Garage Sale Stalker (Garage Sale Mysteries)

by Weinert, Suzi

His ploy worked. Mrs. Iverson paled and brought a trembling hand to her lips. She’d feared this day for three decades, knowing she’d randomly picked the agency’s name from the phone book yellow pages the day Adam entered their lives. She realized her ruse could buy only a few days’ time before Bromley’s search unearthed no recorded facts to support her invented story. She always hoped if it came to this, spontaneously volunteering a legitimate agency’s name would satisfy curiosity enough to discourage further checking. She searched her mind for any plausible explanation short of the truth, but nothing believable emerged. Cornered at last, she realized the deception guarded for nearly thirty years was finally over.

  But when she told that truth, what devastating reprisals awaited?

  She sighed in resignation as her face clouded with anguish. Worse than the revelation that she’d broken laws, she feared her son’s outrage when he learned the parents he trusted had lied to him all his life. If she lost Adam, what little was left of her world would disintegrate. Tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

  Just then, the front door opened and in walked Adam.

  CHAPTER 76

  “Hi, Mom! I’m home,” Adam began. But his smile melted, replaced by confusion at the unlikely group before him. “Mrs. Shannon? Mr. Bromley? What…?” his incomplete question faded as a sob caught his attention. Following the sound, he did a double take. “Mom! You’re crying.” Striding quickly to the couch where his mother slumped, he put his hands protectively on her shoulders and turned sternly toward the others. “What’s going on here?” he asked, piercing first Jennifer, then Bromley with steely eyes.

  Sally Iverson pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her streaming tears. “Adam, I… guess it ’s time to tell you something… something your father and I hoped never to reveal.” Her hands twisted the tissue as she gathered resolve to continue. “You see, we had a little boy before you came to live with us… our son, Matthew. He died of spinal meningitis when he was only six years old. Losing him broke our hearts and your dad and I thought we couldn’t go on living without him.” She blew her nose. “Then two months later, when we were just about at the end of our rope, we found you curled up in the woods by our house. You’d been beaten and starved. You were covered with bruises and cuts and your little ribs showed through the skin on your chest... ”

  She stifled more sobs at the memory of his emaciated condition. “Clearly, you’d been neglected… and even worse, abused, but we were afraid if we called the police, you’d be returned to those same cruel parents or put in a system with foster families. We feared you’d be scarred by more bad experiences until maybe someone like us eventually adopted you. We needed you so much, and you needed us, so that finding each other seemed like a miracle. We instantly took you into our hearts and into our lives and no parents could love you more than we have.”

  Mouth agape, a startled Adam finally managed, “You found me in the woods? This is a joke, right?” He laughed nervously, but their sober expressions told him it was not. “But... you told me you adopted me from an agency.”

  “We said that because we loved you too much to lose you. We thought if all our family told the same story, everyone would believe it. If the world knew the truth, you would have been taken away from us and, worse, maybe even returned to the people who hurt you. We read several terrible newspaper stories about that happening.”

  Adam took a step back, trying to absorb these lightning bolts. Finally he managed, “Mom, I… I couldn’t ask for better parents than you and Dad and I knew from the start that I wasn’t your own child, but found in the woods?”

  Sally stumbled on. “Son, there’s more! We used our dead son Matthew’s birth certificate for you. You became Matthew Adam Iverson. We held our breath when you started kindergarten, but nobody questioned your birth certificate then or in college or on your job applications. Nobody ever has… until now. Yes, we told you we’d adopted you in case you remembered your awful early years. If you did, we wanted you to know that other life was separate from the safe one you shared with us.”

  “So, if that’s not my birth certificate, who the hell am I?”

  “We didn’t know,” Sally admitted, “but legally adopted children often don’t know that either. Adam, we did adopt you in every sense except for the legal papers. You looked about six when we found you and that age fit perfectly with our little Matthew’s certificate.”

  “So if you used Matthew’s information, I also don’t know how old I really am.”

  “But that can happen with legal adoptions, too.” Sally wiped her eyes with the tissue. “Children abandoned by their parents on the street or left on church doorsteps don’t come with statistics.”

  Jennifer asked, “Adam, do you recall anything at all about your early years?”

  He reached back in memory as best he could. “No, it was always too scary to think about. I… I just completely blocked it out.” He turned toward his mother. “And actually, because of that black hole, I was all the more grateful to you and Dad for your care and love.” He shrugged, trying now to think about this from a detective’s standpoint. “So, where did I spend my first six years and how did I end up beside your house?”

  “That’s what we’re all trying to figure out,” Jennifer explained.

  “Did my other parents file a missing person report?”

  “No, they did not,” Bromley explained. “I checked.”

  “Did the newspapers or media report the disappearance of a little boy?” Adam asked.

  “No,” Sally said with certainty. “ We checked every single day for months after you came to us.”

  “Then was I kidnapped somewhere else, abused and eventually dumped in the Virginia woods?”

  “Or did you escape from a very cruel home, wander a few miles through the woods and collapse near the Iverson house?” Bromley suggested.

  Thinking like a policeman, Adam asked suspiciously, “And of the many possible scenarios that could fit this situation, why do you pick that particular one?”

  “Good question, Adam! We couldn’t figure any of this out except for an amazing piece of information Jennifer uncovered. Why don’t you sit down. Good! When we tell you this, you’ll understand how the rest might fit together. Now get ready for a… a big surprise!” Bromley drew a breath. “It turns out your DNA and mine are an exact match!”

  “What?” Adam jumped to his feet. “But how… how could that be?”

  Then his mind reeled back to his interview with Bromley and his own conclusion then that Mathis, the boy who disappeared from the Yates’s home, the boy with the missing finger, was actually Bromley’s son.

  Adam’s voice rose an octave as he cried out, “You mean you are my biological father?”

  Bromley nodded.

  Gasping, Adam looked at the four fingers on his left hand. Then his eyes opened very wide. Was he Mathis?

  CHAPTER 77

  Dazed with this mind-numbing revelation, Adam recalled the night of Jennifer’s rescue when they returned to the Yates house and she showed police what she’d learned while captive. As they moved through the rooms and dim cellar, he didn’t dream that dreadful house and its terrible secrets related to him personally. Yet he surely endured years of horror in that very place. How could anyone suppress ghastly memories that tightly? Yet the undeniable facts proved he and Mathis Yates must be the same person! And detectives understood facts, convenient or not.

  Adam groaned, shaking his head in disbelief. “Oh my god,” he cried out, slumping down heavily onto an empty chair. “Does this mean that awful Ruger is my brother?”

  “Half-brother,”Jennifer corrected. “Remember, you had different fathers.”

  “Does this mean I accidentally killed my brother outside the hospital?”

  “‘Accidentally’ is the key word here,” Bromley added quickly. “You meant to subdue and arrest him. You couldn’t have known about the syringe in his pocket.”

  “Good lord, this is just… just
too much! In a matter of minutes I’ve learned I’m not who I thought I was, that I don’t know how old I am, that I suffered a dreadful childhood, that a crazy woman—who is also my mother—chopped off my finger, that I have a new father I knew nothing about, that my brother is a serial murderer and that I killed him!” Adam hunched forward in the chair, holding his head in his hands and moaning softly. “Will Hannah even want me when she learns my missing finger is the least of my scars?” His voice cracked in misery.

  For the first time in his life, he felt as if he were outside himself, looking down from above upon a stranger while simultaneously being the very stranger he gazed upon.

  A heavy silence hung in the room as each of the others realized how their parts in this drama paled compared to Adam’s life-wrenching revelations. Their instinct to comfort him warred against the guilt that they brought him the very information causing this suffering.

  Minutes passed as he struggled to assimilate the magnitude of these disclosures!

  Groping for anything that might help, Jennifer ventured carefully, “Adam, believe it or not, there may be plus-sides to all this.”

  He choked and managed sarcastically, “My entire life has changed in a matter of minutes and you say there are plus sides?”

  “Well… for example,” she continued with great caution, “you escaped from an impossible childhood and overcame that awful start without permanent scars like Ruger’s. You ended up with loving parents, which he never had. You made a successful, well-adjusted life, which he couldn’t. You found a wonderful girl who loves you so much she wants to marry you, and he didn’t. And while the dad you loved died four years ago, now you have a second chance to get acquainted with another father, one who’s eager to know you.”

  Adam listened. A long moment passed before he straightened ever so slightly as Jennifer’s spin on this new situation penetrated his troubled thinking. But anguish still shrouded his mind and face.

  “And that’s not all,” Bromley added. “You’re now the rightful living heir to the Yates’s farm property. That extremely valuable location potentially makes you a millionaire. Wearing my ‘attorney hat,’ I think I can help straighten out the legal details very quietly so only a handful of people close to you need to know.”

  Imagining the impact of this information at the police station where he worked or the media circus inevitable with a story like this, Adam asked doubtfully, “You could hush it up?”

  “I think so.” Bromley confirmed. “And wearing my ‘father hat,’ I could introduce you to another branch of law enforcement: the legal profession. Every law firm needs a good private investigator, and you’re already an experienced detective. Once you have a family, you might find such investigating safer and better paid than your current job. And if law school interests you, I’ll be looking for an eventual successor to take over my practice.”

  Adam straightened a bit more, lifted his head and looked at others in the room. Sally touched his hand and eyed him anxiously. “Son, can you ever forgive me for not telling you the whole truth about your adoption?”

  Adam sighed and stared at his hands. Finally, he put his arm around her in a tight hug. “Mom…, dear Mom. You just tried to protect me. Can I forgive you for wanting me and loving me? That’s what every child hopes for! You’re my mom and I’ve loved you ever since I can remember. That hasn’t changed… although lord knows everything else has.”

  Sally beamed through tears of relief at her son’s unexpected forgiveness. Jennifer hugged her. “I’m glad to know someone like you, someone brave enough to risk everything to get to the truth. Thank you and welcome to the Shannon family. We’ll plan a get-together very soon to introduce everyone to you.”

  Sally dried her last tears. Her son still loved her and after four years of widowhood, she was about to be swept into the Shannon clan, a family Adam liked and respected.

  “And to think,” Adam marveled, “this morning when I woke up I was just a poor, simple, everyday Fairfax County police detective.”

  Bromley chuckled. “Now wait! You’re not the only detective here! We’d know none of this without Jennifer’s hunch and follow through.”

  “Her hunch?” Adam asked.

  Jennifer explained the clues sparking her curiosity and the sequence of events bringing them to his mother’s house today.

  Adam looked at Jennifer with new respect. “So when I marry Hannah, we’ll have two detectives in the Shannon family?”

  “And if you’re getting married soon,” Bromley interrupted hopefully, “does this mean I may have grandchildren one of these days?”

  “Well, yes. I suppose it could… someday, Sir.”

  “You don’t need to call me Dad yet, unless you want to, but I hope one day you will.”

  “Well, I… well, thanks… ah, Dad.”

  As Jennifer and Bromley prepared to leave, Greg turned to Sally. “How would you and Adam like to have dinner with me tonight?”

  Adam shrugged. “Sorry, Sir…er, Dad, but I’m on duty tonight.”

  “Well then, perhaps you’ll join us next time. Sally, why don’t we go anyway to talk about suddenly finding ourselves the mother and father of the same son?”

  “Why, thank you, Greg. That ’s a wonderful idea,” she agreed with a smile.

  Jennifer chuckled to herself as she stepped out the door. Well, well!

  ***

  Back in her car, she reached quickly for her cell phone and speed-dialed her husband. Her excitement was electric as she waited for him to answer.

  “Hello.”

  “Jason, any chance you can get away from work early? I have something really big to tell you!”

  “Jen, what is it? Are you all right? Are the kids okay?”

  “Yes, yes, but this news is colossal! Please come home as soon as you can. And Jason…”

  “Yes?”

  “….hold on to your hat!!!”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Though my story is fiction, I researched for factual accuracy. Thanks to all who shared their time, knowledge and insights. If errors exist, they are my mistakes alone.

  At OnStar (by GM), Michael McNamee helped me understand their system and how it operates in police situations.

  At the well-respected INOVA Fairfax Hospital, Maria T. Huber answered my questions and toured me through the areas relevant to my story.

  In Virginia, the public sector group called Fairfax County Child Protective Services (FCCPS) partners with a private sector group called Childhelp, a national organization devoted to meeting the physical, educational, emotional and spiritual needs of traumatized children. Several individuals at FCCPS gave me valuable information, including Jim Gogan, Hotline Supervisor and retired police officer. Many at Childhelp (http://www.childhelp.org; phone: 480-922-8212) provided important facts.

  The Fairfax County Police Citizens Academy Class #15, under Police Chief David M. Rohrer, offered ten weeks of in-depth, on-site exposure to their objectives and procedures, besides a 12- hour citizen “ride-along” when I was able to observe first-hand all patrol responses and activities during that period.

  Guy Morgan, Professional Standards Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department (retired Fairfax County Police Officer with 22 years of service, 17 of them in Major Crime Investigation) read and reread my manuscript, offering dozens of relevant ideas and corrections.

  Two physicians advising me on medical accuracy were Martin G . Prosky, M.D. of Washington, D. C., and Tony Fiore, M.D. of Fredericksburg, VA. A third doctor, Daniel B. Kaplan, D.O. of Naples, FL (a fellow writer) offered not only medical knowledge but his valuable time, encouragement and many excellent suggestions for improving my story.

  Carole J. Greene entered my world when I was about to give up on my novel. Capable literary agent and editor extraordinaire, she made invaluable contributions by stimulating, instructing, inspiring and prodding my original rough draft into this book. She’s not only my mentor but has become a dear friend.

  Beth Iddings u
sed her valuable time to provide me with important information.

  Fred Getty, Attorney at Law in Locust Grove, VA, graciously provided legal insights.

  Others who read and offered ideas to better my story are Bill Wilson (a fellow author), Hugh Gibbs, Ruth Geils, Sally Eatmon and Kathy Weinert. Special thanks to my sister, Margo Gibbs, for her constructive coaching and enthusiastic cheerleading.

  READING GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How would you describe Jennifer Shannon and her relationship with her husband?

  2. Explain her interest and insights into garage sales. What tactics did you learn about giving or attending these sales?

  3. Jennifer Shannon discovers human interest stories at garage sales from people she doesn’t know. Have you ever learned an interesting story from a complete stranger?

  4. How was Jennifer Shannon able to escape from her captor? What might you do in such a desperate situation?

  5. How would you describe the lasting effects of Ruger Yates’ childhood? Do you consider him a victim or a villain? Do you think his Special Forces training played a role in who he became?

  6. Compare the lives of Ruger and Mathis Yates. Discuss the likelihood of siblings from the same home environment turning out very differently.

  7. How did Greg Bromley try to protect Wendy and Ruger? Discuss how the best of intentions can have tragic results.

  8. Since the police can’t protect citizens at all times, discuss the contradictory roles of trust and suspicion in shaping one’s own self-defense.

  9. What chance events affected Jennifer Shannon’s fate? Has your life been similarly impacted by random occurences?