by Jane Tesh
He didn’t look up. “Come in.”
“You missed a great catfight.” I sat down in the chair.
“How long have I been gone?”
“Angie says all day.”
He raised his head. “Ashford’s getting stronger. He’s not going to leave.”
“Yes, he is. I’ve got the answer. Lassiter’s notebook.”
“He’s not going to leave. Even if you have the proof he needs, he’s not going back to wherever he came from.”
“He has to. Kick him out. Make him leave.”
There was a pause. Camden looked away. “Maybe I don’t want to.”
I sat up in the chair. “What? What are you talking about? You want to be John Ashford? I don’t believe it.”
He didn’t meet my eyes. “At least he knows who he is.”
I got up and walked around so he had to look at me. “That’s Ashford talking, not you. He’s going right back to hell where he belongs. You think I’m going to let that self-righteous jackass stay? You think anybody who knows you would choose Ashford? You think Kary would like that? Rufus? Fred? What about Ellin?”
“I think she’d be happy with Ashford.”
“I think you’re an idiot.” I was rewarded with a glint of anger in his eyes. “Ashford’s working on you from the inside. He even bragged about it to me. If you let him take over, then you’re a bigger pushover than I thought.”
“I don’t know what Ashford’s doing,” he said. “I haven’t been here for days! You tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to give up.” I leaned against the bureau. “Lassiter’s dead. Someone trashed his house. I don’t have to be psychic to know what they were looking for. Why did you say not to let Melanie Gentry have the notebook?”
“I don’t know. It was one of the few things that came to me when I was myself.”
“Well, I’ve got it now. Is the same thug going to come after me?”
“All I can see are two hearts singing.”
“Yeah, we’ve been there already. It’s the name of Ashford’s pet song.”
“It’s something else.” He pushed back his hair. “It’s all mixed up with the past, the future—I don’t know. How reliable can I be with Ashford popping in whenever he feels like it? I just know Melanie Gentry shouldn’t get her hands on it.”
“Okay. She won’t.”
There was another pause, longer and grayer than the first.
Camden got up and headed toward his bathroom. “I told Buddy I’d help him with his festival display.”
“You don’t want to be John Ashford.”
He stopped. I didn’t think he was going to answer me, but finally he did. “No. But I’m not sure who I want to be.”
I went downstairs. I called the airport and got the first flight out of Parkland to Richmond. Just to be on the safe side, I took the notebook with me.
***
The flight to Richmond took a little less than an hour. Then I spent another hour and a half in the rental car, looking for the right address. I expected some small faded welfare mother, not this sleek suburban mom, complete with minivan, golden lab puppy, and three teenaged kids. Denise Baker Rice was trim, her dark hair short and curly. Her eyes were dark. Her features were regular, unremarkable. There was nothing of Camden about her, not in expression or gesture.
She glanced at me. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Rice, my name is David Randall. I’m a private investigator, and I need your help. Would you mind answering a few questions?”
The puppy barked and wiggled on his leash. She gave the end of the leash to the oldest girl, who was deep in conversation with her sister and barely noticed me. “Sara, would you take Sunshine to the backyard, please, and help Allie with the groceries?”
Sara gave one of those deep exasperated sighs the young are famous for, but she agreed to the unreasonable demands. She took a bag of groceries, Allie took a bag, and the youngest girl grabbed the six pack of Cokes and trailed after. Denise Rice shut the van door and gave me a searching look.
“What’s this all about?”
I took a chance. “It’s about your son. Your first one.”
She stared at me for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer. I thought, I’ve got the wrong woman. But then she cleared her throat. “Look, I was barely sixteen. I couldn’t keep him. It was the only choice I had.”
“I’m not here to pass judgment. I’m not even an intermediary. Camden doesn’t know I’ve been looking for you.”
“How the hell did you find me? I thought all those records were sealed.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Camden? Is that his name?”
I reached into my pocket. I’d brought a snapshot along. “That’s the name he goes by. That’s him in the middle. The pretty blonde is a good friend, Kary, and the big guy is Rufus. He has a house in Parkland. We all live there.”
I could tell she didn’t want to look at the picture, but her curiosity was too strong. “Oh, my God,” she said softly. She took the picture from my hand. “He looks just like Martin.” She left me for a few minutes, drifting back into memory. Then she said, “Perhaps you’d better come inside.”
Inside was a typical suburban home: ranch-style furniture, lots of browns and reds and yellows, and big windows displaying a fenced-in backyard where the youngest child raced in circles with the puppy. The groceries had been deposited on the counter separating the living room from a big shiny kitchen loaded with the latest appliances. Denise Rice walked to the stairway that led to the upstairs and listened a moment, as if to assure herself the other children were busy and wouldn’t interrupt. She motioned me to the living room sofa and took a seat opposite me in a recliner.
“So, Mister Randall, you found me. Now what?”
“That’s entirely up to you. Camden needs to know a little something about you and his father.”
She looked at the picture again. “He’s all right, then. He’s healthy. He has a nice home. What does he do for a living?”
“He works in a clothing store, and he helps people out. He’s clairvoyant and damn good. Are you psychic? Is Camden’s father?”
“You’re not going to tell me that’s how you found me.”
“No, nothing spooky. Just the Internet.”
A wry smile curved her mouth. “After all this time. Why now? What does he want? What do you want?” She paused. I waited. “I’m not some cruel, heartless mother, Mister Randall. I’m very glad he’s alive and has good friends like you and this pretty woman. But that part of my life is behind me. I can’t see that it would do either of us any good to meet now. We’re complete strangers.” Still, her gaze strayed to the photo.
“It would help him to know who you are. A little background, a little history. Do you have anything I could take back? A memento, perhaps? A baby shoe?”
“No. Nothing. I told you, I was sixteen and scared to death. I didn’t even see him after he was born.” Another glance at the picture. “He’s very handsome.”
“There’s another girl in his life. Her name’s Ellin. I’m pretty sure he wants to marry her.”
“Good. He’s getting on with his life, then.” She gave me a worried look. “Unless there’s something you haven’t told me. This doesn’t involve bone marrow or a kidney, does it?”
I imagined her reaction if I told her about Ashford. “No, Camden just needs to know about his real family.” Which, counting Daisy and Denise’s girls, includes four half-sisters. Wait till I sprung this on him.
“There isn’t anything to tell.”
“What about his father?”
“A crazy fling, that’s all. I had no idea I could become pregnant the first time I had sex. Brilliant, huh?”
“His name?”
“I met him at a
party. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. When it was all over, he left. He said his name was Martin, and that’s all I ever knew.” She touched Camden’s picture. “He’s right there, Mister Randall. You’re looking at him.” She laughed a slight laugh. “I don’t believe he has a single feature of mine, does he?”
“You’re his mother,” I said quietly.
She got up and left the picture on the coffee table, as if to distance herself from any part of Camden. She stood by the window and watched her daughter and the puppy roll on the ground, chewing on each other. “Thank you for the information. I’d be lying if I said I never wondered about him. I’m glad he’s doing well. But if he doesn’t know you’re here, then it seems to me he isn’t interested in opening a relationship. That’s fine with me. It would be difficult explaining things to my children.”
“I think he might be interested in speaking with you.”
She shook her head. “That part of my life is over.”
I got up and wandered around the room. Denise Rice had dismissed me, but I wasn’t ready to go. There had to be something here I could use. I walked over to the piano in the corner and looked through the array of vocal scores stacked on the bench.
“The kids musical?”
“What?” She turned to face me. It was obvious from her expression she thought I’d gone.
“Your kids. Do they have musical talent?”
“Sara tries, but she has a hard time with it. I can’t get the other two interested.”
Several framed documents hung above the piano. Closer inspection revealed they were awards and degrees in music, all in her name. There was also a picture of Denise Rice and other women in a choral group and a framed copy of a newspaper article, a good review of her debut at one of the Houston theaters as Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance. “A clear and true soprano,” the reviewer had written, “with a warm, inviting tone.”
“Mrs. Rice.” When I had her full attention, I said, “Your son has a fine tenor voice. He loves to sing.” I pointed to the review. “This description fits his voice. Clear and true.”
Her expression changed. “He’s a singer?”
“Church choir, choral societies, birthdays, weddings, in the shower, whatever. All the time.”
“All the time.” Her voice was wistful.
“Drives us crazy. It means everything to him. I’m sure if he ever had the chance, he’d like to thank you for that.”
She nodded, her eyes slowly filling with tears.
“I’ve taken up enough of your time,” I said. “I’ll leave my number, if that’s okay. No pressure. No expectations. I won’t bother you again, I promise.” I left my card on the piano and the photo on the coffee table. As I started out, she said,
“Michael.”
I turned, puzzled.
“Michael,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to call him. It was my father’s name.”
“Thank you. He’ll be glad to know.” It wasn’t much, but I hoped to hell it would be enough.
Chapter Twenty-three
“The Unwilling Bride”
I couldn’t get a flight home until early Tuesday morning. By the time I got back to the house, Camden was downtown at the festival with Buddy, Angie, and Rufus. I expected Kary to be with them, but she was home, sitting in the porch swing, hemming her pageant gown.
“Ms. Gentry stopped by about sixteen times,” she said. “I told her I didn’t know where you’d gone, but it must have been important. She said it better have something to do with her case.”
“Thanks. I didn’t mean for her to bother you.”
Kary snipped a piece of thread. “She didn’t bother me. She just kept getting more and more annoyed. She went into your office and I asked her what she was looking for. She said you still had her great-grandmother’s letters, so she grabbed them off your desk and left.”
The notebook was still locked in the trunk of the Fury. Seemed a good place to leave it. I took a shower and put on some clean clothes. I got a Coke out of the fridge for me and brought a diet soda out to Kary.
She thanked me. “I hope your trip was successful.”
“I hope so, too,” I said. “I found Camden’s mother.”
She set her gown aside. “Are you serious? What did she say? What does she look like? Does she want to see Cam?”
“She’d rather not see him.”
Kary’s happiness faded. “Oh. Well. I guess I can identify with that.”
“She’s very nice, has a family, a husband, a new life. She doesn’t look like him at all, but she’s a musician, a singer. Camden must have inherited his voice from her. I took a picture along, and she says Camden looks just like his father, but she couldn’t tell me anything about him.”
“You were hoping to have good news for him, weren’t you?”
“It may be enough to help him the next time Ashford’s on board. That’s what I’m counting on.” I took a drink. “He doesn’t know I did this.”
“You want to keep it a secret?”
“If I had better news, no. But wait and let me tell him when the time’s right.”
“He’s never said anything about his parents,” she said. “We have this sort of pact. I don’t mention mine, and he doesn’t mention his.”
“You don’t have a pact with me,” I said. “I’d like to know why you live here.”
For a moment, I thought I’d gone too far, but Kary was in an unusually pensive mood. She took a sip of her soda and put the can on the porch rail. “I told you I didn’t want to be a part of the Ingram Bible Hour. That isn’t the whole story. When I was seventeen, I got pregnant. It was a mistake, of course. It was really stupid, but my boyfriend and I were curious and I was rebelling against all those rules. My parents as you can imagine were horrified. Their religion doesn’t believe in abortion, and neither do I. But they were mainly concerned about how having an unwed mother would affect their ratings, so I left. They said, okay, that’s it, good-by.”
My throat began to ache. “So you had the baby?”
“I lost her when she was six months old. That’s when Cam took me in. I’d been staying with a girlfriend. I was really sick and upset about the baby for a long time.”
If only I’d been here. “I’m sure you were.”
“My family wouldn’t have anything to do with me, and I felt that God had given up on me, too. Do you know what that’s like, David, to spend your whole life being told that God will take care of you and you’re special and nothing bad can happen and then there’s nothing? Nothing. There’s no answer when you pray. There’s no solace. All those happy little hymns and songs. Empty. Meaningless.”
My throat was so tight, all I could do was nod.
“It took me about three years to come out of depression. Music helped. Sometimes I’d play for hours. I don’t know what Cam told his tenants, but no one ever complained, not even Fred. I’d lost my scholarship, so I started taking a class or two at the community college, and eventually, I decided to come back to life.” Her voice became softer. “But the worst part is, I can’t have any more children.”
“Neither can I.” When she looked at me in surprise, I realized I’d said this aloud. Well, she had just told me her most private story. It was only fair that I tell her mine. “I had a little girl once. Lindsey. When she was eight years old, she and I were in a car accident.”
In my mind, I saw the car roll over and burst into flames. I saw the dark hillside, the faces of rescue workers, the black plumes of smoke. I saw my hands, cut and bloody from clawing through the brush and burning metal. I didn’t see Lindsey. I couldn’t find her.
“I couldn’t find her.” Once the words were out, I wanted to scream them, scream and cry and tear things apart. But I was calmed by the depth of sympathy in Kary’s brown eyes. She didn’t say, �
�You did all you could,” or “That’s too much to carry around,” or “If it was an accident, you can’t blame yourself.” She just reached over and put her hand on mine.
“I named my little girl Elizabeth. That’s my middle name. I was going to call her Beth.”
“Lindsey was Lindsey Marie.”
“A lovely name.” We sat in silence for a few moments. Kary straightened the lace trim on her gown. “Once I have a good job, I’m going to adopt a baby. Donnie’s not sure he likes that idea. The thing is, he knew about my situation before we started dating. Now he’s asking me to forget or at least postpone my plans. But I really want a family, David. I always thought I could adopt some children no one else wanted and give them a good home, the way Cam did for me.”
Adoption: Is It Right For You? Whatever you want, I started to say. We’ll adopt fifty children, a hundred. No, how could I face having another child, even a child with Kary?
I couldn’t talk about this anymore. I managed to clear the emotion from my throat. “If you’ve got a plan for your life, and he’s not on board, maybe he’s not the one.”
And maybe I’m not the one, either.
***
I headed back to the college. Luckily for me, Thomas was in.
“But someone’s with him just now,” the secretary said. “She’ll be just a minute, I’m sure.”
“She?”
“Ms. Gentry. She stopped by to give him some reports.”
“What exactly does Ms. Gentry do at the college?”
“She’s an administrative assistant. She does all the kinds of things I do, only she has an office.”
“Does she stop by a lot?”
“Recently, she’s been by more often. I imagine they’re discussing the budget.” She picked up a stack of papers. “I have to go make some copies. Just go on in after she leaves. That’ll be okay.”
I thanked her and waited until she was gone before approaching the closed door to listen. I could hear voices raised in argument. Thomas’ voice sounded desperate.
