by Keene, Susan
The truth of her statement hung in the room like stagnant fog.
Ryan broke the spell. “Denise, what was your real name?”
Mom glanced from me to Ryan. Her face had drained of all color. It was obviously a question she didn’t expect. She chose to dance around it. “I don’t know if there is anyone alive anymore who even cares about what happened thirty-five years ago, but if there is, I don’t want to end up in the ocean as fish food.”
“If I find out your given name, it puts you in danger? Who would I tell?”
She sat quietly. So much time had passed; I didn’t think she would tell us. “Louise Dawson. You have no idea what you are doing by bringing this out in the open. “
“If you tell me why it was and is so important to hide all of this, then maybe I can understand,” I said.
“Someone had to know there was a second baby,” Ryan insisted. Maybe they thought she was stillborn. Maybe the baby was promised to someone else and when they found out there were two children, they panicked and gave the other one to you. May I see Kate’s birth certificate?”
“Yes, of course, I have a copy, but Kate has the original. I told you it has me listed as her mother and John as her father.”
“Indulge me,” Ryan grinned.
Mom got up. “Sure, I’ll get it.”
I sat at the table and studied the waves. I found the ocean to be a metaphor for life and the world. It changed every second. As the waves lapped the shore and went out again, they left behind a piece of the old and took some of the new. It was either going in or out or up or down. It sustained itself. I needed to be more like the ocean, to remember the beauty of my past, that with my loss of Michael, I found Ryan. When I found Lizzy Smith, I left behind my stubborn selfishness and made room for my adorable Chili.
I had a sister. I saw her up close. She shared a pathway to my soul and she needed help. It was essential I find her.
Ryan took a picture of my birth certificate with his phone. “It says here your maiden name was Denise Jones, not very imaginative.”
I turned my attention from the ocean to him and my mother. One thing was for sure, the older I got the less I understood life and its twists and turns. “So which is it, Jones or Dawson?”
She looked down and didn’t answer. She had more secrets hidden and she wouldn’t share.
We caught an evening plane back to St. Louis. I didn’t have anything to say. Ryan didn’t talk either. I took the time and went over the entire visit one scene at a time. I wanted to see if I remembered anything I didn’t pick up on earlier.
I bet my birth mother didn’t know about me either. I took out my notepad and made my own notes. I wrote down the need to find out who else worked at Honor Hospital. Who ended up with a baby? If he was still alive I needed to find the doctor who signed my birth certificate and a nurse named Sally Jeffers, who signed as a witness. I wanted to know why I had never heard of Honor Hospital. By the time the plane landed, I had over thirty ‘find outs’ on my list.
Ryan drove me back to the apartment but instead of coming in he told me he had an appointment and would be home later. Secretly, I was pleased. I wanted more alone time to review and reminisce about a childhood that wasn’t as it had seemed.
I could only think so much before I had gone around the circle several times. My mom never married. She took a baby from a dead mafia princess. A baby who would most likely have ended up in the child welfare system and might have had twenty foster homes and none of the advantages I had. She took money to stay quiet about the child’s identity, and likely, the people who were involved in it were either dead or had moved on to something different. For thirty-four years, Mom and I lived a life above suspicion about anything or anyone.
It played repeatedly in my mind. I silently hashed out the different ways my life could have been. With everything I learned at Mom’s I decided I loved what she did for me. Everything she did was illegal. I could only hope she had done what she did for the right reasons. Somewhere I had a real mother and father.
The same fact came up over and over. My mother was paid a large sum of money to take me. Someone sold me. It made me shudder.
Sophie called again. “It’s me” She had my voice, but more hoarse and with an Eastern US dialect.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you. It would put you in great danger. Have you been with your mother all this time? Did she tell you we are the biggest secret ever?”
“Sophie, I don’t believe anyone would care after all these years. Mom’s sixty-four and teaches grade school math in Florida. How could it hurt anyone if we found each other now?”
“Kate, you’re naïve, and apparently you have no idea who our so-called father is or where I’ve been all my life. Come to 2456 S. Chamberlain, Apartment 34, be there at seven-thirty tomorrow evening. Come alone and don’t let yourself be followed. I’ll tell you all I know. If we pool our knowledge we might have the answers.
She hung up.
I was both excited and scared. Something told me I was in no danger if I went. I planned to be there.
Alone.
CHAPTER 16
R yan called about nine and wanted to know if I was hungry for Mexican food. I told him I had been dreaming of a comfort meal I had when I was a kid.
“Be there in thirty minutes,”
I went to the kitchen and began putting the meal together. I heard the elevator come to the top floor exactly thirty minutes later.
I stood outside the door as it opened. “Hi.”
He reached for me, hugged me rakishly and held me back at arm’s length. “Is our comfort food ready? I’m hungry.”
I took his free hand. “Yes, it’s ready.”
When he looked down he smiled. “Tuna sandwiches and tomato soup? It’s one of my favorites too. Another one I like is chili and a peanut butter sandwich.”
We laughed. “Wine sounded horrible with this, so I poured milk.”
“It’s perfect, Kate, and so are you.”
We wolfed down the food. Butterflies flew around in my stomach. It wasn’t the food. It was that I was to meet Sophie and I hadn’t told him. I had never lied to him before. Well, not a lie exactly; an omission. Omissions led to lies and lies led to lack of trust, which led to the end of a relationship. I decided I had to tell him.
I waited until we moved to the couch and we each had a glass of wine. “Sophie called earlier.” He waited for the rest. “She gave me an address and wants me to meet her tomorrow evening.”
“That’s great. Some of my men will surround the place and we’ll have her where we want her.”
I laid my hand lightly on his arm. “We can’t do that. I promised I would come alone without being followed.”
“Kate!” He put his glass on the coffee table and stood. “You don’t really think I’m going to let you go meet a strange woman, a murder suspect, alone, do you?”
I looked up at him. “It’s what I think and it’s what I expect.”
“This is a hard one. How can I let you go into danger without going along?”
“Ryan, sit down.” He did, but only on the edge of the seat. “I have good instincts. I don’t feel like there’s any danger here. She’s my twin. I sense the connection. She wouldn’t hurt me. I don’t know why the man was killed, but I believe her when she says she didn’t do it. She wants to talk and I need answers.”
We sat in silence. I heard the elevator go down and the speaker come to life. Amy came to drop Chili off. I ran to the lift. A face-lick from my dog could fix the worst of situations.
The door opened and there they stood. Chili wiggled from head to toe. Digger ran to Ryan and jumped in his lap. I felt the tension exhale from the room. “Come in.”
Chili jumped and turned every time I reached for her. She jumped back and ran in a circle. She was one happy dog. “Are you hungry?”
“Oh, no, Jake’s in the car. We’re having a late dinner tonight. He leaves for Dallas in the morning. Are you
coming to work?”
“Sure, I’ll be there around nine. Anything happen while Ryan and I were in Florida?”
“No, not really. Nathan and I make a good team. There’s money in the bank and we’ve found one runaway girl and three lost dogs, the usual boring stuff.”
“Okay, got to go. Come on Digger Dog!” The dog was reluctant to jump down as Ryan rubbed his belly. When the door opened, it reinforced Amy was leaving, he ran to the elevator like a bullet. I saw Ryan wave goodbye.
I scooped Chili up in my arms and walked back to the couch. Ryan held out his hands to take her. “Tell you what I’ll do,” I offered. “I’ll give you the address. You’ll do nothing with it. If you don’t hear from me by midnight you can go there and do what you feel you need to do. Until midnight I need to have my freedom.”
“Ten.”
“Eleven.” I countered
He rubbed Chili’s ears “Ten o’clock or no deal.”
“Fine, Ryan, but if you do anything before ten, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Deal.” We sealed it with a kiss, or two, and more.
The next day we found out there were five babies born at Honor Hospital from March twenty-ninth through April second, 1980? Four of them were girls. They were Diane, June, Shirley, and Daisy. No baby named Kate, Kathryn or Kathleen or anything remotely close.
To make things more confusing, there had never been a nurse named Sally Jeffers, and no Dr. Signorelli worked there within the fifteen years before or after I was born.
“I’ll ask Sophia who’s listed on her birth certificate as a delivery nurse, doctor, and parents.” My mother was never registered as a nurse in any state at any time. She had graduated from Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri in 1975 with a double major in Education and Spanish. It matched the profession she had now, but why she lied about being a surgical nurse was another inconsistency to add to the pile.
Further investigation brought up a Denise Madison from St. Charles who died in a car crash the night of her high school graduation in 1970.
There was no activity on her Social Security number, and she had no credit cards, driver’s license, or bank records until she graduated from college in 1975. In my occupation I’d seen it a dozen times. Someone needed an identity so they visited a cemetery or searched court records until they found a person who died young. They claimed their identity and began a new life, another lie by my mother.
We still didn’t know anything about Sophie. I hoped to answer all of my questions when I saw her.
There was a death certificate issued May 17, 1982, for a Julia Lombardi. She died in New Jersey, not in St. Louis, and not in an automobile accident. She died in an airplane crash along with most of her high school volleyball team, she was fifteen.
The one fact I had that couldn’t be disputed―everything my mother told us in Florida was a lie.
I had hoped to find out more about my sister before we met, but clearly, it wasn’t meant to happen. We headed home. Ryan sat on the chair in the bedroom and chatted with me as I attempted to get dressed.
“Are you going to wear that?” He looked at my black dress and matching jacket. “Are you planning on ending up out on the town?”
Instead of lashing out, I smiled.
“I think slacks and a jacket so you can carry your gun.”
He did have a point. I settled on a pair of man-tailored navy pants with a muted plaid jacket. My shoulder holster was well covered. Ryan seemed pleased.
He gave me all sorts of advice and pointers on how to protect myself. I felt like a young girl on her first date. He seemed to have forgotten I was a trained detective.
At six-thirty, I headed for the south side of St. Louis. The homes there were beautiful yet only a rifle shot from one of the worst areas in the city. Such was the face of St. Louis.
It didn’t seem to bother anyone. There were outside café’s and farmer’s markets, specialty shops, and the waterfront within five miles. I had entered the address into my GPS before I pulled out of the parking lot at the apartment.
Thirty-four wasn’t an apartment at all, but a three-story brownstone, no wider than a back alley. There was an entire row of them, all numbered oddly. Sophie’s number was neatly tucked between number seventeen and twenty-two.
I wanted to learn the real story of my life.
The parking lot sat nine or ten houses past where I wanted to be. It was dark and on the other side of the street. Signs everywhere let you know that parking in front of the row of dwellings was strictly prohibited.
When I drove into the lot I realized it was private and meant only for inhabitants and guests. I pulled into a spot marked with the number she gave me. On one side sat a new Jaguar. The other space that shared the number sat empty.
It was a spooky walk to the door. There were three steps up to a small stoop. When I touched the door to knock, it creaked open. I pulled my gun and looked through the apartment one room at a time.
The living room was in a shambles, the bedroom door had been kicked in. I could hear running water in the bathroom so I pushed the door. It wasn’t latched and slammed open into the body of a man. I looked around and holstered my weapon. A touch informed me the man was dead. He hadn’t been there long. He was warm.
I took a deep breath and tried to decide who to call first, Roger or Ryan. I decided on Roger. After the strange things that had happened to me recently, I wanted to cover my butt. The smell of warm, fresh blood made me gag. I wanted to find out who he was but decided to wait on the porch and not contaminate the scene.
Two men sprang from nowhere and grabbed me. I tried to scream, but one put his hand over my mouth. The other one took my Glock and cell phone out of my jacket pocket and tossed them on the front porch along with my keys, ID, and the money I carried in my back pocket.
They shoved me into the backseat of a car with a man who was so big he took up most of the space. “Settle down, Sophia. You knew we’d find you and take you back. The old man will be angry if you have any bruises.
“Let me go, I’m not Sophia. I’m Kate Nash. Please, you’re making a big mistake.”
“We could always leave you here and make it look like you killed someone else. As it is now, you’ll look like another victim.”
“Here, take this, it’ll make the trip more bearable.” The big man next to me poured a sour liquid into my mouth. I almost choked as I tried not to swallow it. It was the last thing I remembered until I woke up sometime later in the dark.
CHAPTER 17
M y head pounded as if someone had hit me in the head with a sledgehammer. The dark was so black, it occurred to me I might be buried in a hole. I didn’t want to panic and use all of my air in case I’d been entombed.
When I tried to stretch, there was plenty of room. I slid around and realized I was on a bed and not restrained. I couldn’t see an inch in front of me. I stood and took tiny steps until something solid hit my hands, which I’d managed to extend in front of me. I turned and touched my way to what I decided was a window. I opened the heavy drapes. It looked as though I was on the second floor. The window I gazed out appeared to face the back of some kind of compound.
Satisfied I had seen all I could from where I stood, I turned my attention to the inside of the room. The light drifted in from the yard lights and bathed the room in a warm glow. The decorations were pretty but outdated. The drapes were a muted mauve. White carpet with roses covered the floor except for a small area in front of what appeared to be a wood burning fireplace.
The sitting area sported a couch, love seat, chair, and ottoman all in a deep rose color. Everything looked like décor right out of a 1940’s Alfred Hitchcock movie.
On the wall behind the area, two more windows stretched floor to ceiling. I walked over, knelt on the love seat and pulled the cord.
There were more lights in what I gauged it to be the front. The gate was so far away from the house, I had to concentrate to make it out. Once my eyes adjusted to the d
im lights surrounding the place, I saw four men with guns behind a tall wrought iron gate. Though I could only see a limited distance, I got the feeling the stone wall I saw encircled the perimeter of the estate.
I went back to the first window. There was an area the size of two football fields filled with cars. Cadillacs, Fords, Nissans, were neatly backed against the wall.
There was no doubt in my mind that I had been kidnapped and taken to the family home in Newark. I didn’t know what to expect and the unknown terrified me. I’d have to mingle and interact with organized crime if I wanted to gain my freedom. If I wanted to survive this I couldn’t let it intimidate me.
My concentration was interrupted by a soft knock on the door. It hadn’t dawned on me to see if the door was locked. Before I could take a step toward the door, it opened and a middle-aged woman floated in. She was short, shorter than me. Her skirt touched the floor giving the illusion she had no feet. She held a covered tray in her arms. It looked heavy. I moved closer, took it away from her and sat it on a table to my left.
She turned on the lights. “Sophia. I’m glad you’re back. Your father has threatened all of us if we didn’t find you. How could you put us all in such danger? You know how important this wedding is to the future of the families.” She had stuck both hands under her apron. She looked like a small, Italian, Aunt Jemima.
A thousand questions swirled around in my brain, but I decided to let her think I was Sophia.
“I know it’s important to my father.” It was a terrible chance to take, to try to be someone I wasn’t. Someone I knew nothing about. My instincts told me it was a better choice than to tell her who I was and cause more trouble for myself.
She looked at me so intently, my body got hot with fear. “Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Sophie.”
She shook her head and pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. She dialed a number “Anthony. I need you in Sophia’s room right away.”
My knees buckled. How had I given myself away so easily? I pulled out a chair and sat. “Are you going to turn me in?”