Lorna Barrett - Bookplate Special

Paige sighed, looking even more tired.

“Sir, you don’t have to answer this woman’s questions. You don’t even have to put up with her being in this room,” Turner said.

Paige waved a weak hand to quiet his employee. “It’s going to come out eventually. I’d rather tell my story to this young lady than to a TV reporter.”

“Sir, we can issue a statement. There’s no need to-”

“Jason, why don’t you go get a cup of coffee and leave us alone for about fifteen minutes?”

Turner looked ready to protest, but nodded. He backed up. “I’ll be just outside if you need me,” he said, then turned and left the room, closing the heavy door behind him.

“He’s very protective of me,” Paige said.

“I can see that,” Tricia said. Fifteen minutes wasn’t much time, and she didn’t want to waste it. “Had you ever met Pammy Fredericks?”

Paige shook his head. “I never saw the woman, but Jason tells me she called our offices several times. She mailed us some papers, asking for money or she’d reveal something about my sordid past.” The ghost of a smile crept across his lips. “As if anything else could be as embarrassing as what everybody already knows.”

“You were saying about your-” Had the woman been his friend, lover, mistress?

“M.J.” He smiled. “She liked being called that. Like in the Spiderman comics.”

“What did the papers Pammy sent you contain?”

“According to Jason, nothing. At least nothing with my name on it. Just ramblings about hooking ‘him.’ ”

Tricia opened her purse, took out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to him. He took it, fumbled to straighten it out on his lap, and gave a shuddering breath.

“That’s her handwriting, all right. Where did you get this?”

“Pammy hid the diary in my shop. I made a copy of it before I handed it over to Captain Baker of the Sheriff’s Department.”

Paige nodded. He pointed to the date in the top left corner. “See this? At the time the diary was written, I was out of M.J.’s life-had been for at least a year or so.”

“Yes, I understand you two had broken up for a while.”

He looked at her through narrowed eyes.

“I read several accounts of your colorful past online,” she explained.

He shook his head, perturbed. “I wasn’t very stable in those days. I drove too fast-drank too much. She worked on my father’s clerical staff.” He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. “After we started going out, Dad grew to love her. He hoped she’d straighten me out. Sadly, she only managed that in death. He didn’t know she was almost as wild as I was, which was part of the reason we originally broke up. When we got back together, it was as if that wild streak in her took over. She didn’t care about anything. We did a lot of foolish things together. Things I’m deeply ashamed of now.” He sighed. “No matter what good I’ve done these last nineteen years, it will never make up for what happened that rainy night in Portsmouth.”

“I read that the police theorized the car hydroplaned.”

He nodded sadly. “We’d both been drinking. Truth was, at that point, M.J. drank more than I did. She said it helped her forget.”

“Forget her child?”

He looked up sharply. “How did you know?”

“I read most of her diary. M.J. was very upset. I take it the child had birth defects. She called the baby… it.”

“M.J. made the mistake of having an affair with a married man after we had parted ways-I never did know his name.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“It went into foster care. The people who took it in eventually adopted it.”

“Now you’re calling the baby ‘it,’ ” Tricia admonished.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what sex it ultimately ended up being.”

Tricia blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Didn’t M.J. write about what was wrong with the child in her diary?”

“No.”

“It was born with multiple sex organs. The baby needed gender assignment surgery. M.J. saw it as a punishment for her affair.”

“The baby was a… hermaphrodite?”

He nodded. “I believe the more popular term now is intersex. To make things worse, M.J. suffered from postpartum depression. It wasn’t as well understood in those days. Sometimes not understood today, either.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“My foundation has contributed funds to study it, to find new medications that can help women in need.”

Paige closed his eyes, and Tricia decided he’d had enough traumas for one day. She reached out to touch his arm. “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Paige. I’m sorry I had to drag all this up for you again.”

His smile was tepid. “I suppose I’ll have to go over it with Captain Baker at some point in the future, but I don’t understand what significance it can have to his case. Ms. Fredericks may have tried to blackmail me, but she never would’ve succeeded. I wouldn’t have paid. The child wasn’t mine.”

Tricia shook her head. Pammy had probably figured blackmailing Paige was worth a shot, withholding the missing pages that would back up his claim of innocence. A paternity test would’ve cleared him in a heartbeat, but Pammy probably hadn’t been smart enough to consider that, either. There could only be one reason she’d withheld those pages: they had to have named the baby’s real father.

If Pammy had been smart, she would’ve destroyed the pages. But time and again Pammy had proven she wasn’t that sharp. Unless she reserved the pages in some kind of backup plan in case Paige wouldn’t pay. Could she have saved them to blackmail the baby’s real father? But why? Unless that man had money or something else that would improve her life.

It just didn’t make sense.

Then again, Pammy had never made sense.

Tricia noticed Paige staring at her. “Do you read mysteries, Mr. Paige?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Dick Francis is my favorite author.”

“As I mentioned, I run a mystery bookstore in Stoneham. May I send you a few titles?”

“I’m missing several of his early books from my collection. Do you have a copy of Bonecrack at your store?”

“I sure do, and I’d be glad to send it over.”

That would be very kind of you. Let me pay you for-”

“You’ll do no such thing. It would be my pleasure to give it to you.”

“You’re very kind. Thank you.” He handed her the sheet of paper.

“Would you like to keep it, as sort of a remembrance?”

He shook his head. “I don’t like to remember M.J. from that last year of her life. I prefer to think about the days she worked for my father, before all the unhappiness consumed her.”

Tricia nodded and rose from her chair. “Thank you for seeing me.”

Turner stood outside the door, his expression dark.

“I hope you didn’t upset the old man. It wouldn’t be good for him.”

“Actually, I’m surprised the hospital kept him here. The paramedic said his injury wasn’t life threatening.”

“No, but his kidney disease is. He’s already had one failed transplant, and has been back on dialysis for years. So far they haven’t been able to locate another donor kidney for him.”

“Surely a man in his position-”

“Oh, I’m sure he could buy one from a living donor-but that’s not his style.”

Tricia remembered how pale Paige had been at the Food Shelf’s opening. No wonder he’d stepped up his philanthropic gifts. If he felt his time was growing short, he might want to see the fruits of his generosity.

“I’m very sorry to hear that. I’ll be sending over a book for him. I’ll have it left at the reception desk. May I call you to be sure Mr. Paige has received it?”