Nobody's Child (The Jeri Howard Series Book 5)

by Janet Dawson

  Now I drove north and west on Interstate 580, across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to connect with Highway 101. The Bay Area drizzle became a steady gray rain as I entered Sonoma County, and a downpour by the time I turned off Graton Road onto the gravel drive leading to Mother Earth Farm. I didn’t see the Jeep Cherokee I’d seen before, but the blue Chevy van was there. The dogs were on the back porch, sensibly out of the rain. They roused themselves from a bed of blankets to greet me with wags and barks.

  Aditi was baking cookies in the kitchen of the big two-story farmhouse. She greeted me at the back door and I stepped over the threshold into a warm mouth-tingling fog of cinnamon, clove, and ginger. She was dressed much as she had been before, in loose-fitting pants and a roomy blouse, her long gray hair caught back and tied with a gauzy scarf. Flames crackled in the fireplace at the other end of the large family room, and I saw three cats curled up on the end of the sofa closest to the warmth of the fire. A huge pine tree stood in one corner, its branches thick with glittery decorations, wrapped packages mounded on a red-and-green-quilted tree skirt. One of the cats, the ginger tom, had inserted himself under the tree like a large furry mobile gift, tucked economically between two wrapped boxes, his head pillowed on a red foil ribbon.

  “You have news,” Aditi said.

  “Of a sort. I still haven’t found Dyese.”

  “The kettle’s on. Want some tea?” She poured me a large mugful of her herbal concoction and parked me at one end of the trestle table, where fat sugar cookies in the shapes of stars and bells and Christmas trees were cooling on a wire rack. She put half a dozen on a plate and set it down in front of me. Then she stood at her kitchen counter and rolled out another batch of cookie dough. “So tell me.”

  I sipped tea before I spoke. “According to the autopsy report, Maureen was HIV-positive.”

  “Oh, no.” I could hear the sadness in Aditi’s voice as she set down her rolling pin. “That means the baby has it too, doesn’t it?”

  “If Maureen was HIV-positive while she was pregnant, there’s a twelve to twenty-five percent chance, according to the doctor I spoke with.”

  “I told you she was born here,” Aditi said, brow furrowed as though she were thinking out loud. “I’m a nurse-midwife. Even though it was a home birth, Dyese did have the standard tests. It’s a state law. I prick the baby’s heel and put a small amount of blood on some filter paper. But those tests are mandatory screens. They don’t routinely test newborns for HIV. Even if they did, it wouldn’t show anything. Because of the antibodies.”

  “Right.” I took another sip of tea. “Of course, if Maureen contracted the disease after Dyese was born, maybe there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Aditi sighed and put her rolling pin into play again. “But we don’t know what happened to Maureen before she got here. Or after she left, other than the fact that Serena saw her panhandling on Telegraph again.”

  “I can fill in some of those blanks.”

  I reached for one of the warm sugar cookies. It was as delicious as it looked. Aditi was using a handful of copper cookie cutters to punch out more shapes, which she then lifted from the counter to place on her baking sheets. I sketched in the details of Maureen’s life before and after her sojourn at Mother Earth Farm, at least those I’d been able to find out Aditi opened the door of the Wedgwood stove and placed the cookies inside. Then she set a timer and joined me at the table.

  “Is Patrick Ennis Dyese’s father?” she asked, helping herself to one of her cookies. “When the baby was born, Maureen wouldn’t say. That’s why there’s no father listed on the birth certificate.”

  “Patrick had sex with her. He admitted as much. And there’s certainly a strong resemblance between him and Dyese. But I also have to consider the possibility Maureen was pregnant before she left home. Maybe that’s why she left.” I shook my head.

  “You said you had a feeling something traumatic happened to make her run away,” I continued. “Her mother’s an alcoholic and I’m sure Maureen felt neglected, but that had been going on for years. She had four months to go until high school graduation. She would have been out of there, and gone to college. But she ran away instead. It had to be a specific incident. That’s why I came up here today, to ask you to think again. See if you remember anything she might have said.”

  “You think she was raped?” Aditi’s face was troubled.

  “It’s possible.” I raised the mug of tea to my mouth. At that moment the back door opened and Viraj came in accompanied by a young woman who looked so much like him that I knew this was another of the couple’s children.

  “Our older daughter, Yasmin,” Aditi said, pouring mugs of tea for both. “Yasmin, this is Jeri. She’s the private investigator we told you about.” Yasmin smiled as she took her tea. She and her father had evidently been shopping. Both carried brown paper bags with handles, and one had several rolls of Christmas paper sticking out the top. “Is it still pouring out there?”

  “It stopped. It’s turning cold now.” Viraj took a swig of tea and walked over to warm himself at the fire. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we got some frost tonight.”

  Yasmin removed her coat and gloves, revealing an outfit consisting of faded blue jeans and a sweatshirt from the University of Arizona. She hung her coat on a rack near the back door. Then she sat on the sofa and scratched the black and white cat behind the ears.

  “You found out anything about Maureen?” Viraj asked me.

  “We were just talking about that.” Aditi brought him up to date.

  He shook his head slowly at the mention of Maureen’s HIV infection. “Had a good friend die of AIDS not too long ago. It’s an awful way to go. And Maureen was about Yasmin’s age. You remember Maureen, don’t you?”

  The light shimmered on the young woman’s golden hair as she nodded. “Oh, yes. The girl with the pretty baby. She used to help with the goats. Such a sad person.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. “Did you talk with her much?”

  “Yes. We really got to know each other when I was home from school a couple of summers ago. Dad told me she’d been killed.”

  “I’m trying to find out why she left home in the first place. Did she ever give you any indication?”

  Yasmin got up from the sofa and carried her mug of tea to the table, helping herself to one of her mother’s cookies. “Not in so many words. But I had my theories.”

  “Such as?”

  “I always thought she might have been raped,” Yasmin said. Aditi and I traded looks. “Not by a stranger. Date rape, you know. Someone she knew, or thought she trusted. She never said this in so many words. I’m just guessing, really. But that happened to one of my classmates from the university. And afterward, she acted much the same way Maureen did.”

  “Did she ever mention a man named Douglas Widener?”

  Yasmin thought for a moment. “Widener. I don’t think so. But she did say something about seeing someone she knew over in Santa Rosa. His name was Douglas.” That jibed with what Widener had told me about seeing Maureen at the farmers’ market.

  “A professor at Sonoma State,” Aditi chimed in. “We saw him at the market. Maureen seemed to know him. Later he gave her a sweatshirt.”

  “Douglas Widener was dating Maureen’s mother at the time,” I said. “I’ve heard rumors that he was also putting the moves on Maureen. But nothing confirmed. I just wondered if Maureen ever talked about him. Or a couple of high school friends, Kara Jenner and Emory Marland.”

  “Emory Marland.” Yasmin repeated the name as though tasting it. “That name doesn’t sound familiar. Neither does Jenner. But she did mention someone named Kara. Like maybe she was her best friend.” The young woman shrugged. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you more. But Maureen really didn’t like to talk about the past. Who could blame her?”

  I finished my tea and stood up. It appeared I needed to go back to the Bay Area and lean on some more people. But I was reluctant to leave this warm pleasan
t room with its smells of Christmas baking. “Thanks for the tea and the conversation. I’ll let you know if I find Dyese.”

  “You have to take some of these cookies with you.” Aditi began stacking cookies in a thin cardboard box she’d lined with tissue paper. Before I knew it, she’d filled a brown grocery sack with glass jars of homemade blackberry jam and a couple of loaves of cinnamon raisin bread, as well as the cookies.

  “Going right back to work?” Viraj asked with a smile.

  “No, I’m not.” My words surprised me. I needed to go to Santa Rosa and lean on Douglas Widener one more time. I needed to go back to the Bay Area to see if I could find Terry Lampert at home, or persuade Kara Jenner to level with me, since she hadn’t done so thus far. But all of a sudden there was something I had to do right now.

  “To Sebastopol,” I said. “I’m going to start on this end of Main Street and work my way south. And I’m not going home until I finish my Christmas shopping.”

  Thirty-seven

  PROFESSOR DOUGLAS WIDENER WAS NOT HAPPY TO see me. When he opened the front door of his Santa Rosa apartment, he obviously had been expecting someone else. I represented an unpleasant and persistent wrinkle in the smooth fabric of his life.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I smiled. My mood had lightened somewhat as I meandered down Sebastopol’s main thoroughfare, from store to store, getting my shopping done in the proverbial one fell swoop. It had also given me time to think, to the point where one of the shopkeepers looked at me oddly as I wandered around her store, muttering to myself.

  “I have more questions, Professor.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know.” He made no move to let me in, standing in a narrow passage between the door and the frame, as though barring the way.

  “I don’t think so. Did you ever have sex with Maureen?”

  “Why the hell do you keep pounding that drum?” he asked angrily.

  “Because there’s a two-year-old girl missing and someone murdered her mother. And it all comes back to sex.” I paused. “Maureen was HIV-positive, Professor. Did you ever sleep with her?”

  Widener’s face paled to the color of cold ashes and his mouth opened and shut, like a fish suddenly thrown from a stream to the shore. “Good God,” he said finally. “I never touched her. I’m not stupid, for God’s sake. The girl was barely eighteen. I was involved with her mother. Naomi would have had my balls if I’d tried anything.”

  “Why did Maureen run away from home?”

  “I’ve told you everything I know,” he protested.

  “Dig deeper. Did she give you any indication what was going on in her life right before she disappeared? What about Kara Jenner and Emory Marland?” He looked baffled. “Two people she knew in high school. I want you to think back, Professor. Did she ever talk about them? Did they ever come over to the house? Can you recall any scrap of information about those two people?”

  “If it will get rid of you, I’ll certainly try.” He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Kara. Blond, willowy, very attractive girl. She and Maureen were best friends.”

  Not according to Kara, I thought Each time I spoke with her, she seemed to take pains to disassociate herself from Maureen.

  “There was a boy, but I don’t remember his name,” Widener continued. “Kind of big, ordinary-looking. He followed them around like a puppy dog. Bad case of inarticulate adolescent.”

  How well I remembered those days, with no nostalgia at all. “So this kid used to hang around with Kara and Maureen? He was a friend?”

  Widener shrugged. “I’m not sure the girls considered him a friend. More of a pest. They used to laugh at him. I think they tolerated him because they were both swooning over his older brother. He was the... hunk.” This last he said with distaste, as though he didn’t want to soil his lips with the colloquialism.

  I pressed Widener more closely, but it appeared he had nothing else to tell me about Kara and Emory. The elevator door opened and a young woman stepped out. She headed down the hallway toward his apartment and stopped, looking at us with some confusion. She was young enough to be one of his students. Probably was. And I didn’t think it was likely his plans on this rainy afternoon included advising her on her master’s thesis.

  “I won’t be a minute,” he said, opening the door wide enough to admit her to the inner sanctum. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Ms. Howard.”

  It all came back to sex, I told myself sardonically as I went outside to my car. I headed south again. Even though it was rush hour, traffic wasn’t as onerous as it would have been had this not been the week before Christmas. By five it was dark. The rain had stopped as I drove through San Rafael and up onto the Richmond bridge, but all the way back to Berkeley the asphalt of the freeway glistened with moisture. I took the University Avenue exit, heading for Kara Jenner’s north of campus apartment. But there was no answer when I rang the buzzer at the building on LeConte.

  I went back over to McGee Avenue to stake out Terry Lampert’s house. It was nearly six-thirty when a station wagon drove slowly down the narrow street and pulled into the driveway. Four people got out. They hauled shopping bags and boxes from the rear of the wagon, laughing and talking as they trooped up onto the porch. I could hear the dog bark its greeting as I got out of my car and headed across the street. I intercepted them on the front porch. The front door was open now, and the little mutt with the big bark made a beeline for some grass and a good pee.

  “Terry Lampert?”

  He turned. “Yes?”

  His wife had turned on the porch light. I looked him over in the harsh overhead glow. He was a man of medium height and build, his features reflected on the faces of the teenage boy and girl who stood beside him. Middle forties, brown hair receding from a high forehead. His wife, a blond woman about the same age, had set her packages down just inside.

  “My name’s Jeri Howard,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. I’d like to talk with you about a friend of yours. His name’s Rio.”

  I saw the woman’s lips clamp tightly together as her husband’s eyebrows came down in a frown. She shepherded her curious children inside the house as Lampert stared at me, trying to figure out what I was after.

  “What makes you think I know anyone named Rio?” His words came reluctantly.

  “He was seen getting into your company car,” I said, jerking my chin in the direction of the brown sedan parked at the curb. “I assume he’s a friend of yours. Otherwise you wouldn’t be giving him rides on a regular basis.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’m trying to locate him. He may have some information I need.”

  Still Lampert hesitated. I applied a bit more pressure. “Come on, Mr. Lampert. I’m sure it’s against company policy for you to be giving rides to hitchhikers. Particularly one who’s rumored to be a drug dealer.” He stared at me wordlessly as the shaggy brown mutt left the front lawn and scampered back onto the porch to sniff my shoes and ankles. “May I come in, Mr. Lampert?”

  He sighed deeply. “I guess so.”

  The dog, some sort of scrubby short-legged terrier, preceded me into a rectangular living room dominated by the Christmas tree that crowded the front window. A sofa bracketed by end tables stood against the wall to my left. A low wooden coffee table in front held neatly arranged magazines and a scattering of Christmas ornaments. On my right was a low overstuffed armchair that was now the repository for the shopping bags the Lamperts had brought home with them. An oak rocking chair with a carved back stood near an open doorway leading to the dining room and kitchen. On the far wall was an entertainment center with a collection of stereo equipment and a large-screen television set. The top of this had been decorated with a red wooden sleigh pulled by eight carved reindeer, with a fat Santa Claus figure holding the reins. The sleigh was stuffed with Christmas cards.

  Mrs. Lampert stood near the back of the rocking chair, looking at her husband with eyes full of inquiry. When her husb
and didn’t say anything, she ran her fingers across the carved wood and said, “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Thank you,” I told her. “That would be nice.”

  She unbuttoned her jacket as she turned and disappeared into the kitchen. Somewhere in the back of the house I heard recorded voices and beeps as one of the children played back the messages on the family’s answering machine.

  “How did you find me?” Terry Lampert asked.

  “It wasn’t difficult. Someone saw Rio get into the car and remembered the name on the door. All I had to do was find Corcoran Industries and make a phone call.” I took a seat at one end of the sofa and unzipped my jacket. “Tell me about Rio.”

  “We were in ’Nam together, about a hundred years ago.” Lampert took off his jacket, revealing roomy blue jeans and a brown sweater. He walked part of the way into a hallway and opened the door to a closet. After he’d hung up his jacket, he returned to the living room and sat down in the rocker. “Sometimes he needs a ride. I give him a ride. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Why?”

  “You ever see White Christmas?” he asked. Then he smiled. “Of course you have. Everybody’s seen White Christmas. You remember that scene early on, when Danny Kaye asks Bing Crosby why they’re gonna see the sister act? Ol Bing says, ‘Let’s just say we’re doing it for a pal in the Army.’”

  “And Danny Kaye says, ‘It’s a reason. It’s not a good one, but it’s a reason.’” I smiled back at Lampert “Is that the only reason?”

  The man opposite me shrugged. “It’s a little bit of, there for the grace of God. If I hadn’t met my wife, that could be me, living on the streets.”

  “Selling marijuana?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “I think you do, but grass is not my concern at the moment. Rio is. What’s his real name?”

  “Rivers. Leonard Rivers. I guess that’s where the name Rio came from. And he’s from a town up in Sonoma County, called Monte Rio.”