The Butcher's Daughter

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “What about Charisse?”

  “Charisse?”

  “You were looking for her. Now that Delia is dead . . . are you still looking for her daughter?”

  “Delia’s been dead a long time, Regina, and Charisse is an adult.”

  “You were all fired up to find her last time we talked.”

  “Well, I’ve been hitting dead ends,” he tells Regina. “It’s not easy to find someone who disappeared thirty years ago when you’ve got nothing to go on.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. But if she were your daughter, Detective Barnes, you’d still be looking.”

  It’s not the first time a family member has made a comment like that when he’s searching for their lost loved one. But it’s always in an abstract “put yourself in my shoes” way. Regina Harrison’s tone strikes him as pointed. As if she knows.

  Does she? He and Amelia had sensed that the Harrisons might have been withholding details. But not that. Regina can’t know that.

  Anyway, he wouldn’t have made any more progress uncovering her current identity if he still believed she’s his own flesh and blood.

  You just keep telling yourself that . . . Gloss.

  “I’m still looking,” he assures her, and hangs up with a promise to keep her posted.

  Ten minutes later, he’s in his apartment, shivering out of his clothes and into layers of thermal and fleece after finally, finally calling the super about fixing the heat.

  “Can it wait till tomorrow morning?”

  Even more bone-tired than he is bone-chilled, Barnes tells him that it can, and the super tells him to make sure he’s home between ten and noon.

  He texts Amelia that he’s going to bed and they can talk in the morning. Then he texts Kurtis to see if he can get together over the weekend and talk, saying he’d like to try to help him.

  Brushing his teeth in the frigid bathroom, he continues to think about the case, reconsidering it from an outsider’s perspective. Take away any personal connection, everything he’d ever known or assumed about Charisse, Perry Wayland and Gypsy Colt, and the victims . . .

  What does pure logic tell him?

  Alma and Brandy lived in a dangerous part of the city. They weren’t insulated from the neighborhood’s criminal activity and violent characters. Anything could have happened. He’d jumped to illogical conclusions based on what?

  Guilt, over the money from Wayland?

  That, yes, and gut instinct.

  But it isn’t foolproof. Especially when emotion comes into play.

  Had Barnes been trying too hard to make sense of the past, haunted by the threats Wayland had made about his daughter on that Baracoa beach?

  Barnes never even had a daughter.

  If Wash were here, he’d advise him to stop licking his own wounds and start focusing on the unsolved murder.

  Not my case. I’m Missing Persons, not Homicide.

  Just because there was a vase of flowers at the scene . . .

  Lilies, to most people, don’t symbolize Cuba.

  Brandy had used the pseudonym Lily Tucker when she visited Amelia with the baby ring. Maybe lilies are her favorite flower, and her new boyfriend knew that.

  The fact that he was wealthy doesn’t mean that he was Perry Wayland. Maybe he was a legitimate businessman. Maybe the murder had nothing to do with the boyfriend at all. Or maybe it did, and he’s in a gang or a drug dealer or involved in organized crime . . .

  There are countless reasons why getting involved with the wrong man could have led to a professional hit on the Harrison women.

  But Sumaira and her team aren’t investigating a possible connection, however unlikely, to Perry Wayland and Gypsy Colt.

  He had looked into Wayland and Colt’s whereabouts. He’d found no evidence that they’d survived the catastrophic storm in Baracoa, and no evidence that they did not. Certainly no evidence that they’re in New York City.

  “You’re getting colder, son . . .”

  Damn. It’s time to confess the whole story, including the bribe money he’d accepted from Stef. Time to deal with the consequences, whatever they are. It’s the right thing to do.

  Now, before he loses his resolve. In person. He returns to the bedroom to get dressed again, turns on the light, and spots something he’d missed earlier in his haste to change into warm clothing.

  An envelope is propped on the pillows. It bears a printed label addressed Detective Barnes.

  He stares at it long and hard before looking around, heart pumping.

  What the hell?

  Barnes conducts a quick search of the apartment. No sign of forced entry. He grabs his gloves and a letter opener, returns to the bedroom, and uses his cell phone to snap photos of the envelope. Then he puts on the gloves, picks it up, and slits it open.

  It contains a note folded around a four-by-six photo. It’s grainy, snapped at night, showing a woman silhouetted in a backlit window.

  The note is on printer paper, all in caps.

  I WARNED YOU NOT TO SNOOP INTO MY PAST. NOW I’VE SNOOPED INTO YOURS. FINDERS KEEPERS.

  Westport

  Hearing a snowplow rumbling up the street, Liliana peers out the window, checking for headlights following along in the cleared swath behind the truck. But it passes, leaving the street deserted, snow swirling in the streetlights’ glow. No sign of Bryant yet, and no sign of the shadowy figure she’d glimpsed a few times before.

  Now, knowing what she knows, her theory seems ludicrous. To think that for weeks now, she’s been imagining a stalker out there, watching her.

  Not just a stalker, but her birth father, the volatile, violent man she remembers, the one with the scar by his mouth, the one who didn’t want her. He’d been popping up in her nightmares again lately, triggered by the colored Christmas lights. No wonder she’d imagined that he was lurking during her waking hours.

  Liliana turns away from the window and returns to the couch, where Briana had roused herself, expecting her master’s return. “Not yet.” She sits beside the dog and resumes petting her. “Soon, though.”

  Bryant had texted at around eight o’clock to say his client meeting in Norwalk was running late, and it would be a slow drive home afterward in the snow. He told her to eat without him, and she remembered she’d promised to make a homemade meal since she was working from home today.

  But neither of those things had happened. Not the cooking, and not the working. After he left, she settled in to check her email and found something that had changed her plans for the day. Changed everything she’d ever assumed about who she is and where she came from.

  She’d called her mother in Florida. Emily Tucker had gasped when Liliana told her. “Well, that’s not what we were expecting, is it? How do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Are you going to—”

  “I’m not going to do anything until I tell Bry, Mom.”

  “Good. The two of you can sort through this together. But whatever you decide, I want you to remember one thing, Lily my love. You are still the person you’ve always been.”

  Yes. She’s the same person, and the loving couple who’d adopted her and raised her are, and will always be, her parents. But—

  She hears another vehicle coming up the street. This time when she peeks out the window, she sees her husband’s SUV. Briana follows her to the door, tail wagging.

  Liliana pats her head, watching her husband climb out of the driver’s seat and go around to the passenger’s side to grab a bag of takeout he’d picked up on the way home after learning she hadn’t cooked. She can see that it’s Chinese food, and he hadn’t asked her what to order. She always gets chicken and broccoli with brown rice, hot and sour soup, and a spring roll.

  Once, early on, Bryant had theorized that she craves familiarity because she’s an adoptee. He’d started asking questions; she’d said she doesn’t like to talk about it. Her husband, never one to resurrect a dropped subject, had never asked about it agai
n.

  She watches him stride toward the house in his navy wool walking coat, a gray plaid scarf at his neck. There’s a bounce in his step. He must have had a good day. He’s one of the top reps on his team, receiving an award at his company’s sales conference in San Diego this week. Bred for success, he’s the son of a doctor and a college professor, grandson of one of the country’s first Black airline pilots. So much pride in that family, and rightfully so.

  Her parents are also prominent and successful. They, too, had raised her with high expectations, taught her to set lofty goals and achieve them.

  But they’re white.

  Bryant greets her with a kiss, then points to the walk and driveway. “Babe, I don’t want you shoveling on days when you don’t have to go anywhere! I can do it when I get home.”

  “I used that service that left a flyer in the mailbox a few days ago offering a free trial. I thought they wouldn’t even show up, but the guy came twice, and he said he’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Good, then I don’t have to worry about you while I’m gone.” Bryant hangs his coat on a hook, stomps his feet on the mat and heads for the kitchen with the food. “Let’s eat, and then I have to pack.”

  She follows him. Now isn’t a good time. He’s had a long day, and his airport car service will be here at four in the morning, and he’s leaving for a week . . .

  And I can’t keep this to myself for a week.

  “Bry.”

  “Hmm?” He’s unpacking the food, lining up white cartons on the counter.

  “I need to tell you something. Can you sit down for a second?”

  “Can we eat while you’re telling me? Because it’s late and I’m starved and—” He turns and catches sight of her face. He sits. “What happened?”

  She takes a deep breath and sinks into the opposite chair, opening the laptop she’d left on the kitchen table. “You know I was adopted. But I never told you I was abandoned.”

  His eyes widen and then fill with tears as she tells him about her earliest memories of a grim life, and how she’d been found at the Chapel Square Mall as a toddler. He takes her hands in both of his as she tells the story leading up to finding a forever home with the Tuckers.

  “I can’t believe you never told me you had such a traumatic childhood.”

  “It wasn’t, after I was adopted. I’ve never liked to talk about it, or even think about how I was abandoned. I mean, maybe a part of me always wondered, but the rest of me didn’t want to know. Only lately . . . I guess the wondering part took over, and I didn’t just want to know. I needed to know. Because of you, and how we’re going to have children, and . . . you know, I kept thinking that my birth parents were not good people. Terrible people who are out there somewhere, and they might walk back into my life someday, into our lives. So . . .”

  She tells him about the DNA test she’d taken.

  About the results that had come back today with a match to a man with whom she shares 3,448 centimorgans across eight-two DNA segments.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means the higher those numbers are, the closer the relationship is. And one hundred percent of the time two people share that amount of DNA, they are parent and child.”

  “So you’ve found your birth father.”

  “Yes.”

  “The man who slapped you around and—”

  “No.”

  Liliana takes a deep breath, turning the laptop to show him the match, accompanied by biographical information and a photo of a man who doesn’t have a scar and hasn’t been haunting her dim memories and recent nightmares. “This is my father, Bry. He’s a detective in New York City, and his name is Stockton Barnes, and he’s been looking for me.”

  There are still plenty of troopers monitoring the southbound interstate with radar guns, but Amelia’s cousin is in no danger of a speeding ticket. Lucky drives a good fifteen miles per hour below the speed limit. Amelia, seated in the front passenger seat, can feel Jessie’s impatience in the back. She knows Jessie’s right foot is gunning an imaginary gas pedal as her mouth rattles at full speed, asking questions about the town, passing landmarks, Lucky’s life . . .

  Everything except where they’re going. She’d already tried that, back at the house, and the woman had shaken her head.

  “You’ll see.”

  “But does it have something to do with—”

  “Like I said, this truth isn’t mine to reveal. So I’m taking you to meet someone who’s been waiting a long time to tell it. Half a lifetime—and all of yours,” she’d added with a glance at Amelia.

  “But how did you know we were coming tonight?” Jessie asks. “Because when we showed up at your house, it was like you were expecting us.”

  “Marshboro is a small town. Folks know everything about everything.”

  Lucky is a lovely woman, not just for her age, which Amelia would guess is mid to late seventies. She’s not roly-poly as Bettina had been, but there’s a resemblance.

  Back in October, Amelia’s DNA test had turned up Lucky’s daughter, Quinnlynn, as a first or second cousin. She’d sent a message through the private website. Waiting for a response that never came, Amelia had studied the genealogical profile. Based on DNA—she and Quinnlynn share 286 centimorgans across twenty segments—and three decades’ worth of molecular biology research, she’d concluded that Quinnlynn’s mother and her own birth mother had been first cousins.

  Bettina.

  There’s always room for error, but . . .

  What in the world is going on here? Amelia’s brain darts along a path of possibilities as they exit the interstate just north of the state line.

  Lucky heads east on a two-lane highway that’s being widened to four, past new home construction and modern strip malls, with a smattering of shabby houses and small businesses in the mix.

  They make several turns, with a steady stream of taillights in front of them and headlights behind.

  “Lotta traffic, this bein’ a holiday weekend and all,” Lucky comments, squinting as if the glare bothers her. “Lotta traffic all the time, lately.”

  Most of the other vehicles are luxury cars and SUVs—couples with kids and dogs, coolers and surfboards.

  “Barrow Island,” Jessie reads aloud as they follow a sign toward a causeway. “That’s where we’re going?”

  “It is.”

  Barrow Island . . .

  Has someone mentioned it to Amelia? Not recently.

  Barrow Island . . .

  She can hear it, drawn out in a distinct Southern drawl. But the voice in her head isn’t Bettina’s.

  They pass an old wooden bridge stretching out over the water, lit only by a lamppost on this shore and a distant one across the Intracoastal. On the near end, a marker designates it a historical landmark, for pedestrians only, according to Jessie the sign reader.

  “Nowadays it is. Used to be for cars, too. Only way to the island till the causeway was built.”

  “When was that?”

  “Let’s see . . . early ’70s. Now they’re fixing it up and they want to build a second one, ’cause of all the traffic.” She grips the wheel as she navigates between orange cones and concrete construction barriers. On the island, the rest of the traffic bears right toward the new vacation home developments on the island’s south end.

  Lucky goes left. “Nothing but the salt marsh and a few houses up this way—used to be outbuildings on a rice plantation. But they’re talking about turning the main house into an inn. Then I s’pose the fancy folks will be up here, too, and they’ll want to pave the road. Everything’s changing. Old-timers don’t go for that, but there aren’t many left, so I s’pose it’s a good thing . . .”

  “What?” Jessie prods when she falls silent, but she shakes her head.

  The road is hard-packed sandy dirt, bordered on both sides with dense foliage and live oaks draped in Spanish moss. In the headlights’ distant glow, Amelia sees a herd of animals on the road.

  �
�Look out! There are deer!” Jessie warns from the backseat. “I almost hit one last night, and—”

  “Those aren’t deer,” Lucky says. “They’re feral horses. Used to roam the whole island, but now they stick to this end, like the old-timers.”

  The animals move to the shoulder as they pass, and Amelia turns to watch them, hearing that same voice in her head—the drawl from the past, telling her about an exotic island where horses run free.

  Maybe it was Bettina.

  Lucky turns into a long lane leading to an antebellum cottage. It’s low and wide, with a porch, and painted blue. Alongside the steps, blue bottles adorn the branches of a tall shrub.

  Amelia’s heart quakes. She remembers . . .

  Not Bettina.

  “Before we go in, child . . . I have something to give you.” Lucky reaches up to flick on the car’s interior light and hands Amelia a lumpy envelope. “It’s from my mother.”

  “Auntie Birdie?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  She opens the envelope, takes out a small rounded strip of plastic and holds it up to the light.

  “What is it?” Jessie asks, leaning forward and then gasping. “Oh! Oh, Mimi!”

  “What is it?” Amelia echoes, turning it over in her hands, seeing that something is printed on it. The words are in Courier font, slightly smudged letters and numbers pecked out on a typewriter like so many old records she’s perused over the years, only . . .

  This one pertains to her. The strip of plastic is a tiny hospital bracelet.

  Martina Eleanor Hunter 4/25/68

  “Who is . . .”

  “You are,” Lucky says simply.

  “Oh, Mimi! No more maybe birthday,” Jessie whispers, pressing her forehead to Amelia’s shoulder.

  I was born on April 25, 1968.

  I’m Martina Eleanor Hunter.

  Lucky opens her car door. “Let’s go on in, then.”

  Martina.

  Not Amelia.

  April.

  Not May.

  She just sits there, clutching the little bracelet.

  Then Jessie is there, outside, reaching into the car to hug her. “Come on, Mimi. Let’s do this. I’m with you.”