He returned to the living room and sat down. “How has everything been? No problems?”
Mr. Peterson looked at him for a moment, not understanding. Then he shook his head.
“No, no security issues. Everything has been just fine. We’d let you know if there were any problems.”
Zachary looked out the front window, then leaned back, relaxing his muscles. Once he got into the visit, his anxiety would ease. He was safe there. Lorne and Pat were safe.
“How is Pat?”
Since Pat was out, that made it a lot easier to talk about him and get a temperature reading from Mr. Peterson. Pat had been struggling since the murder of Jose. He had gone through a period of depression, but was, as far as Zachary knew, doing fairly well on an antidepressant prescription and occasional therapy sessions.
“He’s doing pretty well. Very excited about you meeting his family. It’s been a long time, you know, and now he’s finally able to merge these two sides of his life together. The family he grew up in and… well, me. And you.”
It was hard to believe that Pat’s family had refused to have anything to do with him just because of his relationship with Mr. Peterson. Zachary knew there were people out there who were so against gay relationships that they would not associate with anyone who was in one. But Pat was such a warm and giving person that Zachary couldn’t imagine him coming from a family like that. And he couldn’t imagine how they had held his orientation against him for decades.
But Pat’s father had passed away, and his mother and sister had finally decided that they wanted to get to know him again.
“What are they like? What was it like when you met them for the first time?”
“Well, you can imagine that it was awkward. It’s one thing to decide that you’ll start talking to your son or brother again. But it’s another to take that step and meet the person you’ve hated all of those years. I suppose they thought that I was some kind of…” Mr. Peterson shook his head and searched for the words. “Some sort of devil that managed to tempt Pat away, to twist him into this relationship. It has been difficult for them to accept that he just happens to have a different orientation than they have.”
Zachary smiled. He couldn’t imagine Pat being anything else. And he couldn’t picture Mr. Peterson as being some kind of incubus. In his sixties now, his fringe hair turned white and he had a bit of a paunch. He had always been a father figure to Zachary.
When Mr. Peterson had come out, he had lost his accreditation as a foster parent. Zachary hadn’t been told at the time what was going on but, after Lorne was divorced and Zachary’s social worker figured out that Zachary had still been visiting him, he had assumed that Mr. Peterson must be a pedophile and a predator. That had led to some interesting conversations.
Zachary had been banned from seeing him anymore. But Zachary had been fifteen or sixteen at the time, and he hadn’t listened to anything he was told. It had been only a week later that he had taken his next roll of film over to Mr. Peterson’s apartment to develop it in his darkroom. And he had met Pat for the first time.
He’d never felt threatened or uncomfortable around either one of them. If all foster parents could be like Mr. Peterson and Pat… maybe Zachary’s teenage years wouldn’t have been quite so difficult. He’d had too many issues for the Petersons to handle. Mrs. Peterson had insisted that he be removed from their family. And maybe she was right. Maybe they had not been the right family for Zachary. He hadn’t been stable enough to be with any family for long.
“You’re far away,” Mr. Peterson observed.
Zachary shook off the memories. “I can’t imagine anyone thinking about you like that,” he said with a little laugh. “You and Pat have always been… well, just you and Pat. You were older than him, but you were never… You didn’t force him or lure him into the relationship.”
“Of course not,” Mr. Peterson agreed. “I could never do anything like that. He’s his own person, and if we hadn’t been compatible, we would not have stayed together.”
Zachary heard the garage door opening and then closing and, in a few minutes, the kitchen door opened and Pat entered carrying a couple of bags of groceries. He saw Zachary through the doorway and smiled.
“Zachary! You made it. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.” He had, of course, missed it the first time Pat had asked him to meet them. But that had been Christmas. Zachary was never doing very well around Christmas. He hadn’t been up to it then.
“It’s so nice to be able to have my family… be part of my family again. My mom is very excited about meeting you.”
Zachary’s face got warm. He hadn’t ever had a grandparent, and the thought of Pat’s mom being excited to ‘meet her grandchild’ felt a little weird. Pat had been more of a father to him the past couple of decades than anyone but Mr. Peterson, and Zachary was happy to call him a foster father or stepfather, but it was strange to think of Pat’s extended family being part of Zachary’s family.
“I hope she’s not disappointed.” There was a tightness in his stomach that hadn’t been there before. He wasn’t exactly the cute baby bundle that most grandparents looked forward to seeing. He was about as different from a cute little baby as he could be.
“Zachary, I’ve talked so much about you. She’s really looking forward to it. You don’t need to feel like you have anything to prove or to measure up to. You’re just family. I just want my family to meet each other. You’re not expecting anything from them, are you?”
Zachary considered. He wasn’t. He would take them however they were. Whether they were sharp and acid like Joss or warm and caring like Tyrrell or Mr. Peterson, it didn’t really matter. He’d take them as they came. He knew that he wasn’t getting a doting grandparent. He was just meeting the woman who had raised Pat. And Pat was a great guy.
“No. It will just be nice to meet them,” he agreed.
“I’ve met some of your siblings now. There wasn’t anything awkward about that, was there?”
“No.” Pat was always the consummate host. He made everyone feel comfortable. Kenzie and Zachary’s siblings had immediately felt at home with him. And Pat would make things comfortable when his family came. “No, it was really nice,” he agreed.
“There you go.” Pat put his bags on the kitchen counter. “I just have to get these put away. Have you had supper?”
“I grabbed something on the way.”
“So, no,” Pat discerned. “Granola bars or fries don’t count.”
Zachary scratched his jaw. “Well then… no, I guess I haven’t,” he admitted.
“That’s what I thought. How are you ever going to put on weight if you don’t eat at least three meals a day?”
“I’ve been gaining weight.”
“A little,” Pat admitted, looking at him critically. “But not enough. I could fatten you up a lot faster.”
Mr. Peterson chuckled. “We’re not going to cook him for Easter dinner.”
Pat laughed. He moved around the kitchen, putting his groceries away, while at the same time pulling seemingly-random items out of the cupboards and fridge. Zachary watched him through the doorway. Watching Pat pull a meal together was like magic. Nothing like when Zachary put a burrito in the microwave or Kenzie boiled pasta on the stove, adding bottled sauce after it was drained.
“I know you’re going to tell me that you’re not very hungry…” Pat said.
“No. I don’t really need anything.”
“Yes, you do. Let me make you something nice.”
Zachary went to bed with a full stomach despite himself. He felt stuffed. Pat’s omelet, toast, and hash browns had been way too much for him. He’d done his best but hadn’t made much of a dent in them. Pat was used to that and just laughed good-naturedly.
“You can have it for breakfast tomorrow.”
The morning was the worst time for Zachary’s nausea. He didn’t plan on having a big, eggy breakfast in the morning.
>
He took a walk through the house to make sure that everything was in place and the burglar alarm was armed. Pat and Lorne headed off to sleep, and Zachary sat on his bed, checking his email and social media and waiting for his eyelids to get heavy enough that he could try to sleep.
26
The next day, he was up before Mr. Peterson and Pat, even though he’d gotten to bed several hours after them. He booted up his computer and worked on what he could until he heard the two men up and around.
He looked at the time on his system clock and decided that it wasn’t too early to call Heather and see what she had been able to find out.
Just as his call rang through, his computer dinged and he saw an email come in from her. Heather answered the phone, laughing. “How did you know I was going to send that?”
“I just wanted to know how you were doing. I wasn’t sure whether you would have anything yet.”
“Well, I worked pretty late the last couple of nights.”
Zachary double-clicked the attachment on the email she had sent and looked over the bolded headings. “So he does have some dementia in his family.”
“Yes. Nothing that was ever identified as Huntington’s Disease, though,” Heather summarized. “Usually it says dementia or Alzheimer’s. No requests for donations to Huntington’s Disease research or anything like that. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t expect that we’d be quite that lucky. I’m happy that you managed to find something.”
“Yeah. I don’t know if it has ever actually been diagnosed.”
“In some cases, it isn’t, especially if it is later in life, or if they have a few generations where people die young before it hits. I guess some people get it when they’re fifty, but some don’t get it until they’re seventy or eighty. And then… they just call it aging… or maybe Parkinson’s.”
“Yes. I think there was one in there that they said was Parkinson’s.”
“Okay. Well, that’s really helpful. And you have his contact information in here.” Zachary scanned through the information that Heather had sent him. “Okay. I’ll talk to the client, and then see whether I can get ahold of McLachlan.”
“Do you think you should contact him directly?” Heather asked worriedly. “He’s not going to want to talk to a private investigator. He could get violent if you start digging into his family history and what’s gone on at these clinics.”
“I’ll be careful. I’ll approach him with some other story. Stroke his ego. Kenzie said that these doctors who have done this kind of thing in the past, you know, substituting their sperm in fertility treatments, they’ve got big egos, think that they are something special. I’ll focus on that. Tell him that I’ve heard how wonderful he is or something. That my client noticed him at the fertility clinic and wanted me to reach out to him… for something. Advice.”
“I don’t know. It still seems like… I don’t know; I would be worried about it.”
“I’ll be careful.” Zachary had run afoul of enough other bad actors that he knew he needed to be careful. This time, it wouldn’t turn out like it had before. And it wasn’t like McLachlan was a serial killer. He was a doctor—someone who had sworn the Hippocratic Oath. Do no harm. The danger would not be in his acting violently toward Zachary, but in figuring out that the jig was up and running away.
“Make sure you are,” Heather instructed him in her big-sister voice. “Do you need anything else from me?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’ll let you know if I need something, but I think this wraps it up pretty neatly. He’s got to be the guy.”
After Zachary was off the phone with Heather, Pat poked his head in.
“Morning, Zachary. Early bird as usual.”
“Yeah. You know me. If I get a few hours in, I’m doing well.”
Pat knew better than to suggest sleeping pills. He knew what had happened the last time Zachary had taken sleeping pills when he was there and they had interacted with his painkillers. Zachary had nearly ended up back in hospital when Pat and Lorne couldn’t wake him up.
“You up for coffee and toast?” Pat inquired.
“Coffee sounds good,” Zachary agreed. Toast would be pushing it. A few cups of coffee to get his day going, and he would have something to eat later in the day when he was feeling up to it.
Pat rolled his eyes. “I’ll put the coffee on.”
Zachary smiled. He listened to Pat clinking mugs and whatever else in the kitchen, and figured he had a few minutes before Pat and Lorne were ready for breakfast. He’d get in another call or two.
He tried Gordon first. The first call went to voicemail. Zachary switched over to his text messaging app and scrolled through to find Gordon’s number. He was probably in some big high-powered meeting at Chase Gold. When the markets closed in Japan. Or opened. Or whatever they did.
He shot off a quick text to Gordon, just letting him know that Heather’s research seemed to confirm that the employee they suspected might have Huntington’s Disease in his family. So Zachary would contact him and, if possible, get the police involved. Zachary wasn’t sure what the charges would be. What did you charge someone with who substituted his own sperm for someone else’s in an IVF procedure? Wrongful birth? Fraud? Sabotage? He wasn’t sure what statute it would fall under.
There was a quick text back from Gordon indicating that he understood and would follow up with Zachary when he was able.
Zachary put his phone down, filed the email from Heather on his client file in cloud storage, then got up off of the bed and stretched. He was dressed for the day, but hadn’t spent enough time in the bathroom, not wanting to wake the other men up. He needed to shave if he was going to be shown off to extended family at dinnertime. And probably shower and wash his hair too. He never did much with his hair; just kept it buzz-cut short so that he didn’t have to fuss.
When he returned from his shave, he saw that his phone screen was lit up as a call came through. He dove for it and saw Gordon’s profile on the screen. He swiped the call.
“Hi, Gordon?” He wasn’t sure he had caught it in time. It might have been ringing for a while before he had seen it.
There was silence for a moment. Zachary pulled the phone away from his face and reached out to tap the number to call it back. But he could see that the call was still live.
“Gordon?”
“Not Gordon,” came the sharp retort.
Zachary’s blood froze in his veins. Bridget?
In a split-second, he realized that he must have called Gordon’s home number instead of his work number. There was a stabbing pain in his chest. He couldn’t breathe.
He had called Gordon’s home number, which was also Bridget’s number, and she thought that he was stalking her.
A stupid mistake. As a PI, he was supposed to know a thing or two about stealth and not giving the game away when one spouse was investigating the other.
He swallowed, trying to think of what to say. Or should he just hang up and let Gordon try to explain it or to calm her down later? He gasped, finding it hard to breathe.
It was just anxiety. He was used to feeling that way when confronted by Bridget. It would pass. But he didn’t know what to say or do.
“Why are you calling me?” Bridget demanded. “You know you aren’t supposed to have any contact with me.”
“It must have been a pocket dial,” Zachary said, his voice strangled, sounding like a thirteen-year-old whose voice hadn’t changed yet. “I didn’t mean to…”
“I didn’t mean to,” she mocked. “You shouldn’t even have my number in your phone. You shouldn’t be able to pocket dial me.”
“I didn’t have it down as your number; it was on Gordon’s… from when I was doing the investigation at Chase Gold. I’m sorry. I’m not even in town; I’m down at Mr. Peterson’s. It was unintentional.”
“You’ve always got an excuse. What makes you think I would believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”
“Bridget…
”
Zachary could see Mr. Peterson walking down the hallway, past his partly-open doorway. Mr. Peterson stopped where he was and turned toward Zachary. He mouthed the name. Bridget?
Zachary made a frustrated motion that tried to express to Mr. Peterson that he hadn’t called Bridget and was trying to get off of the phone with her. He didn’t want to have to explain why he was on the phone with his ex-wife. Mr. Peterson knew all—or at least most—of the gory details of Zachary’s life with Bridget, and all of the ugly stuff that had happened since they had broken up.
Of course, there were still things that Lorne didn’t know, but he knew how it had torn Zachary up, how he hadn’t been able to let her go, and about all of the ups and downs of trying to get over her since. He knew that Zachary shouldn’t be on the phone with Bridget now.
“You know what? Enough is enough. I’m going to get a restraining order. Do you understand me? I’m going to make your life a living hell! You keep calling me. Following me around. Coming into the house when I’m not here! You can spend the rest of your life inside a jail cell. They can keep you there until you finally figure out that I don’t want anything else to do with you. You need to leave me alone!”
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you. Ask Gordon. It was just because of the case at Chase Gold. You know. The girl who died. The intern.”
Going to the house when Bridget was not there? He had never done that. Not since she had kicked him out. He’d never fallen that low.
“I know what case you’re talking about, but that is over. You don’t need to talk to him about that anymore. That’s just an excuse to call me and think you can get away with it. But you’re not. You’re not getting away with it!”
Her last words were a shriek of rage. Zachary pulled the phone away from his ear, wincing at the volume and pitch. He tapped the button to end the call. Then he sat there, looking at the blank face of the phone.
She Was at Risk Page 14
