Baby Love (Baby Series)

by ANDREA SMITH

  I didn't want to be away from Trey but I knew that both of us could not stay with his mother. Trey was constantly on his Blackberry with the police and state highway patrol. I knew that this wouldn't do any good. My mother if nothing else was good at duplicity and avoiding detection. What she had failed at was the realization of how much I loved my baby and that was her fatal mistake. I would bet the whore's life on it…

  Once off of the phone, Trey cautioned me to say no more about my suspicions relative to my mother. I wasn't sure if it was because he thought me delusional but the reasoning he gave me sounded logical. He said that if the local authorities deemed this a "domestic incident" it would delay getting the FBI involved. Trey wanted every resource available to be involved in finding Preston. I would not hinder that in any way. Trey said we could not discount that this had been a kidnapping for ransom in which case, we wanted the assistance of the feds.

  I knew my mother well enough to know that kidnapping for ransom was not her game. She didn't possess the international savvy it would take to leave the country and keep a low profile for the rest of her life. She didn't roll that way. Preston was valuable to her but for some other reason; something less dramatic but equally lucrative without the risk. She had made a grave mistake in underestimating the love that Trey and I both had for our baby girl. That is because my mother did not understand the concept of love. She would soon experience the wrath that results when a loved one is put at risk. She had crossed a very dangerous line this time.

  CHAPTER 11

  Once at Gina's she was all over me, weeping and sobbing, telling me that she and Ian were there for me in any way that I needed them. I was worried she would make herself sick over this. There was no need. Preston would be back with me shortly. I was sure of that. I needed Gina's help for the moment as this window of opportunity presented itself only briefly.

  "Gina," I said sternly, "You need to get it together. I need your help."

  She looked at me through tear stained eyes, puzzled at my calm demeanor. The truth was I was not calm. I was nowhere near calm but I knew what I needed to do and I knew that I had to act quickly before Trey became aware of what I was doing.

  "I need you to take me to the airport tonight. I booked a flight to Indianapolis that leaves at 10:17 p.m. I need some clothes. I may be a couple of days."

  "What the fuck are you talking about Tylar?" she all but screeched.

  I motioned her to keep quiet so that I could explain.

  "Listen Gina, I can tell right now that the local authorities are skeptical about Preston's disappearance. You should have heard the way they interrogated Trey at the hospital. Fuck this shit and their bureaucratic red tape. I know my mom is responsible for this. You are my best friend. I need your trust and your help. Do I have it?"

  "Abso-fucking-tutely!" she said without pause. "Let me get you some clothes and a duffel bag. Do you need money?"

  "No, I'm good with my credit cards. It's not like I'm running away. You can tell Trey where I've gone once he gets here tomorrow. I know where Daniel is living. I need to get a jump on this just in case he is still in touch with my mother. He must have some information that could possibly help."

  "Let's get going then," she said without hesitation.

  Once I landed in Indianapolis, I had to take a shuttle to a little town outside West Lafayette, Indiana where Daniel was living. I had gotten the address when I called his parents home earlier, pretending to be Abby Dunsmire from the reunion committee planning the 5-year class reunion from our high school.

  His mom had been more than willing to spill all available information on Daniel, candy-coating it a bit. She said he had left college to pursue a career in agriculture. Translation: he worked on a farm. She said that he had been involved on a major R & D project at one of the primary employers of large heavy equipment in West Lafayette. Translation: factory worker. She explained that this had led him to pursue agriculture as he felt he could contribute more to that particular line of work.

  I had booked a night at a Marriott Hotel close by. I planned on getting up as early as possible and finding Daniel's rural address as I knew he must be a farm worker. He certainly would not have had the funds to buy his own farm, unless my mother had invested my trust money in it which I highly doubted. It was more likely that my mother had been sponging off of him for the length of time she had been there.

  I found the farm easily with the GPS on my rental car. I arrived there just after dawn before he went out to do whatever it is farmers do at the break of dawn. The farmhouse was small and dumpy. A couple of mixed breed dogs came running out onto the graveled driveway as my car pulled up to the house.

  I noticed my old blue Jeep Cherokee Laredo parked by the side of the barn next to the house. My heart quickened. What if Mom was here? That meant that Preston was here as well; or that I was totally off-base in my assertion that my mother had taken the baby. I had to know one way or another.

  If the abductor was not my mom then I guess I would be starting from scratch on this. I couldn't be wrong. My baby's quick return depended on me being right about this!

  I walked up the short dirt path to the door. There was no doorbell so I pounded on the storm door with my fist several times. I could hear someone moving about inside. The curtain on the door moved a smidgeon and I heard a mumbled curse. He had better open the damn door. I was not averse to kicking the glass in if need be. I heard the lock turn and the door opened.

  Daniel was standing there in a pair of grey sweat pants and a dirty tee shirt. His hair was in dire need of a trim, and it appeared he didn't shave very often these days. I wasn't sure that he recognized me at first as his expression was simply impassive.

  "Daniel? It's me. It's Tylar," I said hesitantly not sure if he was even awake enough to comprehend what I had said.

  "I know who the fuck you are. What is it you want?" he asked acidly.

  (Where the hell did that come from? Shouldn't that be my line?)

  "What I want is to know where my mother is," I commented just as acidly.

  "More importantly, I want to know where the slut took my baby and what part you played in this so that I can make sure you are charged as an accessory."

  He attempted to shut the door but my foot was planted firmly between it and the door jamb.

  “You know Daniel; you can talk to me or you can talk to the authorities. What you don’t want to do though is deal with my husband who is likely finding out just about now where I am.”

  He reluctantly opened the door allowing me to step inside the house. It smelled of whiskey and dirty clothes.

  "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, rubbing his unshaven face and looking totally clueless.

  "Look - asshole," I said plainly, "I didn't travel here to listen to your feign ignorance about my mom and what she has been up to these last few weeks…'

  He cut me off abruptly either out of stupidity or ignorance because I was going nowhere until I had drained his mind of any information that might help me locate my mother.

  "Get the hell out of here, Tylar. I don't know what the hell you are talking about and I don't fucking care. I don't want you or that slut that raised you in my house. Now get out. I will call the police if you'd like."

  "Go ahead," I hissed, daring him to do just that.

  "I want them here so that they can question a potential material witness at the very least, and a possible accessory to kidnapping."

  I had his attention. I could see that now. He finally managed an expression and there was a hint of fear in it.

  "Come on into the kitchen," he invited. "I need some fucking coffee."

  I followed him through the closed in back porch that now looked as if it served as a utility room. There was an old washer and dryer in it, as well as a mound of dirty clothing piled right in front of it. The kitchen opened up right beyond the utility room. I saw a stack of dirty dishes on the counter and in the sink. A ' Mr. Coffee' had some coffee pouring into the pot. />
  Daniel rinsed out two dirty coffee mugs, pouring himself one and starting to pour one for me.

  "No thanks," I said, taking a seat at the small kitchen table.

  He poured himself a mug of coffee then came to sit down at the table, taking a heavy gulp of it before he raised his bloodshot eyes to me.

  (What the fuck had happened to him?)

  "You're probably wondering why I look like shit?"

  "What I'm concerned about Daniel, is where my baby has been taken since my mother abducted her and assaulted my mother-in-law."

  "Your baby? I wasn't aware that you had a baby." He said it very matter-of-factly as if it was of no consequence that I had a baby or that this baby had been kidnapped.

  "You know," he said, "I was supposed to have a baby, too. I lost mine. Maggie and I loved each other Tylar. I know that you probably don't get that - I know that for me it's hard to understand, but it just happened. It started on our prom night -"

  I interrupted him, not willing to relive that drama when more important things needed to be discussed.

  "Daniel, I know about all of that. I don't really give a damn. I flew here from Atlanta because my baby - my five month old baby girl - was taken from my husband's and my home while my mother-in-law was interviewing babysitters. I have reason to believe it was my mother that took her and assaulted my mother-in-law. What I want to know is how you are involved?"

  "Tylar - I am not involved in any way with what supposedly happened to you and your baby. I haven't seen Maggie for about six months. She and I were living together after she had quit her job and moved here from Radcliff. I was still in school but I needed to be with her. I quit school, got a job in a factory. I thought everything was good. One day I come home from work and she was fucking gone. No note, nothing. She had taken my Ford Bronco; left that piece of shit Jeep here for me. I didn't hear from her for months. She finally brought her ass back home. She was more than six months pregnant. She said it was mine."

  He stopped and got up walking to the counter and picking up a nearly empty pack of cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it. He pulled a dirty dish from the sink, plunking it down on the table to use for an ashtray.

  "I do believe the baby was mine. She claimed she had been out and about, trying to earn more money so that our baby would be well taken care of since I had quit college for her. I really believed her. She went into labor a few weeks early here at home. We had no medical insurance. She didn't want me to take her to the hospital. She said women had delivered babies at homes for centuries. She said she would instruct me on what to do. She had read up on it."

  He got up from his chair at the table and poured a shot of Jim Beam into his coffee mug, then topped it off with coffee.

  "Don't judge me," he commented noticing how I had watched what he had done.

  "You have no idea how much pain that woman has caused me."

  "Oh, I think that I have a clue," I said sarcastically.

  "Please go on."

  "I assisted her during labor, helping her with the contractions and following her instructions; she was in a whole lot of pain. At one point, I finally couldn't take her screaming and called the paramedics. By the time they got here and transported her to the hospital, our baby was stillborn. He had strangled on his own umbilical cord. Something that had a doctor been there to deliver would not have been an issue."

  "What happened after that?" I prodded.

  I needed the whole story; everything that he knew that could help me figures out where the nut job had taken my baby.

  “She kinda lost it. She said that that had been her last chance to have a child; that she had always wanted one. She had undergone an abortion years back. A doctor had told her that she would have problems conceiving. She seemed to go off the deep end. She certainly didn’t seem to want me any longer . . . .”

  He broke off then, genuinely upset about discussing this with me. He seemed devastated about what had happened.

  “What did she mean about always wanting to have a child? What did she think that I was for Chrissake?”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  He paused, stubbing his cigarette out.

  "I didn’t think you did.”

  He got up and poured more coffee into his mug. A sardonic smile passed briefly across his face. He shook his head as if he wasn’t all that surprised that I apparently was to be the last one to find out about what he was ready to tell me.

  “She’s not your mom; she’s your aunt,” he stated simply.

  “Your birth mom died before you were a year old. They were sisters. Maggie took you into raise. She was none too happy about it either. Said she did it because she had promised her sister—your mother that she would. I think she did it for the money. It was always about the money with her.”

  I was suddenly filled with raw emotion, some of it was relief knowing that I was not a direct descendant of the duplicitous bitch; but I also wondered if my birth mom had been cut from the same cloth as 'Aunt' Maggie. If that was the case, it was a moot point.

  "Speaking of which," I interrupted, "What did she do with the $50,000 plus she stole from my trust fund last year?"

  It was Daniel's turn to be blind-sided. I could tell he had no clue about the money she took from me.

  "She didn't have any money to speak of that I knew about when she got here. She had cashed her last pay check, closed her checking account and came in her Jeep that was loaded down with her clothes and some personal shit. That was about it."

  "She didn't move her furniture in here?"

  As I looked around, I could see that nothing was familiar. It all looked to be garage sale mix'n'match.

  "As you can see, she did not," he replied stiffly.

  That meant that Maggie had either sold all of the furniture or had put it into storage. But why not bring it here?

  "Did she have a job while she lived here with you?"

  He snorted derisively which answered my question. She had devised a way to hide her tracks and stay under the radar after she had robbed me of my trust. But why take the money if she wasn't going to spend it? Perhaps she had loved Daniel in her own perverted way. Perhaps she kept the money hidden away if their relationship hadn't worked out. Maybe losing the baby had been the driving factor in her leaving Daniel and taking my baby. But how could she have known where I was or even that I was pregnant. There was much more to be uncovered.

  "Daniel - is there anything else that you can tell me? Did she call you at all after she left? Did she give you any indication that she was planning to leave?"

  "My parents came up for the private burial of the baby. They hated Maggie for corrupting their only son as they liked to put it, but they were civil to her that day. They picked up the tab for the burial. We named him even though he was stillborn. Maggie said that everyone deserved to have a name they could be proud to carry, dead or alive. She named him Daniel Renaud and I insisted he carry my last name, 'Henderson."

  "Daniel Renaud Henderson," I repeated out loud. "Where did she come up with the middle name, do you know?"

  "She said it was her name. I don't know maybe it was her maiden name. She did say that she had been married briefly. It was supposedly her husband that had forced her to get an abortion."

  Except that according to what Trey's investigator had learned; Maggie had never been married. Of course, he would have been searching through court and vital statistics records under the name of "Preston," and not "Renaud." This might prove to be an important piece of information.

  "Where did she get the name Preston?" I questioned him.

  "How the hell should I know Tylar? Most of everything she ever told me was a fucking lie! I only accidently found out that she wasn't your mom. That slipped out after she delivered our stillborn baby. She was ranting and raving blaming herself for not going to the hospital."

  "Why was she so against going to the hospital?" I asked.

  "She said she needed to stay underneath the radar on acc
ount of you were harassing her about her involvement with me and that you had threatened her in some way. I pointed out that you were still her daughter and she needed to make things right. That's when she slipped and told me. She didn't provide any more details other than what I have told you, I swear."

  "Daniel - you said she took your vehicle. May I ask what type of vehicle she took?"

  "It's a 2010 white Ford Bronco. It was a present from my parents. It's still registered in my name. I'll write down the license plate number for you. She may have switched plates though. I'll get the VIN for you too. She had transferred her jeep into my name as well. She wanted nothing in her name. She said she simply needed to disappear so that we could be together without complications."

  "Why haven't you reported your vehicle stolen?"

  "Shit Tylar, I'm not looking for revenge. I loved her once you know?"

  "Did you buy this farm?" I asked.

  "Yeah - I put $15,000 of my college grant money on it. Maggie said we could plant corn, beans and wheat to sell at market; raise chickens and sheep and make our living off of the land. Right - the place is in foreclosure."

  "What about a cell phone Daniel? Doesn't she even have a cell phone?"

  "She used those track phones, the disposable ones that you can change the number every time you buy a new one. She did use mine for awhile but she racked my fucking bill up so high I put a stop to that."

  "Who was she calling?"

  "I don't know. A bunch of calls to Mississippi from what I remember. She claimed it was a business partner. Then some calls from Virginia. Those were incoming - fucking collect calls from a goddamn prison! Here I was working night shift at the factory and she had my phone. She was accepting those fucking calls. Probably having some hot and heavy phone sex with a fucking inmate. She is a freak, a fucking freak that's all I can say."