Vanishing Act

by Fern Michaels

  “Are you finished?” Charles asked calmly.

  “I said what I had to say,” Nikki snarled. She looked around at the other Sisters, who appeared stunned at her outburst.

  “She speaks for me, too,” Kathryn said coolly.

  One by one, the others all agreed.

  “I think this means you have the floor, Charles.” From the pocket of her Windbreaker, Myra withdrew a strand of the clanking metal circles. She was about to loop them around her neck when Charles held up his hand, panic in his eyes.

  “I was going to address this particular problem at the end of our discussion, but since you are all in such a wicked mood at the moment, I will address it now.

  “Lizzie informed me a week ago that she is going to be taking the job as chief White House counsel on January 2. There were many details to iron out before she would commit, and she wanted Cosmo’s assurances that he was all right with what she was planning. Mr. Cricket okayed her taking the job.

  “Now, the reason Lizzie is taking the job is because of all of you. She put so many restrictions on the table, she knew that if Connor agreed to them, she had the inside…‘skinny,’ as she put it, to expedite your pardon. She said she felt she could make it happen within six months. What we’re talking about here is another six months of waiting for it to happen. Six months is not a lifetime. Seven months, if you insist on counting December, but in December we will have guests for two full weeks. So, essentially six months, ladies.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Alexis demanded.

  “Because Lizzie wanted her new husband’s approval first. She’s putting her new married life on hold for all of you. That says to me she thinks she can make it happen. For all she’s done for you, don’t you think you owe her that vote of confidence?”

  Myra moved the metal necklace from one hand to the other. The clanking noise was the only sound in the room.

  “Let’s table that vote until we’re finished with our other business,” Annie said.

  Nikki was so relieved at the reprieve that she felt light-headed. She looked at the others, who were smiling at her the way sisters smiled. She had their vote, she could see it in their eyes.

  “All right,” Nikki said.

  “There’s not much.” Charles picked up a square box that looked heavy. “Inside this box is a record of the resolution of all Bonnie and Clyde’s identity theft victims’ cases. The last checks were mailed to the recipients five days ago, just in time for Thanksgiving. They were substantial and should make for a very merry Christmas. The other banks involved, recognizing their liability for their own employees’ misconduct, did essentially what Chase did for the foster-kid victims. You ladies made thousands of people very thankful this year. Your firm, Nikki, worked around-the-clock to make this happen. There is a surplus of money, mostly interest the monies earned while it was offshore. Where do you want those monies to go? Anonymously, of course.”

  “We talked about it earlier, Charles. We want half of it to go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and the other half to the center that helps find missing children,” Annie said.

  “Commendable, ladies. Consider it done. Now, what name did you all come up with for the island?”

  Yoko stood up. “We unanimously agreed to call that slice of paradise Flower Island.”

  “Flower Island it is. One last thing. I have a request for your help. The time frame will be so tight if you agree to take it on that I don’t know if you want to step in or not.”

  “Tell us what it is, and we’ll let you know,” Kathryn said.

  Charles squared his shoulders. “It’s bleak, and it’s terribly sad. A client showed up about ten days ago at Nikki’s old law firm. She and her husband, with the aid of a lawyer, hired a surrogate to give them a child. They paid $50,000 to the surrogate plus legal fees. They also paid all medical expenses for the surrogate. The couple borrowed the money from relatives and friends. They had a beautiful baby daughter whom they loved dearly. Nine months later the surrogate decided she wanted her baby back. She sued. The couple lost the baby because they didn’t have the funds to fight the lawsuit.

  “The young mother was devastated. The father got angry and decided to do what he could to make things right, which pretty much turned out to be nothing. He went on the Net and threw things out there, hoping something would stick. Basically what he was asking was if anyone out there had gone through the same thing, or knew of someone else who had gone through it, to get in touch with him. He came up with three other couples whose babies had been reclaimed by the surrogates. The couples all used the same lawyer but different surrogates. All the couples are in the same financial situation as the first couple.

  “What they want to know is this: is there a way for you to get their babies back before Christmas? I called Pearl Barnes, and she’s got her people working on it as we speak. The decision, of course, is entirely up to you, but your firm would like an answer as soon as possible. The sooner you give me your answer, the sooner I can get to work.”

  Annie looked around the table. “How could we not take this on? Just raise your hands, and let’s get on with it.”

  Everyone in the room, including Charles, raised a hand.

  Myra slipped the noisy necklace back into her pocket.

  “Are we adjourned?”

  The Sisters all looked at Nikki.

  “We’re adjourned,” Nikki said quietly.

  “We didn’t vote on Martine Connor,” Kathryn whispered as they walked through the door.

  Nikki looked up at Kathryn and smiled. “I know.”

  If you enjoyed Vanishing Act, don’t miss the next exciting novel in Fern Michaels’s Sisterhood series!

  Turn the page for a special preview of

  DEADLY DEALS,

  a Zebra paperback on sale in April 2010.

  Prologue

  It looked like a cozy building, and it was…in the spring and summer. Ivy covered the brick walls, and flower beds abounded, all tended by the new manager of the Quinn Law Firm, a twelve-member, all-female firm, as everyone was quick to point out. In whispered tones, of course. Previously owned by one Nikki Quinn, one of the infamous Vigilantes.

  In the fall and winter, the three-story brick building in Georgetown took on another appearance. Usually smoke could be seen wafting up through the chimney from the fireplace in the spacious lobby. A wreath of colorful leaves adorned the stark white door.

  The Monday after Thanksgiving, the building underwent another transformation. A fragrant evergreen wreath with a huge red satin bow almost as wide as the door arrived from a grateful client in Oregon. Inside, the fire blazed; the birch logs, from another grateful client somewhere in the state of Washington, arrived like clockwork the day before Thanksgiving.

  It was a low-key firm. All the lawyers were friends, each of them helping the others. There was no shortage of clients, but that hadn’t always been the case. At one point the firm had struggled to keep its head above water, but that all changed when the Vigilantes were captured and then escaped. The media had a field day as they splashed the news that the Quinn Law Firm’s owner was one of the notorious women. Within twenty-four hours, there were waiting lines of women—some men, too—forming up outside to be represented by the now-prestigious, outrageous, famous law firm.

  Nancy Barnes, the firm’s business manager, was new to the firm but not that new. She’d replaced her aunt Maddy, who had retired to stop and smell the roses a year after the Vigilantes had gone on the run. She knew the firm inside and out, having worked there summers and holidays for as long as she could remember. She herself was a paralegal but had found out that management was more to her liking. She had a wonderful rapport with the lawyers and clients. At Christmas time alone she had to have a friend come by with a pickup truck to take all her presents home: gifts from the lawyers, gifts from all the grateful clients.

  Nancy Barnes loved her job.

  On the first day of October, Nancy was huffing and puffing as s
he struggled with an oversize pumpkin that she somehow managed to get into the lobby after she opened the door and turned off the alarm without dropping the pumpkin. She knew by the end of the week there would be about twenty more pumpkins around her scarecrow-and-hay arrangement, all brought in by the lawyers themselves, along with the paralegals and the secretaries.

  Cozy. A feel-good place to come to when in trouble.

  Nancy looked up to see a young woman coming through the door. Her first thought was that she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Fragile. Scared. But there was a spark of something she couldn’t quite define. Yet.

  Nancy Barnes was a chunky young woman who wore sensible shoes. She had curly hair, unruly curly hair, and a bridge of freckles danced across her nose and rosy cheeks. She wore granny glasses and always had two or three pencils stuck behind her ears or in her hair. It was her smile that put new clients at ease, or maybe it was her first words of greeting, no one was ever quite sure. “Good morning. What can I do to help you?”

  “I’m Rachel Dawson, and I need to talk to a lawyer as soon as possible. I don’t have an appointment. I’m sorry. I just…What I did was…My husband doesn’t know I’m here. I can’t afford to be here.” The woman flapped her arms and then said, “But here I am.”

  “I’ll tell you what, walk around here to where I am, and then I’ll get us both some coffee, and you and I can talk. What that means is after you tell me your problem, I’ll decide who it is that would work best with you. We have donuts, too.”

  Rachel Dawson tried her best to smile but couldn’t bring it off. Nancy could see she was fighting back her tears.

  Settled at her desk with coffee Rachel Dawson wasn’t going to drink, she said gently, “Tell me what you’re comfortable telling me so all of us here can help you. I want you to think of this firm as your extended family. Everyone here works for the client, and it doesn’t matter which attorney is assigned to you. Do you understand that?”

  “I can’t afford to be here. My husband is going to be upset when he finds out I…”

  “Let’s not talk about payment right now. But for the record, we do quite a bit of pro bono work. I’m usually the one who makes that particular decision, so we aren’t going to worry about whether you qualify or not right now. Tell me how we can help you.”

  Rachel Dawson fooled Nancy. Before she spoke she gulped at her coffee and drained the cup. “I can’t have children. It’s me, not my husband. I had every test in the book. I’m thirty-seven. My husband is thirty-eight. We both have very good jobs, but right now I’m on a leave of absence. We were so desperate to have a child, but the wait was so long, and going outside the country didn’t work for us. A friend of a friend told us about a lawyer who arranged adoptions. We went to see him a year or so ago, and in the end what we did…what my husband did was donate his sperm to a surrogate. It was all legal. We paid the lawyer one hundred thousand dollars. I don’t know how much of that went to the surrogate. We paid all of her medical expenses. I even drove her to the doctors when she had to go. She was a student at George Washington University. We bought her clothes, food, paid her rent. She gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. We were overjoyed. I can’t tell you how giddy we were. We went into panic mode the day we found out. We had to redo the house—you know, make room for two babies instead of one.

  “I guess I should tell you we had to borrow forty thousand dollars from our parents. Call us foolish, but we’ve been saving for a college fund even though we had no children. We hoped that we would eventually be blessed. We’re savers, Miss Barnes.”

  Nancy watched Rachel peer into her cup. She seemed surprised that it was empty. Without thinking, Nancy reached for the cup and went to the kitchen for a refill.

  “We were so happy. It was like suddenly our life was now complete. We didn’t sleep. We sat up and watched the twins sleep. I guess all new parents do that. My husband took leave, too, for a month, so I could get things working. We couldn’t afford a nanny, and our parents helped out. We literally thought we’d died and gone to heaven.”

  Rachel reached for the coffee and again drained the full cup. She set it down precisely in the spot it had been in. Nancy waited, knowing the worst was about to be revealed. She wasn’t wrong.

  “Then our world turned upside down. A letter came in the mail from a lawyer saying his client, the surrogate mother, wanted the twins back. We thought about fighting it, but we had seen cases like this played out in the media, and the birth mother always got the children. Our parents offered to mortgage their houses. We were going to cash in our retirement funds and the college fund but were advised not to do that. My husband talked to several lawyers, and they basically told us to move on and put it behind us. I went to the lawyer we used to arrange the adoption. I called and called, and he didn’t call back. I went to his office, and they wouldn’t let me see him. I thought about going to the newspaper, but the truth was, I wasn’t strong enough mentally or physically for that kind of onslaught. You’ll find out sooner or later that I had a minibreakdown. That’s what they called it, anyway.”

  Nancy looked down at the small recording machine she’d decided to use at the last second. As usual, she’d forgotten to mention it to this frail woman sitting in front of her. “Mrs. Dawson, I’m recording this conversation. I hope that’s okay. I should have told you that before I turned it on.”

  “That’s okay. Is there anything you can do for me and Tom?”

  Nancy’s mind raced. Was there? “I’m going to turn this off for a few moments. Then I’m going to get you some more coffee. I have to make a few phone calls. Will that be okay? I think I know just the person to help you.”

  “Truly? You do? Oh my God, I’ll do anything. Anything at all if you help me.”

  “Which lawyer did you go to to arrange the adoption?”

  “Baron Bell.”

  “Baron Bell?” The name shot out of Nancy’s mouth like a bullet. “Baron Bell refused to see and talk to you after…after…?”

  “Yes, Baron Bell. He seemed like such a nice man. He’s always in the papers, and he’s an advocate of everything. Everyone Tom talked to backed away when he told them it was Mr. Bell who arranged the adoption.”

  “Who was the surrogate mother?”

  “Her name was Donna Davis.”

  Nancy ran to the kitchen, refilled Rachel’s coffee cup, and then walked down the hall to an empty office and called her aunt Maddy. “I don’t know what to do with her, Maddy. Nothing like this has ever come up before. I’ll be honest, I don’t think any of our lawyers here at the firm will agree to go up against someone like Baron Bell on what could become a high-profile case like this one. Talk to me, Maddy.”

  Nancy listened. She reached for a pad and pencil and scribbled furiously. “Maddy, are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”

  “Can you think of anyone better?”

  Nancy smiled. “Actually, I can’t. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if…Rachel could get her babies back for Christmas?”

  “It’s the time for miracles. I’ll do what I can. Keep me in the loop, honey.”

  “Will do, Maddy.”

  Back in the office, Nancy sat down and reached for a small pad. As she wrote down Lizzie Fox’s name, address, and phone number on a slip of paper, Rachel Dawson kept on talking. “I think this is some kind of baby ring. Tom says I’m out of my mind, but on my really bad days I would go to the park and just sit. I talked to a lot of nannies and young mothers. One of the mothers looked at me when I told her what had happened and told me about someone else the same thing happened to. I have her name right here in my purse. I even went to talk to the adoptive parents, and they’re in the same position Tom and I are in. They used Baron Bell, too. Their surrogate is a student at Georgetown. Is there any way, any way at all, that we could get our babies back for Christmas? We had such plans. Our first family Christmas.” Rachel burst into tears.

  “Rachel, I can’t answer that, but the person I want you to
go see is just the right lawyer for you. Trust me when I tell you she could take on Baron Bell with her hands tied behind her back and blindfolded. If anyone can help you, it’s Lizzie Fox.”

  Rachel Dawson bolted upright. Her tears stopped in midflow. “She’s the lawyer that…She was…the Vigilantes’ attorney.”

  Nancy stared across the table, her gaze steady and direct. “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Oh! Oh! When should I go to see her?”

  Nancy’s phone rang. She picked it up and listened. All she said was, “Thanks, Maddy.”

  Nancy looked at Rachel. “Right now. You can walk to Lizzie’s office from here.” Nancy was out of her chair and around the desk. She put her arms around the woman’s thin shoulders. “Just tell Lizzie everything you told me. Be sure to give her the other surrogate’s name. By the way, is your surrogate still living wherever she was living before the birth of the twins?”

  “She is. I…I would park down the street hoping to get a glimpse of the twins. They never seem to leave the apartment. I guess she has a babysitter while she goes to class. I was so obsessed. I don’t know how to thank you. Will Ms. Fox work on a payment plan for us? Do you know?”

  “You’ll work something out. I wouldn’t worry about that right now. Just go and talk to her, and I wish you all the luck in the world.”