Sensing his embarrassment, I stepped in. “Had sex?”
He nodded. “Yeah. She talked about him. Said he played mind games with everyone, said he’d brainwashed her mother—Mrs. Sprouse, you know—so she wasn’t even the same person. It made me sad to listen to her.”
“Did you use protection?”
He caught my meaning immediately and blushed under his tan. “She was on the pill.”
Hmm. I was tempted to give him the “condoms are your friends” lecture, but decided it wasn’t my place. “Did you know she was pregnant when she ran away? That she had a baby?”
“Really? No, I . . .” His eyes widened, and I saw all the possibilities flash through his mind. “Was it—”
“Yours? You tell me.”
“We only did it three times. She was on the pill,” he reiterated. “She said.”
“You could take a DNA test,” I suggested. “That would—”
“My dad!” He blanched.
Clearly Papa Emmerling was a forceful figure. I wondered what he knew about his son’s dallyings with Elizabeth.
“Are you eighteen?”
“Next month,” he said. “The twelfth.”
“Then your dad wouldn’t have to know. Think about it.”
“I’m leaving for college next week. In Virginia. I got a scholarship to UVA.” A trace of pride sounded in his voice. As if suddenly becoming aware of the straw he was mangling, he dropped it on the table.
“They have labs in Virginia,” I pointed out drily. “Think about it.”
“I will,” he promised. He hesitated, and I saw his throat work. “Miss Smith—”
“Charlie.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“A girl. Olivia.”
He bit down on his lower lip. “I don’t know what my dad would—”
“Did your dad—your folks—ever meet Elizabeth?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
“Once.” His tone said the meeting was not a success.
I didn’t press it. “Did you hear from Elizabeth after she left school? When was the last time you saw her?”
“February. But we didn’t date after November. She broke up with me around Thanksgiving, and I only saw her around school after that.”
“Did she say why?”
“Not really. She didn’t have time, she said. She’d gotten a part-time job. It took up a lot of her time, she said. Look, I gotta get back to work.” Wes pushed back from the table.
“Did you get the feeling she was seeing someone else?” I persisted.
“Maybe. Probably. Elizabeth was the kind of girl who needed to always be with a guy. I think it was her way of proving she was pretty and . . .”
“Lovable?” How sad.
“Yeah. She even flirted with—” He pressed his lips closed and headed for the door, chucking his empty cup into the trash with unnecessary force.
Why did I get the feeling he was going to say “my dad”?
After dropping a subdued Wes back at work, I drove to the office, thinking about what he’d said. I knew women like Elizabeth, women who got their sense of self-worth from attracting men. Each new conquest bolstered their self-esteem, made them feel worthwhile or likable. The feeling never lasted, though, and they’d move on to another man, needing to prove and re-prove their desirability. I didn’t get it, but I’d noticed those women frequently had strained relationships with their fathers. Elizabeth certainly qualified on that front, with her birth father unknown, her adopted father dead, and her stepfather screwier than a hardware convention. From my point of view, it made finding Olivia’s father that much more difficult since Elizabeth might have had a series of casual partners.
I parked myself at my desk when I got back to the office and popped a Pepsi. Fresh out of brilliant ideas, I pulled a legal pad out of a drawer and made a list of possible candidates for Olivia’s father, roughly in order of likelihood:
Wes Emmerling
Zachary Sprouse
Seth Johnson
Jack Van Hoose
Stefan Falstow
Unknown boyfriend/rapist/other
I surveyed the list with dissatisfaction. Wes had admitted actually having sex with Elizabeth, so he had to get top billing. Sprouse seemed the next likeliest candidate, based on proximity and access, if nothing else. Johnson also seemed possible; he’d known Elizabeth for some years, apparently had a thing for young girls, and had (maybe) tried to seduce her in a classroom. Jack Van Hoose seemed unlikely, but I couldn’t discount him. Linnea seemed to think Elizabeth had feelings for him; maybe he’d been flattered by her attention and one thing led to another. Stefan Falstow was a ludicrously long shot. I’d started thinking Falstow was the father when Linnea told me the surrogate story, and even the news that Elizabeth had been pregnant when she met the Falstows didn’t completely knock the idea out of my head. Maybe she and Falstow had some sort of prior relationship. I realized I didn’t know anything about the man and had no idea whether or not his path might have crossed Elizabeth’s. I starred his name.
I stared unhappily at the last line. If I couldn’t jolt one of the named men on the list into admitting his paternity, I was left with Mr. Other, and I didn’t know where to begin to look for him. I supposed I could ask around the high school, see if Elizabeth had confided in anyone besides Linnea, but it seemed unlikely, especially since she’d run away almost a year ago and apparently Linnea was the only one she kept in touch with. Maybe she’d made new friends at the apartment complex. Returning to the seedy development to do a house-to-house (or a door-to-door, in this case) would probably be a waste of time, but I needed to do it. I made a new list:
Interview “Lizzy’s” neighbors
Interview Stefan Falstow
Track down Johnson’s ex-wives and interview them
Meet Van Hoose
“So,” Gigi interrupted my thoughts, “what’s next?”
I looked up to see her leaning forward, chin in palm, at her desk. Her eyes were fixed on me like a dog hoping for a Milk-Bone.
“I’ve contacted all the lawyers in town,” she said, thumping the phone book, “to let them know our agency wants to do process serving. A couple of them said they might give us a call, but they don’t have anything until next week. What did Melissa want?”
Our agency. Grrr. “For me to find the baby’s father,” I said. “Now. ASAP. Pronto.”
“I’m surprised she doesn’t want to keep the baby,” Gigi said. “I know if Kendall had a baby—heaven forbid!—no power on earth would make me turn it over to a stranger to raise.”
“Not all women are the maternal type,” I said. I was pretty sure I wasn’t. Not positive, but pretty sure. Every now and then I heard a faint tick-tick that might have been my biological clock but was probably just the creaking of my joints as I aged. I ripped the page off the legal pad and tucked it into my purse. “I’m headed back to the apartment complex where Elizabeth had the baby. With any luck, one of the neighbors might have noticed her visitors, or she might have confided in someone out there.”
“If I came, too, it would only take half as long,” Gigi said. “I could talk to some of the neighbors while you talked with the rest. You could tell me what to ask,” she added, forestalling the objection hovering on my lips. She pulled out her steno pad and waited.
“Okay,” I caved. “Let me print some photos”—the ones of the live Elizabeth from Aurora—“and I’ll tell you what to cover.”
Forty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of the Shady Glen Apartments. As on the last time I’d visited, a handful of cars occupied spaces around the lot, and I figured we’d find at least a couple of neighbors home. Also like before, the sounds of crying babies and television programs drifted from open apartment windows. The door to apartment 30B was propped open, and what looked like a father-and-son duo pulled boxes from a small U-Haul trailer, lugged them up the stairs, and deposited them in Elizabeth’s old apartment. Had the Sprouses cleared out her stuff, or
had Truman stuffed it into a Dumpster or, more likely, sold it?
“Let’s start with her next-door neighbor,” I told Gigi, motioning upward. We climbed, Gigi puffing several steps behind me and letting out a ladylike “fiddlesticks” when the heel of her pump slipped through the wire grating of the stairs. I waited for her to arrive on the landing before knocking on the door of apartment 30A.
“No one’s home.” The older of the two men moving stuff into the adjacent apartment, the one I took to be the father, balanced a box on the balcony rail. The tiny landing was crowded with the three of us. “Lady left half an hour ago.”
“Thanks,” I said. I tucked one of my business cards, with a note saying Please call between the door and the frame.
Gigi and I knocked on two more doors before finding someone home. A petite woman in her early twenties with dark hair falling to her waist and Oriental features opened her door a crack. When I showed her the photo of Elizabeth, she said, “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen her around. You’re not bill collectors, are you?” She looked suspiciously from me to Gigi.
“She’s dead,” I said. “The apartment’s been re-rented.” I nodded at the men trekking past us with their boxes.
“Oh, yeah, I noticed them. What’d you do to your arm?”
How could she find a pink cast more fascinating than the news of her neighbor’s death?
“I broke it—”
“Did you ever notice if Lizzy had any visitors?” This woman hadn’t even realized her neighbor had been missing and was dead, so I didn’t have much faith that she’d’ve seen anything useful.
“Sorry.” She closed the door.
“Goodness,” Gigi said, “that wasn’t very polite.”
“Get used to it. She behaved like Miss Manners compared to the way lots of folks respond to strangers at their doors,” I said. I pointed across the complex. “Why don’t you start over there? If you find anyone you think I should talk to, holler.”
I knocked on seven more doors, exhausting my half of the building, without getting any useful information. Elizabeth had kept to herself, it seemed, and although several people said they knew who she was—and two mentioned they’d heard she died—no one had taken note of her visitors or heard anything unusual from her apartment at any time. I rejoined Gigi in the parking lot. “Get anything?”
“There’s a ten-year-old boy, Mike Lacey, in that apartment.” She pointed to a second-floor door. “He’s home-schooled, and he says a man in a Lincoln Town Car came to visit Lizzy. At least, he’s pretty sure he came to see Lizzy. Mike saw him go up those stairs.” She motioned to the stairway leading to apartments 30A and 30B.
Seth Johnson had a Lincoln Town Car . . . “When? Why does Mike remember this?”
Gigi consulted her notes. “Lizzy used to give Mike Starbursts sometimes, so he kept an eye out for her. He says the Lincoln was here ‘a long time ago,’ and he remembers because he was hoping she’d come out with the man and he could ‘accidentally’ bump into her and she’d give him some candy. He’s really cute, and smart as a whip,” Gigi said. “He reminds me of Dexter when he was that age.”
“Did you try to pin him down on when ‘a long time ago’ was?” I pushed my hair out of my face and moved off the asphalt into the shade of an aspen tree. Gigi followed me.
“Uh-huh,” she said proudly. “I asked him when his birthday is, and he said June tenth, and I asked him if it was before or after his birthday. He said ‘after’ and then got to thinking and decided it was after the Fourth of July, too, because he remembered watching the fireworks from a friend’s roof not too long before he saw the Lincoln.”
“Good work,” I said. I meant it. Gigi beamed as if she’d won an Olympic gold medal as we crossed to the car.
So Seth Johnson had visited Elizabeth Sprouse at her apartment a month or so before she had the baby . . . funny he hadn’t mentioned that. I foresaw another meeting with the enigmatic Mr. Johnson in my near future. First, though, I would see what kind of ammunition I could get from one or more of his ex-wives.
14
The databases I subscribe to yielded their treasures with little prompting, and I had basic facts about both of Johnson’s surviving ex-wives within an hour of returning to the office. Courtney Robinson, wife number one, now thirty-six years old, had remarried a contractor who was currently running for city council. I’d seen his ads—featuring the whole family, including two towheaded kids (suggesting to me that the failure to produce offspring rested with Johnson and not his wives)—and didn’t plan to vote for him. Contractors and developers are intent on building on or paving every square inch of Colorado Springs, and I’m against it. Wife number three, Larissa Davern, was twenty-eight and lived in Manitou Springs, a small arty community west of Colorado Springs. She owned a shop called Twinkle and had not remarried.
I dialed Courtney’s number.
“Hello?” Her voice was throaty, very Lauren Bacall.
When I told her I wanted to talk with her about Seth Johnson, she was quiet for fifteen seconds, then said, “I can’t talk about Seth. I signed a confidentiality agreement along with the divorce papers.”
“A young girl died last week, and I’m trying to find the father of her baby. All I need is a few min—”
A choked laugh cut me off. “I doubt Seth is your man, and that’s all I’m going to say. My husband is running for office, and Seth is a powerful man in this state. Please don’t call again.” She hung up.
I stared at the phone, convinced I’d heard real fear in her voice. Without much hope, I punched in Larissa Davern’s number.
“Twinkle!” This voice was light and fluty, the vocal equivalent of a wind chime. “Come by the shop any time,” Larissa said when I told her what I wanted. “I’m here from nine till five every day except Sunday. Poor Seth! I haven’t seen him in years . . . how is he?”
“He seemed fine when I saw him yesterday,” I said. Poor Seth? This woman certainly had a different take on Johnson than anyone else I’d talked to. “I’ll be there in half an hour, if that’s okay.”
Gigi emerged from the bathroom, a damp paper towel plastered across her forehead, as I hung up.
“Headache?” I asked.
“Hot flash.” She fanned herself with her good hand.
“Here.” I tossed her a Pepsi from my fridge, and she gratefully rolled the cold can against the back of her neck as I headed for my car.
I found on-street parking at a meter in Manitou Springs—no mean feat in a town that lets ecologically friendly vehicles park for free—and walked uphill a block to Twinkle. Blinking strings of lights in white, lavender, and blue festooned the outside of the store, making it easy to spot. Maybe the store sold Christmas lights. I pushed open the glass-paned door and found myself in a dim grotto with hundreds of foil, fabric, wood, and metal stars hanging on fishing line from the ceiling. Some of them glowed. A delicate floral scent twined around the racks of hand-printed cards, local art, books, and jewelry—all with a star theme. Gregorian chants—not “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”—played from hidden speakers.
“Please let me know if I can help you,” said the voice from the phone.
The woman behind the cash register was wraith thin and dressed in swirling clouds of blue gauze and chiffon. Strawberry blond hair trailed down her back in tiny corkscrew ringlets. A teardrop-shaped amethyst pendant hung from a heavy chain to midchest, and a silver anklet set with bells tinkled when she floated around the counter. She was barefoot. “You must be Charlotte.” She held out a long-fingered hand for me to shake.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“You have a sense of purpose about you,” she said with a smile. Her skin was so translucent a tracery of veins showed at her temples. Not a line marred her face, and I reminded myself she was not yet thirty. “Can I offer you some water or tea?”
I knew the tea was likely to be caffeine-free—why bother?—and probably steeped from twigs and wildflowers picked at the vernal equinox, or some such th
ing. Water seemed safer. Larissa disappeared into a back room through a clacking beaded curtain and returned with two bottled waters. “Passion fruit or guava?” she asked, lifting both bottles.
What’s wrong with plain old tap water flavored with chlorine, fluoride, and sediment? I reached for a bottle at random. Perching on the velvet-topped stool she pulled forward, I filled her in on Elizabeth’s death and my reason for wanting to know about Seth Johnson, including his attempt to marry Elizabeth. Larissa listened attentively, her head slightly cocked. Every now and then she reached up a hand and drew her fingers through the silky curtain of her hair.
“Marrying Seth was necessary for me to shed my former self and emerge in my present form,” she said, “but he was not my ultimate destiny.”
She talked like she thought she was a damned butterfly. “Can you tell me why the marriage broke up?”
She considered. “At the ashram, where I went to heal my spirit after the division of our souls, I came to see that Seth had let himself be defined by his inabilities, not his gifts. So sad. Who knows what he could have become if only he was more accepting of the body’s limits.” She gazed out the window at passersby on the street.
“Huh?” She’d completely lost me with her New Age–speak. “In English?”
Her gaze returned to me, her irises such an unusual purple I wondered if she wore contacts. “He was impotent, yet obsessed with having a biological child.”
Aah. “The man’s a geneticist, for heaven’s sake. Surely he considered in vitro?”
She was shaking her head before I finished. “Such manipulations were against his faith. Are you familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ the Righteous on Earth?”
“Oh, yeah. Elizabeth, the girl who died, was the pastor’s stepdaughter.”
“Pastor Sprouse was single when I married Seth,” Larissa said. “Anyway, the church forbade any kind of medical intervention, especially for procreation. If God didn’t bless you with children naturally, it was probably because you were either unfit to be a parent or because he had other work for you to do.”
Swift Justice: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Books) Page 18
