The Forgiven

by Amanda Stevens

  CHAPTER THREE

  Naomi had been to New Orleans a few times before, and she’d fallen in love with the city each and every time she’d come. Her father had been born and raised in the Crescent City, and Naomi always figured that eventually he would have come back here after leaving his wife and two small daughters behind years ago in Mississippi.

  “N’awlins is in my blood,” she’d heard him once say to her mother. “Once she starts calling you home, there’s nothing you can do but go on back to her.”

  They’d never heard from him after he left, not one phone call or postcard, much less a child-support check. But in all the years of her struggle to raise her children alone, Naomi’s mother had never said a bad word against him, although there were plenty, Naomi included, who would have thought her justified. She’d been that kind of woman. The kind Naomi, as an adult, had tried to emulate. Strong, independent. A woman who lived for the present instead of wallowing in the mistakes of her past.

  But Naomi had learned the hard way that the past was always with you. It never died. It was like a dream you wake from abruptly, all fuzzy and indistinct around the edges but haunting nonetheless. And binding. It was like New Orleans, she thought. Once it had you, it never let you go.

  Before Sadie had disappeared, Naomi and her sister, Abby, had come down here together a few times. Abby had still been a teenager, Naomi in her early twenties. By silent agreement, they’d come not so much to search for their father, but to find something that had been missing inside themselves. Something that was as elusive as it was fragile.

  They’d walked the streets of the French Quarter, blending with the tourists, window-shopping the antique stores along Royal Street, touring the voodoo shop on St. Peter, and all the while their eyes had carefully studied the faces of passing strangers, the weathered visages of street corner musicians and the artisans who gathered in Jackson Square. Was he among them? Would they recognize their own father if they met him face-to-face? Would he have the same eyes that stared back at them from a mirror? The same mouth? The same color of hair?

  After Sadie had gone missing, Naomi had come back here by herself once. She wasn’t sure why. Something had called to her, she supposed. Or maybe it was just loneliness. Desperation. Perhaps it had been nothing more than her fascination for a city she found both mystical and exciting.

  Whatever her reason, she’d walked the same streets she’d walked with her sister, searched the same crowds, only this time she found herself looking for her daughter’s face as she did everywhere she went. And the same thought tormented her always. As the years passed, would she recognize her own daughter if she saw her on the street? Would Sadie recognize her?

  It seemed to Naomi that she’d been searching for someone all her life. Her father. Sadie. And now for a child she’d been told fifteen years ago had died at birth. A young girl who had no idea Naomi was her real mother. Those times when she had come to New Orleans—Taryn had been here. So close. Naomi wondered now if it had been the bond with her daughter, and not her search for her father, that had drawn her back to this city time and again.

  But was the bond just as strong for Taryn? When she learned the truth, would something that had been missing inside her finally click into place?

  Or would it be as Michael Connelly had predicted? Would she turn against Naomi for tearing her world apart?

  Shivering, Naomi noticed that the room had grown quite dark while she’d sat contemplating her situation. She glanced around the living room of her hotel suite, thinking that the gloomy atmosphere had been caused by her thoughts, but then she realized that as the day melted into late afternoon, storm clouds had gathered over the city.

  From where she sat at the small cherry-wood desk near the windows, Naomi could see the dark clouds rolling in from the Gulf of Mexico, and she watched them for a moment, remembering that it had rained every time she’d come to New Orleans. Should she take that as a sign? she wondered.

  She reached over and switched on a white alabaster lamp that sat at the corner of the desk, but the warm glow of light did little to cast off the storm’s pall.

  The Spencer Hotel, located on Royal Street in the heart of the Vieux Carr;aae, was a beautiful hotel, oozing with Old World charm and Southern hospitality. Normally Naomi wouldn’t have been able to afford such luxury. She drew only a small salary as one of the directors of the Children’s Rescue Network. But Jared Spencer, the president of the Spencer Hotels Corporation, had insisted on making all the arrangements for her when he learned she was coming to New Orleans.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Naomi would have refused. She liked to pay her own way, but Tess Campbell had made Naomi understand that it was something Jared wanted to do. Having been reunited with his own long-lost daughter, he was compelled to do everything he could to help Naomi find hers.

  “You’re lucky you and Jared have each other again,” Naomi had told Tess.

  Tess had merely smiled, but it was the luminous smile of a woman in love. A smile that had made Naomi all too aware of the emptiness in her own life. The next day, she’d left for New Orleans.

  And here she was, alone and searching for her daughter. Always searching. Always alone.

  But Naomi had learned a long time ago that feeling sorry for yourself got you nowhere. Far better to put her efforts into something positive—like leaving no stone unturned to be reunited with her daughter.

  Resolved once again, Naomi turned her attention back to the file Michael Donnelly had given to her before she’d left Eden. He’d provided a detailed account of all his activities and the interviews he’d conducted since she’d hired him, and as Naomi scanned his notes, she found it odd that no one remembered anyone accompanying Aubree that night. She’d shown up at the hospital in the middle of the storm, much as Naomi had, in the throes of hard labor. But Naomi was from Eden. What had Aubree been doing so far from her home?

  As she read through Donnelly’s account of that night, Naomi’s mind drifted backward in time. She remembered racing to the hospital, trying to outrun the tornado, trying desperately to get help for her babies. And when she was finally there, the nurses had wheeled her into delivery. Their actions had been harried, their expressions worried, but not for Naomi.

  “We’ve got the other mother prepped, but we still haven’t heard from Dr. Simms.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Not good. We’re having trouble finding the baby’s heartbeat—”

  That woman, Naomi now realized, must have been Aubree DeWitt. Her baby had died that night, and someone had taken one of Naomi’s babies to replace her. But who? Who had been at the hospital with Aubree DeWitt on that night? Who had persuaded Willa Banks to swap the two babies?

  No one at Eden Memorial had known who Aubree was when she was first admitted. It was only after she’d been taken to County hospital that someone had supplied the admittance desk with her name and address. Which proved that someone had been with her. The same someone who had stolen Naomi’s baby?

  Donnelly had included very little about Aubree DeWitt’s murder because he’d used the limited resources provided by Naomi to investigate the events that had occurred on the night she’d given birth to her twins. He’d done exactly what she’d asked him to do—he’d found her daughter—but now, suddenly, Naomi was consumed with curiosity about Aubree DeWitt. She felt an odd connection with the woman, probably because Aubree had raised Naomi’s child as her own.

  But was it more than that? Having met Alex DeWitt, was she more than a little curious about the kind of woman he had married?

  She closed the folder and rubbed her eyes, then got up and walked over to the window. Opening the French door, she stepped out on the tiny balcony that overlooked Royal Street. It was still early, just after seven, but the coming rainstorm had chased most of the tourists inside. The few scattered pedestrians were locals, accustomed to New Orleans weather. They leaned against buildings, lingered on street corners, nowhere to go, no one to see. Just anot
her rainy twilight in the Big Easy.

  Now and then Naomi caught the faint sound of music, a saxophone, she thought, but the mournful notes were as elusive as dreams in the falling darkness.

  And through the quiet came another sound, whispering along the rooftops. Rain began to fall, gently at first, and then with a steady drumbeat on the sidewalks and streets until even the locals sought shelter in recessed doorways and under awnings.

  Droplets splashed against the ornate black railing on the balcony where Naomi stood, but instead of stepping back, she leaned forward, eyes closed, letting mist from the falling rain settle on her face. She felt tired suddenly. Overwhelmed. In spite of her best efforts, it was hard on evenings like this not to dwell on her losses. Not to succumb to the despair.

  It was hard not to think of Sadie.

  Naomi sometimes wondered if she and her daughter would have remained in Eden if Sadie hadn’t disappeared. Naomi had been an unwed mother in a small Southern town, and even fifteen years ago, that status carried a stigma. Sly looks, gossip. It hadn’t always been easy. She and Sadie might have been better off making a fresh start somewhere else, perhaps even here in New Orleans, a city that had drawn Naomi unaccountably for years. But she’d only been eighteen when her daughters were born. She’d needed her mother’s help.

  So when she’d left the hospital, she’d gone back to her mother’s house where she and Sadie had shared a bedroom until Naomi’s sister had eventually moved into town when she’d gone to work for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. Sadie had inherited Abby’s old room, and then one day she hadn’t come home from school.

  As the years passed, Naomi had stayed on in her mother’s house, even after her mother died, because that was the only home Sadie had ever known. That was the place she would come to if she could somehow find her way back.

  But in ten years, she hadn’t come back. Now Naomi was searching yet again, this time for another daughter, and she shivered as a strange uneasiness settled over her.

  The rain had eased up, but the chill inside Naomi deepened. Suddenly she couldn’t seem to stop trembling. She wore a sleeveless light blue shell and slim black pants with sandals, and for a moment, she thought about going back inside for a sweater. But it wasn’t the weather that had caused her blood to go cold. It was the dart of an image, like the lunge of a sleek panther, through her mind.

  Unbidden, Alex DeWitt was back inside her head.

  To be truthful, he hadn’t been far from Naomi’s thoughts all afternoon. That look of suppressed rage in his eyes. The warning note in his voice. “If you try to harm my daughter in any way, I will make your life a living hell.”

  Had he made his wife’s life a living hell before he’d killed her?

  That’s not fair, Naomi immediately admonished herself. He’d never been charged or convicted of anything. As far as she knew, he’d never even been a suspect. She’d been the subject of gossip herself so she knew how rumors could get started. A rich wife. A troubled marriage. A handsome husband who could have his pick of any woman he wanted.

  Yes, Naomi thought, a man like Alex DeWitt invited talk. Dark and brooding, he wouldn’t take the time to disavow the rumors. More than likely, he would simply mock them.

  Had he loved Aubree? Had he been devastated by his wife’s murder? Had he tried to move heaven and earth to find her killer?

  Even after all these years, was he gripped in the middle of the night by the same loneliness that plagued Naomi?

  Somehow she doubted it.

  According to Michael Donnelly, Alex DeWitt had come back to the States only long enough to collect his daughter before heading back to London, where they’d remained for nearly ten years. Why, after all this time, had he decided to move back to New Orleans? Because he thought the talk would have died away by now?

  Because the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime? Naomi shivered again.

  And what about Aubree’s parents? Donnelly had told her that the Bellamys had tried to get custody of Taryn before Alex had swept her off to England. Had his been the action of a desperate father or a guilty conscience?

  Naomi stared down at the glistening sidewalk, her disquiet suddenly turning restless. The rain had stopped, and people were coming back to the streets, materializing from doorways and shops and alleys deep with shadow. She had the sudden urge to be out among them. To pretend for a little while that she belonged here, that she had no greater care in the world than to decide where to have dinner.

  Turning, she went inside and closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  THE LAW OFFICES of Brown, Jenrette and Boudrieux were located in an old warehouse on North Peters, on the French Quarter side of Canal Street near the waterfront. On the easy side of Canal, some would say.

  The location was not an accident. The laid-back style of the Quarter mirrored the relaxed and somewhat unorthodox approach to the law shared by the firm’s three partners—Danny Brown, Wilson Jenrette and Foley Boudrieux. An approach that had made them, to no one’s greater surprise than their own, all highly successful attorneys and wealthier than any of them had dared dream of back in law school. The hustle and bustle of the Central Business District, the location of the world headquarters of Ventura Oil, was only a short distance away, but it might have been a world away.

  Alex found a parking spot, got out, then glanced up at the faded warehouse as he strode across the street. From the outside, the old brick building retained a crumbling facade that gave the impression of having been forgotten by both time and progress, but like most of the other warehouses in the area, including the famous Jax Brewery, the building had been given a thorough makeover inside.

  A freight elevator carried Alex to the second floor, where he stepped into a world of buttery leather sofas in soft autumn colors, teak floors that gleamed beneath Oriental rugs, and lush oil paintings by talented local artists tastefully displayed in exotic wood frames.

  The receptionist had already left for the day, but Foley Boudrieux was expecting him. When Foley heard the clamor of the elevator, he stuck his head out his office door and motioned Alex down the hall.

  The proclivity for trouble that had almost been his downfall in college still gleamed in Foley’s eyes, but he’d made an effort over the years to look, if not always act, the part of successful attorney—jacket and silk tie in respectable shades of gray; tasseled loafers buffed to a high sheen; crisp Egyptian cotton shirts in white or light blue. His hair was the color of red Georgia clay, his eyes the brilliant, piercing blue of a summer sky. He had been Alex’s closest friend since their college days at Tulane, and it was for this reason, as much as for his professional expertise, that Alex had called him after Naomi Cross’s visit that afternoon.

  And, too, Alex had been reluctant to consult with the firm of attorneys retained exclusively by Ventura Oil because he wanted to keep this matter as private as possible. A mute point, he conceded, if Naomi Cross had been sent by Joseph Bellamy.

  “So let me get this straight,” Foley said, once they were settled. He’d offered Alex a whiskey, which he’d declined, but Foley had poured himself a bourbon from the bar he kept concealed and stocked behind a bookcase.

  Relaxed and in no particular hurry to get to the point, he leaned back in his leather chair and propped his feet on his desk, sipping his drink. He’d shed his jacket sometime earlier, and his red suspenders, a glimpse of the real Foley Boudrieux, fairly glowed against the snowy background of his shirt. “Some woman showed up out of the blue at your office today claiming you stole Taryn from her.”

  “Those weren’t her exact words,” Alex said dryly. “She said that her baby had been stolen fifteen years ago from that hospital in Eden, Mississippi, where Aubree had Taryn.”

  “Eden, Mississippi?” Foley lifted his drink. “Where the devil is that?”

  “North of Jackson, I think. Anyway, she says that Aubree gave birth that same night in the same hospital.”

  Foley peered at him ove
r the rim of his glass. “Is that true?”

  Alex hesitated, frowning. “I guess it could be. Aubree went into labor while she was driving from New Orleans to Memphis, but I never could figure out what the hell possessed her to take off on a road trip so close to her due date.”

  Something flashed in Foley’s blue eyes. He set aside his drink and regarded Alex across the expanse of his desk. “Maybe she was running from you.”

  “What?”

  Foley shrugged. “She knew you were coming back to New Orleans for the birth of your baby. Maybe she wanted to make you come look for her.”

  “That would have been like her,” Alex muttered. Impulsive. Eager to make him worry with no thought to the baby’s safety. He shifted uncomfortably. “This woman, Naomi Cross. She said she’d been told that one of her babies had died that night.”

  “One?”

  “She had twins.”

  One auburn eyebrow lifted slightly, but Foley said nothing. Behind him, through long windows, city lights twinkled in the wet twilight.

  Somewhere out there, Naomi Cross was probably plotting her next move, Alex thought grimly. His frown deepened as he tried to imagine what that move might be. “She said recent events in Eden had led her to believe that both her babies had, in fact, been born healthy that night. It was Aubree’s and my baby who had died. Someone swapped the babies—”

  Foley swore so viciously that Alex stopped, stunned. The lawyer’s blue eyes blazed with anger. His expression was usually so benign that it was off-putting to see him suddenly so furious. “That’s the most ludicrous story I ever heard tell. Anyone whoever saw Aubree with that baby would never believe such nonsense. Say what you will about her, but she adored that kid.”

  “I’ve never denied that,” Alex said quietly. He’d long suspected Foley of having deep feelings for Aubree, but he’d never confronted him, perhaps because he’d been unwilling to lose his best friend. Besides, Aubree had never shown the slightest interest in Foley, other than as a friend, someone like all the others in her entourage she could use and manipulate to her own selfish end. If Foley had fallen in love with her, Alex felt nothing but pity for him.