Yeah, his instincts tell him to stall whatever’s coming. “How was your New Year’s Eve?”
“Oh, uh . . . fantastic, if you think watching TV is fantastic. I did catch a glimpse of your pal Rob at the Billboard Hollywood Party.”
“Right, one of his artists was performing.”
Barnes had met Rob Owens, founder and CEO of Rucker Park Records, in the waiting room of a Brooklyn maternity ward in 1987. That night, Rob’s wife, Paulette, delivered their firstborn son, Kurtis, and a woman named Delia Montague delivered the child Barnes had fathered in a one-night stand.
Last summer, after his own ancestral story was featured on an episode of The Roots and Branches Project, Rob had told Barnes about Amelia. “This woman is an investigative genealogist who specializes in reuniting long-lost family members. You should hire her to find your daughter.”
“I’ve made a living for thirty years now finding missing people.”
“Well, you haven’t found her.”
“Who says I want to? Or that she wants to be found?”
That was before their autumn trip to Cuba, where Barnes had a shocking encounter he’d never shared with a soul, including Rob. He’d flown home and hired Amelia to help him find the daughter he hasn’t seen since she was born in October 1987.
His DNA test results aren’t even back—yet Amelia has something to tell him, at this hour on a holiday?
A skinny young waiter sets a plate and a wineglass in front of her and asks Barnes, “Need a menu, or know what you want?”
“No menu. I’ll just have the same thing she’s having, so, uh . . .”
“Cabernet and cheese fries,” she says.
Oh, yes. A woman like Amelia could have gotten a man like Barnes into all sorts of trouble under different circumstances.
“Cabernet and cheese fries. Perfect. Thanks.”
The waiter walks away. Amelia tilts the stemmed glass and swirls the maroon liquid before taking a thoughtful sip, as if they’re at a Napa vineyard. The lady has class.
“How is it?”
“Not bad, for diner cab.” She sets down the glass and looks up at him. “Stock—”
“Just call me Barnes. Nobody but my mother calls me Stockton.”
Not anymore.
“All right. Barnes . . .” She rests her hands on the table and leans forward. “Delia’s old roommate, Alma Harrison, is dead.”
Hardly the bombshell he’d expected. “I’m sorry to hear that, but—”
“Alma’s daughter was murdered, too.”
“Murdered?”
“Yes. Turns out I knew her—the daughter. She was a client. She came to me in September, and she had my gold baby ring, only she didn’t use her real name, and—”
“What?”
“She used an alias. I didn’t realize she was Alma’s—”
“No, I mean . . . she had what?”
“My baby ring,” she says slowly.
“Did it have a blue initial C and two tiny sapphires?”
Her gasp answers his question.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he says, and takes a deep breath.
Concealed just beyond the light spilling from the diner’s plate glass window, she watches the couple in the back booth. They’re in profile, facing each other. The conversation is serious. She can guess what it’s about, having seen surveillance screenshots of their earlier text exchange.
Can you please meet me today?
Did you find her?
I need to update you in person.
Ok, on a case now but I can meet you tonight.
Keeping an eye on the couple, she smokes an American cigarette—unfiltered, yet bland compared to pungent Cuban tobacco. She’d given up the habit years ago. This is merely a prop to ensure that passersby won’t give her a second glance. These days, smokers perch solo and in groups outside restaurants and bars all over the city, relegated by law to the sidewalks.
That isn’t the only thing that’s changed about New York since she’d left in 1987. In the limo from the airport, she’d caught her first glimpse of the altered Manhattan skyline, aglow in late afternoon winter sunshine. New skyscrapers have sprung up everywhere, the tallest of all on the downtown site now conspicuously missing two promontories.
“Excuse me . . .”
Startled by a voice behind her, she whirls to see an emaciated stranger dressed in rags, blond hair matted around a face that was probably once handsome. He throws up his filthy hands. “Hey, don’t worry. I was just going to ask for a smoke.”
She exhales a stream through her nostrils, regarding him for a moment before taking the pack out of her bag. She removes a single cigarette.
“Thanks,” he says. “Been trying to score a smoke for an hour, you know? People look right through me like I’m not even—”
He breaks off as she puts the cigarette into her own mouth.
“Yeah, never mind,” he mutters, and turns away.
She grabs his arm.
He spins. “What the hell, lady?”
She holds out the pack of cigarettes, along with a couple of hundred-dollar bills from her pocket.
“You remind me of someone I haven’t seen in a while.”
Blue eyes wide, he says, “Bless you. You’re an angel.”
She smiles, lighting the new cigarette with the old. Most people would call her the exact opposite . . . with good reason.
“What in the world is going on, Barnes?” Amelia asks. “How do you know about my ring?”
“I found one just like it, and I gave it to Delia for Charisse.”
“Where?”
“At the hospital, when I was visiting a good friend who was—”
“Which hospital?”
“Morningside Memorial. March 7, 1987.”
That’s precisely where and when Amelia had lost hers . . . the night her mother was dying. Died.
Death records are easy enough to find, if you know where to look. A detective would know where to look. So would a con artist conspiring to get the hefty reward Amelia had offered on the Lost and Foundlings website for information about her biological parents.
The ad mentioned the ring she’d been wearing when Calvin found her in 1968—but not that she’d later lost it.
“My friend Wash was a father to me after I lost mine,” Barnes goes on. “When I went to the hospital that night, I thought he had pneumonia, or bronchitis. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, but then, when I saw him . . . I knew. He was dying. The ring I found had a C on it, and my father was Charles. Maybe I thought it was a sign from him that Wash was going to be okay.”
Amelia’s reward notice hadn’t specified which letter was engraved on her own ring. She’d shared that information with only three people. Jessie hadn’t told. Aaron wouldn’t tell. Silas Moss—long confined to a nursing home, his brilliant mind corroded by dementia—can’t tell.
Her thoughts spin back to the Brandy Harrison connection.
In September, she’d come to Amelia posing as Lily Tucker, a fellow foundling searching for her roots. She showed Amelia a tiny signet ring she said she’d been wearing when she’d been abandoned in a Connecticut shopping mall in 1990. It was identical to the one Amelia had on when Calvin found her in 1968.