CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN HE REACHED the highway after leaving the Roberts farm, Frank had stopped to call Flint first. Then he placed a phone call to Edith Roberts’s sister, Edna Burns. He explained that he was a PI looking for Jenna Roberts Holloway.
“Edith said you might be able to help us.”
“She did?” The sister sounded surprised by that.
“We need to find out what happened to the baby Jenna gave birth to thirty-three years ago,” he told her.
“Oh my,” Edna said. “There must be some mistake. The baby died.”
He looked over at Nettie. “Was the baby delivered at the hospital there?”
“No.” He heard the hesitation in her voice. “She gave birth at home with a midwife.”
“I’m going to need to talk to her.”
“I doubt the midwife is even still alive.”
Frank thought for a moment. “But you must have known what she planned to do with the infant—if it had lived.”
Silence, then, “Well, yes, I guess. The midwife thought she knew of a couple who would take the child.”
Why would the father of the baby be looking for her if she’d died at birth? Something was wrong here. “If the baby died, then there will be a death certificate.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“I suppose,” Edna said, sounding like she wished she hadn’t taken his call. “Really, I can’t tell you any more than I have.”
“Just tell me what the baby’s name was on the death certificate.”
More silence. He thought she might have hung up. “You say you’re a private investigator?”
“That’s right. I’m trying to find Jenna. We fear she is in trouble and thought it had something to do with her baby.”
“Oh, that is horrible.”
“If we have the name on the death certificate...”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” The woman seemed to break down. “Please leave me out of this.” She hung up.
Frank looked over at Nettie. “What now?”
Nettie was looking at her phone. She showed him the North Dakota map she’d pulled up. “It isn’t that far to the town where Edna Burns lives. There is more to the story.”
He smiled. “I think something’s strange too. We need the whole story and I suppose there is only one way to get it. But it’s late. We should wait and go first thing in the morning.”
“My thought exactly. I think it will be harder for her to lie to our faces.”
Frank hoped she was right. The drive the next morning to Turtle Creek took only a couple of hours. The landscape by that time had become monotonous. They’d played a word game to keep themselves occupied, but he was never so happy to see the city-limits sign.
* * *
EDNA BURNS LIVED in a newer subdivision on the edge of town. The door was opened by an elderly, gray-haired woman wearing an apron over a jogging suit. As she opened the door, Frank caught the scent of a baking apple pie.
Frank introduced himself and his wife as Edna merely stared at them.
“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t urgent. Please, Mrs. Burns,” Nettie said. “You have to help us. Jenna is in trouble.”
“I have to get my pie out of the oven,” she said and turned back into the house. They followed her as far as the living room before Nettie stopped to point at a photo on the mantel. For a moment, he thought the girl in the photo was Jenna. She had Jenna’s dark hair and eyes and a smile that seemed to light up the room.
In the kitchen, they found Edna kneading the bottom hem of her apron nervously in her hands. “I knew this day would come.”
“Don’t you think there have been enough lies?” Frank asked.
The timer went off on the oven and Edna busied herself getting the apple pie out. As she set it down, she looked at them with obvious resignation. “I have coffee,” she said. “And pie.”
They sat down at the kitchen counter while Edna continued to busy herself in the kitchen. She cut them each a hot piece of apple pie and filled cups with coffee. Nettie noticed how immaculate the house was.
“Widowed?” she asked.
“For almost twenty years now.”
“I take it you don’t see your sister much,” she said.
“No. Her husband...” Edna seemed at a loss for words.
“We’ve met him,” Frank told her.
“Then you understand.”
Nettie took a small bite of the cooling pie. “What we don’t understand is why you let your sister believe that Jenna’s baby died,” she said after she’d complimented the woman’s baking.
“When my sister called me hysterical and told me that Jenna had been...tainted by some older boy and was pregnant with his child, I didn’t know what to say or do. She pleaded with me to help Jenna. I’d never laid eyes on the girl before that. I hardly ever saw my sister, but I couldn’t turn Edith down. So they sent Jenna here to have the baby, which was to be given up for adoption since the girl was only thirteen.”
Edna stopped to take a sip of her coffee with trembling hands. She hadn’t sat down, seemed too nervous and upset. “She was a sweet thing. I felt so bad for her. It became obvious that the older boy had...forced her and it had happened only once. I couldn’t understand my sister treating the child like this. Jenna was so homesick and scared.”
“So she had the baby here?” Frank asked.
Edna nodded. “I found a midwife since Edith insisted the child be born at home. Jenna had a terrible time. She was so small and the labor was for hours. She finally passed out as the baby emerged. A little girl.” Edna smiled. “She was beautiful. Looked just like her mother.”
“She was alive,” Nettie said. “So why lie?”
“It was my sister’s idea. She thought it would be best if the baby was dead.”
Nettie felt her stomach roil. “But surely Jenna knew.”
Edna dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief she pulled from her apron pocket. “She’d fainted from the pain, and when she woke up, the baby had already been taken away.”
“You told her the baby had died.”
“I tried to convince myself it was for the best. Jenna could put it all behind her—just as her mother wanted.”
“So the baby was adopted,” Frank said.
“No. The family changed their mind. I couldn’t keep the child. My husband had already been diagnosed with cancer. I had my hands full. But I had a friend. I talked her into taking the infant. I helped financially and babysat when I could. I got to see my great-niece grow up.”
“And you never told anyone, including Jenna?” Frank asked.
“I almost did a couple of times. I felt so badly for her that she’d never get to know her daughter. It broke my heart. I would have taken that precious little thing, but under the circumstances, I couldn’t.”
“If you never told, then how did the father of the baby find out that he had a child?” Frank asked.
“I told you that I thought Jenna had fainted? Well, apparently she knew the baby hadn’t died. She’d gone along with it for years, but one day she called me.” Edna cleared her throat. “By then my grand-niece had grown up and left here. I thought maybe it was safe to tell Jenna since I knew she wouldn’t tell her parents the truth.”
“What did she want to know?” Nettie asked.
“Everything. But especially her daughter’s name. Apparently she’d seen some woman in a beauty salon and thought it might be her daughter.”
Nettie shot a look at Frank. “Where was this?”
“In Billings, Montana. So I told her the name we’d given my great-niece. Margaret Ann. That’s the name Jenna said she wanted to give the baby if she was a girl and if she got to keep her. Of course, she couldn’t have kept the child. She was a child herself.”
“And the last name you gave the baby?” Nettie asked, feeling a shiver run the length of her spine.
“Thompson.”
* * *
FLINT TRIED NOT to look at the clock on the wall. They were coming up on eighty-six hours since Maggie was last seen. It was all he could think about. Maggie out in this blizzard. Snow had been falling for days now. Some of the roads around Gilt Edge were closed.
He was doing his best to cling to a thread of hope, but with each passing hour, he became more terrified how this was going to end.
“I’ve got a BOLO out on Clark Terwilliger and the brown van with the Missouri plates,” Mark said, interrupting his thoughts. “At least now we know why he’s looking for Jenna.” He looked up from his computer. “So you think this is more about the kid? Wait. Kid? If Jenna had the infant when she was thirteen or fourteen and she is now forty-seven...”
“The daughter would be thirty-three,” Flint said and heard Mark make a surprised sound. He met Mark’s gaze as he felt what seemed like a bolt of lightning strike him.
“Isn’t Maggie thirty-three?” Mark asked.
Flint sat back in his chair, goose bumps racing across his skin. He’d been looking for a connection and it had been right in front of him this whole time? “I’ve been so worried about Maggie that I... Is it possible?” he said more to himself than Mark.
“And your PIs believe that Clark has Jenna and possibly their daughter?”
Flint nodded, his blood running cold as he heard a text come in on his phone. He glanced down and saw that it was from Frank, along with a photograph of a girl with dark hair and eyes. “Oh God, it is Maggie.”
* * *
MAGGIE STARED AT the woman bound and gagged at the small kitchen table as if she was seeing a ghost. Jenna? The woman’s hair was now bleached blond and she looked different, but there was no doubt. It was Jenna Holloway.
Shocked and thrown off balance, Maggie began to tremble, her legs threatening to buckle under her. If the man hadn’t grabbed her arm, she might have slid to the floor.
Jenna’s eyes widened when she saw her and quickly filled with tears. Her face was badly bruised. Jenna Holloway had been missing since March. The thought that she’d been held down here all this time with this man...
“You sit here,” the man said as he led her over to what looked like an adult high chair, only it was short and squat and looked cobbled together. His fingers bit into her arm when she didn’t move quickly enough. “Don’t give Daddy a hard time now. You don’t want Daddy to hurt Mommy again, do you?”
Maggie shook her head and sat down in the chair, her body shaking like a leaf in the wind. He reached in the back and flipped the tray part of the chair over her head so it trapped her there. Not that she could move before that. She felt too shocked, helpless with fear and confusion.
Jenna’s gaze had followed her and now turned to the man, pleading in her eyes.
“Is Mommy ready to behave now?” the man asked in that annoying singsong tone. He stepped over to Jenna. She nodded without looking at him and he reached over and ripped the tape from her mouth.
Jenna let out a small cry, but quickly smothered it as she raised her gaze to his. “Don’t hurt her. Please, Clark.”
“See, that’s why you’ve been in so much trouble,” he said. “What is wrong with you? Why would I hurt our precious daughter?” He stepped to the stove.
“Are you all right?” Jenna whispered.
All Maggie could do was nod. They were both far from all right. This man was crazy. He’d abducted her and Jenna to pretend they were a family?
The man Jenna had called Clark came back to Maggie, carrying a plate that he set down in front of her. He put a child-sized spoon next to the plate.
Tears welled in her eyes as she saw what was on the plate. It was a child’s plastic plate with three small piles of what appeared to be baby food. She could feel him waiting, feel him getting impatient. She picked up the spoon.
He leaned toward her and she did everything she could not to flinch as he placed a kiss on top of her head. “That’s a good girl.”
“Clark, is this really necessary?”
The man shot her a warning look. “I missed our daughter’s entire childhood. Yes, Jenna, it’s necessary.”
“So did I.” Jenna sounded like she might cry.
“Exactly. And whose fault is that?” He suddenly spun toward Maggie. “I told you to eat.”
Maggie stuck the spoon into one of the piles, telling herself she could do this. She didn’t want him hurting Jenna anymore. She also didn’t want to give him any reason to turn his cruelty on her, either. But she didn’t want to eat this.
She didn’t understand what was going on. Seeing Jenna here had thrown her. None of this made any sense.
“If you are a good girl, Daddy will give you a treat. Now eat, sweetheart.”
Maggie didn’t think she would be able to swallow a bite. Anything she put in her mouth right now was going to come back up. But she could feel him staring at her, that terrifying darkness coming into his eyes.
“Don’t make Daddy hurt you,” he said so quietly that she almost didn’t hear him over the pounding of her heart. “Or hurt your mommy.”
She nodded and took a bite, fighting not to gag on what could have been creamed peas. As starved as she was, it was the most vile-tasting thing she’d ever ingested.
“That’s a good girl. You must be hungry. You slept so long. Now eat up and show Mommy that everything is going to be all right now that we are a family.”
Mommy and daddy and baby? Goose bumps rippled over her skin. She was in a nightmare that she feared she would never wake from. Who was this crazy man who’d abducted her and taken Jenna?
She managed to swallow the spoonful of baby food. As she scooped up some from the white pile, she glanced again toward the open doorway into the rest of the basement. It didn’t appear to be a regular house. There was too much darkness beyond. Where were they?
And how did they get out? She glanced toward the hallway back to her room. That must be where Jenna was being kept. If there was a way out, wouldn’t Jenna have found it by now? The thought that the woman might have been trapped here with this man since her disappearance in March made her shudder.
Maggie couldn’t stand another hour here, let alone the thought of being kept here for months. Even years.
All she could think was that this was some sick fantasy on the man’s part. Surely he would tire of this. And then what?
Her chest hurt from the fear that seized her. So far he’d been acting as if she were a child and he really was her...daddy. She shuddered at the memory of the slap and swallowed the bite from the baby spoon as she saw the way he was smiling at her.
All her instincts told her that things were going to get much worse.