Nora rarely thought about it, but these last few days she couldn’t avoid it.
It was a word her mother used regularly. Along with
“Paso Robles,” Duke muttered.
Nora swallowed uneasily. “That mean something to you?”
“Russ lived there for most of his childhood.”
One more connection to the area. “Which would give him a good reason to meet with her and not think that something was unusual,” Nora said.
She looked back at the forms. “Father, David O’Dell, sixty-four. Mother, April Plummer, fifty-nine.”
But even as Nora thought that there was
Paso Robles, so close to where April had lived for years in SLO. Same age as April would be.
She remembered April at her mother’s trial. She wasn’t pregnant. She’d always been rail-thin. Nora would have noticed if she were pregnant, the hearings and trial went on for months and months … maybe April got pregnant after the trial. Though that would make Maggie a little young for college.
But there had been one pregnant woman at the trial.
“When was she born?” Nora cried out, a bit too loudly. “Dammit, where do they put the birthdays on these stupid forms?” She sounded panicked.
Duke pointed to a box near the top of the form.
December 12. Maggie would be twenty in December.
The timing was right.
Nora dropped the file, a hand to her stomach. She swallowed bile as she realized the unthinkable. This couldn’t be, but there wasn’t any other explanation.
She shoved the file toward Rachel. “Call the SLO field office and have them send a pair of agents to talk to David O’Dell and April Plummer about Maggie. And find out where her sister is-the one she mentioned in the letter she wrote to Anya Ballard.”
Rachel took it, looking at Nora as if her head was about to spin around. “Anything else?’
“Just that. For now.”
With Rachel gone, she breathed marginally easier.
What if she was wrong? They could be going down the wrong path. They could be wasting time. Only, she didn’t think she was wrong. She
Her mother had lied. Lying sounded exactly like something her mother would do.
Nora hated Lorraine. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the waves of pain and anger that washed over her like the ocean hitting rocks during a storm.
For seventeen years Nora had lived without a home, without a place to belong. For seventeen years Nora had tried to understand her mother, had wanted to please her, had done things she knew were wrong but didn’t know how to say no to the woman who’d raised her.
Until Quin was in trouble; then Nora turned. When it was Quin in danger, Nora put herself on the line. And Lorraine went to prison. But that didn’t make the pain go away. It took years before Nora was able to truly make her own path. Quin never understood why Nora refused to let her visit Lorraine in prison, why Nora didn’t visit her. They’d often argued about it, but Nora had always won.
Nora was determined that Quin would not be corrupted by their pathological liar mother.
Duke put his hands on her shoulders and made her look at him. “Nora, what’s going on?”
She took a deep breath and the truth spilled out. “When my mother went to trial, she asked for leniency because she was pregnant. I didn’t even know until the pretrial motions, but it was confirmed-she was five months pregnant by that time. She had the baby right before the trial, in December, and the judge told me that the baby was put up for adoption.
“I didn’t want anything to do with it. I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to feel any connection to the baby. I asked for no details, because as long as my mother didn’t raise the baby, he’d have a decent life.”
“He?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t know if the baby was a boy or girl. I didn’t ask. I never told Quin because there was no reason to. She didn’t have to testify at the trial, why should she be dragged into everything? She was a little kid. I didn’t want that for her. I didn’t want her to live with the pain and guilt I did for so many years.”
Nora didn’t realize tears were running down her face. She was so angry-furious! — and emotionally wrung- out. Remembering the trial, what she said on the stand, the way her mother had looked at her. As if she’d cut her heart out. Betrayed her.
“April Plummer was a friend of my mom’s. Single then, as far as I knew. April was truly a flower child. She took way too many drugs in her youth and ended up kind of simple, but very sweet. We lived with her for a while-a few weeks here, a month or two there. I always thought my mother used her, manipulated her. April would do anything you wanted her to, especially for my mom.”
“And you think that this April adopted your mother’s child?”
Nora nodded, wiping away the tears. She took a deep breath. She had to do this. She had to face the truth. “Fifty-nine-I don’t know how old she was, but my mother is fifty-seven. When Dr. Vigo said that the killer was pulling out only my old cases, those were cases my mother might have known about. At least the first two. I was an informant at Diablo Canyon. That’s where her boyfriend was killed, where she was arrested.” Her boyfriend, Cameron Lovitz. The father of Lorraine’s child, the father of Nora’s half sister.
The father of Maggie O’Dell. And he was a psychopath, just like her.
“The second case she mentioned in the letter I worked as an informant against Lorraine’s friends. They were planning to set oil wells in Kern County on fire.”
Nora looked at Duke. “That was twenty years ago. Maggie O’Dell is nearly twenty now. April came to my mother’s hearings, I saw her several times, and I never saw her pregnant.”
“It should be easy enough to find out,” Duke said.
“I know I’m right.”
“We need confirmation.”
Duke was right, they had to confirm the facts, but Nora knew in her heart and soul that Maggie was the daughter of Lorraine and Cameron. Her life was being ripped apart and trampled. She’d have to tell Quin, and that hurt just as much. But the truth would get out as soon as Maggie O’Dell was caught, and Nora didn’t want Quin hearing about it from anyone but her.
Nora would find Maggie O’Dell and stop her.
“My past-it’s coming back. I thought it was over, but now-” She didn’t finish. What could she say? “I’m sorry.”
Duke grabbed her by the arms and gave her a firm shake. “You had nothing to do with this. Nothing! Don’t even think for a minute that just because you share blood with someone that it means you’re guilty.”
He pulled her into a tight hug. She accepted his embrace, needed it. Needed him.
“You call your contacts, I’ll call mine,” Duke said, talking over her head. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Nora. I promise.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Once again, having Dean Hooper as her ASAC ratcheted up everyone’s response time to Nora’s requests. Warden Jeff Greene called her less than ten minutes after she had explained the situation to her boss.
“How can I help, Agent English?” the Warden asked.
“You have a female prisoner, a lifer, Lorraine Wright. She was convicted of domestic terrorism which resulted in the death of a federal agent.”
