I SPENT THE NEXT HALF HOUR TAKING NOTES AND recording the heartbreaking story of Kimmie Eastman.
She’d been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia right before Christmas. The disease had advanced rapidly, and a bone marrow transplant had become her only hope.
“We’ve exhausted all the other possibilities,” Joline Eastman said. “It’s much more complicated for us than it is for . . . Caucasians.” Her chin rose fractionally as if she expected me to argue with her.
“Why?”
“The survival rate for any kind of transplant is nearly forty percent less for African-Americans. The specialist said it’s because of our heritage. Our race is older, and we have more complex tissue types.”
“I assume you’ve had immediate family tested.”
“Of course,” she said. “Her brother came closest, but not enough to take the risk. At this stage of the disease, rejection would almost certainly be . . . would lead to a bad outcome.”
I hated the medical doubletalk. Tiptoeing around the words seemed so pointless. What Joline Eastman meant was that her daughter’s rejection of noncompatible bone marrow would be fatal. There would be no second chance to get it right.
“And your husband’s family?” I asked. “May I have his name, by the way?”
“It’s Jerry. Jerrold.” She spelled it for me. “He’s a doctor, an OB-GYN. But it’s irrelevant. He’s not Kimmie’s father.” She paused. “And you need to deal directly with me, Mrs. Tanner. Only me. I expect you to protect my privacy. I don’t want my husband to be . . . bothered with this.”
Bothered? It seemed a strange choice of words.
“Are you in touch with her biological father?”
“No.” Joline tugged down the hem of her skirt and studied the floor.
“Have you made an effort to contact him?”
“There’s no point. Leave him out of it.”
The intensity of her reply seemed a little over the top, but I let it go. “Isn’t there a registry for bone marrow donors? Like with other organs?”
Her head snapped up, and her eyes again flashed with anger. “Of course! Don’t you think I’ve explored every possible avenue to save my child?”
It was a rhetorical question to which I had no answer, and I scribbled a few notes to give Joline time to get herself under control.
“So you need to find your own family.” I picked up the old graying photograph and studied the smiling faces. “The photographer was from Charleston, but I can’t make out his name. Do you know where this was taken?”
She shook her head. “My great-great-grandfather owned a grocery store. At least that’s what I remember hearing. He and his brothers started it after the Civil War, I think. That could be where the picture was taken, but I’m not sure.”
“It’s a place to start. May I?”
When she nodded, I pulled the bundle of letters toward me and studied the tattered envelopes. They’d gotten damp at some point, and much of the ink had smeared and run. Most of the postmarks were indecipherable.
“They’re from my grandmother, Esther Mitchell. Grandpa served in World War Two. He saved some of her letters.”
“Are they still living?” I asked.
“Oh, no. Grandpa passed before I was born.”
I looked up when she hesitated. The anger was back.
“Grandmother Mitchell and my mother were killed in a car crash. Drunk driver.”
“I’m sorry. How awful to lose them both so senselessly.”
Joline Eastman’s eyes were dry. “Yes. Tragic. Especially since my mother was the drunk who was driving.”
She wrote a check for our retainer, not flinching when I named the amount. Judging by her outfit and the Kate Spade bag she’d retrieved the checkbook from, I didn’t think it would prove a burden. I tried not to give her too much hope, but she seemed to walk a little straighter when Erik opened the door for her on her way out. She’d left all the documents with me, and I’d given her a receipt for them.
Erik took the vacated chair in front of my desk, and I filled him in. He’d listen to the tape later and transcribe it for our files.
“Poor woman,” he said softly.
“She’s desperate,” I said. “Without the bone marrow transplant, they’ve given her daughter only a couple of months.”
He picked up the genealogical chart and studied it. “Lots of missing information—missing people—here. Does it have to be a direct ancestor?”
“I’m assuming the closer the blood relationship, the better the chances for a match.”
“And you say Joline’s mother and one grandmother are both dead, right?”
“And the Mitchell grandfather.” I took the family tree from his hands and traced the lines with my fingers. “Joline’s father skipped out when she was a teenager, but he’s a viable candidate. If he’s still alive. Maybe he has parents or living siblings. But the best bets are her two sisters, neither of whom she knows how to locate.”
“That’s strange. Did she say why?”
I shook my head. “Nothing helpful. The mother drank, so maybe it has something to do with that. At any rate, she hasn’t spoken to”—I looked again at the chart—“Maeline and Tessa since before their mother was killed.”
“It’s always a problem trying to track down women when you don’t have their married names.”
“I know. But at least the given names are unusual. Betty and Sally would be a lot more difficult. I think they might be the best place to start.”
“What about Kimmie’s father?” Erik asked.
“She seriously didn’t want to talk about him. Judging by her age when the girl was born, I’m guessing high school hormones gone wrong—a one-night stand or something like that. Joline didn’t really tell me anything useful except that he’s a dead end. The same with her mother’s side of the family. Apparently they’ve all been ruled out.”
Erik looked at the photo of the pretty teenager. “It’s a damn shame.”
I reached in the drawer for an oversized envelope and began placing the documents inside. “I know. But all we can do is work with the information she’s willing to give us. And protect her privacy. She was pretty adamant about that, too.” I paused and again studied the grainy photograph before handing it across to Erik.
“Do we know anyone who could work on this?” I pointed to the blurred printing visible on the building in the background. “Maybe bring this part into better focus? Most of these people are probably dead, but if we could pinpoint the location, it might give us a jumping-off point. Or maybe someone could raise that printing on the back, identify the photographer.”
“I’ve got a couple of online buddies who do digital photo enhancement. I might even be able to find a program myself. Let me see what I can do.” He rose and stretched. “Things have been kind of quiet, haven’t they? I know all these background checks haven’t been too exciting.”
I rubbed the cramp in my thigh and smiled. “Boring is good,” I said, then sobered. “I just wish the consequences of failure on this one weren’t so damn final.”
“I know. Let me get started on the photo,” he said and turned back toward his desk.
I pulled the bundle of letters back out of the file and weighed them in my hand. Maybe a dozen, the lifeline between a wife and a husband separated by thousands of miles and a mountain of fear and uncertainty. The Greatest Generation, I thought. So few of them left now, but at least their grandchildren had come, if belatedly, to an appreciation of their courage and sacrifice on the beaches of the Pacific and among the hedgerows of Europe.
The Judge had missed his chance at war, a fact he often bemoaned when some of his older colleagues allowed bourbon and camaraderie to loosen their tongues and memories. My father had attended the Citadel, then gone on to law school at South Carolina. Educational deferments had kept him out of Korea, and age out of Vietnam.
I glanced at my watch. Lavinia had said they’d be gone a couple of hours. I wondered what kind of tests Harley Coffin had felt it necessary to order up on an octogenarian already confined to a wheelchair. My hand hovered over the phone, and I jumped when it rang.
“I’ve got it,” I called and grabbed up the receiver. “Simpson and Tanner, Inquiry Agents. This is Bay Tanner.”
“Hey, sweetheart. How’s your day going?”
I felt my shoulders relax. Sergeant Red Tanner of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office had been first my brother-in-law, then my friend and sometime antagonist, and finally, as of last Christmas, my unofficial fiancé. The ring he’d given me, with his two children watching quietly from the corner of my great room, still sat in its velvet box at the bottom of the floor safe in my bedroom closet.
“Not bad,” I said. “We’ve got a new client.”
“Interesting case?”
“Sad more than interesting. How about you? Out keeping the world safe from bad guys and speeding tourists?”
His laugh always reminded me of Rob’s, and I flinched. I wondered what my murdered husband would think of my marrying his brother. In good moments, I liked to believe he’d be pleased for both of us. At other times, I wasn’t so sure.
“Pretty quiet around here, too,” Red answered. “I finished up testifying this morning on that drug case in Beaufort. Those two scumbags are going away for a long time.”
“Good. So when will you be home?”
“I’m off at five. Want to go grab dinner somewhere?”
I hesitated. “I’m not sure. Lavinia called and said she had to take the Judge in to the hospital for some tests. I may want to run over there this afternoon.”
“Want me to go with you?”
I smiled. Most of the time, Red defied the stereotype of the macho, gun-toting lawman. While he was perfectly capable of violence when the performance of his duties called for it, he could be as concerned and caring as his brother had been. I cursed myself for the comparison, a thing I’d promised myself not to do. It was unfair to the Tanner men, both the living and the dead.
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. Lavinia’s supposed to call as soon as they get home.”
“Well, keep me posted, honey. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
I gritted my teeth. Sometimes Red forgot I wasn’t one of his children.
“I’ll let you know.”
After we hung up, I sat staring at the phone, willing it to ring, but the beast remained stubbornly silent. I drew a long breath and turned back to the letters Joline Eastman had left behind.
I switched on the desk lamp and rummaged in the bottom drawer for the magnifying glass I kept there. Erik had hooted when I brought it in, making Sherlock Holmes wisecracks for the rest of the day. I focused the lens on the first of the smeared postmarks, but there was nothing decipherable, and the ink on the return address, written with a fountain pen, was simply a blue blotch. They’d been addressed to Private First Class Chauncey Mitchell, which Joline had confirmed was her grandfather’s name, but the rest was again a blur. He’d served in France, according to his granddaughter, but she had no other information about his time in the Army.
It had amazed me how little our client knew about her own background and history. Perhaps because aristocratic Southern families—my own included—were intensely fixated on the past, I found it hard to fathom how someone could grow to adulthood so completely oblivious to all those who had come before her.
I moved on through the nearly dozen letters, inspecting the envelopes. I knew I’d eventually have to extract the letters themselves, but I found myself postponing that invasion of the Mitchells’ privacy, even though both husband and wife were long dead. Lavinia’s disdain for those who pried and gossiped had been drummed into my head from an early age. My choice of a second profession still didn’t sit well with her.
I found the first clue about halfway down the stack. The round circle enclosing the postmark had escaped the water damage to some extent, and I thought I could make out the letter E at the beginning. Joline said she had been born near Pritchardville, just up the road from Hilton Head on the mainland, but had no idea where her family was prior to that. The photographer’s imprint on the old photo had looked to me as if it read CHARLESTON, even though that was primarily a guess. And just south of that antebellum jewel of the Confederacy lay Edisto Island.
I opened my mouth to call Erik when the phone forestalled me. I snatched it up.
“Bay Tanner.”
“Honey, it’s me.” Lavinia’s voice sounded strained.
“What’s wrong? Is the Judge okay?”
“It’s his heart. You’d better come.”