The Baby's Defender

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  West sat back sharply. “Morbid much?”

  Cady’s face warmed. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid remark, and I didn’t mean it. It’s just—”

  “No, it’s okay. You have every right to be stressed.”

  “Yes, but not to take it out on you. I sounded like I don’t trust your protection.”

  “Do you?”

  “Totally.” She met his somber gaze. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d trust more with my life.”

  “Except God?”

  Cady dropped her gaze. How was her trust doing in the God department? It had suffered a nearly fatal blow with Griffon’s death, but it wasn’t gone—not entirely.

  Slowly, she nodded. “I’m getting there, and you’re helping.”

  West beamed at her. “One of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.” She smirked at him.

  “No worries. I won’t. Now clean that plate.” He tilted his empty dish toward her. “We all need to keep up our strength.”

  “Aye, aye, Sarge!”

  West made a sour face. “That’s navy meets army. Ain’t gonna happen, sweetheart.”

  The final word hung pregnant between them. Cady bent her head over her plate and began shoveling pasta into her mouth. Surely it wasn’t his jesting endearment that suddenly put the flavor back in the food? If it was, her heart was in big trouble.

  Once Cady joined West in the clean-plate club, changing and feeding Livvy occupied an additional half hour, but finally they got on the road toward the lawyer’s office. West again took the wheel. His brow was furrowed and his gaze intense, darting between the highway and the rearview mirrors.

  “You think we’re being followed?” Cady asked.

  “How else did your mother locate us at the police station? I’m more than furious with myself that I didn’t spot the tail, and I can’t see one now.”

  “What if there’s another way for her to keep tabs on us?”

  “You mean like a tracking device? Not on this vehicle. Bren swept the Blazer when he did the house yesterday and came up clean. But I forgot to mention he also installed an anti-tracking device in here, so anything subsequently installed, including anything on our persons or within our personal effects, would be blocked once we got into the vehicle.”

  “Efficiency is Brennan’s middle name.”

  “Don’t tell him that. He might start to think he’s worth twice as much as he’s being paid.”

  “Which, if you guys have your way for this job, is exactly nothing.”

  “I’m glad you see my point, and we will have it our way.”

  A giggle spurted from Cady’s lips. “Is that what you call humor in the trenches? You may be the only person on this planet who could make me laugh right now.”

  They came up on Mr. Platte’s office building and, thankfully, one of the spaces in the office lot was empty. West pulled into it.

  “Wait just a moment.” He got out, head swiveling this way and that. “Okay, let’s go inside. No bicycles in sight.”

  As she emerged from the vehicle, Cady shuddered at the reference to the biker snatching Livvy in her stroller.

  “Now that,” she said, “was not funny.”

  “You’re right.” West collected Livvy out of the back seat. “Nothing about that scenario amused me one bit.”

  They stepped through the front door and Cady inhaled a long breath of the faintly eucalyptus-scented atmosphere in the reception area. She needed to be calm for this interview, especially if she learned more unwelcome, and potentially tragic, information about her mother.

  Jasmine, the twentysomething receptionist, welcomed them and escorted them down a hallway. They continued past the glassed-in office of the paralegal, Maude Hankins, who Cady had chatted with briefly when she came to the office about the will. The woman’s salt-and-pepper head was bent over work at her desk and she didn’t spare them a glance. The receptionist’s knock on the door at the end of the hall was answered by a gravelly voiced invitation to come in. Their escort opened the door and Cady stepped inside with West, carrying Livvy, close on her six.

  The balding lawyer, his seventy-plus years evident in a face etched with lines and wrinkles, rose and held out his hand. “Mrs. Long, good to see you again.”

  Cady said hello and clasped the man’s paper-dry palm, then introduced West. Another greeting and handshake were exchanged.

  The elderly lawyer peered down at the baby in the car seat and smiled, softening the stern set of his countenance. “I see you brought my tiniest client with you.” He lifted his gaze. “Welcome. Please have a seat.” The man waved at a pair of padded guest chairs in front of his desk, then settled into his own chair and eyed them expectantly. “What can I do for you today?”

  Cady bit her lower lip. How did she begin to ask about intimate family details? Where did she even start?

  “We’ve been sorting through Cady’s attic,” West said, “and we found a set of diaries from her mother’s childhood that mention a half sister with the first initial H, but not a full name. Cady is understandably curious about a relative she’s never met. Do you know anything about this ‘H’?”

  West’s nonchalant approach would do nicely. She shot him a grateful look and he answered with a small nod.

  Mr. Platte pursed his lips. “Hmm. I imagine the diary is referring to Hannah. Sad story.”

  Cady’s insides clenched. “What was sad?”

  The lawyer leaned back in this desk chair and folded his hands over his slight paunch. “Hannah was born to your grandmother out of wedlock a year before she married your grandfather and two years before your mother was born. Then your grandfather passed when your mother was only three years old, and the little family went to live with your great-aunt. From Anita, I understand the pair of youngsters were a mighty handful.” Platte chuckled. “Hannah in particular. Such a shame we never got to know if she would have straightened out and become a productive adult. She passed from this life at the age of twelve.”

  “What happened?” Cady leaned forward.

  West reached over and enfolded her hand in his own. She tightened her fingers around his palm.

  “Meningitis,” Platte said.

  A pent-up breath blew from Cady’s lungs. Natural causes, then. Nothing related to her mother and the childhood feud between half siblings.

  “I was attending a conference in Chicago when it happened,” Platte went on. “When I returned, I found out I’d missed the funeral and everything. But that sort of illness can strike suddenly and kill quickly, and there had been a rash of it going around at the time. The little girl died in the night in her bed. So sad.” Platte shook his head. “Even sadder, it happened only a month after your grandmother passed, leaving May and Hannah orphans. Anita, of course, stepped in and finished raising May. She did her best, but perhaps the derailing of your mother’s life could be laid at the door of all the tragedy in her youth—loss of father, mother and sister. As a child, May was so bright and promising, but—” The lawyer left the sentence unfinished and gave his head another shake.

  Cady cleared her throat of a lump that had suddenly developed. She and her mother had lots of loss in common. “Was Hannah buried in the family crypt?”

  Platte blinked owlish eyes at her. “Why, I imagine so. I never asked. Nor have I had the opportunity to notice. As you know, I was an honorary pallbearer at Anita’s funeral, but at my age I did not venture down those steep stairs into the crypt.”

  “I didn’t go down for the interment, either,” Cady said.

  Platte emitted a chuckle that sounded a bit like fall leaves rustling in the wind. “Understandable. You were quite advanced in your pregnancy. If you want to know the answer to your question, I guess you will have to look for yourselves.”

  “We’ll do that,” West said. “Pay
our respects.”

  Cady locked gazes with him and his hand squeezed hers gently. That touch offered the only warmth amidst the chill that was creeping over the rest of her.

  At least, now they knew Hannah was indeed dead, but the only assurance Platte had offered them as to the cause was hearsay from his client, Cady’s great-aunt. Had there been some sort of cover-up to protect the surviving child, Cady’s mother? Or were the horrific events of the past few days turning her into a conspiracy theorist? Better that, than to be right in her awful suspicions.

  * * *

  As they drove away from the lawyer’s office, West offered an open ear as Cady shared her theory with him, but he would need more evidence in order to be convinced.

  “Until we have any proof otherwise,” he answered, “we should take Mr. Platte’s version of events at face value. We could go to the courthouse and find Hannah’s death certificate.”

  “That’s the kicker.” Cady turned bleak eyes on him. “Locating a death certificate could mean nothing. One of my great-aunt’s friends—sort of a long-term beau—was a doctor. I remember him being putty in her hands. Whatever she said, his answer was always, ‘Whatever you say, my dear Anita.’”

  “Colluding in covering up a murder is a pretty hefty accusation to lay at a physician’s door.”

  “It’s a hefty accusation to lay at anyone’s door, and I’m not saying he would have consciously colluded. But if my great-aunt insisted meningitis was the cause of the sudden death, especially since the disease was going around at the time, he could have caved without a second thought.”

  “Wouldn’t there have been an autopsy?”

  “Not necessarily, if the family didn’t want one and a doctor certified the cause.”

  “You make a good case, but I hope you’re wrong.”

  “You have no idea how happy it would make me to be wrong. But first I want to check out the family crypt to make sure that’s where she’s buried. The name plaque would supply a date of death that would come in handy when asking for a copy of a death certificate.”

  “What if your mother is hanging out down there? She’s a dangerous woman.”

  “I know, but you’re with me.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure—”

  “Please.” The wealth of feeling in her amber gaze tied his heart in knots. “Chances are that she isn’t there. At least not anymore. We know she was out and about this afternoon leaving a note on my windshield.”

  West heaved a long sigh.

  “Thank you.” Cady reached over and squeezed his hand.

  He lifted a corner of his mouth in a half smile. One would think he’d handed her the moon instead of caving to a potentially risky request.

  “Here’s the deal,” he told her. “If we find any sign that she’s in there, we’re going to revisit this conversation and, depending on what circumstances we discover, make a wise choice as to whether or not to call in the authorities.”

  “I can live with that.” Cady nodded. “We can at least check for Hannah’s burial plaque and look around for any evidence that the tunnel from my house reaches that far. No harm done.”

  West glanced at the clock on the dashboard—2:10 p.m. “How’s Baby-bug doing?”

  Cady swiveled her head toward the back seat. “Just cashed in on her afternoon nap.”

  “Then she won’t need to be fed until she wakes up. Let’s drop her off with Bren while we go traipsing around the graveyard. If he’s not up by now, he needs to be.”

  When they arrived at his apartment, Brennan was, indeed, awake and tickled to look after his honorary niece for an hour or so.

  “When we get back,” West told his partner, “we’ll all go to the hospital and visit Darius.”

  “Let’s do it,” Brennan said, offering his fist.

  West bumped it with his own and ushered Cady toward the door.

  “Be careful out there,” Brennan called after them.

  West looked over his shoulder at him. “You know it.”

  The drive to the cemetery was short and quiet with Cady brooding beside him. For her sake—no, for all their sakes—her mother needed to be apprehended soon. The woman was a menace to society. The personnel at the center who lost track of her had a lot to answer for.

  Yet once the danger was past, what did the future hold for Cady and him? He and the guys had offered to help her with renovations and upkeep on the house, but it was going to be torture hanging around her as nothing more than an arm’s-length friend. West shoved the unproductive thoughts away. He needed all his focus right now to ensure that Cady had a future—even if it was without him by her side.

  “Here we are, then,” he said as he turned the vehicle onto the cemetery grounds. “Direct me how to get as close as possible to our destination.”

  Cady obliged, taking them through winding paved routes almost to the far end of the cemetery.

  “There,” she said, pointing to a compact but stately chapel building made of weathered white stone.

  Stained-glass windows, mainly in dark blues and vivid greens, lined the sides of the main structure. A tall white cross stood on top of what appeared to be a boarded-up bell tower. West parked the Blazer under the shade of an immense old oak tree nearby.

  “According to Great-Aunt Anita,” Cady said, gaze riveted on the building, “this building is far older than the Frank Heyling Furness house I inherited. The first of my ancestors to immigrate to the United States in the early 1700s came over from England with a significant fortune and the stones and boards and furnishings of this chapel that they’d had dismantled and shipped over from their British estate. In keeping with ancestral tradition, a crypt was dug under the building for family remains, and the chapel hosted an active community congregation until the middle of the nineteenth century when the county bought this whole acreage as a cemetery. Part of the deal, however, was that our family retain perpetual rights to the chapel and the crypt beneath.”

  “You have a fascinating heritage,” West said.

  “Fascinating? I hadn’t thought of it that way. Tragedy seems to have dogged our steps for many generations.”

  “How about we work toward bringing that legacy to an end?”

  Cady’s head swiveled his direction. Her eyes were wide and luminous. “I’d like that very much.” Color suddenly flushed her cheeks, and she quickly turned away and got out of the vehicle.

  What was that reaction all about? West emerged from the vehicle and trotted to catch up with her as she marched toward the chapel, determination in her stride.

  “Whoa!” he called out. “Stick with your bodyguard. Remember?”

  She slowed down and he reached her a few feet shy of the chapel’s two front steps.

  “Sorry.” She offered him a sidelong look. “I just want to get this visit over with. The place has always given me the creeps.”

  “I think the chapel is charming.” He scanned the building up and down.

  “Structurally? Certainly. I might appreciate the church more if Great-Aunt Anita hadn’t always talked like our ancestors were alive down there under our feet. That kind of talk gives nightmares to a little girl.”

  “Sounds like your great-aunt was quite a unique character.”

  “I loved her, and she loved me, but ‘unique character’ pretty much sums her up.”

  “Where’s the key?” West gestured toward the padlock hanging from a heavy chain looped through the handles of the double doors.

  “It’s on the Blazer key chain along with the house keys.”

  “Platte gave it to you?”

  “The one and only. He kept one and gave me one at the will reading. I didn’t bother having the locks changed on this building like I did the house.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t have a key?”

  “No.”

  West snorted. “
Then that’s another thing she would have had to steal, either from Platte’s office or your purse, and since you have your key, I wonder if the lawyer still has his.”

  “Let me make a quick phone call and find out.”

  West waited patiently while she talked with the receptionist.

  “Mr. Platte’s key is right where it’s supposed to be,” she said as soon as she ended the call. “Maybe that’s a good sign that I’m wrong about the tunnel, and she was never here.”

  “Or maybe she managed to get her hands on one of the two keys, had a copy made and returned it.”

  Cady shook her head. “My mom may know her way around a computer, but she has no breaking-and-entering skills. She would have had to break into somewhere to get her hands on a key before she would have been able to access the tunnel. That scenario is quite a stretch.”

  “All right, then, assuming she didn’t have the skills to sneak into a home or office and acquire a key, if the tunnel access is here, she would have had to break into the chapel in some other way. Neither the chain nor the padlock shows any signs of tampering. Let’s walk around the building and see if there are any windows broken or other points of unauthorized access.”

  A cautious circuit revealed nothing broken or even mildly suspicious. The rear entrance at the base of the bell tower was boarded up and didn’t budge when West tugged at it.

  “So far so good,” West said. “It’s possible she was never here.”

  “I don’t know whether to be happy or disappointed about that. We still don’t know how to locate her.”

  They trod up the steps and he pulled the Blazer key chain from his pocket.

  “It’s this one.” Cady pointed to one of the keys.

  He undid the lock and opened one of the doors.

  “Just to be on the safe side,” he said as he drew his gun and stepped over the threshold, motioning Cady to wait on the stoop.

  Odors of dust and old woodwork greeted him in the gloom, as well as a mild chill that inhabited closed-up old structures most of the year in this northern climate. The small amount of sunlight that came through the door behind him and filtered through the stained-glass windows outlined dark shapes that he assumed were pews, but the far end of the building was swallowed in blackness. However, no sense of human presence disturbed the peace and quiet.