really was cold out here. The ocean breezes whipped through his wool-blend jacket as if it were made of gauze. Though the wind blew his hair onto his forehead, tickling his lashes, he ignored it.
“This birth certificate?” he prompted.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen! May I introduce you to Polly? Polly was found in Golden Gate Park on Christmas Day with a broken wing. She’d been abandoned—”
Patrick turned with a sudden tension, but it wasn’t just another hired Beauty soliciting bids. The smiling woman who stood at the foot of the folly, swinging a silver filagreed cage that held a ruffled blue parrot, was Ellyn.
“Hi there, stranger,” she said with a teasing note of remonstrance. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”
He smiled. “Sorry. Mr. Frost and I had some business to take care of. Ellyn Grainger, this is Don Frost.”
She smiled and shook his hand, but her face was troubled. An empathetic woman, she probably sensed that something wasn’t right. She was also smart enough to sense that Patrick didn’t want to talk about it.
Don Frost’s gaze was openly admiring. Patrick looked again, seeing her through the other man’s eyes. Yes, Ellyn Grainger was a prize, from her ivory skin to her wine-colored hair, from her flawless breeding to her generous heart.
As he had almost every day for the past two years, Patrick asked himself why he couldn’t be sensible enough to fall in love with this very nice woman. And, as usual, he got the same answer. He didn’t know how to love anybody. In that respect, at least, he truly was Julian Torrance’s son.
“The auction is almost over,” Ellyn said to Patrick. “I just came down to let you know that Karen has outbid you on Smoochy, so if you wanted to place another—”
Patrick had to smile. Ellyn was a terrible liar. She knew damn well he didn’t want that flea-bag. “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of being so selfish,” he said nobly. “Let Karen have him.”
Don Frost coughed suspiciously, and Ellyn’s lovely hazel eyes twinkled. “All right,” she said. “But you won’t be too long, will you? We’re going to have champagne and strawberries on the patio. Do come, Mr. Frost. It’s a very nice champagne.”
“Thanks,” the investigator said, though Patrick noticed he didn’t commit to anything. Don didn’t seem awed by the rich and beautiful, in spite of the scuffed loafers and tired jacket. “That sounds nice.”
Ellyn retreated gracefully, and as soon as she was out of earshot Patrick turned back to the investigator. “Go on,” he said. “This birth certificate?”
The other man squared his shoulders and dropped his social smile. Back to business.
“This birth certificate doesn’t name the father. But it also doesn’t name the mother. On this one, both parents are simply listed as ‘unknown.’”
Both parents? How? Patrick felt the sudden need to sit down, too. But he overcame it. When you grew up as Julian Torrance’s son, you learned early never to show the least sign of weakness.
“How is that possible, Mr. Frost?”
“Well, naturally I wanted to know that myself. I’ve been looking into it for the past week. I had hoped to find out something that would make the news a little more—” His gaze slid to the side. “A little more tidy.”
“But?”
“But I’m afraid this story just isn’t tidy. That’s why I came myself. I thought I should, in case you had questions.”
“I have nothing but questions,” Patrick said. “You aren’t providing much of anything but riddles. Surely when a woman delivers a baby, she has to give the hospital her name.”
“She does if she goes to a hospital. This mother didn’t. In this particular case, the mother delivered her baby herself. The baby was subsequently found and sent to the local birthing center. The adoption was formalized from there.”
The baby was subsequently found…
Patrick sat down. He had no choice.
“I’m listening,” he said. “Just go ahead and tell me everything.”
The investigator nodded. “All right. At about 1:00 a.m. on the morning of November 25, exactly thirty years ago, the owner of the birthing center, a Mrs. Lydia Kane, received an anonymous call. A female voice told her that a newborn baby could be found in the girls’ bathroom of the local high school. Mrs. Kane then went to the high school. The custodian was there late, cleaning up after the homecoming dance. He had already found the baby and called the authorities.”
Patrick noticed, with the vague back third of his brain, that Don Frost was careful to use impersonal terms. The mother. The baby. Never “your mother” and “you.”
The man’s eyes were round and sad. It dawned on Patrick that Don Frost pitied him. In an odd, confused way, that made Patrick angry. He didn’t need pity. He didn’t care about all this. He didn’t have the slightest recollection of lying abandoned on a cold bathroom floor.
“Still,” he said. “Someone must know who the mother was. High school girls can’t go through a whole pregnancy without someone noticing. That much weight gain shows, doesn’t it?”
Frost shrugged. “Unless they wear baggy clothes or starve themselves. Some do.”
“But they can’t just give birth at the homecoming dance without someone—”
Patrick stopped. He was being ridiculous. Of course they could. He read the papers. Every now and then a story like that would grab the headlines for a few days. The baby in the trash can, in the Dumpster, in the shoebox in the teenager’s closet, hidden behind the video games.
“Actually,” Don went on after a slight pause, “in this case there were a lot of rumors. The whole thing caused quite a stir in Enchantment, which is a fairly small town. People round there still tell the story of ‘The Homecoming Baby.’”
“And what do they say?”
“Well, they seem to agree that the mother was probably a girl named Angelina Linden. Pretty girl, from a good family, but a little wild. The authorities definitely would have checked it out—checked her out, I mean, about whether she’d given birth. But they couldn’t. She and her boyfriend both disappeared that night.”
“They ran away?”
“That’s what everybody thought. But then a couple of years later, they found the boy’s body. There’s an old ghost town just northwest of Enchantment, a place where the kids go to fool around. Some abandoned mine shafts up there, not too safe, actually. Apparently the boy had fallen down one of those. Broke his neck.”
The wind was picking up. Patrick heard it blowing across his ears, but strangely he didn’t really feel the cold any more. He felt slightly numb all over.
“And the girl?”
Don Frost must have had to deliver a lot of bad news in his career. He looked grim, but he didn’t avoid Patrick’s gaze. He met it squarely.
“They
