by Kate Flora
“You said Stephanie can corroborate…” I stopped. “You’re here as the grownup, right?”
He nodded.
“So why are you taking orders from a frightened and distraught sixteen-year-old girl instead of taking sensible steps to protect her?”
“She’s very mature for her age.”
“Excuse me, Mr. McKenzie, but when you talk like that, you sound like her pathetic man-child of a father. You can’t protect her by hiding her. How does that help her return to Simmons? Or were you planning on hiding her forever?”
McKenzie didn’t like that very much. “Look, I’m the only…”
A nurse approached the glass and glared at us, a finger to her lips. We were disturbing the babies. Heidi didn’t seem to have noticed. She was smiling and rocking and holding her daughter.
Andre was watching the corridor expectantly. I wondered if he knew who we were expecting, or if he was simply prepared for whatever came. Ever since he’d said we were followed, my anxiety level had been amping up.
McKenzie’s freaking knight in shining armor crossed with California hippie avatar wasn’t helping. In a clinch, he was more likely to need looking after than to be useful. He was watching Heidi with a goofy smile that made me think he was imagining the three of them returning to California, becoming a little family, and making music together happily ever after.
I suppressed my urge to whack him upside the head and say “get real.” He’d come when Heidi needed someone.
I shifted my attention back to the corridor. My money was on The General and his remaining minion. If it was them, Andre would have to do double duty. I’d mixed it up with bad guys before, but now that MOC was with me, I wasn’t about to.
If it turned out to be Miller and Flynn, come to snatch up Heidi, I didn’t know what I would do. I was supposed to be the rescuer. I had no idea how I would do that here, but I’d have to do something. That toddler’s “I don’t wanna” melt-down was looking very appealing again, but I’d criticized McKenzie for not acting like a grownup, so I couldn’t take that route. Heidi was the child. I was the grownup. Somehow, I wanted to come out of this with Heidi safe, not in custody, and as soon as it was practical, headed back to Simmons.
Seconds felt like hours as I waited for something to happen. Shootout at the O.K. Corral was one thing. Shootout at the neonatal care unit quite another. I had crazy visions of a Matrix-style, slo-mo conflict, all done silently so as not to disturb the babies.
With McKenzie pressed up against the glass, watching Heidi like a kid at an aquarium, I stepped back and whispered to Andre, “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. Everything is going to be okay. Trust me.”
I did trust him. Of course I did. I just didn’t trust anyone else involved in this so eloquently named “clusterfuck.”
It might be perfectly descriptive, but I needed to excise that vulgar word from my vocabulary.
I looked at Heidi again, watching her trace her daughter’s tiny face with a fingertip. Mothering had to be instinctive for her. She couldn’t have learned that from her own mother, the woman who hadn’t wanted a baby. Who had blamed her husband when the baby wasn’t perfect. Her mother—many mothers—would have been repelled and repulsed by a child that represented a horrible assault. I thought about how her friends had described her. Calm. Generous. Loving. I momentarily forgot about whoever was coming and joined McKenzie in watching a miracle.
It always happens in the moment when you let your guard down. I was watching a courageous girl and beautiful motherhood as General Norris and Lt. Aaron Ramirez burst off the elevator and stormed down the corridor, guns drawn.
What the hell were they thinking? Were they planning to burst into the nursery and grab Heidi, here in front of all these people and undoubtedly recorded by hospital security cameras as well?
Andre stepped forward to block them, and my heart seized with fear. He was strong and competent and fearless. But he was one to their two, and they were also presumably strong, competent, and fearless.
And armed.
Thirty-Four
I stepped back away from Andre so that I couldn’t be grabbed and used as a shield, while McKenzie turned and stared at the approaching duo, frozen in mid-turn.
The commotion made Heidi look up, and she jumped from the chair, holding her daughter protectively against her chest, her eyes fixed on General Norris and Lt. Ramirez, terrified, yet making a visible effort not to scream and frighten the babies.
A nurse stepped protectively in front of her while another put an arm around her and urged her toward a door.
Heidi stared at the two men like a deer trapped in headlights. She couldn’t move.
Andre faced them, his hands up in a calming gesture. “Let’s put those guns away, gentlemen, shall we? There are babies here.”
Without responding, General Norris nodded at Ramirez, who tried to open the door of the nursery. It was locked.
“Shall I shoot the lock, sir?” he asked.
What was wrong with these people? These were tiny, fragile, newborn babies, and he wanted to fire a gun? What if it ricocheted? What if it went through the door and hit a baby, or the brave nurse who was now standing protectively on the other side of that door?
Why didn’t Andre do something?
In another second, I had my answer. Moving as quietly and efficiently as a swarm of black ants, a Boston Police SWAT team appeared. It was impressive. Terrifying. Like something from a movie.
Seconds later, as Norris and Ramirez were being secured, General Norris loudly protesting his rank and his innocence, Miller and Flynn appeared.
“My hero,” I murmured, linking my arm through Andre’s. “Did you know about all this?”
“Sorta,” he said.
I am not a cop. I don’t see the mysterious things going on around me that he does. Well, not always, anyway. Once again, my training officer has fallen down on the job. I am not sufficiently observant. Had we been a strange caravan, moving through the night? First us, then Norris and Ramirez, then Miller and Flynn, on their radio, frantically organizing this? Was that why Andre, who normally drives like a bat out of hell, had taken his time on our journey? I thought it was because of Boston traffic.
William McKenzie still stood frozen, wearing the bewildered look of a man tapped to appear in a movie without being told what his role was. No. That was unfair. He might have been unfit for the lead role he’d cast himself in, but he had come when Heidi needed him, and she had definitely needed someone last night. He’d had a minor part, and he’d performed well.
In my pocket, my phone buzzed. My mother. I hoped she was only calling to talk about details for the shower, but I needed to be sure there wasn’t a new crisis with my father. I answered.
“I’ve got some great ideas for that shower,” she began.
“Is Dad okay?”
“Yes, dear. Of course. Otherwise I would have called you.”
Yeah. Right. Like she did when he had his heart attack. “Sorry, Mom. I can’t talk right now. There’s a SWAT team here and some bad guys are getting arrested. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I pushed end, leaving her to speculate about what I meant. Time enough for that tomorrow, when I could explain how we’d be busy with the new house. When I might have the patience for one of her rants about how other people didn’t get into these messes and I needed to change my life and find a safer, more lucrative career.
Before they departed with their prisoners, Miller conferred briefly with Andre, thanking him for the heads up, and patted me on the shoulder. “Good work, Kozak,” he said. “Now take that girl back to the Caleb Strong Inn, and don’t lose her again before we can talk to her.”
As if I was the one who lost her before, or the one in charge of her now.
“Before you go,” I said. “What about Heidi? Will she be charged? Because you know that she’s a victim here, just as much as that baby she’s holding.”
“We know,” Miller said. “Her fri
end Stephanie called us and told us what happened. As much as she can remember, anyway. I assume we have you to thank for that, too?”
He looked beat, and grumpy, and already anticipating the long night of interviews and investigation that lay ahead. “We’ll still need to talk with her, of course.”
“Of course.”
His smile was fleeting, but genuine, as he added, “Any time you want a job…”
“She’s already got too many jobs,” Andre said, wrapping his arms protectively around me. He and Miller and Flynn exchanged those cop looks that a civilian like me will never fully understand. Like they communicated on a different frequency.
“You’re a lucky guy, Lemieux,” Flynn said.
Then he and Miller marched off, surrounded by the fierce black ants, the general still protesting loudly. Through the glass, I could see Heidi standing behind the babies, holding her daughter, hope and wonder on her face as she watched General Norris and Lt. Ramirez being led away.
I looked at Andre. This part was over, a new phase of issues to be managed just beginning.
There was so much more that lay ahead. Updating Gareth. Getting Heidi safely back to the Caleb Stow, recovered and interviewed, and then reintegrated into the Simmons community. Gareth and Dr. Purcell would have the difficult task of helping her through the trauma she’d faced, and supporting her through police interviews and whatever criminal trials lay ahead. Helping her make good decisions about her daughter’s future.
I was far from done, too. Gareth and I still had much work to do to reassure the Simmons parents and get things on campus back to normal.
Suzanne and I had new staff to hire and train. A zillion clients waited for my attention.
In my personal world, there was my mother to placate. A shower to be planned. My father to worry about. And all the challenges of our new, unfinished house. For once, something to look forward instead of dread. But, as Scarlett O’Hara reminds us in Gone with the Wind, tomorrow is another day. First, there would be chocolate cake.
Epilogue
Of course, sorting things out for Heidi, and for Simmons, was far from a piece of cake. Nothing ever is.
Heidi was able to stay at Simmons, and opted, with the support of her good friends, to share the reason for her pregnancy and why she hadn’t known about it, which meant sharing the ugly story of her assault. In true Simmons fashion, the community came together to support her. It was a support she badly needed as her parents and stepfather went through their various legal processes.
Heidi’s openness, and the community’s acceptance of the situation, also made communicating with the Simmons parents easier. It took time, and several letters to parents and the parents of prospective students, but finally it was done without a significant impact on the incoming class.
Gareth thought the school was stronger than before.
Heidi’s friend Stephanie had been there that night. She’d also been given a spiked drink but it had made her sick, and she had stumbled home in a dazed and confused state, too impaired to help her friend. Her mother had been out, and when she had confided the event to her mother the next morning, they had decided to wait and see how Heidi was. When Heidi seemed undisturbed and had no memory of the events, they had made the wrong-headed decision not to tell her what had happened or go to the police. Fleeing from the ugliness across the street had spurred Stephanie’s departure for boarding school. Now she—and her mother—were wracked with guilt about what they had let Heidi go through, and how they’d let her rapists go free.
Spring came and students poured out of their dorms like creatures emerging from hibernation to turn their faces to the sun. Despite the grim days Gareth and I had spent doing urgent damage control, the warmth, and the sea of smiling students, comforted us as we wrapped up our business. I prepared to head back to Maine, to my next challenge—our house.
As I’d seen when Andre and I were at the hospital, Heidi had strong mothering instincts toward her daughter. After careful consideration, though, she decided that she wasn’t ready for motherhood. The solution was an open adoption by a couple she already knew—Ruthie and Joel Ivens. In some places, the idea of a young mother giving up her baby to a couple who lived in the same dorm might have seemed crazy. At Simmons, it seemed reasonable. Indeed, Grace Ivens would grow up surrounded by love in a community that was delighted to welcome the little girl to their midst.
The model of a community being open-minded and accepting of each other also became a message for me. Much as I’d protested about having to plan a baby shower, never mind share it with my unpleasant sister-in-law Sonia, the Simmons model changed my thinking. This wasn’t just about me. Mom and Dad were going to be wonderful grandparents, and Michael and Sonia’s baby would be MOC’s cousin. I didn’t want to introduce our baby into a family riddled with strife and conflict. So when my mother called again to talk about plans, I swallowed my negative thoughts and plunged in.
The result was that Andre and I had a truckload of darling baby things, enough stuffed animals for triplets, and, as yet, no place to put a baby. But just as I’d swung into gear to plan that shower, Andre and his father were full speed ahead to finish the nursery so MOC didn’t start life in a dresser drawer. Family rumor had it that Andre had spent his first month in a drawer, and he claimed it had scarred him for life.
The month after Simmons, I also took care of something to make my work life easier. I hired new staff. One more full time person, and a part-timer, to help us be more responsive to our client’s needs. In the midst of our hiring, a miracle happened. My former secretary, Sarah, who used to read my mind and manage my life and my mother, finally left her abusive husband and moved to Maine. Just, as she put it, “so I could get my old job back.”
After a few years of over-burdened dashes from one crisis to another, I found I was looking forward to coming to work.
The commute to work was longer, but it was on pleasant country roads, and I could already tell that I was going to become addicted to the farm stand and garden center I passed every day.
MOC kicked liked a soccer forward. Andre was singing while he worked. Reports were that Heidi and little Grace were thriving. And I was thinking about shucking “Thea the Great and Terrible” for good.
But maybe I’ve been a human tow truck too long. Someone will break down on my watch. I’m sure of it. And I will have to help.
The End
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Page ahead for an excerpt from Death Comes Knocking
Death Comes Knocking
A Thea Kozak Mystery, Book Ten
I knew most people would think the soft gray green we’d chosen an odd color for a baby’s room, but it was peaceful and soothing. The baby I was carrying was an acrobat. A night owl. A perpetual motion machine. I didn’t yet know whether when MOC—our abbreviation for Mason, Oliver, or Claudine—appeared Andre and I would have a son or a daughter. What I did know was that whoever we met in the delivery room, the child would need peace and soothing. Or we would.
I was prying the lid off the paint can and wondering whether it was safe for a woman shaped like a whale to climb up the stepladder when the doorbell rang. I hesitated before heading for the stairs. We didn’t know many people in our new town, which meant it was likely one of Andre’s siblings. I like them well enough. They’re family, after all, but they have a different sense of time from mine. Their visits go on too long and they’re sense of personal boundaries seems nonexistent. I wasn’t keen on a discussion of my girth, or my birth plans, or whethe
r I was planning to breast feed, never mind whether MOC would be baptized.
Still, family is family so I headed downstairs. The woman I found on my doorstep was no one I’d ever seen before. I’d remember her if I had. She was absolutely stunning. She had long, straight black hair and piercing blue eyes and alabaster skin. She was wearing bright red lipstick and a dress that looked like she’d stolen it from gypsies—a multicolored extravaganza that screamed exuberance. I’ve never in my life owned something that bold. Tall women with big chests tend to try and minimize their physical footprint.
She smiled at me and held out a hand. “Hi, I’m Jessica.” She gestured back toward the street. “I’ve just moved into the cottage.”
It was only when she turned sideways and gestured that I realized the crazy dress was hiding a pregnancy about as advanced as mine.
“Thea,” I said. “Come in. Welcome to the Whales Club. Would you like some tea? Or coffee? And I’ve got some lovely Finnish coffee bread.”
“I would love some coffee,” she said, following me into the house, “but I’ve given it up. Do you have any herbal tea?”
I did. Andre calls it ‘gerbil tea’ and says it tastes like a cup full of straw, but I’ve grown rather fond of it since I’ve cut down on coffee. Anyway, hibiscus and berry didn’t taste like straw. In the kitchen, I put the kettle on, got out the bread, and sliced it. For a woman who often forgot to eat and usually had an empty refrigerator, I was becoming awfully domestic. Maybe having a house was changing me.
Jessica took a chair and studied my kitchen. “Wow. This is lovely. I’ve always wanted a place with tall glass cabinets like this.”
“Me, too,” I agreed. “So you’ve moved into the cottage. It looks really cute from the outside. Is it nice inside, too?”