match Father Dan drink for drink
ever again), and I was late for my first appointment of the week. As
the owner and currently sole employee of a private investigation
business teetering on the edge of solvency, I couldn’t afford to piss
off potential clients by being tardy. And the woman tapping her foot
outside the door of Swift Investigations did not look like a happy
camper when I screeched to a stop in my Subaru Outback.
I assessed the waiting woman through the
windshield as I gathered my purse and laptop. She was taller than my
five-foot-three and rangy, dressed in a spiffy red suit and low-heeled
pumps. Mid-thirties, at a guess. Everything
about her said “wound too tight” from the French-braided hair pulling
the skin of her face taut, to the way her eyes skittered to her watch,
to me, and to the infant car seat at her feet. Shit. Who brings a baby
to a business meeting?
I got out of the car and offered her my
hand. “I got tied up with a burglary,” I said in lieu of an
apology. I’d bet the burglar had snarfeddown
at least fifteen dollars’ worth of the primo seed blend I put out to
attract song birds. “You must be Melissa Lloyd. C’mon in.”
She bent to pick up the baby carrier as I
unlocked the door and flicked the light switch. The illuminated space
was simple, clean and organized, just the way I liked it. Off-white
walls made the office look larger than it was. My desk filled the back
right corner by a window with wooden blinds. A matching desk, currently
unoccupied since my last assistant left to become an aroma-therapist,
sat with the long side making an L with the door. A closed door led to
the small bathroom in the back left corner.
“You are Charlotte
Swift, the investigator?” Ms. Lloyd paused just inside the door.
“Last I looked.” I crossed the nubby,
green-flecked carpet and sat behind my desk, stowing my stuff beneath
it. Swiveling my chair, I pulled a Pepsi from the mini-fridge against
the wall and popped the flip-top. I offered one to Ms. Lloyd with a
gesture but she shook her head, looking repulsed. I could see the word
“coffee” hovering in her mind but she didn’t speak it. Just as well
because I don’t even have a coffee maker; I don’t want to encourage
people to linger. There’s a cafe two doors down if they’re that
desperate to feed their addiction.
She wasn’t. She settled the baby on top of
the empty desk, tucked a yellow blanket around it, and seated herself in
one of the uncomfortable chairs.
“Cute kid,” I said perfunctorily, barely able
to make out a wisp of dark hair poking from beneath the blanket. “How
old?”
“A
little over a week.”
Melissa Lloyd looked damned trim for someone
who’d just popped out a baby. Maybe she was into Pilates. I drew a
legal pad toward me. “You said on the phone you need to find someone?”
“Yes. Your Yellow Pages ad said Missing
Persons is your specialty, right?”
Since her furrowed brow seemed to indicate she
needed reassurance, I said, “I’ve been in business here for almost six
years. For the past four, I’ve specialized in finding missing
persons. Before becoming a PI, I was in the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations, the OSI. You’ve seen NCIS, about
the Navy investigators? Like that, only without Mark Harmon. Overall,
I have more than thirteen years experience as an investigator. You can
check with these people if you want.” I slid a piece of paper
containing the names of clients who’d agreed to provide references
across the desk.
She took it, creased it in half, and tucked it
into the envelope purse on her lap. “That’s okay,” she said, sounding
as if references were no big deal.
She’d be dialing one of those numbers before
her car was out of the parking lot.
“What can I do for you?”
She leaned forward, her uncertainty replaced
by a business-like air. I knew she owned an interior design business in
Monument--I’d checked her out after she called--and I could suddenly see
her bossing wallpaper hangers around, coaxing homeowners into replacing
their mauve shag carpet, and trolling furniture stores until she found
just the right lamp or ottoman. I figured this air of command was more
natural to her than the earlier indecisiveness. It matched the suit,
too.
She took a deep breath and said, “The baby’s
not mine.”
“You’re babysitting?”
“No. Well, sort of.” She bit down on her
lower lip.
Oookay. Not
her baby. Not babysitting. If she was going to confess to kidnapping,
I needed to get it on tape. And I’d have to hope there was a reward for
the child’s safe return because clearly Ms. Lloyd wouldn’t be handing
over a retainer check. I surreptitiously pushed the button on the
underside of my desk that started a voice-activated recorder.
“So, if the baby’s not yours, whose is it?”
She laughed, an unmirthful sound. “God,
I’m screwing this up. Someone left the baby on my porch a week ago.”
The stork, maybe. That
sounded about as likely as Father Dan converting to Buddhism. I know my
clients don’t always tell me the truth; in fact, most of them probably
pitch me lies like Nolan Ryan throwing heat, but I like them to have
some glancing acquaintance with reality.
“Why would someone do that?” I tried to keep
my skepticism out of my voice.
She half rose, glaring. “Look, if you’re not
going to take me seriously--”
I threw up my hands in a surrender
gesture. If she’d kidnapped the baby, I needed to keep her calm,
convince her to tell me where the baby belonged. “I’m
listening. Really. Why don’t you just
start at the beginning?” I put on an Oprah face: non-judgmental and
encouraging.
She glanced at the sleeping baby and sank back
into the chair. “This is confidential, right? I mean, discretion is
very important to me.”
“I’ll keep what you tell me confidential
unless I think there’s a good reason to tell someone--something about a
crime, say--or the courts compel me to tell. PI-client relationships
aren’t protected like lawyer-client communications.” There. If she
confessed to kidnapping, I could blab all to the cops with a clear
conscience.
Ms. Lloyd looked marginally reassured. At any
rate, she continued with her story. “Like I said, someone left the baby
at my front door last Monday. I found her when I was leaving for
work. She was in that car seat, screaming her head off. At first, I
thought it was a mistake of some kind, or a joke, but there was a
note. It was addressed to me and when I read it I knew it wasn’t a
joke. My daughter had abandoned her baby on my doorstep.” She stopped
to take a deep breath.
I leaned forward, my forearms on the desk. “Your daughter? You
mean the baby’s your grand-kid?” I mentally revised my assessment of
her age up a few years. Damn, she looked a year or two younger than my
thirty-seven.
“Yes, she’s my grand-daughter. I had her
DNA-tested.”
“You what?” This
woman looked like a normal Colorado Springs professional woman, maybe a
bit more successful than most, but she was a certifiable loon.
“I thought it was necessary,” she said. She
reached into her purse and I stiffened, but her hand came out with
nothing more threatening than a manila envelope. “I got the lab results
yesterday--money produces fast results. Olivia’s definitely my
grand-daughter.” She didn’t sound happy about it.
“Okay, then, and you want me to . . .?”
“Find my daughter.”
At last, a note of sanity in this bizarre
discussion. Her daughter, obviously a teenager, had a baby, panicked,
dumped it on dear old mom, and ran away. Runaways were my thing. This,
I could handle. I offered her a sympathetic smile. “Right. How old’s your
daughter?”
“Seventeen.”
I jotted a note. “Did you bring a photo?”
“No, I--”
“I’ll need one. Her name?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met her.”
Wham! Right back to la-la land. I
drained my Pepsi and clunked the can onto the desk. “Ms. Lloyd--”
“I know!” She held up a hand to stop me. “I
know it sounds crazy. Just hear me out.”
Her eyes pled with me and a note in her voice
gave me pause. I arched my brows, inviting her to continue.
A wave of red washed up her neck and mottled
her jaw. “This is hard for me. I haven’t talked about it in--. I had
a baby. When I was sixteen, almost seventeen. I
gave it--her--up for adoption. I hadn’t heard of her, or from her,
since the day I signed the adoption papers until a week ago.”
I pushed across my handy box of tissues, but
her eyes remained dry, her voice tightly controlled.
“I know what you must think of me--”
“No, you don’t.”
She stopped, mouth open in mid-word. After a
second’s thought, she said, “You’re right. I don’t. I guess I’m
projecting. My husband says I do that a lot. Sometimes I feel so bad
about giving up that baby, so guilty, that I worry everyone thinks I’m a
horrible person. Un-natural. Like I have a
scarlet ‘A’ on my chest for ‘Abandoner.’ But
I was only sixteen! I just didn’t have what it takes to be a mother. I
still don’t. And my parents . . . well, let’s just say my daughter’s
better off wherever she ended up than she’d’ve been
with my folks.”
The bitterness in her voice would give
unsweetened chocolate a run for its money. Her remark about abandonment
hit too close to home and I said the first thing that came to
mind. “You’re married?”
“Yes. He doesn’t know.”
“Hello?”
She almost smiled at the incredulity in my
voice. “I mean he doesn’t know I had a baby and gave it up. Of course
he knows about Olivia, but he thinks I’m babysitting for a friend. He’s
not a kid person; he just about freaked when I called him to tell him
last Monday. He told me not to expect him to change any diapers. He’s
been away, in Arizona, trouble-shooting some problem for a customer . .
. he does software, something to do with personnel systems. He’ll
probably be gone another two or three weeks and I need to have this
resolved before he comes home.”
“The note says the mom is coming back. Why
not just wait?”
“It could be months! I can’t take care of a
baby that long.” She shook her head vehemently.
“Well, you could turn her over to Child
Protective Services and let them find the mother.”
“If she weren’t my grand-daughter that’s
exactly what I’d do. But . . . well, part
of me feels like that would be giving my daughter away a second time and
I just can’t do that either. Hiring someone to find Olivia’s mother
quickly seemed like the best solution.”
Olivia’s mother, I noted, not “my
daughter.” I studied her, the resolute line of her thin lips, the dark
smudges under her eyes, the tension in her shoulders. The faintest
trace of freckles dusted her nose and the tops of her cheeks, and I
imagined her as a kid, playing hide and seek and tag in
the Colorado sunshine. The baby stirred in her sleep and we both
looked over at her. One little fist now hung over the edge of the car
seat.
“Okay,” I told her. “I’ll find your
daughter. Since you don’t know her name, or where she lives, or what
she looks like, let’s start with what you do know. When and where was
she born?”
“There’s just one more thing.” Melissa Lloyd
looked down at her fingers pleating a fold of skirt and I could hardly
hear her. “I don’t want to meet her.”
“What?”
She looked up at me, her blue eyes fixed
unwaveringly on mine. “I don’t want to see her. Olivia’s mother. When
you find her, I want you to meet up with her, hand over Olivia. I can
let you have some money to give her if she looks like she needs
help. Then tell her I don’t want to meet her or hear from her ever
again. She’s not part of my life.”
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