The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five) (35 page)

"I don't believe this!" Bo whispered. "She was in love with him!"

The realization was on a par with seeing your first-grade teacher at the beach in a bikini, Bo thought. That sense of shocked betrayal when a one-dimensional image is revealed to be complex, human. Had Madge, married and a mother of two, conducted an affair with a man connected to one of her
cases? A man accused of molesting his own daughters? It was unthinkable.

Bo scrutinized the photo again. Madge's arm was around his waist, her face too close to his for mere professional courtesy. When things turned out well, clients sometimes asked to have their social workers join them in pictures. Bo had done it more than once. Pictures of smiling children, reunited families. This was not one of those. This was a snapshot of lovers, preserved by a deliriously happy Jasper Malcolm in perhaps Madge Aldenhoven's lifelong weakest moment. Bo was sure he had turned to kiss her in the second after the shutter clicked. And that she had kissed him back, eagerly. It was that kind of picture.

"Hey! What are you doin' in there?" a male voice shouted. "Get outta there!"

Bo slipped the photo into her jeans pocket beneath the grip of Bede's paw, and turned to face a man in full-body white plastic protective gear, gloves, and an air-filtering face mask.

"Just curious," she answered, ducking through the fence. "I live up the street, knew the old guy who lived here. A shame, huh? Say, what's the space suit about?"

"Hazardous cleanup," the man grunted importantly. "Did you touch anything?"

"No," Bo lied. "Why?"

"Irradiated blood from chemotherapy. Your friend who died in there? He had cancer. The blood's dangerous. I gotta clean that area where you were before the wrecking crew gets here to take that chimney down. Can't you read? Look, it says 'dangerous keep out.' That means you."

"No problem," Bo agreed, heading for the Pathfinder. "I was just leaving."

So the old dollmaker had cancer, she thought as she sped
back to Ocean Beach. Was receiving chemotherapy. May have been dying. That would explain the distribution of his doll collection, the enervation that left him sitting in a padded rocker on his porch for hours every day. Bo remembered the rocker. An artifact of extreme age. Would Jasper Malcolm have been able to drive all the way to St. Dymphna's in Julian, wait around in the cold until Tamlin entered the chapel, swing a garden shovel with sufficient force to kill her, then drive all the way back to San Diego in time to lure Rombo Perry to a vacant lot and stalk Janny on the beach? It seemed unlikely.

At home Bo took Molly to her neighbor, secured the Venerable Bede in the kitchen on a bed of towels, then showered and dressed for work, wondering about Pete Cullen's role in the sequence of events. He couldn't have killed Tamlin; he was with Bo the entire day and had no motivation to do so in any event, although the same could not be said of Jasper Malcolm's death. So who had killed her? Or had anybody? With a shiver of chagrin she realized that they had only Cullen's story of that event, which might have been merely a ruse. It made no sense, but Bo had to be sure.

"May I speak to Sister Mary Andrew?" she said into the phone minutes later. "Thank you."

"This is Bo Bradley," she said when the Mother Superior answered. "I'm calling to extend my sympathy to you and the other sisters. What a shocking event."

"Yes," the nun replied softl
y, confirming Cullen's story. "Such violence cannot be understood. Her funeral mass will be held tomorrow in the chapel. If you feel that it would be appropriate, you may bring her daughter. I've already contacted Beryl, the sister, but her father's phone seems to be out of order. The sister agreed to go to his home and tell him."

“I’
m afraid Jasper Malcolm died last night when his house burned," Bo said. "That's why his phone isn't usable. I'm sorry to burden you with more bad news. And I'll consider Janny attending the funeral, although at the moment I think it would be too much for her. Good-bye, Sister."

Slipping the old snapshot into her purse, Bo drove to work and parked in front rather than near her own office at the back of the building. The copy room was in front, just behind the reception area. For once it wasn't occupied by a repairman dismantling any of the three chronically malfunctioning copiers. Bo ducked in, made an enlarged copy of the photo, then tucked both in her purse as she hiked the ramps and corridors leading to Court Investigations, her professional home. Madge Aldenhoven, casual in a denim skirt and penny loafers, was in the hall showing something to one of the other supervisors. It was a little quilt, Bo saw. A log cabin design in green and white calicos. A crib quilt.

"Look, Bo," she said, "it's for lit
tl
e Patrick! I've been working on it for months. Estrella's husband called this morning with the news. Do you think she'll like it?"

"You made this? Madge, it's fabulous!" Bo smiled. "And the color's just perfect. He's got red hair, you know."

Edging into her own office. Bo watched as various other workers came out to admire Madge's handiwork. The supervisor's violet eyes were bright with pleasure. How could this be the same woman who routinely trampled the lives of strangers because the rules demanded it? How could Madge turn her back on Janny Malcolm and a thousand other lost children, then go home and lovingly stitch a quilt for Estrella's baby? Bo sighed and glanced at the old snapshot tucked in her purse. There was another Madge, she acknowledged. A human Madge who had, at least once, broken every rule in the book.

"There's a message from the social worker over at women's detox," the supervisor called cheerily through Bo's open office door. "Police brought the mother of your Friday case in last night, again. The worker says she's in pretty bad shape, showing some brain damage as well as hepatitis, a collapsed lung, and acute colitis. She'll probably sign a termination of parental rights. The social worker's recommendation is to go for a pre-adopt placement on both kids. Just transfer the case over to foster care. We're not going to have to fight on this one."

"Good," Bo replied, remembering the gray-skinned baby boy half dead in a sea of dirty clothing. The mother's story was undoubtedly a sad one, but the chain of ruined lives had to stop somewhere. Adopted and loved, the baby and his older sister might at least have a fighting chance.

"And Bo," Madge went on from the doorway, "I know you've continued to wor
k on the Malcolm case. Mary Man
deer phoned me yesterday afternoon. I'm not going to upset Estrella by bringing disciplinary action against you, although I should. A decision has been made regarding Janny Malcolm's placement in a group home for mentally ill youngsters up in the mountains near Big Bear. I hear it's a very nice facility. The foster care supervisor and I both agree that this is best."

"Mmm," Bo replied as Madge turned toward her own office.

Two supervisors? Even a juvenile court judge would be wary of overruling such a decision. Two CPS supervisors together could, Bo knew, pretty much make their own rules. Although not this time.

But before the inevitable confrontation, Bo decided to try ancillary measures. Pulling Estrella's copy of the Yellow Pages from a bookcase, she looked under "bricklayers." Rick Lafferty's name was there.

"Mr. Lafferty, I don't have time to pad this," Bo explained after introducing herself. "Your daughter Janny is about to be carted off to a psychiatric facility for the next three years even though she's not suffering from any psychiatric illness. You can stop it, rescue her. Will you?"

"No," Rick Lafferty answered. "That's all from a long time ago. The other one, Kimmy, and now her mother—they're dead. I've had enough trouble, Ms. Bradley. Leave me out of this."

"Strike one," Bo said while drawing brick designs on a flier announcing free body-fat testing in the lunchroom the following Thursday. But what was Rick Lafferty afraid of?

Next she called information in Redding Ridge, Connecticut, only to learn that there was no listing for the senior Laffe
rtys, George and Dizzy. Apparentl
y they'd moved sometime within the last thirteen years. Janny's brother, Jeffrey, would be eighteen now, Bo mused. Probably a senior in high school
. Did he know he'd had twin littl
e sisters? Did he remember? Did he ever have strange dreams of a child crying, a sickening thump, and then silence?

Bo paced between her desk and Estrella's, thinking. Madge clearly wanted to put the Malcolm case behind her. She was willing to overlook Bo's insubordination and outright defiance in order to do so. But she'd made the wrong decision about Janny, a decision that could only destroy the girls' precarious emotional stability. Bo took the copy of a photo showing her supervisor in the arms of a client from her purse and folded it into her skirt pocket.

Bradley, you've hit bott
om. Do this and you're as cold
hearted as she is. It's not right. Don't sell your soul!

There had been numerous events in her own life, Bo remembered, which did not bear close scrutiny. She could blame a psychiatric disorder for every one of them, and how convenient. But other people didn't have the shield of a medical diagnosis to hide behind. Other people just closed the door and hoped their mistakes didn't come back to haunt them. Still, a child's life hung in the balance.

"Better the trouble that follows death than the trouble that follows shame," her grandmother's voice warned from within her mind.

Bo smoothed her curling hair behind her ears, checked her makeup in the mirror on the door, and walked briskly to Madge Aldenhoven's office.

"I feel very strongly that a psychiatric placement for Janny Malcolm is inappropriate," she said, closing Madge's door behind her. "I know the whole story, Madge. Everything except what's behind it, that is. And Janny's taken the fall for everybody involved. She's a scapegoat. But she's a person, Madge. Packing her off now to a psychiatric group home in the middle of nowhere may just smash that."

"Smash" had a nice ring, Bo thought. Evocative under the circumstances.

"Bo, I've told you I'm willing to overlook your unprofessional behavior regarding this case," the supervisor replied. "However, I expect you to demonstrate your desire to keep your job by respecting a professional decision made by not one but two of your superiors."

"No deal," Bo said softly, then took the framed photo of Madge and her family from behind a stack of case files on the
desk. "When was this taken, Madge? About thirteen years ago?"

"I suppose so. Really, Bo, I have work to do."

"Why was there no one at Kimmy Malcolm's funeral but you and Mary Mandeer?" Bo asked, staring at the picture. "That was a lovely thing to do, but why didn't you invite her mother, or her father, or her
grandfather
?"

Only a tremor in her right hand, holding a county-issue pen against a memo pad, suggested the older woman's response to the emphasized last word.

"I insist that you drop this, Bo," she said, glaring at the wall beyond her desk. "It's no longer your case. It's out of your hands."

Bo jammed her hands into the pockets of a brown knit skirt she'd worn because it matched the habits of St. Dymphna's nuns. A folded edge of paper in one pocket made her thumb twitch.

"No, it isn't," Bo whispered. "But before this goes any further I want to tell you I think Patrick's quilt is wonderful. I'm proud to work with someone who's capable of such a loving gesture. But I will not allow you to further damage an already confused child in order to protect yourself from your own past The woman who made that quilt would help Janny Malcolm now, not hurt her. I know who you are, Madge, even if you don't. Even if you chose a long time ago to hide from yourself behind the asinine set of rules this place generates and call it 'professionalism.' Help me out here, Madge. Let me read that case file. I know you took it home. Help Janny."

"It's not that simple, Bo," Madge said quietly. "Oh, for somebody like you it is, of course. You're impulsive, ruled by feeling. You're sure you're always right. But sometimes—"

"Did you know that Tamlin Lafferty was murdered yesterday evening as she prayed alone in a chapel for the world's mentally ill?"

"No, I—"

"Then you probably don't know that Jasper Malcolm died last night as well when his home burned around him. And oh, by the way, the last thing he said to me when I interviewed him last week was to tell you you're always in his prayers."

Bo saw the older woman's shoulders hunch inward, the sharp gasp,
the beginning of tears. Perfectl
y orchestrated, this was the moment to reveal the gleaming, conceptual knife. Show Madge her own face alight with illicit, unprofessional, ruinous love. Break her.