Chapter 30
Before they left the hospital, they looked for Angus Telford. But his shift wasn’t scheduled to start until midnight, and no one would share his home address with them. In fact, no one seemed to want to talk much about Angus at all.
“Can’t you do that thing you did before?” Gabby didn’t want to give it a name. She was still processing the side of Barnaby that she’d witnessed. That wasn’t arrogance, it was something beyond—dictator-ness?
“Nope, I’m all Carmichael-ed out. Probably for the rest of the year, if I’m honest.”
“That’s a relief. That dude was a little scary.”
“Tell me about it. Imagine him as your father.”
She shuddered, deciding that she didn’t appreciate her parents enough. They had high standards, but they were never deliberately cruel to her. The phone call she needed to make still loomed ahead of her. The best time to call her mother was in the evening, so she’d try then.
Was she procrastinating? Safe to say, yes.
“We could stay in town another night,” Barnaby suggested as they exited onto the walkway that led back to the Eastern Promenade. “See if the Cove will let us in tonight since we missed our reservation last night.”
As much as Gabby loved the idea of a fancy night out, it didn’t feel right with so much going on. “Let me work my magic and see if I can locate Angus.”
She flexed her fingers dramatically, then pulled out her phone.
Among her many methods of locating people, she liked Facebook and Instagram the best. She was so experienced at it by now that a quick glance through someone’s timeline could tell her what neighborhoods they hung out in, what kinds of things they liked to do, who their friends were—even if they shared none of those personal details in their profile.
Angus Telford liked to sail. In fact, he owned a sailboat. A pretty freaking expensive one.
She showed a few photos of it to Barnaby, who whistled. “That’s a Sunreef Seventy, older model, worth over a million dollars, not including yearly upkeep.”
“I had no idea that physician assistants got paid that kind of money.”
“I’m pretty sure they don’t.” Barnaby bent to peer more closely at her phone. “Can you tell what marina that is?”
She flipped through a few more photos. “Swan Harbor.”
He swore. “I saw that name when I was going through the Lightkeeper books. It’s a yearly expenditure that made no sense to me, since all our boats are kept in the Sea Smoke Island marina.
I figured my father had another boat I didn’t know about.
But maybe he’s been paying Angus’ marina bill as part of this fucking coverup. ”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” she warned him, although she had to admit that seemed suspicious.
“Only one way to confirm. Fancy a drive to Swan Harbor? It’s about an hour up the coast.”
“It might be our best chance, so sure. We can surprise him. I’m sure he’ll love that.”
They stopped at a food stand and bought lobster rolls while they waited for a Lyft to pick them up.
“Don’t you have a Carmichael family Mercedes on standby on the mainland?” she teased.
“Fuck.” He lowered his roll, just inches from his mouth. “We actually do. Not a Mercedes, but a Land Rover. I completely forgot.”
She burst out laughing. “Oh my God, you’re so rich you forget one of your perks?”
“Shut up,” he grumbled, making her laugh even more. He called Judy and got the location of the garage where the Land Rover was kept. “We still need a Lyft to get to the car, so you can stop laughing at me now.”
“Hell no. Imma be laughing about this for a while.” She realized she’d slipped a little code-switching in there. That must mean she was really comfortable with Barnaby.
How did that happen? It wasn’t just the sex.
Since they’d gotten closer, Barnaby had offered her respect, support and protectiveness—all things that meant more to her than good sex, though he’d also given her that.
Barnaby was hitting all the marks so far.
It hasn’t been that long, she reminded herself.
So much had been happening lately that she felt she’d known him much, much longer.
In the Land Rover, they drove up the coast, through tiny towns with wooden bridges arching over rivers, past smokestacks rising from old brick mill buildings, harbors bristling with sailboat masts.
“Maine is such a pretty state, sometimes I do miss it,” she mused as they drove past a green jewel of a downtown park next to a white-clapboard church.
“Would you ever consider moving back?”
Was he asking for a reason? Don’t get ahead of yourself.
“My parents would love it. I do think about it. I sublet my apartment when Heather and I decided to spend the summer up here. Heather just gave hers up, so it looks like she might be staying on the island with Luke and Izzy. What about you? What’s your next adventure?
How long will you be stuck at the Lightkeeper? ”
“I have no answers to any of that. Right now, this is my adventure. Helping Tamara, figuring out what happened to my mother. Spending time with you.” He flashed her such a devastating smile that it knocked the breath out of her. “Best adventure of my life so far.”
“That can’t be true. Didn’t you kayak the Inside Passage in Alaska?
” Before he could answer, she snapped her fingers.
“Crap, I forgot. I wanted to do a little more research on the Garners. Heather dug up the information about that plane crash, so I never saw it myself.” She pulled out her phone and flexed her fingers again.
“I love watching you do your thing. You get so excited.”
“That I do.” Her fingers flew over the keys.
“Being good at something is the ultimate high. Here we go. I’ll start with Jill Garner since she was the attending nurse.
” She added hospital details to her search.
“She didn’t work at the hospital. But she was an obstetric nurse.
It looks like she worked for a medical temp agency that had a contract with the hospital. But she left the agency that year.”
She checked another site that focused on voter addresses.
“And that’s the same year her address changed to Sea Smoke Island.”
“So she moved to the island the same year I was born?”
“That’s right. Keith must have been a toddler then. Heather thinks he was about seven or eight years older than her, which means he’s a little older than you. That must have been when they bought the house that Amelia lived in.”
“Or someone bought it for them,” Barnaby said darkly. “Another payoff.”
“Could be.” She switched to a property records database. “There’s no mention of the Carmichaels, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Do me a favor and google these other names.” He passed her the list of names of the medical team who had assisted during and after his birth.
She did more than that. She found contact information for everyone on the obstetrics team.
The OB/GYN who had delivered Barnaby died a few years ago.
Both of the nurses had retired and moved out of state.
She called one of them and reached her daughter, who said she’d recently had a stroke and couldn’t come to the phone.
The other, Nancy Baggot, answered the phone herself.
Gabby scrambled to come up with a way to approach her request, and landed on a “partial Carmichael.” “Hello, I’m calling on behalf of Barnaby Carmichael, of the Carmichael family from Sea Smoke Island in Maine.
I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s working on a memoir and wants to start at the very beginning—the moment of his birth.
Would you be willing to answer a few questions?
I can put him on the line when you’re ready. ”
“Oh my. Barnaby Carmichael?” Nancy’s previously cheerful tone turned wary. “John’s son? Does John know he’s calling?”
“Barnaby’s in charge of the Carmichaels’ affairs now and he doesn’t do anything without full authorization.” Close enough to the truth, she thought.
“Because there’s that NDA…I don’t know…I’d have to talk to a lawyer…no, I’m sorry. I can’t say anything until I’ve spoken to him. What did you say your name was?”
Damn it.
Barnaby gestured for her phone. She put it on speaker and held it closer to him.
“This is Barnaby Carmichael.” The commanding Carmichael tone was back.
“As the official family representative, I give you permission to break the NDA. If you need that in writing, you’ll get it.
In the meantime, I’d like to ask a few questions, and you can choose what you want to answer. ”
After a long pause, she said, obviously still reluctant, “Okay.”
“First, about the NDA. I assume it was put in place to keep the fact that Sophie Brown was my mother a secret. Is that correct, or is there another reason?”
“I shouldn’t…” she stammered.
“Is it also because of what you witnessed afterwards?”
That question sent Nancy into a panic. “I…I didn’t see anything. Just the blood. I didn’t see anything else.”
“It’s okay, don’t worry.” Barnaby switched to his calm-in-an-emergency voice, the one he’d used with Safiya on the Lightkeeper lawn.
“Your name will never come up, I promise. No one will ever know.” He shot Gabby a sharp warning look she could interpret perfectly well—keep Nancy’s name off the podcast.
She nodded reluctantly, knowing she could write around it if necessary.
“I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see it.
I can’t understand how such a thing is even possible.
She was fine after the birth. It went smooth as butter.
When I left the birthing room, there was barely any cleanup left to do.
All her vitals were fine, better than fine.
She wanted to go home that night, but John insisted she stay one more just to be safe.
The next day, she was gone and there was a pool of blood under the bed…
so much blood and vomit. It must have been a stabbing, or a gunshot, but how could anyone get weapons into the maternity wing?
I couldn’t understand it. I tried to ask questions, but no one would say anything, and then the lawyer came and asked me to sign the NDA.
There was…there was some money too. I’m embarrassed to say it. I had a small child myself and…”
“I understand.” Barnaby tried to soothe her, while also following the road signs guiding them to the Swan Harbor marina.
Maybe they should have pulled over to make this call.
She gave him credit for keeping his head while hearing about the pool of blood under his mother’s hospital bed.
“Please don’t beat yourself up. I’m grateful you’re speaking to me. ”
“I’m happy to.” She gave a little sob. “It’s been eating at me all these years. I’ve tried to make sense of it. I think…well, I have a theory of my own. But it’s just a theory.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Well, there was that woman who came in, acting like she was better than the rest of us, like we were her servants. None of us liked her. When she was in the room with Sophie, I got a bad feeling. This was before the birth. I tried to hang around and pretend I was busy taking her vitals, but she told me to leave. I heard them arguing, but I don’t know what about.
All I could make out was that bitch saying, ‘you’ll never get anything,’ and Sophie saying, ‘I already have all I need,’ and that was it. ”
Gabby leaned closer to the phone to pose a question. “Was that Elle Evans? We saw that name on the visitor log.”
“Maybe, but Sophie called her something else.”
“What?”
“Ann something.”
“Was it Annabeth?” Gabby asked into the sudden silence from Barnaby.
“I think so, yes.”