Dying for a Clue

by Judy Fitzwater

  “Is the clinic involved with adoptions—legal or illegal? I thought maybe somebody could drop by and simply ask if adoption was something the clinic could help with.”

  “Not to worry. Consider it covered.”

  “Teri, all I wanted were some ideas—”

  “I tell you, we’ll handle it.”

  “‘We’? You couldn’t possibly be thinking of calling Leigh Ann...”

  “Leigh Ann? You’ve got to be kidding. That girl is nothin’ but trouble. Besides, how could she help me get inside a fertility clinic? She’s way too young.”

  “But—”

  “Chill, babe. Talk to you soon.”

  The phone buzzed in her ear as terror settled in her bones and Muffy stared up at her. Someday she’d figure out that doing nothing might be less productive but a whole lot less terrifying than getting Teri involved.

  Chapter 14

  Jennifer drummed her fingers on the small table at the new age coffee shop/bookstore down the street from the Telegraph offices and took another sip of water. Sam was late, as usual, and her stomach was doing double loops waiting to be fed.

  He swept in looking attractively disheveled, spied her in the back, and came grinning toward her, obviously pleased with himself.

  “It’s harder to find something that’s not there than something that is,” he declared, loosening his tie and settling into one of the flimsy wooden chairs.

  The waitress was right on top of them. Jennifer ordered a vegetarian delight and a cappuccino. They made some of the best specialty coffees in Macon.

  Sam requested a meatball sub and a plain coffee—assuming someone in the place knew how to brew one.

  When the waitress was out of earshot, Sam leaned forward and filled her in. “Diane Robbins was not legally adopted in the state of Georgia by Stewart G. and Anne Marie Robbins, nor was any other child by any other name.”

  “You’re sure?” Jennifer asked, not at all ready to accept what he was saying. “What about variations in name spelling?”

  “Absolutely sure. I also looked for S-t-u-a-r-t, A-n-n, even Mary. Tried with the initials and without. Nothing—five years on either side of our estimated date.”

  If nothing else, he was certainly thorough. “Maybe the record is simply closed—”

  “Only from the other side, from the birth mother’s side, would any information be kept confidential.”

  She knew that. Still, she’d love to put together a scenario that would allow Diane at least hope of a legal adoption. Jennifer sighed. “So where’d she come from?”

  Sam helped himself to a slug of her water and raked back his hair. “Hey, I’m a newspaper reporter, not a seer. Maybe you should ask Valerie.”

  He was kidding, but if, for one moment, she thought Valerie could conjure up the truth about Diane, she would ask her to do just that.

  “It’s not like this child was an infant,” Jennifer reminded him. “Someone would miss a three-year-old.”

  “So you’re saying you think she was stolen?”

  “Well, let’s look at this as logically as possible,” she suggested, fingering the sugar packets in the small glass container in the middle of the table. “How does a young child become available for adoption?”

  “Her parents can no longer take care of her because of illness, drug abuse, lack of means to support her, or—”

  “Death,” Jennifer finished, shoving the container to one side. “Only if any of those situations occurred, she should have gone into the child social services system, and, according to you, she didn’t.”

  “At least not that I could find. And, believe me, I did try. A name would have helped.”

  “Okay then, let’s look at what we can conclude. If Diane was adopted, it was out of state. If she is actually from Georgia, as her parents have led her to believe both they and she are, the adoption must have been illegal.”

  “Most likely. We still have the question of how she wound up in Collier’s hands.”

  He took another drink of water and then offered it back to her. As far as she was concerned, it was his now.

  “Let’s take this one step at a time,” she suggested. “What about checking for a birth certificate?”

  “I couldn’t find one for a Diane Robbins in her age range, and there should be a corrected one if her name were changed.”

  “And the original?”

  “Are you kidding? All we have is a first name of Cat. We aren’t even sure how that should be spelled, with a C or a K, or what it might be short for. But I hardly think it’s her given name. We certainly don’t know her birth parents’ names or, for sure, what her birth date is.”

  Jeez. He was such a stickler for details. “Okay, okay, so that’s out.”

  “We’re stabbing in the dark. If you really want to know the circumstances surrounding Diane’s adoption, what we should do is find Diane’s mother, the one that took off from Smith Mountain.”

  She could go with that.

  “Get a license plate number, plus the make and model of her car, and I’ll see what I can do. If she hasn’t crossed state lines, we just might get lucky.”

  “Will do.”

  “Good. You staying close to the apartment?”

  His concern was nice, but she was a big girl, and what did she really have to be afraid of? “I’m doing what I have to do. The workmen are scheduled to install a new bedroom door in my apartment tomorrow. They had to order the lock I picked out for the front door. It’ll take a few days for it to get here.”

  “One of those across-the-door steel jobbies like you see in movies about New York City, huh?”

  “This is serious,” she reminded him.

  “I’m perfectly aware of that,” he said, for once completely sober. “The police are pretty sure that Beverly Hoffman’s death was a professional hit.”

  Jennifer tried to blink back her surprise as the waitress rounded the table and plopped down their orders, spilling some of the homemade potato chips onto the bare table. “Vanilla bean coffee was the closest I could get to regular today,” she warned him, scooting a cup in Sam’s direction and scooping up the wayward chips. He grunted and waved her away.

  Jennifer stared at her sandwich with pepper and mushroom slices spilling out of the bun. Suddenly, she wasn’t so hungry anymore.

  “Professional?” she whispered.

  Sam took a mammoth bite, tomato sauce clinging to one corner of his mouth. “The good news is that means they’re most likely gone and won’t be back. Made the hit, tried a recovery of the material—at the scene, at Diane’s and then at your place—all within a short period of time. Since we’ve had no more activity in more than twenty-four hours, I think we can assume these guys have left.” He wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin.

  “Professional?” she repeated.

  He waved the hand holding the napkin up and down in front of her face. She batted it away. “You weren’t on the list. Neither was Johnny Zeeman. If he had been, they would have capped him in that alley.”

  “Capped him?”

  “You know, put a bullet in his head. Made sure he was dead.” He bit off another mouthful of meatballs. “They knew neither of you could make an ID. Too dark, and too far away.”

  She shoved her plate away. She might never eat again. “Then why’d they come back up the alley looking for me?”

  “You might have been armed, and they wanted to make sure Johnny was down. They weren’t going to give you a chance to take them out.” He grinned. “Of course, they didn’t know it was you out there.”

  She made an ugly face at him.

  “What you ought to be asking yourself is who hired them,” he went on. “And how they knew to be in that alley that night. Who told them Hoffman was at the clinic to pass over information, assuming that’s why she was killed?”

  Who, indeed? Johnny knew. So did Hoffman. And Diane. Who might they have told?

  And where, exactly, was that information?

  Chapt
er 15

  The news that Beverly Hoffman’s death could have been a hired kill left Jennifer on edge. Even though she was sure they were safe, she felt guilty for leaving the girls alone while she’d gone out for lunch with Sam.

  A hand on her shoulder stopped Jennifer cold as she scurried across the parking lot toward Sam’s apartment. She crouched, whirled, and let out a loud hah-yah! ready to do battle, but Johnny Z’s “Hey, hey, watch it, will ya” kept her from landing what promised to be an anemic blow to his chest.

  “One of these days I’m not going to be able to pull my punch,” she barked at him.

  He snickered at her. “Yeah, well save it for the enemy, doll.”

  Unfortunately, at this point, that might include him.

  He leaned in and added, “We need to talk.” He looked better than usual. His color was almost back to normal, at least what passed for his yellowish kind of normal, but his breath was cloying with smoke. At least he’d put on a suit and tie—a seedy suit and tie—but still...

  “Haven’t you ever heard of a telephone?” she asked, and then wondered why she’d bothered. He ignored every question she ever asked him.

  “The girls all right?” He nodded in the direction of Sam’s balcony.

  “I left them well supplied with pizza and dvds. What more could a couple of teenaged girls want?” Other than teenaged boys.

  “They can wait,” he told her. “You and me have business to conduct. I thought maybe you might like some lunch. I know a nice, quiet, little place...”

  Please, someone, tell her he wasn’t asking her out. The suit. She should have known.

  “Sorry. I’ve already eaten.”

  “Maybe some other time...”

  And maybe not.

  She leaned against the wrought-iron handrail that led up the steps, ready for some answers of her own. “I’ve got a question for you: Who’d you tell we’d be in that alley Sunday night?”

  “Oh, I get it. You think I tipped somebody off, so I could get myself shot.”

  When he put it that way, it did sound pretty ridiculous.

  “Any more questions?” he added, bristling that she’d had the nerve to ask. Or from her rejection. Maybe a little of both.

  “Yeah, one. How’d you get yourself kicked off the Macon police force?”

  His eyes narrowed, and, for a moment he looked like he’d been sucker punched. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll answer that one if you want to explain how you got yourself charged with murder a few months back.”

  Her cheeks went red. He was playing dirty. But then, so was she. “It wasn’t murder—”

  “All right, then, communicating threats.”

  “You checked up on me.” She felt violated, even if the story had been in all the newspapers.

  “Like I said before, it’s my job. You think I’d let just anyone in on my business? Besides, I’ve been asking myself who you might have told. Now, any more questions?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good. So what’s Diane said about her parents?”

  “Where they live, what they do.”

  “She tell you they can’t be located?”

  “Yeah. Her dad’s on a business trip and her mom split.”

  “Panicked and cut out, huh?”

  Jennifer shook her head at him. “Hardly.”

  “What you got in mind?” Johnny was reaching for another cigarette. If he kept this up, she’d have to check into buying some of those little filter masks to wear over her nose.

  “Someone wants a child so badly they go through years of fertility treatments and then all the trouble of adopting her, maybe even illegally, and then they find out this kid is in some kind of trouble. My bet is she’s already here in Macon looking for Diane.”

  His lighter wouldn’t strike, so he chewed on the filter. “So what say we do a little nosing around Lanier, find out if someone’s been asking after Diane.”

  As if she already didn’t have more to do than there were hours in the day.

  “And you don’t think we might stand out a little too much, poking around on campus? It’s not like anyone would mistake us for a couple of students.”

  “Not me, but you’re somethin’ else. Notch down that sophistication a level, and you could pass for twenty easy.”

  She didn’t know if he was handing her a line to get what he wanted or whether he meant it, but it sure beat someone calling her ma’am.

  “So you think she figures Diane will come back to the dorm or show up in class, and when she does…” Johnny waved his hand.

  “She’ll be there,” Jennifer finished.

  “I could go with that.”

  “Well, I’m not quite sure I’m ready to deal with Mrs. Robbins. Besides, I think we won’t have to go looking for her. Most likely, one way or another, she’ll find us,” Jennifer told him. “Moms are like that.”

  “Yeah? Well, when she does, I’m counting on you to gain her trust.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. She’s a lot more likely to listen to a nice-looking, friendly gal like you than she is someone like me.”

  At least they could agree on that.

  “And when you do, see if you can’t get her to give you one of her bank deposit slips.”

  “Oh, and just how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Ask for her address. If it doesn’t occur to her, suggest that it’s printed on a deposit slip. Most people figure the only way you could use it is to put money in the bank.”

  “How else can you use it?” she asked.

  “Just see if you can get it and hope that she turns up soon.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s got to know something.”

  Chapter 16

  When Jennifer left Johnny and finally got up to Sam’s apartment, the girls were getting restless. They weren’t used to captivity. She studied them as they lounged on the floor. They were drinking Cherry Cokes.

  Diane was quiet, remote, pouty. She’d forgone the dark red lipstick and most of the eyeliner. She looked younger than before, almost like she was drawing back into her childhood, back to when she was safe, sometime after three and before seventeen.

  They’d let Muffy finish off the pizza crusts they’d thrown back into the box they left on the floor. Jennifer let her have the last piece, and then crumpled the cardboard and stuck it in the trash can.

  “Why didn’t you bring any of our CDs?” Valerie moaned at Diane. “Did you take a look at the kind of music Sam listens to? Arrrrgghhh.”

  She flung herself out flat on the floor, her fiery orange-red hair spread out like a starburst, and stared back up over her eyebrows at Jennifer. “Surely you have something better at your place.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Cake.”

  “Cake? I thought you wanted music.”

  Valerie groaned louder this time and covered her eyes. “What century are these people from? How long did you say we had to stay here?”

  “I thought you liked it here,” Diane snapped, apparently more irritated with Valerie than she was with being at Sam’s apartment.

  “It’s not that; it’s just I need to get out,” Valerie insisted, sitting up and stretching her legs.

  “Well, there’s the door. No one’s got you locked in,” Diane hissed.

  They were getting on one another’s nerves. Bored, tired, and confined: a dangerous combination. TV and the Internet held only so much appeal.

  “I don’t think going out would be such a good idea, at least not yet,” Jennifer suggested.

  Diane nudged her toward the bedroom. Once they were inside, she shut the door and leaned against it. “She’s been doing tarot spreads all morning. The girl thinks she’s a wiccan.”

  “A witch?” Jennifer shook her head. “She’s just playing.” Or so she hoped. “Where’d she get the cards?”

  Diane gave her a look. “She carries them in her purse, can you believe it? So, tell me she’s not into this stuff. She actually look
ed through all of Sam’s closets and drawers to see if he had a Ouija board. My dad always says you shouldn’t mess with that stuff. Never know what you might call up.”

  “So did mine. Invites trouble,” Jennifer agreed. “But Valerie seems harmless enough. How’d the two of you meet?”

  She shrugged. “She came with the room.” Diane crossed behind her and sat on the foot of Sam’s unmade bed.

  Men. He should have made it up. After all, he knew there was company in the house. Jennifer came around the side, tugged the comforter out from under Diane, and threw it over the sheets.

  “What are we going to do? I can’t stay here forever. I’ve got classes.” She chewed on one dark red fingernail.

  At least she was diligent. It hadn’t been much more than a day, but it hardly seemed a good idea to point that out. In college terms, that could be over a hundred pages of reading.

  “Johnny’s doing what he can,” Jennifer assured her. “So is Sam, and I’ve got a friend setting something up. We will figure it out.”

  “Good, but I’ve got a full scholarship that requires a 3.0 grade average to keep. I didn’t even bring my books.” She reached behind her for Sam’s pillow and hugged it to her, like a child holding onto a teddy bear.

  “Hey, I’m impressed. What were you, valedictorian of your high school class?” Jennifer asked, hoping to get her talking about something more pleasant.

  Diane frowned at her. “Nothing like that, but I did all right. Got Bs mostly. Private colleges have a lot more latitude than public universities. They give out a lot of special-type awards, especially for specific majors.”

  “And your major is...”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Okay. This conversation seemed at a dead end, but at least they were talking. She needed Diane to trust her. “So how’d you wind up in Macon?”

  She shrugged. “It was Mom’s idea, mostly, I guess. We scoped out a few schools, mainly in state, but some in Tennessee and North Carolina. But this scholarship came along, and Mom said that was it. Lanier has a great reputation as a liberal arts school, and since I still don’t know what I want to go into, she thought it was the best choice.”