forty-four

Kelly was surprised when we pulled up at Harbor House.

“Where are we?”

“I live here,” I replied.

“Why aren’t we at the police station?”

“It’s a long story,” Frank said as we made our way into the house. “I need to make a few calls. I’ll meet you two upstairs.”

I led Kelly into the conference room and opened the windows. The room was stuffy, but the cool night air brought the temperature down. It was almost eight o’clock, and the last sliver of sun had plummeted below the horizon. It was officially nightfall, and Gayle, my sixteen-year-old non-birth daughter was missing.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Kelly confessed. “This is a horrible way to meet my daughter’s biological mother.”

I pointed to the conference table, and Kelly and I sat down.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Kelly nodded.

I was about to ask if Gayle was a happy child, and then I changed my mind. “Is she connected?”

Kelly smiled. “She’s the most present person I know.”

Frank entered the room. He was sensitive enough to realize that Kelly and I had just had a moment.

“All good?” he asked, and we nodded.

“Okay. According to her high school, she was in attendance today, and she was seen on the bus at dropoff,” Frank said. “It sounds like Dr. Corey missed the connection at the bus stop. I think maybe Gayle saw CeCe and me at the house and got spooked. Kelly, I need you to contact all of her friends and their families. Cheski and Lamendola are on their way, and they will help you make the calls. She must have taken refuge somewhere.”

“I can do that,” Kelly said, although he seemed completely spent at this point.

“One more thing,” Frank said. “Has Carolyn said anything else besides texting to ask if Gayle is with you?”

“No. I’ve sent her about a hundred texts, but she hasn’t replied.”

Frank said, “Before I send out an Amber Alert, I’m going to ask you one more time. Is there any reason Gayle would be in the woods that connect to the recycling center?”

“If she had been, she never told me about it.”

Frank pulled out a chair and sat down. “Had you ever been to the recycling center with Gayle?”

“No,” Kelly replied and then hesitated. “Mike, my husband, handled most of the household duties. But now that you’re asking, I believe Mike was friendly with the guy that runs the place. I think he might have even come to Mike’s funeral.”

Had I heard right? “Mike knew Bob?” I asked.

“Big guy, right?” Kelly said.

“Did Gayle know Bob?” Frank asked.

Kelly stood up abruptly. “I don’t know why you’re asking me these questions. My daughter is missing, and my sister-in-law is in hiding. Why the hell do you care about the fat guy at the recycling center?”

“Because he’s dead,” Frank said. “And we think Gayle witnessed his murder.”

Kelly slumped back into his chair. His frame, although nowhere near the size of Bob’s, filled his seat and then some. However, in his present defeated form, he looked as though my mother could have taken him in an arm-wrestling contest.

“We also suspect she was friendly with Bob. She had been seen with him more than once around town.”

“What?” Kelly yelled. “Where? Where could my daughter have possibly been seen with the guy from the recycling center?”

Frank hesitated. The one thing Kelly didn’t want to hear was that his daughter had been seen at a bar or motel with Bob. The truth, however, was even stranger.

“It seems they were attending storage unit auctions together,” Frank said.

For Kelly, the comment about the auctions came out of left field and drained his face of expression. His cheeks dropped as if Frank had physically punched him with the news of his daughter’s strange activities. “But then how is my sister-in-law involved?”

“We don’t think Carolyn is involved in Bob’s murder. We do, however, think she’s trying to keep your daughter’s identity secret.”

“From whom?” Kelly said, and then made a stopping motion with his hand. “Forget it, I understand,” he said to me. “Carolyn wants to keep Gayle away from your father. He was the one in the local papers last fall, the former head of the Sound View labs. If I remember, he may have used the labs’ resources unethically.”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“So you two think my daughter—who just happened to witness a murder at the same point your father, after sixteen years, has chosen to find her—is in danger?” Kelly chuckled sadly. “I don’t believe it, and I’m going to repeat what I told you earlier. If my daughter was at the recycling center, she was there for a reason. She’s not an outdoorsy kid, and she wasn’t hiking in the trails for exercise. I also don’t believe your father suddenly decided to reappear in her life at the same time she supposedly witnessed a murder.”

Frank shifted uncomfortably in his chair. We had come so far in this investigation, but we were tripping over holes. Kelly was right. The facts didn’t add up. What were the odds Gayle had simply strolled by the recycling center at the exact moment Bob was being pushed? Even if they had been friends, the timing seemed odd. I was also curious about my father’s involvement. Why would he choose to step out of the shadows to find Gayle now?

“What does your daughter do in her free time?” Frank asked.

Kelly groaned. “Honestly, I don’t know anymore. Mike was a stay-at-home dad, and he managed Gayle’s afternoons. When he died, our family began to deteriorate, and I lost Gayle to her computer. That’s why Thai Tuesdays are so important. She spends way too much time on those virtual social sites.”

At the mention of social sites, Frank’s eyebrows shot up. “Where’s her computer?”

“In her backpack,” Kelly replied. “That’s another reason I knew she wasn’t in the house. Her best friend, that damn computer, wasn’t on her desk.”

I reached for Frank’s arm and pointed to the door. Cheski and Lamendola had arrived and sat down to help Kelly contact Gayle’s friends. Frank and I stepped into the hallway.

“Let’s get out of earshot,” he said.

Frank and I headed up another flight to my attic studio, where one of my first drawings of the skinny jeans woman was propped up on my easel.

“I think Gayle knows Bob,” I said. “I think Kelly is right. If she was at the recycling center, then there must have been a connection between Gayle and Bob.”

“And we know they both spent time online.”

“Not unusual for a teenager,” I added.

“But odd for someone like Bob,” Frank said. “We also know that Bob had an online conversation with someone named the Maid, to establish a meeting time at the recycling center.”

“At the exact time Bob had the encounter with the doughy man.”

“Is it possible that Gayle is the Maid?” I asked. “Was the social site their channel of communication?”

“It’s possible,” Frank confirmed. “Bob was a grown man. Whatever their relationship, he wouldn’t want to leave a trail on Gayle’s phone.”

“Okay,” I paused. “We also know they were collecting computers.”

Frank nodded. “And that one of Gayle’s dads was at least friendly with Bob.” Frank reached his arms toward the ceiling and grabbed for a beam, stretching his shoulders and back while he processed the seemingly disconnected information. “The recycling sting is tomorrow night. We’ve got to get this right. We’ve got to find out why Gayle and Bob were collecting used computers.”

“We will,” I said. “We have to. She’s real, she’s scared, and I think she’s gotten herself into something she can’t handle.” I walked over to Frank and hugged him, unable to let go. His body felt firm and safe—all the qualities I struggled to maintain.

He released his arms from the rafters and held me for a minute. Then he peeled me off his solid torso.

“We’ll have time for this. I promise,” he said, kissing me lightly on the lips. “For now, we need to find Gayle.”

We made our way back down the attic stairs when I heard Katrina call for me. I rushed to the first floor expecting to find Katrina with an amniotic puddle at her feet. I wanted to smack Frank for shrugging off the arrival of this baby. I was just about to ream Frank when I saw that the floor below Katrina’s bare feet was dry as she stood holding the front door open.

Katrina held her stomach with one hand and pushed the screen door forward with the other. Dr. Carolyn Corey walked into Harbor House.

I recognized her because I’d stalked her. Still, her presence rattled me, and I could see she felt the same way. Given the events of the day, none of us felt great, but Corey was a hot mess. Her hair, a halo of ratted frizz, framed the bursting bags under her eyes. Part of me wanted to punch her. To grab her matted rat’s nest, slam her against the wall, and demand answers to questions that had plagued me for the last year. Instead I put my arm around Corey and led her into the library.

“My brother-in-law texted me and said he was here.”

“Where is Gayle?” I asked. “Has she contacted you?”

“About an hour ago,” Corey croaked, her voice raw with emotion. “That’s why I came. I want to see Kelly. He needs to know she’s safe.” The three of us moved into the library. “Gayle wouldn’t tell me where she was, but she said she was okay.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I do,” Corey said. “She’s pretty savvy for a sixteen year old.” She paused and looked at me. “You were no dummy yourself at that age.”

Quite an ice-breaker, I thought. By making a direct reference to my life, Corey all but admitted our connection. Her veiled diplomacy, however, wasn’t sufficiently forthcoming for Katrina.

“Why did you take CeCe’s embryo?” Katrina demanded as she accelerated to the punch line.

“Look, I came here to help Kelly find my niece,” Corey replied. “I’m not sure we need to rehash history right now. Besides, I think we all have a good idea what happened at the labs.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “I was twelve. I have no idea what happened.”

Corey rose to leave. To be polite, I grabbed her hand and not her hair. “You can’t leave. The details may help us find Gayle.”

“Fine, if you think it will help,” she acquiesced and resumed her position on the couch. When she lifted her head, I could see the pain in her face. Her mouth was pulled down at the corners, and her brow was heavily creased. With a good night’s sleep and some serious salon treatments, I’m sure Dr. Corey could pass unnoticed in a crowd. Tonight, she looked like a refugee. “I don’t even know where to start,” she mumbled.

“Tell me about the day of my procedure.”

Corey’s frown increased. This was sensitive ground. She sighed and started from the beginning. “Your procedure had been completed by the time I’d arrived to work. I had been under the assumption that the morning patient was William’s wife, your mother, but the detail on the medical chart indicated otherwise.” Corey stopped, and her mouth hung open as she recalled what would turn out to be an unpleasant day for both of us.

“Go on,” I urged.

“According to the birth date on the chart, the patient, as you mentioned, was a kid.” Corey’s chin trembled. “I was horrified. I felt as though I was the only one who had seen the discrepancy. At first I thought the birth date was a typo, but your father’s blinding passion for his genetic research had begun to make me nervous in the months preceding your procedure. He had become increasingly obsessed with his studies, aloof in a way, and I didn’t think I’d get a straight answer if I had asked directly. So I drove to your house to see for myself.”

“That’s why you came over,” I said. “You weren’t there for a follow-up medical exam. You were checking up on my father to see if the patient was really twelve.”

Corey nodded. “When I saw your mother with a glass of wine in her hand, I knew for sure she hadn’t been the patient. I’d suspected as much. The chart had been correct and that meant only one thing. William was out of control, and he had used his children in a live experiment. I literally threw up in your bushes on my way out.”

“Did you know he had been prepping Liz James as a potential surrogate for my embryos?”

“I was eventually able to piece that part together.”

While Corey and I had been “catching up” in the library after our sixteen-year hiatus, Frank and Kelly had found their way back downstairs.

Kelly hugged the last bits of oxygen out of his emotionally drained sister-in-law. He looked at me and then back to Corey. “Is CeCe the donor?”

“Non-birth mother,” I corrected. “For the record, I didn’t donate voluntarily.”

Kelly sat down next to his sister-in-law. “Carolyn, help me understand what happened.”

Corey had gnawed a chunk out of her lip, and I could see it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to tell her brother-in-law the truth. From what I could recall from the photos in her house,
the Corey-Goff clan were a happy bunch, and Carolyn had been instrumental in the creation of the family. She took one of Kelly’s hands and placed it over her heart so he could feel the pounding. Hell,
I could practically see her heart thumping from across the room.

“The egg was harvested without CeCe’s knowledge when she was very young. Once I realized how sick CeCe’s father truly was, I became hell-bent on protecting the future of the embryo,” Corey said, and then turned to me. “Your father wasn’t interested in bringing a new life into the world; he wanted a test subject to study, and he had planned to make damn sure your fertilized egg would come to fruition. I worried that the child would be forced into a life full of disadvantages simply so William could prove out his DNA thesis.” Corey took a deep breath. “I figured the only place this life would be safe was with me. Physically with me.”

The room fell silent.

“After the fertilization,” she continued, “I had twenty-four hours to make my decision about implantation. I suspected William had already arranged a surrogate through Lifely, and I couldn’t let it happen.”

My throat tightened, and I asked a rather insensitive question. “Why didn’t you flush it?”

Corey fiddled with her collar to release a thin gold chain with a tiny cross dangling from the bottom. “Irish Catholic,” she said. “If the fertilization hadn’t occurred, I would have discarded the material, but I couldn’t make myself do it after fertilization. Mike and Kelly seemed like an obvious choice for parents. I was young, unmarried and still in medical school, but my brother and Kelly were”—she turned to Kelly—“perfect.”

Like their house, I thought. The neat and tidy house at the end of the cul-de-sac, a stone’s throw away from the recycling center. One look at Kelly and I felt certain Gayle had had a jump-start on a good life. I still wasn’t sure what had brought us to this point, but I was determined to find out.

I stared blankly at Dr. Carolyn Corey. Had she stolen Gayle or saved her? At this point, Gayle didn’t seem safe. In fact, I’d go so far as to say my daughter’s life was now in jeopardy.

“Do you realize CeCe’s father is looking for Gayle?” Frank asked.

“I do, and I think that might be my fault too,” Corey confessed. “When I read about the death of CeCe’s brother, I worried that the memories might stir up your father’s interest in relocating the embryo. William had no proof at the time, but he knew your genetic material had gone missing right after it was harvested. For the remaining months I worked at the labs, I hid my pregnancy and played dumb, which I’m not very good at.” Corey shrugged. “I couldn’t hide my disgust, and I’m sure William suspected I had something to do with the missing embryo.”

“Did he accuse you of taking the fertilized embryo?” I asked.

“I’d put him between a rock and a hard place. He knew the only reason I’d take the embryo was if I thought he had planned to do something inappropriate with it. He couldn’t approach me because I could have called his bluff. It probably drove him crazy.” She paused and then smirked. I could see the idea of upsetting my father had pleased her. She continued, “The problem is that six months ago, when your brother’s trial was in full swing, I panicked. The implantation was an event I had buried years ago, but I felt I could no longer hide it once I realized your father might be thinking about it too. I wondered if the trial had stirred up your father’s memories, so I told Kelly and Gayle that a man named Prentice might come around asking questions.” She paused. “I thought giving Gayle the information would protect her.”

“You told Gayle?” Kelly bellowed. “Why would you do that? You know your niece. If you didn’t tell her the whole story, she’d try to figure it out herself.”

“I realize that now,” Corey said, “and, I think that’s exactly what happened. I don’t think William searched for Gayle until she started to look for him, and I know she made it at least as far as Liz James.”

“Gayle found her way to Liz?” Frank asked.

“She did,” Corey said. “I hadn’t heard from Liz in years, and then she called me at work and told me Gayle had appeared at her door.”

“Holy cow, Frank,” I said. “That’s how Liz James knew I was my father’s daughter. She saw the players line up, and she knew this would come to a head. She bided her time and then bribed anyone connected to this lunacy.” I looked at my wrist again. Damn, I had really liked that watch. I swung my watchless arm in frustration. “Well, now we know why my father stepped forward. Gayle’s curiosity lured him out of hiding.”

“The timing is right,” Frank conceded. “It coincides with your father hiring Norma too.”

“My new cleaning lady?” Corey asked. “She just started with us.”

“Yeah.” I advised Corey, “You might want to change your locks unless you want an unannounced visit in the middle of the night from my father. I’m guessing he’s pretty annoyed with you.”

Frank stood and paced the library. He pulled at his mouth but kept us waiting.

“Frank?” Katrina nudged.

He stopped and crossed his arms across his chest and said, “I’m going to bet your father has discovered his granddaughter’s weak spot: her relationship to Bob,” he said. “He’s had a few months head start on us, and he’s probably aware of what Gayle has gotten herself into at the recycling center. If we don’t figure out what Gayle knows about Bob’s murder, your father will get to her before we do.”

“Now I believe you,” Kelly said to Frank.

Frank sent an exhausted Carolyn and bewildered Kelly back to their respective homes, holding out hope that Gayle would return to one of the two houses before morning.

Before they departed, Frank turned his attention to Corey. “So all Gayle said was she was safe?”

Corey nodded and added, “She admitted she’d gotten herself into a bind, but she felt confident she could fix it.”

“Those were her exact words?” I said.

“Pretty much,” Corey answered. “She also said she knew where to hide so that William couldn’t find her.”

I waited for Corey and Kelly to leave before I addressed Frank. “I’m afraid Gayle is trying to solve Bob’s murder on her own.”

Frank frowned and scratched his beard. “It appears that way, doesn’t it?”