A Woman With A Mystery Part 4

"Maria Perez?"

"No, I'm the caretaker," the woman said.

"The caretaker? Has Ms. Perez left town?"

After a long silence, the woman said, "I'm sorry, but Maria Perez was killed in a car wreck."

He sucked in a breath. "When was that?"

"October. I'm just taking care of the place until the estate is settled."

"Can you tell me when exactly she was killed? Was it on Halloween?"

"No, the day before. Would you like a member of her family to call you?"

"No, that won't be necessary." He clicked off the phone and glanced over at Holly, who was waiting expectantly. "Maria Perez was killed in an automobile accident the day before before Halloween." Halloween."

"Then she couldn't have been one of the monsters," she said.

"No." But had someone seen to it that Maria Perez wasn't at the birth?

Holly stared out at the pa.s.sing town, visibly shaken by the news. He didn't have the heart to tell her what he feared they'd find at Carolyn Gray's apartment.

Chapter Four.

The West Gate was about as upscale as Dry Creek got. A half-dozen two-story apartment buildings with bay windows and balconies painted the recent color of choice: tan. Slade idly wondered what kind of money nurses made these days as he and Holly found Carolyn Gray's unit, knocked at the door and waited. To neither of their surprises, Carolyn Gray didn't open the door.

"Keep an eye out," he told Holly as he pulled out his lock-pick kit and went to work on the door. It was a simple lock and Carolyn hadn't set her dead bolt.

"Are you sure about this?" Holly asked with obvious apprehension as he opened the door.

"Carolyn?" he called softly.

No answer.

Holly followed him deeper into the apartment.

He had a bad feeling that Carolyn Gray was probably the only one who'd seen the person who'd brought Holly and the baby to the hospital, especially if most everyone else had been busy that night. If Holly was right about her baby being born alive and then stolen, that person wouldn't want to be identified.

By the time he pushed open the bedroom door, he'd pretty well convinced himself that they'd find Carolyn Gray murdered. Holly's paranoia was definitely catching. And quite possibly with good reason.

Instead of finding a body though, he found the place had been cleaned out. And in a hurry! Empty drawers hung open, abandoned clothes hangers were piled like pick-up-sticks on the closet floor. Carolyn Gray was gone and it didn't look as if she'd be back. But had she left on her own?

After finding nothing of interest in the apartment, they left.

"There's a chance I'm not crazy, isn't there?" Holly said quietly as she climbed back into his pickup.

"Yeah." A slim chance at this point. But a chance. The same chance that he might now be looking for his own very-alive baby. He didn't want to think what had happened to Carolyn Gray.

"Did you have any tests done while you were pregnant?" he asked, hoping for at least one that might prove the stillborn wasn't hers.

Holly shook her head. "Maria, my midwife, didn't feel it was necessary."

"So you didn't know the s.e.x of your baby?"

"No."

And there were no tests anywhere as proof. How convenient. Other than the blood tests taken at the hospital.

He drove back to Dr. Delaney's office, where they'd left her SUV. "I want to talk to your sister-in-law," he said as he pulled into the parking lot next to her car. "She was there, you said, when you woke up at the hospital. Did you call her? Or did one of the nurses?"

Holly seemed startled by the question. "I don't know. I never even thought to ask."

"I'd like to see your sister-in-law alone, if that's all right with you." He could feel her gaze on him.

"I should tell you that Inez might be difficult."

"You told her you were hiring me?" he asked, wondering if this Inez person was the one who the Santa bell-ringer had been talking to last night.

She shook her head. "I just mentioned to her that I didn't believe the stillborn baby was mine, and that I was concerned about the blanks in my memory. I didn't mention hiring you because I didn't even know myself that I was going to until I did."

"You didn't mention the...monsters?"

She shook her head and looked appalled at the idea. "Can you imagine what Inez would do?"

He couldn't, but obviously she could and it wasn't good.

"I was thinking about your painting," he said. "One of the monsters seemed smaller than the other two. Do you think it's possible it could have been a woman?" He could feel her gaze.

"Yes, that's true, one is smaller." She sounded surprised that he'd noticed. Or surprised that she hadn't.

"But the painting doesn't prove anything. I mean, how can I be sure it's even a real memory?"

She had a point there. But he found it hard to believe anyone could conjure up something like that.

"You aren't thinking it could be Inez, are you?" she asked suddenly. She seemed to find the idea laughable. "When you meet her you'll see why that isn't possible. She can barely get around."

He'd have to take her word for it. Until he met the woman.

"But I do wish now that I'd never said anything to her about any of this." She let out a sigh and he wondered why she'd confided in him about monster memories-and not her sister-in-law. "You have to understand," she said slowly, "Inez is from an older generation and a very conservative family. My getting pregnant only a month after Allan died was considered a family scandal. Inez doesn't want me making it any worse by pursuing what she sees as lunacy brought on by guilt, grief and postpartum depression."

A possible explanation, one Slade himself had definitely considered. But so far they had no idea where Holly had given birth. Or if the baby taken to the hospital with her was actually hers. And the only other person who might know anything had left town in a hurry. Or had been taken out of town. It was enough to make him definitely suspicious.

Holly's story was crazy. It was a leap to think that some other woman had given birth that night at about the same time and close by in order to make the baby switch. Quite the coincidence. Or maybe not. Just like the midwife getting killed in an auto accident the day before Holly gave birth.

"I hope the blood typing will prove that the baby isn't...yours." He'd almost said ours. ours. "Otherwise, we might have to have the body exhumed for DNA testing." "Otherwise, we might have to have the body exhumed for DNA testing."

She looked shocked-and scared. "Inez will never allow it. She had the infant buried in the family plot. She even named the little boy after her brother, Allan Wellington."

The sister-in-law had named the baby? "Wellington? Not Barrows?"

"Barrows was my maiden name. I never took Allan's name," she said, and looked away from him out the side window at the pa.s.sing houses. "We were married less than a week. He was older than I was."

Whoa. She married some old guy who died only a week into the marriage? That didn't sound at all like the woman he'd known. But he reminded himself, he'd never expected her to steal his money and files and skip out on him either. So he couldn't rule out the possibility that Holly had married Allan Wellington for his money. He just hoped he didn't find out that she'd offed the guy.

She fell silent as if she wished she hadn't offered as much information as she had. He wondered if she was worried about what he thought-or suspected. Or if the concern he saw in her expression was over the possibility of riling her sister-in-law.

"You always do what your sister-in-law wants?" he had to ask, studying her. The Holly Barrows he'd known before wouldn't have let some old biddy boss her around.

She seemed surprised by the question. "Inez has a way of wearing you down," she admitted, a sadness to her tone as she opened her side of the pickup to get out.

He glanced around to make sure there was no one around her vehicle, not sure who he was looking for. He doubted he'd recognize the Santa bell-ringer without his beard and hat. But there were few people on the streets with most of the stores closed for the day.

"I'll call you later," he said as she got out. He waited until she drove away, his mind racing. Who was this Inez Wellington that she had so much power over Holly? And Allan Wellington, this man Holly had married, why did his name sound familiar? Something told him the marriage hadn't been a happy one. Or maybe he just wanted to believe that.

He picked up his cell phone and dialed Chief L. T. Curtis.

"What do I need to get a body exhumed?"

"This isn't about your-"

"No." Slade had put his mother's murder on the back burner, but hadn't forgotten about it by any means. "It's for a client of mine. She gave birth recently. There is some question as to whether the baby might have been switched and the wrong baby buried."

Curtis was silent for a moment. "It's happened before. Were these babies born at County Hospital?"

"No, it's complicated," Slade said, not really wanting to get into the details or to involve the police at this point. "What would I need for an exhumation?"

"Enough information to talk a judge into giving me a court order."

In other words, proof. The one thing Slade was real short on.

"I a.s.sume this is about that plate you needed run?" the chief asked.

"Yeah. I'm getting the blood typing from the hospital tomorrow and I hope it's questionable enough for a court order."

"I thought she didn't give birth at the hospital," Curtis asked.

"No, but she did go there right after the birth and they routinely take both the mother's and baby's blood."

"This is one h.e.l.l of a time to ask for an exhumation," Curtis noted.

"Yeah," Slade agreed. "I'll check back with you, but meanwhile I'll be at Sh.e.l.ley's. I'm house-sitting until she gets back from her trip to Tobago." Sh.e.l.ley'd had the chance to spend the rest of the holiday with some friends on the Caribbean island, and Slade had insisted she go. He felt better having her out of town right now.

"Too bad you didn't go with her," the chief said, and hung up.

Slade shook his head as he clicked off his cell phone, started his pickup and headed for Paradise.

INEZ WELLINGTON lived some thirty miles from Dry Creek in a condominium in a fancy gated community known as Paradise West. Slade had been born and raised in Montana in a time when only a jack-leg log fence-and often not even that-separated the men from the cows. Because of that, he was contemptuous of gated communities and pitied the frightened people who lived behind the bars.

A stoop-shouldered thin woman with a shock of white hair and small dark eyes opened the door. Inez looked to be in her early seventies and had the pinched face of a woman who hadn't got what she wanted out of life. She leaned on a gold-handled cane and eyed him suspiciously.

"Yes?" she said, even though she knew who he was and why he'd come because he'd had to call even to get in the gate.

"I'm Slade Rawlins, the private investigator Holly Barrows hired," he said again, just so there was no misunderstanding.

But from the look of obvious contempt in her gaze, it was clear she knew exactly who he was and why he was there.

"Yes," she said, motioning him in and triple-locking the door behind him. "The only reason I'm bothering to see you at all is for Holly."

Somehow he didn't believe this woman did anything for Holly's benefit. He stood in the small stone foyer. From what he could see of the rest of the condo, the decor was as severe and cold as the woman herself. A few plaques hung on the wall, tributes to one Wellington or another. Obviously a bunch of overachievers.

He couldn't see the Holly Barrows he knew from the two months they'd spent together last year marrying into this family. He couldn't help but be suspicious and wondered just how old Allan Wellington had been.

"I need to ask you a few questions," he said, hoping the old bat would at least offer him a drink.

She pursed her lips as she shuffled past him and into a sitting room, the tip of the cane tapping the floor. She didn't head for the ornate mirrored bar, but took a straight-backed chair and offered him one that looked equally uncomfortable. It was.

"This is such a waste of time and money," she complained as she brushed at her spotless slacks.

"How long have you known Holly Barrows?" he asked, getting right to it. He didn't want to stay here any longer than he had to.

Inez lifted a thin, veined, pale hand from the arm of her chair. "About two years."

"Did you meet her before or after your brother Allan met her?"

She pursed her thin colorless lips, her hand dropping to the arm of the chair. "We met her at a party, I believe, the same night. Did she also tell you they had hoped to have children? Unfortunately, Allan succ.u.mbed to a weak heart before he could produce an heir."

An heir. Slade made a mental note to see how much money Holly Barrows had come into after her husband's rather quick demise and was disgusted with himself for his suspicious nature.

"And how old was Allan?" he asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

The old woman stiffened. "Fifty-one."

"You had the same mother and father?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Of course, we did. I was the firstborn. My mother had trouble conceiving. It's one of the reasons Allan dedicated his life to infertility. He was a change-of-life baby, a miracle. Not that it is any of your business."

"I just want to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Holly, is what, twenty-eight? That's quite the age difference."