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Jenna’s eyes rounded, and her face lost all color. “He’s selling babies to the adoption agency? Bastard. Oh, sweet Jesus. Larry wants Brittany’s baby so he can sell her.” She punched the comforter. “And he almost had her convinced.”
Cliff wrapped an arm around Jenna. “He has to be the one who now has Baby Blakely.”
“Why did he have to kill Nurse Grey? And who else is involved in smuggling the baby out of the hospital? It had to be the man in the jumpsuit. A man we have yet to identify,” Jenna sighed. “If Larry has the baby, we need to catch him before he transfers her to the agency, and God knows what family willing to foot the bill.”
Hank continued, “His phone shows his location at a motel about a mile from where you’re staying in Bozeman. Swede was able to tap into his cell phone tracking application after we talked to you earlier. We’ve been tracking him since. Your sister says he won’t go anywhere without his cell phone. He’s been back to the tavern and driven around Jenna’s address some this evening, even stopping for a while down the street from your house. Eventually, he returned to the motel.”
Jenna’s eyes narrowed. “Then again, if Larry’s still hanging around—”
“—he doesn’t have what he came for,” Cliff finished.
“The baby,” Hank said.
“And we’re back to the mystery janitor.” Jenna drummed her fingers on the comforter.
“I did some digging into David and Trudy Waters. David was a graduate of Baylor University in Texas. He met his wife there. They married after they graduated. She’s had a number of miscarriages and one live birth. The baby died of SIDS at four months old.”
“David Waters told her all that.”
“I did a fact check to make sure he wasn’t lying,” Swede said. “He was telling the truth. When we searched for Trudy’s maiden name, I learned she was Trudy Duvall, daughter of Thomas and Ruth Duvall.”
“Of Duvall Industries?” Jenna asked. “The oil and real estate magnet?”
“That’s the one,” Swede confirmed. “Trudy was a Dallas Debutant on her way to becoming one of the most eligible bachelorettes in the state. She participated in all the debutant functions and went to all the right social events. And then nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing?” Jenna asked.
“She disappeared before her senior year in the college preparatory high school she attended.”
“How can someone as high-profile as that disappear?” Jenna held up a hand. “Never mind. I already know. Money can make a lot of things disappear.”
“The sleazier tabloids rumored she was pregnant and hiding away to have the baby since she was out of sight for a full year.”
Cliff leaned toward the phone, caught up in the story of a woman he’d never met. “Was she pregnant?”
“I didn’t find any medical records proving she was with child. However, I dug into Thomas Duvall’s personal tax records. He donated fifty thousand dollars to an organization that works with young, single pregnant women, helping them make choices. They provide counseling and access to medical care for mothers carrying their babies to term and keeping them or giving them up for adoption. They also counsel women on the option of abortion.”
“Poor kid,” Jenna said. “All of those choices would be difficult.”
“In that same year, Duvall paid monthly payments to a Mental Health Rehabilitation Facility in Missoula, Montana.”
“They sent her that far away from home?” Jenna’s heart hurt for the teen who’d had to give up a baby.
“I’m sending you a photo of Trudy Duvall the spring before she disappeared,” Swede said.
Jenna’s phone pinged with an incoming text. She opened the text and enlarged the photo. It was a photo of a young woman in a white gown, standing alone, with another photograph of a dozen young women in white dresses.
“The woman standing beside the group picture is Trudy Duvall,” Swede said. “She’s also in the group photo at the center back.”
Trudy stood in the center back because she was the tallest, standing several inches taller than the girls on either side of her. Her features were a little on the plain side, and she wore a slim-fitting dress that clung to her lithe, athletic build, emphasizing her model-slim hips and small breasts.
“This photo was taken during her junior year of high school,” Swede said.
“If she disappeared because she was pregnant and now is having difficulties having a baby, she could be feeling desperate,” Jenna mused. “Hank, Swede, thank you for the information. I need to check on something,” she said. “Please say hello to my sister for me.”
“Will do,” Hank said.
Jenna ended the call and placed another, putting it on speaker.
