then we had realized he was probably still in school. It was during the lunch hour and he was sitting on a park bench on campus alone reading a book on quantum physics.
“You called her a kid,” I said. “She’s the same age as me.”
“Well, yeah, but she acts like a kid. I thought you were her when you first walked up, but you’re more sophisticated.”
“How did you get to be friends with her? How did you meet?”
“I was in the public library downtown and she came in looking lost. She saw me and came over to ask for my help. Probably because I look like a geek, and I am a geek.”
“What did she want help with?” Tracy asked.
“She said she wanted to look at some newspaper articles from the past. I helped her with that.”
“What were the newspaper articles about?”
“They were about a kidnapping that took place in Houston over thirty years ago. There were other articles she looked up but I wanted to get back to my studying. Later, she came over and asked me how to copy these articles and I showed her
“When she was done, she came over and asked if I wanted to go somewhere for a burger and coke, that she was buying. She seemed to be interested in me and asked me all about myself.
“After that, I would go to her house and she would spend time with me. I don’t have a lot of friends and my dad left when I was little. My mom works two jobs so I don’t have anyone to talk to most of the time.
“Being the geek that I am, I don’t mind much because I spend most of my time inside books anyway.”
A bell rang and he stood up and tucked his white dress shirt inside his black slacks. It didn’t stay. He threw his lunch bag in the garbage and gathered up his books.
“I have to go or I’ll be late for class. I’ve never been late before.”
“When can we talk to you again? What time do you get out of school?” I called after him.
“I work at the Better Burger. I go to work at three.” He yelled back as he was running toward the building.
“What a neat kid,” Tracy said, looking after him. She looked at her watch, “I guess we have about three hours to kill. I’m hungry, what about you guys?”
We found a small diner and sat in a booth. The waitress who came to take our order was skinny with big boobs. She had pink hair and her uniform was unbuttoned very low to show off her boobs.
She popped her gum as she headed toward us. “You look mighty fine woman,” she said, looking at me. “You’ve done something to yourself but I can’t figure out what it is.”
“No, I’m not Christina. I’m Judith McCain, her twin, I mean triplet sister.”
“No kidding,” she stood looking at me, popping her gum. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Tracy remained silent and allowed me to question the waitress. “Could you tell us anything about her, like where she might be now?”
She sat down next to Huck, across from Tracy and me, shoving her butt against him.
“Move over you big hunk,” she said. “Is it true what they say about black men?”
Huck didn’t answer, but glared at her. She shrugged and looked back at me. “I’ve known Christina since we were in the second grade. My family moved to Tulsa when my dad got a job on the oil rig working for Mr. Limick.
“Christina and I became friends but when she hit puberty, she went kind of crazy for some reason. She stole from everyone and slept with every boy in town. My parents made me quit associating with her.
“I married and had a couple of kids and settled down. Christina never did and didn’t seem to want to get married. She was in and out of juvie hall until she turned eighteen and then ended up in the adult prison for passing bad checks.
“The last time she got in trouble she had a judge who sentenced h
er to some mental facility and she was in there until about a year ago.
“Then about a week ago she came in here with another woman and ate dinner. She said she was on her way to Houston and had a good job lined up, that she was going to make a lot of money.”
When she didn’t continue, I looked at Tracy.
Tracy asked the waitress, “Did she give any indication about where she would be staying in Houston?”
“All she said was that she would be staying in a fancy hotel with her friend, who she didn’t introduce, by the way.”
Someone called from the back, “Hey Gina, you working or sitting there flapping your mouth? We got customers waiting.”
“Don’t get your jockey shorts in a wad, Roy. I’m coming.” She winked at Huck and got up and took her time going to the back where she picked up two plates of food.
We had been so interested in getting information out of Gina that we hadn’t ordered anything and I realized I was starving.
When Gina was between customers we motioned her over and she took our order. The food was delicious and we sat drinking coffee when we were finished and while we were waiting until it was time go see Rudy at the burger place.
He was once again tucking his shirt into his pants when we went into Better Burger. He motioned us to take a seat and he brought us cokes. The place was full of teenagers ordering burgers.
“It’ll slow down in a little while and then I can talk,” he told us.
We watched him running back and forth carrying burgers from the kitchen to the booths, pausing every now and then to tuck in his shirt. It didn’t take long to feed all the teenagers and he came and sat with us.
“I don’t know what else I can tell you but Christina told me several times that she was going to Houston one day and stay in the Hyatt Hotel. She had seen a picture of a Hyatt in some magazine and said they were the best. I thought of that after I left you earlier. Does that help you at all?”
I looked at Tracy and Huck and both of them nodded. “Thanks, Rudy,” I said and we got up to leave.
Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 04 - Jupiter Returns Page 3
