Cry Mercy

NINETEEN

Emme had always considered herself a patient woman, but by three in the afternoon, when she hadn't heard from any of the boys, she'd just about exhausted what patience she had. She dialed Nick's cell phone again and was prepared to leave a message when he picked up.

“Hey,” he said. “I was just about to call you. My client just left-finally. I say finally because he's been here since eight fifteen this morning. And I say that with all fondness and gratitude, because he brought me one hell of a car.”

“What kind of car?”

“A very sweet 1949 Cadillac. There were less than eight thousand of this model made, less than fifty are registered.” He sighed happily. “Like I said. It's one sweet car.”

“Well, good luck with it.” She wasn't exactly sure what one said under the circumstances, but figured that would suffice.

Nick laughed. “So what good news did today bring? Aaron cough up the name of Donor 1735?”

“I wish it was going to be that easy.” She related the gist of her conversation with Aaron that morning.

“So whatever DNA Belle used had to have come from one of her male donor siblings?”

“Right. I emailed the four of them but no one's gotten back to me yet. Of course, there could be a lot of reasons for that. It's summer, they could all be working today. Or the one who gave her the DNA could be reluctant to speak up.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. I don't know how kids that age think. But I do think there's a high probability that Belle sent a copy of the DNA profile to whomever gave her their DNA. I did ask, but so far, nada.”

“Aaron is still going to try to retrieve Belle's emails, though, right?”

“He's going to consult with a buddy who apparently knows a lot about computers.”

“I thought you could retrieve just about anything from a hard drive.”

“I don't think it's quite that cut and dried. And Aaron didn't know if email, once deleted, could be retrieved. But he said he'd do his best and I have to trust him to do that. In the meantime, though, I think we need to be prepared in case we can't get the information from him.”

“So your thoughts for plan B would be…”

“I think we need to go through all those boxes of Belinda's. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure she'd have printed out copies of whatever information she had on her computer. She'd have wanted a hard copy. And besides, if she was successful in getting a DNA profile, she'd have sent it to one of these genealogy services that tracks DNA, right? She'd have kept a record of that, too.”

“You're right. We need to go through her stuff. What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Well, I was hoping to start on that, but if you have this car to work on…”

“The Caddy can wait. How early do you think you can get there?”

“I can drop Chloe off at eight.”

“It'll take you about two hours to get to the farm. Get a pen and paper and I'll give you directions.”

“I guess I didn't put things back too neatly last time.” Nick and Emme stood in the farmhouse's foyer, surveying the pile of boxes, some half-opened, some with articles of clothing draped over the sides.

“Well, we'll start with those, then, the ones that are already opened.” She poked into the nearest carton, which appeared to contain mostly sweaters. “We'll go through every single item and when we're done, we'll pack the box up again and move it into the living room.”

“Okay.”

He'd already opened all the windows to let in some cool morning air. Now he opened the front door. “It's going to get pretty hot in here,” he told her. “By one, the sun is going to be coming right through those windows.”

“Maybe we'll get lucky before we have to worry about the heat.” She dove into the box and began removing things item by item. She held every sweater by the shoulders and shook each piece vigorously. “Just in case Belinda hid something inside,” she told him when she found him watching her, one eyebrow raised. “And check every pocket. You never know what you're going to find.”

She straightened up, a red hooded sweater over her arm. “You can start any time now, you know.”

“I just like watching you.”

“Watch me later. We are going to get through all these boxes today.”

He pulled one of the cartons closer and pushed the lid all the way open. “This one had a bunch of skirts and pants and jackets.”

“All things with pockets.”

“Right.” He stuffed his hand into the pocket of the pair of black pants he'd drawn out of the box. When he was convinced that it held no hidden treasure, he folded it and set it aside.

“She sure had a lot of stuff,” he muttered.

“Girls that age do,” she smiled. “Clothes… can there be too many clothes? Shoes. Oh, and bags… I'm still fighting my addiction to good bags.”

“Bags? You mean, like handbags?”

She nodded and shook out another sweater.

“One of these boxes only contained handbags.”

“A girl after my own heart.”

“What's with that?” He frowned. “You can only use one at a time, right?”

“This from a guy who thought nothing of having nineteen cars? Dare I say you can only drive one at a time?”

“Hey, it was only seventeen. And I sold most of them.”

A knock on the back door was followed by a voice calling for Nick.

“That sounds like my neighbor, Herb,” he told Emme. “In here, Herb. Front hall.”

“Nick, I've got the estimates for the repairs to the… oh, hello.” Herb Sanders stopped midway through the door. “I didn't know you had company.”

“This is Emme Caldwell. Emme, meet Herb.” To Herb, Nick said, “Emme's helping me look for Belinda.”

“You a cop or something?”

Yes was on the tip of her tongue, and then she remembered. “No, I'm a private investigator with a firm working with Nick.”

“Well, it's nice to meet you.” Herb nodded. “I hope you find that girl. Seems she's been missing a long time.”

“We're doing our best.”

Herb waved a fat envelope at Nick and said, “I have some estimates here for you to look at. Three for each of the projects you asked about. I'd have a fourth, but Greg Burton, he said he wanted to take another look at that back wall in the barn, so he'll be stopping out. Want me to just leave these on the kitchen table? You can give me a call when you're free, and we can go over them.”

Nick glanced at Emme hesitantly.

“I can go through this stuff by myself,” she told him. “Go do what you have to do.”

“It shouldn't take too long.”

“It's okay.” She turned back to the box she was working on and resumed sorting. When she was finished, she repacked the sweaters and dragged the box into the living room, then started on the next box, this one filled with books. She dragged it over to the stairs where she sat and began to search through every book and notebook.

“Find anything?” Nick came back into the foyer with two bottles of water. He handed one to Emme and put the other down on the top of an old desk that sat to one side of the front door.

“Not yet.”

“It's getting stuffy in here. There's no breeze outside.” He stood at the window. “I'm sorry we don't have any fans. And obviously, no AC. I keep thinking I might do that, one of these days. But someone would have to be living here full-time to justify that kind of expense, and as long as the property stays in the family, that isn't likely to happen.”

“It's a charming house,” she said, looking up from the book she was holding upside down. She fanned through the pages, then closed it and set it next to her on the step. “I love the old woodwork in these places, the high ceilings, the big rooms with the big windows and the fireplaces.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “The entire property has a lot of charm. There's a pond and what's left of my granddad's peach orchard. They sold off most of that parcel a long time ago.”

“How many acres did they have?”

“When my granddad was farming, they had over two hundred. Wendy sold some to Herb after she inherited it. Now, we're down to about sixty, and Herb uses most of that for his corn. I guess we have about a dozen acres that we use, between the garages and the pond.”

“I noticed an old cemetery on the road as I drove up. Is that your family's?” She shook out another book but nothing fell out.

“It's on the property, but there aren't any Perones buried there. The family my grandparents bought this place from had owned it for almost two hundred years. Their name was Sawyer. They're all buried down there.”

“None of their descendants wanted to keep the farm?”

“I don't think they had any children. My granddad showed me where the folks he bought from were buried-Mary Alice and Henry Sawyer-and he was careful to keep the graveyard respectfully mowed and the weeds out.”

“That was nice of him. It looked pretty tidy when I drove past,” she said.

“Herb kind of took that over after my granddad died. Wendy would never have thought to do it, and I wasn't here.”

“Herb sounds like the ideal neighbor.”

“He is. He and his wife are the best. They keep an eye on the place for me. Last time I was out here, I noticed that we're in need of a lot of repairs. Herb lined up some contractors to come out and look things over and write up some estimates. That's what he was dropping off. The barn needs work, the pond house my granddad built for Wendy and me-remind me to show you that before we leave-that needs a new-”

“Oh,” Emme exclaimed as several sheets of folded paper fluttered from a book she'd turned upside down. She bent over to pick them up and straightened them out. She looked them over quickly before handing them off to Nick. “Emails from Blondebelle to aspark1010.” She looked up at Nick. “Belle to Aaron.”

He read through them. “This is stuff we already knew. Donor 1735 was of Scandinavian and Irish descent. Oh, here's stuff Hayley hadn't told us. He was born in Philadelphia on August first, 1961, and he's a lawyer.”

Emme leaned around him to read for herself, and he put his arm around her to bring her closer.

“So all we have to do is find a lawyer who was born in Philly on August first, 1961. Hey-piece of cake,” he said dryly.

“Right. It'll be a snap.” She pointed at the box that sat at his feet. “Keep looking.”

“Here's the box with the bags in it.” Nick pulled out a black leather clutch and looked inside. “It seems to have a lot of pockets in it. Maybe you should look through these.”

“Because I said I liked bags?”

“No. Because you'll know where to look for the pockets.” He opened another box. “Looks like… stuff girls wear that guys don't. Sorry-this creeps me out a little. This one's yours.”

“Okay. You finish up on this box of books and I'll do the bags and the girly stuff.” Emme pushed a carton aside to make room to walk. She peered inside the box Nick had relinquished to her. She was through it in less than five minutes. “No place to hide stuff in any of these things.”

She moved that box into the living room and moved on to the box of handbags.

“Wow. Belinda really did have a lot of bags.”

She began to sort through them, finding sticks of gum in some, pink packets of sweetener in others, pens in most, but no papers that would bring them closer to finding Donor 1735.

When he finished with the box of books, Nick said, “Want to take a break? It's getting hot in here.”

“No, I'm good.”

“Maybe there's a fan in the attic.” Nick wiped sweat from his forehead. “I'll be right back.”

Emme glanced up to see him take the stairs two at a time. Overhead, she heard first his footsteps, then the creak of a door being opened, followed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. A few minutes later, he came back down.

“Nothing. I don't know how anyone lived in this house in the summer without even a damned fan.”

“We only have four more boxes to go.” Emme pointed out. “I think we'll survive.”

“Not without cold drinks,” he grumbled and went into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened, then closed.

“The cupboard is really bare,” he told her. “I have an idea. Let's drive into town and pick up some lunch.”

“You go,” she said. “I'll keep working here.”

“You sure? You're not dying from the heat?”

“No, I'm fine.”

“Sandwich, all right?”

“Whatever. I'm not fussy. Just get me whatever you get for yourself.”

“That's easy enough. I'll be back in twenty, thirty minutes.”

“Fine.” She looked up and smiled. “I'll be here.”

He left through the back door and she heard the Firebird rumble softly as it passed the window to her left. The house grew very still, and she became aware of a clock ticking in one of the other rooms. She wished there was music, a radio, an iPod, anything to cut through the silence. It was just too quiet.

She finished going through the bags-Belinda had excellent taste in bags, she'd give her that. There were several in that box that Emme had admired, but none of their zippered pockets had hidden secrets. She folded over the top and dragged the box into the living room with the others.

It was a nice room, a comfortable room. She could see a young Nick sitting on that sofa-now covered with a well-worn sheet-with his grandfather, watching TV. She peeked at the books gathering dust on the shelves that flanked the side windows. He'd mentioned his grandmother reading something… ah, here it is. The Joy Luck Club. She lifted the book from the shelf and opened it. Angela Curcio Perone was written in a beautiful script inside the front cover. She wondered which of the sheet-covered chairs his grandmother had sat in to read. The picture in her mind was a gentle one, one of two generations of a loving, happy family enjoying each other's company on a hot summer night. It must have been nice to have that, she thought with a tiny stab of envy.

Emme replaced the book and went back to work. She looked inside several boxes, and decided to go with the one containing books. Sliding the box on its side, she sat cross-legged on the floor and reached inside and pulled out the top book. Geometry. The only math course she ever did really well in. She thought if she were superstitious, she might take that as a sign, but she wasn't, and the book held no surprises. She pushed it to her right and tried again.

She heard the car before she saw it. Standing and stretching out the kinks, she went to the window and watched the Firebird slide past. Just below the windows on that side of the house, a bank of roses grew leggy and wild and covered with blooms. She went out the front door to get a better look.

“Em,” Nick called to her as he got out of the car. “Is something wrong?”

“No, I just came out to get a better look at these rose bushes.” She walked toward him.

“My grandmother planted them about a million years ago.” He shifted the bag from the deli from one hip to the other. “Wendy tried to get them under control, but I'm sorry to say no one's tended to them since she died. There's always been something else that seems more important. I'm surprised old Angie-that was my gram-hasn't come back to haunt me over it. She really took a great deal of pride in them.”

Don't offer to prune them, Emme commanded herself. You have other things to do that are more important. Besides, you won't be back here again. Let it go. Tempting as it may be…

“You can cut some before we go, if you want, to take back to your room.”

“Maybe a few for Trula for helping out so much. Thanks.”

“Trula has her own rose garden,” he reminded her as she came toward him. “I think Emme and Chloe could use something pretty to brighten up that hotel room.”

“Thanks. I do love roses.” She looked back over her shoulder and thought about which colors she'd pick. Definitely the light pink ones, and some of those lavender ones as well.

“Let's take our lunches down to the pond house and eat there,” he suggested. “It'll be shady, and cooler than the house.”

“Sounds good. Should we lock up the house?”

“There's no one around to break in. Let's just walk.”

He held out a hand to her and she took it, matching him stride for stride. They walked through a field that sloped downward toward a large pond. A tiny cabin sat on its bank and a narrow dock jutted into the water.

“This is beautiful,” she told him. “So quiet it's almost scary. How do people sleep out here?”

“Very soundly.”

“I guess I've gotten used to hotel noise over the past few weeks. Our room overlooks the parking lot and the main road into Conroy, so there's always road noise. And there's always someone coming in around one or two who slams the door to their room. And the elevator pings when it hits our floor whether it stops or not. We're two rooms down from it, so I hear it all night long.”

“Sound to me as if the whole hotel thing is wearing thin.”

She braced herself for the slope, tugged at the hem of her short skirt, and tried not to lose her footing in her sandals.

“I'm not really dressed for this,” she muttered when they reached the dock.

“I think you look great,” he said, making no effort to pretend that he wasn't looking at her legs. “This is the pond house my granddad built for Wendy, but she'd outgrown it by the time I came along. It was the best playhouse you could imagine.”

“Did you have playmates here?”

“Just my granddad.” He smiled. “He made for one hell of a pirate.”

He pushed the door open. “It needs a lot of work, as you can see. One of the estimates Herb dropped off was for this place.”

“Are you going to go to the expense of renovating it? I mean, since no one's used it in a long time.”

“It's not my first priority-that would be the house-but yeah, I'm going to take care of it. Someday maybe there will be kids to play in it again.” He backed out of the doorway and she followed. “Besides, my granddad built it himself.”

He handed her the bag holding the food and said, “I'm going to run back to the house and get us a blanket to sit on. I'll be right back.”

“Can't we sit on the dock?”

“Sure. If we want to spend the afternoon picking splinters out of each other's butts.” He smiled. “Which, maybe on second thought, might not be so bad…”

“Go get a blanket.”

He took off up the hill at a trot. Emme sat the bag on the wooden planks that formed the dock and watched a duck and her ducklings bob and weave between the reeds.

“I didn't realize how much of Gramma's stuff Wendy kept,” Nick said, making his way down the slope. “For some reason, I assumed she'd gotten rid of most of the old stuff and replaced it with new things of her own.” He held up a mostly blue quilt. “I found this at the foot of one of the beds. I remember it from when I was a kid.”

“Why would you assume your sister would have gotten rid of it?” She helped him spread the blanket on the dock.

“I guess because everything else about her was very hip, very contemporary. It surprises me that the second floor looks just the way I remember it.”

He knelt down and reached for the bag and opened it. “I hope this is okay. I figured burgers would be good, since everyone likes burgers, but then I thought they'd get cold on the way out here. So I went with cold sandwiches.”

“I'm sure whatever it is will be fine. Thanks.” Emme sat opposite him on the blanket and opened the foil packet. She stared at the contents for a moment, then asked, “Ah… just for the record, what is this?”

“Chicken, avocado, field greens, and sprouts on whole grain.” He stared at her. “What's it look like?”

“That, what you said.” A tiny smile played at the corners of her mouth and she peered into the bag as if searching for something. “Did you get chips, by any chance?”

“That's them, in that foil bag.” He held it up, then tore it open.

“Let's see that. Oh. Sweet potato and beet chips. Yum.”

“Don't knock ′em till you try them.” He laughed and twisted the top of his water bottle.

“What, no soda?” she asked innocently.

“Soda is the invention of the devil.” He spoke solemnly, but his eyes gave him away. “It's loaded with high fructose corn syrup.” He handed her a bottle of water.

“You and Trula would get along just fine,” she told him. “She is militant about what goes on in that kitchen of hers. Everything's organic, and comes from local farms. She's totally indoctrinating Chloe, who asked the waitress this morning which local farm her eggs came from. She'll be really proud when I tell her what I had for lunch today.”

“You can let her think it was your choice. I won't give you away.”

A pair of dragonflies danced on the air between them before chasing each other across the pond.

“All kidding about the quiet aside, it is very peaceful here,” she noted.

“I don't come back as often as I should, but it's where my heart is.” He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed thoughtfully, then asked, “Where's your heart, Emme?”

“In terms of a place?” She shook her head. “There's no place I have any attachment to.”

“How ′bout the house you grew up in?”

“There were way too many of them, and none of them particularly memorable for anything I'd want to hold on to.”

“Your family moved around a lot?”

“Actually I had no family.” She hesitated for a moment, debating with herself before telling him her story-selectively edited-in the most nonchalant manner she could muster. When she finished, it occurred to her that she'd told that story more in the past few weeks than she had in the past ten years. The thought was both comforting and unsettling.

“So you really never had a home.”

She could tell by the look on his face that this disturbed him, so she said, “It's okay. I turned out okay.”

“You turned out just fine, from everything I can see. But that doesn't make it okay.”

“It's one of those things you don't get to change, you know?” She tried to make light of it, but feared her attempts were falling flat, so she added, “The only thing I can do to make the past not matter so much is to try to make the future better. To make Chloe's childhood better than mine was, to give her the security and love I didn't have.”

“She's one of the most confident and self-assured kids I've ever met, so I'd say you were doing a great job.”

“Actually, I am doing a hell of a job.” She thought then about telling him everything, about Anthony Navarro and the reward he'd put on his child's head, about changing one false name for another, but he reached out for her, one of his big hands wrapping around her forearm and sending a current through her entire body.

“I'm glad you recognize that,” he said, just before pulling her closer and covering her mouth with his own.

The buzz was back, filling her head and flowing through her like live current. His tongue teased the corners of her mouth and she took his head in both her hands and urged him to explore more. He tasted salty like the chips and smelled like the summer day, and when he eased her back onto the quilt, she drifted down willingly. His hands made fists in her hair for a moment, then slid along her sides, one elbow coming to rest on the dock to take his weight, the other hand seeking her breast with a light caress.

She hadn't expected that heat could overtake so quickly, or that want could swell like the tide, without control and without limits, but the feel of his hand on her skin set her senses into overdrive. When his lips led a hot trail from her mouth to the side of her face, to the warm spot under her ear, to her neck, her throat, she arched her body to encourage him to keep going. When he reached the place where her shirt impeded his progress, she slid a hand between them and unbuttoned it, his eager mouth following each inch of skin as each button came undone until his mouth closed over the thin lace that covered her breast. He eased the strap over her shoulder and feasted on her flesh, his tongue's sure flickering stoking the flame right to her core. He covered her body with his and she moved against him, wanting him closer. The only thought resounding inside her was More.

“Do you want to go up to the house and…” His breath was ragged and he seemed to be struggling for control.

“No,” she whispered. “Here. Now.”

He tugged her skirt up over her hips and his fingers were inside her, stroking her nearly to insanity.

“Nick.” She gasped, tugging at his waistband and finding his zipper, pulling it down as far as she could.

“Right.” He swallowed hard. “Here. Now.”

She parted her legs wider to welcome him, and sighed with pleasure when he entered her. Her hips rocked in rhythm with his, together gathering speed and intensity like a runaway train. When the crash came, it was mighty and swift and overwhelming.

“I think the top of my head just blew off,” Emme said when she could find her voice.

“I'm sorry,” he murmured. “I usually take a little more time than-”

“If you apologize, I'm going to have to hurt you,” she told him, her breath still uneven.

He laughed and started to say something, but as he rose up on one elbow, his attention was drawn to the top of the slope.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “We have company.”

“What?” She bolted upright, closing the front of her shirt and pulling down her skirt.

From somewhere behind them she heard the barking of a dog.

“Shit.” Nick grumbled and pulled his cutoffs up, zipped the zipper and pulled on his T-shirt. “When Herb said one of the carpenters would be stopping over, I didn't think he meant today.”

He looked down at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Other than the fact that I'm half-undressed and there's a stranger about to slide down that embankment, yeah, I'm fine.”

“I'll head him off,” he told her, pausing to lightly kiss the side of her face before standing and taking off up the slope.

What in the name of God has gotten into you? her inner voice demanded as she gathered their partially eaten lunch.

She began to smile, cutting off the voice and offering no explanation for her uncharacteristic behavior. Every decision she'd made over the past four years had been strictly for Chloe. Today she'd made one strictly for herself. She'd be damned if she was going to make excuses for it.

She folded the quilt and slipped her feet back into her sandals and started up the hill. She was whistling when she arrived at the drive, where a big, brown lab sat next to a pickup truck, and a tall, thin man stood talking to Nick.

“Emme, this is Greg. He's going to take a look at the barn,” Nick told her. When Greg turned to greet her, behind him, Nick rolled his eyes. “He thought since he was out this way, he'd stop and take a look at that back wall.”

“Great.” She smiled and offered her hand to the dog to sniff before patting him on the head. “Good timing.”

“That's what I was just thinking,” Nick agreed.

“Oh, yeah,” the carpenter nodded. “You got a weak back wall there, no telling when it's going to come down.”

“I'll be in the front hall,” she told Nick. “Nice to meet you, Greg.”

“Likewise.”

She left the grocery bag on the kitchen table and went upstairs to find a bathroom. On her way back down, she paused at the landing overlooking the driveway. Nick and the carpenter were nowhere to be seen, so she assumed they'd gone into the barn. Well, it spared them from having to come up with after-sex talk, she reasoned. She'd never been real good at that. It was just one of any number of reasons she hadn't been good at relationships.

She poked into the remaining boxes and decided to finish up the clothes to get those all out of the way. She sorted through a half-dozen pair of jeans and found the bottom of the box contained notebooks. She flipped through several, reading the subjects on the colored tabs.

“Genealogy,” she read aloud with a laugh. “Now, if I were going to…”

The packet of folded papers, held together with a small black and chrome clip, fell into her lap. She opened them flat on the floor and let out a yelp.

She took them into the kitchen and sat at the table, ironing out the folds with her hands, and began to read. A few minutes later, Nick came in through the back door.

“Em?” he called.

“In the kitchen,” she told him. When he came into the room, she smiled and said, “This is your lucky day.”

“Boy howdy, is it ever.” He leaned over to kiss her neck.

“No,” she laughed. “I found the paperwork we've been looking for.”

“You're kidding,” he paused, his lips still at her throat.

“Here, take a look.” She handed him the stack.

“Where?”

“In her genealogy notebook.”

“Of course. Where else?” He breezed through them, shaking his head. “I have no idea what any of this means, all these columns of lines and letters.”

“Neither do I. But we can find someone who knows what to do with it all, and with luck, they're going to lead us to Donor 1735. And hopefully-eventually-we'll find your niece.”

“You still think we will?”

“I think we will find the answer to what happened to her,” she replied, choosing her words carefully. “For better or for worse.”

“But I should probably prepare for the worst.”

She nodded slowly. “It's always good to be prepared, Nick.”

“Right.” He straightened up and handed her the sheaf of papers. “So let's get on with it. For better or for worse, let's see where this leads…”