Chapter 36 #2
Nellie glanced at her with disdain. “I don’t give a damn what you do.”
The three intruders sat there spellbound, afraid to say anything else lest their informant clam up. They let her ramble in hopes of getting to the information they wanted.
She picked up a pack of cigarettes off the counter and lit up, blowing smoke toward the ghost in the window.
“I loved him from the moment I first set eyes on him at my interview to be his nurse assistant. I knew right then I would do anything for him.” Her back to them, she swished her hand around as she spoke, the cigarette smoke making curly-cue patterns in the air.
She took a long draw and threw her head back, blowing the smoke over her.
“He was so handsome! Those bedroom-brown eyes and that neatly trimmed hair and that body. Oh my god that body!” She chortled at the memory that brought her pleasure.
“He was twenty years older than me – I was twenty-one and fresh out of nursing school – but the age difference didn’t matter to us. Our love began on that day.”
Inez dared to ask. “You had sex with him at the interview?”
Nellie flicked ashes into the sink and turned to them.
“You’re so crass. But sure. Why not? It was obvious we were destined to be together.
” Her face contorted as if she suddenly remembered something.
She dropped the cigarette onto the floor and stomped it out angrily.
“But his damned wife wouldn’t let go. Twelve years Clive and I delivered babies together, side by side day after day, so in love we could hardly stand it.
He wanted a divorce, but she refused. That shrew was delusional, thinking she could make him love her. ”
Stillness enveloped them. Dalia, Kenyon, and Inez all knew that Nellie Franklin was transferring her own behaviors and beliefs onto the doctor’s wife. Nellie was the delusional one. If Dr. Clive Upton had wanted to divorce his wife, he would have.
They flinched when Nellie sat back down at the table.
Fitfully circling her hands on its Formica surface, she continued, intent on making them understand.
“What we did was a gift to all those pregnant women who didn’t want their babies.
Or didn’t deserve them. Unwed. Ungodly. Loose women with no morals whatsoever.
A few were wives who got pregnant while their husbands were away at war.
Most were whores, college students from universities all over the state and into Ohio. ”
The three didn’t miss the irony of that declaration, seeing that Nellie had just told them she started an affair with the married doctor the first day they met. Dalia gasped when Nellie leaned in toward her and shook a nasty finger at her.
“If you were one of our babies, your mother was no good. Why don’t you just leave it at that?”
Dalia had no answer to that.
Inez intervened. “Nellie, did he tell mothers their babies had died and then sell the babies?”
“Sure. There were lots of people who wanted babies.”
“Did you keep records?”
Nellie got up and lit another cigarette, once again talking to the window. “Yes.”
“Are they in your garage?”
“Yes. But you can’t have them. Leave well enough alone I say.”
They all jumped when they heard the front door open and heavy footsteps approach. Sheriff Wi?niewski came into the room.
He took off his hat and held it at his chest like a gentleman. “Hello, ladies. I understand there may be a problem here.”
Nellie blew smoke at him. Dalia and Kenyon eyed his gun in relief, glad protection had arrived. Inez never took her eyes off Nellie.
“How’d you know we were here?” Dalia asked, wondering if Prissy had given them up, or perhaps the sheriff’s granddaughter had been fearful for their safety.
“Somebody in the field across the way saw you…” he pointed at Nellie with his hat “…on your porch aiming a shotgun at these ladies. Where is it? He looked around and saw it in the corner.
“I checked it,” Inez said. “There’s no ammo.”
“Not that I doubt you,” he said, “but let’s make sure.” He picked it up, checked, and put it back where it’d been. “Nellie, why did you threaten these women?”
“ Humph . Nosey bitches. But I decided what the hell. I may as well tell them what they want to know to get them off my back. There’s no way, though, they can have Clive’s files. They’re mine. They’re all I have left of him.”
The sheriff frowned. “Nellie, Clive Upton died fifteen years ago.”
Tears sprung to the woe-be-gotten woman’s eyes and she swiped at them with a ragged kitchen towel. “You don’t have to remind me, you cruel cretin. You know what? I’d do it all over again. If he was here and wanted to do it all again, I’d do it. I love him.”
No one had a response to that twisted statement. Inez said, “Sheriff, I recorded what she told us. She confessed to stealing and selling babies.” She pushed the recorder across the table to him.
The sheriff picked it up, noted that it still recorded, and set it back down. “Nellie, sit down while we listen to this together.”
It took an hour to go over it all, first listening to the entire tape, then the sheriff asking pointed questions.
He called his deputies to cordon off the garage, its contents now evidence.
The FBI would be called in, he informed Nellie, and he was taking her in for kidnapping, child endangerment, and the selling of human beings.
She seemed shocked when he read her Miranda Rights.
“But…but…” she sputtered. “We were only helping all those wayward women.”
Sheriff Wi?niewski didn’t respond as he escorted her to his car. Before he got in, Dalia ran up to him. “Sheriff, can I please look at the files? I came here to see if I’m one of the sold babies.”
His hardened face softened as he considered her plea. “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. It’ll all come out in time.” He started to get in his cruiser but turned back to her. “When were you born?”
“May 27, 1970.”
He nodded. “You ladies need to leave now.” With that he was off.
The three amateur sleuths stood on the street watching him drive away. There was no chance of getting in the garage as his deputies, the same ones who’d arrested them before, stood guard. Tragically, any chance of gaining insight into Dalia’s birth anytime soon vanished.