“Excuse me?” a female voice called from behind her.
Anne stopped and turned to see a young nurse’s aide approaching. She was in her late teens, with short, curly brown hair and a sweet smile. The name tag on her lapel said Lambert.
“Hi, I’m Bev,” the nurse’s aide said. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with Google-puss...uh, I mean—”
“Google-puss fits her perfectly,” Anne assured her.
Bev giggled. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I was there, too, on the night your friend came in, and she was real nice to me. She even gave me this locket.”
The young woman held up a gold-plated locket hanging from a gold chain around her neck. The locket was engraved with the letter
L.
Anne smiled. Maybe luck was with her, after all. “Bev, these flowers are for you,” she said, handing them to the nurse’s aide. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee or a soft drink or something?”
Bev took the flowers from her hand, looking thoroughly pleased. “Yeah, well sure. I was just going on my break. Thanks.”
Five minutes later they were in the cafeteria, Anne with a tall glass of water—per her lactation instructions—and Bev with a giant Diet Coke and a plate of French fries.
“I’m sure her doctor picked this hospital,” Bev said in answer to a question Anne had just asked. “Faust always brings his patients here to deliver.”
“So Heather wasn’t rushed here or anything?” Anne asked.
“Hardly. She had already been in labor for nearly six hours when I came on shift at eleven that night,” Bev said between bites. “But she was real good about the pain, joking around and stuff. Some of the women. Whew! Do they scream.”
“What else do you remember about that night, Bev?” Anne asked.
“I wasn’t in the delivery room, but I got to see Heather and her baby when they rolled her back to her room. She looked so happy with her little boy in her arms. First thing she said to me was that he had his daddy’s hair and eyes.”
“His daddy’s hair,” Anne repeated, remembering what Andy had said about Rolan Kendrall’s toupee.
“Well, yeah, she had all that long, curly red hair and the baby had that straight patch of blond.”
She had red hair? But Anne could have sworn Andy had said Heather Kendrall was a blond beauty.
“And her little boy had just the bluest eyes you ever did see,” Bev said. “I know they say that all newborns have blue eyes. But it’s not true. I’ve seen lots of ’em born with brown and even black.”
“Did Heather’s husband ever visit her in the hospital?” Anne asked.
“I don’t know. Only man I ever saw her with was the male nurse who works for Dr. Faust.”
“What’s his name?” Anne asked.
“A huge guy with black hair and a really squeaky voice. He’s not the kind you ask.”
Bender?
Anne’s heart started to race right along with her speculations.
“Heather and me, we talked about rock groups and just all kinds of cool stuff,” Bev related. “You would never know she was so old... I mean, so much older. Only that big male nurse kept telling me to get lost every time I tried to come by to say hello.”
“Bev, the locket that Heather gave you. Did she get it in the gift shop?”
“No, she was wearing it when she came in.”
Anne had begun to suspect as much.
“She gave it to me on the afternoon after she delivered, while I helped her walk up and down the hall,” Bev continued. “She was asking me about the nurse’s entrance and exit to the parking lot. Of course, I didn’t know why at the time.”
“You didn’t know why she gave you the locket?” Anne asked, confused.
“Oh, I know she gave me the locket because she liked me and knew the
L
was the first letter of my last name. It was her wanting to know about the back way out of the hospital that I didn’t get at first.”
“How do you mean?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what, Bev?”
“She lit out the back exit that night with her baby when the nurse brought him for a feeding,” Bev said. “Didn’t even bother waiting for her doctor to check her out. Just took off. That male nurse and her doctor were really ticked, I can tell you.”
* * *
A
NNE
HURRIED
THROUGH
the hospital lobby, looking for Tom and the baby. She had so much to share with him. But she couldn’t see him or Tommy anywhere. Finally, she approached the gray-haired receptionist at the admissions desk.
“Excuse me, I was supposed to meet a priest—”
“Are you Anne?” the receptionist interrupted.
“Yes,” she said, surprised to be addressed by her name.
“Father Christen was called to the bedside of a dying man in intensive care. He asked if you’d meet him there. It’s just around the corner to your right. Go straight down the hall. You’ll see the signs for the family waiting room.”
Anne thanked the receptionist and headed down the hall. When she reached the waiting room, she found a couple in their sixties sitting together, softly crying.
On the woman’s lap was Tommy. He, too, was crying, but not so softly. Anne went directly up to the woman.
“I’m Anne,” she said, reaching for Tommy.
“Oh,” the woman said, immediately relinquishing the baby.
Anne held Tommy close to her. He clutched her as though he had feared she had abandoned him. She knew Tom wouldn’t have let the baby out of his arms if it hadn’t been necessary, but she still hated the thought of Tommy being in a stranger’s hands, even for a few minutes.
Tommy obviously wasn’t too thrilled about it, either. Anne cuddled him, stroked his head and talked soothingly to him until he quieted. Then she took the vacant chair beside the weeping woman.
“Where’s Father Christen?” Anne asked softly.
“He’s in with our son,” the man said.
So, it was this couple’s son who was dying. Anne wished she knew what she could say to these distraught parents, but she had no words.
“We never knew!” the woman sobbed, her distress so intense that it welled and overflowed, like the tears streaming out of her eyes. “How could we have guessed what he had done?”
Anne understood that the woman wasn’t really talking to her. The man wrapped his arm around his wife, holding him to her as tears flooded his face, as well. “Sweetheart, we got him the priest. It’s all we could do. The rest is up to him.”
A moment later Tom emerged from the intensive care unit with a chunky, gray-haired male surgeon. Both the surgeon and Tom approached the waiting couple.
“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Tomei,” the surgeon said, grim faced. “We did what we could.”
The couple looked at Tom. He sent them a reassuring smile. “He died in peace.”
Anne knew then that Tom must have been summoned to their dying son’s bedside to hear his confession and to give him absolution for whatever it was they had just learned he had done.
She’d never realized what a gift that could be until she saw the relief that cut into their sorrow.
Then the full impact of what she had just witnessed struck her with startling clarity.
And suddenly Anne had the answer to what had puzzled her for so long.
CHAPTER TEN
A
S
T
OM
WATCHED
Mr. and Mrs. Tomei disappear into the intensive care unit with the doctor, he was glad that he had been here today for them, as well as their son. They had received a shock and had a tough decision before them. But after having first talked with them and then their son, Tom was confident that they would make the right choice.
He turned to Anne, intending to ask her what she had found out, only to be surprised into silence by the intense expression on her face as she stared at him.
“The damn answer was right there in front of me the whole time,” she said.
Tom was stunned. Both by Anne’s sudden cursing and the irritated edge to her tone.
She held Tommy out to him. Tom gently took the baby from her arms, wondering what had happened.
“I’ve just been too blind to see it,” Anne said in that same irritated tone.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked as calmly as he could.
“You gave me the big clue, didn’t you?” she said as she started to pace, her movements just as agitated as her words.
“Anne—” Tom began.
“‘I’m not just a man,’ you said,” Anne interrupted. “‘I’m a priest. I stand by my vows.’ You even said that meant that you couldn’t always tell me what I wanted to know.”
Suddenly, Tom realized that Anne’s anger wasn’t directed at him. It was directed at herself. He carefully controlled the growing excitement inside him.
Anne stopped her pacing and came to stand directly in front of him. Her eyes rose to his. “Lindy didn’t just come by last Friday to have Tommy baptized. She also came by so you could hear her confession.”
Tom’s sigh of relief was soft and private, registering deep within his heart.
“Well, Tom?”
He was careful to keep his face and tone noncommittal. “Anne, if you’re asking me whether I heard the confession of someone, you must understand I can’t tell you. Even the fact that I might have heard a confession is a confidential matter between a priest and a parishioner.”
Her eyes sparked with insight.
“Just what I thought,” she said. “Everything you’ve refused to tell me—still refuse to tell me—is what you learned in Lindy’s confession. Even the identity of Tommy’s mother. The only fact that Lindy shared outside of her confession is that Tommy is yours.”
Tom loved this bright, beautiful woman so much at this moment that it was taking every ounce of his control not to show it. But he couldn’t show it because it could be interpreted for what it was—his total relief that she had finally understood.
Anne moved closer to him until they were breast-to-breast, and looked him right in the eye. “I’ve never liked the strong, silent type,” she said in a voice too calm, too sensible.
When she paused, Tom felt the breath stall in his lungs.
“But I think I’m definitely going to make an exception in your case,” she finished with a smile, and he recognized the similarity of the phrase he’d said to her three days before.
She leaned up then, grabbed the lapels of his black clerical jacket and kissed him hard on the mouth just as he had kissed her. And Tom fell in love with her all over again.
Anne leaned back and slipped her arm in the crook of his. “Come on, Father Christen,” she said as she dragged him toward the exit. “While I’m on a roll, I have another mystery or two to solve today.”
* * *
T
OM
AND
A
NNE
sat in adjoining cubicles in a nearby library less than twenty minutes later, going through the microfiche records of old newspapers.
“Your friend Andy did say that Heather Kendrall was a local beauty queen ten years ago?” Anne asked from the cubicle next to Tom’s.
“That’s what he said,” Tom replied, shifting little Tommy in his arms.
Anne wished Andy had been a bit more specific. The local newspapers were pretty thick, and the local beauty queens were numerous. Having so many pages whiz by on the screen was beginning to give her a headache.
She had told Tom all about her conversation with the nurse’s aide, Bev Lambert, on the way to the library. From the grim expression on Tom’s face, Anne could tell that he hadn’t been aware of the details surrounding Lindy’s delivery and subsequent flight from the hospital.
Getting to the truth of all this was going to take some doing, with Tom not able to help out in the crucial areas—and Anne not exactly sure what those areas were.
But she didn’t care. She was riding high on the relief of having finally figured out what had kept Tom silent for so long. She felt as though nothing could stop them now from uncovering the secret behind little Tommy’s birth and Lindy’s death.
Anne was bleary eyed by the time she finally found what she was looking for in the microfiche records. “Here she is,” she called, excited to be at the end of her search.
Tom scooted his chair over to her. “Heather Svenson, Miss Firecracker,” he read beneath the newspaper shot of the big beauty queen with the brilliant smile and shoulder-length blond hair pictured on the screen.
“That woman is a natural blonde,” Anne said with conviction.
“And you obviously think that’s important because...?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know of any natural blondes who would dye their hair red,” Anne said. “Did you find a picture of Rolan Kendrall in the society pages?”
Tom handed her a copy of the newspaper microfiche he had printed out. “This is the happy couple last year at a fund-raiser,” he said.
Anne looked at the smiling photo of Heather Svenson Kendrall and her husband, Rolan. Heather now had short blond hair. In contrast to her very light coloring, he had black hair and eyes.
“The facts are impossible to ignore, Tom,” Anne said as she looked at the picture of the Kendralls. “Bev told me that the baby’s mother was wearing a locket inscribed with the initial
L.
That’s
L
as in Lindy, not Heather. Bev also described her as having long, curly red hair. Heather Kendrall didn’t give birth to that baby whose certificate bears her name. Lindy did.”
“Yet the Kendralls clearly planned to claim the baby as theirs,” Tom said as he stroked Tommy’s cheek.
“And the presence of Bender in that hospital room proves that Attorney George Shrubber is up to his snout in that attempt to take Lindy’s baby from her,” Anne said.
Tom nodded. “The only reason they didn’t succeed is because Lindy sneaked him out of the hospital with her.”
“Can you tell me when you first heard of Shrubber, Bender and the Kendralls?” Anne asked.
“When Shrubber and Bender came to the Church of the Good Shepherd a few days ago,” Tom answered.
“I pretty much figured that must be it,” Anne said. “If Lindy had mentioned them in her confession, you never would have been so open about trying to find out about them.”
“Speaking of Shrubber,” Tom said, “I’d like to swing by his house and have a look.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Anne agreed as she grabbed her shoulder bag and rose. “There are a few things that are really bothering me,” she confided as they headed out of the library. “One, what happened to Lindy’s baby and how did she get hold of Tommy? And, two, why did Lindy agree to be admitted to the hospital and give birth under Heather Kendrall’s name?”
“That second one is bothering me, as well,” Tom said.
Anne hadn’t expected he would comment on the first. She imagined she could look forward to a lot of one-way conversations on that topic.
“I’d best warn you now, Tom Christen. Whether it turns out to be embarrassing to you or not because of all the women you were with a year ago, I’m going to find out which one is Tommy’s mother and get to the bottom of these secrets.”
Tom seemed amused by her threat. She supposed it was just the nature of the male beast to be anything but embarrassed by the number of women who had succumbed to his charms. And she had to admit, Tom was damnably charming.
Damn him.
* * *
T
HE
FIRST
ADDRESS
Pat Hosmer had given Anne and Tom for Shrubber turned out to be a Georgian house on Brattle Street in Cambridge. It was red brick, with stately columns alongside the door and antique panes above it.
Anne consulted the assessor’s sheet she held. “Two bedroom, two bath. Appraised at two million. Shrubber bought it just under two years ago, and get this. He paid cash.”
“The private adoption business must be lucrative,” Tom said as he stopped the Porsche a few doors down and parked it at the curb.
Anne gazed up and down the street of the well-kept, exclusive neighborhood. “I wish we could—”
“Get down, Anne,” Tom interrupted, his deep voice a command as he slid down in his seat and pulled Anne with him.
“Tom, what—”
“It’s Bender,” Tom whispered, keeping an eye on the image in his side view mirror. “Stay down.”
She actually didn’t have a choice. Tom’s strong arm was firmly anchored on her chest, and she sensed a deep, almost dangerous current flowing through him. When mere seconds later he withdrew his arm and sat up, he was so calm and seemed so relaxed that Anne wondered if she had imagined it.
“It’s all right now,” he said. “Bender’s gone inside.”
When she straightened, Anne looked toward the Georgian house. Her eyes fixed on the green four-by-four that was now parked out front. Excitement pumped through her.
“Tom—”
“Yes, I know, a green van,” he interrupted. He tore off a slip of paper from a pad he’d been scribbling on. “This is the license number. I’m assuming the next thing you’ll want to do is to call your friend at the D.A.’s office?”
Anne had already pulled out her cell phone. After exchanging a few words with Pat and waiting for the records to be accessed, she got the information she needed, thanked her friend and flipped the cell phone closed.
“It’s registered to a Claude Butz,” Anne said. “Pat checked the name in her computer. Butz is a shady private investigator who lost his license four years ago when he shot a guy. His lawyer got the charge reduced to simple assault in the plea bargaining. And guess who that lawyer was.”
“Shrubber,” Tom said.
She nodded. “Butz served eighteen months in prison. Last information from his parole officer is that he’s working as a bouncer at nightclubs. And, Tom, get this. Pat says the physical description on her record for Butz matches that of the guy Shrubber introduced to us as Chet Bender.”
“So Shrubber lied,” Tom said. “Bender really is Butz.”
“His background and green van aren’t enough to implicate Butz in Lindy’s accident, but they’re important pieces of evidence to add to the case against him and Shrubber.”
“I thought it might be the prosecutor’s wheels I’ve seen turning around in that beautiful head of yours,” Tom said.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Anne promised, still riding high on her recent discoveries.
Tom glanced at the list of addresses Pat Hosmer had given Anne. “I didn’t notice before, but this second address for Shrubber is in South Boston and not far from the hospital where Lindy delivered. We should head there next.”
Tommy started to fuss in his car seat and Tom checked his watch.
“The little guy’s hungry again and probably needs changing. We’d best make a stop at home first.”
“Traveling with him would be so much easier if I were breast-feeding,” Anne lamented.
“As soon as we get home, I’ll see what I can do to hurry that process along,” Tom said as he pulled the car away from the curb.
“We don’t have any time to waste,” Anne said, trying her best to sound practical, despite the juicy little thrills already shooting through her in anticipation of what Tom intended.
“Don’t worry, Anne,” Tom assured her with that irresistible air of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. “I’m not planning on wasting any time.”
* * *
“A
NNE
V
ANDREE
DIDN
’
T
give birth to any baby,” Claude Butz said as he stood in front of Shrubber’s ornate desk inside the Georgian house on Brattle Street.
Shrubber leaned forward in his heavy baroque chair, juggling a brass paperweight in the shape of a football. “This better not be another one of your screwups, Butz.”
“Believe me, Mr. Shrubber,” Butz said. “I checked every birth record in the Berkshires. The judge lied. That’s Lindy Olson’s baby she and the priest have.”
“Damn,” Shrubber said. “Why are they claiming it’s theirs? What are they up to?”
“Does it matter?” Butz asked with a shrug. “Important thing is that you can demand they return the baby. After all, you have the birth records showing the kid is the Kendralls’.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Shrubber said irritably as he swung out of his chair. “I can’t afford to make this a legal matter. If I go to court to press the point over this kid against a priest and a judge, our whole operation could come under scrutiny.”
“You going to give the Kendralls another kid?”
“Thanks to you they don’t want another kid,” Shrubber said, spitting out the words. “I told you never to let one of our clients hold a baby until it was out of the hospital and officially in their hands.”
“Heather Kendrall didn’t go through me, Mr. Shrubber,” Butz said. “She bribed one of the nurses in the maternity ward.”
“I don’t care who she bribed. You were at the hospital to keep a lid on things.”
“But I had my hands full watching the girl.”
“Fat lot of good that did,” Shrubber said, slamming the brass paperweight onto his desk. “You still let her and the baby slip through your fingers. Now the Kendralls are threatening to go public if they don’t get that damn kid.”
“What are we going to do?” Butz asked.
“
We
aren’t going to do anything.
You’re
going to get that baby back.”
“You mean just take him?” Butz asked. “But what about the priest and the judge?”
“What about them?” Shrubber challenged. “They know the kid’s not theirs. And it’s obvious Lindy didn’t tell them anything important. Otherwise the cops would be all over us.”