Ice (A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Book 1) Read online

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “No.” Grandma Patty shook her head. “I’m too smart to be a doctor. I’m a photographer. I have this really big special camera that takes magical pictures of the inside of your body. It’s really cool. Would you like to see it?”

  Emma’s eyes were wide with wonder.

  Grandma Patty turned to the doctor. “Can I take Emma to my office to show her my camera?”

  The doctor nodded his head. “You can even take a picture of her arm.”

  “Would you like that, Emma?”

  Minutes later, Emma was enjoying a ride in a wheel chair down the hallway with Grandma Patty to get her arm X-rayed.

  Finally alone, Chris plopped into a chair and rested his head back against the wall. He closed his eyes and listened to the quiet, which gave way to the conversation he had been having with his mother right before they heard Emma’s flight fail.

  It had something to do with Peyton Davenport and the circumstances behind her birth.

  “Where’s Emma?”

  Chris hadn’t realized he had fallen asleep until the sound of LeAnn’s voice made him jump in his seat and bang the back of his head against the wall behind him.

  A maternity nurse, LeAnn laughed while checking the back of his head for any injuries. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I assume Grandma Patty took Emma to X-ray.”

  “And I assume you got a text from Mom. What did she do? Send out a BOLO for the two of us?”

  “She worries, like all good grandmothers.” Standing over him, LeAnn squeezed his shoulder. “How’s single parenthood treating you?”

  “Takes a lot of getting used to.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “You and Doris are very lucky to have each other. We were all worried when your dad passed so suddenly.”

  “Ah, I don’t think anyone has to worry about Mom,” he said. “She’s the strongest woman I know.”

  “It’s been my experience that people who come across as being the strongest are not,” LeAnn said. “Your mom was only eighteen years old when she married your father. She’d never been alone before. You coming home has been the answer to our prayers.” She headed to the doorway to return to the maternity ward. “She loves having you and the girls home—and relishes being a grandma.”

  Instantly, Chris remembered what they had been talking about when Emma’s scream interrupted them. “LeAnn, do you have a minute?”

  “I’m on break.” She glanced at her watch. “I have a few minutes.”

  Chris stood. “Mom was telling me about a prayer request you had sent out years ago when Peyton Davenport was born. Something about her almost dying…”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I remember that all right. I’m not sure if you remember, but back in the early nineties, before texting, our church’s prayer network was very old school. Everyone on the list had designated prayer partners. To send out a prayer request, you’d call two people and then they would call two people. Now, you send out one text—”

  “I know how it works,” Chris said. “I’m on the network. What I want to know is about Peyton Davenport. Mom said something about a miracle—”

  LeAnn’s eyes lit up at the memory. “It was a miracle. I’ve seen a lot of miracles in the maternity ward, but Peyton Davenport’s takes the cake.” She held up her hand. “I honestly thought she was dead—stillborn. It was an extremely difficult birth for her mother. Poor woman. You know she ended up committing suicide?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Threw herself off the second-floor verandah of their mansion. So sad. Mason Davenport is an extremely nice man. He adored Julie, who was really sweet—even if she was a little touched. He gives a ton of money to the pregnancy center to help at risk women. That’s just one of the charities he helps in the community.”

  Conscious of the time, Chris eased LeAnn back onto topic before her break ended. “You said you thought Peyton Davenport was stillborn. Obviously, she wasn’t.”

  “Dr. Poole insisted on putting her on the respirator and life support himself,” LeAnn said. “He must have picked up some tiny sign of life.”

  “Dr. Frederic Poole?” Chris recalled that the same doctor who had delivered Tamara Wilcox’s baby had also delivered Peyton Davenport.

  Tamara Wilcox was the woman who Jacqui had found in the hospital records whose husband had abandoned her and her baby after they had died. The hospital’s business office discovered much later that Tamara’s identification was a fake.

  Dr. Frederic Poole had also been Sandy Lipton’s doctor.

  Possible scenarios flashed through Chris’s mind.

  “Dr. Poole was Julie Davenport’s doctor,” LeAnn said with a nod of her head. “Now, I never touched Peyton. But I saw her, and she was blue. Dr. Poole took her straight to the life support system. I sent out a prayer request right away. When I came back on shift that night—” Tears filled her eyes. “It was a miracle. Peyton looked like a different baby. She was off life support and breathing on her own.”

  “She looked like a different baby,” Chris muttered. “Speaking of Dr. Poole, do you remember a woman whose husband dropped her off here in the parking lot.”

  “We get quite a few people dropped off in our hospital parking lot, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Her name was Tamara Wilcox,” Chris said. “She was in labor and unconscious. She died of cardiac arrest and the baby died soon after delivery. It was a baby girl. Turns out the husband never checked her in and her identification was a phony.”

  “I remember Tamara Wilcox,” LeAnn said. “I was off duty when she was brought in. So I only know what I had been told. Both the mother and her baby had been abandoned in our morgue. What made you think about that? That happened years ago.”

  “Cold cases are a hobby of mine.”

  “The church finally took up a collection and gave her and her baby a proper burial.”

  She checked the time on her watch while Chris asked, “So she did get a proper burial?”

  “Oh, yeah,” LeAnn said. “Doris organized the whole thing.”

  “Doris? As in my mother Doris?”

  “Your mother is such a great lady,” LeAnn said. “As soon as I told her about this poor mother and child abandoned in our morgue, she went right to work. Took up a collection to buy a casket and a little headstone. Got Old Man Drake to donate his burial plot at Edge Hill Cemetery on account that he and his wife had decided to get themselves cremated and divided up among their six kids. She guilted Reverend Ruth into officiating for the little funeral in the spring. It was lovely. Your mother is such a generous woman. To think that she did all that for a young woman and child who she had never known.”

  “That’s my mom.”

  She gave Chris a hug. “I’ve got to get back to work. Give Emma a hug for me. Nice talking to you.”

  As she hurried down the hall, Chris took out his cell phone and sent a text to Elliott: I located Sandy Lipton’s body.

  “Nonni!” Emma’s voice was heard from down the hallway.

  Chris stepped into the doorway to find Emma hopping up and down in the wheelchair which Grandma Patty was pushing. Doris hurried from the opposite end of the hall to meet her.

  “My arm is broken,” Emma announced as if she had just received a wonderful gift. “Grandma Patty says they’re gonna put a cast on it and everything.”

  “Oh, you poor baby,” Doris said.

  “She did a real number taking that flying leap down those stairs,” Grandma Patty said.

  “Could have been worse,” Doris said. “She could have jumped off the roof like Christopher tried to do.”

  “Mother, why did you have to tell everyone about that?” Chris asked. “Everyone’s going to think I’m reckless.”

  “Christopher, everybody already knows you’re reckless.”

  Behind Doris, Gra
ndma Patty nodded her head in complete agreement.

  Their discussion faded away into the background as Chris took note of his mother’s companion.

  In silence, Helen waited by the security doors through which they had entered the emergency room. Aware of his gaze on her, she raised her eyes to meet his. Hesitantly, she closed up the space between them. “Doris called to ask—”

  “Sierra is babysitting Katelyn and Nikki,” Doris finished while wheeling Emma into the examination room. “We couldn’t leave you alone here while Emma was hurt.”

  “I haven’t been alone since Katelyn was born.”

  “And you never will be,” Grandma Patty said. “Take my advice. Be thankful and embrace it.”

  The touch of Helen’s hand on his arm caught his attention. Turning his head from the two older women fussing over Emma, he saw her lovely face only inches from his. She squeezed his arm. He felt the heat of her touch all the way through the padding of his winter coat to warm his heart.

  “I thought you were mad at me,” he said in a low voice.

  “As hard as I try I can’t—”

  The automatic doors flew open. Doctors, nurses, and medical technicians appeared from seemingly nowhere to rush to their stations. Even Grandma Patty practically knocked Chris over in her flight down the hallway to radiology. The nurse and doctor who had been attending to Emma followed the gurney surrounded by EMTs, nurses, and doctors down the hallway to another examination room.

  “We have a burn victim coding!” a nurse yelled. “Chopper from Fairfax’s burn unit is four minutes out!”

  Chris could smell gasoline and smoke as they whizzed by to wheel the gurney into the examination room.

  “She went out a second-floor window,” one of the EMTs said to a medical technician holding a clipboard. “Broken bones—”

  “She’s got a knife in her upper chest!” another nurse said in a loud voice to be heard over the long loud beep of the machine indicating cardiac arrest.

  Snapping orders, the doctor went to work trying to save the woman’s life.

  Helen broke away from Chris to wander to the doorway of the examination room. With the eye of a detective, she watched the doctor attempt to restart the heart of the woman suffering from burns, stab wounds, and broken bones.

  Chris stepped over to one of the EMTs. “What happened to her?”

  The emergency technician shrugged his shoulders. “Answered a call for a house fire on Morgana Drive in Shepherdstown. We could smell the gasoline. We actually saw her—on fire—jump out the second story window. Someone stabbed her and set her house on fire. Whoever did it must have really been mad at her.”

  “Morgana Drive?” Chris asked. “In Shepherdstown?”

  “Chris!” Helen covered her mouth with her hand.

  When he reached her, she buried her face in his chest. “What is it?” He peered into the examination room where the doctor was calling the time of death for their records. While Helen sobbed in his arms, he saw the reason for her despair.

  On the gurney, under all the soot and ash, Chris recognized the lovely face of Felicia Bell.

  “You’re getting old, old man,” Chris murmured to the blurry reflection in his bathroom mirror. He dried his freshly washed face with a towel, rehung it on the rack, turned off the light, and padded across the hardwood floor to his bed.

  Chris took in a deep breath and let it out. In the dark, he wondered if Helen, in the guest bedroom, was as exhausted as he was or if sorrow made sleep impossible.

  It was close to midnight before the hospital released Emma. Helen was distraught over Felicia’s death. So Doris had insisted that she and Sierra spend the night in the guest room on the ground floor. Sterling had chosen to sleep with Emma and Thor, who had become the dog’s best friend.

  For once, Chris was sleeping alone—alone with his thoughts and memories.

  Felicia was more than just “an old friend.” She had been one of the four musketeers. Through high school, the four of them were inseparable. Even after Rodney and Felicia had betrayed Chris and Helen with their affair, the four of them remained close.

  Chris chuckled at the memory of how their friends joked about Chris and Rodney “swapping girlfriends” in their senior year.

  The thought of calling Rodney to offer his condolences crossed his mind. No, those days are gone.

  Chris and Rodney’s friendship had managed to withstand adolescent competition, lies, and even betrayal, but it couldn’t weather envy. Chris’s selection for the FBI over Rodney’s was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  “I’m sorry they didn’t select you for the investigator training program,” Chris told Rodney on the first day of their last semester at Shepherd College.

  At that point, the two of them had been together through six years of school, served in the same unit of the Army Rangers, and attended college. Chris was at a loss in understanding why Rodney had never called him back after Chris received his letter of acceptance from the FBI. After Doris had learned from Rodney’s mother that he had been declined, he realized why.

  “I know how much it meant to you,” Chris said after finding Rodney in the student union on the first day of their last semester.

  Rodney looked up from his egg sandwich.

  Chris was startled by the glare of intense hatred in his friend’s eyes—directed at him.

  How could Rodney switch from his best friend, his bud, his brother in arms, to an enemy so quickly over a job? It takes a long time for jealousy to brew to become strong enough to dissolve such a strong friendship—to create that much hatred.

  “Dad said that the state police would be honored to sponsor you for the police academy.”

  Rodney rose to his feet so fast that he knocked over his chair. Chris fell back from the table.

  “I don’t need your leftovers, Matheson.”

  With that, Rodney picked up his backpack and walked away from Chris… and their friendship.

  “Are you asleep?”

  Helen’s soft voice made Chris jump. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard her open the door at the bottom of the stairs and make her way to the top floor.

  Squinting at her silhouette in the moonlight shining through the window and skylight, Chris wondered if he was dreaming. She was dressed in one of his mother’s long nightshirts, which happened to be sheer enough that he could see the outline of her body. It was as slender as he remembered.

  “Chris?” she whispered.

  Afraid that she was going to leave, he said, “I’m awake.” He grimaced when he heard a boyish squawk in his voice. “Where’s Sierra?”

  “Sound asleep.” She stepped closer to the bed. “I can’t sleep. I can’t get Felicia out of my mind.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You’re going to think I’m…” Her voice trailed off.

  Chris pulled back the covers. “Do you want me to hold you, Helen?”

  She slipped in between the sheets and wrapped her arms around him. Pulling her close, Chris held her. She buried her face into his neck.

  Her breath sent a wave of excitement through his body. Instantly, he yearned for her.

  He tried to push away his desire. It would be unfair to take advantage of her grief just because he wanted her back in his life—wanted things to be the way they used to be.

  That’s not possible. Things have changed. You have changed. She’s changed. Circumstances have changed.

  He told himself that they were just two friends comforting each other, but flashes of memories—along with all the intensity of their former passion—sent shock waves throughout his body.

  “Helen,” he whispered into her hair while trying to shift over to the other side of the bed to conceal his rising desire.

  Helen tightened her hold on him. Her fingers brushed down his spine to his hip, sl
ipping beneath the waistband to his lounging pants. “I’ve missed you, Chris.” She planted a kiss on his jaw.

  Chris let out his breath. “I’m not going to have a one nightstand with you, Helen.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  He searched her face. In the moonlight, he was able to see into her eyes—pleading with him—for what, he was unsure.

  Pressing her body against his, she kissed him softly on the lips.

  He caressed her face. “You’ve always been the one, Helen.” He kissed her softly. “Not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about you and when we were together.”

  Returning his kiss, she wrapped one of her legs around his. “I’ve never stopped loving you, Chris.”

  “Keep this up,”–he kissed her again— “and I’m going to lose control.”

  “I think we’re already there.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Helen woke up to the faint warmth from the morning sun shining through the skylight onto her face. She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow to pick up Chris’s musky scent. Memories of the early morning hours rushed to the forefront of her mind. She reached for him. Upon finding the other side of the bed empty, she opened her eyes and searched the dimly lit room.

  A sliver of light sliced through the crack of the bathroom door. The water was running in the sink.

  As usual, Chris had woken early to clean the stalls and feed the horses before breakfast. She recalled that even as a teenager, Chris would be up hours before school to finish his chores.

  She slid out of bed and reached for the nightshirt that she had tossed to the floor.

  The bathroom door opened.

  “You’re awake.” Fully dressed in his faded jeans and a thermal shirt, he stepped out of the bathroom. “There’s no need to rush. Schools are on a two-hour delay.” He walked over to the bed.

  “I should get back downstairs before Sierra wakes up and finds me gone.” She tilted her head back for him to kiss her on the lips.