Baby Girl Doe (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 5) (27 page)

Herbert Ambler was not going to sit idly by and watch a he-man like Gus eat reconstituted hospital meatloaf for his first dinner since being rescued.
He’d ordered from The Palm Restaurant. We feasted on porterhouse, creamed spinach, potatoes, and cheesecake, all within the confines of Gus’ hospital room. It had been pretty late when Herb escorted everyone back to a nearby hotel to spend the night.

Several weeks had passed since Gus’ rescue. I can still remember lying next to my husband in the hospital bed on that first night, thanking God for giving him back to us.

“We’re all alone finally. Do you want to . . .” I asked in my most alluring voice.

“Sure,” Gus said, as he started to nod out.

“Just hold me for a few minutes, okay?” Gus was out before I completed my sentence. It was satisfying enough just to hold him and know that he was safe. There’d be plenty of love making in the days ahead.
Count on it!
I got cozy next to him and watched him sleep, feeling myself drift off as well.

Somewhere in the very same hospital, Raven Gallagher was recuperating from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She’d soon be off to prison with her brother, where they would surely spend the rest of their lives.

~~~

In the days that followed I read up on the history of these siblings so that I could try to understand the intense misery they’d endured; misery so powerful that they needed to live their lives as other people just to make it from one day to the next.

Raiden Gallagher had been living his alleged life as Jay Charnoff, a fire department investigator for the past year. My guess was that the real Charnoff was dead, murdered and disposed of in similar fashion to Bill Alden and Joshua Dane. Who had Raiden impersonated before becoming Charnoff? How many others had there been? He had survived childbirth only to be placed in an orphanage for children with special needs. Alden couldn’t care for his healthy daughter let alone a mentally impaired son, and so he lied and said that his son had died. His wife was dead. Who would be the wiser? It was an easy story to peddle. My guess was that Raiden had been misdiagnosed at birth as developmentally challenged. Somehow over the years, he caught up intellectually. In fact, he was far more than average. He was bright—bright enough to learn the circumstances under which he and his sister were born and what had become of her. He was bright enough to impersonate a fire inspector and convince Richard Tate, the Montauk fire chief, that a homicide was no more than an accidental fire.

Raven had learned to live like a hermit crab because her own life was a living hell. It began the day Margo Atwater left her at the doorstep of the foster home of Celeste Thax. She could be a woman or a man, whatever she needed to be in order to survive. Just like the hermit crab, which is forced to abandon its shell when it becomes too small, Raven moved from one identity to another as needed to survive and prosper. As far as we could gather, either she or Raiden had taken the lives of Alana Moore, Sarah Fisher, Joshua Dane, and Camryn Claymore. Were there others? Raven and her brother were in custody and would be prosecuted on a multitude of felony charges. Time would reveal how many deaths they were responsible for.

They had schemed and murdered Bill Alden, the man they believed to be their father, the man who was too weak to hold onto his children. They’d intended to kill Margo Atwater for abandoning Raven and setting her upon a life journey of sorrow. Raven had no idea how hard Margo had fought for her. She only knew that Margo was the one who had dropped her off at Thax’s house, and for that, Margo was going to die.

They had almost gotten away with it all when I began to poke my nose where it didn’t belong. My guess was that Kaley Struthers was a sweet and caring person blinded by love. She would do anything for Camryn, even help distract a vacationing policeman while Camryn dosed him with a fast-acting tranquilizer so that they could abduct him and draw his nosy wife’s attention away from her investigation. I was on a course to destroy everything Raven and Ray had worked so hard to accomplish.

Kaley had confessed to her role in Gus’ abduction and swore that he was going to be let go unharmed as soon as the trio had left the country. A box of electronic igniters was found in Charnoff’s gold Impala. Tate thought that a device like that could have been used to start the car fire in which Ray Claymore had allegedly burned to death. I’d never be able to prove it, but I’m sure the same fate was planned for Gus.
Let him go unharmed, my ass.
Did Kaley have any idea that the twins were murderers? I guess perhaps she didn’t want to know. She swore up and down that she had not poisoned Bill Alden’s cigarettes, and I believed her. She was a hapless pawn. Perhaps worse . . . perhaps she was the sort of person who suspected something was wrong and looked the other way.

They had planned to run away together: Raven, Kaley, and Ray. Dubai has a no extradition treaty with the United States, so they could never have been brought back for trial. All they needed was a few more days, a few days to kill Margo Atwater and then slip silently out of the country.

I didn’t hate them for taking Gus. I was over it. Gus was over it, and it was back to life as usual. I understood a small measure of what Raven and Raiden had been through, and if I ever felt that understanding slipping away, I needed to look no farther than Max’s crib. My son would have every ounce of love that Gus and I had to give and then some. Growing up without parents . . . Growing up without love . . . I found it amazing that Raven and Ray had survived at all under such appalling circumstances. God only knew that revenge must have looked extremely tempting to them.

~~~

We went over to Ma’s at the end of our shift shortly after returning to work. She was watching Max and cooking—cooking all the frustration out of her. When we arrived, the kitchen table was filled with enough food to feed a proverbial army.

I may have listened to my husband and not fed Max my sweet potato fries when I was told to, but no one and I mean
no one
was going to tell Ma how to spoil her first and only grandson. Max was in his highchair demolishing a meatball when we arrived, covered from head to toe in sauce.

I thought Gus was going to explode but he didn’t. He laughed. He laughed so hard he said it made his stomach hurt. “I need another vacation,” he divulged. “The last one just straight out sucked.”

~~~

I hope that you enjoyed Baby Girl Doe. I always enjoy hearing your comments and questions, so please write to me at
[email protected]
. For more information, please visit my website: lawrencekelter.com.

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Baby Girl Doe

A resident New Yorker, Kelter often uses Manhattan and Long Island as backdrops for his stories. He is the author of the Stephanie Chalice Mystery Series and other works of fiction.

Early in his writing career, he received support from best-selling novelist, Nelson DeMille, who reviewed his work and actually put pencil to paper to assist in the editing of the first novel. When completed, DeMille said, “Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum.”

His novels are quickly paced and feature twist endings.