“You’ve been doing this for thirty-five years?” I asked, wondering if Cloris had come here to have her baby.
“That’s right. I’m not a registered nurse, just vocational, and Melvyn was only a GP, but I think we did okay. Only lost two babies in all those years.”
“You and your husband delivered them?”
“Sure did. Not in the last ten years, though. Times have changed. Not that I don’t know how to deliver, but I’d need a midwife certification from the state. We gave the girls the best, most inexpensive care for a good many years, though. After the Doc died, I discovered most of them could have had the finest room in any hospital for what those adopting families paid Feldman, but he cut costs and pocketed most of the cash.”
“Ben’s wife, the one I told you about from Shade? Her name was Cloris. Do you remember her?”
“Cloris? Let me think.” Her lips moved in and out as she concentrated; then she said, “Yes! Yes! I do remember her! Unusual name. Right after she gave birth she changed her mind about the adoption. Took one look at those beautiful twin girls and said she couldn’t give them up.”
“Twins?” My heart hopped. “But I never realized—”
“Wait a minute,” said Sally Jean, holding up a restraining hand and shaking her head vigorously. “It’s all coming back. Cloris got real bent out of shape once she realized she’d never see them again. Not that some girls hadn’t balked before. But if they wouldn’t sign the adoption papers, Sam Feldman would hire a family to keep the baby for a few days. That way the girl could reconsider without an infant snuggled up to her. Oh, Mr. Sam was slick, all right. He’d come and talk to those girls about how there’d be no more dancing or movie shows and how they wouldn’t be having fun anymore; they’d be changing diapers. And I’ll admit, I didn’t argue with that approach. Those infants deserved a decent life, one that probably wouldn’t happen with mothers who were little more than children themselves. After a few days, sure enough, they’d forget and sign whatever Sam wanted them to sign.”
“But Cloris was different?” I asked, a strange tightness constricting my chest. Twins. Cloris gave birth to twin girls.
“Way different. She came here with only the clothes on her back. A sad young woman, and bearing some trouble she wouldn’t talk about. Had worried eyes, same color as yours.”
“But she signed the papers?” I asked, my voice sounding small and faraway. Twins. This couldn’t be real. There had to be an explanation other than the one I couldn’t push from conscious thought.
“Well, see, I don’t know. I assumed she did. But after the birth she took sick. Got to coughing so, and I couldn’t get her fever down. She nearly gave up when she came ’round and found out Feldman had taken the babies already. But I wouldn’t let her die. Uh-uh. No, ma’am. But though her body finally healed, her heart wasn’t mended. She left the money behind, the five hundred Sam gave her to start over.”
“She tried to get those children back,” I said quietly. “Tried for a long time. And was murdered for her trouble.”
“And you think Sam killed her because she came too close?”
“Yes,” I said, then lapsed into silence.
I heard Sally Jean saying, “I could kick myself from here to Lufkin for trusting the Doc and Sam so completely. As far as my husband’s concerned, he probably didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. And me? I cooked and cleaned and cared for the girls, thinking I was doing good works all those years.”
I blinked, forcing myself back into the present moment. “You won’t tell Feldman I came here, will you?”
“Do I look like I fell off the stupid truck?”
“Good.” I stood. “If you’ll give me his address, I’ll be on my way. I can’t thank you enough for the information.”
“If he’s killed two people, seems to me getting rid of you would be easy, girl. Best to call the police, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” I said. But I would not be calling the police. Not yet.
“You be careful then, little lady.” She took a piece of paper and wrote the address, handing it to me just as a voice echoed down the hallway.
“Sally Jean! It’s me,” a woman called through the latched screen at the front of the house.
The door rattled. Thank goodness Sally Jean had fastened the hook, because I recognized that voice. Helen Hamilton.
“Is there a another way out?” I whispered.
She nodded and gestured for me to follow her.
I hurried out the back door, then drove two blocks before calling Sally Jean on my cell. She picked up on the second ring.
“It’s me, Abby. Is she still there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sally Jean.
“Standing near you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied cheerfully.
“Can you delay her so I can visit Feldman?”
“I’ll try. Friday sounds fine,” she said, covering for me.
“Thanks.” I disconnected and sped west. I had to make a move while Sally Jean was delaying Hamilton or miss my chance at Feldman—even though I was no longer sure I wanted to know the truth.
No, I wanted to believe in coincidences. And the kindness of the only father I had ever known and the invalid mother I had not.
But I’d been fishing in troubled waters for more than a week, and it was time to reel in that shark Feldman.
An older man answered the door after I knocked, then backed up six feet inside. He looked seventy or close to it, with thinning silver hair and piercing blue eyes. Though I’d realized Feldman would be old, a geriatric murderer didn’t quite jell with my image of a criminal.
“Terry Armstrong, Houston police,” I said, extending one of the business cards I’d been hanging on to for a moment like this. “Are you Samuel Feldman?”
I’d told the big lie this time. The illegal kind. But with the word twins battering my brain unmercifully, I really didn’t care.
“Yes, I’m Samuel Feldman,” he said, stepping forward and snatching the card before retreating again into the shadowy foyer.
I was now face-to-face with this slimeball, and though he looked frail, his voice sounded strong and self-assured. I would have preferred weak and wavering.
“I’m a consultant in the Unsolved Crimes division, and I have a few questions,” I said. “Can I come in or should we go down to the precinct?”
He hesitated a second, then replied, “What’s this about?”
“It’s about murder, sir. Would you like to discuss this here or go downtown?” I didn’t stop to consider what I’d do if he actually told me to take him “downtown.”
“I can give you a minute, but I know nothing about any murder.” He turned abruptly and I followed him inside, wondering if he’d noticed my trembling hands or an expression that surely must have relayed how sick I felt inside.
A winding staircase rose to my right, and the foyer ceiling opened up to the second floor. A gleaming chandelier hung above our heads, and this hallway alone could have housed a family of four. I couldn’t help thinking that all this wealth had been achieved thanks to exorbitant fees paid by hundreds of desperate people over the past thirty years. Had I known one of those desperate souls? Lived with him all my life?
Feldman walked briskly to the left, into a formal living area furnished with an expensive-looking modular sofa and heavy white drapes on the picture window with a bay view. A palatial room, one that reminded me of winter.
“What’s this about?” he said curtly.
He sat on the sofa near the fireplace, and I sat opposite him, seemingly a football field away. A heavily varnished coffee table fashioned from the trunk of a redwood filled the U space between us.
“I’m investigating the deaths of a couple named Grayson,” I said. “You may remember the wife. Her name was Cloris, and her children were placed in an adoptive home through your agency many years ago.”
He crossed his legs and leaned back against the white cushions. “Thousands of children
came through my agency, and by the way, I don’t own or operate that business any longer.”
Maybe not on paper, I thought. He’d no doubt covered himself there. “Let me refresh your memory. Cloris Grayson caused a bit of trouble in your life... before someone murdered her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. We know you placed her twins, and we know she tried to find them. If she succeeded, then you would have lost. Big-time. I’d call that motive, sir.”
He shifted his thin frame, paying considerable attention to his fingernails. “I think you’re mistaken. I don’t remember this woman.”
I guess I had expected him to fall on his knees and confess. I should have planned this confrontation better, but I was too distracted by what Sally Jean had told me to even make much sense right now. Still, I couldn’t leave without getting something out of this asshole. Maybe if I threw out a line about the judge, he’d squirm.
“You cooperated with a judge named Eugenia Hayes. We believe you made some shady deals with her, threw a few bribes her way. Is that not a fact, sir?”
“I told you I don’t know anything about your murder, nor about bribery. Frankly, I’d categorize your information as flimsy innuendos. I haven’t been in a courtroom in a long time, and I don’t recall anyone named Hayes.”
“Suffering from selective amnesia, sir?”
He got up. “I won’t be insulted in my own home. Obviously you’re grasping at straws.”
I had forgotten he was a lawyer, a “professional liar,” like Judge Hayes said.
“This isn’t the end, Feldman,” I said, knowing this was true, even if everything else I’d said was a lie.
“If you show up again,” Feldman said, “you’d better have more than speculation.”
He marched ahead of me, and I heard the phone ringing beyond a door across the foyer.
“I’ll find my way out,” I said.
He waited until I was out the front door, but didn’t come too close... almost as if he were afraid of what was out there. He certainly wasn’t afraid of me.
It was raining like God opened the drain, and I hesitated before closing the front door behind me. Just then a gust of wind blew me backward and the door opened, horizontal rain spraying into the foyer. I stepped back inside, deciding to wait a minute or two for the weather to let up.
That was when I realized I could hear Feldman talking in the other room. He said, “When do you think you’ll be here?”
Silence followed. I moved closer to the half-open door.
Feldman said, “I’ve had a visitor. Houston Police.”
His voice drifted closer, as if he might be walking toward me.
Damn.
I hurried across the foyer and crouched behind a large statue of some naked Greek god. I sneaked a peek and saw Feldman step out, his attention on the open front door. He maneuvered around the puddle on the floor, shut the door, and practically jumped away after doing so. As he went back into the other room, I heard him say, “Stupid woman left the door open.”
Taking a path close to the wall, I tiptoed back, stopping outside the room just in time to hear him say, “I understand. But they’re putting things together.”
Another pause before he said, “I know they don’t have any evidence, but she mentioned Eugenia Hayes, and she was one of the judges. If they dig deep enough, they’ll find out Rose made her step down and—Hold on; I’ve got another call.”
My knees almost gave way, and I steadied myself against the wall. Then, not caring whether Feldman knew I’d been listening in, I opened the door and ran out into the stinging rain. I didn’t remember starting the car or navigating through the downpour, but soon I found myself on P Street.
I parked in the driveway and sat there in the Camry, not bothering to even turn off the air-conditioning, my soaked clothing molded to my cold, shivering body. Rain still poured in unrelenting intensity from the swirling slate sky.
I clutched the steering wheel, my knuckles protruding white and sharp through the stretched skin of my hands. The truth, the thing that was supposed to set you free and all that crap, ricocheted between the confines of my skull, cruel and punishing.
Then tears began sliding down my cheeks and under my chin.
23
The rain let up minutes later, but rivulets continued to trail down the windshield. I watched one and then another and another meander and disappear. I could have easily run to the Victorian during this temporary reprieve, but I remained paralyzed in my car.
Those words, Rose made her step down, kept replaying in my head like a broken car alarm, over and over and over.
I don’t know how much time passed, but my tears had dried. I was left feeling numb and more alone than I could remember. That was when another man’s words came back. Jeff Kline’s words. Ben Grayson was living on your property because he wanted to be there. Yes, indeed. Ben had come to find Daddy, to find Kate and me.
“How very clever of you, Daddy,” I whispered. Was anything he’d told us true? Had there even been a fatal plane crash right before Kate and I were born? I doubted it.
And did he have any idea how much this truth would hurt when it came pouncing out from the past? How did I reevaluate a lifetime founded on deception? Where did I begin?
I felt overwhelmed and unequipped to deal with any of this. I wanted none of such a messy past. But having made the first vital connection, my synapses continued to fire. My father made Hayes step down because someone threatened to expose the judge as corrupt, had threatened to reclaim her children.
Cloris. Also known as Connie. Also known as my mother.
I shook my head, sprinkling the windshield with water from my drenched hair. Don’t think about that part, Abby. Not now.
Rain pummeled my car anew, and for some silly reason—maybe denial was kicking in—I entertained the notion that Daddy could have been honoring a friend’s request when he forced Hayes to resign—simply been helping some friend protect their adopted children, not his own. After all, he had powerful business connections and measurable influence in political circles.
But I knew the truth, and the more I tried to push it away with implausible explanations, the more its presence grew. But that voice in my head came back with, You don’t have solid proof. All you have is an overheard sentence spoken by a cruel old man.
And I had to be one hundred percent sure.
Eugenia Hayes knew everything. At least, she used to know. Could I drag the truth from the cloud of confusion fogging her mind? Maybe if I could hear the words from her, from the woman who sealed the deal, I could accept that I was raised by a man who then spent a generation lying to my sister and me.
The same curly-haired woman sat filing her nails at the information desk at the nursing home. When I marched past her, she spotted me and called out, “You can’t go up there!”
Over my shoulder I said, “I’ll only be a few minutes. I need to talk to Eugenia Hayes.”
I continued toward the elevator.
“Don’t make me call security. No visitors for her.”
I turned and went back to the desk. “Has something happened? Is she sick?”
“You upset her last time, and her son had a fit. Seems she called him and rambled on about bribes and crooked lawyers. She got so worked up she had to have three breathing treatments. After that, Mr. Hayes told the doctor not to let in anyone else.” She lifted her eyes, her withering gaze intended to shame me. “The son doesn’t come here much, you know. Of course, after you explained to me about Eugenia’s operation, I could understand his shame, but—”
“Wait a minute. I never said anything about any operation.”
She kept on talking, ignoring me. “Then I knew what had upset her son so much. Mr. Hayes was worried that little tidbit about his mother’s operation would get around town, don’t you know.” She paused, glanced around the deserted lobby, then whispered, “About her sex change.”
She resume
d her normal tone. “I told him I wouldn’t tell—but he kept denying Eugenia started out as his father, Eugene. But we know better, don’t we?” She winked. “So you’re the one who got him so mad.” She smiled, pleased with this logic, and started buffing her index finger.
I had to talk to the judge. Now. So I did what lately seemed to come so naturally to Charlie Rose’s daughter: I lied.
Leaning on the desk, I said, “Eugenia told me about her son, how he keeps visitors away. How he’s embarrassed by her. She’s lonely up there. Craves company. Do you want to contribute to making her last days on earth totally miserable? I don’t think that’s why you work with the elderly, is it?”
She set her nail buffer down. “Well... no.”
“Please let me talk to her. I’m begging for a few short minutes.”
“Maybe I could call the nurses’ station... say you’re an out-of-town relative and have the son’s okay to visit.” She pointed a finger at me. “But you have to give me your word you won’t upset her.”
“I promise.” And that was probably another lie. But I didn’t care.
Judge Hayes sat with the head of the bed propped up, her eyes clear and alert. “It’s about time you showed up,” she said. “I told that man who keeps insisting he’s my son to find you, get you back here,” she said. “Did you locate him?”
“Your son?” I asked, dragging a chair to the bedside.
“No, that snake Feldman. Don’t tell me you forgot already?”
Judge Hayes was chastising me about forgetting? “Yes, I found him. But something he said troubles me. Do you remember the man who pressured you to resign?”
“Resign? I’ll never resign. I’ve done things I shouldn’t, but always in the best interests of the children. So many children... beaten, forgotten, neglected...”
I sighed. Reality lasted for only the tiniest interludes with her. I had another trick I’d thought of on the way up in the elevator, though, and took my address book from my purse.
“What’s that, counselor?” she said, obviously curious.
“This is evidence,” I said.
“Evidence? You’d better mark it as an exhibit, then.”
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