Dead Giveaway

3

"Don't look at me, Burl," I said, scrambling to answer while trying to gulp down my surprise. "I didn't know anything about Mrs. Olsen's will. My client didn't either."

"You know for sure, do you?" he said.

"What's going on?" the deputy asked.

"Nothing. I'll handle things from here," Burl said. "You've been a big help, but you can get back to your regular watch."

"You'll call HPD with this?" Glen held up the envelope.

"That's right," came Burl's smiling response. But his gleaming charm was tarnished by a hardness in his voice.

Before the deputy left, the chief got the name of the HPD officer who had made the original request to the Liberty County Sheriff's Department.

Thank goodness Jeff gave that chore to someone else, I thought, remembering his request to one of the policemen at the coffee place. I watched the chief flip open a cell phone and punch in the number.

After a few seconds he said, "This is Chief Rollins of the Bottlebrush Police Department. I understand you need information for a notification on a victim named Verna Mae Olsen?" Another short pause as Burl listened, then he said, "I'd be happy to discuss what we've learned with whoever's in charge of the investigation."

I sat back in my chair, stomach in my throat. Damn. He wanted to talk to Jeff. I might be up a creek in a wire boat after all.

"Hold on." Burl looked at me. "Got something to write on?"

I took a deep breath and pulled the crumpled paper with Verna Mae's phone number from my pocket.

The chief smoothed it out, pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and said, "Go ahead."

Meanwhile, I marveled at how cooperative I was being at assisting in my own demise. Even upside down I recognized every digit he wrote. Jeff's cell number.

Burl thanked the officer, disconnected and started to dial again. I reached across and grabbed his thick wrist. "Could we talk before you make that call?"

He closed the phone. "About what?"

"The detective who's in charge is... a friend of mine. Got me my PI job, as a matter of fact. I don't think he'd be too happy if he knew I'd driven here tonight."

Burl sat back, arms folded, that stupid, evil phone tucked under one armpit. "Bet he won't be happy. So?"

"Is there some compelling reason he needs to know?" I asked.

"How would you answer that question if you were in my position, Abby?"

I hung my head. Bit my lower lip. "I'd say I had to give the investigators everything I knew. This is a murder case, after all." I stared him in the eyes. "But I could tell Sergeant Kline myself when I see him. It's not like my trip here has anything to do with the murder. I just had questions for you, questions about a woman who wanted to talk to me tonight and never got the chance."

Burl placed the cell phone on the table between us. "Tell your friend now that you're here at Verna Mae's, and then we'll continue our conversation."

"Now?" I stared at the phone, the little palm-size instrument of torture seeming to grow larger the longer I looked at it.

"If this pisses your friend off, work it out later. Right now we owe Verna Mae Olsen our best effort before more time passes."

I sighed. He was right. I was being totally selfish. Still, my hand trembled when I picked up the phone. The chief pushed the paper toward me, but I shook my head. "Don't need that."

Jeff answered on the second ring with "Sergeant Kline."

"Um, hi again," I said.

"Abby?" He sounded even more stunned than when he got the last weird call from me.

"As you can probably tell from the caller ID, this is not my phone," I said quickly.

"You're full of surprises tonight. Whose number is on my screen?"

"Burl Rollins. He's the Chief of Police in Bottlebrush."

A few seconds passed before he said, "Okay. What have you got for me?"

I couldn't tell from his tone if he was pissed, or glad to hear from me, or just totally confused.

"Some surprising information," I said.

"Great. I love surprises in a murder investigation. Especially when they involve you." He might as well have added, "Because about now, you've got more problems than a mailman at a rottweiler show."

"I'm at Verna Mae's house, and the police have discovered Will is her sole beneficiary," I said.

A long silence followed before he said, "Please tell me you just found out, that you didn't know this when we talked earlier."

"Of course I didn't know," I snapped. "I'm sure Will didn't know either."

"Why? Because he would have told you?" His tone was ripe with sarcasm.

"That's right," I answered.

"Maybe there's a few things you don't know about your client aside from who is birth parents are. If the chief is there, let me talk to him."

I handed the phone to Burl, and while he reported to Jeff in more detail, I wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts and wondered how I would clean up this little mess I'd just made.

When Burl flipped his phone shut, he said, "The sergeant said you should meet him at HPD headquarters at ten a.m. tomorrow."

I checked my watch. It was after one already.

"Sharp," Burl said as he stood. "Which means you better get yourself back to the city if you want to sleep tonight."

"But you said we could talk about the baby case after I called Jeff... I mean Sergeant Kline."

He pushed his wire-frames up on his nose and sighed heavily. "You sure you want to do that now?"

"I've got a client who needs answers."

"Sounds like your client needs to provide a few of those himself."

"Yes, and he'll do that. But could you tell me more about your investigation into Will's abandonment?"

Burl lowered himself into the chair. "Not much to tell. About wore me out hunting for clues."

"What happened after you took Will from Verna Mae?"

"Turned the kid over to CPS the following day. Couldn't get a caseworker out that Sunday night. Me and my wife, Lucinda, kept the baby overnight. It's not like we didn't have two cribs going already—a nine-month-old and a two-year-old. That kid sure had a set o' lungs on him. And he was big. The wife put him into one of the little snap-up pajamas our youngest had outgrown. I remember her saying she had to use the three-month size. She figured he wasn't newborn, but now that I know he turned out to be a giant, maybe he was."

"Maybe. You asked questions around town, I presume?"

"Sure. Thought it would be easy to find the parents, since the kid looked to be mixed-race or black. The Missus is a retired nurse and said another reason she didn't think he was newborn was because she could tell he had some African-American in him. Seems black newborns look white at first, so she thought the boy had to be at least a couple weeks old. Jasper mentioned the baby was black, too. All I saw was a great-looking, healthy kid with curly dark hair. Real shiny. Handsome as he was loud."

"Did you hear any rumors about mixed-race couples at, say, the high school?"

He shook his head no. "We only had about five hundred kids total in the schools here. A mixed-race couple would have been noticed, there or anywhere. Would have been talk around town, too. There wasn't."

"You think someone came a ways to drop off the baby, then?"

"I guess, but Verna Mae's house isn't exactly right off the highway. That bothered me. Made me put some credence in her going on and on about how God brought the baby to her for a reason. Hell, maybe she was right."

"She told me the same thing. The clothes, the infant seat? No leads there?"

"I checked, but they weren't bought in this town. We didn't have the Wal-Mart back then, only a grocery store. Couldn't plug brand names into a computer and trace the purchases, either."

"Did those personal items go with him when CPS took over?"

"I suppose. Can't say as I remember." I read discomfort in Burl's tired eyes.

"Frustrating case, huh?" I said.

"You betcha. Verna Mae hounded me for information about the baby for days afterward. Then she quit calling after the family court hearing that placed the child in state custody." He shut his eyes, seemed to be thinking hard. "But we know now she found out about him somehow, considering she left him everything."

Burl rose suddenly, saying, "Wait a minute." He shot out of the kitchen, his fatigue apparently gone.

I followed, jogging to keep him in sight as he ran down the hall and took the stairs.

I caught up to him in Verna Mae's bedroom. He was on his knees, pulling a lidded cardboard box from under a four-poster bed decorated with enough ruffles and tassels to supply a fabric store for a year.

"What's going on?" I asked, hurrying to his side.

FOR W.K. was printed in black marker on the lid he now removed.

Inside were stacks of scrapbooks and photo albums.

"Glen told me he'd found books under her bed filled with a bunch of old newspaper articles about basketball. Said he thought it was peculiar Verna Mae was interested in sports, what with the frilly house and all. I told him she was peculiar and said he should keep looking for what we came for."

He opened one album. On the first page was a year-old Houston Chronicle article about the state high school basketball championship. The next pages contained clippings from other newspapers around the state covering the championship from two years ago. Several had photos of Will—not shaved bald like he was now, but with plenty of wild dark hair—a basketball in one huge hand, and jumping high for a layup.

"I'm betting those books go back even to his elementary school days from the way she talked the other day," I said.

Burl looked up. "You're sure your client didn't know about her interest in him before then? Or about her will?"

I knelt and picked up a different album. "If he did, he's a damn good actor." I flipped open the page and saw a photo of Will in a stroller, recognized his adoptive mother, Annabelle Wright, wheeling him in the park. Telephoto lens? Probably. There were more articles, these from the smaller paper that served the community where Will grew up, stories from the days when he played in Little League baseball and the youth basketball program Verna Mae had mentioned. Seems Will had been an all-star no matter what sport he played. Made the honor roll and had been inducted into the National Honor Society, too. It was all there. Page after page chronicling his young life.

I felt a chill. Hearing such things from her lips had been creepy enough, but holding the proof of her fixation was even more disturbing.

"I'm not sure if her being so stuck on a kid she knew only for a few hours has anything to do with her death, but something's not right," Burl said.

"You mean with these albums?" I asked, not understanding.

"That boy wasn't a stranger to her. It's obvious she loved him."

"No kidding." But then it dawned on me where he was headed. "You don't think he was her baby?"

His smile was back. "You may be green, but you're a thinker. If Jasper Olsen's wife bore another man's child, a black man's child, then Verna Mae was lucky to escape with her life. Knowing that nasty SOB, he mighta killed her."

"You think she made up the story about finding Will? That she was forced to give away her own child?"

"I never explored that possibility. Not once. She was so... well, hefty, she could have hidden a pregnancy. What a stupid, greenhorn fool I was." He banged his forehead with the heel of his hand.

I put the album back in the box and noticed something beneath the stack of scrapbooks—the corner of a brown paper sack. "What's this?" I said, lifting out the albums and setting them on the carpet.

I pulled out the sack and started to peek inside.

"Let me do that." Burl took the bag and stood.

Carefully he slid the contents onto the bed. Baby clothes. Tiny white shirts and one-piece sleepers. And a blanket of creamy, soft wool. I rose and fingered the blanket, turned a satin corner over to check the label.

"HANDMADE FOR POSH PRAMS," I said.

"About nineteen years old, I'd say." He stared at it, his lips tight with anger. "She lied to me, withheld evidence, and I never once questioned her about the kid possibly being hers. Sloppy police work, is all I can say."

"Is the blanket really evidence?" I asked. "She could have bought it herself."

"Right. When? You won't see a fancy blanket like this in Bottlebrush. She probably had to go to Houston to buy it. Did she rush there on that Sunday evening, buy the blanket, then keep it when Jasper called me to pick up the baby? Doesn't make sense, Abby." He carefully placed the blanket back in the sack, his shoulders slumped, his expression haggard. "You or HPD need any assistance, call me. Meanwhile, I'll just hang on to this."

"Giving me that blanket would help," I said.

"I'm thinking I'll ask around. Someone in town might know where Verna Mae got it."

"But—"

"This is evidence collected during the execution of a warrant," he said. "The blanket stays with me. Time you went home, Abby. Get some sleep. We'll talk again."