The Wrong Girl (Jane Ryland) Read online

  Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Unending gratitude to:

  Kristin Sevick, my brilliant, hilarious, and gracious editor. Thank you. The remarkable team at Forge Books: the incomparable Linda Quinton, indefatigable Alexis Saarela, and Seth Lerner for the very cool cover. Copy editor Julie Gutin, who not only saved me from continuity disaster but found one hilarious error that would have had readers calling me at home. Bess Cozby, who, so cordially, keeps all the trains running on time. Talia Scherer, so talented, and so passionate about libraries. Brian Heller, genius, and my champion. The tireless and fabulous Bob Werner. The inspirational Tom Doherty, who makes it all happen. What a terrifically smart and unfailingly supportive team. I am so thrilled to be part of it.

  Lisa Gallagher, a wow of an agent. A goddess. A treasure. Without you, none of this would have … well, you know.

  Francesca Coltrera, the astonishingly skilled independent editor, who lets me believe all the good ideas are mine. Editor Chris Roerden, whose talent and skill and commitment made such a difference. Editor Ramona DeFelice Long, whose keen eye sees everything. Even the stuff I tried to finesse. You are all so incredibly talented. I am lucky to know you—and even luckier to work with you.

  The artistry and savvy of Madeira James, Charlie Anctil, Jen Forbus, Nancy Berland, and Mary Zanor. The expertise, guidance, and friendship of Dr. D. P. Lyle and Lee Lofland. And the wizardry of MJ Rose and Carol Fitzgerald.

  The inspiration of Krista Bogetich, Mary Jane Clark, Tess Gerritsen, Mary Higgins Clark, Carla Neggers, and Robert B. and Joan Parker.

  Sue Grafton. And Lisa Scottoline. And Lee Child. Your incredible generosity will be paid forward.

  My dear posse at Sisters in Crime, the board, and the Guppies. Thank you. And at Mystery Writers of America, the MWA-U team: Reed Farrel Coleman, Jessie Lourey, Dan Hale, and Margery Flax.

  My amazing blog sisters. At Jungle Red Writers: Julia Spencer-Fleming, Hallie Ephron, Rosemary Harris, Roberta Isleib/Lucy Burdette, Jan Brogan, Deborah Crombie, and Rhys Bowen. At Femmes Fatales: Charlaine Harris, Dana Cameron, Kris Neri, Mary Saums, Toni Kelner, Elaine Viets, Dean James, Catriona McPherson, and Donna Andrews. And Nancy Martin. And Katherine Hall Page.

  The amazing Elijah T. Shapiro and Jill McNeil for brilliant ideas.

  My dear friends Mary Schwager and Amy Isaac and my darling sister Nancy Landman.

  Dad—who loves every moment of this. (Mom—Missing you.)

  And Jonathan, of course, who never complained about all the carry-out salmon.

  Many of the character names in the book—you know who you are and I won’t spoil the magic by telling—are the result of incredible generosity of those who donated to charity auctions. It was such fun to swipe your names, and I hope you enjoy your alter egos.

  I’ve tweaked local geography a bit to protect the innocent. And I love readers who look at the acknowledgments. Thanks to you all.

  http://www.HankPhillippiRyan.com

  http://www.JungleRedWriters.com

  http://www.FemmesFatales.typepad.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  “Listen, Jane. I don’t think she’s my real mother.”

  Jane Ryland took the phone from her ear, peering at it as if it could somehow help Tuck’s incomprehensible tale make sense. Real mother? She didn’t know Tuck was adopted, let alone looking for her birth mother. Why would Tuck call her? And spill this soul-baring saga of abandonment, adoption agencies, then meeting some woman in Connecticut? Jane and Tuck were barely friends, let alone confidantes, especially after Tuck had—

  The doorbell?

  “I’m in your front lobby.” Tuck’s voice buzzed over the intercom at the same time it came through the phone. “Sorry to show up at your apartment on a Sunday, you know, but I couldn’t come to the Register, of course.”

  Of course. It’d be humiliating for Tuck to visit Jane at the newspaper where they’d shared a cubicle as “news roomies” only months ago. Once a hotshot reporter, Tucker Cameron had been fired from the Register for sleeping with a source. The Boston Police public relations officer, of all dumb choices. In the months since, according to the nonstop newsroom gossip, the two pariahs, Tuck and Laney, had dropped off the map. Until now. But that was Tuck. Never a dull …

  Jane pushed the red button in the intercom box, retied the drawstring on her fraying weekend sweatpants, and opened her front door, making sure Coda didn’t streak through her legs. The calico—a kitten, really—had arrived on the downstairs stoop a few weeks before, tiny paws icy with snow. All Humane Society intentions disappeared after the shivering fluff nuzzled into Jane’s shoulder, but neither of them was quite used to the other yet.

  Jane heard the entry door click open, three flights down, and Tuck’s footsteps climbing the hardwood steps as she talked into her cell. “So what am I supposed to do now, roomie? I’m not a reporter anymore. No one will talk to me. Laney’s looking for a job. I’m like a—well, you’re the only one who can help me. The only one who was even nice to me. After.”

  Tuck’s head appeared around the landing, a black knit cap over her dark ponytail. A puffy snow-flecked black parka emerged, then her black jeans. She paused, one leather glove grazing the mahogany banister, the other raise
d in tentative greeting. Tuck’s trademark swagger—her outta-my-way confidence—was missing.

  “Tuck? You okay?” Just another February at Jane’s. First a stray kitten, and now—was Tuck crying? Tuck?

  “I guess so.” Tuck stomped the last of the snow from her salt-stained boots, punched off her phone, stuffed it into her parka pocket. “I’m trying to be angry instead of miserable. But I can’t let this go.”

  She swiped under her eyes with two gloved fingers, wiping away what could have been snow. “It’s my whole life, you know?”

  “Tell me inside. Get warm. Dump your boots by the door.” Jane took Tuck’s soggy parka and cap, draped them over the banister, then ushered her visitor into the living room, pointing her to the taupe-striped wing chair by the bay window. Slushy snow pelted the glass, the wind clattering bare branches, the last of the afternoon’s feeble gray light struggling through. Coda slept on the couch, almost invisible, curled on a chocolate-and-cream paisley cushion.

  “Tea? Beer? Wine?”

  “Wine. Thanks. This has really kicked my ass.” Tuck plopped into the chair, then twisted one leg around the other. “The lawyer I contacted at first was worthless, then the agency got my hopes up, but now, well, this is worse than not knowing. Which is why I’m here.”

  Which made no sense whatsoever.

  They’d been office mates for only about two weeks. Jane was dayside, covering politics. Tuck worked the night shift, seemed to care only about her sensational front-page Bridge Killer stories. Their paths crossed only when their stories did. Now for some reason Tuck seemed to think she needed Jane’s help, so here she was. That was Tuck.

  “Hang on a sec, let me get you a glass.” Jane padded to the kitchen, grabbed the wine from the fridge, twisted it open. What would it feel like, not to know your own mother? As a kid, she’d thrown around adoption like a threat. “When my REAL mother comes to get me, you’ll be sorry,” a petulant eight-year-old Jane taunted her parents. She and BFF Laurie, slumber-party faces smeared in beauty goo, speculated in late-night whispers whether Jane’s chestnut hair and hazel eyes meant she might really be adopted, might really be royalty or Bono’s girlfriend’s abandoned daughter.

  Jane did know what being fired felt like. It happened to her last summer and the sting hadn’t quite gone away. So if Tuck needed her for something? She held out the glass and sat cross-legged on the couch. Least she could do was pour some wine and listen. “Okay, all ears.”

  With Coda’s purr a rumbling underscore, Tuck spilled the details.

  Jane’s reporter training switched into gear, assessing what could be wrong, or a coincidence, or a mistake. She ticked off her questions, finger to finger, as she did with every story she covered.

  “So back at the beginning. You called the agency. Your mother told you which one?”

  “Yes. ‘The Brannigan,’ they call it. Brannigan Family and Children Services. Ten years ago, when I first called, they told me all the records were sealed until my birth mother gave the okay to open them. A closed adoption, you know? Then I guess I tried to forget about it. I mean, I was eighteen, she might have been dead. Plus, I knew my mom—adoptive mother—wouldn’t love that I was looking.”

  Tuck paused, rolled her eyes.. “She’d have said, in that snarky voice she uses, ‘Why do you need another mother, Tucker dear? Am I not enough for you?’” She shrugged. “She’d probably still say that, even in her … condition. But she lives in Florida, she stayed in their condo thing after Dad died. So she’ll never know.”

  “Condition? She’s…?” Jane searched for a way to ask. She missed her own mother every day. Poor Tuck.

  “Yeah. Doctors say it won’t be long, and ah, I don’t know. I’m trying to deal with that, too. It’s hard.” She puffed out a breath, shook her head. “Anyway. Last week, after all that time, the Brannigan called to say they’d found my birth mother. It felt perfect, you know? With me and Laney serious, thinking of kids, and the last of my adoptive family almost gone? But now…” Tuck pulled the stretchy band from her ponytail, then twisted it back on. Took a sip of wine, carefully replaced her glass on the coaster.

  She looked at Jane. “But now, even though I’m not at the paper anymore, I think I may be on to the story of my life.”

  2

  “Kurtz got here first. She’s got the two of ’em in her cruiser. See ’em? Parked out on the street?” The beat cop, a grizzled veteran Jake didn’t recognize, cocked his head toward the Roslindale triple-decker’s inside stairway. “Lucky my new partner likes kids. Looks pretty bad upstairs, gotta warn you, Detective Brogan. DeLuca’s already up there. Back room on the left, second floor. Crime Scene’s on the way. The ME. And family services. Snow enough for you?”

  “It’s Boston, right?” Jake’s words puffed in the chill. He brushed now-melting flakes from his police-issue leather jacket, pulled out his BlackBerry for taking notes. He looked to the top of the stairs, scanning. Sniffed. Nothing. The entry door behind him was open, letting in the cold. Any smell was long frozen away.

  “Door open when you got here, Officer Hennessey?” That’s what the cop’s badge said, R. Hennessey. Looked old enough to be a lifer, still on the beat.

  Hennessey nodded. “They’re canvassing, seeing if anyone saw anybody leaving. So far, no.”

  “And there are two kids? Whoever called nine-one-one wasn’t clear. We know who that is yet? I have the kids as last name—” Jake checked his BlackBerry shorthand. His phone always ridiculously auto-corrected. “Is it Lussier?”

  “So says the nine-one-one caller.” Hennessey, a stocky fire hydrant zipped into foul-weather gear, flapped his leather gloves against his BPD navy parka. “Wish we could close the damn door.”

  At least Hennessey knew enough not to touch the scarred wooden doorknob of 56 Callaberry Street. There was barely room for the two of them in the cramped square of dark-paneled foyer. The dusty bare light bulb overhead didn’t cut it, and the one on the first landing was out.

  “So, the kids? Don’t they know their mother’s name?”

  “We asked. ‘Mama,’ the boy said. Their own names, he knew. Phillip and Phoebe. What kind of a name is Phoebe?”

  “Hennessey?” Commentary, he didn’t need. “How many kids? The nine-one-one call indicated—”

  “Apparently two. Maybe the caller meant three people resided here, ya know?” Hennessey shrugged. “We found a boy and a girl, approximately one and three years of age. Weren’t crying or anything when Kurtz brought them down. Guess maybe they don’t know. Victim’s their mother, looks like, white female, age approximately thirty. Checking her ID now. Cause of death, looks like blunt trauma. No weapon so far. Like I said. Ugly. Frying pan, something like that.”

  “So says—?” Jake raised an eyebrow. It wouldn’t have been Kurtz, the officer who had the kids in her cruiser. She was new on the street, just promoted from cadet, now evidently partnered with Hennessey. The ME was still on the way.

  “So says your partner, DeLuca.” Hennessey lifted his plastic-covered cap with one hand, propping it while he scratched a bristle of gray hair. “Guess he’d know. You two the big-time detectives and all.”

  Here we go. All he needed. Yes, his grandfather, Grandpa Brogan, had been police commissioner. Yes, Jake got his gold badge at thirty, three years ago. Jake had aced the academy, probably gotten higher scores than this guy. Still, even cracking last fall’s Bridge Killer case, getting the commendation from Superintendent Rivera, hadn’t stopped the sneers from the old-timers. “The Supe’s fair-haired boy,” they called him. Whatever.

  Jake ignored the bait. “So the nine-one-one caller? Any ID? I know we’ll have it on tape, but anything else I should know?”

  “Yo, Harvard, that you?” Paul DeLuca’s voice boomed down the stairwell. “You planning on coming up here anytime soon?”

  “Chill,” Jake yelled back. Jake’s college history and Brahmin mother were a constant source of amused derision for his partner, though after a few close calls togeth
er and a couple of massacres on the basketball court, their relationship had matured into respect and good-natured banter. Jake held two thumbs over his phone keyboard. “So, Officer Hennessey? Anything? Sign of forced entry? Anyone else live in the apartment? Husband, boyfriend, the nine-one-one caller?”

  “Nope. Nobody’s owning up. Neighbors all say it wasn’t them. Mighta been a blocked cell, ya know?”

  Calling from a cell phone, Jake knew, didn’t give dispatchers a GPS location. Enhanced 911 often worked only from a landline.

  “Cell phone nine-one-ones are a bitch,” Jake said. “Keep at the canvass, though, right?”

  Hennessey’s eyes went past him and out to Callaberry Street, where a gray-and-blue cruiser idled, plumes of exhaust darker gray than the darkening afternoon.

  “Poor kids,” the beat cop said. “They’re screwed.”

  3

  “The woman from the agency said my name is Audrey Rose Beerman, can you believe it?” Tuck laced her fingers together, clamped them on top of her head. “It’s an okay name. But I don’t feel like an Audrey Rose Beerman.”

  Jane took a sip of her Diet Coke, not quite sure how to react. What did Tuck want her to do?

  “Maybe it’s all about what we’re used to. How we see ourselves.” Plain Jane, Jane the Pain—the nicknames Jane’d been saddled with as a bookish kid in the relentless social hierarchy of Oak Park Junior High had sent her to name-fantasy world. Anything but Jane. For a while she’d wished to be Evangeline, courageous girl of the forest. Then Hyacinth, all flowy skirts and poetry. Her mother chose “Janey” when affectionate, “Jane Elizabeth” when making one of her pronouncements. As in “Jane Elizabeth Ryland is a perfectly good name. Evangeline is ridiculous.”

  Hey, Mom, Jane sent a message upward. You were right. Miss you.

  But today was about Tuck. “So you didn’t know your real name? Before?”

  “Well, yeah. I did. That’s one of the weird things, and tell you about it in a minute. But anyway, my—adoptive mother, I guess I’m supposed to call her—told me the agency always said my birth mother—” Tuck stopped mid-sentence, slumped her shoulders. “It’s impossible. ‘Real’ mother? ‘Birth’ mother? ‘Adoptive’ mother? I mean, the woman I called my mother took care of me and changed my diapers and let me stay left-handed and yelled until the softball coach let me be the pitcher. She’s kind of a whack job, at times, but what mom isn’t, right? My biological mother, who conceived me, carried me for nine months, gave birth to me—she left me at the Brannigan.”