by Jean Stone
She went out to the hall and ran upstairs to check out one last detail. It only took a minute to confirm her suspicion.
Then she walked briskly toward the main entrance. She didn’t know if John had figured it out yet, too, but Annie was now certain she knew who Bella’s mother—and her father—were.
Chapter 29
Annie climbed into the police cruiser, no longer caring what her clothes or her makeup-less face must look like. She was blissful that she finally knew the answers.
“Where are we going?” John asked.
“Are you alone?” she asked, disappointed. She’d been concerned they’d need some sort of backup like in the cop shows on TV. She suspected that few people enjoyed a confrontation with law enforcement.
“Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve. A couple of revelers already went crazy out on South Beach. Hank and Lou are taking care of it.”
Small town. Small police force that swelled in summer months in tandem with the heat and crowds. As John had already told her, until then, the force was stretched thin. “Okay, then,” she said, “let’s hope for the best.”
John smiled. “I certainly will, once you tell me where we’re going.”
“To the Thurmans. You know the address.”
His eyes narrowed. He squinted. “But Francine said . . .”
“I know what she said. That she isn’t Bella’s mother. So we now believe that Caleb told the truth—he isn’t the father.That is correct.”
John took his foot off the brake and drove down the hill to the road. “You think she’s the brother’s baby? What’s his name . . . Michael? Well, if Michael’s the father, who’s the mother?”
“Michael came to visit Francine this morning. They had an interesting conversation. They didn’t see me in the room.”
“And? Did he confess?”
“He does resemble Caleb, though he does not have the dimple. And though I know beans about DNA, I suppose it’s possible. Or, of course, Bella could have gotten the dimple straight from her father.”
“Oh, God,” John groaned. “Well, we know for sure Bella’s father isn’t Clark. We got confirmation this morning that he was out on the Jean Marie fishing at George’s Banks most of last winter. He wouldn’t have had time to be over on the Cape.”
Annie let it slide that she’d already discounted Clark as Bella’s father. “No. She isn’t Clark’s daughter.”
“Then . . . ?”
“Well, though I’ve never met him, I’m willing to bet that Caleb and Michael’s father—Stephen—has a dimple on his chin.”
John blinked. “Stephen? You think Bonnie’s husband is Bella’s father?”
Annie nodded.
“Wait a minute. If Stephen’s her father, who’s her mother?”
“That’s the easy part. Bella’s mother is Francine’s mother, too. I think Bella and Francine are half sisters.Which accounts for why the baby has Francine’s sad, soulful eyes.”
John turned south onto County Road. “You sure about this?”
“Completely. I told you about Isabella Wright—the woman I learned about from the nurse, Helene, in the maternity department. Isabella moved with her family to Minnesota right after high school graduation in 1995. Helene had said all the kids had been upset. After I left Francine today, I went back to maternity. Helene was working. I asked if she remembered the first name of Isabella’s mother. She said it was also Isabella, which was why she’d called her daughter Bella until the daughter refused. Then I asked if Isabella, the younger one, had a boyfriend before the family moved. She did. It was Stephen Thurman. And he was really upset when she left. I don’t know the details, but I’d be willing to bet Stephen does.”
“Holy crap,” Sergeant John Lyons said with a broad grin. “So there’s a definite connection with Francine being from the Cape and Stephen going there with his boys . . . but how did Isabella and Francine get there from Minnesota? And why?”
“I have no idea. I know that Isabella married a guy whose family was in banking. Based on Francine’s age, she must have been theirs. But that’s all I know.”
“Okay, we know for certain that Francine was living in Wellfleet a year ago. So let’s start with that—and the Sunrise Café.” He picked up his phone and called the police station. He fired off a few questions, then asked for a callback, ASAP. When he hung up, he turned back to Annie. “Let’s go. I’ll question Thurman, but jump in whenever you want. I’d love to see him grovel to a woman. I can’t stand the son of a bitch.”
Annie laughed. “Seriously?”
“Stephen convinced his father, Billy—who was my dad’s friend and a great guy—that he should let Stephen take over the books for the painting business. He’d taken an accounting class somewhere off island and thought he knew more than God about finances. But he was cheap. He screwed both seasonal people and islanders. And he wouldn’t let Billy buy new equipment. When the old man fell off a ladder and was killed, it was because the damn thing was too old to still be in use. Instead of taking any blame for his dad’s death, Stephen collected a boatload of insurance and bought the house on Scallop Cove Road. He never could have afforded the place otherwise. Or to send his kids off island to college. On top of everything, he’s a crappy painter.”
By the time they turned onto Scallop Cove Road, someone at the station called John back. He said “Yes” and “Uh-huh” a few times, and he nodded. As he pulled into the Thurmans’ driveway, he gave Annie a thumbs-up sign.
And Annie knew that Stephen Thurman was about to be brought down a notch. She was happy she’d be there as a witness.
* * *
Bonnie opened the back door. “Again?” she asked. “Which one do you want now?”
Annie knew that the woman would not like John’s answer. “Is your husband home, Bonnie?”
She let them in but didn’t ask them to sit down. Then she disappeared from the kitchen.
Annie and John stood in the doorway that led into the kitchen. They didn’t speak. It was interesting to Annie that John had what she’d heard was called an “island grudge.” She supposed there were plenty of those scattered around, like the one Winnie had with Nancy Clieg.
Stephen arrived. An angry shade of red tinted his cheeks; his hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Annie hoped he didn’t have a gun in there. She was, however, able to see a distinctive dimple in the center of his chin.
“John,” he said directly. He did not address Annie.
John removed his hat and pushed back his hair. “Hey, Stephen. I suppose you know why we’re here.”
The man pulled his hands from his pockets—thankfully, there was no gun—and folded his arms across his broad chest. “Actually, no. Except I heard you’ve been accusing one of my boys of knocking up some girl from the Cape.”
“The girl has a name. Francine Gardner. I believe you met her last Christmas when you took the boys fishing in Wellfleet? She was a waitress at the Sunrise Café?”
Stephen emitted what could have been a guffaw. “A waitress? Jesus, John. Is that the best you can do? Do you know how many girls have waited on me over the years?”
“Well, you might not remember her, but perhaps you knew her mother?”
Annie couldn’t stand keeping quiet another second. “Her name was Isabella,” she said. “You knew her years ago on the island. When her name was Isabella Wright.”
The red tint of his cheeks washed out to a gray pallor.
Annie stepped forward. “I understand you were high school sweethearts?”
Before he could agree or deny it, John interrupted. “It was too bad when Isabella moved away, wasn’t it? Then she got married. After her husband died, she moved to the Cape. Where she was the manager at the Sunrise Café. In Wellfleet. Where it just so happens you took your boys last Christmas vacation.” While he talked, John’s gaze penetrated Stephen’s body language and every flinch that the son of a bitch’s eyes were making. Then he looked at Annie again. “Annie, would you do the honors and
tell Mr. Thurman about Bella?”
Annie smiled. “My pleasure. I think we’d all like to know, Mr. Thurman, if you knew that you’d—how did you call it?—knocked her up? Not Francine, but Isabella? Did you know you are the father of her baby? A sweet little girl named Bella. After her grandmother. Oh, perhaps you didn’t know that Isabella Wright had been named after her mother, who turned out to be Bella’s grandmother. Don’t you love how island folks respect tradition?” She knew she sounded snarky, but she couldn’t help it.
Bonnie shoved Stephen out of the way and pointed a finger in John’s face. “Get out of my house,” she hissed. “Both of you. I’m sick of you people and your accusations. Unless you have a reason to arrest anyone, get out of my house right now.”
The four adults stood there, eyes jumping from one to another.
Annie had a hard time believing that this Bonnie Thurman was the same woman who’d been so nice when she’d been there with Earl.
John turned to leave.
Then Stephen held out an arm and stopped him. “No,” he said. “Wait. It’s true. It’s all true.”
Bonnie’s fists clenched. Then she shrieked, rolled one shoulder back and then forward, and socked her husband in the jaw.
“Whoa,” John said. He moved quickly and grasped Bonnie’s arm. “Maybe the four of us can sit and talk about this like civilized people?”
Bonnie glared at John; John glared at Bonnie, his grip remaining on her arm. She turned her eyes from him; he let go and relaxed.
They moved into the living room. Stephen led the way, rubbing his jaw where Bonnie’s punch had landed. John walked behind him, one arm resting on Bonnie’s shoulder. Annie went last.
They breathed. They sat. Stephen sagged into a big leather chair. John and Bonnie took the sofa. Annie perched on a small ottoman, because laundry was piled on the other chairs.
Stephen put his hands on the armrests and began to pick at the tightly rolled piping along the edges. “I had no idea. Not ’til this morning.”
His wife said nothing.
“It was when we split up. Remember? Last Christmas?”
“As if I could forget,” Bonnie seethed.
“You told me not to come back.”
“But you did. You bastard. After you’d been fucking a . . . a waitress.”
Annie was embarrassed now, as if she’d walked into a domestic scene that she had no business being in.
“Once,” Stephen replied. “Only once.”
Bonnie laughed. “Only once? The same way you fucked Laureen? Your own brother’s wife?”
Good Lord. Annie would have done just about anything to slip out the side door unnoticed then, to leave the Thurmans to disentangle their very personal issues.
Then Bonnie’s eyes narrowed with piercing accusation. “Do our boys know? God, Stephen. Did you flaunt this in front of them?”
Stephen stood, walked to the fireplace, and pressed his forehead against the mantle. “They did. But none of us knew about any baby.”
Bonnie put her hands up to her face and bent forward, almost down to her knees.
The back of Stephen’s neck was crimson now. Annie wondered if he might grab the poker, whip around, and lash out at them all. Would John be able to yank his gun from its holster and stop him before it was too late? Before their skulls were bashed in or their faces disfigured? She knitted her fingers together and tried to breathe slowly, tried to calm her overactive imagination. Then she said, “I know this must be difficult for both of you. But can we please remember there’s an innocent baby involved?”
A moment passed before Stephen said, “Where’s her mother? Where’s Isabella?”
“She’s dead,” Annie said. She took grim satisfaction in the silence that filled the room.
After a few seconds, John said, “Did you know that Francine Gardner—Isabella’s other child, the one we guess was her dead husband’s daughter—is the girl who jumped off the Chappy ferry? That she tried to kill herself because she didn’t know where to go or what to do with the baby now that her mother’s dead?”
Stephen turned around and drew his hands down his face. “Jesus.”
Bonnie started to cry.
“You’ve probably heard that the courts frown on birth fathers who shirk paying child support. Chances are, it will be easy for me to get a warrant for your DNA,” John said. “So you might as well tell us what happened. You knew that Isabella was in Wellfleet, didn’t you? Please don’t insult us by saying it was a coincidence.”
Stephen moved to the wide window that looked over the lawn and out to the cove. “Yeah. Isabella has an older sister named Marty. Marty hated it in Minnesota. Within a year after they moved, she came back east to the Cape. Didn’t come back to the island, though. She said she no longer wanted her life to be at the mercy of the boats. Anyway, she met Bill Hastings—the guy who owns the Sunrise. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Isabella married some wimp. A rich boy who never measured up to his daddy’s standards. When the daddy died, they learned that he’d been cut out of the will. The guy even gave away all his assets so they couldn’t contest it. The rich boy was no longer worth shit. So he killed himself. They had one kid—Francine. By then Isabella’s father was gone, too, and her mother was a pain in the ass. So Isabella moved to the Cape to be near Marty. She needed a job; Bill gave her one. When Francine got a little older, she worked there, too.”
“When did all this happen?”
Stephen shrugged. “Five, maybe six years ago. Francine was twelve, I think, when they arrived. She’s a quiet, mousy little thing. Must take after her weasel of a father.” He guffawed, as if he were a bully.
“Did you know that Isabella got pregnant?”
“Hell, no. My boys told me this morning. The way I figure it, she kept it from me because she didn’t want to screw up my marriage. Not that it was in any great shakes at the time. But Isabella was like that. She really liked my boys and didn’t want to mess them up. She was real thoughtful. She always had been.”
Bonnie stood up and left the room.
John took a long breath. “It sounds like you’d seen her more often than last Christmas.”
His shoulders slumped; his head now drooped. Stephen Thurman actually looked smaller than he had before, as if his conscience might have shriveled his bravado. “Look. She went through a lot. We had a good thing when we were kids, you know? Her folks didn’t like me; they said I wasn’t good enough for her, but the wimp was.” He waved an arm around the room. “Like this wouldn’t have been good enough? Christ, I paid six eighty-five for it, and now it’s worth over a million. That wouldn’t have been good enough for his precious daughter?”
Annie decided that, no matter that he was Bella’s father, Stephen Thurman was a jerk who had even inflated the valve of his real estate as if they could not learn the truth. She silently praised John for not commenting that the money for the house had come from the insurance from the painting business.
“When I started taking the boys fishing over there on school vacations, Bonnie was glad to be rid of us.”
“And you were glad to reconnect with Isabella,” John said.
He shrugged with nonchalance. “That was how it started. She called to tell me when she and her kid got to the Cape.”
Annie wondered where men like him came from and how they often managed to have a decent family that they took for granted; a wife like Bonnie; boys like Michael and Caleb, who’d been willing to protect their father from his indiscretion. She also wondered what on earth Francine’s mother had seen in him. Then again, Annie’s own parents might have asked the same thing about Mark if they’d still been alive when he’d come into her life. They’d loved Brian, but they would have had a hard time even liking Mark.
John stood up. “Well, Francine is in the hospital if you want to bother to see her. She’s going to be okay, not that you asked. As for your daughter, she’s safe for now. Where she’ll end up is yet to be determined.” He turned to Annie. “Come on, Annie. I�
�ve had enough of the stink in this house.”
* * *
Some people prayed to God. But Francine prayed to her mother.
“Please, Mommy. Get me out of here.”
Then she cried again, because she no longer believed that her mother—or anyone—was listening.
Chapter 30
“I need a drink,” John said, once they were back in the cruiser and heading into town.
“I have wine at my house,” Annie said. “And clean, decent clothes. I’d give just about anything to change into clean, decent clothes.”
He laughed. “Let’s pick my truck up at the station. Then get the hell over to your place.” On the way out of the house, he rested a hand on Annie’s shoulder. They walked to the passenger side of the cruiser, and he opened the door for her as if she were a real lady and not a woman in gnarly, soap-splattered clothes.
* * *
“I bought all this before the blizzard,” Annie said, showing John her collection of chardonnay. “I guess I’d feared I’d be snowed in ’til April.”
She’d called Earl and Claire to be sure Bella was all right. Then John had taken the phone and told his dad everything that had happened and that Annie had figured out that Stephen Thurman was Bella’s father. “So we decided to celebrate,” John said. “Would you and Mom keep Bella for the night? We might stay out late.” He thanked him and hung up, then looked at Annie. “I thought you might need a break from the baby. Besides, you shouldn’t drive to Mom and Dad’s to pick her up if you’ve been drinking.”
Annie laughed and handed him a corkscrew. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Glasses are to the right of the sink.”
She took her time changing into jeans, a soft white sweater, and thick wool socks that were casual, but more stylish than her fuzzy slippers. She felt no need to rush—rushing about anything was not the island way. Then she added what she hoped was enough makeup so she looked attractive without sending a message she didn’t know if she was ready to send. When she went back into the living room, John was sitting on the love seat. She noticed that he’d added wood to the stove and had turned on her Bose stereo—one of the few things she had kept from her life with Mark. Low strains of Thelonious Monk filled the room.