Detective Harbing had played the role of “good cop” throughout the proceedings. “We’d like to establish the time he left, that’s all,” he said nonthreateningly.
Though he refused the detectives’ request, Sterling appeared to leave the door open a crack. A short time later, after driving Jake to his condominium garage so that the Fortune CEO could pick up his Porsche and then following him to the Lake Travis estate in order to discuss the matter of retaining a criminal attorney, the lawyer called Kate from the library phone to make a quick, surreptitious report. By the time Jake entered the room after changing into a bathrobe for comfort’s sake, he was speaking to Erica.
The moment Jake’s estranged wife heard his voice in the background, she demanded that Sterling put him on the phone. But she didn’t get much out of him. “Just tell the kids I’m innocent, okay?” he muttered. “I can’t talk right now. Sterling and I have important business to discuss. In the meantime, I need a drink. And something for a splitting headache.”
After taking a taxi back to her hotel to shower and change clothes, Jess spent a restless, worried night at the hospital. It wasn’t possible to get much sleep in the oversize lounge chair that had been positioned near Annie’s bed, no matter how much she turned and twisted. Though her little girl seemed better, thanks to the antibiotic drip that flowed steadily into her bloodstream from a needle inserted into a vein in her left hand, she was still very weak. The prospect of how she’d react when her chemotherapy was administered was a nightmare Jess couldn’t dismiss from her thoughts.
“You’re all I have, darling, don’t you know that?” she whispered with a lump in her throat around 3:00 a.m. as she gazed at her sleeping child. “You have to hold on until we can make you better. There’s a whole wonderful life ahead of you, just waiting for you to live it….”
Annie was awake and complaining about the catheter in her hand by the time Stephen popped in around 7:00 a.m. Surprised to see him at all on a Sunday, Jess was thankful she’d taken a moment to comb her hair and put on fresh lipstick.
“What are you doing here?” she asked with a smile. “Don’t you ever get a day off?”
Before entering Annie’s room, Stephen had stopped to check Annie’s chart at the nursing station. Calling himself every kind of idiot, on impulse he’d made a point of scanning that portion of her admission form which listed the names and addresses of her parents. In the box allocated for the name of Annie’s father, Jessica Holmes had written Deceased. That didn’t prove she was single, of course. She might have remarried. But he didn’t think so. Her air of bearing up under the weight of Annie’s illness alone argued against it.
Now, noting the shadows beneath her big, brown eyes and the temporary lines worry had etched in her lovely face, Stephen wished he could do something to comfort her. She was having a very tough time. Unfortunately, he could relate to it. He knew all too well what it was like to worry over a child that way.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t answered her question. Since he’d lost David, Sunday had become the most difficult day of the week for him. He felt relief, instead of annoyance, if he was called upon to put in an appearance at the hospital.
He couldn’t tell her that. “I have an elderly patient on three who isn’t doing as well as I’d like,” he explained instead, minimizing Mrs. Munson’s condition, because it wouldn’t do to speak to her of a patient he expected to lose. “Since I needed to check on her, I thought I’d visit Annie, as well.”
He turned to the child. “I see you’ve been a good girl and kept your catheter in, even though it hurts a little,” he said. “That deserves a medal. Or some sort of treat.”
Annie’s eyes brightened at once. “What do I get…another of those terrific bandages?” she asked.
Stephen shook his head. “Not this time. I brought you a real surprise.”
Her curiosity turned to delight when he reached into his jacket pocket and brought forth one of David’s small plastic cowboys, along with a matching Indian to keep him company and two miniature ponies for them to ride. “These are really for me?” she exclaimed. “I get to keep them?”
Stephen’s smile broadened. “You most certainly do.”
“Wow!” Annie was overwhelmed. “A cowboy and an Indian! Thanks a bunch!”
Jess was smiling too. “You didn’t have to do that,” she told him approvingly. “But the fact that you did was awfully sweet.”
In the house next door to Stephen’s on Forest Road, Lindsay Fortune-Todd was having breakfast with her husband, Frank, her seven-year-old daughter, Chelsea, and her six-year-old son, Carter. The blueberry pancakes she’d made were perfect, as was the orange juice her husband had squeezed and the hazelnut-flavored coffee he’d brewed. Outside, birds were chirping in the trees. The sun was crosshatching Lake Travis with diamonds.
Yet all was not right with her world. Despite the beautiful weather and her immediate family’s happiness, a frown drew her delicate brows together. Calls from her younger sister, Rebecca, and her sister-in-law, Erica, earlier that morning had given her plenty to worry about. From what they’d related, it sounded as if Jake might be placed under arrest and tried for Monica Malone’s murder.
Frank, a tall, sandy-haired internist whose practice was situated next to hers in the Minn-Gen Professional Building, squeezed her hand as she stared out the breakfast room’s bay window at a pair of racing sailboats without really seeing them. “It’s going to be all right, Lin…I know it is,” he reassured her. “Jake’s innocent. The police will find the real killer in due course.”
She tried to keep the worry out of her reply for the children’s sake. “Not if they fasten on him and don’t keep looking,” she predicted.
Just then, the phone rang again.
“I’ll get it,” Frank offered. “You need to finish your breakfast, if you’re going to the hospital.”
Getting up from the table and walking into the kitchen proper, he removed the portable phone from its wall sconce. His back was turned to her as he said hello. She couldn’t hear his part of the conversation that followed, just his tone of surprise and distaste.
A moment later, he returned to the table with obvious reluctance and handed the phone to her. “It’s the police,” he said incredulously. “I told them you knew nothing whatever about the Malone case. They insist on talking to you.”
Lindsay stared at him in consternation. A moment later, she was speaking stiffly into the receiver. “This is Lindsay Todd….”
“Detective Tom Harbing with the Minneapolis Police Department here,” a male voice replied. “Sorry to trouble you on a Sunday morning, Dr. Todd, but I need to ask you a quick question. It’s in regard to Monica Malone’s murder. I guess you probably heard about it.”
She vouchsafed him an icy “Yes.”
The detective cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but we were wondering where you were between the hours of 9:00 and 10:15 p.m. Saturday night.”
Lindsay all but hit the roof. “Surely I’m not regarded as a suspect!” she exclaimed, causing Frank to grip her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Detective Harbing replied, neither confirming nor denying her statement. “However, a neighbor of the victim, who was walking her dog around 10:00 p.m., claims to have seen a woman answering to your description in the vicinity around that time. Is it possible that, like your brother, you paid a visit to Miss Malone Saturday evening?”
In an effort to keep from using words she didn’t want her husband and children to hear issuing from her mouth, Lindsay took a deep breath. “I hate to disappoint you, Detective Harbing,” she said. “But I have an airtight alibi. I was at Minneapolis General Hospital during the time in question, checking on a sick child and tending to a newborn who was on the critical list. At least a half-dozen pediatric nurses and technical staffers will corroborate my statement.”
Dismissing the detective’s perfunctory apology with a curt “Goodbye,” Lindsay leaned into h
er husband, attempting to draw comfort from him.
“It’ll be all right, honey…you’ll see,” he predicted, demonstrating his awareness that she wouldn’t want to be quizzed over the details of the call in front of Carter and Chelsea.
“I hope so,” she whispered. “Since Mom died, things have seemed to go from bad to worse.”
A moment later, distraught over the way the tentacles of Monica Malone’s murder were reaching deep into her family, she was disappearing into the den to phone Sterling and apprise him of the latest development.
Lindsay was still visibly upset when she arrived at the hospital and ran into Stephen in the doctor’s lounge. I wonder what the problem is, he thought. She usually has such an even disposition.
“After you,” he said pleasantly, ceding his place at the coffee urn.
When they’d each poured a cup, he invited her to take a break with him at one of the round mahogany tables. A bit impatiently, she shook her head. “I’ve got a lot to do.”
It probably wasn’t the best time to approach her about Jessica Holmes’s bone-marrow quest, but he hated to postpone doing so. Given the seriousness of Annie’s condition, there was little time to waste. If the Fortune family could supply the needed marrow…
“C’mon,” he urged. “It’s Sunday. Besides, I need to talk to you.”
Shrugging, she took a seat.
“It’s about Annabel Holmes,” he said, taking an experimental sip of his steaming brew. “According to her mother, they came to Minneapolis for treatment because of a hitherto-unknown familial connection. She’s hoping one of her newly discovered relatives, if that’s what they turn out to be, will be able to supply the bone marrow Annie needs.”
“But that’s wonderful!” Lindsay exclaimed, momentarily carried out of her family troubles by concern for a patient. “The odds of finding a donor among blood relatives are so much better than they are among the general population….”
Stephen’s expression told her she hadn’t heard the whole story yet. “You might not think it’s so great when I tell you it’s your family she’s trying to reach,” he cautioned.
Lindsay thought she’d heard it all when Detective Harbing asked her to describe her whereabouts on the night of Monica Malone’s murder. But apparently she hadn’t. A woman who seldom swore, or even thought in scatological terms, she found herself stifling cuss words for the second time that morning. Jessica Holmes had seemed so nice! Yet she was turning out to be cut from the same cloth as the detestable Tracey Ducet, who—with her odious boyfriend’s help—had tried to pass herself off as Lindsay’s twin, who’d been kidnapped shortly after their birth.
“I hate to sound so hard-hearted, but I’m sick to death of fortune hunters,” she proclaimed, jumping to her feet. “If Jessica Holmes’s primary interest is securing a pipeline to riches, instead of help for her daughter, I think it best that another pediatrician be put on Annie’s case.”
“Hold on.” Stephen laid a restraining hand on Lindsay’s arm. “I may be a patsy for distraught mothers, but I don’t think so. And I tend to believe her when she says it’s strictly bone marrow, not money, that she wants. She has an old letter addressed to her maternal grandmother that seems to substantiate a possible relationship. For Annie’s sake, why don’t you talk to Mrs. Holmes about it before deciding her quest is a mercenary one?”
Jess sensed Lindsay’s hostility at once when the latter paid a routine visit to Annie’s room to check on the girl’s general condition a short time later. I see Stephen—Dr. Hunter—has told her I’m trying to contact the Fortune family as possible bone-marrow donors, and she believes it’s just a scam, she thought with a sinking feeling. If I can’t convince her otherwise…
About to ask the brown-haired pediatrician if she’d mind stepping out in the hall so that they could talk privately, Jess was startled by a request to accompany Lindsay to the nearest doctor’s transcription cubicle for the identical purpose. Tension was rife between them as Lindsay ushered her inside the cramped, glassed-in space, which was furnished with a counter, half a dozen chairs and a row of tape recorders, and shut the door.
“I won’t mince words, Mrs. Holmes,” Lindsay said. “Dr. Hunter has informed me you believe my family may be related to you in some way…that you brought your daughter to Minneapolis in the hope that the Fortunes could provide her with bone marrow for her much-needed transplant. While I’m highly skeptical of that possibility, as one who has seen more than one con artist appear on the scene in hopes of skimming some of the wealth from my parents’ estate, I’m willing to look at the letter Dr. Hunter says you have in your possession. However, I warn you…if it appears to be a fraud, I plan to resign from your daughter’s case.”
Can she really believe I’d use Annie that way? Jess thought, sorely tempted to take umbrage. Somehow she managed to keep her cool. Not answering, out of concern that whatever she might say would appear inflammatory, she withdrew the letter from her purse and handed it to the woman she believed to be her great-aunt in the tangled web of relationships Benjamin Fortune’s marital infidelity had produced.
Accepting it in the same vein, Lindsay unfolded it and spread it out on the counter. With a start, she recognized her father’s handwriting. As distinctive as the man himself had been, with its slashing capitals and energetically scrawled lowercase letters, it would have been a nightmare for a forger to copy. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind that the letter was genuine.
That being the case, she doubted Jessica Holmes had stolen it for dishonest purposes. She was willing to bet Jess could document her relationship to the unknown Celia of the salutation to a fare-thee-well.
A frown knitting her brows together, she read the letter twice from start to finish. From what she could gather, Ben had fathered a daughter named Lana with the addressee, an Englishwoman named Celia Warwick, during his World War II military service. Though it hurt to realize her father had abandoned his child, she realized it had happened long ago, during wartime. When he’d returned to Kate, they’d married and her mother had given birth to Jake.
Resolved not to agonize over something her mother had probably known nothing about, Lindsay focused on the letter’s content. In essence, it was a heartfelt plea on Ben’s part for a chance to have some sort of relationship, however tenuous, with the child he’d fathered in England. Several of the comments it contained led Lindsay to believe he’d steadfastly been denied that privilege.
You say my wife and your husband would be hurt by it. Well, I don’t buy that, Celia. Neither of them would ever have to know—nor would what happened before we married matter. To begin with, there’s an ocean between you and Kate. I travel to England from time to time on business, and—preoccupied as she is with her own life—she seldom accompanies me. As for your husband, George, you could introduce me as a long-lost American cousin. It’s true, as you point out, that I have other children, who know me well and bring me great delight. Yet, as a mother, you must surely realize—a parent’s heart is big enough to love every child he or she has brought into the world.
There wasn’t any date. Stunned to learn that she had a half sister, Lindsay realized that the Lana of the letter must be Jake’s age. I want to meet her, she decided. With Mom gone, there shouldn’t be any obstacle.
Jess saw at once that Lindsay’s attitude toward her had changed when the brown-haired pediatrician raised her eyes from the page. She waited breathlessly for some sort of verdict.
“I take it you’re Lana’s daughter, from your claim of relationship to my family,” Lindsay said slowly, scrutinizing Jess with fresh eyes.
Jess nodded.
“Where’s your mother now? Still living in England, I imagine.”
Sadly Jess shook her head. “Mom died of a heart ailment several years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
A small silence rested between them. “I would have liked very much to meet her,” Lindsay added, her mouth curving with a pensive warmth that was like the sun slowly
emerging from behind a cloud. “Sorry I was so hard on you. I shouldn’t have distrusted you the way I did, when your concern for your daughter was so obviously genuine. It’s just that there have been fortune hunters, including one who claims to be my long-lost twin….”
Jess was willing to forgive her the earth. “I understand completely,” she replied in a shaky voice. “Anyone in your position would be wary. Do I dare hope you’ll put me in touch with your family members, so I can ask them to be tested? If we could find a donor for Annie…”
Her voice breaking, she couldn’t stop several tears from spilling down her cheeks.
To her surprise, the brown-haired pediatrician who’d seemed so unapproachable just a short time earlier reached over and gave her a hug. “If you like, I’ll approach them for you on Annie’s behalf, starting with the adults, including myself,” she offered, giving new life to Jess’s hopes. “It would help tremendously if I could show them a copy of this letter.”
By now, Jess was smiling again, though her eyes were still red-rimmed, and glittered with unshed tears. “I’d be happy if you would,” she said. “As it happens, I made several photocopies….”
Annie’s temperature had registered as normal for almost eight hours by the time Stephen looked in on her again before leaving the hospital. Though she still seemed weak, in Jess’s opinion, she was sitting up in bed and playing with the plastic figures he’d given her when he entered the room.
“Look, Dr. Hunter…my cowboy and Indian are having a shoot-out,” she greeted him.
The look he threw Jess expressed pleasure in her liveliness. “I hope nobody’s getting too badly hurt,” he said as he lifted her wrist to take her pulse.
“Don’t worry,” she replied with an indulgent smile. “It’s just pretend, like at the cinema.”
Lindsay, who’d been passing in the hall and dropped in for a moment to assure Stephen that she’d do her best to help find Annie a donor, couldn’t help but notice the warm glance he exchanged with Jess. Was it possible that her friend, who’d been referred to by the hospital’s female staff as “tall, blond and unavailable” ever since his divorce, had at last developed an interest in someone?
Mystery Heiress Page 6