The twins were surprisingly cooperative, although the routine examination was punctuated with their incessant questions. In addition to being very active children, they were very talkative, something that didn’t seem to bother Clay in the least. He was patient and good-humored with them and plainly enjoyed his role as a father. John watched them without saying a word. Clay had smiled at John’s silent observation and when he sent the boys upstairs for their bath, he turned to him.
“The best thing I ever did in my life was marry Benita,” Clay said in his deep, gravelly voice. “When I met her I was totally knocked out, so much so I tried to run for my life but it didn’t work. I was so in love with her I couldn’t see straight and I still am. The next best thing to happen to me was becoming a father. I had no idea having kids could be so fulfilling. As long as you have a good lock on the bedroom door of course,” he added wryly.
Adam, who was still sitting at the kitchen table with John, burst out laughing. Clay smiled and pointed at Adam. “Go ahead, laugh. Wait until you’re under the covers with your wife getting some much needed intimate time with her and you hear a little voice asking, ‘What are you doing?’ You’ll be calling a locksmith within the hour, trust me.”
All three men laughed together, but Clay recovered first. “Believe it or not, I’d like to have another one but your sister would probably have me committed if I brought it up. I love having babies with my wife. Benita is the most beautiful woman on earth as far as I’m concerned, but when she’s expecting it just drives me crazy,” he admitted. “I’m trying to work up my nerve to suggest another one, but I couldn’t do that do her. She has enough on her plate as it is,” he sighed.
John couldn’t think of anything to add to this heartfelt declaration, and Clay looked at the two men and smiled. “Your turn is coming, though. You Cochrans like having babies as much as the Deverauxes do, you’ll be popping them out pretty soon,” he predicted.
Adam, not surprisingly, had agreed. “Alicia and I want a big family, at least four. We plan to get started next year.”
John was saved from having to say anything by a loud thump from upstairs followed by Patrick’s frantic barking. Clay raised his hands and stared at the ceiling briefly before taking off to find out what was going on. Adam left in search of Alicia and John was left sitting in the kitchen contemplating the conversation that had just taken place.
Even now, back in Ann Arbor with Nina curled next to him in the bed, the words still echoed around his head. Everyone took it for granted that babies followed marriage like night followed day. But it didn’t always happen that way and for John, it wasn’t going to happen. He looked at Nina again and a tremor raced through his body. How would she react when she found this out? He grimaced at the irony. Nina wasn’t the only one with secrets. Would she still want him when she found out what he was keeping from her?
***
Paris tapped on the door of Bump’s studio and waited for permission to enter. She peeked around the door after hearing his voice and gave him a big smile. “Hey, Uncle Bump! Thanks for making time to see me,” she said brightly as she entered his studio. He was seated at his uncluttered desk but stood when she came into the room and held out his arms for a big kiss.
“You know I always have time for you. Now what were you being so mysterious about? You made it sound like you found the Holy Grail or something. What have you been up to, you nosy rascal?” he asked fondly.
Paris made a comic face and said in a voice totally devoid of guile, “I keep telling people I’m inquisitive, like any good researcher. Nosiness is just snooping, getting in people’s business for no good reason. I, on the other hand, am trying to acquaint myself with all aspects of the human condition to better serve humanity.” She looked so pious Bump laughed in her face.
“Sit your nosy butt down and tell me what’s on your mind, Snoopy.”
“Ooh, Uncle Bump that’s just wrong,” she muttered as she sat down on the comfortable chair across from him. She reached inside her Coach tote bag and pulled out a document envelope. “Something’s been nagging at me since I went up to Detroit for the preliminary taping. I was at Donnie and Angel’s house and I found Nina in the nursery with the baby, singing to her. There was something about her voice that was just odd to me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then, when we were at Trey’s singing party, something else just kinda went “boing” in my head and I couldn’t let it go. I started digging around on the Internet and in the archives at The Deveraux Group. Take a look at this and tell me what you think,” she said handing him a few black and white photos.
Intrigued, Bump reached for the pictures and examined them carefully. In just a couple of minutes, he saw what Paris had seen. “Well, I’ll be damned. You know, I thought I was getting senile, but when I heard her voice it was like listening to a ghost. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I knew I wasn’t that crazy,” he muttered as she continued to stare at the pictures.
“So you think I’m right? You think she’s the one?” Paris asked eagerly?
Bump looked long and hard at the first picture, a snapshot of the late, long-lamented songbird Rita Shannon. The picture was at least twenty-five years old, but the image was timeless. There was Rita Shannon sitting in a big armchair serenading her little girl, flanked by her young sons. The woman looked so much like Nina it could easily have been her in the picture. “Why didn’t I see the resemblance before?” Bump wondered out loud.
“It wasn’t so much the resemblance as the way she looked holding Lily Rose. There was just something so familiar about the pose, it made me think I’d seen it before. And I had seen it, in a book about girl groups from the sixties. But the other one, that was the clincher for me. Look at it, Uncle Bump.”
He turned to the other photograph and let out a low whistle. This one was a picture of Rita with a head full of short ringlets, looking over her shoulder with an infectious smile bracketed by dimples, the same dimples they’d all seen when Nina was singing with the twins at the party.
“This can’t be a coincidence, Uncle Bump. Everyone knows Rita Shannon had three children. And after she died there was a big thing about her singing partner Donella Divine adopting the children. They were supposed to be such rivals, but Donella stepped up and took the kids to give them the kind of home Rita wanted them to have. Then she left their group, The Sensations, and kind of disappeared. I read all this from different sources, of course. There were some variations, but they all agreed on one thing. One, there was no love lost between Rita and Donella. Two, Donella took guardianship of the children and three, after that she just vanished from public life.” Paris rose from the chair and started walking around the big studio, a habit when she was deep in thought.
Bump laid the pictures on his desk and got a faraway look on his face. “You couldn’t know this, but I knew The Sensations and their manager. I always liked Rita. She was a sweet little thing, full of talent. Now that Donella? Piece of work, that’s what she was. Couldn’t half sing and she had all the coordination of an ox on roller skates. I worked with them a couple of times and it was a trip. The worst time was when I was the musical director for the Oscars.” Bump shook his head, lost in the memory. “They had a big hit that year, the song was nominated for an Academy Award and they were going to perform it at the ceremony. Rita was pitch perfect every time and Donella kept screwing up. They finally had to make her stand there and move her mouth and they played a track with Rita singing her part, too. That girl was just pitiful,” Bump recalled with a shake of his head.
“So why was she in the group at all?” Paris asked. “Why didn’t they drop her, replace her with someone else?”
“Because, my poor innocent Snoopy, Donella was the mistress of the man who owned the label. She married him right before they hit the real big time. And I’ll tell you something else, Paris. She may have adopted those boys but she didn’t take that little girl. Whoever Nina grew up with, it wasn’t her brothers and Donella. I saw them in Toron
to where they moved not too long after Rita died and Donella had two children, not three. The little girl in that picture was nowhere in sight.”
“So who is Nina and where did she come from?” Paris asked in frustration.
Bump gave her a long, serious look. His tone was equally grave when he addressed her. “That’s something we may never know, Paris, because that’s a line you can’t cross. This is one you’ve got to leave alone.”
***
The old Nina would have seen it coming. The other Nina, the wary and distrustful one who knew life was full of ugly surprises, would have been ready for it. But this Nina, the one who’d been wooed and courted and romanced into happiness, was blindsided. The new gentler, sweeter Nina was the one who was jerked back into reality by a phone call. It came from California a couple of weeks after their Thanksgiving sojourn to Atlanta, two weeks in which she and John grew closer than she could have believed possible.
She had just finished printing off the second copy of the manuscript and instead of the depression she thought she’d suffer at the end of the project, she felt elated. She stroked the precise stack of paper that represented months of hard work and was proud of what she and John accomplished. We really do work well together, she thought with a loving smile. The tiny mechanical voice of the printer announced her job was complete and Nina clapped her hands in delight. She jumped up from her chair, took the last sheets off the printer and added them to the stack, then put a CD into her portable player. In seconds she was dancing madly to “The Hustle,” by the great Van McCoy, the seminal disco anthem of the ages. She felt weightless and joyous, ready to fly. The book was finished, John was healthy and happy and most amazing of all, he loved her. Nina finally collapsed on the sofa, laughing and exhilarated.
Her cell phone rang and she answered it at once, her smile evident in her voice. “Hello!” she said happily. She had to turn the stereo off in order to hear clearly, the voice on the other rend was the last one she expected to hear. “You’re what? No, I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all! How can you do this to me? ” Nina’s voice shook with rage. “This isn’t right, you know it isn’t. How can you treat me like this after all I’ve done?” Nina was ice cold and trembling from head to toe. When the brief conversation ended she wrapped her arms around her middle and stood with her head bowed for a long moment. When her head raised her eyes were cold and resolute; she knew what she had to do.
She picked up her phone and punched in a familiar number. “It’s me. Where is she? Does she know about it?” Nina paced back and forth while she listened to the voice on the other end. “She what? Well, when were you going to tell me about it? Okay, I’m on my way. I’ll be there late tonight or very early tomorrow morning. You have my cell number, if something else happens I expect you to use it.” Her voice was firm but there was a gentle restraint there, too. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
She made reservations while she packed her bags. “No, I don’t need a return flight. Just one way,” she told the ticket agent.
She put one copy of the manuscript into a neat white box and addressed it to John’s editor. The other copy she put into a box along with all John’s research materials. She would leave it at his apartment on the way to the airport. She had to make four trips to load the rental car but now she was finished. She looked around the suite and was strangely calm. She felt no pain, no tears, no anger, she felt nothing. Turning to the door, she walked away from her dreams and returned to her reality.
***
John frowned as he flipped his cell phone shut. He’d been calling Nina all afternoon and got no answer. His face relaxed as he realized she might be at the track; she never left her phone on when she was running. Deciding to surprise her, he glanced at his watch and checked his appointment book. He was free for the rest of the day and he wanted to do something very special for Nina. He was singing to himself as he left the building, bracing himself against the early winter chill. It was almost totally dark, even at this early hour. It had been two weeks since the Thanksgiving holidays and the end of the term was almost here, along with the beginning of the winter break. He smiled as he got into his SUV, thinking about the holidays with Nina. He’d been trying to wait until Christmas to give her something, but he knew he couldn’t hold out any longer.
His first stop was a florist, where he picked out two dozen Tropicana roses. Their deep coral color reminded him of Nina, feminine and exotic at the same time. He then stopped at Trader Joe’s market for some non-alcoholic sparkling white wine and other delicacies he knew would delight her. John was in an even better mood when he got to the University apartment. He opened the door singing and almost broke his neck when he stumbled over a large box that hadn’t been there earlier. “What the hell is that?”
He set his purchases in the chair by the door and inspected the box. He took out the manuscript, which Nina had secured with large elastic bands and stared at it thoughtfully. Realizing the rest of the box contained his research John ignored it, turning his full attention to the manuscript. It was finished, all complete. John felt humbled and awed when he saw the results of all Nina’s hard work. This is all thanks to Nina. This would have never happened without her. John’s heart swelled with gratitude and love as he flipped open his phone again to call her. Answer the phone, woman!
He looked out the window at the inky sky; now it was totally dark outside. Glancing at his watch, he left the apartment with long purposeful strides. He had no idea where Nina was and she wouldn’t or couldn’t answer her phone. Something strange was going on and he didn’t like it one bit.
Chapter 16
John looked like hell. His entire posture bespoke depression and anger. He was sitting with his legs extended in front of him, and his elbows resting on his knees. He was staring at his feet, his unshaven face a mask of pain. All of his brothers looked concerned.
Finally Andre spoke up, needing to get clarification. “So what happened, John? You got to your place and found the box, then what did you do?”
John continued to stare before speaking. When he did his voice sounded raspy and unused. “It was getting late and I was worried about her because I hadn’t heard from her and she wasn’t answering her phone. I decided to go to her place to see what was up and when I got there…” He stopped talking for a second as pain flashed across his face. “When I got to the residence motel, I went to her suite and there was housekeeping, changing the linen and vacuuming, cleaning the suite up because she’d checked out.” The anger and bitterness in John’s words were at war with his pain and bewilderment.
Alan gave a low whistle. “So she just left without a word to you? You have no idea what made her take off?”
“None whatsoever. Everything was fine, better than fine. I bought a ring for her in Puerto Rico and I was going to pop the question last night, I couldn’t wait until Christmas. And she just vanished,” he said bleakly.
The men were gathered at Adam and Alicia’s loft in council. John had called Adam that morning, frantic with worry and all the men met at Adam’s to lend their support and help. Donnie said what was on all the men’s minds, the worst case scenario no one wanted to address. “John, man, you can’t rule out foul play. I mean, have you considered the fact that something could have happened to her?” he asked gently.
“Yeah, I thought about nothing else but that for the first five or six hours. But everything was just too methodical and precise, too much like Nina. I called my publisher this morning and guess what, the manuscript was delivered. She sent it in express overnight delivery and it arrived today. So that told me she planned on this, or at least that she was in her right mind before she left.
“I felt like a real idiot doing it, but I had to ask them what her address and telephone number in Oakland is. There’s so much about Nina I don’t know, things we just never got around to talking about,” he said with a shake of his head. “Get this,” he said looking up at the worried faces of h
is brothers. “Nina was out here on her own dime. I thought the publisher was paying her expenses while she was here but she was paying them out of her own pocket,” he said, the disbelief evident in his voice.
John grew hot all over again as he remembered the brisk, chatty voice of the editor working with him and Nina on the book. “Nina’s quite something isn’t she? I kept telling her she could work from home on this, but she insisted she had to be in Michigan with you. I told her we couldn’t reimburse her expenses and that she’d basically have no income until the completion check was cut, but she was fine with that. She’s always been the most productive ghostwriter we have and it looks like she’s done a wonderful job with you. Congratulations on an excellent project, John. I think this book is going to have a home on the best seller list for a long, long time,” she said warmly.
Now it was Andre’s turn to give an awed whistle. “You mean to tell me she came out here to be with you and she was paying for it herself? That had to be costing her a bomb, man.
And she was probably keeping up her regular expenses back home, too. What in the world would make her do that?” he said wonderingly.
Donnie looked at his twin brothers in disgust. “You really are the romantically deficient ones, aren’t you? Love made her do it, you idiots.”
Andrew agreed. “She knew you were sick before you left California and she wanted to be with you to keep an eye on you. It wasn’t about the money she was spending it was about her looking out for you.”
John leaned back on the long leather sofa and put his arms behind his head. “How could I have been so blind? Why didn’t I figure any of this out? I feel like the world’s biggest fool.”
Adam gave his brother a sympathetic look before repeating Donnie’s earlier concern. “But we still don’t know why she took off, or where she is. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I don’t think we can rule anything out yet. She could be anywhere, man.”
A Fool for You (The Cochran/Deveraux Series Book 7) Page 16