Chapter 3 - The Christmas Nursery
Police sealed the sixth floor while guests were escorted from the
ballroom.
By midnight, the Bellweather looked less like a Christmas hotel and more
like a crime scene wearing garland.
Lucy sat in my office wrapped in a hotel blanket, drinking cocoa.
“You believed me,” she said.
“Always.”
“Even when everybody looked at me like I was bad?”
I knelt beside her.
“Especially then.”
She considered that.
“Can I have more marshmallows?”
“That was emotional blackmail.”
“Is that a yes?”
Before I could answer, Graham entered.
His tuxedo jacket was gone. His sleeves were rolled up. For the first
time all evening, he looked less like the chairman of Vale Holdings and
more like a tired man whose family had been dismantled in public.
“Police took Evelyn, Monica and Dr. Pike for questioning.”
“Arrested?”
“Not yet.”
He looked at Lucy.
“I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For not believing you immediately.”
Lucy shrugged. “Adults do that.”
Graham blinked.
I almost laughed.
Then Harold entered carrying documents recovered from Monica’s bag.
“There’s a private maternity contract.”
Graham stood.
“With whom?”
“A surrogate.”
The woman was twenty-seven-year-old Julia Ellison.
Mara’s daughter.
The contract had been executed under a shell company called North Star
Family Services. Julia had agreed to carry an embryo for an unnamed
married couple.
But the genetic parentage section was missing.
Graham read the pages.
“Is the child mine?”
Harold hesitated.
“We don’t know.”
The police searched Evelyn’s townhouse before dawn.
They found prenatal vitamins, fake medical records, prosthetics in three
sizes, and a locked room painted pale blue.
A nursery.
There was a crib beneath a hand-painted moon.
Tiny clothes hung in the closet.
Christmas presents sat unopened beneath a miniature tree.
One gift tag read:
TO BABY CHARLES, FROM AUNT MONICA.
The scheme had been prepared down to the wrapping paper.
But another object changed everything.
A calendar.
December 24 was circled.
Beside it:
JULIA — INDUCTION, 11 P.M.
Graham stared at the photograph the detective showed him.
“She could be giving birth right now.”
The detective nodded. “We’re checking hospitals.”
Lucy, who was supposed to be sleeping on my office sofa, sat upright.
“She won’t be at a hospital.”
Everyone looked at her.
“Why?”
“The lady on the phone was whispering.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“She said get me out of the hotel. Maybe she was here.”
I remembered the warm kettle in Room 614.
“She was.”
We searched access logs.
At 10:08 p.m., a temporary employee badge had opened the old ballroom
elevator.
At 10:19, it opened the basement laundry.
At 10:31, the badge opened the loading dock.
Security footage showed a pregnant woman in a long gray coat climbing
into an ambulance.
The ambulance did not belong to the city.
Its markings read:
NORTH STAR MEDICAL TRANSPORT.
Harold swore.
“North Star.”
The same name as the surrogacy company.
Police traced the vehicle to an abandoned private clinic twenty miles
north.
Graham insisted on going.
“So am I,” I said.
“No.”
“My security credentials uncovered half of this.”
“You have a daughter.”
“Exactly why I’m going. Whoever called knew my name and Lucy’s.”
I left Lucy with my sister, Rachel, who arrived furious, terrified and
still wearing Christmas pajamas beneath her coat.
“You attract normal problems,” she told me. “Normal people lose
luggage.”
“Helpful.”
“Come home alive.”
Snow thickened as we drove north.
At 2:14 a.m., police entered the clinic.
We waited outside.
Then an officer ran back.
“There’s a woman inside.”
Graham went white.
“Julia?”
The officer nodded.
“She’s alive. She’s in labor.”
We were allowed inside only after the building was secured.
Julia lay in a small medical room beneath harsh fluorescent lights. A
frightened nurse remained beside her.
When Julia saw Graham, she began crying.
“You look like her.”
“Like Mara?”
“My mother.”
“Where is she?”
Julia shook her head.
“First tell me you won’t let Evelyn take my baby.”
Graham froze.
“Your baby?”
Julia gripped the sheet.
“She lied about the contract.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That the embryo belonged to her and her husband. That I was helping a
family.”
“And it didn’t?”
Julia looked directly at him.
“The embryo was mine.”
Silence.
“And the father?” Graham asked.
Julia closed her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
A contraction hit.
The nurse called for the paramedics.
Julia grabbed my wrist.
“They stole eggs from me during a procedure two years ago. Dr. Pike told
me I had ovarian cysts.”
Graham stepped backward.
“This was planned for years.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Julia began sobbing.
“Because my mother found something your father hid.”
“What?”
Julia whispered two words.
“Your will.”
Graham stared at her.
“My will?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
May you like
“Charles Vale’s real will.”
Then the lights went out.
