THE SECRET OF CHEROKEE COVE (6 page)

Doris sank into the chair across from Dana, her expression falling. “Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“She had a lot of happiness before that. Three kids who loved her like crazy and a husband who thought she hung the moon,” Dana assured her, blinking back tears of her own. “But she never told us about her experience here all those years ago, and I need to know all I can about what happened to her.”

Doris reached across the table and patted Dana’s hand. “Honey, I don’t know that digging up old bones that way is going to make you feel any better.”

Dana knew the woman was probably right. But she needed to know about her mother’s past for more reasons than just assuaging her own curiosity and sense of unease about what she’d learned. It was possible, though perhaps not likely, that Doyle’s attempts to find out what had happened to their mother all those years ago had put him in danger. If the story Nix had told her was true, their mother had tried to take a baby that she believed had been stolen from her. That baby was probably still alive. His parents were probably still alive.

And if her mother’s version of the story, however wild it might seem, was true, the other couple would have a pretty good reason to want Doyle and his sister to disappear and stop dredging up history.

Reason enough to make sure the nosy chief of police met with an unfortunate accident?

“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it,” she said to Doris. “But I need a place to start looking.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t talk about it,” Doris said. “I just wanted to be sure you’re ready to hear what happened.”

Dana’s stomach turned a flip at the serious look in the nurse’s eyes. But she stiffened her spine. “I’m ready.”

“What have you been told about your mother’s experiences here at the hospital?” Doris asked.

As briefly as she could, Dana told Doris the story that Nix had imparted to her, leaving out nothing, no matter how insulting to her mother. As she spoke, she saw Doris’s expression grow first troubled, then indignant.

“Oh, honey, if that’s what you’ve heard, no wonder you want answers,” Doris said when Dana fell silent. “It’s a bunch of half-truths and flat-out lies. I can promise you that.”

Even though she’d known in her heart that Nix’s story was a gross mischaracterization, Dana felt a little thrill of relief to hear Doris Kingsley’s reassurance. “So what’s true and what’s not?”

“It’s true your mama came here to the hospital to have her baby. A little boy. And it’s true she wasn’t married. She didn’t talk about the father or anything like that. She was focused only on that sweet little baby.” Doris’s gentle eyes grew sad. “She loved that baby boy.”

“Did she pick a name for him?”

“She didn’t get a chance.”

Dana took a deep breath. “What happened to the baby?”

“The doctors said sudden infant death syndrome. Back then, we knew less about how to prevent it. And he was in two of the high-risk categories—born to a teenage mother from a poverty situation.”

“So there was never any question that my mother did something to her baby?”

Doris gave her a pained look. “I’m sorry to say, there was an investigation. But the doctor had seen SIDS cases before, and that poor little baby had all the signs. Your mama didn’t do a thing to that baby but love him.”

Dana blinked, spilling tears that had formed in her eyes. She dashed them away with her fingertips. “What about later? Did she try to take someone else’s baby?”

“I think losing her son put your mama in a very bad place.” Doris’s voice was gentle but firm. “Anything she did was out of that pain.”

“So she did try to take another couple’s baby.”

“I can’t tell you the name of the couple. I know who they were, but we have privacy laws—”

“I’m a deputy U.S. marshal. I understand about laws,” Dana said quickly, afraid Doris would stop before she told everything that had happened. “Just the basics will do.”

“Your mama became convinced her baby had been switched with the dead baby. Coincidentally, the only other couple in the maternity ward at the time of her baby’s death came from the same town as your mother.”

So the other couple had been from Bitterwood, too. That could help her narrow the possibilities. “What made my mother think there was a switch?”

“She said the dead baby didn’t look like her son.” Doris shook her head. “I wasn’t on duty when it happened. I never saw the baby’s body, but I know that people don’t look the same when they’re dead as when they’re alive. And with babies, who can look so much alike anyway—”

“She was seeing what she wanted to see,” Dana finished for her.

“I think she must have been, don’t you?”

Dana supposed it was the most likely answer. Grief could make the whole world look like an alien landscape, even a world as familiar to you as the sound of your own voice. She’d experienced deep, crushing grief twice in her life so far. The world had changed drastically for her both times.

What must it have been like for her mother, alone, scared and clinging to the one good thing in her life, only to see it taken from her so quickly and cruelly?

“She dressed up like a nurse’s aide and took the other family’s baby in his bassinet as if she was taking him back to the nursery. They discovered what she’d done just a couple of minutes later when the real nurse’s aide came for the child,” Doris continued. “The hospital went on lockdown. They caught her trying to take the baby out through the employees’ exit on the ground floor.”

“Was she arrested?”

“Yes, but the other family didn’t want to press charges, once they had their baby back and learned about her own loss. The police made her go see a psychiatrist instead of putting her in jail. That’s the last I heard about her, one way or another. But I’ve often wondered what happened to her.”

Impulsively, Dana pulled out her billfold and showed Doris the last picture her family had taken together. It was an impromptu shot, taken by a friend of her father’s during a camping trip near Terrebonne Bay. They were all there—her parents, she and Doyle looking as bored and embarrassed as the college students they’d been at the time, and young David, mugging for the camera and flashing devil’s horns behind Doyle’s head.

“Beautiful family,” Doris said with a smile. “You and the younger boy look a lot like your mother. Has anyone told you that?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “I’ve heard that.”

As Dana put the photo back in her billfold, Doris released a soft sigh. “I can’t add much more to the story, but if you’re really intent on following up, I can tell you where to look.”

Dana looked up at the older woman. “Oh?”

“When it first happened, it was all over the local paper here in Maryville, and I bet it might have been an even bigger deal in your mama’s hometown.” Doris patted her hand. “If you want to know everything that happened, you need to get yourself to the library and look up those newspapers.”

Chapter Six

“Good God.” Doyle looked up at his sister with a stunned expression. “I figured whatever had happened to Mom must have been pretty bad, but—”

“I know.” Dana caught her brother’s hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “It was hard to hear.”

“It’s hard to believe. Mom was the most levelheaded person I’ve ever known. For her to go off the deep end and try to steal someone else’s baby—I can’t even picture her doing anything like that.”

“She’d just lost a child. And she was little more than a child herself.” Dana had spent the past thirty minutes alone in the waiting room just down the hall from her brother’s room, preparing herself to tell him what Doris Kingsley had revealed. She’d had trouble herself reconciling the picture the nurse had painted of her mother and her own memories of Tallie Massey, a strong-minded, kindhearted woman of good sense and honorable intentions. “I don’t know how she would have reacted in such a situation. We never knew her at that age or in those circumstances.”

“I wish she was still here.” Doyle passed a hand over his face, his eyes dark with regrets. “I wish she could tell us what happened.”

“Doris Kingsley thinks we should let it go. Stop trying to find answers. She said digging up bones wouldn’t make us feel any better.”

Doyle gave her a knowing look. “She doesn’t know you.”

“Or you.”

Doyle looked down at his cast-encased leg. “Yeah, if I can ever get out of this damned hospital.”

“Tomorrow,” said a voice from the doorway. Dana turned to find Laney standing there, holding a brown paper bag in one hand and a tablet-style device in the other. “I brought food and reading material.”

Doyle went for the bag of food first, to no one’s surprise. Dana gave Laney a hug and moved so that she could have the chair beside the bed. “Tomorrow, for sure?”

“That’s what the doctor says,” Doyle said with a grumble. “I don’t know why they want to keep me around. I’ve been trying to give them reason to kick me out, but they’re awfully patient with me.”

“He’s been a bear.” Laney gave him a stern look. “I’m beginning to rethink this whole engagement.”

Doyle touched her face. “Don’t do that. I’ll be good.”

She kissed his palm. “It’ll take worse behavior than a little surliness for you to get rid of me.”

“Oh, God, they’re at it again.” Another voice came from the doorway, this time belonging to one of Doyle’s detectives. Ivy Calhoun, Dana remembered. With her was a taller, more slender woman with light brown hair and intelligent blue eyes.

Ivy introduced her as Rachel Hammond, a friend. “We had lunch here in town, so I thought I’d drop by to see how the chief’s doing.”

“Suck-up,” Doyle said with a smile.

Ivy grinned. “I’m bucking for chief of detectives.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll have to take that up with Antoine.” Doyle nodded toward Rachel. “Dana, you should talk to Rachel about looking up those old newspapers you were talking about. She used to be a librarian.”

Rachel Hammond’s eyes lit up at the mention of her former job. “You need help finding something at the library?”

“Oh, Lord, you spoke the magic words,” Ivy said with a grin.

“Specifically some old newspapers from about thirty-seven years ago,” Dana said. Doris Kingsley had remembered the year, though not the month, that Tallie Cumberland had been a patient here at Maryville Mercy Hospital.

She’d have been seventeen at the time, Dana thought. Within two years of losing her son, she’d married Dana’s father and gotten pregnant with Dana herself.

But what had her life been like between losing her son and meeting the man she’d marry?

“I can take you to the library whenever you like,” Rachel said, eagerness evident in her voice. “Or maybe I can introduce you to some primary sources.”

“She means people, not books,” Ivy translated in a dry drawl.

“Primary sources would be terrific,” Dana said quickly. “When do you get off work?”

“I’m the CEO of my company,” Rachel said with a smile. “I make my own hours. I can go whenever you like.”

“Now?”

“Sure.” Rachel’s smile reminded Dana of a kid who’d just been let out of school for the summer. “I need a ride, though. I left my car at the office.”

“No problem. I’ll drive you back to the office when we’re done.” Dana waggled her fingers at the others. “See you later.”

As she and Rachel walked to the hospital parking deck, Dana briefly outlined what she was looking for, without using names or going into minute detail. “I’m not sure of the month, but I’m pretty sure of the year.”

“You’re talking about Tallie Cumberland, aren’t you?”

Dana stopped in the middle of the corridor. “You’ve heard the story, too?”

“Well, yeah. I live in Bitterwood, you know.”

“It was a bit before your time.”

“Only by a few years. And let me tell you, it was a big deal in my neighborhood, because the way I heard it, the family whose child was nearly abducted were Very Important People.” The emphasis Rachel put on the last three words made Dana’s chest ache. Her poor mother, she thought, young, poor and swallowed up by grief, forced to withstand the onslaught of people with power and wealth who could, without question, ruin her. No wonder she had fled Bitterwood and not looked back.

Not looked back, that was, until she’d returned here fifteen years ago on her first real vacation in years.

Why had she come here? What had she hoped to find?

The child she thought had been stolen from her? Had she still believed her baby was alive, after so much time and distance from her original grief?

“It can be a pain to get access to newspaper archives from that far back,” Rachel told her as they drove out of the hospital parking deck. “But I know a guy at the
Bitterwood Town Crier
—he’s been there for over forty years. Started working on the presses and eventually made his way up to reporter, then editor. If anyone on earth can tell you everything you need to know about the Tallie Cumberland story, it’s T. J. Spencer.”

They were back in Bitterwood within twenty minutes. By then, it was nearly lunchtime, and Rachel suggested they offer to take T.J. out to lunch. “He eats most days at Ledbetter’s Diner because he can walk there from the paper,” Rachel said. “But I happen to know that T.J. fancies himself a man of the world, and there’s a really good Lebanese place that’s opened in Purgatory near The Gates, that new detective agency where Ivy’s husband works.”

T. J. Spencer turned out to be a tall, barrel-chested man in his mid-sixties. His thinning red hair was liberally streaked with silver, and his face was lined by the years, but he had a masculinity and vitality that reminded Dana of her father. She liked him immediately and liked him even more a half hour later, when he’d filled in a lot of the gaps in what she knew about her mother’s ordeal three decades earlier.

“It’s a shame, how people treated that poor girl,” T.J. said with a shake of his head as he dipped a sliver of pita bread into the baba ghanoush he’d ordered as an appetizer. “She never did tell anyone who the father was. I hear it was a surprise she was pregnant at all—she’d been the only one of the Cumberlands around these parts who’d managed to stay out of trouble for any length of time.”

“Did you know her?” Dana asked.

“Not really. I went to school with her uncle Royce, whose claim to fame around here was that he ran a big moonshine still in an old barn off Pepperwood Road, but I guess you’d say the Cumberlands and I ran in different circles.” He didn’t sound apologetic, just matter-of-fact. “There were a ton of those kids in these parts back then. Before what happened, I mean.”

“And afterward?” Dana asked.

T.J.’s eyes narrowed. “Bitterwood became a bad place for Cumberlands.”

“In what way?”

“Well, for instance, a few days after Tallie tried to steal the baby, Royce’s still blew up. And when he rebuilt it, it blew up again. Cumberlands were being rounded up by local law goin’ and comin’, for stuff they deserved to be arrested for, sure, but also a few things that seemed pretty petty, if you want my opinion.”

“So the Cumberlands figured they’d worn out their welcome around here?” Rachel asked.

“I reckon that’s exactly how it went.”

“And it was all because of what my mother did?”

T.J. gave her a long, considering look. “I suppose it wasn’t so much what your mama did as who she did it to.”

“You know who the baby’s parents were?”

“I do,” T.J. answered with a nod. “Paul and Nina Hale.”

Next to Dana, Rachel reacted with a soft gasp. “You’re kidding.”

“I take it that’s bad?” Dana guessed.

Rachel blew out a long breath. “Well, yeah, since about half of anything worth owning in Bitterwood belongs to either his family or hers. My family was comfortably well-off, but these people could have bought and sold everything we owned twice over and never even given it a thought.”

Money equals power,
Dana thought,
especially when the opponent has no assets at all.
Her mother had messed with the wrong family.

“How’d they manage to keep their names out of the papers?” Dana asked. “I mean, several people have told me the story, but you’re the first person who could name the family, which means it never got written up. Did they pay off the newspaper?”

T.J. laughed. “Not exactly.”

“Nina’s father is Pete Sutherland,” Rachel said, as if that would mean something to Dana.

It didn’t. “And Pete Sutherland is?”

T.J. grinned, though there wasn’t a lot of humor in his expression. “Pete Sutherland is my boss. He owns and publishes the
Bitterwood Town Crier.
”

* * *

“I
T
STILL
DOESN
’
T
explain how he managed to keep his daughter’s name out of the Maryville newspaper.” Dana’s voice sounded equal parts excited and frustrated over the phone.

Nix zipped his leather jacket and pondered what she’d told him. The Sutherlands and Hales were Bitterwood’s version of the Morgans and the Rockefellers. Smaller scale in terms of wealth, of course, but their level of influence was formidable. The Hales owned land and resort properties from Chattanooga to Cumberland, Maryland, choosing to live in Bitterwood for precisely the reason half its population longed to get away—its quiet, out-of-the-way seclusion.

Nix supposed the Sutherlands stuck around the little town for much the same reason, long after Pete’s father had sold several newspapers back in print’s heyday for a fortune and invested his earnings in oil and mining interests. Old Pete was a Bitterwood celebrity of sorts, an old-fashioned newspaperman who still liked to have a little ink on his hands. He might be rich, but he didn’t put on airs, taking delight in his Appalachian roots and his reverence for the area’s history.

Hell, Nix had always liked the old coot himself. But he’d never crossed the man, so he’d never had occasion to see Mr. Sutherland’s darker side. Assuming a darker side even existed.

“What do you propose to do about it, now that you have that information?” he asked Dana, putting the phone on speaker and setting it on the bed beside him while he pulled on his boots.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling you,” she answered. “I considered trying to meet the Hales to get their sides of the story, but Rachel Hammond seemed to think contacting them would be a bad idea at this point. And since she grew up amongst their ilk, I figured I should defer to her wisdom on the subject.”

Nix grinned at her word choices. “Probably smart. But if you’re hoping I can get you any closer to the town muckety-mucks, you’re out of luck. I’m from Cherokee Cove, not Edgewood. I have a feeling there were probably some Nixes run out of town right along with the Cumberlands back in the day.”

“Believe me, your redneck roots are what I’m banking on. I’d like to talk to some folks in Cherokee Cove.”

Oh, no,
he thought.
Bad idea. Very bad idea.
Especially considering how much she apparently looked like her mother, if the whispers he’d been hearing since she came to town were anything to go by. Cumberlands had become easy scapegoats for all the problems people in his little neck of the woods had suffered over the ensuing years. They haunted Cherokee Cove even today, long after the last Cumberland had pulled up stakes and headed for more welcoming parts of the state.

“Listen, we should talk about this, but not now. I’m following a different lead, and besides, taking a cop into Cherokee Cove isn’t the way to get information.”

“But you’re one of them.”

“Not when I’m wearing the badge,” he answered firmly. Which was why he wasn’t going to be wearing the badge today, at least not where anyone in town could see it. “Tell you what. I’ll call you later, when I get some time.”

“Fine.” The tightness in her voice made him wince with guilt, but he reminded himself that she’d gone on her hospital detective jaunt without consulting him, and the guilt passed. If he found out anything that might answer their questions about who had tried to kill the chief, he’d tell her. But until then, he was a cop on a case and she was, fancy federal badge or not, a family member of the victim, in town on vacation. She’d just have to be patient.

He should have known patience wasn’t one of Dana Massey’s virtues.

* * *

T
HE
SMALL
COMMUNITY
of Cherokee Cove, on the northern slope of Smoky Ridge, lay nestled in a shadowy, wooded valley in the side of the mountain. There was only one road in or out, which probably explained why Dana didn’t manage to get twenty yards past the first house before people started coming out into their yards to watch her drive past.

She ignored their unsmiling gazes and drove on until she reached a small cluster of buildings that seemed to be the sum total of the community’s business district. There was a tiny post office, a hardware store and a small grocery on one side of the road. On the other side stood a small brick church with a white steeple. Nowhere to park in front of either the post office or the store, she noted with surprise. She turned off the road and parked in the gravel lot next to the little brick church.