After my arms had been treated with pulverized aloe vera leaves mixed with some other plant Martha ground up with, and after we’d all eaten bowls of curried rice and jerk chicken, Martha gave each child a sugarcane stalk to suck on and sent them back to the little TV.
“You really got a job for Jug?” Martha asked.
We were sitting around a cotton blanket on the tile floor near a stone hearth in the kitchen. Martha had stacked our wooden bowls to one side and gave Jug and I small glasses of amber rum.
“I do have a job, if he’s willing. First, though, let me tell you why I’m here.” I sipped my drink, and though I always add Diet Coke to my rum, this needed no additions. It was delicious and warm, and if I drank enough, I figured my still stinging arms and legs wouldn’t be bothering me. I’d be passed out.
Jug had heard some of my story on the way over here, but Martha listened intently, and gently rubbed her belly when I mentioned the tiny pink bracelet and death certificate I’d found in Donnelly’s house.
“The death certificate is making me wonder if I’m on the wrong track,” I said. “I’m hoping Jug can do a little research on the island while I go back home and try to find out more about Blythe Donnelly. I have the name of the midwife who attended the birth and—”
“What’s her name?” Martha and Jug said almost in unison.
“Elizabeth Benson,” I replied.
They both nodded knowingly.
“You know her?” I said.
“Just the name,” said Jug. “Jamaica is not a big place, miss, and we got plenty experience with midwives.”
Martha rolled her eyes. “Too much experience, you ask me.” But she smiled at Jug, who reached over and took her hand.
“I’d like you to find this woman, see what she remembers about Donnelly and her baby.”
“What if he can’t find her?” Martha said.
“Then he can’t find her, but he still gets paid for looking. His time is valuable.”
She laughed. “That be news to me.”
Jug slapped her knee playfully. “I can find anyone. Cost you a hundred dollars U.S. Special deal for you.”
“Let me decide the price, okay? I guarantee you it will be more than a hundred.”
Martha grinned widely. “Oh, he can do it okay, now that you gonna give us enough for the dog. Gonna take lots of trouble to get rid of those fleas.”
Jug looked at her, eyes bright with what I could have sworn were tears. I think he wanted that dog as much as the kids did.
“We call her Bobo, like the cop called missy here,” he said with a smile.
He and Martha laughed loudly, so of course I had to ask. “And just what does bobo mean?”
Martha said, “Bobo means fool, mon.”
12
I sat in the quietest corner of the Kingston airport—a spot more at din level than the chaos level fifty yards away. My plane to Houston would board in about fifteen minutes, so I took out my freshly charged cell phone. I had plenty of voice messages.
I’d thought about listening to them when I woke up, but I’d slept longer than I should have after last night’s activity and had enough time before coming here only to have Jug drive me to a bank. We set up an account for him and I deposited two hundred dollars. Once I got back home, another ten grand would appear by electronic transfer—something I hadn’t told him. I wanted it to be a nice surprise. He’d saved my butt, and God knows he needed money for his family. Meanwhile, I’d provided him with a printout of the birth book record and death certificate. He seemed eager to hunt down the midwife and ask her what she remembered, if anything. When he’d dropped me off at Norman Manley Airport, we’d said our good-byes and hugged like the good friends we’d become. I would miss that guy.
I accessed my voice mail, bending over and plugging one ear so I could hear. The first message was from Jeff asking me how I liked Jamaica and telling me he’d be gone for a few days to pick up a murder suspect who had fled to Seattle. The next was from Kate asking when I’d be home and telling me that Diva was pouting. Gee. What a surprise.
The last voice message was from Graham Beadford, and I immediately wondered how he’d gotten my cell number, but then I recalled I’d given it to Roxanne, so she’d probably given it to him. He said he wanted to meet with me about a matter “of interest to us both” and provided his suite number at the resort where he was staying.
This has money written all over it, I thought. But I wasn’t about to invest time or money in someone suffering from Anheuser’s disease. My ex had cured me of getting involved with alcoholics for a lifetime.
I erased the messages, then called Angel’s cell number. He answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Angel. I was wondering if you could do a little research for me on my case.”
“Sure. I got nothing going right now except watching this dentist lady cheat on her husband. Galleria tryst. A little window shopping for jewelry, a little wine drinking, a little stayover in a fancy hotel. Like watching an old episode of Lives of the Rich and Famous.”
I told him about the progress I’d made on Megan’s behalf and asked him to check out Blythe Donnelly, born in Dallas in 1961. He told me that as soon as he snapped a few pictures of the lovebirds exiting the hotel, he’d head back to the office and get busy. I thanked him and clicked the phone off.
I had just enough time before I boarded to visit the duty-free shop. Jamaican rum makes for good sleep, mon. Martha had taught me that much.
True to Kate’s report, Diva was aloof when I arrived home that evening. But she warmed up as soon as I sat down in the living room with my Diet Coke. I gave her some much-needed attention, then called Kate to tell her I was home. I filled her in on my trip, not sharing exactly how I’d learned the things I was telling her. She must have been tired because she didn’t ask too many questions. I had just hung up when my doorbell rang.
I went to the foyer, saw Angel through the peephole, and quickly opened the door.
“Did a drive-by to see if you were home yet and saw your car,” he said after I let him in.
“Want a drink?” I asked. “Got some nice rum.”
“No, thanks.” He was holding a large brown envelope and as usual looked like he came right off the dry cleaner’s rack—pressed white shirt, creased khakis, and a silver belt buckle, this one so huge it must have weighed five pounds.
“Come on in and sit awhile,” I said, leading him through the foyer.
He glanced around as we entered the living room. “Nice place. Nice neighborhood. You like this better than River Oaks?”
“A million times better. So were you able to find out anything on Blythe Donnelly?” I asked, eager to get my hands on that envelope.
“What there is to know.” He sat on one end of the sofa and crossed his legs, which showed off his worn but well-cared for alligator boots.
“Because she’s lived in Jamaica so long?” I sat, too.
“There’s not much to know because she didn’t live all that long.” He opened the envelope.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“She’s dead, Abby. She died in 1974.” He removed a sheet of paper and handed it to me.
It was a copy of a small newspaper article from the Dallas Morning News, the death notice for Blythe Donnelly, who had passed on from “complications of cancer” at the age of thirteen. The notice was very detailed, probably a last tribute written by a devastated family who had lost someone they loved far too soon.
I said, “Okay, so maybe the woman in Jamaica is a different Blythe Donnelly. Maybe—”
“That’s possible, but not likely. I don’t think two Blythe Donnellys were born on the same day in the same year in Dallas, Texas, do you?”
“You’re right,” I said. “And considering what I found in Donnelly’s house—cash transactions, a large bank account disappearing, the lack of friends—I’m betting there’s an explanation.”
“I won’t ask how you gained access to that inf
ormation,” he said.
“I seem to have forgotten myself,” I said with a grin.
“Just so you understand that this person you’re tracking is using a stolen identity and could be in big trouble.”
“I understand. So now what?” I said.
“This could be tough,” he answered. “We’re not dealing with someone stealing personal information to rob a person blind. This sounds more like a woman who needed to disappear. And there could be a hundred reasons why.”
“Criminal reasons?” I asked.
“Or personal,” he said. “A way out of a tough life.”
“So what’s my next step?” I asked.
“There are several ways to go at this, but I’d begin by checking missing person reports around the time this woman showed up in Jamaica.”
“That’s probably a humongous number of people,” I said.
“Not necessarily. You have a location—Dallas—and that narrows the field. Not likely someone in Maine would hunt up death certificates in Dallas trying to find a good candidate for their identity theft. We weren’t exactly a nation of computer users back then.”
“You’ve got a point,” I said. “So I’ll definitely start with missing persons.”
“If you need any help with your research, let me know. I’ve got connections in Dallas, a few friends who used to be cops up that way.” He stood and I followed suit. “And now I better get home. Becky’s cooking venison stew and I’m not about to miss out.” He patted his starched, flat belly.
After Angel left, I headed straight for my office, but once I sat down behind my desk, I paused. Angel had mentioned death certificates. If Donnelly wasn’t really Donnelly, maybe the baby’s death certificate wasn’t real either. Maybe Donnelly had been trying to hide the child as well as herself. And maybe the records copied to my phone computer could offer additional information. So I transferred all the birth and death files from the e-mail message onto my desktop PC.
It took me only fifteen minutes to discover that the baby’s death certificate had not been scanned or even manually keyed into this particular database, though loads of other information from that year had been compiled. The infant’s records could have been lost in the hurricane... and then there was the other possibility. The baby’s death had been faked.
But though I wanted to get busy on this angle, the doorbell rang again and this time the visitor was not nearly as welcome as Angel.
“What can I do for you, Aunt Caroline?” I asked when I opened the door. “Because I’m busy working on—”
“A murder case in Seacliff?” she asked sweetly.
Damn. That’s all I needed was her dipping her pen in my ink. Kate must have let something slip. “Listen, I’d love to visit, but—”
“Do you know a police person named Fielder?” she asked.
Double damn. Better find where this leak had come from and shut off that faucet as soon as I could. “Come on in,” I said.
I offered her a drink, and once we were seated on the sofa, her with a glass of white wine and me with the rum and Coke, she said, “So tell me what you’ve been up to, Abigail.”
“Why don’t you go first? Obviously you’ve been snooping around in my business.”
“Why would you think that?” She offered her best shocked and dismayed expression. “And I really don’t appreciate your tone, considering I came here to offer you valuable information.”
I needed this woman in my life like an armadillo needs an interstate. But knowing her, I’d better play nice or she’d clam up. “Sorry if I sounded rude, but I’ve had a long day. What information are you talking about and what’s this about Fielder?”
She smiled and sipped her wine, leaving bright pink lip marks on the rim. “You know how much I care about you, Abigail. And I’m concerned for your welfare. So before I tell you, why don’t you explain how you got mixed up in all this?”
I knew why she wanted to know and it had nothing to do with my well-being. The next time she played a foursome at the country club, she hoped for center stage with her society friends. And she would get exactly that if she could reveal unpublished details about James Beadford’s death. The quickest way to find out what she knew and get rid of her was to give her just enough information to satisfy her.
I summarized what had happened at the wedding reception, focusing more on the response of the guests than on anything substantive. I mentioned the scream, the ensuing chaos, how long we all had to stay in the house. She then asked who did the catering, what the bride wore, and did I think the wedding gown was totally ruined? It seemed clear she didn’t give a rat’s ass how this tragedy affected Megan and her family.
“Now tell me about Fielder,” I said. “How did you connect her name with mine? Did you read it in the newspaper?”
“She called me,” Aunt Caroline said, looking as proud as a cat with a mouthful of feathers.
I blinked. “Wait a minute. She called you? Not the other way around?”
Aunt Caroline picked a piece of lint off her camel wool slacks. “She had a lot of questions about you, Abigail. And she certainly knew plenty about your past.”
I took a hefty swallow of my drink. What the hell was Fielder doing?
“And the gist of these questions?” I asked.
“She wanted to know if you had a personal relationship with the Beadford family and if so for how long. Of course I couldn’t answer that question.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t answer? I told you the last time you were here that Megan hired me a few months ago.”
“Have you forgotten how you cut me out of your life since last summer?” she said. “What makes you think I would know who your friends are or—”
“This has nothing to do with my friends. What else did she want to know?” I was pissed off and she knew it.
Her smug smile disappeared. “I came here to inform you about the call from Fielder, so don’t get irritable, Abigail. Because you’ve been out of town, which I had to hear from this police woman, too, I was unable to offer this information sooner.”
“Fielder knew about my trip?”
“She said you went to Jamaica. Whatever were you doing there? The Bahamas or Grand Cayman are a far more preferable—”
“So she’s been following me? Bugging my phone? What?”
“I have no idea. When we spoke, she seemed very interested in the unpleasantness at your house last summer. The murder, the subsequent—”
“She could have read about all that in archived newspapers or HPD reports, so why contact you?”
“She told me she’s gathering background on those who attended the wedding and she certainly couldn’t call that austere Detective Kline for information considering how the two of you are... involved.”
“It’s Sergeant Kline,” I said tersely, wishing this idiot woman would get to the point.
“You have an intimate relationship with him, I assume, and I’m sure in the law enforcement world that makes for communication difficulties between police people, n’est-ce-pas?”
Apparently having Jeff followed to locate me hadn’t provided Aunt Caroline with enough dirt about the two of us to satisfy her curiosity. She was fishing for more.
“Quit the games and tell me what Fielder said.” Her mouth tightened into a pucker and she averted her gaze, obviously miffed I wasn’t about to discuss my private life with her. “She wanted to know if you’d planned this vacation to Jamaica and when you were coming back. And I’m being totally forthcoming when I say that she did ask me how you handled that messy situation last summer. I told her you nearly got yourself killed and—”
“Is that all?” I cut in.
She fiddled with her three-karat diamond ring. “I came here with the best of intentions. If someone were investigating me, I would certainly want to know the details.”
“And you’ve told me next to nothing. Is there more?” I said.
“No.”
I stood. “Then thank you and good nig
ht. I had a long flight and I’m tired. You remember the way out?”
She took her time leaving, all the while trying to pretend none of her probing into my life and talking about me to Fielder was of any consequence. But it was. It bothered the hell out of me. Fielder had been digging through my past and was keeping track of my whereabouts. So who had told her I’d gone to Jamaica? Surely not Kate. She would have mentioned it the minute I called her earlier today. That left Jeff. Maybe it was a small thing, maybe he didn’t think his discussing me with his old girlfriend Quinn mattered, but it did. It mattered too much.
So without thinking, I picked up my phone and called his cell.
He answered on the second ring, saying, “Hey, Abby. Are you at home?”
“Oh, I’m home all right. And I just found out you’ve been talking to Fielder about me. I don’t like that, Jeff. I stay out of your cases and you can just stay out of mine.”
Silence followed. A sickening silence, the kind that washes over you like dirty water. I’d made a mistake. A bad one.
His voice was as cold as liquid nitrogen when he finally answered. “We’ll talk some other time, okay?”
Click.
I squeezed the receiver and shut my eyes. This foot in mouth disease of mine was gonna kill me yet.
13
Though I was dead tired, sleep did not come easily. I’d been such an idiot to call when I was still hot from my encounter with Aunt Caroline. I tossed and turned and finally at three A.M. I called Jeff again and got his voice mail. I apologized several times in a rambling sleep-deprived monologue that probably made me sound like an even bigger jerk than before. At least I was able to get some rest afterward, but I wondered about Jeff. How much had I pissed him off? How much sleep had he gotten? Hopefully I could ask him soon.
The next morning I showered and ran a few errands, cat food and coffee being the priorities. Around noon I arrived home with three bags of groceries. Or should I say three bags of comfort food along with the cat chow and coffee—chips, jalapeños, salsa, ice cream, and regular Coke—and all in quantities far greater than one female should consume in a year’s time. So what? I would drown my troubles in saturated fat and sugar.
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