Eden's Baby

by Adrianne Lee

  David shouted, “Beth!”

  Beth jerked, her eyes coming slowly open. She was alive. Eden’s chest heaved with relief as Beth lurched to a sitting position, fear radiating from her rounded eyes. “Eden?”

  “Dear God, Beth, what happened?” Eden cried. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I—I was down on the dock, feeding the ducks bread, when I heard a noise near the house. I thought it was you guys. But when I called out, I saw someone in dark clothing dive behind the trees. I’d left the telephone in the kitchen and I didn’t know what to do, so I got in the boat and rowed away.”

  Someone had been snooping around the house? Eden’s muscles ached with tension. Whoever it was had not been there when David and she had arrived home; they’d searched inside and outside and would again as soon as they were back on shore. “No one’s there now. Come on, sweetie. We’ll tow you back and discuss this over some hot cocoa.”

  “And cinnamon rolls,” David added, grinning at Eden, obviously recalling the last time he’d made them for her and burned them to crisps. “Heated cinnamon rolls are my specialty.”

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, they not only had hot cocoa and thick, gooey, unburned cinnamon rolls, but a fire blazing in the fireplace. They were all wearing dry clothes and enjoying the sweet treat.

  David set his cup on the floor and stared at the fire, but he had the air of a caged tiger.

  Beth shoved her hair off her forehead. “For pity’s sake, David. Just ask, okay?”

  He jerked up at that, then laughed. “Have you thought of taking that mind-reading act of yours on the road?”

  “Doesn’t take the psychic hot line to figure out that you want to know who and what I saw.”

  “So spill the beans, kiddo. Could you tell whether it was a man or a woman?”

  “Woman, I’d say. Do you think it was Rose?” Beth shivered.

  “Are you catching cold?” Eden reached over and felt her forehead. Was it warmer than normal? “Maybe we should take you to the hospital, sweetie, and make sure you’re okay.”

  “Oh, please,” Beth lamented. “David, tell her I’m okay.”

  “She’s okay.” David winked at Eden. He could see a trip to the hospital right now might cause Beth more trauma, but Eden’s concern was understandable. “Let’s compromise. We’ll keep close tabs on you, and if it looks necessary, then we’ll make the trip. Meanwhile I prescribe bed rest.”

  “I accept,” Beth said. “But first I want to know what Kollecki wanted with you two.”

  Eden tensed.

  David silently signaled for her to let him handle this. Tomorrow was soon enough to tell Beth about Valerie. She wouldn’t be seeing the news on television or hearing about it from any outside source. She needed a good night’s sleep before she was presented more distressing news. “One of my neighbors spotted someone at my house last night and called the police. But King County didn’t know where to reach me and they didn’t contact Kollecki until this morning.

  “Kollecki had a few more questions for me about my answering-machine tapes, then Eden and I met the King County police at my house to make certain no one had gotten in and nothing was disturbed.”

  Eden was amazed at how easily he lied. Amazed and grateful.

  “And? Was anything disturbed?” Beth asked.

  “Not a thing. False alarm.”

  “Good.” Beth yawned and stretched and bade them good-night. Eden went up ten minutes later and tucked her in. She prayed Beth’s ordeal wouldn’t bring on nightmares.

  Back downstairs, Eden rejoined David, sinking onto the sofa beside him. The fire crackled and snapped, and she couldn’t keep her eyes from sliding to the windows, couldn’t keep from wondering if the person Beth had seen might still be out there, hiding, watching, plotting against them.

  Reflexively she inched closer to David, ever aware that the last thing she should do was allow someone obsessed with him to see them together. “Who do you think Beth saw?”

  “Good question.” David leaned back and stretched his arm along the top of the sofa behind her shoulders, reaching fingers to pluck at the knit of her sweater. His gaze was tender. “A couple of hours ago, I would have been certain it was Rose. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Eden cringed inside, her gaze stealing again to the naked windows and the black night beyond. Half expecting to see a woman’s face pressed to the panes, she braced herself against certain, sudden fright. The only woman reflected in the glass was herself, a pale-faced apparition who wouldn’t scare a flea. “Shouldn’t we notify the police?”

  “I called while you were upstairs. But they can only come out if there’s been a break-in.”

  “Even if it might have been an escaped convict?”

  “What proof do we have of that?” God knew, he’d had the police’s need of physical proof rammed home enough lately to penetrate even his thick skull. “The word of an exhausted young woman?”

  “Well, she saw something.”

  “Yeah, something. But was it a someone?”

  “What are you saying?”

  He sighed. “Beth has been under a great deal of stress, waiting for the kidney while getting weaker every day. Then there’s been Peter’s death. Your arrest. The relentless press. Knowing a stalker may be after us. Our hiding out. All of which must be preying on her mind. On her imagination. We can’t swear she wasn’t spooked by a neighborhood dog or the wind or shadows or all three.”

  She couldn’t dispute that they were all spooked, jumpy. She drew her legs tight against her chest and rested her head on her knees, considering the possibility that Beth had imagined seeing someone prowling the grounds. Eden realized, given the mood hovering around her now, she could probably summon a person or shadow herself. “I guess you could be right.”

  He dropped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Eden nuzzled his chest, staring at the flames glowing red and blue in the fireplace. Silence reigned for a full ten seconds, then David pulled back. “I’ve also thought long and hard about something else. Rose might have killed Marianne. She might have killed Valerie. But Valerie’s gun was stolen from her Mercedes three weeks before Shannon and Peter were murdered.”

  “While Rose was in an Oregon jail,” Eden finished for him. Like an awakened monster, her uneasiness stretched with new life.

  She hated giving up Rose as the star player in the nightmare her life had become. It left them at square one. Frustrated. Frightened. And vulnerable to the sick fancy of an unknown adversary—whose next move could not be anticipated. She hugged her knees harder. “Do you have any idea who it might be, then?”

  “I think we need to figure that out.”

  “Resurrect our suspect list?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a pretty short list to start with, but now that Val—” Her throat constricted at the thought of how Val’s innocence had been proved. “Just Denise Smalley.”

  “There have to be others.”

  Pondering the problem, she got up, went to her room and returned with a tablet and pen. She sat back down beside David and wrote “Denise Smalley” at the top of the page. Then moved the pen to the next line. “Who else?”

  “Hmm...”

  Eden tapped the pen on the paper. “Was Denise’s name on that hit list found in Rose’s apartment?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Maybe we should include the names of the women who were on that list.”

  David’s eyebrows arched up. “Why?”

  “Because if Rose didn’t kill Shannon, maybe Rose didn’t make up that list herself. Maybe it was planted—like the gun in my van.”

  His eyes widened. “You think our stalker is using the old ploy of making herself so obvious she’ll automatically be eliminated from suspicion?”

  “Can we afford to overlook that possibility?”

  “You’re suggesting Rose was framed for Marianne’s murder?”

  “You said she was recanting her confession, and I can’t help recalling Beth
’s description of Rose as a person who would help a fly escape from a room rather than swat it. Was Rose that kind of person?”

  David considered. “She was reticent and tended toward—at least I thought at the time—hero worship. For me. For Marianne. After the murder, I decided the worship was plain old jealousy.” Had he been wrong about everything? Had she merely been shy, maybe docile, pliable to the point where more-determined minds than her own manipulated her? Had she been framed? Every day he was becoming more convinced of it. He made up his mind. “We can’t afford to overlook the possibility that she’s innocent.”

  He took the tablet from Eden, and below Denise’s name, he wrote two other names. Eden had heard of neither woman. His hand faltered as he wrote the names of his student assistant, his secretary and Beth’s nurse. She knew he couldn’t comprehend any one of these three women committing the horrendous crimes that had been done in the guise of loving him, but he couldn’t ignore even the slimmest of chances that they were.

  Not with their own lives on the line.

  He relinquished the tablet to her. “Can you think of anyone else?”

  “Just one.”

  The telephone rang. David answered. “Dr. Coulter”.

  Eden wrote “Rose Hatcher” on the last line.

  David stared at the name, realizing he was hearing the voice of that very woman in his ear. “Dr. Coulter, is it really you?”

  A chill shot through him. “R-Rose?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. I tried calling you at your house, but you were never there.”

  The chill turned to frost. His gaze flew to the bare windows. “Where are you, Rose? Where are you calling from?”

  “Oh, I can’t tell you that. The police are looking for me. You probably heard I escaped, but I had to, Dr. Coulter. I didn’t kill Marianne.”

  David snatched the pen from Eden and scrawled across the tablet for her to get the other telephone and call the police while he kept Rose talking.

  Where had Beth said she’d left the other cellular phone? In the kitchen. Eden scrambled up from the sofa.

  David asked, “Then why did you confess, Rose?”

  “I don’t know. I was just so tired, and they wouldn’t let me sleep and I got so confused, I started to see in my head the way Marianne had died and I thought maybe I did do it—since I could see it. But after I got to Purdy and got some sleep and could reason again, I knew I couldn’t have done what they said. I’m innocent, Dr. Coulter.”

  Eden scanned the kitchen counter. From the other room, she could hear David asking Rose about yesterday, about Valerie. Where was the blasted cell phone? Her stomach churned. She searched the table, the floor, the top of the microwave, the top of the refrigerator. She jerked open cupboards, then drawers. The other cell phone was not in the kitchen.

  Her panicked mind spit out an answer. Beth had seen someone. That someone had come into the house while Beth was on the lake and taken the second cell phone.

  Alarm pulled her heart into her stomach like an express elevator descending from the penthouse to the basement.

  She ran back to the living room, arriving just as David asked, “Tell me something, Rose...how did you get my cellular phone number?”

  But Eden feared she already knew. Rose had gotten the number from the second cell phone—by pushing Redial. David’s cell phone was the only number Eden had called. That meant Rose could be close by. Right outside. Watching them.

  She scribbled this onto the tablet.

  David frowned, then shook his head. He scrawled “Forgot,” then pointed to the corner plug. The second cellular telephone was ensconced in the battery charger. Relief nearly buckled her knees. Rose did not have the phone. She was not outside.

  Eden hurried to the phone and jerked it from the charger. Her hands shook so hard it took two tries to jam the battery in place.

  “Never mind,” David said, frustration ringing in his voice. “She hung up.”

  “I’m sorry. Beth said she’d left the phone in the kitchen and when I couldn’t find it...” She clamped her hands on the sides of her head. “God, I actually thought someone had taken it. I’m losing my rationality.”

  He put his telephone down and closed the gap between them. “No more so than I. I actually suggested the police could trace a call from my cellular phone.” He laughed at himself.

  Eden laughed, too, her tension fragmenting. “Did Rose say where she got your cellular number?”

  “No, but as Beth suggested, she could have gotten into my office at the hospital at any time that Lynzy or Colleen were out running errands and found where it’s written down.”

  Eden handed him the cell phone. “Did Rose say where she was?”

  “She wasn’t about to divulge that.” He squatted and replaced the phone in the charger.

  Not wanting to give up on locating Rose, Eden asked, “While you were talking to her, did you hear any background noises?”

  His chin jerked up, and his eyes settled on her, amusement in their mossy depths. “Like they do on TV?”

  “Well...”

  A lazy grin tugged at his sensuous mouth, and he unbent his body, rising slowly, grazing his fingertips up the sides of her as he stood. “Good thought, Mrs. Columbo, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear a thing that would help us locate her whereabouts.”

  “What did she say?” Her voice was breathy.

  “Same thing as on the tape. That she was innocent and I had to believe her. Help her prove it.”

  “And...?”

  He shrugged and pulled her against his side, leading her back to the sofa. “We know she couldn’t have stolen the gun, but how can I be certain about Marianne?”

  “You’re a great judge of character. What’s your gut tell you about that?”

  David’s sigh was heavy as if from the weight of an onerous burden. “One of my first patients had me convinced she was suffering schizophrenia. It turned out she was an actor hired by an ex-fraternity brother of mine to play a joke on me.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “I suppose I deserved it. I was pretty self-important and cocky at the time, and the joke served to bring me down a couple of well-deserved pegs. It also undermined my confidence in my ability to read people.”

  Eden could see what this confession cost him and realized he probably hadn’t told anyone else. She also sensed he would construe any sympathy over this matter as pity, so she offered none. She grabbed his hand. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve never met Rose, but I’ve also wondered if she’s innocent. I can certainly empathize with her desire to prove it and get her life back.”

  Snuggled together, they discussed the women on their list for another hour. The fire was winding down, and the aura in the room felt mellow. His head was on her shoulder, his warm breath caressing her neck, the ambience between them intimate. There would be no better time to tell him about the baby.

  But she couldn’t bear to look at him, couldn’t bear to see the possible rejection in his eyes. She drew a deep breath, releasing it with a hesitancy that mirrored her reluctance. “David, I’ve been putting off something that you have every right to know.”

  She clamped her lips together, holding her breath, waiting for his cue to continue. Silence. Then a soft snore. She crooked her neck and glanced sideways at him. He’d fallen asleep.

  Disappointed yet oddly relieved, she eased out from under him, and he sank slowly to the sofa. She stood staring down at him, wondering if the baby she carried was his, if it would look like him. Smiling at the warm notion, she lifted his legs and covered him with a comforter. Then she went upstairs to bed.

  THE NEXT MORNING, the rain was gone. The warmer air hitting the damp ground lifted steamy patches over the grass and soil like an eerie fog. Eden and Beth were in the kitchen and David was showering when the front door banged open and a woman called out, “Yoo-hoo! Anybody here?” ,

  Nervous alarm gripped Eden as she made her way to the foyer, with Beth close on her heels. A silver-h
aired woman of ample proportions stood in the foyer, her arms weighted down with a knitting bag and a huge purse. Eden stepped protectively in front of Beth. “May I help you?”

  Beyond the woman, Eden saw a motor home parked next to her van. A man with a leathery face was unhitching a compact car from the trailer hitch.

  “Well, hello. I’m Bertha McFadden. You two must be friends of James.”

  “Y-yes,” Eden stammered.

  David came down the stairs, capturing the woman’s attention. “Oh, Dr. David. How are you?”

  “Fine, Bertha. I trust your summer has been a great one as usual.” He didn’t wait for an answer but introduced Eden and Beth to the woman, explaining that Bertha and Mac were James’s renters. He said to Bertha, “James wasn’t expecting you for another week.”

  “Lordy, don’t I know it, but Mac’s gout was pestering him somethin’ awful, and he wanted to see his doctor. But now, don’t you go frettin’ about us. We’ll just stay in the motor home until you’re gone.”

  “That’s very kind of you.” David and Eden exchanged glances. “We could use a day or two to figure out where we want to go.”

  Mac McFadden, his skin as dark as a coffee bean, his hair as silver as a polished dime, trudged up the steps, carrying a brown grocery sack. He was built like a Marine. Bertha spun toward him. “Mac, put that stuff back in the Winnebago. Dr. David is staying in the house for a few days.”

  Mac set the sack on the porch and wiped his forehead with a pristine white hankie. “Hey, Doc. Sorry to show up unannounced.”

  “It’s no problem.” David introduced Beth and Eden to Mac.

  Eden said, “Why don’t you come in? We have a fresh pot of coffee brewed.”

  “And warm cinnamon rolls,” David added.

  Mac’s face brightened. “I’ve had enough coffee this morning to float a carrier ship, but I can’t resist your cinnamon rolls, Doc.”

  Mac started forward, then stopped and stared down at something hidden by Bertha’s girth on the porch. “You know better than to go stomping around without your glasses on, Bert.” He glanced up at them. “She can’t see two feet in front of her without them.”