“So, Charles, who is the mysterious guest who is to arrive in the morning? What happens if the cable car is frozen? Then what do we do?” Myra asked.
“We’ll deice it and spray some hydraulic oil. Our guest is Tobias Tyson, also known as Tee or, as his…uh…colleagues like to call him, MF. For Magic Fingers. Mr. Tyson is a…safe-cracker. Top of his field. Two stretches in the federal pen for his expertise. He very graciously agreed to my invitation to join us here and to teach one of you the tricks of his trade.”
“Which one of us? Whose safe are we going to crack?” the two women asked at the same time.
“That’s up to Mr. Tyson. But to answer your question, it will be Baron Bell’s safe that you are going to crack. My intel tells me the safe is like the man himself, or the self he portrays to the public—benevolent and old-fashioned. I have here many articles and pictures of the man, and the safe is always prominently displayed for some reason. It is an antique and weighs several tons. Impossible to steal, but not impossible to crack.”
“Tell us what you’ve learned from your people and the files Maggie brought to the mountain,” Myra said.
“On the surface, Mr. Bell is what he appears to be. He has a thriving legal practice, mostly corporate. He’s a fine lawyer. Being benevolent, he doesn’t advertise that he brokers baby deals. It’s not something he does on a regular basis. From what we can gather, he does it several times a year. Once the deal is done, all the legalities are worked out, and everyone signs off on it, he’s finished. An example is Rachel and Tom Dawson. Mr. Bell brokered their deal. I hate using that particular term, but that’s what it was, a deal. As subsequent events made clear, the babies the surrogates bring to term are nothing more than commodities as far as Mr. Bell is concerned.
“Mr. Bell put the Dawsons in touch with a surrogate, who would conceive a child using Thomas Dawson’s sperm. The Dawsons paid Mr. Bell one hundred thousand dollars. The surrogate had her own attorney, but we can go into that later. Right now we’re just concerned with Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell’s role in the matter was to end the minute the surrogate gave birth and the papers were signed.
“But when the surrogate gave birth to twins, which was not expected, as the second baby hadn’t shown up on the ultrasound, things changed. The surrogate demanded more money for the second child, and the Dawsons didn’t have it. They said they would try to come up with the money. Here is where Mr. Bell entered the picture again, presumably because more money from the Dawsons was involved. The Dawsons took the twins home. They managed to come up with a few thousand extra, but nowhere near what Bell and the surrogate wanted.
“Then the surrogate filed a suit with her own lawyer, saying she’d changed her mind and wanted to keep the twins. Bell bowed out and refused to talk or meet with the Dawsons. Not only couldn’t the Dawsons defend a lawsuit—they were bankrupt—but since they couldn’t come up with the rest of the money, they had to surrender the twins to the birth mother.
“Mrs. Dawson went through what she described to Lizzie as a mini-breakdown. Mr. Dawson wanted to kill someone. The couple’s marriage is suffering because of all this. Then Mrs. Dawson got angry. She pulled up her socks and started to check on things on the Internet. She also spent a lot of time in the park, talking to nannies and young mothers, and came up with another case similar to her own. That’s when she went to Nikki’s firm, and the office manager sent her to Lizzie.”
“Were the Dawsons given back their money by Bell?” Annie asked.
Charles shook his head. “No. Nor did the surrogate give back the monies they paid for her care during her pregnancy. The Dawsons could sue for the money, but they have no funds to work with.”
“Why didn’t the Dawsons go to the newspaper or the media? If Mr. Dawson’s sperm was used, he is the biological father. That has to count,” Myra said.
“They didn’t want the public uproar they knew would occur. Mr. Dawson was afraid his employer would terminate his position if it came to light that he was embroiled in a family media circus. Mrs. Dawson more or less felt the same way as her husband. They did talk to several lawyers. When they told the lawyers about the demands for more money because a second child was produced, they were told that for the surrogate to make such a demand, and for Mr. Bell to be involved with the attempt to extort the money the surrogate demanded for the second child, was a crime. It is illegal to sell babies, so the one hundred thousand dollars and associated expenses paid the surrogate could not be part of a commercial transaction in which the baby was bought. The minute the surrogate demanded more money simply because she gave birth to a second child, she was breaking the law by trying to sell the second child.
“But when the lawyers were told that the only evidence that such a demand had been made was the Dawsons’ testimony, they could tell the Dawsons only that they couldn’t win, that as long as the birth mother testified that she had simply changed her mind and could not bear to be parted from her children, she would always get the kids. They were also told that Mr. Dawson risked having to contribute child support if he pursued the matter.”
“But you said Mr. Dawson was the sperm donor. Doesn’t that count for something?” Myra demanded again, outrage ringing in her voice.
“It takes money to pursue any kind of action they might want to bring. And any suit they brought would undoubtedly be met with a countersuit. Right now, Myra, that young couple is licking their wounds, and they don’t know what to do. Lizzie is going to represent them pro bono. As a matter of fact, she’s scheduled an appointment with Baron Bell for Wednesday. She’s going to fly in, attend the meeting, and return to Vegas on the red-eye. She didn’t explain the purpose of the meeting to Bell’s secretary. Because of her reputation, they wouldn’t dream of asking or putting her on the spot. The truth of the matter is they were probably flattered that she wanted to meet with Mr. Bell.”
“Are we thinking Baron Bell and the surrogate’s lawyer are…in this together?” Annie asked. “Who’s her lawyer? Anyone we know?”
“From what I’m told by Maggie, she’s a Lizzie Fox wannabe,” Charles replied. “Maggie said she is full of herself and isn’t even a good lawyer. Her name is Adel Newsom. From what I can gather, she tries to emulate Lizzie in everything. Her colleagues aren’t kind about it when they discuss her.”
Myra fingered the pearls at her neck. She looked toward the windows, but all she could see in the shiny blackness was her own reflection. “Do we know if they’re just business associates, or are they…something else?”
“Oh, Myra, for heaven’s sake, say what you mean. What she wants to know, Charles, is, are the two of them shacked up?” Annie said.
“It appears to be so, but at the moment there is no proof. Maggie has her people digging deep.”
“What about the babies? Are they safe? What about the other case? What happened to that child?”
Charles closed his eyes. It looked to Myra and Annie like he was in pain. Somehow he managed to speak through his clenched teeth. “Bought and sold after the surrogate reclaimed the child. The same thing will probably happen with the Dawson twins.”
“This is all about money,” Myra said, her eyes brimming with tears. “How can people do that to innocent children?”
“People like that have no conscience, Myra. They go by the green stuff in hand. Well, I, for one, am going to relish going after them if Lizzie can prove they’re the scum we think they are. And I, for one, will show no mercy where they’re concerned. What else, Charles?” Annie demanded.
“We think there’s a good chance the twins are about to be sold off to a new couple. That’s why we have to do something quickly,” Charles said.
“Maggie!” both women said in unison.
“Front-page picture of the Dawsons and their problem, along with pictures of the twins,” Annie said.