30
Sam walked out of the water after a morning swim.
She stood on the wet sand, squeezing salt water out of her long hair, and feeling charged up.
The ocean had been flat calm for days, but waves were building offshore, and she felt the energy.
She glanced up at the cabanas and saw four of the Old Detectives huddled over a low table.
Although she couldn’t hear what they were saying, Anne, Mike, Nola, and Edward were talking animatedly.
Sam knew they had taken the wedding mysteries to heart and were doing their best to solve them, to help get Kate and Conor back together.
Sam saw Miranda and Leo walking along the tide line from the point. She felt surprised to see them together. Miranda was dressed in yoga clothes; while Sam was still swimming, she had noticed the beach yoga class offered by the hotel. She had also seen Leo jog past, along the hard sand.
“I thought you left,” Sam said to Miranda.
“I decided not to,” Miranda said. “Bernard and I are over. Besides, there’s so much going on, and I feel I need to be here.”
“I don’t get many chances to run on the beach,” Leo said. “Must be kismet—it was nice to bump into Miranda. We hadn’t met before.”
Miranda ignored that. “Sam, is there any news about Maeve?”
“No,” Sam said. “I checked with Kate first thing this morning, and she hadn’t heard anything.”
“This is just incredible,” Miranda said. “I don’t know Maeve well at all, I just met her, but I hate to think of something happening to her. She seemed so sweet.”
“And she seemed devoted to Kate,” Leo said.
Sam felt jarred by the fact that they had both used the past tense. “Don’t say ‘seemed,’” she said. “She’s coming back.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” Miranda said, grabbing Sam’s wrist. “I just meant at the time I first met her—three days ago, at the rehearsal dinner.”
“Same here,” Leo said. “I’m sure she’s still devoted to Kate. Ongoing, Sam. I guarantee you she’s okay.”
Sam’s head was spinning. She wanted to ask Leo how he knew that. She knew she was being extra sensitive, that one terrible thing after another was taking a toll. “Sorry,” she said. “I just wish I knew what happened to her.”
“I feel as if I brought bad luck,” Miranda said.
“Hmm, isn’t that a little dramatic?” Leo asked.
“No,” Miranda said. “I helped Belinda get this whole thing started.”
“On purpose?” Sam asked. “You knew she was going to confront Kate with that ring and baby picture?”
“Sam, I didn’t know what she was going to do,” Miranda said. “She was my closest cousin when we were kids. She’s gone through a lot, and I was just so glad when she called me, told me she had this amazing plan.”
“What plan?” Sam asked.
“Crashing the wedding of the boy next door. I knew she used to have a crush on him. She made it sound so lighthearted and fun—like going back in time, being girls again. She was a widow, I’m divorced. Life gets to be so serious—mortgages, health stuff, getting older.”
Sam couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This person actually thought it was fun to have destroyed Kate and Conor’s wedding? Miranda must have read her expression.
“Honestly, it was a stupid prank. She told me she thought Conor would get a kick out of it. It wasn’t until we’d set the whole thing in motion—you know, getting ourselves invited along with Garrett and Bernard—that she told me about Conor being the baby’s father.”
“What did she say?” Sam asked.
“That she had had a child with Conor. And that he never took responsibility for it.”
“That’s disgusting,” Sam said. “That is not who he is. If she did have his child, he would have stepped up. But she was lying.”
“I’m figuring that out,” Miranda said.
“If you were such close cousins, why did she wait until this summer to tell you that she had had a baby?” Sam asked.
“I knew that part,” Miranda said. “Of course I knew she had a daughter—I just didn’t know who the father was.
She never talked about him. And she didn’t tell me that Conor was the father until just before the rehearsal dinner.
Once she told me, things fell into place—her real reason for wanting to crash his wedding. ”
“To destroy his life?” Sam asked.
“More like to destroy Kate’s. I tried to stop her, but by that time, we were with Bernard and Garrett, and I told myself she wouldn’t do anything crazy in front of everyone,” Miranda said.
“She must have been a very sick person,” Leo said.
Miranda nodded. “She was. She had very bad depression and anxiety, and she wound up in a hospital when she was very young. She was there for over a year. I always thought that was where she got pregnant.”
“Maynard-King?” Sam asked.
“You know about that?” Miranda asked, sounding surprised.
“Yes. And she married the head of the hospital. Dr. Tyler.”
“Yes,” Miranda said. “Jonathan was her doctor when she was a patient there. But they didn’t get married until several years later. After she’d gotten well—or at least gotten better—and had a daughter with another man.”
“Conor,” Leo said.
“Not Conor,” Sam said sternly.
“Like I said, she never told me,” Miranda said. “It was always a big mystery. I actually figured that Jonathan was the father, and they had to keep it secret because it would have been a scandal . . . for the head of MK to get a patient pregnant. The board would have fired him immediately.”
“They certainly would have,” Leo said. “I can promise you that.”
“How do you know?” Sam asked. “Are you connected to the hospital? Are you their lawyer or on their board?”
“No,” Leo said after a few seconds. “But Rhode Island is a small state, and I’ve known members of their board. Besides, it’s universal truth that fooling around is one thing. Getting caught is another. Especially for a man in authority.”
That put Sam’s back up. Was Leo saying that it was okay for a doctor to sexually abuse a patient as long as he kept it secret?
“Anyway, Sam,” Miranda said. “I feel terrible about what Belinda did. I think she really lost her mind when she found out Conor was getting married. She was obsessed with him.”
“That seems obvious,” Sam said. “You know, Miranda . . . considering that Belinda was your cousin, you don’t seem all that sad about her death.”
“I’m sad,” Miranda said sharply. “You don’t know how I feel. But I’m also angry at her, the way she tried to use her daughter to manipulate Conor and drive Kate away.”
“Who is the child?” Sam asked. “What’s her name?”
Miranda didn’t answer that question. “Could I be in trouble? For being involved with getting Belinda here? Could I be a suspect?”
“Miranda, I’m a lawyer,” Leo said. “If you want me to advise you, we can step away, and you can tell me whatever you know about Belinda, her daughter, and anything else. That way it will be just between us.”
Miranda seemed to consider his offer, but she didn’t reply.
Leo gestured toward the cabana, where the Reids and Aldriches were sitting together. “Let’s go up there,” he said. “I want to take some notes. Even if I don’t represent you, we’re working together to get some answers. It can only help.”
Miranda shook her head hard. “No, thanks,” she said, starting toward the hotel. “Sam, I will see you later.”
“That is strange,” Leo said, watching Miranda go. “She seemed to want to talk, but she shut down when you asked her Belinda’s daughter’s name. What’s she afraid of?” He gestured for Sam to follow him up the sand to the cabana, and they walked there together.
Sam looked down at the table where the four of them sat. There were index cards and what looked like an old-fashioned phone book. From the cover, she could tell that it was South County’s telephone directory.
“Not everyone researches on the internet,” Mike said. “We’ve been tracking down 1740 ever since we heard about it.”
“We had an old phone book in the cottage,” Anne said, flipping through the book, pointing at a particular page. “Look what we found.”
Sam took the empty chair beside her and saw several advertisements. Each one was set within borders, in its own square. There were different sizes, fonts, and images. Anne tapped her finger on a listing positioned in the upper right corner:
1740 Events
Fantasies our specialty
Let us make your fairy tale come true
Discretion guaranteed.
There were a phone number and line drawing of a beautiful woman and a monster—they looked to Sam like Beauty and the Beast.
“Wow!” Sam said. “That’s it!”
“This ad is too old for it to matter,” Leo said. “It’s out of date. Let’s move on.”
“I agree with Leo,” Nola said. “Just from my own experience, dealing with violent offenders, especially in sex crimes, they are not going to advertise. They operate in secret. This ad was for something else—they’re party planners.”
“But it says ‘fairy tale,’” Sam said. “And look at the drawing—it’s Beauty and the Beast. Have you tried the number?”
“Of course,” Nola said. “As soon as we saw the ad. The person who answered had no clue about the company or anything to do with 1740. He said he has had the number for fifteen years.”
“See? It’s out of date,” Leo said. “Maybe this particular operation went out of business back then, and the number was reassigned.”
“Well, people have been known to lie,” Mike said.
“We are better off focusing on present day,” Leo said. Sam stared at him, wondering why he seemed so opposed to looking into what seemed to her to be a good lead.
“I’m sure that’s what Conor, Tom, and Joe are doing,” Mike said. “And Kate too. Sam, didn’t you and Kate go to Maynard-King and find some sort of note mentioning the infamous 1740?”
“Yes,” Sam said.
“So let’s run this down,” Mike said. “Go in a different direction.”
“Backward,” Leo said.
“Come on, now,” Nola said. “Don’t be negative.”