"Never used on any automobile registered in Texas," Cooper said. "I imagine someone's got an illegal source for plates, too."
Richter was standing in front of the fireplace, arms folded and looking concerned. "I once asked JoLynn about that car—in fact, I offered to buy her something more accessorized than that cheap compact. But she refused, said it was the first brand-new car she'd ever bought. So I asked about helping her with insurance, since she would have to change her county of residence, but she said she'd take care of it. I'm certain any fraud was the work of the charlatan who sold her the car in the first place."
Cooper tried to hide his "You've got to be kidding me" expression, but I caught it. He said, "No matter what the explanation, I have an untraceable car, so I can't check on Miss Richter's activities or acquaintances prior to her arrival here. We have to go down a different road—with Abby's help." He looked to Richter. "You got that birth certificate we talked about?"
"Yes," he answered. "Would you follow me?"
I started to get up, but Cooper spread his arms along the sofa back. "We'll wait here. Damn comfortable furniture you got, sir."
I eased back down in the chair.
Richter hesitated, then finally said, "Fine. I'll get it." He headed toward the long hallway with all its mysterious closed doors.
Cooper removed a driver's license from his uniform shirt pocket and held it up. "JoLynn left her purse when she took off that night. The address is this ranch, so I'm betting the license is fake, too. My guess? Richter will probably come up with an explanation that clears JoLynn of any wrongdoing."
"Are you saying there's a possibility JoLynn isn't related to Richter?" I said.
"Can't say for sure, yet," he answered. "Richter says she arrived here with that birth certificate, that Katarina's name was typed in the mother slot. Father unknown, which is damn convenient."
"Forged or not, that birth certificate might be enough for me to learn if JoLynn lied about being the granddaughter. I've come across plenty of fake certificates in the last few years and almost every forger screws up something."
"Being former FBI, I'm more familiar with counterfeit money than counterfeit birth certificates," he said.
But when Elliott Richter returned, he looked confused and troubled . . . and had no document or envelope in his hands.
"Sh-she gave it to me to put in the wall safe. That was over a year ago."
Even if I had barbed wire for brains, I could figure this one out. "Let me guess," I said. "It's gone."
10
If I'd thought the disappearance of the birth certificate combined with the fake registration and inspection stickers would open Richter's eyes, make him at least a little suspicious of JoLynn, I was wrong. He simply refused to believe she had anything to with the certificate's disappearance.
"One of them took it," he'd said. "They don't want her around."
"One of them?" Cooper said as we stood in a room off Richter's office where the safe was located.
"The precious little family. The ones who'll peck on me like carrion when I'm feeble and senile."
"I see," Cooper answered, checking out the safe's digital lock.
Meanwhile, I said, "Did you give anyone else your entry code?"
I was afraid he'd say JoLynn, but he simply shook his head, looking bewildered.
Along with the wall safe, there were shelves filled with reams of paper, a large shredder, an IBM copier and a backup server for the computer. And an additional door besides the one we'd come through. Maybe some of the rooms were connected, or maybe Richter had an adjoining spot to store his gold bricks.
Cooper was still examining the safe's keypad. "No tool marks or other signs this was tampered with, but if you have the right high-tech gadget, you're in. There's also the tried-and-true method of someone standing over your shoulder and watching you punch in the numbers." "No one did that," Richter said, his bluster back.
"Maybe you wrote down the code somewhere?" I said quickly, not wanting them to start flapping at each other again.
"My attorney has the numbers in a sealed envelope— in case anything should happen to me."
"And he'd be in big trouble if he shared that code, wouldn't he?" Cooper said.
"He would be dismissed, yes," Richter said.
Richter's eyes kept moving left, then right, then left.
Bet he's trying to think who could have possibly figured out that code. "Memory is a strange friend," I said. "Little betrayals all the time. Maybe if you sleep on it, you'll figure out how someone could have gotten those numbers." But I was certain that if Richter came up with a name, it wouldn't be JoLynn's. Kate always tells me denial is the most powerful defense mechanism there is and this guy was using it like he'd just won the BlindSpot Lottery. I couldn't understand why he was so hellbent on believing JoLynn.
Cooper said, "I've got to get back to the shack we call a police station in tiny little Pineview. Either of you get anything, call my cell."
Richter led the three of us to the foyer and Cooper took off after promising to keep this case his top priority.
I turned to Richter. "I'd like to interview the rest of the family. Can that be arranged?"
"With work schedules, daytime is out. Would you find a dinner meeting acceptable? Here? Tomorrow evening?"
"I'd prefer to speak to each one alone."
"Certainly. If they're in my house, they'll cooperate. If you came to the office or went to their homes, I can't promise you their cooperation. You're free to use the library for your interviews."
"I'll need to bring my sister with me. She's in on most of my initial interviews and from what you've said about your family, I might need her. She's a psychologist."
Richter ran a hand through his hair and smiled for the first time since lunch. "Maybe she can cure the whole crew, make them forget about my money and concentrate on their own lives."
"Let me call her, see if she's free."
I opened my phone and hit her speed dial. Kate answered, saying she was hurrying into a session but would be available tomorrow evening. Richter and I settled on a six o'clock dinnertime and then I left for Houston.
First I drove by the crash site—Richter had given me directions. JoLynn had slammed into a live oak near the bottom of a hill and without brakes, only a miracle would have saved her. The two-hour drive stretched to three thanks to an accident, and when I passed a mangled car, I couldn't help thinking again about what JoLynn must have felt as she tried to avoid that gigantic tree.
Once the traffic cleared, I headed straight to Jeff's place so I could have supper with him, Doris and Loreen. I let myself in with my key and found Doris watching an educational DVD on her Learning Laptop. Doris had never been to school prior to coming to live with Jeff and had lots of catching up to do. Besides Loreen, who was wonderful, we'd also found her a great tutor. We already knew Doris was high functioning, but it seemed like she picked up something new every day.
When she saw me, she set down her computer and jumped up from her big floor pillow. She wanted her hug. How could you not love someone whose affection was so genuine? And I had come to love Doris very much.
Loreen was in the kitchen of Jeff's spacious new condo. She had a "life list" now, one of those daytimeTV ideas she'd known nothing about when she'd been working as a prostitute at age sixteen. That list included learning how to cook and she was making as much progress as Doris was with her goals.
My arm around Doris, we walked to the breakfast bar that separated the living area from the kitchen, and sat down.
"What's on the menu tonight?" I asked Loreen.
"Grilled chicken, herbed rice and an arugula salad with toasted almonds. Jeff called, by the way. He won't be home for hours."
"What else is new?" My nose was busy sniffing out another wonderful something beneath the aroma of herbs. "Is that bread I smell?"
"Almost homemade." Loreen brightened. "I bought a bread machine—they're cheaper than I thought."
&nbs
p; "What kind are you baking?" I hoped it wasn't something with fifty grains. Kate makes her own bread sometimes, but it's about as heavy as an anvil.
"Potato bread. Probably too many simple carbs, but it sounded good."
"Simple carbs?" I said. "Sounds like Food Channel talk."
"Yum. Potatoes," said Doris. "Mashed potatoes with butter."
"Butter's not good for you, Doris," Loreen said, her expression that of a good mother. "Besides, the potatoes are in the bread."
Doris scrunched up her nose in confusion and glanced at the machine. "Potatoes are big. How do you fit them in there?"
Loreen smiled. "They're mashed at the place they make the bread mix, so you are getting potatoes the way you like them."
I smiled, too. Loreen was so good for Doris and vice versa.
We sat down to eat about twenty minutes later and the meal was scrumptious. Loreen limited Doris to two slices of the "mashed-potato bread" by saying that we had to save enough for Jeff. Same for the chicken and brown rice. Doris would always have a weight issue, but Loreen was determined to keep Doris as healthy as possible.
The salad was delicious, however, and Loreen had no problem with Doris finishing that off. When Jeff's sister had come to live with him, most vegetables had been met with a vigorous shake of the head, but those days were over.
After the three of us cleaned up the dishes, I told Loreen I'd stay with Doris until Jeff came home. Loreen's protests to the contrary didn't last long and soon she was on her way.
Doris and I did a jigsaw puzzle until she tired of it and asked to go to her room. "Can I watch TV, Abby?"
"Would Loreen let you?" I asked.
"I can watch one hour if I do the homework. Five spelling words. Bird. B-I-R-D. Cat. C-A-T. Dog. D-O G. Fish. F-I-S-H. Rat. R-A-T." She grinned like a mule eating cockleburs.
"Good job," I said. "Don't go watching any of those gory shows with the bodies. You'll get nightmares, remember?"
"I remember. I'll watch TV Land, okay?"
"Good choice. I'm proud of you." These sounded like Kate's words coming from my mouth, but my sister had been right when she advised me to give Doris plenty of praise. The tantrums Doris used to throw were history.
Another hug and she was off to her room. When I peeked in a half hour later, she was sound asleep, so I turned off her small television.
I made coffee and now that Doris was down for the count, I took my mug into Jeff's office and booted up his computer. Without the birth certificate, my job had become a lot tougher.
I sipped my coffee while the computer screen populated, then clicked on the browser icon. The Internet is scary when it comes to all matters illegal. While doing a search for a case, I've sometimes found advice on how to con people out of their savings, bomb buildings and buy assault rifles. But I'd never looked into how you could completely obliterate the identity of a car. I ran a search just for my own education and discovered this kind of crime seemed to be more prevalent in the United Kingdom—but that was a Google search. After logging on to one of my private-eye databases, I discovered forgery didn't involve only checks, birth certificates and wills, and counterfeit didn't apply only to money. If people needed documentation for something they owned or had perhaps stolen—especially expensive jewelry and cars—someone could manufacture the right paperwork for a price.
Okay, now what? JoLynn had a life before showing up at the Magnolia Ranch last year. Could she have been reported as a missing person by someone? But after an hour of searching—there are thousands of missing-persons' pictures on the Net—I gave up, my eyes blurry from gazing at photo after photo.
I checked my watch and saw it was nearly ten o'clock. Still not too late to make a call. I wandered back into the living room, found my purse and took out my cell. I located the phone entry for Penny Flannery.
I'd met Penny, a Children's Protective Services caseworker, after she called and asked me to help an adolescent foster kid who wanted to meet his biological father. The man had been AWOL from the kid's life for about fourteen years. Unfortunately that case didn't turn out well. I discovered the father was in Huntsville State Prison on an armed-robbery conviction. The young man decided he didn't want that reunion after all.
But Penny and I had become friends and I'd told her to relay to Health and Human Services that I would be willing to take cases pro bono in the future.
I punched CALL and Penny answered on the fourth ring, sounding out of breath.
"It's Abby. Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"No way," Penny said with a laugh. "I was running around in circles trying to find the damn phone. What can I do you for?"
"I need help with a case and I realize you can't search adoption files, but this particular person appeared in a man's life with his family name on her birth certificate. She told him she'd been adopted as a baby and was his biological granddaughter. In fact, the man's daughter's name was on that certificate."
"But that doesn't make sense if she was adopted. They put the adopted parents' names on the certificate, not the biological mother's name. Unless this woman went to court, had her adoption file opened and reclaimed her original birth certificate, that is."
"Exactly. If she didn't petition the court for her records, could she have been in foster care and not an adoption case?" I said.
"For sure. We don't change their names—we keep their original birth certificates until they're officially adopted."
"Okay, you've given me a glimmer of hope here. How confidential are foster-care records?" I asked.
"The records are pretty private unless there's a good reason to reveal a child's identity," Penny said.
"This girl—her name is JoLynn Richter, by the way— is too old for foster care now, so does that change anything as far as the confidentiality?"
"Maybe. Get to the point, Abby."
I told her the situation and how I wasn't sure we had correctly identified the woman in that coma. With the fake ID and the birth certificate conveniently missing, I definitely smelled a scam. Or, at the very least, a girl who was protecting her past.
Penny said, "This sounds like a special circumstance. I'll run the name, check with my supervisor and get back to you."
"Would a picture help?" I certainly could use one myself and felt stupid I hadn't asked Richter to provide a photo today. Maybe he could e-mail me one.
"I only need to run the name. Her picture will be in her file if she was in foster care."
"You'll call me when you know something?"
"Sure, Abby. Should be tomorrow."
We hung up and I logged off Jeff's computer. This was a start, but for some reason, I felt less than hopeful, something that never happens to me early in a case. Heck, I'm usually so optimistic, I expect to bring home a bird from a wild-goose chase. JoLynn obviously went to plenty of trouble to hide her past. The birth certificate could have been the original and she was ashamed of being a foster child. I could only hope it was as simple as that.
When I heard Jeff's key in the lock, my mood brightened.
We embraced in the living room and he murmured, "You are the best thing I've seen all day."
I pulled away and smiled. "I look better than a corpse? Gee, I'm flattered."
"Shut up, smart aleck." He drew me back and his hands gently lifted my face to his, his fingers in my hair.
Oh, yes, let the undressing begin.
An hour later, Jeff sat at the breakfast bar eating leftover chicken and rice. I'd pulled a stool to the end of the bar so I could see more than his profile.
My hands were supporting my chin as I admired him. "I think you should always eat wearing only boxers. Shirtless suits you."
"Tell me that again in about twenty years and I might smile. As for you, I get a total kick out of your hair all messed up like it always gets after we make love."
I laughed. "I can do messy hair for a lifetime. Now, I hate to change the subject, but you wanna hear about my case?"
"Sure."
; I told him about my meeting with Richter, the forgeries, the missing birth certificate. "This might be my toughest job yet. Richter's got his head in the sand when it comes to JoLynn."
"Maybe he's playing you," Jeff said. "Are you sure he was as heartbroken and confused as he seemed?"
"Playing me? Why would he do that?"
Jeff finished the last grain of rice, reached over the bar to the kitchen counter and grabbed a napkin from the wicker basket. "Maybe he hopes you'll find out things about JoLynn he can use to discredit her and get her out of his life." He wiped his mouth.
"No way, Jeff. He loves that girl. Besides, Cooper found out plenty of information to open that particular door and Richter never walked through. But there's something else going on, something I can't put my finger on."
"You'll figure it out like you always do, hon. How's about we go back to bed and continue this conversation there?"
"Conversation? I don't think that's what you have in mind."
Jeff just grinned and we walked back down the hall to the bedroom, arm in arm, my head on his shoulder.
11
I left Jeff's place right after Loreen arrived early Tuesday morning to begin her day with Doris. Diva snubbed me when I came in through my back door. She always has what I call her "kitty buffet"—three dishes of her favorite dry foods and a water feeder that could be used to quench a desert. Didn't matter. I'd left her overnight and she didn't like that one bit. She ran off to a hiding place as soon as she saw me, but she had been waiting in the kitchen for my arrival and that made me smile.
Penny called not long after I arrived home, and I was glad I didn't have to wait around all day to hear her say, "Though I cannot tell you who was in foster care in Texas, I certainly can tell you who was not. No one named JoLynn Richter came through our system in the last two decades."
I sighed, thanked Penny for her help and hung up. Maybe JoLynn had been placed in foster care in another state or maybe she really had been adopted. But then how did she get her original birth certificate if it wasn't fake like everything else? There was no way to find out. I made a pot of strong coffee and went to my office. Stopping only for a few snack breaks, I spent the rest of the day again searching missing-persons databases, which apparently made Diva forgive and forget. She made good use of my lap for hours.
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