"Sadly, you're right," Dylan said. "I contacted all four of the former employees who still live here in San Antonio and all four of them refused point-blank to meet with me once they knew that I was trying to reunite a baby born on March 16, 1974 with her birth mother. The outcome amounted to four potential leads resulting in zero useful information."
She frowned. "Isn't that what you would have expected, though? Adoption records are supposed to be kept confidential, after all."
"You're right, but based on my past experience with this sort of case, I would have assumed at least two of the four women would agree to meet with me, even if they refused to give me any information once we did get together."
"Were you just unlucky, do you think? Might one of them reconsider if you approached them again?"
"I don't believe so. After our phone calls, despite their reluctance to talk, I paid personal visits to each of them and once again they all refused to speak to me. So having struck out with the locals, I contacted one of the employees who'd moved out of town."
"Did you have better luck with her?" Emily asked.
"Yes, and no. Lizbeth Hoffmann is a nurse-midwife who worked at the adoption agency for fifteen years, from 1970 until it closed in the mid-eighties, exactly the time period we needed. She'd transferred to Lubbock to be near her grandchildren once she retired, and since that would have meant a plane journey if I wanted to interview her in person, I had to be content with contacting her by phone. Still, she was quite friendly at first. She told me she no longer approved of the system of closed adoptions and regretted having been involved in so many secret placements."
"That sounds very promising. Just the sort of person you must have been hoping to find."
"Yes, but unfortunately, the good news stops there." Dylan scowled at the memory of his frustrating phone conversation with the former midwife. "Encouraged that I'd found an ally, I asked Mrs. Hoffmann if she'd retained any records from her time with Lutheran Family Services that she could refer to in order to refresh her memory about specific cases."
"And what did she say?"
"She admitted that she might have a few personal records that she'd kept, but she wasn't promising anything. She was perfectly friendly in her warning, she just gave the impression that she didn't want me to get my hopes up. Then she asked me for the birth date of the baby I was interested in reuniting with its mother. Your birth date, in other words—"
"So you gave it to her…"
"I did." Dylan sighed. "And Mrs. Hoffmann's reaction was instantaneous. The minute—the second—I told her that the baby I was interested in was a little girl born on March 16, 1974, she clammed up on me. Closed down tighter than Fort Knox."
Emily frowned. "But why? Why would mentioning my birthday trigger such an intense reaction?"
"I've no idea. Mrs. Hoffmann suddenly claimed that she was never involved with the births, which all took place in the local hospital. She insisted she had nothing to do with the subsequent adoption placements, so she had no useful information to pass on. Then she told me never to call back, and hung up the phone. Slammed down the phone, more like it."
Emily stirred the melted ice in her glass, looking troubled. "That's a really odd reaction. First Mrs. Hoffmann wants to help, then she tells you never to call again as soon as she hears my birth date?"
"That's about the gist of it. Yes."
Emily frowned. "If Mrs. Hoffmann worked at the agency for fifteen years, she must have been involved in the prenatal care of dozens of single moms—"
"I'd guess as many as four or five hundred."
Emily's frown intensified. "That makes her reaction even more weird. Out of all those babies, are you suggesting that there was something so extraordinary about my birth that she recognized which child you were talking about the minute you told her the date I was born?"
"It gets even stranger," Dylan said. "When I thought back on my interviews with the employees who are still living in San Antonio, I realized that their point-blank refusal to speak to me always came after I mentioned your birthday."
"Good grief, what could possibly be so special about my birth? Was I the only survivor of quintuplets, or something?"
Dylan gave a wry grimace. "Funny you should mention that, because I began to wonder the same thing. In the end, though, I concluded that these women all recognized your date of birth because someone else had recently asked them about the same adoption. Found out something useful, perhaps, and then suggested they'd be smart to keep quiet about what they knew."
Emily's head jerked up, shock darkening her eyes. "What leads you to that conclusion?" she asked.
"Among other things, the conversation I had a couple of days later with Donna Freni," Dylan said.
"And she is…?"
"Donna is a former agency employee who moved to the Dallas area. She joined Lutheran Family Services right out of college, and she's now in her fifties, and working as a family counselor for a big HMO in Piano. By chance, I had to make a business trip to Dallas in connection with another case, and I decided to make a detour so that I could call on Mrs. Freni in person, rather than pleading for information over the phone."
Dylan pushed aside his half-eaten sandwich, his appetite killed at the memory of yet another dead end. "After my experience with Mrs. Hoffmann, I pumped Donna Freni for all the information I could before I even mentioned your date of birth, but she wasn't willing to cooperate. From a few hints she let slip, I'm pretty sure she has actual records of all the adoptions she participated in among her personal papers. The trouble is, she refused to share anything she knows with me."
"But why? Why would Mrs. Freni take the records unless she intended to share them at some point. And how could she be intimidated into silence? Dylan, what's going on?"
"How could she be intimidated? Easily. As you yourself mentioned, adoption records are supposed to be kept confidential. People aren't usually prosecuted for breaking the law, but they could be."
"You think someone threatened these women with prosecution if they revealed anything they knew about my birth?"
Dylan nodded. "Yes, I do. I've questioned a lot of witnesses over the years, and I recognize when people are too scared to talk. These women were scared."
"But who are they scared of?" Emily reacted so strongly that she almost knocked over the dregs of her iced coffee. "Dylan, that makes no sense. Who in the world would care enough about my birth to run around Texas threatening potential witnesses to keep them silent?"
"If your biological father was a very important man, or if your birth mother was the daughter of a very prominent and wealthy family, there might be all sorts of incentives for making sure people in the know are warned to keep quiet."
Emily didn't say anything for a few minutes. Finally she raised her eyes, her expression wistful as she met Dylan's gaze. "Well, you warned me what might happen when I started to delve into my family origins. But despite everything you said, I guess I always hoped my birth mother would be just as anxious to find me as I am to find her. It's a bit of a shock to discover that instead of longing to meet me, she's so reluctant to acknowledge my existence that she's intimidating people just to make sure I never darken her door."
"You're jumping to conclusions again," Dylan said.
"It's way too early to assume that your mother doesn't want to meet you. You asked me who could possibly be interested in the details of your birth, and I gave you one reasonable answer. But at this point in the investigation, we have no way of knowing that it's your birth mother who's been coercing these witnesses into silence. That's no more than a wild guess."
"But if not my mother, or someone in her family, then who?"
"Well, that's a major reason why I wanted to see you today, Emily. Can you think of someone in your current circle of acquaintances who might be interested in finding out the details of your birth? Think hard before you answer."
Emily stared into the distance, but her gaze was focused inward. After a few moments' sil
ent contemplation, she shook her head. "Apart from myself, I have no clue as to who might have an interest in finding my birth mother. Or preventing me finding her, as the case might be. My adoptive parents, maybe? But that's impossible. I know Sam and Raelene would never attempt to trace my birth mother without telling me what they planned."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course. They love me, they have my best interests at heart—"
"And you love them, and have their best interests at heart. But you still initiated an investigation without saying a word to them."
"I only wanted to save them from hurt feelings," Emily murmured, evidently taken aback by his comment.
"Maybe they had the same thought," Dylan suggested.
Emily paused only for a few seconds before shaking her head. "No, Sam and Raelene have nothing to do with this. It just wouldn't be in their natures to go behind my back on something so personal. Besides, I'm a hundred percent positive they would never intimidate all those women from the adoption agency into keeping silent. They're so kind-hearted they couldn't threaten a mouse into staying out of the pantry. And apart from my adoptive parents, who else among my friends would care about finding my birth mother?"
"Nobody among your friends, probably. But what about your enemies?"
"My enemies?" Emily looked bewildered at the word. "Dylan, I don't have any enemies."
"Everyone has enemies," he said curtly.
"Well, okay. Yes, I have enemies, of course. Julie Mae in high school was mad when I made the cheerleading squad and she didn't. I have a cousin, Sam's niece, who dislikes me every bit as much as I dislike her. Then there are always a few guys who believe that buying me dinner gives them a divine right to sleep with me, and are seriously annoyed when I tell them no—"
"None of those sound likely candidates. How about business rivals?"
"Way back when I was just starting out as an interior designer, Mark Reddy accused me of underbidding in order to snatch a couple of jobs from his long-standing clients, but that's about it. These days, my biggest client is my dad. I do the interior design work for all his model homes, including the layout of the kitchens and bathrooms. I earn a decent living, but what I do isn't exactly cutting edge. I'm just not important enough to have crossed anyone's radar screen as a professional threat."
Dylan stirred the slivers of ice at the bottom of his glass, all that was left of his lemonade. "There's one sense in which you're a very important person."
She smiled. "Tell me. I'm all ears."
"Your relationship with Michael Chambers. You were engaged to a man who might be the next governor of Texas, and that made you very interesting to a lot of people. You personally may not have any enemies, but what about Michael? Rival political campaigns are notorious for dirty tricks."
The look she directed at him was disbelieving. "Okay, I feel like Miss Naive U.S.A. here, but are you suggesting that Governor Kincaid had me investigated to see if he could find some dirt to use against Michael?"
"It's surely within the bounds of possibility," Dylan said.
Emily pulled her sunglasses down, her fingers drumming on the tabletop. "I'm willing to accept politicians do crazy things, but Governor Kincaid is a decent man. I can't believe he would authorize funds for such a silly wild-goose chase."
"Why silly?"
"Because tracking down my birth mother would be a complete waste of time and energy for him. I've lived with the Suttons ever since I was a week old. Whoever my birth mother is—even if she's spent the past twenty-seven years in jail for murder or some other truly horrible crime—well, so what? How could Kincaid exploit my birth mother's crimes to sling mud at me, much less at Michael?"
"Sometimes people throw wildly, just in the hope that some of the dirt will stick," Dylan suggested.
"But nothing about my mother's past could be made to stick to Michael. Surely Kincaid would run the extreme risk that the mudslinging would boomerang and leave him with filth all over his hands and face."
"Even so, never underestimate the depths to which political campaigns can sink," Dylan said. "There's always some crazy intern willing to break the rules and launch an attack against the opposition."
Emily looked at him consideringly. "You really think Kincaid might be behind this, don't you?"
"Not Kincaid," Dylan said. "I have too much respect for his intelligence, let alone his integrity, to believe he would choose to win by slandering his opponent. But I wouldn't vouch for all his election campaign team."
"If you approach Kincaid's campaign manager, you know he's just going to deny being involved."
"Which is why I'm not going to bother approaching him," Dylan said. "For right now, I'm just going to concentrate on making an end run around whoever is responsible."
"How can you continue your investigation if none of the former agency employees are prepared to talk to you?"
"There's always someone, somewhere, who's willing to talk. A secret is only safe when all the people who know the truth are dead, and that sure isn't the situation here. For a start, there are still those two former employees of Family Services who moved out of state. I'll try to make contact with them this week, and report back to you. Maybe whoever silenced all the other employees didn't get to those two. Then if that fails, I can start tracking down hospital records. That's longer and a lot more complicated than going to the adoption agency, but it can be done."
Emily sent him a grateful smile. "Thank you, Dylan. I really appreciate all the hard work you've done for me on this."
"Thank me when I've got something more useful to report to you than a bunch of puzzles and dead ends." Dylan glanced at his watch, then rose to his feet. "I'm sorry to cut this short, but I'm already running late for my next appointment back out at the ranch."
"I understand," Emily said, heading toward the steps that led up to the street level of downtown San Antonio. "I'm running late myself."
"I'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow night, at the reception your parents-in-law are throwing for the Texas Fund for Children," Dylan said. "My sister's fiancé, Cole Bishop, has just taken over as executive director of the fund, so Lily insisted I had to buy a ticket and attend. I know you and Carolyn are both active volunteers. That's where you first met, isn't it?"
As soon as he mentioned the party, Dylan could have sworn he saw a flash of consternation in Emily's eyes, but she recovered herself within seconds, and smiled at him with all the cool assurance of a woman who'd been attending charity functions and handling difficult social situations since her presentation at the cotillion on her seventeenth birthday.
"Yes, that's where Caro and I first got to know each other. And I already met Cole at the last board meeting, right before my wedding. He made a presentation to the board and he seems to have some really excellent ideas for revamping the administration of the fund. Which, to be honest, had gotten more than a tad messy over the past few years." She smiled shyly. "He's also amazingly good-looking."
Dylan laughed. "My sister would agree with you on that, I'm sure."
"And since you're planning to attend the party, I hope there'll be a chance for me to introduce Jordan to you. I think you would enjoy each other's company."
Composed, gracious, seemingly unaffected by the heat that blasted at them, Emily said a courteous goodbye as soon as they hit street level. She thanked Dylan again for his help in finding her birth mother and walked briskly toward the parking garage where she'd left her car.
He watched her departure with wry admiration, recognizing a fellow spirit who disliked to wear her heart on her sleeve. Emily put on a good show, he reflected, but the prospect of attending tomorrow night's ball in support of the Texas Fund for Children had obviously given her serious pause.
You didn't have to be a genius to work out why. Attending such a prestigious event less than two weeks after she married the "wrong" brother would no doubt be a daunting prospect even for a woman with all of Emily's legendary poise. Dylan decided he was looking forw
ard to meeting Jordan Chambers. The man who could persuade San Antonio's own Ice Princess to toss everything aside for love had to be quite a guy.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jordan pushed open the swinging glass door that led to his brother's campaign headquarters, a suite of offices on the ground floor of a handsome fifty-year-old building on Commerce Street. He was greeted by a pretty receptionist who looked barely old enough to vote, with a halo of fluffy blond curls and a sweet smile.
Jordan glanced at her name badge and returned her smile. "Hi, Kimberly. I'm Jordan Chambers. I'm here to see my brother."
"Oh yes, Mr. Chambers. How nice to meet you! I saw pictures of your wedding on the news last week. It was lovely. Your wife is just beautiful."
Kimberly blushed and broke off abruptly, as if remembering that the Chambers-Sutton wedding might not be the very wisest subject to bring up for discussion in this particular setting, given that her salary was being paid by the fiancé who'd been dumped.
Somewhat breathless, she switched to business and tried again. "Mr. Chambers…Michael…gave strict orders that he wasn't to be disturbed. Is he expecting you, Mr… er…Chambers?"
"I'm sure he knew I'd be stopping by sometime today," Jordan said with perfect truth. Michael might be brick stupid on occasion, but he must have known this confrontation couldn't be put off much longer. "Just point me in the direction of my brother's office, and I'll take full responsibility for the interruption."
Kimberly's expression remained uncertain, so he flashed her one of his patented, melt-your-panties smiles, then felt guilty when she instantly responded. Still, Jordan excused himself, it was pretty damned hard to remember to behave like a sober married man when your honeymoon had been an eight-day exercise in physical torture, and your wife-in-name-only kept insisting that she wanted the divorce finalized as soon as possible.
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