Leann Sweeney - Pick Your Poison

I helped her sit up straighter, concerned about the faint blueness around her lips and alarmed by the parchment quality of her skin. I feared her bony shoulder might crumble beneath my touch. “Are you all right?”

“Of course not. Who is? Ask your questions, counselor.” She leaned back into the pillows and closed her eyes.

“Do you remember a man named Feldman? Samuel Feldman?”

She bolted upright and hatred raced across her heavily wrinkled cheeks to settle in the tight line of her mouth. “Did that snake send you here? Because if that’s the case, get out!” She started to lift the blanket off her legs.

I took her hands in mine. “I swear I don’t even know him,” I said quickly. “He hurt someone and I want to see him punished.”

I’d come up with the right response through pure dumb luck, because she calmed immediately. “You don’t want to find him, nurse.” She squeezed my hands and shook her head emphatically.

Within the span of a few moments I had gone from lawyer to nurse. Getting information out of her might be more difficult than I thought.

“Do the world a favor and skip the CPR on Samuel Feldman,” she said. “Nothing wrong with him that reincarnation wouldn’t cure.” She grinned, and I saw teeth too large for her shrunken gums.

“I have to find him first,” I said. “And unfortunately I’ve misplaced his address.”

“Check hell. I think he’s stringing barbed wire down there.”

She seemed quite sure how much she hated Feldman, but maybe if I mentioned the adoptions, she’d focus more on facts than emotion. “I heard you placed many babies with families over the years. Could you tell me about that, Judge Hayes?”

“Ah, the babies. Sent hundreds to fine homes. Sad part was, the birth mothers were babies, too. Children having children. Tragic. Absolutely tragic. I had to make some hard decisions, but that’s why they elected me.”

She squared her thin shoulders and I could picture her, robed and dignified, running a courtroom.

“Um... I also need information on a woman named Cloris Grayson. She—”

“No!” Her face went gray and she clutched both my wrists. “You promised me. You said I wouldn’t lose my good name. You claimed you were a fair man.” She stared off past my right shoulder, obviously focused on the past. And what I saw in her eyes seemed like pure terror.

I decided to play along, to pretend I was this man she’d spoken of. “I am a fair man, but I need to know about the baby.”

She cocked her head and appeared lost by my remark. “If you don’t know, who does?”

“Oh, I know, all right, but I still need help locating Feldman. Finding him will solve my problems.”

“He went to see Cloris. That’s what he said, anyway. He promised he’d convince her to quit. But don’t trust him. Don’t ever trust him. Look where it got me.” A tear slipped from the corner of one eye. “My career is ruined.”

She started crying, the room echoing with her long, whimpering sobs while I rubbed the tissue-paper skin on her hand. I’d never intended to upset her this much.

When she finally regained control, she said, “Tell them the truth, nurse. Tell them I’m not a bad person.”

“Of course you’re not a bad person,” I said quietly. “Even good people do bad things sometimes.”

“And child?” she said, slowly closing her eyes. “Water the plants before you leave, would you? We breathe for each other, you know.”

I stopped at the house on P Street after leaving the nursing home, and, as expected, Steven’s truck was sitting in the driveway, as well as an expensive foreign car.

I burst in through the back door, anxious to tell him about my conversation with the judge, and found him and another man poring over books and blueprints laid out on the kitchen counter.

“Hi,” I said, addressing the stranger and extending my hand. “Abby Rose. I take it you’re the renovation expert here to help Steven with my house.”

We shook, with the man casting a puzzled glance toward Steven.

“Guess I forgot to mention the owner is my ex-wife here,” said Steven. “Mr. Gibson is the man we hope to contract, Abby. He knows his stuff.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Gibson. The house really belongs to Steven at this point in the renovation. I’ve put this project in his very capable hands.” Maybe that would salve Steven’s ego a little, as I could see he was embarrassed by my blundering in here unannounced.

Gibson said, “You’ve given me what I need, Mr. Bradley. We’ll have a more thorough consultation in a few weeks.” He gathered one set of blueprints and said, “Nice to meet you, too.” He bowed stiffly in my direction, then hurried out through the back door.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said. “But I’ve had a breakthrough on Ben’s case, Steven.”

“Wonderful. Maybe you should think about applying to the police academy.”

I ignored the sarcasm and told him about my visit with Hayes and what I considered to be a confirmed connection between Feldman and Cloris. He listened with half an ear, obviously anxious to return to his blueprints and books.

“How much weight can you put on the ramblings of an old woman with a brain disease?” he asked when I’d finished.

“I’m certain what she told me was founded in reality. I mean, the name Cloris is so unusual. The next step is to convince Jeff to help me find Feldman.”

“Jeff, is it? How cozy.” Steven slammed one book shut.

“He’s a friend, like you are,” I said.

Steven abruptly gripped my shoulders. “I love you, Abby, and not like a friend. And one day you’ll be back with me, where you belong.”

I stepped back, away from his grasp. “This is too intense, okay? Can we drop it?”

“Sure. Sorry.” But that small fire of desire in his eyes remained.

As for me, I felt nothing but regret.

The next afternoon Kate was free, so she and I turned our attention to the safe-deposit box. We’d driven in Kate’s 4Runner to Willis’s office first, picked up the needed paperwork to gain access, and were now on our way to the small bank located south of the city near the Space Center. A thick layer of rolling gray clouds covered the sky as the slow-moving storm marched ever closer.

“Refresh my memory on what those happy weather people are saying,” I said. “Will this become a hurricane?”

“Probably won’t get that strong before the thing slams into us,” said Kate. “Which exit do we take again?”

“NASA Road One. About two more miles down the freeway,” I said. “The summer’s been so dry, when the skies do open up, it will be like a cow peeing on a flat rock.”

“Let’s hope the rain waits until tomorrow,” Kate said. “We have that country-club thing Aunt Caroline arranged, remember?”

“I remember,” I said.

“Terry’s coming over about six and we’ll leave from our house.”

“With all the construction on the interstate, we should plan on forty-five minutes’ travel time,” I said.

“You bringing Steven?” Kate asked.

“No way. Slow down, Kate. Here’s the exit coming up.”

“Right or left once we get off?”

“Right, then over the freeway.”

We found the bank without problems, and after wading through yards of red tape—paperwork no doubt designed to discourage any but the most tenacious person from removing anything of value from inside the four walls of Community Savings—we carried the safe-deposit box to a cubicle.

But if I thought a miraculous revelation, complete with videotaped documentation, would rise from the depths of that small metal receptacle, I was mistaken. We found an unlabeled computer CD. Nothing else. Still, I held out hope that my theory about Daddy was correct and this CD would reveal something about Ben’s presence at our house.