Chapter Nine
The motel was a former motor inn on the edge of Eureka, U-shaped with scalloped gingerbread trim over the windows and a general look of neglect.
Cat entered the office, a bell dinging overhead as she did.
The smell of cooked cabbage was almost enough to bring back her morning sickness.
An older woman appeared looking harried as she wiped her hands on her apron.
The sign on the registration desk said Karla Brooks, owner.
“Only have one double left.
Seventy-five dollars.
Just one night?”
She looked up for the first time and noticed the uniform.
Disappointment made her face seem to sag.
“I’m Acting Sheriff Cat Jameson from Fortune Creek.
I’d like to ask you a few questions about the woman who gave birth in one of your units.”
Sighing, she said, “Could we make this quick.
I’m in the middle of making dinner.”
“No problem.
Did you check her in?”
A nod.
“Did you get her name?”
The woman opened her book and turned it so Cat could see the name Lindsey Martin.
“She pay cash?”
Another nod.
“Was the woman alone?”
“Far as I know.”
“Did she seem to be in distress? In pain?”
A shrug.
“Did she make any request other than a room?”
“Wanted the one at the end.”
“Is that the one you gave her?”
A nod.
“Did you see anyone else with her before she left?”
“Nope.”
“I’m asking because the baby she gave birth to is missing and the woman was murdered.”
The motel manager swallowed, her eyes misting over.
“She was the one?”
“It would appear so.
If you saw something, anything at all, it might help us find her killer and—”
“That’s the missing baby boy?”
Her voice broke.
“I have a son.”
She looked away for a moment before she turned back to Cat.
“The next morning, the man in the adjacent room did come by to complain about not being able to get any sleep.
Said there were people coming and going.
He heard a car pull up, door slam and someone enter that room in the middle of the night.
He couldn’t get back to sleep because of the moaning.”
She lifted a brow as if it was obvious what he thought that was about.
“Then he said he heard a baby cry.
Sometime later he was relieved to hear the person leave and drive away so he could get some sleep.”
“He didn’t hear the baby cry again?”
A head shake.
“I’m going to need his name,”
Cat said.
“But this has been really helpful.”
She thought about asking to see the room but knew there would be nothing to see after all this time.
Outside in the parking lot, she made the call from her patrol SUV.
She couldn’t help thinking about Athena in labor, giving birth in a motel room instead of a hospital, someone helping her.
The same someone who took the baby?
The man who’d been in the adjacent motel room told her pretty much the same thing the motel owner had.
“Do you remember anything else that could help? The sound of the car engine? Perhaps you heard a voice.”
“Two females,”
he said.
“Not sure how I know that, just that I do.
Also on the car… Sorry, they all sound alike now.
There is one thing.
The one who left, she opened the car door, but took a few minutes before I heard the engine start up.
I think she put the baby in some kind of car seat.”
“You didn’t look out the window?”
She heard him hesitate.
“I did look.”
He sighed.
“I didn’t get a good look at the woman, but she definitely had the baby.”
Cat pried a description of the woman out of him.
He’d gotten a better look than he’d thought.
He described Patty Cooper Harper.
She hurriedly called the DCI, Montana Division of Criminal Investigations, and asked for their help in locating Ginny’s sister, Patty Cooper Harper.
According to the description the man in the motel room next to Athena’s had given Cat, Patty had helped deliver the baby.
That meant she had to have known the baby was coming and had been prepared with whatever she needed, including a car seat.
That gave Cat hope that the infant was safe and being cared for.
It was dark by the time she headed back to Fortune Creek.
She drove along the narrow road, trees etched dark against the fading light of day.
The cool spring night, as pretty as it was, made her melancholy.
She hadn’t let herself think about the future—or the past, determined to live day by day and think only of her daughter growing inside her.
Tonight, though, the past came creeping in, bringing tears of pain and sorrow.
Her cell phone rang as she neared Fortune Creek.
She hurriedly wiped her tears and picked up.
“This case just keeps getting more interesting,”
JP said the moment she answered.
“Did you know that male cells have been found in maternal blood even decades after a pregnancy?”
“I did not,”
Cat said, darkness dropping like a cloak over the road ahead.
Her headlights cut a swatch of light through the trees standing like sentinels on both sides.
“But if you’re trying to tell me that you obtained the father of the baby’s DNA from the deceased woman’s blood—”
“I am.”
That stopped her.
“I thought we’d have to wait until we found the baby,”
she said.
“You know who fathered Athena Grant’s baby?”
“The crime lab just called to tell me that they found a match.
Are you sitting down?”
“I am.”
She braced herself, thinking of how absolutely sure Dylan Walker was that he hadn’t fathered Athena Grant’s baby.
“Is the baby Dylan’s?”
“Looked that way at first.
Definitely a relative.
Does he happen to have a brother?”
“He did.
Beau Walker.
But he died nine months ago.”
“Like I said, interesting case.
It appears that Beau is the father of the missing baby, unless there is another brother.”
“Nope.
Looks like I’m going back out to the ranch tomorrow,”
she said as she saw the lights of Fortune Creek ahead and felt a strange sense of relief.
Something about the night was getting to her, making her feel anxious, making her feel afraid.
She was tired from being on her feet all day and hungry.
Once in her apartment, she planned to make herself some canned tomato soup and a grilled cheese for dinner.
As she pulled into the tiny, isolated Montana town, she saw Rowena’s vehicle was parked up the street.
Movement caught her attention.
A woman and man arguing in the shadows on the side of the Fortune Creek Hotel across from the sheriff’s office.
She probably wouldn’t have noticed them except that a car went past, its headlights bathed the two in light for a moment.
They’d both looked in her direction as if surprised to see a car going by.
She recognized the woman first.
Rowena Keeling.
The man was one of the two she’d seen going into the hotel whatever day that had been.
She was losing track, each day slipping away so fast, and the baby still not found.
Parking behind the sheriff’s department building, she made the hike to the second floor over her office.
As she did, she speculated on what the two had been arguing about.
Clearly, they knew each other.
She’d gotten the impression that the only reason Rowena had come to Montana was to see Dylan Walker.
Once in her apartment, she didn’t turn on the lights.
Instead, she moved to the front window to look out, curious if the two were still out there in the dark.
But the spot where they had been was now empty, just like the main street of town.
Nor was the vehicle she recognized as Rowena Keeling’s still parked down the street in front of the café any longer.
As Cat turned on a lamp and closed the curtains, she made a mental note to ask a few more questions when she saw the woman at Dylan’s ranch in the morning.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as she had planned, though.
The next morning, she was awakened by the two men she’d seen going into the hotel.
They’d flashed their FBI IDs, demanding the file on Athena Grant.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Dylan,”
his lawyer said.
“I don’t like them reopening the bombing case.
It was never really closed, but all I can think is that they have new evidence.
I have to warn you, I have been contacted by the prosecutor’s office.
They wanted your address in Montana and a phone number.
Said they were updating their contact sheet.”
He swore under his breath.
“Right.
You have no idea what might really be going on?”
“No, since they haven’t filed any charges against anyone.
But if they suspect that your wife and brother were having an affair…they might get the idea that you had something to do with the bombing.
Your experience in the service, as well as with your job, puts you in the category of explosives expert.”
Dylan didn’t need his lawyer to tell him that.
“You think someone is trying to frame me?”
“You liquidating everything you owned and moving to Montana does look suspicious.”
“Anything I do right now makes me look suspicious,”
he said, thinking of the trouble that had followed him out here to Montana.
Ginny’s sister’s friend was dead, her baby missing.
Did it matter that it wasn’t his baby? It would still raise suspicion.
The timing couldn’t be worse, but maybe that too wasn’t a coincidence.
He ended the call and tossed down his phone.
No one seemed to know exactly why the investigation into his wife’s and brother’s deaths was being reopened.
But Rowena had been right at least about that.
Was she also right about there being some discrepancy with identifying the remains? Or was his lawyer closer to the truth and they were coming after the jealous husband.
Rowena had stopped by early this morning.
She’d mentioned a massage appointment in Eureka and had left.
He thought this time she might be telling the truth and didn’t follow her.
Instead, he called an old friend for surveillance equipment, saying he needed to do some tracking.
He planned to put it on her car if he got the chance.
Now, standing out on his deck, he ran a hand through his long hair, wondering idly when he’d last gotten it cut.
Not that it mattered—at least to him.
He had more important things to worry about.
The last thing he wanted to think about was Ginny and her death.
He could still see her in his mind’s eye quickly getting into the town car that pulled up to the curb and it quickly driving away—only to stop up the street.
As he’d stepped into the street, planning to try to catch her, it had blown up. He had tried to recall his mindset at that moment. He’d known something was going on with his wife that night. She hadn’t been herself. That she would get into a car and take off like that—
At the time he hadn’t known who was driving.
That came later.
He hadn’t even known his brother was back in the states.
Why had Beau been picking up Ginny? He didn’t know, probably never would.
Or why she’d seemed to be in such a hurry.
At the gala, she’d been by his side on her phone when he’d been stopped on the way out. When he looked again, Ginny was heading for the door. He had excused himself and tried to catch up to her. Hadn’t he known then that something was up? That she’d been acting oddly all night? He’d gotten the feeling that there was something she wanted to tell him.
He thought about how upset she’d been when they’d discovered he couldn’t father a baby.
They’d actually talked about adopting.
What a fool he’d been, since after her death, he’d found the birth control pills she’d been faithfully taking in her side of the bathroom cabinet.
Ginny had never wanted to have a child with him—or anyone else apparently.
What he would never understand is what his brother had to do with any of it.
He assumed Beau and Ginny had been having an affair.
He’d found evidence of the two of them meeting at hotels and bars before the day they died.
If he had been able to find that evidence, he didn’t doubt the investigators looking into the bombing could find it as well.
But what if it hadn’t been an affair? What if Beau had gotten involved in something even more dangerous and now the feds had discovered it? Dylan just hoped that the two of them hadn’t made it appear that he was part of it.
The gate intercom buzzed, making him start.
He moved to it and his heart fell.
The acting sheriff was back.
“Need to see you,” she said.
He didn’t even ask, he just buzzed her in.