Dying for a Clue

by Judy Fitzwater

  “When you talked to the nurse at the clinic, did you tell her who you were?” Jennifer asked casually.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t really talk to her. I was so freaked out, all I wanted was out of there.”

  “But did you mention you went to Lanier?”

  “Valerie might have. What are you getting at?”

  “Johnny had to give her your name, otherwise she wouldn’t have known what was going on. It just struck me that she probably realized you were a college student, even if he didn’t tell her.”

  But that didn’t explain how someone knew she was at Lanier instead of Mercer or Wesleyan or Macon College.

  Diane looked up from where she’d been twisting the corner of Sam’s pillowcase. “What difference would that make?”

  Maybe none, and maybe why her dorm room had been ransacked. She was learning from Johnny Z. She didn’t answer.

  “I don’t suppose you have a picture of your mother with you?”

  Diane blinked at her. “I think I still have one in my wallet, the one Mom and Dad had taken for their church directory.” She dug in the back pocket of her jeans, pulled out her wallet, flipped through it, and handed Jennifer a bent, 2-by-3-inch photo.

  Her parents were an attractive, young-looking couple with big smiles. Her mother was blonde, most likely an attempt to cover the gray. Her straight, one-length hair curled under at her shoulders. Her father, graying at the temples, seemed pleasant enough.

  “You’re not in the picture,” she observed.

  Diane’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t go to church that much.” She definitely had Jennifer pegged as one of the “grown-ups.”

  “Mind if I borrow this?” she asked.

  “I want it back,” Diane told her.

  “I promise.”

  “Why do you need it?”

  “We think your mom might be in Macon,” Jennifer explained.

  Diane rolled her eyes. Again.

  “You don’t look surprised.”

  “Are you kidding? That woman’s on me twenty-four, seven. If she’s not home, you can bet she’s here somewhere. Either that or she’s gone to get my dad. She doesn’t think I know how to breathe without her.”

  Diane dumped the pillow and started unraveling the fringe on the throw that lay at the foot of the bed.

  “You and your mom don’t get along?”

  Diane shrugged. “It’s just that’s she’s always in my business.”

  Jennifer nodded. She thought it better not to point out that a mother’s business was her children.

  “Look. I’ve got a paper due next week in my survey of English lit class. And if I get too far behind in math—”

  “Okay, message sent and received. I’ll get over to Lanier as soon as I can and pick up your books. Make me a list.”

  “I need the rest of my makeup and some clean clothes and—”

  The telephone rang and Jennifer answered it. But before she could speak, another voice chimed in with “hello.”

  “I’ve got it, Valerie,” Jennifer said. There was a pause. “I’ve got it,” she repeated, relieved to hear the other phone click off.

  “I’ve been calling all over Macon for you.” It was Teri. “Even tried Mrs. Walker in Atlanta. Your answering machine isn’t picking up, and Dee Dee has no idea where you are. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what you’re doing at Sam’s when he’s at work? And who was that woman who answered the phone?”

  “I told you. Someone broke into—”

  “And because of that you’re shackin’ up with Sam?”

  She turned her back on Diane in an effort to get at least a modicum of privacy and whispered into the phone. “I am not shackin’—”

  “Whatever. But you know better. Guys like him don’t come along every day. You two have too much going for you to blow it. You’ve got to ease into this one, girl. Moving in with him casually—”

  “I haven’t moved in. I’m a guest as in staying with, not living with. Got that? And there’s nothing casual about it. Two armed men broke into my home, stormed my bedroom, threatened me with bodily harm—”

  “Oh, my God. You didn’t tell me all that. I thought you meant somebody lifted your TV. You mean they actually—”

  “No, they didn’t, but they would have if they had gotten through the bedroom door and if Mrs. Thorne didn’t have a vendetta against loud music. I’m fine.”

  “Sometimes you don’t make much sense. Is Muffy all right?”

  “She’s fine, too.”

  “Good. I still don’t know why you didn’t come to my place to stay.”

  As if Teri would be any kind of protection.

  “So tell me,” Teri said, “what have you and Sam been doing?”

  Jennifer let out an exasperated puff of air. “Why did you call?”

  “Oh, that. We have an appointment Thursday afternoon at 5:45 at the fertility clinic. You’re to meet us there.”

  “Meet who?”

  “Me and Monique. She’s the one with the problem. Poor thing’s been trying for twenty years to have a baby and just can’t seem to make it happen. Figure out what you are to her before you get there, and make it believable. Maybe her daughter.”

  “You just told me she’s infertile.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Niece then, whatever. Make it good.”

  “But I told you, someone there might recognize me.”

  “Not likely. You won’t be wearing slime. Besides, with Monique in the room, I hardly think anyone will be looking at you. She knows how to take center stage.”

  She had a point.

  “Besides,” Teri added, “Monique said she wouldn’t do it unless you were there. We’ll protect you.”

  Like that was some kind of reassurance.

  “How’d you manage to get an appointment so soon?”

  “Monique made it. They’re working us in. Need I say more?”

  Not really.

  “Okay. I’ll see you then,” Jennifer agreed.

  “No, wait. I almost forgot. You’re to be at Monique’s tonight, seven sharp.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “She’s called the whole gang in—you, me, Leigh Ann, even April. She’s not happy about what happened.”

  “You didn’t tell her about my apartment being broken into, did you?”

  “Only a little. I didn’t know the juicy part.”

  Jennifer groaned. “So she’s calling a meeting?”

  “That’s what she said. Apparently ‘the situation is more serious’ than she first thought.”

  Where did Monique get off taking over her life? Probably the same place Teri did. “Well, I don’t feel under any obligation to go.”

  The pause on the line was not good.

  “You still want to get published one of these days?” Teri asked. Jennifer could almost see her impatiently tapping her foot. “I wouldn’t alienate Monique if I were you. She means well, and, Jennifer, she really does know what she’s doing.”

  Maybe about writing, but her own personal life was quite another matter.

  “Don’t upset her,” Teri warned. “She’s only trying to do right by you. I think she sort of thinks of all of us as family.”

  It was true, and she had asked for help. She just wasn’t sure she could handle two nights in a row of Teri, Leigh Ann, Monique, and April. “All right. I’ll be there.”

  “Good.” Teri was back to her overenergized self. “See you tonight.”

  Chapter 17

  It might not have been the Spanish Inquisition, but dim the lights a little and give Monique one of those robes, and it would have been hard to tell the difference.

  “You have the skills, Jennifer,” Monique insisted. “Use them.”

  Put an echo to those words, and she could have sworn Obi-Wan Kenobi had spoken. She should be so lucky.

  If all Monique intended to accomplish with this meeting was to alternately browbeat and inspire her into devising a plot for the real-life mystery she
was drowning in, she could have done it by e-mail. But then, Monique probably wanted to make sure she didn’t have access to that wonderful invention, the delete button.

  Besides, if Monique wrote mystery, she’d understand that those carefully inspired flashes of insight her sleuths came up with were the result of careful manipulation of her characters. How could any kind of fictional scenario have any relevance to what was going on in her real life?

  Jennifer had told them everything she knew about Diane, her mother, the adoption, and Beverly Hoffman’s death, which wasn’t much. Going over it again wasn’t going to change her story. She still didn’t know what was going on.

  “Babies,” April said, patting her tummy as if using it as a visual aid. “It seems to me, this whole thing is about babies.” She shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

  Of course, at the moment everything seemed to be about babies to April. And no wonder, that kid seemed far too fond of his or her current situation and in no hurry to make his debut, regardless of any discomfort he might be affording his mother.

  “I can see why you’d think that,” Leigh Ann offered from the safety of the corner section of Monique’s sofa. She had been surprisingly quiet while Monique bullied, Teri sympathized, and April made her increasing discomfort known. “But I think what’s going on with Diane is all about identity.”

  “Oh, come on,” Teri chimed in, rolling her eyes. “For all practical purposes this Diane person knows who she is—Diane Robbins. Okay, so she was raised with a name other than her birth name. So what? It’s not like she lost her memory and forgot her life. She lived it. ‘What’s in a name?’ Besides, how many memories do any of us have before the age of three anyway?”

  “Do you really want to know?” Leigh Ann asked. “I was regressed once, all the way back to the womb. I remember my first Christmas, my first birthday, my first boyfriend—”

  “Before age three? Girl, you are sick,” Teri declared. She turned to Jennifer. “So, you thinkin’ about having Diane regressed?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “She’s too fragile for that. Besides, those kind of recovered memories are suspect.” She threw a pointed look in Leigh Ann’s direction. “What we need are facts. We’ve already got too many maybes.

  “But Leigh Ann has a point,” Jennifer added. “Diane’s situation is about identity. We want to know who she is, who her biological parents are.”

  “Yeah, but I think you’re looking at this all backward,” Leigh Ann explained. “You keep asking who she is when you should be asking why is it important who she is.”

  “Are you following any of this?” Teri asked April.

  “Not a word. Think you could slip a pillow under my leg if I can get it up?”

  Teri stole the one from behind Leigh Ann and, with Monique’s help, wedged it under April’s knee.

  “Look,” Leigh Ann said, sitting forward. “If any of us found out we’d been adopted, so what? I mean, except on an emotional level, who would care? There might be lots of tears, feelings of betrayal and loss, but no one would be running around shooting people in alleys or passing secret information back and forth. You think it’s because she was adopted. I’m saying what if it’s because she was adopted. Different stress from the verb to the noun. Get my drift?”

  “Yeah, and it’s a valid point. But we’re dealing with murder here,” Jennifer insisted, “which means the most likely answer is an illegal operation, people making money by selling babies. Big bucks being passed back and forth.”

  “Are we? Where’s your proof? Where are the other babies?” Leigh Ann asked, a little too satisfied with herself.

  “That’s what we intend to find out during our little excursion Thursday,” Jennifer pointed out, “the one in which we uncover proof the East Lake Fertility Clinic is a cover for a black market baby operation.”

  “If you’re going to start talking about selling babies, I’m going home,” April declared.

  “Even if we were to get some kind of hint that the clinic was indeed delving into a kind of black market,” Monique stated, leaning forward in her rocking chair, “I don’t see how that would provide proof. I hardly think Dr. Collier is going to break down and hand us a written contract.”

  “I’m not talking about proof we can take to the authorities, at least not yet,” Jennifer insisted.

  “Yeah. We get Collier to say something in front of witnesses—that would be the three of us,” Teri said pointing to herself, Jennifer and Monique, “and we’ll get the FBI to send us back in wired.”

  Terrific. Now Teri had them in the middle of an undercover government sting.

  “Stands to reason,” she went on, “the feds have been watching them for some time, waiting for someone like us to break the whole mess wide open.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jennifer said. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure but what we shouldn’t call the whole thing—”

  “Thursday, 5:45,” Monique repeated. “You two meet me in the parking lot ten minutes early. Now go home.”

  They were dismissed, just like that. Like it or not, Jennifer would have to go through with it. If she didn’t, she’d never hear the end of it.

  Chapter 18

  Jennifer’s heart caught in her throat as she drove her little Volkswagen Beetle into the parking lot of Sam’s apartment. A police car was parked in the dim light of the street lamp next to the steps. No lights were flashing, but the sight was every bit as terrifying as if sirens had been blaring and the sidewalks roped off. Quickly, she pulled into one of the two remaining spaces next to the road.

  Every conceivable horror tumbled through her brain. If something had happened to Diane, she’d never forgive herself. She’d left the girls alone to go to Monique’s, before Sam had gotten home. Why had she been so foolish, so overconfident that they were safe? Johnny had warned her, warned her that if he’d found her, then someone else—

  She couldn’t let herself think about all that. Stay focused, she told herself as she jerked on the emergency brake and pulled the keys from the ignition with sweaty, uncooperative fingers. No use speculating, when in just a few moments, she’d know. She practically stumbled to the steps.

  The girls were sulking in the living room. Neither speaking to the other, but lots of body language was going on. Sitting on the floor near the coffee table trunk with her knees drawn to her chest, Diane looked up through that strangely red hair as Jennifer came in. Valerie, standing near the table on the other side of the room, stuck her hands in the rear pockets of her jeans, turned her back, and struck a pose as if to say, “Don’t mess with me.”

  Over near the kitchen, Sam was huddled with Tim Donahue, in full police uniform. They were friends from way back. She’d always suspected he was one of Sam’s major sources, but neither one would admit it.

  Sam caught her eye and raised a wait-one-minute finger.

  At least everyone was accounted for, including Muffy, who saw fit to bathe Jennifer’s hands in doggy saliva, apparently glad, at last, for a friendly face. Everyone else was too preoccupied to give her the attention she obviously deserved.

  Some of the tension drained from Jennifer’s body. Whatever was going on, at least no one had been hurt. Her mom had taught her to count her blessings: all present, one; no blood, two.

  “She walked out,” Diane told Jennifer without even a hello.

  Jennifer tossed her bag in a corner and squatted down next to Diane. “What do you mean?”

  “I was sleeping, and she took off. No note, no nothin’. Didn’t even lock the door.” She shot a dagger in the other girl’s direction.

  Valerie whirled. “I went out for a damn doughnut. So sue me.” She punched the Dunkin’ Donuts bag on the table.

  “Why didn’t you lock the door?” Jennifer asked.

  “I didn’t have a damn key, and I didn’t want to wake Diane up coming back in. I wasn’t gone more than fifteen minutes. Christ, you’d think I’d massacred a village.”

  “Just cool it,” Jennif
er cautioned.

  “Cool it? Excuse me. He called the cops.” Valerie pointed at Sam.

  The two men turned and Tim spoke. “Miss, in the future, leave a note when you go out. You could save everybody a lot of worry.” He let himself out the door, turning back for one last smile and to add, “You ladies have a nice evening.” He patted Muffy, who felt it her obligation to see everybody out as well as in. Part of her hostessing duties.

  “He called the police because he was worried about you,” Jennifer said, watching Sam’s pensive face.

  Some of Valerie’s anger fell away. “I know. Look, I’m really sorry. This place was getting on my nerves, and I just needed to get some air. If Sam had gotten home twenty minutes later, you’d never have known I was gone.”

  “You want me to take you back to your dorm?” Sam offered. “Whatever’s going on doesn’t concern you. The dean could find you another room.”

  She shook her head, her face blanching. “Nah. I don’t want to leave Diane by herself. But maybe you could give me a key...”

  “No key. If you stay, you don’t go out unless Jen or I know it. Understood?”

  She nodded. “Understood.” She went over to Diane and put a hand on her arm. “Hey, roomie, I bought you a doughnut. Your favorite, Boston cream.”

  Diane stared up at her. “You don’t get off that easy.”

  “Okay. What do you say I make it two creams and throw in a blueberry?”

  “And a handful of chocolate doughnut holes?”

  “Boy, you don’t ask for much.”

  “Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  And with that, they made up. Jennifer only wished she could shake the hollow feeling in her stomach as easily.

  Someone would miss a three-year-old. Jennifer stared at her computer screen resting on the dining table, the brightness glowing eerily in the dark. The girls were asleep on the floor, Sam in his room. Even Muffy had given up and was whimpering in her sleep. Chasing rabbits, her dad had always said.

  A three-year-old. Jaimie wasn’t more than a dream, yet Jennifer knew that if she or he were ever born and if he or she were to vanish, she would never rest until she’d found her child. Never.