is addicted to but I think may contain massive amounts of sugar.”
Lake smiled. “Plain yogurt sounds good. And an English muffin. But you don’t have to wait on me. I can get it.”
“No, no, sit down. There’s coffee on the table.”
“Your place is great,” Lake said, sliding into a chair. “How long have you lived here?”
“About five years. When I was married, my wife insisted on doing the whole Upper East Side thing, which never really thrilled me. I found this place right after we split, and it’s been great. There’s a little study upstairs and a room for Matt, my stepson. In fact, he lived here the whole year I was working in Washington.”
“What’s he like?”
“A real good guy,” he said, setting her yogurt down. “Twenty-two. Now at Columbia Law. How about some sliced banana with that? As you can see, I’m flush with those. My housekeeper clearly thinks I’m suffering from a potassium deficiency.”
She smiled again and poured a mug of coffee for herself. “No, this is fine.”
After toasting and buttering the muffin, he slid the plate in front of her and pulled out a chair for himself at the table. This is all so weird, she thought. He’s the only man besides Jack that I’ve sat across the breakfast table from in nearly fifteen years.
“We need to make a plan,” he said firmly. Suddenly the no-nonsense Kit Archer was back.
“I know-and I have to get home,” she said. “I need to feed my poor cat.” And yet what if the man from the park was keeping an eye on her building now?
“Where’s your place?”
“The Upper West Side.”
“I thought I’d drive home with you and make sure you got back okay. I’ll head to work from there.”
“Look, you don’t-”
“Stop. There’s no way I’m going to just let you go home alone-not after what happened last night.”
She felt relieved knowing he’d be with her.
“Thank you.”
“That’s just step number one. From there you need to call this nurse you mentioned-as soon as possible. But is there any chance she could be involved?”
Lake shook her head. “At this point I don’t feel sure of anything, but Maggie seems like a pretty guileless person.”
“Okay, then, explain to her what happened to you. Let her know how serious the situation is and that you need her help.”
“I’ll do my best to convince her.”
“Good. How long has she worked there?”
“About three years, I think. She’s the one Keaton had given his keys to so she could pick up his mail.”
“It’s not going to be easy to get her to betray her bosses,” Archer said. He tapped his lips lightly with his fist. “I wish we had some kind of proof to offer her-a way to legitimize your story.”
“I think I have something,” Lake said softly. “Not actual proof, but a strong indication that the clinic used Alexis’s embryos on someone else-and is doing it with other patients as well.”
He raised his chin, expectant.
“I think I know what the letters mean.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, astonished. “Tell me.”
“It seems so obvious now, but it wasn’t until I was lying in the dark last night and saw them in my mind that I figured it out. I think the first letters refer to hair color-
Archer stared at her, incredulous.
“Geez. Because that way-”
“-they do the best job of matching. Keeping track of a couple’s coloring isn’t necessary for medical purposes, and even if it was, why be so cryptic about it? But if the clinic is stealing embryos and transferring them to other women, it would be important to have that information. You’d want to make sure that the baby had coloring similar to its parents. The first indication that a child might not be yours would be if the coloring were totally off. From what I know it’s fairly rare for two blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed child-and many people just assume it’s not possible at all.”
“Right-blue eyes are a recessive trait.”
“If the coloring is really off, a couple might start asking questions. They might even get a DNA test for their peace of mind. And if there’s a discrepancy, they’re going to panic and demand an explanation.”
“But what happens when the kid gets older and his features don’t fit so well with his parents’?”
“If the coloring works, it may not seem like such a big deal. And by then there’s total attachment. Even if the parents have reason to be suspicious, they may not want to rock the boat.”
“Yeah, let sleeping dogs lie. And you just figured all this out last night, lying on my couch?”
Lake smiled. “I think my subconscious has been working on it for a while. When I spoke to Alexis, she made a point of saying that the baby she saw with Melanie Turnbull matched Melanie’s coloring perfectly. That comment has been playing in my brain somewhere ever since.”
Archer shook his head in disgust. “And all just to improve their success rates. Do you think all the doctors could be in on it?”
She thought of Steve and felt a pang of worry.
“I don’t know,” she said. She took a sip of coffee. “It’s possible that only a few people are involved and doing it without the others being aware. The nurses, for instance, could be totally in the dark.”
“Wouldn’t they be curious about the codes?”
“They might not notice them because they only appear on the basic information sheet that patients fill out in the beginning, not on the medical forms that get used later. Once a patient is under treatment, the focus would be on notations made about procedures, that sort of thing.”
“You need to persuade Maggie to look through a bunch of the files and see how many have these codes. Of course, if she’s in on it, this will be the tip-off that you know as much as they suspect you do.”
“And if she’s not and they catch her going through everyone’s records, this could put her in danger,” Lake said.
“Warn her that she has to be extremely careful.”
“Okay,” Lake said. She glanced down at the table, thinking about all of this. What would be the best way to approach Maggie? She would probably have better luck if she did it face-to-face.
“Speaking of danger,” Archer said, interrupting her thoughts. She glanced back across the table. He had leaned back in his chair and was studying her intently. “Tell me what you know about Keaton.”
Lake’s heart jumped. Where was this going?
“Wh-what do you mean?” she asked.
“How do you think his death fits in with all this? Did he learn something he wasn’t supposed to know?”
Lake slowly let out a breath in relief.
“I’ve wondered the same thing,” she said. “We know that anyone from the clinic could have gotten into his apartment by using the set of keys from Maggie’s drawer.”
She wished she could tell him about seeing Melanie Turnbull’s name on Keaton’s table. Or at the very least that Keaton was going to bail on the clinic. Maybe she could say that Keaton had let that fact slip during conversation. But that would only arouse Archer’s curiosity-and she couldn’t give him even a hint of the whole truth.
“Possibly,” he said. He finished his coffee and set the mug down. “But as much as I don’t like coincidences, there’s a chance that Keaton’s death is just that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I talked to some police contacts I have. They’ve got their own ideas about what went down.”
“Oh?” Lake said, almost in a whisper.
“Keaton had a lady caller the night he was killed. There was a torn condom wrapper on the floor next to his bed. Which explains why the cops seemed interested in you. They’re gonna look at every woman he crossed paths
