Bitter Roots

by C. J. Carmichael

  Once they were gone, Zak made a show of keeping busy, but it was damn hard to concentrate. The price of being in the background meant that sometimes he had to wait to find out stuff. Normally he didn’t mind, but today it was making him crazy. Once Trevor and Patsy were gone he made a show of needing to go down to the evidence lock-up in the basement, but once he was there, he dialed Tiff.

  “All hell is breaking out here. I don’t think you need to worry about Kenny anymore.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I can’t tell you now, but by this evening some of it might be public knowledge. Want to meet up at the Dew Drop later?”

  “Sure. I’m assuming you don’t think Kenny killed Riley.”

  “No. He looked like a top suspect for a while. But now...no. I’m almost positive he didn’t kill Riley.”

  “That’s a huge relief, but he still might be skimming money from our farm. I’m not sure how to tell Aunt Marsha and Mom. They think he walks on water.”

  “I’ll help you map out a plan,” he promised, though frankly fraud and theft did not seem nearly as important when there was a homicide about to be solved.

  He was back at his desk for ten minutes at most when he heard footsteps climbing the stairs to the second floor. A moment later Aubrey Sparks walked in the door.

  If it had been Elvis himself, back from the dead, Zak couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “Aubrey. You okay?”

  She looked like she’d just gotten out of bed—hair uncombed, no makeup. Zak thought he could see pink flannel pajama bottoms peeking out between the hem of her full-length down coat and her suede Sorel boots.

  “I just saw the sheriff drive up to my in-laws’ house. He’s in there talking to them right now and I...I need to talk to someone, too.” Aubrey’s voice betrayed a desperate nervousness. She glanced from Zak to Butterfield, then back again. “Zak, can I talk to you?”

  Butterfield shrugged, a tacit signal to go ahead.

  “Sure. Sit down. Can I get you a coffee?”

  She shook her head to the offer of coffee, then perched on the chair and dug out some papers from her purse. One was a copy of the adoption agreement for Brody. The other was Brody’s birth certificate. “Look at these. Do you see anything strange?”

  He didn’t at first. The adoption papers looked perfectly legal. The only detail that gave him pause was the name of the birth mother, which wasn’t listed as Riley Concurran but a Miss Mary Peters. He felt the bitter crush of disappointment. His theory had seemed so clever, so perfect...and yet he must have been wrong. If Riley wasn’t the mother of Will’s grandson then what possible motive could there be for him to beat her to death?

  He studied the birth certificate next and that was when he realized the point Aubrey was here to make. “You and Derick are listed as Brody’s birth parents and yet you also have an adoption certificate for him.” He looked to her for clarification.

  “Exactly. You and I both know I’m not the mother, and I don’t think Derick is the father either. Brody’s real mother was coerced into impersonating me when she went to the hospital to give birth. I bet they paid her to do it. And to list Derick as the birth father.”

  A million questions sprang to mind at this wild theory. But almost immediately he saw the advantages to the Sparks family if they could convince—in other words pay—a pregnant woman to do what Aubrey suggested.

  Without any record of being the birth mother, the woman would have no future claim to the child. No ability to rescind the adoption if she later changed her mind. And the child would have no way of ever seeking out his birth parents, either.

  “But if that’s true...what about these adoption papers?”

  “They’re fake, Zak. A little bit of make-believe Derick and his parents came up with to make me believe I was legally adopting a baby boy—and not buying him from a woman they’d bribed to impersonate me when she went to the hospital to give birth.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “I thought this was a legal adoption,” Aubrey said. “But it was playacting. I believed I was in an adoption agency, but my in-laws rented an office and hired actors to fill the roles of lawyer and adoption agency manager.”

  Zak had no doubt she believed what she was saying. But it was such an audacious plan—were the Sparks capable of such deception?

  “I know it seems insane. But it’s true, Zak. I had this feeling everything was too good to be true...I mean it usually takes a long time to arrange an adoption, right? And ours came together in a matter of months.”

  If the Sparks had set up a fake adoption, they wouldn’t have used the real birth mother’s name on the papers—which meant his theory about Riley could still be correct. “When did you figure out the adoption was a sham?”

  “At first it was a vague feeling I had that something was wrong. But then, about a month ago Derick and his parents started acting weird.”

  Which was when Riley Concurran moved to Lost Trail. The timing couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “Things got a lot worse once that poor woman was beaten to death. For the past ten days Derick has been impossible. He hasn’t been sleeping and he snaps at everything I say. In all the five years we’ve been married I’ve never seen him act this way.”

  “Like he’s under an unbearable amount of pressure.” Not to mention guilt. “Is that why you have a bruise on your face? Did Derick hit you?”

  She touched her cheek protectively. “No. Derick wouldn’t. It was his father...”

  He should have guessed. “When?”

  “Derick and I were in the middle of a big argument one night when Will and Jen were coming to visit the baby. I made the mistake of saying something to them about their son being hard to get along with these days... Will went crazy. He slapped me. Hard. Then told me I was lucky to have a husband like Derick.

  “That was when I first started to suspect Will and Jen were more involved than I’d thought. Then today when I saw the sheriff pull up at Derick’s parents’ house, and the sheriff and the deputy get out of the vehicle, I knew something was seriously wrong. I pushed Derick to tell me the truth, and it didn’t take him long to confess. The guilt was practically choking him.”

  Zak was so engrossed in Aubrey’s story, he was taken by surprise when the door burst open again. This time it was Derick holding his son swaddled in a thick, blue and yellow quilt.

  Aubrey jumped from the chair, automatically holding out her arms for the baby. “I’m sorry, Derick. I’ve told Zak about the fake adoption.”

  The moment Derick relinquished the child his shoulders fell. “You did the right thing. This is all my fault. I never should have agreed to the plan. It sounded perfect when Dad and Mom explained it to me. But everything’s gone horribly wrong.”

  Drawn in by the drama, Butterfield stepped forward and invited Aubrey and Derick to sit down. “Let’s go through everything nice and calm, step by step. You’ll feel better once it’s all out in the open.”

  Zak didn’t often agree with Butterfield, but in this case he thought the deputy was right. Derick was a straightforward guy, basically honest and kind. He wasn’t built to handle guilt or to practice deception. The opportunity to confess was something he’d been yearning for, but it still couldn’t be easy, not when it meant outing his parents.

  “My mom and dad were only trying to help. They saw the stress Aubrey and I were under. They knew we’d been trying to have a child for almost five years.”

  “Why not be patient and adopt the regular way?”

  “We’ve had some bad experiences with adoption in my family. I have a cousin who adopted a baby with her husband and then two months later the birth mother changed her mind and asked for the baby back. It broke my cousin’s heart.”

  “And Will has a sister who adopted as well,” Aubrey added. “When her son turned eighteen he pulled away from the family. Went to find his birth parents and ended up going to live near them to go to college. It tore the family apart.”
>
  “We didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Derick said. “Mom and Dad hired an investigator to find a pregnant woman who didn’t want her baby and who wasn’t in any shape to raise a child even if she did want one. They paid her well—I know that’s illegal, but it didn’t seem fair otherwise.”

  Zak could tell Butterfield wasn’t connecting the dots, so he clarified, “And this birth mother—she was Riley Concurran, correct?”

  Butterfield almost rolled off his chair as Derick and Aubrey nodded.

  “And how did Riley find you?” Zak asked. “The whole point of this transaction was to have a perfectly clean-cut adoption, with no way for the birth mother to ever track down or claim the baby she’d given up.”

  “It was a stupid detail that gave us away,” Derick said. “Dad gave Riley one of the company pens to sign the paperwork at the hospital. It had our company name, town, and state. Everything she needed to track us down.”

  “Why did she come?” Zak asked. “Had she changed her mind? Did she want the baby back?”

  Derick let out a shaky sigh. “She claimed she wanted to make sure the baby had a good home. But once we showed her that he did, she still wasn’t satisfied. She set up a meeting with Dad on Halloween night—”

  “Do you know where they met?” Zak asked.

  “The parking lot of Lost Creek Park. That’s when she told him she wanted the baby back.”

  Butterfield’s eyes were glistening. “At which point your dad lost his cool and hit her, right?”

  Inwardly Zak groaned. Leading the witness much, Butterfield? “How did your dad react, Derick? Do you know?”

  “I tried calling him that night. Neither him nor my mom answered. The next morning, when I heard Riley had been beaten—” he gulped “—to death, I went to see my dad. He refused to talk about it. He said, we were family, we’d stick together and get through this.”

  Derick’s eyes were moist as he glanced from Butterfield to Zak. “But I can’t believe my dad did it. And if he did swing out in anger, he sure didn’t mean to kill her. Maybe there was someone else with them, some other guy who had a grudge against Riley.”

  Zak could understand why Derick would clutch at straws to defend his father. But Trevor had seen only one man dropping off something that might have been a body behind the medical clinic. And that man’s truck and general size matched Will Sparks perfectly.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Work had always provided a panacea for Justin when times were hard, so the morning after Willow left he threw himself into reviewing contracts. The day care drop-off had gone better than he’d expected. He was so grateful to Debbie-Ann for going out of her way to treat Geneva with kindness. She’d set up the little girl at the craft table with her daughter, Ashley, and the two little girls had been happily decorating pumpkin cut-outs when he left.

  With his mind focused on other things, Justin didn’t realize he’d worked through lunch until his father showed up in his office.

  Clark Pittman eased his frame into one of the two upholstered chairs that were positioned in front of Justin’s desk. “I looked for you at the Snowdrift. Not taking lunch today?”

  Justin glanced at the time display on his computer. “Wow, the morning flew by. Want to grab a sandwich now?”

  “I’d like to, Son, but I’m headed to Missoula. The medical examiner is performing the autopsy on Riley Concurran’s body today and I plan to sit in. Did you hear the sheriff made an arrest this morning?”

  Justin dropped his pen. “He did? Who?”

  “You’re not going to believe this—Will Sparks.”

  One of Justin’s major clients was Sparks Construction. Before Derick took over management of the company, he’d had business meetings with Will practically every month. Will was tough with a quick temper, but he was also a devoted family man. Justin couldn’t imagine him messing around with a young woman like Riley. “That’s insane. Has our sheriff turned into a loose cannon?”

  Neither he nor his father had a high opinion of Archie Ford’s intellectual abilities. But Ford was a good man for keeping law and order, and generally the people of Bitterroot County respected him for that.

  “It’s a complicated story, but here’s the bare-bones theory. Riley Concurran is the birth mother of Will’s new grandson.”

  “What?”

  “Allegedly Will Sparks hired an investigator to find a pregnant woman who would be willing to sell them her baby. They wanted someone young and desperate, someone from a major city far from Montana with no family or support system. The investigator came up with Riley.”

  “Good God.” This sort of thing was illegal but it probably happened more often than most people would think. Families with money and power—even if they were just big fish in a small pond like the Sparks family—often didn’t think the “rules” applied to them.

  “I never told you this, Dad, but Riley came to my office once asking if an attorney had to turn in a client if he knew they’d done something illegal. I wondered what crime she was speaking of. Honestly, I suspected drugs. But it must have been this—she’d sold her baby.”

  “Yes. The Sparks thought they’d covered all their tracks but their plan went sideways when Riley showed up in Lost Trail, allegedly this time wanting the baby back. The theory goes that when she made her demands at a clandestine meeting on Halloween night Will lost his temper. Big time.”

  “Will the sheriff be able to prove any of this?”

  “Most of the evidence is circumstantial. But an eyewitness saw a Sparks Construction truck drive out from Lost Creek Road around three a.m. on Halloween night. A man fitting Will’s general description was alone in the truck. He carried something large out of his truck—about the size of a human body—and then drove off.”

  Justin whistled. “Was this witness close enough to see his face?”

  “No, but there’s more. This morning Aubrey and Derick confessed to the illegal so-called adoption. According to Aubrey, Will Sparks arranged the entire thing.”

  “I can almost see Will and perhaps Jen, too, coming up with a plan like this. But why would Derick and Aubrey go along with it?” They were such a nice couple, and Derick was reasonably intelligent with a humble and kind manner about him, quite the opposite of his father’s.

  “Aubrey was kept in the dark. She thought the adoption was legal and above board—until Derick started falling apart under the guilt and she convinced him to tell her the truth. As for Derick, he was under a lot of pressure from his wife who was desperate to be a mom, and his parents who wanted a grandchild and heir for the family business.”

  “Man. This is one messed-up town, Dad.” Justin retrieved his pen and spun it around with one hand—a trick Paul had taught him during their first-year economics course. “I’m afraid I’ve got news of my own, and it isn’t good.”

  Clark’s eyes widened with alarm. “Are Willow and Geneva okay?”

  Justin leaned back in his chair. “Geneva’s fine. But Willow’s gone.”

  As was his way, his father took some time to think over the statement before replying calmly, “You mean she’s left you?”

  Justin nodded. “She left Geneva too. In hindsight I suspect Willow came back to Lost Trail for exactly this purpose. To set me up as Geneva’s legal guardian, so she could go back to Paul.”

  Clark made an expression of distaste. This development would only confirm his low opinion of Willow.

  “You told me Paul is Geneva’s biological father. I take it he never wanted the child?”

  “Having a child cramped Paul’s lifestyle too much. It’s just a hunch on my part, but I’m guessing he may have become abusive toward her and that’s why Willow came to me. She knew I wouldn’t turn her away. My guess is Willow is hoping she and Paul can go back to their old globe-trotting, pleasure-seeking days now that they don’t have a little kid complicating their lives.”

  His father gave a tired sigh. “I’m sorry, Son. You deserve so much better.”

  “Don�
�t worry about me.” Oddly enough, though a corner of his heart was broken, Justin didn’t have it in him to be angry with Willow. He knew too well the pull of Paul’s magnetic personality. “It’s Geneva I’m concerned about.”

  “That poor child. How is she doing?”

  “She’s pretty sad. They say kids are resilient though. Maybe she’ll be okay here with us?”

  “Kids are tougher than they look. You handled your mother’s death much better than I did. Together we muddled through.”

  “We did better than muddle. I lucked out when it came to fathers, Dad.”

  “Geneva’s lucked out too, though she may not realize it yet.”

  “There are people in this world who think their money should buy them anything,” Kenny said. “I guess Will Sparks is one of them.”

  Tiff nodded. She’d just gotten off the phone with Zak when the farm manager had sauntered into her office. She’d filled Kenny in on the arrest and the apparent motive behind the homicide. “I’m not sure what will happen to the baby, but Will’s going to be doing jail time, Zak is pretty sure, even if his attorney convinces the court Will never intended to kill Riley. All the Sparks family’s money won’t get Will out of that.”

  “Speaking of money...” Kenny leaned forward in his chair. “I’m guessing you’ve figured out the balance in the books for investments doesn’t match the balance in the bank?”

  Tiff hadn’t expected Kenny to raise the subject. She gathered the pages strewn around her desk together and tapped them into a neat bundle. “I figured that out the first day I started working here. If you knew there was a problem, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Kenny rubbed the one-day growth on his jaw. “I should have. But I was freaking out. When I was in high school my dad, who worked as an investment advisor, was investigated for fraud. After years of court cases he ended up in prison for cheating several clients out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. My mom stuck by him right through the whole thing, but I was so ashamed. Still am. My dad had been my hero, you know? And then to find out he’d done something like that, well, I haven’t had much to do with either of them since I left home.”