Music City (18 page)

They made small talk for a while, and after their meals were served, as Vani was cutting into her open face crab cake she smiled and said,
“Spill it, Alex, whatever it is, we obviously need to know.”

Alex had just taken a bite of his Char, and finished chewing before he wiped his mouth and put his napkin back on his lap,
“Well, remember a few weeks ago when you had the DNA tests run by your family Doctor?”

Vani smiled, “Of course, Doc Donahue actually seemed a bit taken with Dorothy. It was cute.”
She said between bites.

Tracy cut in
as he took a drink of his sweet tea, “What? Are the test results back already?”

Alex nodded, “Yes, the results are back, and I have to admit, I was surprised.”

Everyone at the table watched Alex expectantly. Derek was more than a bit miffed that this information had not been shared with him already. Alex was his partner, and he was as vested as he was with this family. He took another bite of his salad as he tuned back into what Alex was saying.

“
Well, the results came back, and as you know I passed them on to a friend of mine at the FBI in order to expedite the results.”

Derek spoke up, “Cut the crap Alex, just get to the point.”

Alex was taken aback by Derek’s tone of voice. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought Derek was mad at him for something. He cleared his throat and concentrated on Tracy and his sister. “The results came in today, and your Mother and Dorothy are not sisters. As a matter of fact, they are not related at all.”

Tracy wasn’t sure he was processing what Alex was saying, “How can that be? There’s been a screw-up somewhere along the way, you only have to look at them to know they’re sisters, at
the very least half-sisters.”

Vani shook her head, “This isn’t possible, just look at them!”

Alex shook his head, “I thought the same thing, but I’m telling you, the results say they are not related.”

Derek looked at Vani, “We need to calm down, y’all... We’ll sort this out. First of all, we need to order another test, and we need to talk to your mom
ma and see how she wants to proceed.”

Vani shook her head, “She’s convinced Dorothy is her sister, she’s going to be heartbroken.”

Derek smiled at her, “Your momma is a tough cookie, where do you think you got your determination?” he asked.

Alex agreed, “Yes, your mom is tough, she’ll roll with it, just like she always does.”

Tracy nodded his agreement. Outnumbered, Vani sighed, “I was afraid something like this would happen.”

The lunch was enjoyable, but they all dreaded going to Shelly with more bad news. When they arrived at Shelly’s house, they found her in the backyard in
cutoff jeans, flip flops, and a t-shirt, watering her flowers.

She took one look at them, shook her head and threw the hose down. “I know y’all didn’t come over here just to visit. What’s up?”

They all looked at each other, each waiting for the other to say something. Tracy finally stepped forward, “Momma, the DNA results came back for you and Dorothy, and…”

Shelly cut him off, “We’re not blood, are we?”

Vani was astonished, “How did you know Momma?” she asked.

Shelly shook her head as she began rolling the hose up, “I don’t know, just a feeling, and part of the reason I went ahead and agreed to get the testing done.” Finished winding up her hose into its container, she stopped and put her hands on her hips and looked at all of them, “I want y’all to know right now, that it doesn’t change what I feel for Dorothy in the slightest, we were still raised by the same person and that makes us sisters whether there is any blood involved or not.”

Shelly slapped her hands together, wiping off whatever dirt lingered there, “I have a few ideas I’d like to toss around, if y’all have time?”

They gathered in the generous kitchen around the huge oak table Shelly had insisted on buying while on tour many years before. The table, which she found at an antique shop during one of their excursions, had ended up costing three times what it should have after they had it shipped back to Nashville. Shelly had not cared, she loved that table— she always felt the power in its old wood whenever she was seated at it. Shelly liked to believe that it had once been the centerpiece of another kitchen in another time, where a family had enjoyed meals and shared life’s ups and downs.

As they sat, Shelly explained again what Dorothy had told her about Francine and Murry. Shelly pulled out her phone, “Francine and Murry live between Charlotte and Huntington. I think they hold a big piece of this puzzle. I think, perhaps, I could get more information from them than anyone else in the family.”

Alex sat up, “How do you want to approach this Shelly?”

Vani spoke up, “Momma, I think you need to step back and let Alex and Derek deal with it, you don’t need to go traipsing back to North Carolina looking for relatives, you’re just too public.”

Shelly raised her hands, “Whoa, hold on a minute Vani.” She held up a perfectly manicured index finger currently painted lavender. “How long have I been your Momma? When have you ever known me to pass off something on to someone else?” Shelly raised an eyebrow waiting on Vani to answer her. When Vani offered no answer, Shelly continued, “If I want to go to North Carolina, I will
. Plain and simple. That being said, I’ve been thinking about it, and I agree with you, in that I would like for Alex and Derek to handle it. That is, if they are willing.”

All eyes went to Alex and Derek. Derek, who was in the process of taking a big drink of sweet tea, gulped a mouthful down, and said, “We’ll have to re-arrange the schedule a bit, we have a couple of things coming up.”

Tracy had pulled his smart phone from his pocket and was scrolling through and adding notes as he went. “I can get your calendars cleared, that won’t be a problem. You do have a consultation with that lady coming from Lakewood on Wednesday and I don’t think that it should be rescheduled.”

Derek looked at Tracy, “You can handle the consultation, Tracy.”

Tracy paled, “Me?”

Alex nodded his head, “Yes, you. You’ve got it kid, Derek and I have talked about this more than once, but we haven’t said anything to you because we know you want to be a writer. You’ve definitely got the instincts for the job, Tracy. You’d make a heck of an investigator.”

Tracy blushed, “Really? Wow, well, I suppose I could do the initial consult, find out what she wants, write up the report, I’ve sat in on enough to know what to do.”

Tracy mentally noted to check on what he needed to do to become licensed as a private investigator.

Not lost on them was the fact that they had just had a bomb dropped in their laps, the number of lives that could have been altered by Maye Harris-Taylor was staggering. They also knew that when Shelly found out that she may have parents out there somewhere, she was going to insist on finding them at any cost.

They decided that before they went back to Shelly, they were going to try to find Maye Taylor and ask her how many lives she had changed, or switched. That, they thought, was the best place to start. They drove to Raleigh and found a nice hotel to set up in and Alex went to work.

A few hours and several phone calls back and forth with Alex’s contacts, with the new information they had from Francine and they had the last known address of Maye Harris.

The following morning, they found Maye’s neighborhood and her home. It was in an older part of town. The home itself was just a small clapboard-sided house with peeling paint and what looked like scrub brush in the tiny front yard. On either side were homes that were almost identical in structure and in appearance.

They opened the wooden screen door, knocked on the wooden door behind it and waited.

The woman that appeared at the door with a cigarette hanging out of one corner of her mouth looked closer to mid-eighties than the mid-sixties that she actually was. Maye wore a threadbare house coat that zipped up the front and featured two front pockets with embroidered flowers. It looked as though at one time it
was a pale green color, but now it was mostly yellowed, just like the fingers that now held the cigarette. Derek wasn’t sure if the garment was yellowed due to age or nicotine.

“What do you need?” the raspy voice asked, then broke in to a coughing fit.

Alex tried to use the same story on Maye that they had used on Francine, “Hello Ma’am, we represent the family of BJ Thompson and we’re trying to find his grandmother, is that you?”

Maye wasn’t going to be as easily fooled, “You boys need to shoot straight with me, I ain’t no dummy. I know that Dorothy’s boy is a good for nothing, same as his Daddy, so I ain’t a buying that he sent you to find me.” Another coughing fit wracked her body.

She choked, “So, you might as well fess up as to who sent you here. I ain’t long for this earth and I ain’t got no time for games.” She stepped away from the door and turned to leave them standing at the tiny porch. “I have to sit down, so if you want to keep talking to me, you’re going to have to come on in.”

They followed her in to the darkened living room and she motioned for them to sit across from her on an old worn sofa propped up on one corner with books. Alex spoke, “Mrs. Taylor, we’ve been hired to find all of the children that were removed from your care many years ago, and to be frank, we’re having a difficult time, as record keeping was not as thorough then, as it is now.”

After another coughing fit subsided, she lifted her chin proudly and said, “You wasted your time, you may as well leave now, I ain’t got nothing to say.”

Derek snapped. For some reason, and he wasn’t sure why, he loathed this woman and what she had done to Shelly and to Dorothy. To find out that they should have grown up in happy, loving homes was just more than he could bear and it was all because of this pitiful looking woman in front of them, who reeked of stale cigarettes and cheap beer, who didn’t appear to regret a thing she had ever done in her life. “Look lady, you totally screwed over your children, the least you could do is give them some kind of peace and closure.”

“I should have known it was her,” Maye coughed.

“Who do you mean?” Alex asked.

Maye laughed, “I’m not as dumb as I look, boys. My daughter, Shelly Shepard, sent you, didn’t she? She’s the only one who has enough money to send two fancy looking detectives out to find me.”

Derek laughed, “Are you talking about the country music star? We’re supposed to believe she’s your daughter? Yeah, right.”

Maye took a long drag on her newly lit cigarette, “She’s my daughter. I haven’t seen her since she was a teenager, except on television, but she’s mine. Done well for herself, I’m happy for her. I’m sorry she lost her husband, but she had two beautiful babies to lean on. I’ve seen them.” She leaned forward in her chair and smiled at them, “My grandchildren are beautiful.”

Alex leaned back, put his hands in his
jacket pockets and then crossed his legs. When he reached in his pocket, he activated the recorder he always carried. “Why don’t you start there,” he said.

Maye held back another coughing fit and sat
back in her chair. She nodded her head and looked at them, “I reckon it’s time.”

Maye talked for the next two hours, only stopping to cough, light a cigarette or take a drink of her beer. She said Mayelynn had spunk, she always had, and Maye had blamed her, wrongly, for her beautiful Eric’s death. It seemed Mayelynn
was a demanding toddler, and Maye was tending to her when Eric wandered outside and out of her sight. By the time she found him, he was floating face-down in the neighbor’s pond, dead.

She explained that she knew it wasn’t right, but she blamed her little girl for his death. She also said she knew it wasn’t Mayelynn’s fault, she was just a little girl herself. She said, when she thought about all she had risked to keep Mayelynn, it just all came flooding to her every time she looked at her and she took it out on her.

Maye Taylor cleansed her soul that afternoon. She gave Alex and Derek all the court documents that she had ever been given in any court of law. She gave them names of relatives that potentially had raised her other children.  Then she smiled and dropped a bomb on them, she told them that the only one of her children who was actually the same child she had carried in her body for nine months was Eric. The rest of the children she’d borne were unwittingly raised by wealthy families; her own children were being raised by the parents of the children she raised.

Shelly’s switch
was a spur of the moment decision. Though she had long considered the idea of switching babies around, she just had not worked out how she could actually do it. She met Shelly’s mother while they were both pacing the hallways, waiting on their babies to make their appearances. Shelly’s mother was obviously wealthy. She and her husband were driving from Norfolk Virginia to Atlanta when she went into labor several weeks early. Maye decided that she was the perfect person to switch babies with, because the two women resembled each other a lot, she decided if their babies were the same gender it would be a sign that she was indeed the person to swap her baby with.