by Brynn Bonner
“Have you changed your mind about pressing charges against Marc Benson?” Denny asked.
“No, that’s not why I’m here,” Chelsea said. “I’ve been thinking about nothing but this since I got back and learned from Dinah Leigh what Yvonne told you. And I’ve thought of what you said, Sophreena and Esme, about how people need to know where they came from. I was wrong before. This is the right thing to do. Lincoln knew it all along. I wish I’d listened to him.”
We all waited in silence as Chelsea took a long breath and put her coffee mug on the table. She folded her hands in her lap and began.
“First off, Dinah Leigh doesn’t know I’m here. I wanted to give her the gift of the wedding. Let it be a joy to her. It was marred a little by everything Aunt Yvonne told them, but it wasn’t ruined. Also, I know if I told her and she asked me to keep quiet, I’d probably do it. And that would ruin me. It would eat at me for the rest of my life. Lincoln was right. The truth is always better.”
I looked over at Esme and she pushed out her bottom lip and raised her eyebrows again. She had no idea where this was going either.
“I should have stayed that day, the day you told Dinah Leigh and Conrad, or I should say the day you allowed Aunt Yvonne to make her confession,” Chelsea said with a mirthless laugh. “I left that night without talking with Dinah Leigh about it. Though I don’t know what I would have said or done right then. Maybe this way is better. I know the whole family is torn up. It’s a heartbreak to learn you’re not who you thought you were. But they have no idea the kind of real pain they’re in for, and I’m in the unfortunate position of being the instrument. I don’t think I’d have the strength to do it but for Lincoln. Still, I’m afraid. I’m afraid after what happened to him. I think his death may be tied up in all this.”
Denny leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together—his intense listening pose. “All this?” he asked.
“That letter was from Conrad’s father, or I should say from Herbert Nelson,” she corrected. “That much is true. But it wasn’t what Yvonne claimed. I wish it had been. Marc destroyed the original but what nobody knows is that I scanned it that night. I read it and I knew what it would mean. I kept the original on me at all times until I put it in the safe. I knew somebody was going through my room. I don’t know how they knew about the letter, but I had the idea that’s what they were after. I was afraid Lincoln had betrayed me and told someone, but I don’t think that anymore. I have a copy of the letter on a password-protected partition on my computer’s hard drive, and I also made a backup copy here.” She took a chain with a small flash drive on it from around her neck and handed it to Denny.
“I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why you two seemed so casual about this,” she said, turning toward Esme and me. “Now I realize we were talking about two different stories. Yvonne’s and Herbert Nelson’s. And I believe Herbert’s. I don’t think it’ll take much to prove who Conrad Nelson really is, not once they realize it all goes back to that fire.”
The room started to spin and I had to hold on to the arms of the chair. Finally I breathed the word. “Kidnapped.”
Chelsea nodded. “The letter is twenty-two pages and the man went into great detail. He was trying to wash his soul clean.”
“He kidnapped John David Sawyer?” Esme asked, sliding forward in her chair.
“That’s what he says in the letter,” Chelsea said. “You can read it all there, but the gist of it is that Margaret Sawyer and Marie Nelson were casual friends. They belonged to the same ladies’ club and one day, shortly after baby Johnny was born, Margaret made what I’m sure was an offhand remark to Marie about how having three children was a challenge. Marie, having lost two babies in the span of that year, was incensed that Margaret would complain and fixated on the thought that the baby would be better off with her. After she lost the next one she became convinced that she needed to rescue the baby from the Sawyers. She somehow convinced Yvonne and Herbert, and together the three of them conspired on a plan to take him. I don’t think Herbert would have gone along with it if he hadn’t been afraid Marie was going to harm herself. In the letter he claims he thought he’d be able to talk them out of it if he just let it play out awhile. But once the plan got under way there was no way to pull it back.”
“Who took him? Who actually took the baby?” Denny asked.
“Yvonne,” Chelsea said. “She took him out his bedroom window and went into the woods, cutting across to the Nelsons’ house. Marie was already in Norfolk by then and everything was at the ready. Yvonne put the baby in the car and drove. She was probably already over the county line before the fire at the house got going good. Herbert, I imagine you’ve guessed, is the one who set the house on fire, trying to cover up the kidnapping. But he miscalculated and got a bad burn on his hand and arm. He faked an accident the next day at the graphite plant to cover the injury.”
“The hand,” Esme said, staring into the mid-distance. “That hand. It’s reaching for the lighter. Yvonne is handing it to him as she crawls out the window with the baby.”
“Probably,” Chelsea said, frowning in puzzlement at Esme. “That’s one detail he didn’t include, but otherwise, it’s all in there,” she said, nodding toward the flash drive. “I think he felt worse about setting that fire than he did about taking the baby. He never intended to burn the whole house, just the extension where the baby’s room and the kitchen were located, but something went wrong. The grain alcohol he used didn’t react the way he’d thought it would and the house was old. It went up quick. He stayed out in the woods, watching to see if Margaret and Lenora got out. In the letter he claims he would’ve gone back in for them if he hadn’t seen them come out. Like that makes him a good guy. I don’t understand people. I don’t understand how they could have done this and justified it to themselves.”
I went to get my laptop and we all gathered around and focused on the screen as I read aloud. It was mostly an apology to Conrad, for stealing his life. But while it was confessional and, as Chelsea had said, very detailed, it was also self-serving, placing most of the blame for the kidnapping on Yvonne and on his mentally ill wife. No reference at all to the wrong he’d done the Sawyers.
“I found the letter in Conrad’s baby book that day I inventoried the box of family memorabilia for you,” Chelsea said. “Just like Emma said. I glanced over the first couple of paragraphs and realized it was a very personal letter and that it was about something serious. I set it aside because I wasn’t sure Dinah Leigh would want to pass anything like that on to you at that point. Later I pulled it out of my desk drawer and read the whole thing. I was sick. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I called Lincoln and told him I needed to talk with him. He was tied up just then but I was so upset, he excused himself from his meeting for a few minutes so he could come talk to me. I’ve thought a lot about that conversation and tried to replay it in my head. I wasn’t thinking too clearly at that time, but I’m pretty sure I told him I’d found something out, and that it meant Conrad wasn’t who everybody thought he was and that Dinah Leigh would be devastated if it ever came out. Then I asked him to meet me so we could talk it over. I had to go to the post office and when I came out my door to tell Dinah Leigh I’d be out for a few minutes, Yvonne was standing right there, right beside the door to my room. I think she overheard.”
“This was what time?” Denny asked.
“I’m not sure. I’ve tried to remember how everything went that day,” she said, pulling out a notebook where she’d obviously been making her own notes. “I think it was probably about four in the afternoon, but I could be off by an hour either way. I met Lincoln later in the afternoon when he could get free.”
“And you let him read this?” Esme asked.
Chelsea nodded. “I wasn’t thinking about the bind that would put him in at that point. His loyalty was to the senator and Lenora, and I was asking him to keep this from them. I was trying to protect Dinah Leigh from findi
ng out. I should never have told Lincoln until I’d had a chance to come to terms with all of it myself. He was adamant. He said we had to tell immediately. Our argument got interrupted when the senator came in, and we arranged to meet later that night where we could be assured of privacy to talk more about it and decide what to do.”
“So that’s how you ended up out on the exercise trail that night?” Denny said.
Chelsea nodded. “Lincoln had calmed down and so had I and we talked about it. At first we agreed we had to be careful with the information. These people have been friends for their whole lives, but I don’t know if even the tightest friendship can overcome something like this. Then the more we talked, the more our divided loyalties came to the surface. Lincoln insisted that we tell J.D. He said he was the most levelheaded person in the family and that someone from the Sawyer side should know and have some input in the decision about how to handle it.”
I thought of Damon’s eagerness to be rid of Esme and me. “J.D., not Damon?” I asked.
“Lincoln wouldn’t have even suggested telling Damon. Lincoln always said he wasn’t ready for prime time. But he trusted J.D., especially when it came to ethical calls. Anyhow, by then I was equally convinced that we should wait until at least after Conrad’s wedding before we told anyone anything. And really, at that point, I was hoping that no one would have to know, ever. I knew—I know—what it will do to Dinah Leigh.”
“And the argument escalated?” Esme asked.
I sucked in a breath.
Chelsea nodded. “It was a terrible, bitter argument. But not a physical one,” she said softly, looking over at Denny.
He nodded as if to acknowledge her meaning.
“But after what happened with Marc grabbing me to get the letter, I started rethinking everything that happened. That look on Yvonne’s face when I caught her listening at my door was chilling. I’m wondering if she called Marc then, too. What if he confronted Lincoln about what she overheard?”
“His wife claimed he was asleep in bed with her at midnight that night. We checked on everyone’s whereabouts,” Denny said.
“Patricia takes sleeping pills,” Chelsea said. “You could drive a freight train through her room and she wouldn’t wake up.”
“And you think Yvonne might have convinced Marc to confront Lincoln?” I asked. “He’d have done that to protect her?”
“He may not even know the whole story himself,” Chelsea said. “Marc is absolutely paranoid about keeping everything around Patricia contained, controlling the news, controlling her image. Even if he thought the story about Conrad being illegally adopted was the real story, he’d still have wanted it hushed up.”
“Yvonne’s story 2.0,” I said. “The first one involved Conrad being parented by a teenage girl. I overplayed my hand on that one. I think I gave Yvonne the idea to confess to something more innocuous—her being the mother—in hopes of keeping the lid on something worse, the kidnapping and Conrad’s true identity.”
Chelsea leaned forward, her voice intense. “I don’t think she knows what the letter says, or else she’s counting on my loyalty to Dinah Leigh to keep me quiet. But what if she decides I can’t be trusted to do that? I don’t know how much Marc knows or what he’s done, but I’m concerned for my own safety.”
“A reasonable concern,” Denny said. “I’d prefer you not stay at the hotel right now.”
“You’re welcome to stay here,” I said. “We have a guest room.”
“That’s generous of you,” Chelsea said. “I’ll let you know. I need to talk with Dinah Leigh face-to-face. I dread it, but I owe her that. After that I may have to find another place to go, permanently.”
“My job right now is to get justice, both for the Sawyer family and for Lincoln and his family, including you, Chelsea,” Denny said. “I don’t have any way to prove the veracity of this letter, especially since I don’t have the original. But that doesn’t mean I can’t use it for leverage. Do you know where Yvonne Bayley and Marc Benson are at this present moment?”
“Not specifically,” Chelsea said, “Yvonne is back in Norfolk. Neither Dinah Leigh nor Conrad wanted to be around her right now. And I think Marc may still be in the hotel over in Raleigh where we stayed for the wedding. He and Patricia are estranged still.”
“Thank you,” Denny said. “I believe we’ll see how loyal those two are to each other. There is no statute of limitations on kidnapping, so I’ll have the Norfolk PD pick her up and I’ll go over to Raleigh and invite Benson to come have a talk.” He rose and looked down at Chelsea. “Thank you for this,” he said, holding up the flash drive. “You’ve done the right thing. Doesn’t mean it won’t hurt a lot of people, but it’s the right thing.”
“That’s what Lincoln would’ve said,” she said.
* * *
Denny called late that night, and Esme put him on speakerphone so Jack and I could hear.
“It’s a sing-off,” he said. “Each of them is trying to out-cooperate the other to see who can get the best deal. You wouldn’t believe what a pitiful little old lady Yvonne has become all of sudden.”
“I hope nobody’s falling for that act,” Esme said.
“Her fate will be decided by a jury,” Denny said. “Maybe she’ll fool them, but I’m betting she’s messed up somewhere along the line, and we’ll try to find it. Maybe she’ll even do some time, though she’s old and I don’t know if she’s got enough time left for it to really be considered justice.”
“How about Marc?” I asked. “Has he confessed to murdering Lincoln?”
“Not murder. He claims self-defense. He says he didn’t go out there looking to hurt Cooper. He just wanted to warn him off disclosing anything he’d learned from Chelsea. He swears he didn’t know anything about the kidnapping. He thought it was just a matter of an illegal adoption. In any case, he and Cooper got into it, and in the heat of the moment he ran at Cooper and knocked him off his feet and over he went. We’ll see what the DA makes of it. But one way or the other, he’s done for and he knows it. I’m sure they’ll offer him a plea and if he’s smart he’ll take it, involuntary manslaughter maybe. He’ll probably be out in a couple of years.”
“Somehow I don’t think that will satisfy Chelsea. It doesn’t satisfy me,” I said.
“Above my pay grade,” Denny said. “But the man’s ruined. Everything he built his life around is gone. I guess there’s some justice in that.”
“Precious little,” Esme said.
fifteen
MOVING DAY CAME, AT LONG last. All the club members were back in town and on deck, and Jennifer came along with Denny to help. Even Chelsea, who’d taken refuge at my house for the past couple of weeks, lent a hand.
Marydale, Chelsea, and I were put to the task of putting Esme’s clothes away, which was not a minor mission, since Esme is a thoroughbred clotheshorse. As we worked, Marydale questioned Chelsea about her future in that motherly way she always uses with me. “Will you go back to Dinah Leigh when things calm down?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Chelsea said. “She says she doesn’t blame me for anything and I know she means it, but I think she finds it hard to be around me, and frankly, the feeling is mutual. I’ll always love her and I appreciate everything she’s done for me, but I think it’d be difficult to work together right now.”
“Any idea what you’ll do?” I asked.
“Cyrus Hamilton offered me a job at the hotel. I think I’m going to take it. I like him and I need a fresh start. Losing Lincoln has helped me realize that however much I love Dinah Leigh and however much I owe her, I owe it to myself to live my own life. And anyway, free massages,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Speaking of being your own person, how’s Patricia holding up?” I asked.
“You know,” Chelsea said, “it’s the weirdest thing. I thought she’d come at me like a wildcat after everything that happened. Blame me for everything. But she’s been really nice to me.”
“Her political aspirations must be in tatters,” Marydale said.
“Definitely, but she doesn’t seem too disappointed by that,” Chelsea said. “She’s filed divorce papers and Ken told me she’s thinking of trying to adopt a child as a single parent.”
“Poor child,” I said before I could stop myself.
“No, I think the child will be lucky,” Chelsea said. “At one time Patricia and I were good friends. But then she married Marc. I never liked him. I thought he was sleazy. And of course now I think he’s far worse. But when I tried to warn Patricia about him, things soured between us. While she was with him she changed, and not for the better. But now that Marc will be out of her life, I believe she’ll have a chance to find herself again. I hope so.”
“And Senator Stan and Lenora, how are they taking it all? This must have created a terrible strain between them and Dinah Leigh,” Marydale said. “Have you talked with them?”
“I have,” I said. “They’re still reeling. They’re feeling joy and sorrow, regret and anger, and probably a hundred other emotions, but they’re trying their hardest to come to grips with it. The senator talked a lot about the sins of the fathers not being visited on the sons. He and Lenora were skeptical at first. After all the false claims that have been made over the years, you’d expect them to be, but Yvonne has finally given a full confession and the DNA evidence is in. There’s no longer any room for doubt. Conrad is John David Sawyer.”
“Dinah Leigh is struggling with shame and a crippling sense of betrayal,” Chelsea said. “At first she just did not want to believe her parents were capable of this, but after she read her father’s letter she knew it was true. I think she and the Sawyers will eventually work through things. Maybe things will never be exactly the same. After something is broken, even if you fix it you can usually still see the cracks. But I think they’ll salvage the friendship in some form. They’re all trying. They’ve even been able to make a little joke about shared custody arrangements for Conrad.”