“Sort of like surrogacy?” Annie said. Tricky business.
Sheila nodded. “All of them being paid thousands.”
“Thousands? You must be mistaken,” Annie said. “For babies?”
“For several babies,” Sheila said. “All belonging to John Reilly.”
“These girls are in it for several years, evidently,” Vera said. “Doesn’t it just break your heart? The girls also told us that Reilly was their broker. Their go-between to the agency. They didn’t even know the name of the place.”
Annie mentally sorted through everything she knew, everything she was just told. But it still didn’t add up to murder. Unless . . .
“Vera, you said that this young woman used to be a student of yours. Did she know Emily? Could she have been one of her students?”
“I don’t know,” Vera said. “Come to think of it, she did stop dancing with me about the time Emily came to town. I thought it was because she had graduated from high school and had just, you know, moved on. “
Annie picked up her cell phone and dialed Detective Bryant.
“Adam, do you have the list of Emily McGlashen’s students?”
“Why?”
“I think we may have stumbled on a lead for you. Bring your list and come to my house.”
“Now?”
“As soon as you can,” she said.
Annie turned to face her friends.
“Did you have to get him involved?” Sheila said.
“Well, yes,” Annie said. “Reilly was on the list of donors at Alicorn. And he’s a board member there.”
“You saw a list?” Sheila asked.
“Yes, but the only names I recognized were Reilly, Vandergrift, and Bill.”
“Bill Ledford?” Vera said.
Annie’s heart sank. She had not planned to tell Vera.
“You mean my ex-husband is donating sperm to a sperm bank?”
Annie nodded.
“I just don’t know what to think of that . . . ,” Vera said, becoming paler by the minute.
“Obviously, he wants another baby at some point,” DeeAnn said.
“I can’t imagine,” Vera said.
“Some men are funny about wanting to leave a son behind,” DeeAnn said. “You know sometimes I wonder about them. Men, I mean.”
“Don’t try to change the subject, DeeAnn,” Vera said. “Bill and I, we tried for years . . . and all along he was donating sperm?”
“It’s probably recent,” Annie said.
“Yes, but why wouldn’t he just impregnate Kelsey the old-fashioned way?”
“Maybe she can’t get pregnant.”
“Well, thank God for small favors,” Sheila said. “That woman should not be a mother.”
“And you have to wonder about Bill,” DeeAnn said.
“Oh, I’m one step ahead of you on that,” Vera said. “The police questioned him about Kelsey taking Elizabeth. He claimed he knew nothing about it.”
“Do you believe him?” Annie asked after the room was silent a few moments.
“I don’t believe anything he says anymore. I feel like I don’t even know the man,” Vera said.
Chapter 68
“Detective Bryant has taken John Reilly in for questioning about Emily McGlashen’s murder,” Vera told Beatrice when she walked up the stairs to the front porch.
“Well, now, isn’t that something?” Beatrice said.
Vera sat in the wicker chair next to her mother.
“Do you think he did it?” Beatrice said.
“I don’t know why not,” Vera said. “He’s impregnating young women and paying them to have his baby.”
“What? Have you gone off your rocker, girl?”
“No, I wish I had. I don’t get it. Evidently, he’s helping several young women get through school by paying him to carry his babies.”
“Now, that sounds like something straight out of a B movie or a bad, bad science fiction novel.”
“Don’t I know it,” Vera said and sank into her chair.
“Just because he’s done that doesn’t mean he killed Emily,” Beatrice pointed out.
“I know. Oh, Mama, I’ve got such a headache trying to figure it all out. I’ll let Detective Bryant do it,” she said and sighed.
“Good idea,” Beatrice said. “Look at that hummingbird.”
She pointed out a bright hummingbird buzzing around her feeder. “I think he was here last year. Those male birds are the lookers, you know.”
“Pretty,” Vera said.
“Where would John Reilly get the money to pay women to have his children?” Beatrice said after a few moments.
“That seems to be the million-dollar question,” Vera said. “Nobody knows. I suppose they will find out.”
“Maybe this will clear you,” Beatrice said.
Vera harrumphed. “I hope it’s not too much to hope for.”
A quiet calm overcame them then as they both sat and watched the hummingbirds. Beatrice’s garden bloomed with Virginia bluebells, bleeding hearts, and bright red tulips.
When Beatrice went to bed that night, she was happy. They had another suspect. Her daughter would be allowed to live her life in peace.
They all went to bed that night with a measure of relaxation that they had not felt in a long time.
But a loud gunshot in the middle of the night tore into that bliss Beatrice had been feeling.
What was that? Who was that?
She grabbed her robe, met Vera and Jon in the hallway, peeked in on Elizabeth.
She was there.
Another shot sounded.
Was someone shooting on the street in front of her house?
“Call the police,” Beatrice said to Jon and reached for her pistol in the downstairs drawer.
“Mama, put that thing away,” Vera said.
“Unhand me, girl,” Beatrice said as a woman’s piercing scream invaded their neighborhood. A great commotion of house doors opening and people yelling ensued.
By the time Vera and Beatrice got to their front doorstep, the neighborhood was well lit. As they walked out along Beatrice’s sidewalk, Beatrice found herself blinking. Her heart pounded furiously. Old heart of mine, don’t fail me now, she thought and blinked again. Was she really seeing what she thought she was seeing?
Leola Reilly stood in the middle of Ivy Lane with a smoking shotgun in her hand, her husband splayed on the street in front of her. Vera wanted to go to him. Beatrice stopped her.
“Stay back. The woman is crazy, and she has a shotgun,” she whispered.
“You killed her!” Leola screamed at him. “You killed the love of my life!”
She looked like a madwoman. Her face was red and contorted, and she was flinging the shotgun around as if it were a baton.
“Now, Leola,” he said, holding his shoulder, obviously injured, bright red patches of blood soaked through his pajamas.
“Why? Why? Just because she was onto you and your little seedy game?” She looked up, as if she had just realized she had an audience. “Yeah, that’s right. He killed Emily. Why? Because she found out that he was taking money from Alicorn to fund his own little baby operation. Bastard!”
She lifted her shotgun.
“Leola!” Vera shouted. “Don’t! He’s not worth it.”
“What?” she said and looked up at Vera.
“Leola, c’mon. Put the gun down. He’s not worth going to prison for,” Vera said, her voice shaking.
“What else is there for me? He killed her. My Emily!” she groaned.
“Yes, but your children. Your children need you,” Vera said, moving toward her slowly. Beatrice held her back. “The police will send him off to prison. They are going to need their mama.”
“That’s right,” came a male voice from somewhere near Vera. Soon he was in front of her. It was Detective Bryant. Where was his gun?
“I ought to shoot your ass, too,” she flung at Detective Bryant.
“Maybe,” he said. “But Vera i
s right. We have enough evidence to arrest him. Are you going to leave your children without parents?”
“He’d been funneling money from the foundation for years, Leola,” Bryant went on. “He brought Emily into his scheme by promising her an all-Irish baby.”
Leola sobbed, but she didn’t lower her gun.
“The only problem was the lab could not accept her eggs. They were full of genetic mutations,” Bryant continued. “The adoption agency she came from had lied. She was not one hundred percent Irish. She was not one hundred percent healthy. And she wanted out of his scheme. She was trying to do right by those girls. She tried to warn them.”
An eerie stillness came over the scene. The tableau was dark and sordid, even as the white picket fences stood in watch. Porch lights and flashlights provided only spots of light here and there. Beatrice’s neighborhood stood waiting, watching the drama unfolding before them. Leola held up the gun and pointed it at her husband.
Beatrice noticed the onlookers—the Chamovitzs, DeeAnn and her family, and Sheila and her husband. The whole neighborhood was witnessing the spectacle.
Leola looked like a crazed woman. Her eyes were lit by a fiery passion. Her husband whimpered like a wounded animal. She took a deep breath, lowered the gun, but lifted her leg and kicked him.
“Okay, Bryant,” she said and handed him the shotgun. “We’ll play it your way.”
Vera looked over at Beatrice, who was watching her. Was that her daughter? The woman who helped talk down a crazed woman holding a shotgun to her husband? Beatrice swallowed hard. She didn’t think she’d ever been more proud in her life.
Chapter 69
The Cumberland Creek scrapbookers gathered around Sheila’s basement cropping table as Paige read from the newspaper.:
“When John Reilly found out his wife was having an affair with Emily McGlashen, he became livid enough to strangle her. According to pieces of interviews and forensic evidence, along with an account by an eyewitness, the scene unfolded like this.
“Emily had just finished the Saint Patrick’s Day parade and show. She broke a shoelace and went back to the studio to get new laces. Distracted by the laces and her task before her, Emily didn’t realize that John Reilly was waiting there for her. She hadn’t bothered turning on the studio lights, just her desk lamp. She often placed one lace around her neck while she was working on the other one.
“All of a sudden, he lunged at her, pushed her to the floor. She screamed, but he placed one of his large hands over her mouth. She fought back, but he was too heavy and too strong. This is when an eyewitness entered the room, saw what was happening, panicked, dropped her purse, and ran out of the room. But she didn’t remember the incident at all, because she was so traumatized by it.”
“Oh, dear,” Sheila said. “How awful for you.” She placed her hand on Vera’s shoulder.
Vera nodded. “Go on,” she said to Paige.
“‘We were following the money trail,’ Detective Adam Bryant said. ‘We knew Emily McGlashen was sending money to Alicorn. But we didn’t know about the embezzlement, of course. Nobody did, except her, evidently. She had been investigating it for a while and had just sent an e-mail to one other board member about her suspicions.’
“‘John W. Reilly had been embezzling money for five years,’ a spokesperson for the company said. ‘We are still investigating, but at this point it looks like that figure is somewhere in the millions.’
“A professor at the University of Virginia, Reilly was in the perfect position to make contact with young, struggling, but healthy women. He wanted babies, lots of them, so that he could adopt them out through Alicorn. ‘He looked at us as an investment,’ Chelsea Miller, of Cumberland Creek, said. ‘But I didn’t care. I just needed to pay for school—’”
“Doesn’t that beat all?” DeeAnn interrupted. “He found girls who would have babies for college tuition. Now, that’s just sad.”
“I agree,” Vera said. “But as sad as that is, let’s not forget that Emily died over this.”
“And what a horrible way to die,” Annie said.
“I didn’t like her when she was alive,” Sheila said. “But now that we know . . . she was standing up for Chelsea and the other girls. She was trying to do the right thing for Alicorn, too. Just trying to do the right thing.”
“With all that going on, no wonder she was not a pleasant person,” Vera said.
“Indeed,” Annie said, pouring wine in each woman’s glass.
“I still don’t really understand how he did it,” Vera said.
“Well, he was a respected business professor, and he was one of those people the agency thought had nearly perfect heritage. When he volunteered as a fund-raiser, he was very successful. And of course, they trusted him. At some point their records and bank accounts were completely open to him,” Annie explained.
“And he couldn’t resist,” DeeAnn said.
“But that wasn’t enough,” Paige said.
“No,” Sheila said. “He saw another way to make money from them through this surrogacy plan of his. To me, that’s one of the sickest aspects of all it.”
“I’ll never completely understand his motivations,” Paige said. “Just money?”
“I’ve been thinking about this,” Annie said. “I don’t think it’s just about money. I think it’s also about illusions of grandeur. It suits his personality type, you know? He’s definitely under psych evaluation. Those results should be interesting.”
“Well, he helped himself to my hind end while standing in my mother’s kitchen,” Vera pointed out.
“We know that,” Sheila said, rolling her eyes.
Annie laughed. “You know that is really immature. I can see a high school boy doing that. But a grown man?”
Just then a knock came at the door.
“Must be Leola, Rachel, and Donald,” Vera said. Vera and Leola had patched things up. Leola had apologized for nearly attacking her at the park. After considering the matter more closely and talking with Kelsey, Leola had come to her senses and hoped Kelsey would get the help she needed. Leola had her own problems, now that she was facing charges because of shooting her husband.
When she entered the room, they were all taken aback by how much weight Leola had lost. And had she slept at all?
“So glad you could make it,” Sheila said and hugged them.
“Thanks so much for doing this. I know Emily wasn’t well liked. She was different. But I loved her,” Leola said, looking at Rachel and smiling.
“And she loved you,” Rachel said, beaming. Donald stood on the other side of her, smiling.
“Are you okay?” Annie asked Leola.
“I’m as okay as I can be,” she replied. “Funny, a few months ago, I never would have wanted to tell my children that I’m gay. But now that they know, it’s such a huge relief. I really think that I wasn’t giving them enough credit. I know Emily was planning on telling you, Rachel, soon.”
Rachel smiled and pulled out a DVD from her bag, and Sheila slid it into her computer as Annie poured wine and handed each person a glass.
“Of course, they have so much to deal with because of their dad that me and my story are nothing right now,” Leola said.
Sheila hit PLAY, and the strains of an Irish fiddle erupted.
“To Emily McGlashen,” Vera said, lifting her glass.
“To Emily,” they chimed.
They watched the screen as Emily leapt across the stage. Her feet and legs moved to the rhythm with uncanny precision. Her green skirt moved against her body in its own cadence. Her body was gorgeous, lean, strong, graceful as she leapt and twirled.
A hush fell over the scrapbooking room. Leola sighed. Rachel’s arm went around her.
“God,” Vera said, “she was a beautiful dancer.”
Leola nodded as a tear slipped down her face. Rachel sobbed out loud.
Later, as Annie walked home, she remembered that there was one more thing they had left to do in regard to Emily M
cGlashen. Beatrice was planning to have the Greenbergs to her home before they left town. Annie smiled. That Beatrice was becoming an old softy.
Chapter 70
Annie was remembering when she saw Bryant pull aside another cop after the incident in the street, it made her skin prick. He’d been less than honest with her, which she had half expected. So she reverted to her old reporter’s way and eavesdropped. Well, as best as she could. It was one of the new police officers, and she was a woman. Interesting for Cumberland Creek.
Murmur. Murmur. “Investigation . . .”
Annie stepped out from behind the rhododendron bush, caught Bryant’s eye. The officer whispered something to the detective, and he nodded, then slipped away.
“Annie,” he said, walking up to her. “We need to talk.”
He took her by the arm and led her to a bench, where they both sat down.
“You need to promise me that you will remain calm.”
“Okay,” Annie said. What the heck was going on?
“I know that you and Cookie were good friends.”
Cookie? What does she have to do with any of this?
Annie’s eyes went to her fingers. The best of friends. Or so she had thought.
“Yes?” Annie said.
“We’ve found her,” he said with a barely audible voice. “She is . . . not well but will be soon. We hope.”
Stunned, Annie didn’t know what to say. But her heart raced; her skin tingled. Cookie was alive! A tear stung in the corner of her eye.
“Can you tell me anything?” Annie said, swallowing hard, trying not to sob.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
“Okay,” Annie said, with a wild mix of emotions whipping through her. Anger. Sadness. Relief.
Bryant shot a glance of guilt and shame toward her. He had known all along. She quickly looked away from him.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
He looked away from her. “I just couldn’t. I’ve been kind of a mess about it. Sorting it out myself. Sorting out... other things.”
Death of an Irish Diva (A Cumberland Creek Mystery) Page 24