The Wrong Girl (Jane Ryland) Read online

  Jane’s eyes widened, she couldn’t help it. How would it feel to take something from yourself, a helpless new human, and give it away? That child was now twenty-eight. Twenty-eight, bitter and confused. And, somewhere, was a woman grieving the loss?

  “I’m so sorry,” Jane almost whispered. “But your poor mother. It must have been horrible.”

  “Not so horrible she couldn’t dump me at—well, whatever. My life has turned out fine. Even after the shit hit the fan, Laney and I are okay. He insists everything will work out.” Tuck fiddled with the fringe on the chocolate-and-cream afghan draped over the chair. Jane’s mother had crocheted it in her hospital bed, the last afghan she made. “Not feelin’ it so much today, you know?”

  Today was turning out to be quite the Sunday. Jane needed to get this talk back on track. Whatever that track was.

  “So, Tuck. What is it you want me to do? You got a call from the Brannigan. They said they found your birth mother. You drove to Connecticut, and then what?”

  “Long story short.” Tuck folded the afghan over the arm of the chair. “I go to Connecticut. We meet at Starbucks. She’s great, she’s terrific, I’m in a Hallmark card or a Lifetime movie. I’ve never been so happy. I’m crying, she’s crying. We each order a triple venti nonfat latte—exactly the same thing!—and we start crying again.”

  Tuck pressed her lips together, closed her eyes briefly.

  “‘Audrey Rose. You’re so beautiful,’ she says. ‘I knew you’d be a knockout.’ She said that, ‘knockout.’ ‘You have my dark eyes,’ she says, ‘so skinny, and my crazy hair.’ We spend two days together. I’m thinking—I have a biological family. I have a history. I have a story.”

  “Well, that sounds wonderful, Tuck. It sounds like—”

  “No.” Tuck slugged down the last of her wine. The timer behind the couch clicked on the bulbs of the brass lamp beside her. Jane was shocked to realize it was almost dark outside. February in Boston. It wasn’t even five.

  “I’m telling you, Jane. She’s not my mother. She expected her long-lost daughter. But I’m … I’m not her.”

  “You’re not—why would you think that? Come on, Tuck, why would they—?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. You’re the reporter. My only—you’ve got to find out for me.”

  Tuck stood, tears welling, tumbling a throw pillow to the floor. Coda opened her tiny green eyes at the sound, looked up, then dropped her head back into her paws.

  “Imagine how she’ll feel? When she finds out?” One tear rolled down Tuck’s cheek, and she swiped it away. “After all the plans? The calls? She looked so happy. But I know it. I do. They sent that poor woman the wrong girl.”

  4

  The crime scene cleanup people would have quite a job on their hands. Not as bad as some Jake had seen, but murder was never good. They’d arrive soon enough, whoever the landlord hired, see it for themselves. Jake closed his eyes briefly, making a promise to the woman on the linoleum floor. “We’ll find this asshole,” he muttered. Hennessey was right. Poor kids. Poor woman.

  There’d been nothing on the stairway. He’d kept his gloved hands off the banisters and walls, hugging the wall to avoid possible suspect footprints, was careful walking up the three flights to the top floor. The wooden front door of apartment C stood open, leading to a threadbare living room, cheap couch with haphazard pillows, then a dining room with an oval table, white tablecloth, three twisty metal candlesticks in the center, no candles. Clean. No family photos, no keepsakes. No sign of forced entry, exactly as Hennessey had reported.

  “Yo, D. What you got?” he called toward what must be the kitchen, but DeLuca had gone out a back door. Left it open. A spotlight glared from one outside corner of the minuscule back balcony, and Jake saw his partner’s lanky silhouette leaning over the wooden railing. Three floors up. No escape that way, probably. Unless the bad guy could fly.

  It was four steps across the living room to an archway into the kitchen. Jake paused, getting a read on the place. Sniffed, as he always did. No gas, nothing burning, a sweet fragrance of—maybe some cleaning thing. He surveyed left to right, cataloging the elements, typing notes without looking at the keyboard. Dented white refrigerator, seen better days, but clean, no grubby smudges around the handle. He’d have to check inside it. Two saucepans on a gas stove. Open box of Quaker Oats on the drain board. An open box of Cheerios, on its side, a few pieces spilled on the floor. Cereal. Jake looked at his watch. Five in the afternoon. Huh.

  No dishes in the sink, a stack of multicolored sponges in a plastic dish, some generic green soap on the side. Kitchen table. A high chair, aluminum and plastic, not new, the molded pink serving tray wiped clean. A little pink bowl with a rabbit decal.

  And that body on the floor. One side of her face against the once-ivory linoleum, the other revealing an angry red welt. More than a welt. The skin had already turned purple. Her eyes were open. A trickle of blood made a jagged seam across the yellowed floor, the dark seeping into the cracks between the tiles. Blunt trauma? Jake typed. Weapon?

  White female, approx 30, eyes brown, hair blond, he typed. It spilled across her back, clean, shiny, cared for. Arms splayed. Hooded sweatshirt. Levis, bare feet. If you ignored what seemed the cause of death, it looked like the woman simply decided she needed a nap. Or been dropped from the ceiling. Had she—tripped? Hit her head on the stove? Or floor?

  Jake stood, assessing. A siren wailed in the distance, the sound keening through the open back door. All the streetlights had popped on, and the interior lights in neighboring triple-deckers. People would be gathering below, the neighborhood disaster irresistible. Photog should get snaps. Sometimes the bad guys did return. Yellow crime scene tape should be up. Where the hell was the new ME? Maybe she was the siren.

  It wasn’t suicide, anyway. If the woman had been clonked with a frying pan, like Hennessey said, it wasn’t in sight. No sign at all of a murder weapon. The woman looked poor. Had a family. But the place was—same as her hair—cared for. She’d be sad to see her kitchen messed up this way. Blood and Cheerios.

  Jake never got used to that first moment. The first glimpse of the victim. Murder was the consequence of greed or fear or drugs or anger or frustration or money or whatever made someone explode and decide their needs were more important than whoever was in their way. Jake and DeLuca had seen their share. Solved their share, too. Plenty of bad guys owed their current long-term residency in MCI Cedar Junction to the work of Brogan and DeLuca.

  Her ID was somewhere in the shabby little apartment. They’d find it, then find who she knew, then figure out who had a problem with her. This was a domestic, Jake predicted. They’d close it fast.

  “Yo, Harvard.” DeLuca stood at the back door, his sport coat open, black hoodie underneath, no hat. His hatchet nose red from the cold, he swiped the back of his gloved hand across it. “You ready to join us on this planet?”

  “Yo, D,” Jake said. Jane always said D looked like he’d gotten thinner every time they saw each other. DeLuca lived on black coffee and roast beef subs—maybe that was it. Right now Jake had a bigger question. Besides the murder weapon, another important thing was missing from this crime scene.

  “We’ve got a dead woman.” Jake zipped up his jacket, zipped it down, then up again, like he always did when thinking. “No apparent murder weapon. An empty apartment. Two little kids who can’t talk. So who the hell called nine-one-one?”

  5

  Niall Brannigan strode up the front walk of Brannigan Family and Children Services, cataloging mistakes. No one had deadheaded the decorative mums along the garden path. Now some were rotting and brown. Such a waste of money. Such a poor public image. No one left tomorrow until those were gone. A fine mist lifted from the snowy grass, the last of the afternoon’s light disappearing. Still light enough to see a litany of annoyances.

  Fallen twigs and branches, pine needles strewn across the flagstones, patches of ice on the cobbles. What, the whole grounds
crew was surprised it was winter? His polished wing tips, protected by stretchy rubbers, marched through the slush.

  “Ridiculous.” He said it aloud, swiping his plastic pass card through the new gadget mounted beside the front door. His father would have cringed, someone screwing holes in the wood Mother told him had come over on the Mayflower. Brannigan allowed himself the day’s first smile. Doubtful. But a useful and effective story.

  A bell pinged, a green light appeared, and he clicked open the door. Inside, only the night lights lit the dusky hallway. The place was closed Sundays—he’d come here after afternoon mass—but as executive director, he liked to confirm all was well. Organize a few files, the mail, the upcoming schedule. See what new children were arriving. And departing. Ardith wasn’t waiting at home, but probably at her precious yoga, as always. Thank heaven for liberated spouses.

  He wiped his feet on the bristly reed doormat, loosened his striped muffler, and began to unbutton his overcoat.

  An office light shone down the hall. On?

  Yes. On. A dull glow came through the narrow pane of one of the admin offices. Someone was here? He reached for his cell phone. Should he call 911? The second smile of the day curved his lips. Unnecessary.

  The front door had been locked. So had the back, since no alarms clanged. Not a breakin. All he had to do was check the fancy computer scan on his fancy new lock machine, and he’d instantly know who was here, when they got here, and which door they used. No one had cleared overtime with him. Whoever was working today was doing it on their own time. And without pay.

  He folded his gloves into a pocket, then crossed his arms, contemplating the closed office doors lining the carpeted hallway. One wall was all photographs, a calculatedly impressive gallery of silver-framed infants and toddlers and the occasional preteen. Their “wall of fame,” they explained to first-time visitors. Privately the staff called it their “family jewels.” Children were the Brannigan’s profit center, even though the service was a properly registered non-profit. Their “profit” was making families, he often explained, not only the money. Although the money was lovely.

  Brannigan sniffed, cleared his head of random thoughts. At sixty-seven some thought he should retire, turn the place over to—whoever. Not going to happen. But who was here? Door number one, admin, closed, no light. The second door, bursar, closed, no light. The third door, History and Records, Munson’s office, no light there, either. His own office door, at the end, was still bathed in darkness, as it should be, a single pin spot illuminating his brass nameplate.

  The fourth door. Closed as well, but a spill of orange glowed through the window and under the door. Lillian Finch’s office.

  Brannigan sniffed again. He might have predicted as much.

  What had Mother always said? You can’t know too much about your employees.

  He knew enough about Lillian Finch to know exactly where she was. And as a result, he could predict exactly who was poaching Lillian’s office on an illicit Sunday afternoon. Did she think he wouldn’t find out? And now, he had a decision to make.

  6

  Maybe there was nothing to find.

  Hush, Ella, she shushed herself, propping one elbow on Ms. Finch’s desk and tucking a stray lock of hair back into the bobby pin. She’d been Lillian’s eyes and ears for the past however many years, not that she’d ever call her Lillian to her face. Even those times when she’d been invited for tea at Ms. Finch’s beautiful home.

  Anyway. Lillian always kept every piece of paper, and had told Ella, again and again, that documentation was the key to everything. If there was something to find, Lillian would have it.

  Ella turned another page in the thick manila folder she’d pulled from the bank of wooden file cabinets along the back wall. Birth certificate for baby girl Beerman, a certified copy. Father’s name, not listed. Audrey Rose Beerman, dark eyes, dark hair, deemed healthy, all her shots. Letter from the birth mother. Court order. A revision. A few photos in an envelope—swaddled infant, toddler in a pinafore and floppy hat. Nothing odd, nothing strange, nothing she hadn’t seen dozens of times in dozens of family folders.

  Was that a noise in the hallway? She looked up from her paperwork, fingering the loop of one earring, her heart twisting for a beat or two. She wasn’t supposed to be here on a Sunday afternoon. She’d get in trouble if anyone found out.

  A noise? No. Only the creaking of the old building. Chilly, too, with the heat down. She buttoned her thin cardigan, wished she’d worn jeans instead of her corduroy skirt.

  The call from that Tucker Cameron woman was, well, upsetting. She’d taken it the day before yesterday, Friday, last call of the afternoon. She’d already had her coat and muffler on, almost hadn’t picked up the receiver.

  She sighed. She never could resist the phone. What if it was a match? Wouldn’t want to miss that. She’d answered, then tried to understand what the woman was saying, her words coming too fast to comprehend.

  The wrong girl?

  Impossible. The Brannigan was in the business of making families. Nothing “wrong” about that. Ella reassured the woman, as best she could, there was no mistake. Someone would call her back.

  Should she have reported it? At five on a Friday? What good would that have done? Monday would be soon enough. Lillian wouldn’t be angry with her.

  She hoped.

  Ella eyed Lillian’s desk, the silver container of massed white roses next to a silver-framed photo collection of the families she’d created. Lillian was a saint, no question. Still, she was pushing fifty, fifty-five, maybe, and someday she’d retire. Ella would be ready to take the big desk.

  She turned another page of the Beerman file. There was the R and R request from the mother, Carlyn Parker Beerman, asking the Brannigan to rescind her initial stop order of the closed adoption and release information requested by the birth daughter. Date of issue … Ella squinted at the page. Smudged. But clear enough, three months ago. She’d heard Ms. Finch phone the daughter herself.

  She leaned back in Ms. Finch’s puffy chair. Getting to make the Call was one of the things she loved most. They both did, she and Lillian. The call where you know you are changing someone’s life. Two peoples’ lives. Two strangers, two people who probably thought about each other every day, maybe missed each other every day, would finally be together. After all those years, a mother meets her daughter. A mother meets her grown-up son. A father sees his child for the first time. They recognize themselves in each other’s eyes. They realize they’re not alone.

  A sacred moment. That’s how Ella thought of it. Maybe it would even happen to her, someday. If she never found her own mother, she’d at least spend her life putting families back together.

  There wasn’t always a happy ending, that she knew. You can’t choose your family, and sometimes people regretted reality. Even wished they’d never known the truth. That wasn’t her responsibility. At the Brannigan, all they did was answer requests. After that, families were on their own.

  But this Audrey Rose Beerman thing. Ella stared at the call log she’d filled out two days ago. Audrey Rose Beerman, because that’s who she most certainly was, insisting she wasn’t Audrey Rose Beerman.

  Why would she say that? It was impossible.

  Ella stood almost before she realized it. Her fingertips brushed the slick desk, the manila file sliding to the carpet, papers inside fanning out on the floor. That was a sound. It was.

  7

  “Call from…” The caller ID’s disembodied voice came from the wall phone in Jane’s kitchen. She winced, hoping it wasn’t about to announce a call from Jake. Tuck already suspected their relationship, half-teased Jane about it when they worked together. That would be a real Dear Miss Manners moment, having Jane’s “pal” in the Boston Police detective squad call her on a Sunday afternoon while Tuck sat in her living room. Unlike Tuck, Jane still had her job. Unlike Tuck, it was because Jane hadn’t gotten caught. Jane and Jake realized their careers were safe only as long as thei
r relationship wasn’t discovered.

  Not that there was a relationship. There couldn’t be, not while Jane was a reporter and Jake a cop. They’d skidded their passion to a halt one night last summer, after a little too much wine and almost too little clothing. What if someone found out? Was it worth their careers? Sleeping with a source was forbidden, according to the Register’s ethics protocol. The Police Department’s, too. It wasn’t as if she was one bit in love with the sandy-haired twinkly-eyed hilariously funny and brilliantly—

  “… Alex Wyatt,” the caller ID voice finished. “Call from Alex Wyatt.”

  “I know you have to get that.” Tuck clamped her arms across her chest, propping her feet on the coffee table. “Tell that jerk I said—well, no, don’t. Probably better for your career if you don’t let on I’m here. Right?”

  “Gotcha.” Alex wasn’t a jerk, though. Tuck was bitter since he’d been the one who fired her. But as brand-new city editor, Alex had gotten word from on high. He’d had no choice. “Although he’s actually not—well, whatever.”

  Jane uncurled from the couch, scrabbling her fingers through her finally growing-out but still too-short hair, speculating. Why would her boss call on a Sunday? The Register newsroom staff was barebones—increasingly worrisome budget cuts hit the weekend staff especially hard. A front-page story could happen at any time, any day. Problem was, news doesn’t know what day it is.

  “Call from Alex Wyatt.” If there was a big story, she’d be lucky to get it. Especially since she was the new kid and even veteran reporters were getting laid off. Jane tipped one hand in a pouring “more wine?” motion to Tuck, who handed over her empty glass as Jane dashed to the kitchen, sliding around the corner in her bare feet.