by Diane Capri
Jess thought about the information, trying to make sense of it. “I can try the next-door neighbor. He’ll probably remember if they did renovations before they moved in.”
“That the forgetful guy?”
“He’s not that forgetful. He remembered Vashon.”
“Eventually. Look, I’ve gotta go. Got a line at my desk. Call me if you need anything.”
Jess ended the call.
Nothing stacked up. The Whitings might be good people, but the dates weren’t right, the places weren’t right, and the stories weren’t right. Nothing. She took a deep breath. Somewhere there was a simple explanation. Something that would make everything click into place.
She looked across the water to Vashon Island. The ferry was heading toward the pier. She returned to her car, and turned on the heated seat, surprised by how cold she’d become. The ferry docked, and moments later cars began streaming off in a single lane toward Tacoma. She looked up the address from Mandy’s email while she waited.
When the last of the cars was off the ferry, the red and white barrier across the entrance lifted, and the waiting cars rolled on. Staff waved vehicles forward until the bumpers were within inches of each other. The car deck was filled within minutes. The boat shook, and the engines roared. Her balance swayed. The crew wasted no time setting off.
A ticket collector worked his way through the car deck, collecting fares. Jess paid with her credit card and left the receipt on the dashboard for the return journey.
She took the steps to the upper deck. A girl served snacks from a counter. Jess bought a black coffee and cold bagel and found an empty window seat. The marina swung by as the boat turned for the island. Small craft bobbed in the big boat’s wake. The thrum of the engines grew louder as the ferry struck out across the open water.
The coffee was strong and hot, but the bagel had seen better days. She had little confidence in the food on the island, so she ate it after dipping pieces in the coffee to make them soft enough to chew without breaking her molars.
A middle-aged woman took the seat next to her. She propped a shopping bag on her knees, folded the handles over, and hugged the bag to her chest.
Jess smiled at her.
“Don’t like this boat,” the woman said.
Jess shrugged. “Seems okay.”
The woman shook her head. “Rhody was better.” She stamped her foot on the floor. “Didn’t shake as much.”
Jess raised her eyebrows. “Rhody?”
“Rhododendron.”
“Unusual name for a boat.”
The woman laughed and pointed to the sign on the side of the wall. “Any more unusual than Chetzemoka?”
“Guess not.” Jess smiled. “You live on the island?”
“Coming on twenty years. Not born there, though.”
“You like it?”
“Would you spend twenty years somewhere you didn’t like?”
“No.” Jess shook her head.
The woman gestured to the island with her head. “Why you visiting?”
There wasn’t much to lose by telling the woman. “I’m looking into someone who used to live here.”
The woman grunted. “Rob Hotchkiss.”
“Er…”
“Musician. Lead guy in Train. Or used to be.”
Jess shook her head. “The Whitings on Rainier Road.”
The woman pursed her lips. “Don’t know them.”
“Moved away about a dozen years ago.”
She shook her head. “Still don’t think I knew them.”
“What about Rainier Road?”
“Nice place. Some expensive houses down that way.”
“What do people do?”
“Do?”
“For work? On the island.”
“A few small businesses here. Shops and things. Difficult to commute. Quite a few people do financial stuff over the Internet. That’s big now.”
“Do the ferries run all night?”
The woman shook her head. “Start at five and stop around ten.”
The boat’s engine roared. Jess looked up to see they were almost docked. The engines roared again, and the boat lurched this time.
“Rhody didn’t do that either,” said the woman. “Don’t like this boat.”
Jess downed the last of her coffee and threw the paper cup in a large open trash bin.
“If you want something better, there’s Chelsea’s Place on 99th Avenue. Good seafood.”
Jess thanked the woman, said her goodbyes, and worked her way to the lower deck and found her car. The vehicles rolled off moments after the boat docked. The whole process was handled like a practiced, regular routine. Which it was.
She followed the Vashon Highway north toward the center of the island before heading due east, and finally turned left near the small sign that marked Rainier Road.
The road was picturesque. A ribbon of tarmac with no curbs. Lines of trees were set back from the edges, fences even farther. Even in the flat light of a cloudy Washington day, it had the look of something from a movie or the cover of a romance novel with a happy ending. The tree limbs spread over the road. In a few more years they would touch, and the street would be postcard worthy. It would become a haven for photographers and nervous suitors proposing marriage.
She stopped on the side of the road and checked her phone. The Whiting house was almost at the end, on the right. Number 1823.
She pulled into the driveway. The brick, two-story house was well back from the road. The driveway led to the front door, sweeping in an arc around an ornamental pond before looping back and rejoining the drive. The grass on either side of the drive was lush and perfectly trimmed. Decorative fences ran along both sides of the property.
Jess slowed to a halt. Whoever lived here must spend every waking minute in the garden. She leaned forward. The Whiting house in Bamford had none of the trappings of wealth she saw here.
She eased the car up to the front of the house, stopping just beyond the sidewalk to the front door. She checked her hair in the mirror and stepped out.
“Help you?”
She turned to the side of the house. A man in jeans and a work jacket stood with a trowel in his hand. He waved the trowel.
“I’m Jess Kimball.” Jess smiled and put a friendly tone in her voice. “I’m looking for the Whitings.”
The man frowned. “John and Barbara?”
“I thought they lived here?”
“Not for years.” He shook his head. “You know the Whitings?”
Jess shrugged. “Do you?”
“John and I used to work at the same place. Vashon Life and Casualty. Before he and Barbara moved away.”
“Why?” She looked around. “Seems like a lovely place to live.”
“Long story. They okay?”
Jess gave a slow nod. “John and Barbara are fine. Their son was hurt recently.”
The man inched forward and cocked his head. “Son?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well,” he shrugged, “I kind of lost track of them, I guess.”
“When they moved?”
He nodded. “They were in a bad way when they left here.”
“Financially?”
The man shook his head. “After they lost the first one.”
“Oh. I didn’t know,” Jess prompted.
The man nodded. “A boy. They had the place ready. Nursery decorated. Tons of clothes. You know how people are with their first one.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Even had a name picked out,” he said. “My middle name.” He pulled off his right glove and wiped his hand on his pants before he extended it to her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m Joseph Peter Sandler. People call me Joe.”
She accepted his handshake.
“Peter,” she said. “Their boy is called Peter.”
“No.” He drew the word out, not in denial, but in disbelief. “Well, well.”
He drifted off for a moment,
shaking his head slowly. Jess let him work through his memories and waited until he lifted his head up. “Are you related?”
He shook his head. “We were friends. Good friends. They just…well…turned to each other after they lost their first.”
Jess nodded. “Is that why they moved?”
“They were devastated. You can imagine. Especially Barbara. The loss really hit her hard. Put the place up for sale just a couple of weeks after.”
Jess nodded. “Horrible.”
They stood in silence a moment. Joe stared at the ground. “They were desperate to move. That’s why I bought their place. They were practically giving it away for a quick sale.”
“I’m sure they appreciated that the place went to a friend who would take good care of it.”
He lifted his head. “Their son’s going to be okay, right?”
“Hopefully.” Jess nodded. “When did they move?”
Joe shrugged. “Fourteen years ago.”
“Really?” She cocked her head and put a puzzled expression on her face. “Fourteen years? You’re sure?”
He nodded. “Fourteen years and…well…it would be maybe two or three months. I remember because it was Mother’s Day weekend when they lost the baby. They had a romantic evening at home planned, but she went into labor and, well, it didn’t turn out that way. They moved a month or two after that.”
Fourteen. Not thirteen. That jived with what she’d learned from their neighbor in Bamford. Not like the Whitings had said. A year different. An important year. A year that made sense of Peter Whiting’s birth record in Portland. A year that matched up with their moving dates. There was just one more domino to fall.
“How far along was she?” Jess heard the tremor in her own voice.
The man grimaced. “The baby was full term. Nine months. She went into the hospital for the stillbirth and stayed a day or two afterward. They had a memorial service a couple of days later.” He paused. “She was depressed. Couldn’t talk to anyone. I mean, I tried. We all tried. But… Then she went to visit her sister, and she just couldn’t bring herself to come back. Too painful, John said.”
Jess’s skin tingled. Full term. Fourteen years. Not thirteen. So Peter couldn’t have celebrated his first birthday in Bamford. The last domino. She took a deep breath. “Where did they go? When they moved?”
He cocked his head again, thinking about it. “Portland, I think. John said it was a big enough town that he could find work. Similar to here, but different enough.”
Her stomach was churning like a cement mixer. She needed to think. She turned away as if to look at the front garden, and cleared her throat. “You put a lot of effort in here.”
He stepped forward, his hands on his hips, admiring his handiwork. He seemed relieved to change the subject. “Yeah. I’m retired now. Got to have something to keep me going.”
“What kind of work did you do?”
“Me? Same as John. Insurance. All kinds. Medical, property, casualty, life. You name it. But I’d been at it a bit longer than him. Which is a polite way to say I’m a lot older.”
Jess smiled and checked her watch. “I have to be going.”
He nodded. “Well, say hello to John and Barbara for me when you see them.”
“I will.” Jess returned to her car and fell into the front seat. She turned the key in the ignition with a shaking hand.
Joe waved. “Tell them to come by one day.” He called. “And bring their son. Like to see them again after all this time.”
Jess waved and rolled out onto the road.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jess turned off Rainier Road, drove back to the center of Vashon, and parked in the first empty space she found. Her hands were still shaking, and her heart pounded like a drum.
The facts were tumbling over themselves to contradict each other.
John and Barbara Whiting had lost a baby boy. A boy they intended to call Peter. They’d been so devastated that they’d sold their home at a loss and left this beautiful island.
They’d run away. Made a clean break with the painful memories of the past. They’d moved from the place that would have tormented them. Faced their grief and come out on the other side.
A tough transition. Doable. But never easy. And in the process, they’d abandoned friends and co-workers, and even the man whose middle name they intended to honor by naming their son.
Except they had used his name. They’d named their second son Peter. They’d filled the void the loss of their stillborn baby had created with another.
Except he wasn’t theirs. Not biologically.
Barbara Whiting’s full term baby was stillborn on Mother’s Day, always the second Sunday in May. Peter was born in Portland on June 15 the same year. Two dates, just six weeks apart. Not enough time for a second pregnancy and a live birth. Not even close to thirty-nine weeks. Not enough time for the premature birth of a second, healthy child.
It wasn’t possible. Not even remotely.
Jess took several deep breaths to calm her pounding heart and wiped the perspiration from her forehead. She stopped her mind from making that giant leap that connected her with the boy in the hospital. She fought it back. Her rational intellect clung on to the need for one hundred percent proof, but eventually the thought formed.
The boy in the hospital was the right age. He could be hers.
After fourteen long years, maybe, just maybe, she had found Peter.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jess drove straight south, down through the middle of the island, and back to the port where she’d disembarked earlier. She sat in the line waiting for the ferry. Her cramped fingers gripped the steering wheel too tightly.
Reason had reasserted itself.
That the boy was named Peter meant nothing. That he’d seemed unsupervised in the early morning hours and abandoned at the Randolph hospital, meant nothing. But if it was true that the Whitings were not his biological parents, that meant something. And that they had appeared in Bamford with a male child so close to when her boy had been taken? She took a deep breath. That really might mean something.
Rain splatted on the windows. Fat drops. Distorting her view of the cars ahead and the water she had yet to cross. Mist formed on the windshield. She pried her hands from the wheel and turned on the defroster.
There was a fine line between love and obsession. On one side were all the good things in the world, and on the other? She shook her head. She had her toes on the edge of that line. She was on the side of love, but she could see into the pit that lay beyond. A pit she had fought off every day since her Peter was taken. She took a deep breath.
Feelings and guesses and unexplained calendar dates were all a good start. But not nearly enough. She needed evidence. Hard evidence. DNA would do the job, but Stevenson wouldn’t have the report for a while.
Jess called her office. Mandy answered, slightly breathless, on the third ring.
“Yes?”
“I need Peter David Whiting’s birth certificate.”
“I sent it.”
“A photocopy of the original. With the signatures.”
“Er… Why?”
“I just need it. I need to see the handwritten original.”
Mandy sighed. “Okay, but I’ll have to find someone in the area.”
“I know.”
“You’re in the area…”
Jess’s patience snapped. “Just find someone, will you?”
There was a long silence on Mandy’s end of the line.
Jess swiped fingers through her curls and sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Mandy’s voice softened. “What’s up, Jess?”
Jess bit her lip. She took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you yet. I’ll fill you in when I can. But I need that birth certificate.”
Mandy paused a moment before replying. “No problem. I’ll get it.”
“There’s something else. The Whitings lost a baby. When they lived here on Vashon. A month or two before they moved. F
ind me anything you can. Okay? Anything.”
“Okay.”
“It’s important, Mandy.”
“I know. I’ll get it… You know, if you want to talk—”
“Not now. I can’t. Just find everything you can.” She hung up before the conversation moved into areas she didn’t want to discuss.
The ferry arrived. She crossed back to the mainland and escaped Tacoma. Diving fast. Passing trucks. Her gaze locked on the tarmac, the miles fleeing by, registered only by her subconscious.
She was on the outskirts of Randolph before she realized how far she’d traveled. She took what felt like her first deep breath in several hours as she passed the Welcome to Randolph sign, and cruised into town.
She turned onto Main Street and pulled into the police department parking lot.
She left the engine running, and stared at the sign over the station’s door. The small print said “To protect and serve.” It was the same sign posted by a thousand police stations in towns and cities all over the country. But she hoped these were more than empty words.
She took another deep breath to steady her nerves, fighting off the numbing mist that had settled on her consciousness. It had served its purpose. It had kept her soul from fragmenting and saved her from falling into an emotional pit from which she might never escape.
Her phone showed two emails. Mandy had been as good as her word. Somehow, she had obtained a scanned copy of the original entry in the register of births. The signatures were there. John and Barbara Whiting. Peter’s name was recorded. The place of birth was Kids Own Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. June 15. Fourteen years and three months ago.
She opened the second email. Two scanned documents this time. The first was a copy of an entry in a register of the stillbirth of a baby boy on May 9, fourteen years ago. It listed John and Barbara Whiting as the parents. The second was a page from a newspaper, announcing the death of their baby and a memorial service at a church on Vashon Island on May 17. Less than a month before Peter David Whiting was born.
Jess killed the engine, and sat in the car, listening to the tinkling sounds of the cooling engine. She had to do this right. She had to keep calm. She had to be professional.