In Search of Eden, page 38
Wally shuffled off, and Joseph’s head swam as he looked down at the paper. The owner of the social security number Miranda had given Wally belonged to one Dora Mae Gibson, the social security administration said. Joseph was confused. And he had a feeling that when the facts made sense, he would wish they didn’t. Things didn’t add up.
He checked his watch, then quickly, before it closed, phoned Tennessee’s vital statistics department. He identified himself and waited while the clerk searched birth, marriage, divorce, and death certificates for Dora Mae Gibson. Death and marriage struck out, but birth yielded one return.
“I have a birth certificate on file for Miranda Isadora DeSpain. Mother Noreen Gibson, father Thomas Orlando DeSpain.”
He thanked the clerk, hung up, then shook his head. Why did she use two names? Maybe there was an explanation, he thought, holding on to a thread of hope. The desperation with which he did so made him realize how much he had grown to care for her. Something was rumbling, though, and he remembered the feeling he’d had when they’d first met. JDFR. It just didn’t feel right. That had been what his gut had told him, and gradually he had let his heart override it. He felt a heaviness in both now.
“Hey.” Her voice drew him out of his brooding.
He swiveled his chair around. She was standing in the doorway, looking sober herself.
“David said you’d been called back to work.”
He nodded, not sure what to say or how to proceed. She took the matter out of his hands.
“Joseph,” she said, “there’s something I have to tell you.”
Her face was sober, her eyes full of tears, and he had an impulse to tell her no. To walk toward her and put his hand over her lips and say, Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. But he did not. “Tell me,” he said.
She stood there in front of his desk like a child called before the principal.
“Sit down,” he invited.
She shook her head and looked straight at him, and he felt grief mixed with love.
“Just let me tell it,” she said.
“Tell it,” he said and steeled himself to listen.
“I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll just start in the middle,” she said.
He had to stifle a smile. It faded when she spoke her next words.
“When I was fifteen I had a baby,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion.
Oddly enough, he thought of Eden. Of how he would feel if it were her standing before him in a mere four years, telling him this. His heart twisted with sorrow, and he nodded and waited for her to go on.
“My mother made arrangements,” she said, and he remembered the story of Noreen and how his hand and Miranda’s had clasped together tightly as they heard it together. “A private adoption was arranged, and I knew nothing at all until my mother died. She left an envelope.”
She dug around in her purse and handed it to him. He took it from her and looked at it. He recognized his mother’s gracious swirling handwriting immediately. He frowned, trying to make sense of what she was saying, of what he saw.
“This envelope?” he repeated dumbly.
She nodded, tears flowing freely now. “With a picture inside. Of my baby.”
Why would his mother have a picture of Miranda’s baby? The obvious interpretation made no sense. It didn’t fit with what he’d been told, but he made the leap anyway, knowing that if his preconceived beliefs didn’t fit with the evidence, one of them must be wrong.
Miranda watched him. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He looked back down at the envelope and went through that evidence now, taking reluctant steps with the determination of someone who knows a devastating truth must be faced. She had appeared out of nowhere at just the right time. She had sought out his family. She had certainly shown an excessive interest in his niece. And suddenly he remembered. As the last piece slid into place, he felt the same sense he always did on solving a small mystery. It was slight surprise mixed with vindication, as if a key was selected from a group, and amazingly it slid into the lock and the door opened. But this time it was mixed with sharp regret. He barely needed the confirmation, but he made it anyway.
He remembered standing at the cash register, and there it had been. The picture of his niece. He thought, seeing the scene in detail, remembering her responses and his rejoinders.
He looked at Miranda, still standing before him. She was watching his face, and her own expression was stoic.
He opened his wallet now and took out his small bunch of photos, and he knew what he would find, but he hoped, he prayed he would be wrong. There could still be another answer, his heart insisted, but his brain knew the truth.
The photograph he had taken from beneath the register was on top of the stack. He took it out and held it up to the light, and now, of course, he could see that it wasn’t worn in the same pattern as the others, not curved from his wallet, but flat and shiny. He turned it over and saw Eden’s age written on the back in his mother’s handwriting.
Slowly he thumbed through his other pictures, his mind racing ahead and not wanting to come to the conclusion he had to face. With each picture he looked at and then placed on the bottom of the stack, he felt as if a hope was being set aside. He looked up again and saw Miranda watching him silently, her eyes pooled with tears.
He set down another photo, and just past the gap-toothed first grade picture, there it was. His own baby picture of Eden Elizabeth Williams. He set the two identical photos side by side on his desk and felt a grimness slide in alongside what he could only name loss and grief along with confusion. Why would his brother have lied? His mother? The ripples were seismic. He couldn’t begin to understand the what, much less the why.
There was one last hope.
“What day did you have your baby?” he asked, desperately wanting the answer to be something other than the one he knew would be given.
“December fourteenth,” she said, “nineteen ninety-five.”
The truth fell on him like a weight. He had purchased compasses, lariats, radios, boots, and backpacks on that date for years. He still didn’t understand the how of it all, but he knew what she was saying had to be the truth.
He sat in silence, one image putting all of this into question— the picture of Sarah, guilt-stained, pregnant with his brother’s child.
“But Sarah was pregnant. She and David—”
“Lost their baby,” Miranda finished softly. “At seven months. Just before my mother called her long-ago camp counselor and asked if there was anyone she would trust with her grandchild.”
Some emotion washed over him—something between anger and grief. At his mother. His brother. At Sarah again. He stared into the past and his eyes finally came to rest on Miranda.
So now he knew what she had really wanted with him.
She opened up her mouth to speak again, but his telephone rang. He picked it up, taking the way out provided. He did not want to hear any more. He had already heard enough.
It was Loni, the dispatcher, calling from downstairs. “Lieutenant Williams,” she said. “I think you’d better come down here. Your niece just called and, well, just come down. I think it might be urgent.”
“I’ve got to go,” he said, leaving Miranda watching him with a grieved expression on her face.
He took the stairs three at a time and listened to Loni’s terse report.
“How long ago did she call?” he demanded. Loni looked a little bit afraid of him.
“About ten minutes ago. She called in all of these plates and asked me to check them. I thought you ought to know.”
“Did you call her back?”
“I tried, but there’s no answer.”
“What was the number of the phone she called from?”
Loni read it to him. “It’s a cell phone. I called the company, and it’s issued to a John Adair.”
He ran the name through his mind. It was Grady’s father.
Loni continued. “The billing address was Number 8 Crabtree Drive, North Augusta, South Carolina.”
“Murphy Village,” he said with growing alarm. “He’s a Traveler. I should have known.” He berated himself for not looking further into his niece’s friends. “Did you run the plates?”
“I’m doing it now. The first three are stolen.”
He phoned his mother on his cell, cutting short any preliminary courtesies. “Where does Grady’s father live?” he asked without preamble.
His mother hesitated.
“Now, Ma. I don’t have time to explain, but he’s not to be trusted, and Eden might be with him.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Where does Grady’s father live?” he repeated. “I need to know now.”
“Down at the campground,” she said. “He’s been doing some work for me.”
He hung up the phone and ran to the car. He had no time for anger now. He screamed down the highway, siren blaring, called for backup, and drove into the campground, knowing already what he would find. He drove past the lake to the RV hookups on the other side. Empty, but there were the tracks again. The RV and the truck. And Eden’s bicycle hidden in the brush.
He radioed Loni again as he tore out of the campground. “Put out an APB with all the stolen plates,” he said. “For Virginia, North and South Carolina. A green Dodge Ram and a Jayco fifth wheel. And start an Amber alert.”
He had no idea where Adair was going. He could only think of one possibility. If he was a Traveler, they always went home after they’d finished the long con. He put on the siren and headed for Highway 81 and the Traveler village in South Carolina.
By the time Miranda finished repairing her face in the washroom and stepped outside the police station, Joseph was gone. So. This was how it was to be.
She took a deep breath, got in her car, and drove back through town. She stopped suddenly when Hector bolted into the street in front of her, David following in his chair.
“We need your car,” Hector said. “Ruth called David. She was hysterical. Something about Grady’s father and skipping town and Eden being with them. Eden was last heard from at the campground.”
“Get in,” Miranda said. She and Hector transferred David and stowed the chair in record time. She drove through the crowded streets as fast as she could. They had just turned onto the road to the campground when Joseph’s car approached in its own cloud of dust, headed back the way they’d come. He stopped and rolled down the window just long enough to tell them to go home and he’d call them, then sped off again.
“I’m not going home,” Miranda said, swinging the car around in a screeching U-turn, spewing gravel and dust and barely missing the ditch.
“I’m not, either,” David said.
“I’m with you,” Hector said.
“Fasten your seatbelts, then,” Miranda said, gunning the engine to keep Joseph in sight. She had just found her daughter. She was not going to let some two-bit con man take her away.
chapter 55
*
Eden made her citizen’s arrest when they stopped for gas in Bristol. It had been kind of exciting bumping down the road. Finally they had stopped, and she had climbed out of the cramped cupboard where Grady had stowed her, and she used her radio to call Uncle Joseph before making the collar. “We’re at a Sheetz station right by the mall,” she said. “I’m going to take him in.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he hollered, but she turned off the volume. Sometimes a person just had to do their duty, and hers was plain. She opened the door of the camper and walked right up to Mr. Adair as he was pumping the gas. He looked surprised, but she couldn’t waste time on explaining things.
“Mr. Adair,” she said, “I’m going to have to make a citizen’s arrest on you.”
He looked at her seriously.
“You have the right to remain silent,” she said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense. Do you understand these rights, Mr. Adair?”
“I believe I do,” he said. “I’ve heard them before.”
She nodded. She felt kind of sorry for him.
He put the gas nozzle up and reached for his wallet. “I need to pay for this gas.”
“Go ahead,” she said. She went with him, though, just in case he decided to bolt.
“Do you mind if I move the trailer so folks can use the pumps?”
“I don’t mind,” she said. She climbed into the backseat of the truck behind Grady. He looked like he might cry again.
“I’m sorry, son,” Mr. Adair said, and he really did look sorry.
He pulled the trailer to the side of the big parking lot. “Do you mind if I get us some doughnuts and milk while we wait?”
“Send Grady, if you please, sir.”
“A good suggestion,” he said. He handed Grady ten dollars, and he hopped out of the truck.
“Get me some with sprinkles,” Eden said, “and chocolate milk, please.”
Mr. Adair put on the radio, and they listened to the Old Time Gospel Hour out of Lynchburg while they ate the doughnuts. They were finishing the last one when Uncle Joseph drove up. He looked about as mad as she’d ever seen him.
She hopped out of the truck and walked over to greet him, but he just said he would deal with her later and went over and started talking to Mr. Adair. Then Miranda drove up with Dad and Hector, and Miranda grabbed her and kissed her and said, “Are you all right? Are you all right?” And Eden said, “Of course I’m all right. Now let me go so I can turn over my prisoner.”
She finally got untangled and went back to the truck where Uncle Joseph was with Mr. Adair. She officially passed custody to Uncle Joseph then and tried to tell him that she’d already read Mr. Adair his rights, but he just told her to keep quiet, and he went on and told them to him again. Then he put the handcuffs on Mr. Adair and sent her back to stand with Miranda and Dad and Pastor Hector. Dad had to hug on her, too, and she was missing everything, but finally she had them all calmed down enough to watch what was going on.
Uncle Joseph sent Grady first and was just leading Mr. Adair around the truck and camper to put him in the police car when Eden thought Miranda might faint. Grady came first, and Miranda said hey to him, and then Mr. Adair came in front of Uncle Joseph, and Miranda’s face looked white as a sheet, just like she’d seen a ghost.
Mr. Adair smiled sort of sad-like and said, “Hey, Mirandy.”
Eden was surprised, because now that she thought about it, she didn’t think Miranda had ever met Mr. Adair. But what Miranda did next surprised her even more.
“Hello, Daddy,” she said.
chapter 56
*
Ruth was as exasperated as she’d ever been in her life. “Henry, maybe you can talk some sense into him. I’ve tried and so has Hector, but he has them both in jail and says he won’t let them out until everything is sorted out.”
Henry looked weary, and Ruth supposed it was understandable. None of them had gotten much sleep last night. She had spent hours the night before sorting things out with Miranda and Johnny, but to tell the truth, she felt invigorated. David and Sarah were here, too, Sarah having decided that her daughter’s almost abduction merited a return trip home. They had brought Eden down to the jail at her insistence, and actually, they both looked livelier than they had in weeks. Ruth herself had taken charge of Grady until all this was sorted out.
“Now, tell me this again?” Henry said, and Ruth went through it for the third or fourth time.
“I called the bank yesterday, and they said Mr. Adair never cashed my check,” she said. “He deposited it back into my account.”
“Then why’s he in jail?” Henry asked.
Hector spoke up, sounding apologetic. “There are a few other warrants. Something about some heat pumps.”
“He paid them all back,” Ruth said. “Call and ask them. He told me he stopped by each house yesterday on his way out of town and left each of them a check in their mailboxes. What they paid and extra for their trouble.”
Henry looked interested. “Were the checks good?”
Ruth hesitated. She actually hadn’t thought about that. “I’m sure they were,” she said firmly. “But a simple phone call can verify that.”
“Even if he paid them back, what he did is still against the law,” Henry said, shaking his head.
Ruth was exasperated again. “Well, at least let Miranda out. She had no idea her father was doing anything illegal. In fact, she says she didn’t even know he was here. She says she hasn’t seen him in years, and I believe her.”
Henry looked incredulous. “Joseph has Miranda locked up?”
“Big as you please,” Ruth said. “I’ve tried to tell him he should let her go, but he won’t listen to a thing I say.”
“Where’s Eden?” David asked. “She was here a minute ago.”
“She borrowed my cell,” Hector said. “She’s calling Miranda’s attorney for her. Said she wasn’t allowed to make her one telephone call.”
David grinned. Ruth smiled, too, then turned serious again. “Really, Henry, can’t you do something?”
“I’ll talk to him,” he said, “but don’t expect too much. When he gets like this, there’s no reasoning with him. He’s out for revenge.”
David and Sarah looked sober at that. All of them were quiet.
Henry took Grady aside and spoke to him, found Eden and questioned her, then went to Joseph’s office. Ruth followed him and listened from the hallway. Joseph was at his desk, glowering, filling out the arrest report, she supposed. Reports, plural.
“Joseph,” Henry said, “I’ve got four upstanding citizens out here who think you’ve got one too many people in that jail.”
“She played me for a fool, Henry.”
“I don’t think so, but even if she did, that’s not against the law.”
“What makes you think she wasn’t in on the scams?”
