the town nuts. Everyone wants to know the same thing. What caused that emergency landing? Fine, if it was a mechanical failure, but could it have been terrorists or sabotage?”
“From what I’ve heard, that specific jet has an outstanding history for being one of the safest planes in the air. And she was deluxe to the nth degree, no expense spared for security or comfort. It’s pretty hard to swallow that it was just a plain old mechanical failure-at least if the problem was carelessness.” Winona pulled a couch pillow on to her lap, finding it hard to take her eyes off Justin. Last she knew, he’d long reached the multi-millionaire status… which made it all the more fun to watch him bumbling with a screwdriver.
“So what was the buzz at your station house? Your cops find any reason to think there was foul play connected to the emergency landing?”
“There was no evidence leading in that direction this afternoon…but really, it’s way too soon to say. They may have collected all the relevant evidence, but it will still take weeks of testing procedures before we have complete answers. The whole world knows how much tension there was between the two countries of Asterland and Obersbourg, though…and that Texas party was the first and only thing that brought those two countries together and talking in more than a decade. I really think you’re right, Justin. You and the Texas Cattleman’s Club guys should be brought in, both to question and get some advice, and I’ll be surprised if you don’t get that call.”
“I wasn’t as involved as some of the other members. But I still want to help, if there’s any chance. And I did know all of the people involved.” Justin righted the baby walker, pushed it around the carpet. Sighed. And then turned it upside down to work on it again. “Frightening. To think you could eat dinner with someone, shake their hand, make a joke and laugh with them…and that they could deliberately have had something to do with a near- fatal plane crash.”
“Or that someone could intend harm to so many good people.” She leaned forward to peer over the edge of the bassinet. She cared about the plane crash. She cared about her job. But at the moment-all day really-only one thing dominated her mind and heart.
“You’re not going to wake her up again, are you?”
Winona’s jaw dropped. “Are you out of your mind? I may have only been a mother for a day, but I learned that hours ago. Never wake up a sleeping baby. And if
His chuckle tickled her into a smile, but then he shot her a more serious look. “So, what’s the deal on your squirt there? What’s the legal process-what happens to her now?”
“Well, the first thing you already know. An abandoned baby starts out with a medical checkup, no matter how healthy the child appears to be. In this day of AIDS and drug use and all, there’s no placing a baby-even temporarily-without knowing the health picture. But that was a piece of cake. She couldn’t have gotten a cleaner bill of health.”
“Yeah, so you said this morning. So, then what?”
“Then, normally, she’d be turned over to Social Services, and they’d find a foster-care arrangement for her.” Winona’s arms tightened around the pillow. “The court will get more directly involved as soon as something more definitive is established about the parents. And that’s my job. Finding the parents. Especially the mom. I have to find out what their story is, and why the baby was abandoned.”
“And how do you go about doing that?”
It seemed odd that she’d never told Justin any details about her job before, but then, there’d never been a reason for this kind of thing to come up in conversation. “There are lots of ways for me to pick up clues. Now that I have the baby’s age pinned down-at least ballpark-I can start checking hospital records, see if I can get a lead into young women having babies at that time. Then I can check the papers, same reason. Check the 9ll calls, emergencies, abuse, deaths, anything called in around the time the child was abandoned, to see if there could be any obvious connection.”
“Uh-huh. What else?”
“Then…well, after that, I zoom straight for my at-risk kids. You know how it is in Royal. This is a wealthy community, so on the surface it’d seem we wouldn’t have that many kids in trouble. But I keep finding that the very rich and very poor have a lot in common. In both types of families, there are kids raising themselves. Alone a lot of hours. Parents moving near an edge with drugs or alcohol. Divorces, absentee adults. Any way you cut it, it’s the lonely kids who tend to sleep around-and look for trouble. So one of the things I always do is run a computer check for runaways.”
“And-?”
“And then I’ll check the truancy lists. The arrest lists. Then I’ll call the high schools and junior highs for girls with a high absentee record. Talk to the counselors about girls who were pregnant. I started some things in motion this afternoon, but it’d be pretty unusual to land answers overnight. It almost always takes some time.”
“Okay, Win…but what if you don’t manage to locate the mother after going through all that?”
She frowned, suddenly aware that she was clenching and unclenching her hands-and that Justin was watching her. “That’s not an issue. It’s early days yet. Believe me, I’ll find the mother. I’ve done it before.”
“But what if you don’t?” Justin righted the baby walker again, and this time, it seemed to push along without lurching like a drunken sailor. He set it aside, heaved to his feet and shook his legs as if to shake out the kinks-but his eyes never left her face.
“Well, then, there are other possibilities. A girl in trouble is the most logical choice for the mother. And frankly, I’m about as qualified as anyone in this county to find that kind of girl.” For some blasted reason, her fingers were trying to clench into fists again. She folded her arms across her chest, aggravated that she couldn’t seem to control the nervous movements. It wasn’t like her.
“I know you are, Win.” Justin’s voice was low, caring. “You know what it’s like for a kid to be abandoned. I was never surprised when you aimed to work with juveniles when you decided to be a cop. But you can’t possibly find the parents every time there’s a problem with a child.”
“Well, no, of course not. And as far as Angel…possibly her mother is a married mother with an abusive husband-or that kind of story-which means that she isn’t likely to show up on any record. In fact, someone like that can be almost impossible to trace. And another possibility…”
“What?”
“…another possibility is the kind of girl who’s kept a pregnancy hidden for nine months. It seems impossible, but we all know that it happens-you’ve heard those stories surface on the news every once in a while. This one, though, had to do more than just hide the pregnancy, because the baby’s already a couple months old. But the problem is the same. There has to be a record of something for us to be able to trace it. And if someone is absolutely determined to keep a pregnancy secret-and has some enablers somehow, someway-we really may never know who the mother is.”
“Okay. So we’ve covered most of the possible scenarios, good and bad. But in the meantime, what’s supposed to happen to our miniature princess here, while you’re going through all those record searches and waiting?”
Instinctively her hand shot to her stomach, as if to quell the sudden churning going on in her tummy. Normally she could eat red-hot chili, follow it up with an O.D.-size hot fudge sundae, and never have a digestive problem. But all day, she’d been thinking about what “was supposed to” happen to Angel next…and making herself sick every time she let those fears surface. “Well, the court usually places her in foster care, through Social Services. Like I already told you.”
“I know what you told me, Win,” Justin said gently. “That’s why I’m asking you for the details. So I can understand the situation better.”
Again she pressed hard on her stomach, then met his eyes. “Potentially, down the road, she’s adoptable. She’s a young baby, healthy, and though it’s not fair, her being blond and blue-eyed makes her extra desirable in the adoption market. But for that to happen, we have to find the parents-and find that they deliberately abandoned her, really don’t want her and will legally sign off. Or we could find that the parents are dead. But otherwise…”
“Yeah. It’s that ‘otherwise’ that happened to you, wasn’t it?” Justin had been standing, but now he plunked down on the couch next to her. His gaze prowled her face with the quiet, determined intent of a hunter. “You were in the foster-care system from the time you were six, right? But there was something about how you couldn’t be adopted. I remember the families and neighbors talking when the Gerards brought you home. I just don’t remember the details.”
“There weren’t a lot of details. It was pretty cut-and-dried.” She glared at him, not in anger, but in self- defense. At twenty-eight years old, it was about damn time she quit letting this past-history crap bother her. “I wasn’t adoptable because my mother was alive and could have come back for me at any time. So I was basically
