Mystery Heiress. Suzanne Carey
Lindsay murmured. “I see.”
It was clear that she didn’t—that she couldn’t begin to imagine why, lacking a child to accompany him, he’d taken refuge from his busy but lonely life at a typical children’s haunt. He wasn’t in a position to explain. Nor would he have wished to, in any event.
“Let’s see how this young lady’s doing this morning,” he proposed instead, picking up his stethoscope.
The exam, which included numerous questions and a great deal of gentle prodding and observation on Stephen’s part, took several minutes. It wasn’t difficult for him to see that Annie was very sick indeed. He could almost have guessed what her white-cell count would be. Her English doctors had been correct in stating that she needed a transplant as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, you couldn’t just place an order for matching bone marrow as if it could be purchased from a catalogue. With just one in twenty thousand unrelated persons eligible to donate, from a genetic standpoint, and a paucity of registered and blood-typed volunteers, it could be difficult, bordering on impossible, to find a donor.
While they were searching, Annabel Holmes would likely need some form of chemotherapy as a stopgap measure. “No luck finding a donor for your daughter in England, I take it?” he asked Jess.
She shook her head. “That’s why we came to the U.S.”
Why Minneapolis in particular? he wondered. Does she have people here? There wasn’t time to ask. He was being paged again. To him, the brief request to call the nursing station on 301 West was shorthand for the fact that Mrs. Munson, the elderly polycythemia patient, needed him again.
“I’ve got to run upstairs for a few minutes,” he said. “In the meantime, Mrs. Holmes, I’d like to have the nurses here admit your daughter as my patient, with Dr. Todd as pediatric consultant, and assign her to a room. I’ll need your permission to run some tests so we can determine what her current status is…bone-marrow aspiration and biopsy, X rays, an electrocardiogram, blood and pulmonary-function tests, that sort of thing. I’ll be in touch just as soon as her results are available. Okay? Naturally, we’ll sign her up at once with every available U.S. registry.”
Annie’s illness was rapidly approaching a crisis point, as Jess had already begun to sense. Her little girl would die or, if a miracle was in the offing, she’d get better. It was that simple, and that terrifying. Except for their quest to find a donor among Benjamin Fortune’s descendents, her prospects weren’t bright. Barely contained panic causing a lump to settle in her throat, she nodded without answering him.
A sensitive barometer to everything Jess was thinking and feeling, Annie picked up on her fear at once. “Do I have to stay here?” she chimed in worriedly, gazing up at the tall blond doctor she’d trusted without hesitation the previous afternoon. “Can’t I go back with Mummy to the hotel?”
“I’m afraid it’s the hospital for you, sweetheart,” Stephen said, smiling in an attempt to hide his own consternation over the likely severity of her case. “We need to have you handy, so we can do our best to make you better.”
She appeared to think over his explanation and accept it. “Well, could I have another of those cool bandages, then?” she asked with five-year-old straightforwardness.
He didn’t make a production of asking where it hurt—just produced the requested bounty from the pocket of his lab coat and solemnly affixed it to the back of her hand, as if it were a good-conduct medal. A moment later, after ordering the tests he’d outlined, along with an antibiotic drip to help Annie’s compromised immune system combat her current infection, he was gone.
Jess couldn’t stop herself from shaking.
Lindsay rested a hand on her shoulder. “Dr. Hunter’s the best hematologist around, bar none, and I’m not just saying that because we’re friends and neighbors,” she vowed. “Your daughter’s in good hands.”
West of the city, in the posh, handsomely appointed master bedroom where Erica Fortune, Jacob Fortune’s estranged wife, slept alone, the bedside phone rang sharply. It was going on 7:40 a.m., a bit early for fifty-one-year-old Erica to be up in her previous incarnation as the pampered but increasingly unhappy mate of Fortune Industries’ chief executive officer, who’d succeeded his widowed mother following her fatal light-plane crash in the Brazilian jungle.
These days, as a woman alone bent on finding herself, if not exactly thrilled that her husband had walked out on her, the sleek, silvery-blond Erica rose early. Nibbling on cinnamon toast and drinking black coffee as she dressed for a 9:00 a.m. Saturday class at Normandale Junior College in Bloomington, she reached for the receiver and murmured an absent hello.
Her green eyes widened when her caller identified himself as Lieutenant J. B. Rosczak, a detective with the Minneapolis Police Department.
“Is this the Jacob Fortune residence?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure how to answer him. “Yes,” she agreed tentatively, setting her coffee cup aside. “I mean, it was, until a few months ago. This is Mrs. Fortune. Jacob Fortune and I are separated. What’s this about, anyway?”
Seemingly reluctant to discuss the matter with her in any detail, the police lieutenant ignored her question. “I take it he’s not there, then, ma’am?” he said.
“No, he isn’t,” Erica confirmed.
“Any idea where we can contact him?”
It was beginning to sound as if Jake were in some kind of trouble. Standing there in her sheer panty hose, lacy undergarments and partially buttoned silk blouse, with her toes curling into the plush beige carpeting, Erica took a hurried moment to think. Should she answer in the negative, and try to reach Jake the moment her caller hung up the phone? Of course, that would mean telling an out-and-out falsehood. Though she continued to have protective feelings toward Jake—still loved him, in a guarded way, if she was willing to admit the truth, she didn’t want to lie to the police on his account.
“Actually, he’s been living in his late mother’s house, up on Lake Travis, since our breakup,” she said.
“We’ve already looked there,” Detective Rosczak answered brusquely. “Any other ideas?”
Erica didn’t have any. “Maybe one of our children would know,” she speculated. “Or his secretary at Fortune Industries. Of course, she won’t be in her office until Monday. Please… can’t you tell me what’s wrong? Though we’re separated, I still care about him.”
The line was empty of conversation for a moment, as Detective Rosczak apparently decided whether or not to answer her question. “He’s wanted for questioning in the death of Monica Malone, ma’am,” he admitted at last.
Erica gasped. “Monica…dead?” she repeated in astonishment. “Where? When? How did it happen?” A ghastly thought struck her. “Surely she wasn’t murdered!”
It was clear from the detective’s tone that he was more than ready for their conversation to end. “Maybe you should turn on the morning news, if you want that kind of information, Mrs. Fortune,” he suggested.
Before saying goodbye, he made a point of giving her a number to call if Jake surfaced. “It would be better for him if he got in touch with us voluntarily,” he advised. The implied threat was hard to miss.
Erica was stunned as she put down the phone. Her first impulse was to call Natalie—at twenty-seven, the third-oldest of the five children she’d had with Jake. Natalie lived in an aging farmhouse that had been converted into a duplex, directly across Lake Travis from the mansion that had once belonged to Ben and Kate Fortune—which also happened to be Jake’s current residence. She and her father had always been close. Since he’d moved into his parents’ home, following his split with Erica, Natalie had crossed the lake on a regular basis to visit him. Maybe she knew something.
About to punch the speed-dial button she’d programmed with Natalie’s