French Fried

by Kylie Logan

  Declan put a hand on my knee. A day earlier, I might have sloughed him off. That late afternoon with the last of the day’s sun slanting through the windows and the terrible, sad truth of Rocky’s story left me feeling chilled. I appreciated the warmth.

  “Now that we know Rocky had a son . . . it might explain her obsession with Andrew MacLain,” he said.

  “And it might explain why MacLain was lurking around at the memorial service,” I added.

  And still, Sophie wasn’t sure what we were talking about. Her gaze swiveled from me to Declan and back to me, and since she was never one to beat around the bush she just came out and said what she was thinking. “What on earth are you getting at?”

  “MacLain,” I said. “Andrew MacLain. Could he be Rocky’s son?”

  Sophie gasped and pressed a hand to her heart. “You think . . .” She fanned her face with one hand. “You mean . . .” She twisted in bed, but with that contraption on her knee, she couldn’t move very far.

  Declan got out his phone and did a quick search. “The dates are right,” he announced. “MacLain’s the right age. His biography says he was born in February of ’72.”

  “February.” Sophie nodded. “Near Valentine’s Day.”

  “The thirteenth.” Declan confirmed this with a look at his phone.

  “So why would Rocky look for him now?” I asked no one in particular.

  Sophie lifted her arms and dropped them back on the blanket. “When you get older, you think more and more of the past. Maybe she just wanted some connection, some closure. Maybe she had something to tell him or something to give him. Maybe . . .” I knew when the pieces clicked because she turned as white as the blanket on her bed.

  “Do you think he could have had something to do with Rocky’s murder?”

  I couldn’t say.

  I didn’t know.

  But I sure intended to find out.

  • • •

  WE HAD EXACTLY one opportunity left. Andrew MacLain was speaking at the Hubbard library one last time that Saturday. After that, he was set to leave town, and I didn’t need a crystal ball to tell me he wouldn’t be hurrying back anytime soon.

  I’m convinced it was the only reason Declan let me come along with him to the library instead of going home “where I belonged” (his words, not mine) when I was released from the hospital that morning.

  On our way into the Hubbard library, he shot me a sidelong look. “You need to rest.”

  “You weren’t paying attention at the hospital. The doctor said I’m fine.”

  “The doctor said you should take it easy.”

  I slid him a smile. “I am taking it easy.”

  We slipped into the meeting room and took seats in the last row. MacLain was already halfway through his program. As with his talk on Sunday, his information was fascinating and MacLain himself was entertaining and engaging. He had charm, that was for sure. If what we thought of his parentage was true, I was pretty sure he’d gotten it from his mother, not his father.

  “He’s not just going to come out and admit it.” The program ended and all around us, people got up to head to the front of the room, meet the speaker, and get their books signed. Still, Declan whispered in my ear when we stood.

  “He might,” I allowed. “If we play our cards right.”

  We waited until the last of the crowd was gone, then Declan and I closed in.

  “No book?” He looked at our empty hands. “Just want to talk about Lady Liberty?”

  “Just want the truth,” I said. “And I think we can start in the most logical place. Last Sunday when you signed the book I brought in, I had you make it out to Raquel Arnaud, and you never had to ask me how to spell her name.”

  MacLain took a good, long time collecting his pen and tucking it in his shirt pocket. He stood and looked toward the door of the meeting room, but if he was waiting for a librarian to come to his rescue, he’d have to wait awhile. We’d left Sophie out front, and since she knew everyone in town and could get away with asking anyone for anything, she promised us we’d be left alone for as long as we wanted. As long as it took.

  MacLain’s smile was tight. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand why we’re discussing my spelling skills.”

  “Because it’s an odd name, don’t you think? I mean, even if I asked you to sign a book to Mary Jones, I bet you’d ask how to spell it. Any author would. Names are tricky and people like unusual spellings because it sets their names apart. I just think it’s odd, that’s all, that you know how to spell the unusual name of a woman one day and then a few days later, you were seen hanging around that woman’s memorial service.”

  He huffed out a breath of annoyance. “I told you once before—”

  “You did tell me. But I’m not much of a listener. Then again, I wasn’t the only child of an übersuccessful engineer who devoted his life to making sure I succeeded.”

  MacLain was confused, and I couldn’t blame him. He sidled around the table and would have taken off for the door if Declan didn’t step in his way.

  MacLain looked back and forth between us. “I’m afraid I’m a little slow. Or maybe you’re just being obtuse. You want to tell me what this is about?”

  I was only too happy to oblige, and when I did, I made sure I got up nice and close to him so that I didn’t miss even one little nuance of emotion that crossed his expression.

  “It’s about your mother,” I said.

  His shoulders went rigid. “My mother is Rose Magdalen MacLain. She lives in Cassadaga, New York, and I can’t imagine what you know about her or what you’d have to say about her.”

  I took one more step closer. “Not your adopted mother,” I said. “Your biological mother, Raquel Arnaud.”

  Sure, I was taking a chance. If I was wrong, the worst that could happen is that I’d be embarrassed (or at least pretend to be) and MacLain would leave town thinking he’d just run into one nutty woman.

  If I was right, I’d know the truth, once and for all, and in that one instant between when I spoke the words and when MacLain reacted to them, I knew I was right.

  He didn’t so much step back as he nearly fell, feeling his way, his hand along the edge of the table, back to his chair. He sat down with a plop.

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered.

  But it was too late for that.

  “She started searching for you a couple of years ago,” Declan told him, and played one of the cards we hoped would get MacLain talking. “I know because I’m her attorney. Obviously, she found you.”

  MacLain’s shoulders went rigid. “This is crazy. And it’s harassment. There’s no reason for you to be bothering me with this. No reason for you to be asking these questions or making up any kind of crazy stories about me and my family.”

  “Actually, you’re wrong.” I perched on the edge of the table. “There’s one very good reason. You were seen. At Pacifique. The night Raquel Arnaud was murdered.”

  He froze.

  That is, right before his spine accordioned, his shoulders shook, and his hands trembled.

  I would have a few moments before he composed himself, and I intended to take advantage of them. “How did Rocky find you?” I asked him.

  “I . . . I don’t know.” MacLain’s voice was tight, his eyes were wild with fear and despair, and in that one moment, he reminded me of his late father in that old newspaper picture. “She never said except that she mentioned she’d hired a private detective. All I know is . . .” He passed a hand over his eyes. “One day I got a letter from a woman claiming to be my biological mother.”

  “Did you know you were adopted?” I asked him.

  He glanced up at me, still working through the shock and talking because of it. “I wasn’t supposed to. But years ago . . . I was maybe nine or ten, I found some pape
rwork with my mother’s things. My adoption papers. I shouldn’t have been looking through her desk, but she wasn’t angry when she discovered me. She was upset. So terribly upset! She swore me to secrecy. Father was in Europe on a business trip and even though it was summer, she made me help her start a fire in the fireplace and together, we burned the papers. She made me promise never to tell anyone. No one.” His look was pleading. “You have to promise you’ll never tell a soul.”

  MacLain was a smart guy, but whether he realized it or not, he was digging himself a bigger hole.

  “So you don’t want anyone to know you’re adopted. All the more reason to silence the woman who said she was your mother,” I told him.

  I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be any paler, but MacLain actually lightened a shade or two. Against the pallor of his skin, his eyes looked huge and sunken. “You can’t think . . . you don’t think . . .”

  “You were there at the farm the night she died. You showed up again the day of the memorial service.” I rubbed the spot on my head that was still sore. “I’ll bet you were there yesterday, too, probably looking for anything Rocky had that would prove she was your mother.”

  He shook his head. “The memorial service . . . I just felt . . .” He threw his hands in the air. “After everything that happened, I was just looking for some closure.”

  Everything that had happened.

  Exactly what we were there to talk about.

  Declan leaned forward, his hands flat against the table. “So what did happen?” he asked Andrew MacLain. “And why?”

  “Not what you think.” He twitched his shoulders and raised his chin. “Like I told you, a few years ago, I got this letter out of nowhere from this woman named Raquel Arnaud. She said she was my mother.”

  “And you weren’t anxious for a reunion.”

  He traced an invisible pattern against the table with one finger. “I never said that.”

  “You said your adopted mother insisted on keeping the adoption a secret,” I said. “Why?”

  MacLain made to stand up, but one pointed look from Declan and he changed his mind. “It’s awfully personal,” he said.

  “So is murder,” Declan reminded him. “And telling us the story might save you the trouble of explaining it to the police.”

  This was not technically true, of course, but MacLain was still upset enough not to be able to think things through.

  He ran a tongue over his lips. “Father . . . my adopted father. He doesn’t know.”

  As reluctant as MacLain was about reuniting with his biological mother, this didn’t surprise me. “He doesn’t know Rocky found you.”

  MacLain looked up at me. “He doesn’t know Rocky ever existed. He doesn’t know I’m adopted.”

  Even me, who’d spent her life being reminded day in and day out that I was a nobody without a family, found this a little odd. “Why would your mother—”

  With a look, MacLain stopped my question before I could put it into words. “My father is a successful and brilliant and driven man,” he said, and I knew he wasn’t talking about his biological father, Steve Pastori, the bomber. “But he is also . . .” He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Father has a very strong sense of family. You might call it something of an obsession. I didn’t know about that when I was a child, of course. I didn’t know about any of it that day I watched my mother burn those adoption papers. But years later, I asked her about the incident, I asked why she was so eager to keep the secret, and she explained. She told me she had never been able to get pregnant. She told me she was desperate for a family and she wanted to adopt. But my father, he said he’d never share his life and his fortune with someone else’s child.”

  I hadn’t expected the comment to sting like it did, and I hugged my arms around myself.

  “My father was in China working on a dam project when she told him she was pregnant,” MacLain continued. “He was scheduled to be gone for a year, so she knew she could get away with the story. By the time he came back home . . .” He pointed toward himself. “There I was.”

  “And he still doesn’t know the truth.”

  His eyes snapped to mine. “He never will. It would kill him.”

  “And leave you out of an inheritance?” Declan suggested.

  From the way MacLain hemmed and hawed by way of answering the question, I figured Declan was right on the money.

  “All the more reason for you to keep Rocky quiet,” I reminded him.

  “No!” He slapped the table with one hand. “The first time she contacted me, I ignored her. Who wouldn’t? It was just so crazy, so out of the blue. I thought by not responding, she’d go away. The second time she wrote to me, I decided to be proactive. I wrote back. I told her she was wrong, but I got another letter after that one. And another and another and another. She told me she was sure her information was right. She told me she knew I was the child she’d given up for adoption.”

  “Did she say why she wanted to find you?” I asked him.

  “I never asked. I never cared. I only wanted her to go away.” He clutched his hands into fists so tight, his knuckles were white. “But she told me that she was getting older, and she was thinking about the past, and she wanted to make the connection. She said she didn’t want anything, just to see me, to know what kind of man I’d become. She even . . .” As if just thinking about it scared the bejabbers out of him, MacLain swallowed hard. “She suggested a DNA test. Not to prove it to herself, she told me, but just so I could be sure.”

  “But you didn’t want to be sure.” It wasn’t a question, but MacLain turned to Declan when he spoke, anyway.

  “Like I said, I couldn’t risk what I had. I couldn’t betray my own mother’s secret. Not for some woman who popped up out of nowhere and claimed I was the baby she’d given away years before. Then . . .” His shoulders heaved. “Well, when my publicist told me I was going to Hubbard, Ohio, let’s face it, I had no idea where it was. I certainly didn’t know it was anywhere near Cortland where Raquel’s letters had come from. If I did, I would have refused the gig.”

  “She was so anxious to see you,” I told him, remembering Rocky at the Statue of Liberty parade, the color high in her cheeks and her eyes gleaming with excitement. “No wonder she said the past had overwhelmed her that day,” I said, more to Declan than to MacLain, since he didn’t know that part of the story. “She must have been overcome at seeing you.”

  “She contacted me right after the parade,” MacLain said. “She begged me to come see her. It was the first time I realized she lived in the area, and let me tell you, I was ready to pack up and leave town that night. Then I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought. I thought maybe I could reason with her. I even thought maybe I could bribe her! I thought if I just went and had a talk with her, maybe she’d be satisfied. Maybe then she’d leave me alone.”

  “So you were at the farm that night,” I said.

  MacLain’s head shot up. “That doesn’t mean I killed her!”

  “It sure looks like it does.” Since he was smart, I didn’t have to point this out, but as I’d come to learn, you can never be too obvious when it comes to murder. “You didn’t want anyone to know you were adopted, Rocky wanted to establish a relationship with you. You were there. The night of the murder. You were there.”

  “But not to kill her! Just to talk to her!”

  “And did you?” Declan asked. “Did you talk to her?”

  MacLain hung his head. “No. I got to the farm just as it was getting dark. There was no one around, and the music, it was playing really loud. She didn’t answer when I knocked so I went inside the house.” He looked up at me, his eyes brimming with tears. “And that’s when I found her. That’s when I finally met my mother. After she was already dead.”

  Chapter 18

  Did we believe Andrew MacLain’s claim that
he arrived at Pacifique after Rocky was already dead?

  It was hard to say.

  He certainly seemed sincere enough, but delving into people’s souls, ferreting out their secrets and their motives . . . well, though I’d been called upon to do it a time or two, it wasn’t exactly my job.

  We called Tony Russo and told him what we’d found out, and he ordered Andrew MacLain not to leave town and came to Hubbard to interview him.

  In my book, that was pretty much all we could do.

  But not pretty much all I had to do.

  It was Saturday, and I owed Fletcher Croft a menu. I made dozens of tartines for our hungry lunch crowd at the Terminal, then took care of the e-mail to Croft, and all the while, my thoughts swirled between the investigation and the tantalizing possibility of a job offer from the senator.

  The thought of packing my bags and heading east sent a zip of excitement through me I hadn’t felt in ages.

  But even that couldn’t drown out the other thoughts that whirlpooled inside my still-aching head. With any luck, by the time they settled down, my brain would spit out something that would tell us if Andrew MacLain was telling the truth.

  Or if he was a cold-blooded, coldhearted murderer.

  “Big crowd out there.” Sophie limped into the Terminal office, and luckily I had enough time to close the computer screen so she didn’t see my e-mail to Fletcher Croft. “George says we’ll probably need a few more quiches for tonight.”

  “I’ll get right on it.” I popped out of the chair in front of the computer. “And you . . .” I looked Sophie over and shook my head. “You’re pale, you’re limping like a peg-legged pirate, and . . .” I gave her another quick once-over. “You’re smiling. What are you smiling about?”

  She’d had one hand tucked behind her back and when she whipped it out, I saw that she was holding a newspaper.

  “Have you seen this?” Sophie asked, then answered, “Well, of course you haven’t. You and Declan were out all day, over at the library talking to Andrew MacLain. You haven’t seen the news. You haven’t seen the paper.”