“Right. I gave her a brief outline and gave you a glowing review. She agreed to see you around ten-thirty this morning, at the motel.”
“No problem.”
“Good,” Alan said, and rang off.
Tom checked his watch and went upstairs to start packing, tendrils of dread still weaving their way through his skull and around his rib cage.
15
By ten-twenty, he was driving north on Pacific Coast Highway through a stretch of California contentment marked by tackle shops, seafood restaurants, small boutiques, and no sign of poverty. On his left, between slightly eccentric houses tightly strung along the highway, he got an occasional glimpse of blue ocean with polite surf tickling the edge of a sandy beach. On the right, beyond the roadside businesses, the land sometimes rose to clifflike heights where houses enjoyed stately separation and spectacular views. Both sides of highway were money country.
Malibu, California, 90265.
A folksy-looking hand-painted sign announced NEEDHAM’S FLOWER SHOP AND NURSERY. He looked for Shannon out of the corner of his eye but didn’t see her, then Needham’s was behind him and a sign was coming up fast that said BEACHFRONT MOTEL.
The motel wasn’t very big but looked well-cared-for and confident. Standing on the ocean side of the highway, it shared a corner lot with a small restaurant and cocktail lounge. Tom eased into the center lane, waited for a break in traffic, then turned into the lot, going past the office and parking in an unmarked slot behind the restaurant.
He got out into a fresh ocean-smelling breeze, locked the car, and headed reluctantly back toward the office. Up two steps, a small white porch, a screen door on a spring. Behind it a half-glass door with a brass thumb latch, then he was in a tiny empty reception area with a registration counter, a switchboard, and a half-open door behind the counter leading into what looked like someone’s living room.
He was reaching for the bell on the counter when the door opened all the way and a woman came through it.
She saw him and stopped, a hint of anxiety in her eyes. She had to be in her mid-forties but looked younger, tall and less than fanatically slender, hair brown and done simply and about shoulder length, tan blouse, brown skirt.
“Mr. Bell, I’ll bet.” No mistaking that sunlit piney voice. He said he was. “Customers usually park right by the door. Hi, I’m Mary Jane. Alan explained about this other girl showing up, but now you’re here, I’m not sure I should talk to you.”
“I can’t make you,” Tom said, “but I can’t talk to Estelle Marchand because she died in nineteen seventy-four.”
She became very still. For a moment he thought her eyes were looking at something way back in time, but they came back to fasten on him. Thoughtfully. Carefully.
“Oh.”
Tom said mildly, “I’ve met two people who apparently knew Estelle. You, because you never asked who I was talking about, and a lady named Eileen Scott Farr. She and her husband adopted the other twin, didn’t they?”
After a moment, Mary Jane sighed. “All right.” She raised a hinged section of the counter. “Come in, we may as well be comfortable.”
He went through the counter. She lowered the hinged part and led him through the door into a small, comfortable living room. She waved him to a chair, then sat on the edge of the sofa.
Tom asked, “Are you the manager here?”
“Manager and part-owner,” Mary Jane said. “It’s what I did with the cash settlement when Chuck and I were divorced.” It was the first time Tom had ever heard Charles called Chuck. Times had changed. Charles had changed. “How did you connect me with Estelle after all this time?”
“Eileen Farr mentioned her name. Did you know Estelle’s real name was Anne Merchant?”
“No. I’m not surprised. I don’t think she ever told me the truth about anything. Look, she was a very pregnant street kid who took advantage of my sympathetic nature, okay? She said she’d run away from abusive parents and needed a place to crash until the baby was born. So I let her move in with me. She said she’d already arranged with a family to adopt the baby.”
“When was this?”
“October, nineteen seventy-three. I had this tiny one-and-a-half-room apartment in San Bernardino.”
“Did she say how old she was?”
“Seventeen.”
“She was killed in an accident in San Diego in February, nineteen seventy-four. Her fingerprints identified her as Anne Merchant, who was twenty-two and had been in trouble most of her life.”
Mary Jane made a wry face. “I believe it! It turned out the planned adoption was illegal. The adopting family had been turned down for adoption because the man’s health wasn’t too good and they were financially marginal, but there was this doctor with this clinic in Yucaipa... Well, anyway, he agreed that the baby would be registered as having been born to the adopting parents. But there was a complication: a multiple pregnancy, twins. The second baby would need a mother’s name on the record. So the little bitch borrowed someone else’s. Mine. And my husband’s. The clinic never heard of Estelle Marchand, or Anne Whozit. She was always Mary Jane McCauley to them. I found out all this when she brought the second baby back to my place. She said she couldn’t’ve used her own name without leaving a record that might lead her parents to her. So I said, hey, okay, you can stay till you get on your feet again. My God, I’d even borrowed a thousand dollars to cover her medical expenses. A thousand went further in those days. So guess what she did?”
“Lit out and left you with the baby.”
“After stealing every cent I had in the apartment. She called from a pay phone somewhere to say she wouldn’t be back, no use trying to trace her, she’d pay back the money when she could. She said I’d make a better mommie than she ever could, and hung up.
“Okay. I could’ve turned the baby over to the cops or the welfare people or someone... but I just couldn’t. It would have meant an orphanage, or foster care, or giving her to Estelle’s parents. I thought I’d at least be better than any of them.
“So I did the best I could, and in a few weeks there was Chuck, suing for divorce and custody of the baby he thought was his. I was really tom, you know? I’d had time to get really attached to Katherine. I almost asked Chuck to take me back. But he was all headlong determination. I was reckless and improvident and he’d prove it in court, so full of neurotic malice toward him I’d not even used my medical insurance, risking the life of ‘our’ child just to hide my whereabouts. Of course I hadn’t used my insurance because I’d never had a claim.
“I had this feeling that if I fought like mad I might get to keep Katherine. Isn’t there a prejudice in favor of the mother in these cases? I’d probably get hefty child support, too. But I wasn’t really the baby’s mother, and I really loathed the idea of taking Chuck’s money. And it wouldn’t be much more honest than what Estelle had done to me. And Chuck really could give Katherine things I couldn’t...”
She closed her eyes. For a moment she looked defeated. She opened her eyes and got to her feet and began to pace restlessly.
Tom said, “So you didn’t fight for custody.”
“Token resistance, that’s all. I’ve been praying ever since that I did the right thing.”
Tom said inadequately, “Katherine’s enrolled at UCLA, she’s smart, and she’s gorgeous.”
Mary Jane stopped pacing.
“...I’m so glad.” She made a vague gesture, repeated it, shook her head. She sat down again. “Is there going to be a lot of... unpleasantness about all this? Chuck so hates to be fooled. Or used to.”
“Still does,” Tom said. “Especially if anyone else knows about it. To keep that from happening, I think he’ll bury all this and pave it over.” To his astonishment he heard himself say, “Does he even have to know about it?” and felt a pang of disappointment so profound it was almost completely disorienting.