Chapter Thirty-nine


Leslie led Quinn and Jack into the house, seating them in what was presumably the living room. A faint rattle crossed the transmission, then Jack's low laugh.

"I don't want to sit on this. Some little guy wouldn't be too happy if I broke it." Another rattle as he laid the toy on the table. "Boy or girl?"

"Boy. My friend's son. They were over yesterday. He must have left that there."

From the tautness in her voice, she was lying. Yet her response wasn't what we'd expected. Presumably, the Byrony Agency would have made the adoption as legal as possible. Legal enough to pass a federal inspection, though? Maybe she wasn't sure.

"Don't call her on it," I said. "Play it out."

"But you do want children, correct?" Quinn said. "That's why you engaged the services of the Byrony Agency."

A moment's silence, then, "Yes, we did. Is that what this is about? We're no longer with them, and we paid our bills – "

Quinn laughed. "We aren't bill collectors, ma'am."

"No, no, of course not. I just meant – "

"We're here on a routine check of the agency's procedures," Jack said.

"The agency? Have they done something wrong?"

"No, as I said, it's a routine check."

"Why?" Quinn cut in. "Did you have concerns about them?"

"Concerns? Not at all. They were wonderful. We just decided to pursue other options. But we'd recommend them, and we have. A great agency."

I said, "Okay, take it down a notch. She's already spooked and you don't want to push her into full-blown panic."

Jack took over. "Like I said, it's a routine check only. Private adoption can be a very tricky area, Mrs. Keyes, and we have to be absolutely certain no one – from the birth mothers to the agency to the prospective parents – misuses the system."

"Prospective parents? You think we misused the system?"

"At the moment, our investigation focuses entirely on the Byrony Agency."

In the moment of silence that followed, I could picture Leslie, looking from one "agent" to the other, not believing their "routine check" line. That was fine. We didn't want her to.

Quinn and Jack took turns asking about her ex perience with the agency. Most of the questions were mundane – how much advance notice was she given before the home visits, did she have any difficulty understanding the forms. But every now and then they'd toss in a zinger like, "Did anyone ever offer you additional services for an additional fee?" before swinging back to the general queries.

After ten minutes, I swore I could hear her heart pounding against her ribs. Then, as they reached the end, I did hear a sound – the distant fussing of a baby.

"Ignore it," I said quickly. "Unless the baby starts crying, pretend you don't hear anything. If it's Destiny, she'll fuss for a while before wailing. Finish up and get out of there. If she cries, you'll have to call Keyes on it, and I'd rather you didn't."

As Quinn finished the questions, Jack asked to use the washroom. In the silence that followed, you'd think he'd just demanded permission to conduct a full search of the premises.

"There's one right here on the main level," she said finally.

A low chuckle. "In a house this big, I hope so."

A few flustered words. Obviously, she'd mistaken Jack's request for a ploy to go upstairs, maybe investigate the gurgling and whimpering. That wasn't his intent at all. He just wanted to lay a bug.

While Jack was gone, Quinn asked the final questions, then chatted with Leslie, saying it seemed like a nice neighborhood, a great place to raise kids, he hoped that worked out for her and her husband… All benign small talk, but the woman was probably convinced she heard a note of sarcasm behind his words, that he knew she already had a child.

When Jack returned, she bustled them to the door.

"Oh, I left a card on the table," Jack said. "In case you need to contact us."

She thanked him and hurried them outside. By the time she realized the card wasn't on any table, they'd be gone.


The guys drove over and parked near me at the minimart. Quinn hopped in my passenger side, as Jack made his way, at half the speed, from their car to mine, across the minimart parking lot.

"Has she -?" he began.

I motioned Quinn to silence, nodded, and turned up the volume as Leslie took that critical next step – placing a call to her husband. Jack hadn't had time to bug the phone, so we were limited to her side of the conversation. First came the rush of words, as she explained the visit from "the FBI"… having apparently completely blocked everything after the words "federal."

"They found Miranda's rattle and I know I shouldn't have lied – we have the papers – but I wasn't taking the chance, Ken. I won't lose her – "

A moment's pause.

"I'm not panicking," she snarled, sounding a lot less flustered than she had with Jack and Quinn, her protective instinct taking over. "They asked a lot of questions about the Byrony Agency, like whether they'd offered us anything different or special, but they didn't specifically say – "

A sharp intake of breath as he presumably cut her short.

"Damn it. Right. Okay I'll meet you – "

Pause.

"I'll be right there."

A click as the phone returned to the cradle.

"He told her to shut her mouth," Quinn said. "Prob a bly thinks the phone's bugged."

Jack watched the house through binoculars as we listened to footsteps pattering up the stairs, a baby crying, then Leslie quieting her as she came back down.

More noise, then the slam of the front door.

"Who's got the most experience tailing?" I asked.

"Probably Quinn," Jack said. "Switch."


We hoped Leslie was heading to see whoever had sold her the baby. Instead, she drove to an Applebee's down the road and met a man, presumably her husband, who hugged her and took the baby carrier. They went inside. Talking in a public place. Smart.

"Too bad we couldn't get a bug into her purse," I said.

"Did," Jack said. "But she left it behind."

Leslie carried only a diaper bag – probably having been too rushed to grab her purse. Damn.

I followed them inside, hoping to get a seat near enough to overhear their conversation. No such luck. Though it was still early for dinner, the place was filling fast.

I did manage to walk near the table, after Leslie had taken the baby from her snowsuit and hat. If asked earlier, I'd have said I'd never recognize Destiny – all babies looked the same to me. But the moment I saw that baby I knew, without a doubt, that Miranda Keyes was Destiny Ernst.

I retreated to the car, where we waited for close to two hours before the Keyeses finally emerged, hand in hand, Kenneth carrying the baby seat.

"Did he convince her she's overreacting?" I murmured. "Or that he'll take care of it?"

"Could go either way," Quinn said.

"Maybe I was wrong, getting you guys to back down. Maybe you should have pressed harder. Been more specific. More threatening." I glanced at Jack. "Okay, I'll stop fretting."

"Never said that."

"You don't need to."

We watched them get into their separate cars.

"So who do we follow?" I asked.

"Dad," Quinn said.

It didn't matter. They went to the same place. Home.


Jack and I spent the next hour monitoring the house as Quinn returned the rental car. Then Quinn caught a cab back, and we waited two more hours. Leslie put the baby to bed, the couple talked about their respective days, watched a pretaped episode of Desperate Housewives, and, at ten-thirty, headed off to bed without a single exchange about their visitors from earlier.

Quinn yawned. "Wake me up if they start having sex."

I cuffed him across the chest.

He opened one eye. "We probably wouldn't even notice anyway. Something tells me that bed doesn't see a lot of action. This has to be the most boring evening I've ever eavesdropped on. Are we done yet?"

Jack nodded.


So much for our hopes that the Keyeses would contact the Byrony Agency, spilling the details I needed to prove they'd bought their new daughter. There was still some hope from that quarter, but they were sleeping very soundly for a couple that believed their new baby was about to be ripped from their arms.

On then to the break-in portion of the evening. We stayed away until nearly midnight, only to discover the dessert shop was long closed, the theater presumably closed that night. And, with the actors taking the night off, our homeless guy was, too.

We arrived just as the cleaners were leaving. Twenty minutes later, we went in.

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