Drawing Blood

by Deirdre Verne

  We left Sally’s pawn shop and headed to a coffee shop at the end of the strip mall.

  “Oh my god,” I said, reaching out for Frank’s arm. “This is incredible. I didn’t know Bob had a daughter.”

  “Actually, we don’t know Bob did have a daughter,” Cheski replied. “All we know is he’s been seen with a young woman, but it’s not a given that they’re related. We already looked into Bob’s background, and there’s nothing in the public records that indicate a child.”

  “In Barbara’s absence, who else can we ask?” Lamendola said.

  “The fact that CeCe doesn’t know,” Frank said, “makes me think that Bob was either very private, or it’s not his daughter. Most parents make reference to their children in conversation. Cheski’s kids are out of college, and he still can’t stop talking about them.” Frank laughed.

  This was true. I knew more about Cheski’s extended clan of relatives than I did about my own family. This wasn’t saying much since my family stories read like a textbook from a communist bloc country, heavy on the rewrite. But I had to agree with Frank. If Bob had a daughter, it was strange he had never mentioned her, especially since he’d been out and about in public with her.

  “Talk to Jimmy tomorrow,” Frank instructed. “He might be aware of a relative. And Barbara? She hasn’t returned?”

  Cheski ordered a bag of donuts and four coffees. I felt badly I didn’t have money until I realized that a monetary transaction wasn’t about to take place. Cheski’s uniform closed the deal for free. Frank groaned and refused his donut and coffee.

  “Well, we haven’t looked too hard,” Cheski said as he poured two packets of sugar in a paper cup. “Lamendola and I were wondering how long we should let it go. Barbara’s been AWOL for a week. At what point is this a missing person’s case?”

  “As of now, we’re the only ones missing her,” Frank reasoned. “Usually a relative or coworker reports someone missing. The fact that no has come to us leads me to believe she’s keeping in touch with the people who would miss her.”

  “So you don’t think it’s strange that Bob’s wife goes missing with no forwarding address shortly after his death?”

  “Cheski,” Frank said,“you’re a social guy. If you went missing for a few hours, half the town would call in a missing person’s report. Remember the overnight stakeout we did at that Wall Street trader’s house? You were getting a text every two minutes from family members. On the other hand, if I took a month off, who would come looking for me?”

  “I would,” I said, slighted that Frank thought he wouldn’t be missed.

  Frank rubbed my hand and whispered, “You’d be with me.” I smiled and Frank continued, “I think Barbara’s fine, but at this point we should track down a list of her local friends just to be sure. CeCe, can help you with that task?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll head over to the food co-op in the morning. Barbara does a rotation there once a month, and I’m sure she’s friendly with some of the other volunteers.”

  “Can I come?” Cheski asked.

  I blinked. “To the food co-op?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting into it. You know, the alternative food thing.”

  Cheski’s mouth was framed in sugary powder, and he dabbed his finger on his napkin to save the last few slivers of donut flakes. I wasn’t sure he was an appropriate candidate for an organic market.

  “For real?”

  “For real,” he said as we tossed our garbage. “I figure if I can cut my monthly spending, I might be able to retire earlier. Maybe I’ll become a Freegan.”

  “As long as you don’t cut into my diving territory,” I laughed.

  twenty-eight

  Charlie stood in the driveway when Frank and I returned. Without speaking, he handed us each a bandana and then instructed us to blindfold ourselves. Katrina waddled down the driveway and wiped her hands on a jelly-covered apron.

  “Oh, go ahead,” she said. “You’ll love it.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the case?” Frank grumbled. “I’m not into games.”

  “It does,” Charlie said as he secured the knot at the back of my head and pulled the flap down in the front so I couldn’t sneak a peek.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “Are you taking us down to the water?”

  “Hush,” Charlie said. “There’s a step ahead.”

  “Floor boards? Are we in the barn?” I banged my foot on the ground. “We’re in the barn,” I whispered to Frank. I heard the barn doors scrape along the gravel driveway as Charlie pulled them shut.

  “On three,” Charlie said as he snapped his fingers. “Remove your blindfolds.”

  Katrina shrieked with glee when she saw my delighted face. The entire barn was strung and lit with thousands of Christmas tree lights. In the middle of the off-season holiday extravaganza was a café table with two mismatched chairs, a bottle of wine, cheese, and crackers.

  “The table was my idea,” Katrina said. “Charlie paid full price for the wine, but I can’t tell Frank where we got the crackers and cheese.”

  I laughed at Frank’s expense and spun around the room, enchanted by the festive spirit. “What’s the occasion?”

  “A scavenger hunt.” Charlie pointed to boxes of yet unopened lights. “Copper is at an all-time high,” he said as he sliced at a green tangled cord with a pocket knife to reveal a thin line of copper. “Christmas lights contain miles of copper, and they’re tops on a scavenger’s list. Jimmy is putting a reminder on the flyers to check attics for old lights. This way the scavengers will be expecting to find lights.”

  “Did you ransack Rockefeller Center?” Frank said, clearly in awe of Charlie’s own scavenging.

  “Actually, I found a seasonal store still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. The owner had a basement full of damaged lights. The boxes had been soaked during the flood, but it turns out most of the lights are just fine. It’s kind of a shame, because the scavengers won’t even care if the lights are operational. They’ll just cut them down for the copper.”

  “Very clever,” I complimented Charlie. “But I’m not sure how the wine and cheese fits in.”

  Charlie shuffled awkwardly in place. “Technically, there’s no connection, but Katrina got all hormonal on me when I tested the lights and before I knew it, the barn was strung.”

  “In the spirit of Freeganism,” Katrina said, “it seemed wasteful to toss the lights in a few days without one last hurrah. So we decided that since it’s almost the anniversary of Teddy’s death, it might be better to honor his passing by celebrating you two meeting each other instead.”

  My hand rose to my chest as I recognized a crushingly bittersweet but tender moment. My earlier conversation with Charlie about Frank and Teddy must have had an impact, because it was obvious that he and Katrina wanted my relationship with Frank to work out.

  “It was all Trina’s idea,” Charlie said as he and Katrina politely headed for the door. “Unplug the lights when you leave. I don’t trust a hundred-year-old barn with these lights.”

  “Sure thing,” Frank said. “And thanks.”

  twenty-nine

  I poured us a second glass of wine and insisted Frank eat a few crackers. “They’re totally fresh,” I said as I happily crunched away. “So what do you think about this Corey lady?”

  Frank reluctantly took a handful of crackers, but he politely avoided the cheese. “She’ll know something. The problem is now she’s in private practice, and I don’t imagine she’ll want to jeopardize her career by dredging up a questionable event from the past. It might be hard to get her to talk.”

  “Do you have a plan? We got pretty lucky with Lizzy James,” I said. “I don’t think a roll of twenties is going to cut it this time.”

  Frank pulled out his phone, dialed Dr. Grovit, and punched the button for speaker. As expected, Dr. Grovit’s voice
was preceded by the crinkle of papers. “Dr. Grovit here,” he finally answered. Frank wasted no time introducing Dr. Grovit to our latest discovery—Dr. Corey.

  “Did you know her?”

  “I can’t say I did. At any one point in time, the labs employ hundreds of people. William kept his pet projects and those involved close to the vest. If she’s an obstetrician now, she must have had an early interest in the field. Working with William on reproduction would have made sense.”

  “I wonder if she was recruited specifically for the study,” I said. “It increases the odds she was aware of my father’s relationship with Lifely.”

  We listened as Dr. Grovit clacked away at his computer. “I’m on the World Wide Web now, and I’m looking at her practice’s website.” Frank smiled at Dr. Grovit’s outdated reference to the Internet. “She’s got three partners and a swank address in Northport in a new medical building on the water.” Dr. Grovit sighed sadly and then added, “The practice doesn’t take insurance.”

  “I’ve never heard of that,” Frank said, leaning into the phone.

  “It’s called boutique medicine,” Dr. Grovit bemoaned. “I’m not a big fan, but it’s the result of the country’s recent move toward a more socialized medical system. The reimbursement fees to doctors are embarrassingly low and frankly, that doesn’t work for doctors. The new medical model is to offer a narrow specialty to a select group of patients willing to pay out-of-pocket for individualized attention. From what I’m reading here, this practice handles only high-risk pregnancies for patients willing to pay the whole bill out-of-pocket. I’m guessing these doctors deliver ten babies a month, making them millionaires in a few years. Since most high-risk births are by cesarean, the doctor is almost never on call, which eliminates the worst part of the obstetric profession.”

  I thought about Katrina’s midwife, Vicky. An overworked woman in her fifties juggling dozens of patients at a time and expecting no more pay than a few cases of homemade jelly. I wondered when the poor lady slept. “There’s got to be an angle to get to Dr. Corey,” I said.

  Frank, who also felt the frustration, started to pace the barn.

  “I don’t think you’re going to have any luck with this woman,” Dr. Grovit said. “Her focus is making money, not making amends for something she may have done in the past.”

  “I read recently that New York State is looking into regulating the sperm bank industry,” Frank said, fingering a bucket of unpackaged Christmas lights. “Is that true?”

  Dr. Grovit hesitated. “Well, yes. There are real issues related to the unregulated sale of reproductive material over the last twenty years. But as I said, if this doctor isn’t even taking insurance, I don’t think she’ll be concerned about her early role in the industry working at the Sound View labs.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Think of it this way. A single semen sample could repopulate the world.” Dr. Grovit laughed at the enormity of his statement. “Apocalyptic theories be damned. All you need are a few hundred people who are smart enough to avoid their first cousins and presto, you’ve got instant civilization. Strangely enough, even well-meaning sperm banks that understand how productive a single sample of sperm could be, never controlled for the distribution of the samples collected. That’s why the product of purchased sperm, either a baby boy or a girl, could now have more than fifty siblings. The end result is so out of control, this Dr. Corey couldn’t do anything about it now even if she wanted to. I think your best bet is to leave it alone.”

  Frank circled back to our café table and took a sip of wine. “But now this has become a modern medical problem for these children, hasn’t it?”

  “Indeed it has,” Dr. Grovit said. “But again, I’m not sure how this information will get Dr. Corey to tell you about CeCe’s egg.”

  Frank rubbed his face and leaned into the phone. “How about this: If a woman purchased sperm from a local bank, she likely lived near the bank, just like all the other purchasers. Assuming the recipients stayed in the area, their children are now of reproductive age themselves and could, in fact, be attending the prom unwittingly with their half sibling.”

  “Eww,” I said.

  “Weird, but also scary,” Frank added. “The lack of regulation has now become a public health risk.”

  “A public scare. That’s an interesting angle. You might be able to reach Dr. Corey’s conscience with that argument,” Dr. Grovit said. “But it’s a stretch.”

  Frank grunted. He wasn’t ready to give up. “How does a legitimate sperm bank account for the distribution of sperm to recipients?”

  “Legitimate sperm banks gave sperm samples identification numbers. Now those ID numbers, as you said, have become very important to the grown children actively seeking out siblings from the same batch of sperm.”

  Frank thanked Dr. Grovit and hung up. “He’s skeptical. I need someone who’s motivated personally to help me form this argument.” Frank picked up the phone, placed another call, and asked to be connected to Dr. Wilson, the doctor whose own sperm had been sent to Lifely simply because he had worked in my father’s lab. Frank repeated his theory that untracked sperm posed a health risk in areas local to the banks themselves.

  “I think it’s perfectly believable to say the police department is working in conjunction with …” Dr. Wilson paused while he thought of a credible cover for Frank. “Tell Dr. Corey you are working with the New York State Centers for Disease Control in an attempt to track and catalog unnumbered sperm to prevent the spread of genetic diseases.”

  “Wow,” I exclaimed. “That works. It’s totally believable.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Frank countered. “I’m sure Dr. Corey is no dummy, and I still think it will be hard to get her to talk.”

  “If you don’t want to raise suspicion, try this,” Dr. Wilson proposed. “Tell Dr. Corey the Lifely case is closed, and those involved have already been punished, which is true. To take the heat off, she’ll need to believe this effort is a follow-up to a public health issue with no existing criminal implications. But to put the pressure on, Frank should show up on a Tuesday, after lunch.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows. “Why Tuesday?”

  “Doctors’ offices are typically closed on Wednesdays, so appointments will be stacked tightly on Tuesdays. The doctors will also be squeezing in emergencies before the day off. Most pregnant woman panic when they know their doctors’ office is going to be closed, so the phones will be buzzing. If the appointments are backed up—and they always are—the waiting room will be full by the afternoon.”

  “And a high-end boutique practice doesn’t need a detective flashing a badge in a room full of pregnant woman,” Frank finished.

  I nodded at Frank. “It’s Saturday; will you have time on Tuesday?” Frank looked around the well-lit barn. The scavenger hunt was scheduled for Thursday, and Charlie and Jimmy were about halfway through organizing the equipment. From what I could gather, Frank still hadn’t finished the route’s surveillance points.

  “There’s still a lot to do, but I feel like I need to make time for this,” Frank said, and then he ended the phone call with Dr. Wilson. He came back to the table, sat down, and took another sip of wine.

  “Tuesday it is,” Frank said.

  “This is crazy.” I leaned in to kiss Frank. “I think we might actually find this baby.”

  “Don’t go buying a car seat anytime soon.”

  “Given the kid’s age by now, I’ll be buying video games or a cell phone,” I said, and then I took Frank’s hand, “Admit it, you were pretty upset when you thought Lizzy James had lost the baby.”

  “I was,” he confessed. “Losing the baby just wasn’t a scenario I had considered. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’ve been betting on the fact that there is no baby, simply because there were so many junctures where your father’s plan could have falle
n apart.”

  “And what do you think now?”

  Frank poured us another glass of wine. “The idea that your father tested Lizzy James as a surrogate for a more important delivery is troublesome. It lends credibility to your father’s long-term plan. Before we met Lizzy James, we only knew part one of your father’s plan: the retrieval of genetic material. Now, we know he had been testing surrogates.”

  Frank’s acceptance of something I had taken as fact enticed me. I leaned in and kissed him again, this time passionately. He pulled back and raised his head toward the barn’s roof.

  “I don’t suppose this place has a hayloft …?”

  I wiped cracker crumbs from my lips and moved closer to Frank. The room was warm and twinkly, and I watched Frank’s steady hand as he reached for his wine. I wasn’t feeling all that steady myself as we clinked glasses. Frank returned my kiss, an experience heightened by the wine and sparkling lights. It was a long, deep kiss causing a sensation so heady, I thought for a moment I was passing out until I realized Frank had led me to the barn floor. Like a magician, Frank yanked the embroidered cloth off the café table to cover the wide wood planks.

  “How resourcefully Freegan,” I whispered as Frank kissed my ear. I melted. Please don’t stop.

  At that exact moment, Frank hesitated. He reached around to the back of his waistband. His gun. He’s about to remove his gun. That seemed logical, but in our deep embrace, I didn’t feel the telltale bulge at his back. I could feel a bulge, but I was certain that wasn’t a gun.

  A condom. Of course. As I leaned backwards and inched my way to a fully reclined position, my hand scraped along the pine floor. The nick on my finger I had earned free-falling into a mound of garbage reopened. I ignored the sting, but it reminded me of the great dig for Bob. My thoughts drifted to Bob and then to the woman with black bobbed hair.

  “CeCe.” Frank stopped midkiss. “You have to turn your brain off for at least five minutes.”

  “I can do that,” I said as my chest heaved up and down. I grabbed at Frank’s shirt collar and drew him closer. Then I closed my eyes and stared at the back of my eyelids as the remnants of Christmas lights played across my darkened vision. Let it be, I thought. Let go.