Читать книгу A Father's Vow - Tina Leonard - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

BEN’S HEART contracted at the unwelcome news. He clutched Lucy’s hand tighter in his to calm himself. The unhelpful woman was clearly annoyed with their presence. He decided to allow Carolyn to continue on her course—after all, she was doing her job. He stood still on the porch, torn between giving in to despair and chewing the woman out for her dismissive attitude.

Of course, she had no way of knowing that their mission was one of life-and-death. He had too much invested in the situation, and his desperation was setting his emotions at flashpoint.

Carolyn’s calm voice pushed back the rush of disappointment swelling his heart. “I am sorry to hear of his passing. We were unaware that he was ill.”

The woman shrugged. “What is it you wanted with him, anyway?”

“Actually, it’s a private matter. Could you possibly direct us to Mrs. Benton?”

“I can, but it’ll do you as little good as Dr. Benton.”

To Ben’s surprise, the contrary woman opened the screen door. They stepped into the dark hallway, the musty smell of the house oppressive. A very unpleasant place to live, he thought suddenly. And this was the residence of the man who had helped his mother deliver him. He frowned. If this doctor had been guilty of baby smuggling, wouldn’t he have chosen somewhere better to live?

“Thank you for allowing us to see Mrs. Benton,” Carolyn said. “I realize this is something of an imposition, and I hope she won’t mind us coming without an appointment.”

The woman looked at them for a moment, her expression amused but not in a kind way. “Down the hall,” was all she said.

Ben followed Carolyn, deciding to scoop Lucy into his arms. Something about this house rattled him, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.

He moved into a large room, almost empty, it seemed, of personal effects. Only an overstuffed sofa and a television filled the space—and an old woman in a chair who sat watching “Hollywood Squares,” her back to them.

Carolyn went over to her. “Mrs. Benton?”

The elderly woman ignored her.

“Mrs. Benton?” she repeated. When there was no response, Carolyn glanced at Ben, concerned. “I don’t think she can hear me.”

“Sometimes she can, sometimes she can’t—depends on whether her mind’s fixed or not,” the woman informed them. “She’s got a rare form of brain cancer. Lately she’s more out than in, if you know what I mean. The doctor’s wife ain’t in, ain’t in her right mind.”

“Are you her caregiver?” Ben asked, his disgust growing with every word she uttered.

“As much as I can be. Heaven only knows I’m more of a guard most of the time.”

“A guard?” Carolyn asked.

“She’ll get it into her head that she’s going to drive her car, and if I so much as turn away for a second, she’s out there behind the wheel, angry at the car because she can’t get it to go. I hid the keys, but still she tries.”

Carolyn looked at Mrs. Benton for a few more seconds, her gaze searching the woman’s profile. After a moment, she said, “We’re looking for some records. Is there anyone in charge of the doctor’s records?”

“Just her,” the woman said. “She was his nurse, and his office manager, I suppose. They pretty much worked as a team. You’re not from around here, are ya, or you’d know that.”

“I’m not,” Carolyn said. “This is Ben Mulholland, and his daughter, Lucy. We think that Dr. Benton assisted Ben’s mother in her delivery. We’re looking for Eileen Mulholland’s records.”

“I can’t give you none of that,” the caregiver said, “even if I knew where they were.”

Mrs. Benton turned her head. “Eileen?” she asked in a quavering voice. “Eileen?”

“Eileen Mulholland,” Carolyn repeated softly. Ben’s heart seemed to pause.

Mrs. Benton frowned, obviously trying to sort through something in her mind. “Eileen.”

“Mulholland,” Carolyn said again.

The woman scratched at her hand. “Is she here?”

“No.” Carolyn’s voice was soft. “She died.”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Benton said. “She didn’t die. She’s a healthy farm girl. I took her vital signs.”

Carolyn’s gaze met Ben’s in triumph, but all he felt was a keyed-up sense of fear. He wanted answers, but how were they going to get them out of this addled woman?

Mrs. Benton turned toward the television again, apparently finished.

“Won’t get much out of her,” the caregiver informed them. “You’re lucky you got that much. Say, if this Eileen Mulholland is dead, what are you wanting to see her records for?”

“Eileen Mulholland is not dead,” Mrs. Benton disagreed without taking her attention from “Hollywood Squares.” “I took her vital signs myself.”

“Her health history could help us determine whether little Lucy here is predisposed to any medical problems.”

Ben admired Carolyn’s quick and logical answer. If nothing else, she was managing to squeeze some water from a very difficult stone. He’d have walked away with an empty cup if he’d been in charge of the questioning.

Carolyn took Lucy from Ben’s arms and brought her near to Mrs. Benton, as if to engender a bond between them. To his surprise, Mrs. Benton glanced at the child—then drew back as if she were afraid.

“Is there something wrong with her?” the caregiver asked bluntly, her voice hard as she stared at Lucy. “She looks sick to me.”

Ben took Lucy back from Carolyn and held her more tightly to his chest, willing his anger to burn itself out. Let Carolyn handle this, he reminded himself. If you give this old witch a righteous ass-chewing, you’re going to blow any chance of learning what you need to know.

“I think I’ll go for a drive,” Mrs. Benton said. “I need to drive.”

The caregiver sighed. “No, Mrs. Benton, no drive for you. But if you be quiet, I’ll push your wheelchair in the garden.” She brought a wheelchair over from a side room and helped her charge up, then glanced at the guests. “I think you’ve gotten all you’re going to out of her. Could you see yourselves out? If I leave her while she’s taken a notion to go driving, I’ll come back here and find her gone. One time she walked down the street and tried to get into someone’s house. She kept repeating over and over that she was an orphan and needed a home. Poor devil.”

“We can see ourselves out,” Carolyn assured her. “Thank you for your time.”

“But—“ Ben began, but Carolyn shook her head.

The wheelchair moved toward the back of the house, and they heard a door open and shut.

“I’ll bet she tells everyone she sees that she’s being kept prisoner. She’s probably ‘out’ a lot more of the time than she’s ‘in’ just to survive living with that battle-ax.”

“No,” Carolyn disagreed. “Mrs. Benton’s suffering is real. The interesting thing was, she totally clicked in when anything was mentioned about patients or nursing. Did you notice how that really caught her attention? I have a feeling she was a very competent nurse. It’s the part of her life she seemed very cognizant of. She remembered your mother had been a patient, and that she’d taken her vitals.”

“Great, so Nurse Ratched was a nurse down to her cuticles. How does that help us?”

“It’s something to go on.”

He followed Carolyn as she moved to the front of the house.

“Daddy, can we go yet?” Lucy asked.

“We’ll go, sweetie. I know you’re getting tired.” He was frustrated by the lack of information they’d found, but he injected his voice with kindness for Lucy’s sake. Inside, he cursed, hating the brick wall they’d hit.

Carolyn walked into another room off the hallway, her gaze on the steel filing cabinets lining one wall. “There’s probably a gold mine of information hidden in those steel drawers.”

“I think you need a search warrant or a request or something, Carolyn,” he said worriedly. He’d hired her for her tenacity, but he didn’t know if this much was a good thing. She had a determined gleam in her eye that hinted at her intentions. “Carolyn, if you go through those cabinets and the harpy catches you, she may call the police on us. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“We don’t have a lot of time for legal dancing,” Carolyn said. She pointed to the garden, where they could see the wheelchair being pushed by the unenthusiastic caregiver. “Why don’t you go settle Lucy in the car? I’ll be right behind you.”

“Getting fired from your job isn’t something I want to have you do on my behalf,” Ben said, watching as she walked into the office.

Carolyn ignored him as she opened the first set of steel drawers. “I’m not doing this on your behalf,” she said, her voice preoccupied as she looked into some files. “These files are in a feminine hand, rather than masculine, which makes me think Mrs. Benton was far more than just a simple temperature taker. She was his partner.”

“Miss Carolyn,” Lucy said. “You’re not ‘posed to touch people’s things without asking.”

Ben patted his daughter’s back. “In our home, we teach that it’s not good to just take things we want, Carolyn.”

She glanced up at him, then at Lucy. “I always knew you’d be an excellent father, Ben.”

He frowned. “What does that mean? You make it sound so strange.”

She smiled at his harsh tone. “Sh. You two go outside—you’re wrecking my concentration. I think I’m onto something here.”

“You’d better be. The harpy’s on her way back inside.”

Carolyn flipped a page in a file. “There’s no way that’s possible,” she said.

“Oh, yes, it is. She sees our car hasn’t moved, and she knows exactly what we’re doing. Come on, Carolyn.”

“No, I mean, how could the good doctor have been on the outskirts of Austin to deliver you, then deliver a baby four hours away at the same time?”

“I don’t know, damn it! Come on, Carolyn!”

“Daddy! Don’t say damn it,” Lucy protested, but Ben held his daughter tighter and grabbed Carolyn’s arm with his free hand. She stuffed the file back into the cabinet and closed it just as they heard the wheelchair bumping the porch door.

“You are the most hardheaded, intractable, tenacious person I know,” he said between gritted teeth as he hauled her toward the car. He opened the driver side door for her, then went around to the passenger side, so he could strap Lucy in the back seat. Glancing over his shoulder, he was relieved to see that the caregiver wasn’t brandishing a broom or some other weapon at them.

“That’s what you hired me for,” Carolyn snapped. “It was the trait you were specifically looking for.”

“Buckle up,” he commanded. He slammed the door and hurried to the driver’s side, getting in and cranking the engine. The car pulled away from the curb, and he allowed himself a breath. “I don’t want you bending laws, Carolyn. I’m desperate, yeah, but not enough for you to put yourself at risk.”

She ignored him, her forehead creased in thought. “Your mother was about twenty years younger than Dr. Benton’s wife,” she mused.

“So?”

“For someone whose husband had so many patients, it’s odd that she remembered your mother. And her handwriting was clear in that file. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who allowed herself to make errors. We saw how quickly her memory snapped back into place when the nurse in her was called up. Kind of like a policeman or military personnel, who make it a habit to remember times, places, dates and other pertinent facts.”

“What are you getting at?” Ben demanded. “That precise Nurse Ratched made an incorrect entry? That she recorded the wrong time on one occasion?”

“I think she recorded exactly what she wanted to. The question is, why did she misrepresent the facts?”

“Can you know that she did?”

“I know a doctor doesn’t deliver two children at the same time in locations that are four hours apart. According to her daily notations for your birth date, that’s exactly what happened.”

“It could have been a simple error—”

“I don’t think so. She remembered your mother, she remembered that her status was healthy. I have the strangest feeling that she might have remembered more—she just didn’t feel like revealing it. Or maybe she couldn’t. The memory suppresses difficult things over time.”

“What difficult thing might she have been suppressing?”

Carolyn looked at him with clear eyes. “That her husband stole babies and sold them for a profit. And that she was an accessory.”

* * *

CAROLYN DROVE Ben back to Finders Keepers to pick up his car and, at his request, followed him out to the farmhouse where he lived on the outskirts of San Antonio so that he could feed Lucy and put her to bed. Then they needed to discuss what they’d learned and decide on the next course of action. At first she was nervous going to his house. She was afraid she’d see traces of Marissa everywhere. Then she was ashamed of herself for being so spiteful. For Lucy’s sake, she should hope that there was much of Marissa’s presence in evidence.

But to Carolyn’s surprise, the small house was devoid of pictures or anything else that spoke of the beautiful model. Instantly, the word that came to Carolyn’s mind was comfortable. Clean. Home. Ben.

She lowered her gaze, thinking that her heart had never been in the jeopardy it was in at this very moment. Ben was a protector, and she’d always sensed that with him, she would find warmth. Security.

To distract herself, she glanced around Ben’s home. Log cabin style, the small house welcomed her. The main room was decorated with a blue-and-red Mexican blanket on one wall and another on the rough floor. A brown leather sofa, well-worn and all the more inviting for it, sat directly across from a long picture window. In front of the sofa rested a scarred pine table. Small pillows and two lamps of an indeterminable metal adorned the room. Carolyn wanted to kick off her shoes, sink into the sofa and wrap herself in Ben.