“She looks just like her mama, though,” the man said, wiping his eyes before he handed back the photo. “It’s good to see that she made it all right.”
Edwin frowned at him. “Her mama?”
“That’s the Caligrace I knew. But she’s buried out at Pauper’s Acre,” he said with a nod of his head in the direction of Westfield Manor.
“You’re telling me that this woman’s mother was one of the girls who lived at Westfield Manor?”
“She’s the spittin’ image of her mother, so I’d say, yeah, I am. The home took the bad girls, but they also took unwed mothers when no one wanted them. Caligrace was pregnant. Had a baby girl.”
Edwin frowned, trying to make sense of this. “So Caligrace and her mother shared the same first name, and this woman in the photo is the baby girl she had after she came to live at the home?”
The man nodded.
“How is it that you know this?” Edwin asked, still not sure he could trust this man—or his information.
The man blew his nose into his paper napkin, took a drink of his coffee, then said, “I saw her the night the bus dumped her off. She was crying. I could see that she was pregnant. She had nothing but the clothes on her back. It was winter. I gave her an old coat I had in the back of my rig. I would have given her more, but...”
“But?” Edwin prodded.
The man looked away. “I was thirty-one, married with a pregnant wife at home and two little kids of my own.” He shrugged, his hand trembling as he lifted his coffee cup again. “I couldn’t help her. That’s just the way it was.”
So the man was fifty-six. He looked a whole lot older. Chalk it up to a hard life, apparently. A married man with a pregnant wife at home and two kids when he met the pregnant sixteen-year-old Caligrace.
“How was it that you were there that night? Did you work there?” Edwin asked hopefully as he tucked the photo back into his jacket pocket.
“I was a sheriff’s deputy returning one of the runaways that night.”
“WHAT ABOUT THE CHILD Caligrace gave birth to?” Edwin asked after he and former sheriff’s deputy Burt Denton introduced themselves. “What happened to her?”
Burt shrugged. “Never heard.”
By Edwin’s calculations, the Caligrace in the photo would have been about five at the time of the raid. So maybe her birth certificate was right and she was thirty. Apparently, she’d been put on the state bus that had taken the girls away. Unless someone in town had taken her.
“Any chance some couple felt sorry for the little girl and took her as their own?” he asked.
“I would have taken her in a minute, but like I said, I had enough mouths at home to feed, not that my wife would have stood for it.” He shook his head. “No one around here took her in, but someone must have somewhere else since, according to you, she’s still alive.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t say why you were looking for her.”
“She might be a witness in a homicide,” he said carefully.
The former deputy merely nodded as if he recognized bull when he heard it. “I hope she has a better life than her mother did,” he said, getting to his feet. He glanced at Edwin. “Is that too much to hope for?”
“No,” Edwin said. “By the way, you wouldn’t have any idea where in that building the two lived, do you?”
The former deputy, in a telling gesture, looked away. “Facing the building, farthest room to the right on the third floor.”
“Did the woman you knew ever tell you her last name?”
Burt shook his head. “She said her family had disowned her. She had no name, and neither did her kid. It broke my heart. I guess that’s why she gave her little girl her own name. It’s all she had to give the kid.” He looked like a broken man as he started to leave. “I really don’t want to talk about this anymore. What’s done is done. Some things are best left in the past.”
Edwin watched the former deputy leave, then joined Pete at the other end of the counter.
“Now what?” Pete asked as Edwin took a stool next to him.
“I have one more thing I have to do,” he said. “You should come along.”
Pete gave him a wary look. “If it’s what I think it is, not a chance in hell.”
* * *
AFTER HIS TALK with Rourke, Frank Curry climbed into his pickup and headed for the state mental hospital. It had been months since he’d seen his daughter. Not that he hadn’t tried to visit. He’d gone up there anyway because he hadn’t known what else he could do.
Unfortunately, after Tiffany had injured a nurse and several guards during a short-lived escape, she’d been locked up in the isolation ward. At first the doctor hadn’t wanted her to have any visitors—maybe especially the father she hated.
But through the use of some heavy-duty drugs, she had been downgraded as a threat and was now able to have visitors, Frank had been told. She just hadn’t wanted to see him the times he’d driven to the hospital to visit.
So he’d been surprised—and with good reason, a little worried—when he’d gotten a call from the hospital saying that Tiffany had asked to see him.
He tried not to be too hopeful. Up until a year and a half ago, he hadn’t known he had a daughter. Tiffany was the secret his ex-wife, Pam, had kept from him to punish him because she’d felt he hadn’t loved her enough during their short marriage. She’d raised the girl to hate the father she’d never laid eyes on. Pam had poisoned Tiffany against him to the extent that when they’d finally met, Tiffany had tried to kill him.
After she’d been sent to the mental hospital for evaluation, Frank had hoped that someone there would be able to help her. Pam had washed her hands of her daughter, making it even more painful for Tiffany.
The last time Frank had seen his daughter, he’d had to tell her that her mother was dead, murdered, and that he was a suspect. Actually, the number one suspect.
But in a turn of events, his name was cleared. Unfortunately, it was too late for Tiffany, who’d compounded her problems by making her escape and almost killing several people in the process.
Now as Frank waited in the sunroom, he wasn’t sure what to pray for. If Tiffany was better, she would be charged with not only her attempted murder of him, but also her attacks on the people at the hospital.
He feared she would be going to prison.
If she wasn’t better...well, then she could end up in an institution for the rest of her life.
He turned at the sound of footfalls behind him. The first time he’d laid eyes on Tiffany, he’d thought she was barely a teen. She had the look of a waif, with long, fine blond hair and pale blue eyes. She’d been seventeen, just out of high school. Old enough to be tried as an adult.
The last time he’d seen his daughter, her long blond hair had been hacked off with a pair of scissors she’d somehow gotten her hands on.
Now her hair was longer. It gave her a softer, sweeter look. For a moment, he could almost tell himself that Tiffany was better.
“I wondered if you would come,” she said, stopping a few yards from him. A male nurse had come with her. He stood a few feet back,