The Fate of Mercy Alban (30 page)

After talking with Amity, giving her the latest on Jane and making sure she was safely ensconced at Heather’s house for the night, I asked Matthew to drop me off with Carter at the hotel.

“Sure you wouldn’t like to grab some dinner?” he asked, shooting me a sidelong glance from his spot in the driver’s seat. “You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast and must be starving by now.”

Tempting though it was, I needed some time alone to decompress. After everything that had happened within the past few days, my mind was swirling with thoughts of Coleville, my mother, Mercy, and Jane.

And the manuscript! My stomach twisted as I thought of those sheets of paper, priceless to the literary world, just sitting out in the open on the ottoman in my mother’s study, where I had so carelessly left them. I hoped a curious police officer on patrol in the house wouldn’t realize what it was.

“To tell you the truth, I’m exhausted,” I admitted. “Room service and a soak in the Jacuzzi are about all I can handle at this point.”

After a quick trip to the hotel gift shop to pick up the essentials for Carter and me, we headed up to our rooms, leaning against each other as the elevator rose to the hotel’s top floor.

“Jane’s going to be just fine,” I said, my head resting on Carter’s shoulder.

“And so will we all,” he replied, “as soon as
she
is out of the house.”

We stopped at our floor, the electronic key poised in my hand. “You have a good night, Carter,” I said. “If you need anything, just call.”

“I will, miss. And you, too.” I watched him as he trundled off down the hallway toward the presidential suite and could almost see the entire weight of the world, or at least our little corner of it, on his shoulders.

I ordered a rather decadent dinner of a croque-monsieur, French onion soup, and a salad, and devoured it all as I sat on the bed watching mindless television programs. It felt good to be medicated by the luxury of thinking about nothing at all, even as the week’s events tried to slither back into my brain. I was just about to pour myself a glass of wine and fill up the tub when my cell phone rang. It was a local number but one I didn’t recognize. Thinking it might be the police or the hospital, I answered it.

“Hi, Grace. It’s Harris Peters.”

I let out an audible groan. “Forgive me, Harris, but you’re the last person on earth I’m interested in talking to right now.”

“I heard about your housekeeper and I thought—”

I scowled into the phone. “How did you hear about Jane? And for that matter, how did you get this number?”

“I’m a reporter, remember? Anyway, listen. I have some information for you. At least I think I might. I was intending to keep this all close to the vest until the book came out but now …” His words dissolved into a sigh.

“Now what?”

“I never intended for anyone to get hurt,” he said. “I was horrified when my source at the police station called to tell me what had gone down.”

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that. You’re the guy who searched for years for my aunt, you’re the guy who marched her out of a locked facility. You could be charged as an accessory to all this, for all I know.”

He was silent for a moment. And then: “I’m calling to see if you want to meet. To talk. As I said, I’ve got some information that I think you’ll be interested in. You’ll certainly want to know it before I go public with it. If I go public.”

“I’m not I’m up for a meeting tonight,” I told him. “I’ve just come from the hospital and—”

“I could come to Alban House,” Harris offered.

“I’m not there,” I said. “It’s a crime scene now. Can’t this wait until tomorrow? Or, better yet, never?”

“It won’t take long, I promise. Please, Grace?”

There was something in his voice that worked its way under my skin. This wasn’t the pompous, arrogant man who had confronted me at my mother’s funeral; he was instead pleading with me.

“Where are you?” he continued. “I’ll come to wherever you are. I won’t take much of your time. An hour, tops. Can’t you give me an hour?”

I sighed, gazing at the Jacuzzi in the bathroom. “I’m at the Sheraton.”

“I’ll meet you in the bar in ten minutes,” he said, and the line went dead.

I didn’t even bother to put on my shoes. I tucked my feet into the slippers I had purchased at the hotel’s gift shop, gave my teeth a quick brush, and padded down the hallway toward the elevator.

I was sitting at a table by the window in the hotel bar, sipping a glass of wine and watching the activity on the busy street outside, when Harris Peters walked in. If I hadn’t known he was coming, I might not have recognized him—his designer suit and expensive shoes were replaced by a faded pair of jeans and sneakers. His hair wasn’t slicked back as it had been the day of the funeral; instead it was wavy and rumpled, as though he had just gotten out of bed. But the most striking change was in his attitude. It was just as I had picked up on the phone. He had an air of defeat about him, a resignation that seemed to seep from his very pores. He pulled out the chair next to me and sat down with a thud.

“Please, don’t get up,” he said with a slight smile.

“Harris,” I said, holding my wineglass aloft. “I wish I could say it’s nice to see you again, but unfortunately …”

“I’ll have a Belhaven,” Harris called out to the server, who disappeared behind the bar and reappeared a moment later with a bubbling glass of amber ale. He took a long swig, set the glass down, and leaned back, running his hands through his hair.

“You said you wanted to talk,” I began, taking a sip of wine. “I’m listening.”

“You know the expression ‘Be careful what you wish for’?” He took another sip. “I now know what it means, in great detail.”

I squinted at him. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Harris,” I said.

“I’m talking about what I think I’ve uncovered. The information I’ve spent years searching for. Maybe it should have stayed buried.”

I leaned back and crossed my arms, wondering where he was going with this.

And Harris began to tell me the tale of how he searched for and ultimately found my aunt, a tale of bribery, backdoor payments, hushed meetings with other reporters in European alleyways. I had to admit, I was drawn in. We finished our drinks and ordered a second round as he told of a series of rather unsavory connections, through which he was able to find information on a nurse at Mercy House who suffered from a gambling problem. It was a simple matter for him to confront her and offer her enough money to arrange for my aunt to go missing one afternoon during a walk on the grounds.

I took a sip of wine and eyed him. “That’s a fascinating story, Harris, it really is, but I don’t see—”

He put a hand up to stop my words. “Let me finish. As I already told you, this whole thing started because I’d been rather obsessed with your family, specifically with the mystery of how and why Fate Alban disappeared.”

I can’t explain why, but in that moment, the bar seemed to fall away, taking the bustle on the street, the shoreline, and the other patrons with it, leaving only Harris and me. I could feel the air around us begin to thicken with dread, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to know what this man was about to reveal. But before I could stop him, he began.

“Your aunt said something on the plane that got me thinking,” he said finally. “I’m just going to ask you straight out, Grace. Do you know if your father ever had an affair with someone before he married your mother?”

Out of all the possibilities, of all the things Harris might have brought up, this was completely out of left field.

“Absolutely not,” I said, sitting a little straighter. “My father adored my mother. He was in love with her his whole life.”

But as I said the words, David Coleville’s name swirled into my mind. If my mother was in love with another man before marrying my father—

“He may have loved her his whole life,” Harris said, interrupting my thoughts. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have an affair.”

“Why would you possibly imply that?” I wanted to know, my face reddening. I wasn’t sure where he got off, making these kinds of accusations.

Harris put his palms in the air as if to hold back my anger. “It’s just something your aunt kept repeating on the plane. She was talking about a baby and wondering what had happened to it. She kept asking if I was taking her to the party, and would we see the baby when we got there.

“And it got me thinking, Grace,” he continued, clearing his throat and holding my gaze. “That party was in June of 1956.”

We sat there, staring into each other’s eyes for a moment, and something unspoken passed between us. That’s when I noticed the faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. The same as Jimmy’s.

He took a deep breath. “I was adopted, Grace. My birthday is February 6, 1957. I’ve suspected this for a while. A good long while. It’s the reason I was, well, I guess you could say, obsessed with your family. When your aunt confirmed the existence of a baby, or a pregnancy, back then—”

“You’ve been obsessed with my family for years and now—what? You think you’re actually one of us?” I could feel my face heating up. “Just because you were born within nine months of that party? It’s ridiculous, Harris, the whole thing.” I pushed my chair back and downed the last of my wine. “I think this meeting is over.”

“Wait,” he said, leaning toward me, his voice low. “Don’t go. Please. There’s something else you don’t know.”

I sighed and settled back down in my chair, knowing I should at least hear the man out. Whatever crazy theories he had come up with, it was better I knew them now rather than later. “I’m going to give you exactly two minutes to tell me what you have to tell me, and then I’m going back up to my room.”

“I’ve been receiving payments since I was a child,” he said quickly, gulping air as he did. “Anonymous payments. Didn’t you wonder how I could have done all the traveling to Europe, the bribing of sources, even the payoff to the nurse at the hospital on a reporter’s salary? I’m here to tell you, Grace, we don’t make that much.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. In truth, I hadn’t even considered where he got the money for it all. “Payments? You mean like … child support?”

“Something like that, yes. According to my mother, they started coming when I was about five or six years old. Cash began arriving in the mail in an otherwise unmarked envelope with my name on it.”

That sent a chill through me. “And you have no idea who sent it?”

“It’s been the great mystery of my life,” he said, leaning back and sipping on his ale. “My unknown benefactor. I got the feeling that my mother knew who it was, but she never would tell me. It’s what caused me to become an investigative reporter—I grew up with this mystery, so it was natural for me to gravitate toward solving other mysteries.”

My thoughts began to tie themselves in knots. What Harris was saying made a kind of sick sense, but something about his theory didn’t seem quite right, somehow. Something was off.

“I’m sorry, Harris, but I just don’t think—”

“It would explain the anonymous payments, though, wouldn’t it? Think about it, Grace. Who else in this town is rich enough to send that kind of money every month for a lifetime, and who else in town would want to cover up an illegitimate child? You have to admit it—this has Alban written all over it.”

I shook my head, intending to deny what he was saying. But somehow, I couldn’t seem to get the words out. Who else, indeed? He was right—it
did
have Alban written all over it.

“Would you be willing to take a DNA test?” he pressed. “That way we’d know for sure.”

That crossed a line. Speculating was one thing, but DNA? I recoiled, pushing my chair away from him and standing up. “Not a chance.”

“Grace, this could mean—” Harris started, scrambling to his feet and leaning across the table. “Okay. Let’s dial things back a few notches before this friendly conversation gets out of hand. Sit down, please.”

“This is really poor timing,” I said to him, my words crackling in my throat. “You know Jane’s in the hospital. You know I just lost my mother.”

I wondered if Harris had laid this on me that very day on purpose, specifically because he knew what had happened to Jane. I’d be off my game, and he knew it.

“I’m sorry about the timing,” he said. “I guess—I don’t know. I didn’t think about how hard of a day you’ve already had.”

I studied his face, which was beginning to seem so familiar. The angle of his jaw, the slope of his nose. Could it be? Could Harris Peters be my father’s child?

I shook my head. Something about this whole thing was gnawing at me. There was a disconnect that I couldn’t quite get my mind around, a flaw in his theory that was just beyond my reach. An idea began to take shape in my mind.

“You said you’re still getting the payments, isn’t that right?” I asked Harris.

He nodded. “I am.”

“My dad died twenty years ago,” I told him. “If he were making clandestine payments to an illegitimate child, the payments would’ve stopped then.”

Harris leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve already thought of that. He could have made provisions for me in his will.”

“Impossible,” I said, slapping a hand on the table in front of me. “I was at the reading of his will. I know exactly what was in it, and I can tell you here and now that it didn’t include you or any child other than me and my two brothers, both of whom were gone when my dad died.”

My voice splintered as I thought of Jake and Jimmy, and what they would do to this interloper who was trying to worm his way into our family. And then, as clearly as if one of them had spoken it in my ear, I heard a whisper that illuminated exactly what was gnawing at me about Harris’s theory. In that moment, I knew why it seemed right and yet wrong somehow.

He wasn’t my father’s child. He was my mother’s child. With David Coleville.