Baby Love Lite (14 page)

She continued sobbing; my heart went out to
her. Trey leaned down, kissing her and stroking her hair. He told
her that everything would be okay. I'd one more question that I
desperately needed to ask Susan before she sank into oblivion.

“
Susan,” I said loudly. “I
thought Nurse Bradley had retired from the hospital; how could she
have been of child-bearing age?”

Susan looked me dead in the eye when she
answered. “There's no way that lady was any older than forty I
swear; gray wig and all, I could tell she wasn’t more than late
thirties or very early forties.”

“
Wig?” I asked.

It was too late. Susan had drifted off to
sleep. I'd no further description from her other than she knew that
the faux Nurse Bradley had been wearing a gray wig and that she, in
no way, looked liked she was old enough to have been retired after
twenty years spent as a nurse.

I did recall that the resume at our apartment
for this Sheila Bradley had said her nursing years had been spent
at North Bay hospital where I'd delivered Preston. We needed to get
there.

Trey was still in shock. He was on the phone
with one of his partners letting them know the situation. They
assured him they'd pull all strings possible with the authorities
to get an Amber Alert issued.

The problem was we'd nothing to go on. Susan
wasn't even up to talking to a sketch artist at the moment. We'd no
clue what the perp was driving, though I strongly suspected it was
a newer model, white SUV; the same type of vehicle that had struck
Jean.

The attending physician that had been
treating Susan came in to let us know that they were admitting her
overnight for observation of her head injury. Trey wanted to stay
with her but he didn’t want me to be alone at home. He was right.
Seeing Preston’s stuff and anything that had been a part of the
struggle with Susan against my mother would be disturbing.

I stayed with Susan while Trey made a couple
more phone calls. He called Clive to let him know what had
happened. Gina had returned to Atlanta the previous day. He called
her to see if she'd come and get me for the night. He let me know
that she was on her way to pick me up and that I was to stay there
until I heard from Trey in the morning. He'd talked to Tristan and
Nigel as well; Tristan was getting the first available flight to
Atlanta. Trey needed his family’s support right now. I didn’t want
to be away from him but I knew that both of us couldn't stay with
his mother. Trey was constantly on his cell phone with the police
and state highway patrol. I knew this wouldn’t do any good. My
mother, if nothing else, was good at duplicity and avoiding
detection. What she'd failed to consider was the magnitude of love
I had for my baby, and that was her fatal mistake. I'd bet the
whore’s life on it.

Once off of the phone, Trey cautioned me to
say no more about my suspicions relative to my mother. I wasn’t
sure if it was because he thought me delusional but the reasoning
he gave me sounded logical. He said that if the local authorities
deemed this a “domestic incident” it would delay getting the FBI
involved.

Trey wanted every resource available to be
involved in finding Preston. I wouldn't hinder that in any way. He
said we couldn't discount this had been a kidnapping for ransom in
which case, we wanted the assistance of the feds.

I knew my mother well enough to know that
kidnapping for ransom wasn't her game. She didn’t possess the
international savvy it would take to leave the country and keep a
low profile for the rest of her life. She didn’t operate that way.
Preston was valuable to her but for some other reason; something
less dramatic but equally lucrative without the risk.

She'd made a grave mistake in underestimating
the love that Trey and I both had for our baby girl. That's because
my mother didn't understand the concept of love. She'd soon
experience the wrath that results when a loved one is put at risk.
She'd crossed a very dangerous line this time.

Once at Gina’s, she was all over me, weeping
and sobbing, telling me that she was there for me in any way that I
needed her. I did need Gina’s help at the moment as this window of
opportunity presented itself only briefly.

“
Gina,” I said sternly, “you
need to get it together. I can use your help but not if you're
hysterical!"

She looked at me through tear stained eyes,
puzzled at my calm demeanor. I wasn't calm. I was nowhere near
calm, but I knew what I needed to do and I knew that I had to act
quickly before Trey became aware of what I was doing.

“
I need you to take me to
the airport, tonight. I've booked a flight to Indianapolis that
leaves at 10:17 p.m."

“
What the fuck are you
talking about Tylar?” she all but screeched.

“
Listen Gina, I can tell
right now that the local authorities are skeptical about Preston’s
disappearance. You should've heard the way they interrogated Trey
at the hospital. I know my mom is responsible for this. You're my
best friend. I need your trust and your help. Do I have
it?”

“
Abso-fucking-tutely!” she
said without pause. “Let me get you some clothes and a duffel bag.
Do you need money?”

“
No, I’m good with my credit
cards. It’s not like I’m running away. You can tell Trey where I’ve
gone once he gets here tomorrow. I know where Daniel is living. I
need to get a jump on this just in case he's still in touch with my
mother. He must have some information that could possibly
help.”

“
Let’s get going then,” she
said without hesitation.

Once I landed in Indianapolis, I had to take
a shuttle to a little town outside West Lafayette, Indiana where
Daniel was living. I'd gotten the address when I called his
parent's home earlier, pretending to be Abby Dunsmire from the
reunion committee planning the five-year class reunion from our
high school.

His mom had been more than willing to spill
all available information on Daniel, candy-coating it a bit. She
said he'd left college to pursue a career in agriculture.
Translation: he worked on a farm. She said that he'd been involved
on a major R & D project at one of the primary employers of
large heavy equipment in West Lafayette. Translation: factory
worker. She explained that this had led him to pursue agriculture
as he felt he could contribute more to that particular line of
work.

I'd booked a night at a Marriott Hotel close
by. I planned on getting up as early as possible and finding
Daniel’s rural address as I knew he must be a farm worker. He
certainly wouldn't have had the funds to buy his own farm, unless
my mother had invested my trust money in it, which I highly
doubted. It was more likely that my mother had been sponging off of
him for the length of time she'd been there.

I found the farm easily with the GPS on my
rental car. I arrived there just after dawn before he went out to
do whatever it is farmers do at the break of dawn. The farmhouse
was small and dumpy. I noticed my old blue Jeep Cherokee Laredo
parked by the side of the barn next to the house. My heart
quickened. What if Mom was here? That meant that Preston was here
as well; or that I was totally off-base in my assertion that my
mother had taken the baby. I had to know one way or another. If the
abductor wasn't my mom then I guess I'd be starting from scratch on
this. I couldn’t be wrong. My baby’s quick return depended on me
being right about this!

I walked up the short dirt path to the door.
There was no doorbell so I pounded on the storm door with my fist
several times. I could hear someone moving about inside.

The curtain on the door moved a smidgeon and
I heard a mumbled curse. He'd better open the damn door. I wasn't
averse to kicking the glass in if need be. I heard the lock turn
and the door opened. Daniel was standing there in a pair of grey
sweat pants and a dirty tee shirt. His hair was in dire need of a
trim, and it appeared he didn’t shave very often these days.

I wasn’t sure that he recognized me at first
as his expression was simply impassive. “Daniel? It’s me. It’s
Tylar,” I said hesitantly not sure if he was even awake enough to
comprehend what I'd said.

“
I know who the fuck you
are. What'd you want?” he asked acidly.

“
What I want is to know
where my mother is,” I commented just as acidly. “More importantly,
I want to know where the slut took my baby and what part you played
in this so that I can make sure you're charged as an
accessory.”

He attempted to shut the door but my foot was
planted firmly between it and the door jamb. “You know Daniel; you
can talk to me or you can talk to the authorities. What you don’t
want to do though is deal with my husband who is likely finding out
just about now, where I am.”

He reluctantly opened the door allowing me to
step inside the house. It smelled of whiskey and dirty clothes.

“
What the hell are you
talking about?” he asked, rubbing his unshaven face and looking
totally clueless.

“
Look - asshole,” I said
plainly, “I didn’t travel here to listen to your feign ignorance
about my mom and what she's been up to these last few
weeks.”

He cut me off abruptly either out of
stupidity or ignorance because I was going nowhere until I'd
drained his mind of any information that might help me locate my
mother.

“
Get the hell out of here,
Tylar. I don’t know what the hell you're talking about and I don’t
fucking care. I don’t want you or that slut that raised you in my
house. Now get out unless you want the police here."

“
Go ahead,” I hissed, daring
him to do just that. “I want them here so that they can question a
potential material witness, at the very least, and a possible
accessory to kidnapping.”

I had his attention. He finally managed an
expression and there was a hint of fear in it. “Come on into the
kitchen,” he invited. “I need some fucking coffee.”

I followed him through the closed in back
porch that now looked as if it served as a utility room. There was
an old washer and dryer in it, as well as a mound of dirty clothing
piled right in front of it. The kitchen opened up right beyond the
utility room. I saw a stack of dirty dishes on the counter and in
the sink. A ‘Mr. Coffee’ had some coffee pouring into the pot.
Daniel rinsed out two dirty coffee mugs, pouring himself one and
starting to pour one for me.

“
No, thanks,” I said, taking
a seat at the small kitchen table.

He poured himself a mug of coffee then came
to sit down at the table, taking a heavy gulp of it before he
raised his bloodshot eyes to me.

What the fuck has happened to him?

“
You’re probably wondering
why I look like shit.”

“
What I’m concerned about
Daniel, is where my baby has been taken since my mother abducted
her and assaulted my mother-in-law.”

“
Your baby? I didn't even
know you had a baby.” He said it very matter-of-factly as if it was
of no consequence. “You know,” he said, “I was supposed to have a
baby, too. I lost mine. Maggie and I loved one other, Tylar. I know
you probably don’t get that; it’s hard to understand, but it just
happened. It started on our prom night . . .”

I interrupted him, not willing to relive that
drama when more important things needed to be discussed. “Daniel, I
know about all of that. I don’t really give a damn. I flew here
from Atlanta because my baby, my five-month-old baby girl, was
taken from my husband’s and my home while my mother-in-law was
interviewing babysitters. And I believe it was my mother that took
her and assaulted my mother-in-law. What I want to know is how
you're involved?”

“
Hey, I'm not involved in
any way with what supposedly happened to you and your baby! I
haven’t seen Maggie for about six months. She and I were living
together after she'd quit her job and moved here from Radcliff. I
was still in school but I needed to be with her. I quit school, got
a job in a factory. I thought everything was good. One day I come
home from work and she was fucking gone. No note; nothing. She'd
taken my Ford Bronco; left that piece of shit Jeep here for me. I
didn’t hear from her for months. She finally brought her ass back
home. She was more than six months pregnant. She said it was
mine.”

He stopped and got up, walking to the counter
and picking up a nearly empty pack of cigarettes, pulling one out
and lighting it. He pulled a dirty dish from the sink, plunking it
down on the table to use for an ashtray.

“
I do believe the baby was
mine," he continued. "She claimed she'd been out and about, trying
to earn more money so that our baby would be well taken care of
since I'd quit college for her. I really believed her. She went
into labor a few weeks early here at home. We had no medical
insurance. She didn’t want me to take her to the hospital. She said
women had delivered babies at homes for centuries. She said she'd
instruct me on what to do. She'd read up on it.”

He got up from his chair at the table and
poured a shot of Jim Beam into his coffee mug, then topped it off
with coffee. “Don’t judge me,” he commented noticing how I'd
watched what he'd done. “You've no idea how much pain that woman
has caused me.”

“
Oh, I think that I have a
clue,” I said sarcastically. “Please, go on.”

“
I assisted her during
labor; she was in a whole lot of pain. I finally couldn’t take her
screaming and called the paramedics. By the time they got here and
transported her to the hospital, our baby was stillborn. He'd
strangled on his own umbilical cord, something that, had a doctor
been there to deliver, wouldn't have been an issue.”