A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery #2)(56)

His face had a pleading look. “You have to understand that at that time my wife and I were trying to have a baby. It’s what she wanted more than to live. She talked about it, dreamed of it. Babies were at the center of our lives.”

For a moment, Chet closed his eyes. “I only glanced at her face, then down at the baby. I can still see it. It was a beautiful scene, like something out of a Renaissance painting. The mother and child were so perfectly content. I’ve never seen such a look of...fulfillment, I guess. It was as though this young woman had found her own soul. I thought, That’s how mothers should look at their babies. I was thinking that I was seeing what having a baby meant to my wife. They were both so happy, so at peace.” He stopped to calm himself.

“Finally, the woman said, ‘Seen all you want to?’ That brought me back to reality and I felt like a pervert.”

Chet shook his head in wonder. “I left. I turned around, went out the door, and left them there. To me, it was obvious that was her child and he was a boy. It wasn’t the baby we were looking for.”

He let out a sigh. “We were on lockdown for hours and every inch of the store was searched but we didn’t find the baby.” Chet looked out the window, his jaw muscles working as he thought about what he’d just told.

“Did you see the woman from the restroom again?” Jack asked.

Chet turned back to them. “No. I was stuck in a room interviewing a lot of tired, angry people. One of our questions was if anyone had seen someone carrying a bunch of white lilies, but they hadn’t. We described the missing baby’s clothing. The truth is that I was so busy that I didn’t think about the woman I’d seen. Besides, if I had, I would have assumed that someone else had interviewed her.” He raised his hands in helplessness. “But then, it never entered my mind that it wasn’t her own baby.”

“When did you begin to think she was the kidnapper?” Sara asked.

“Not until about three days later, after I’d had some sleep. It hit me like in a fog. Gradually, I realized that I’d probably seen the kidnapper.”

Sara shook her head. “If she was nursing the baby, then she must have recently given birth. And maybe she’d lost her own baby.”

Chet nodded. “That was my guess. I didn’t tell what I’d seen—I was too afraid of losing my job to reveal that—but I asked everyone in the squad if they’d seen her. Red hair—”

“Red?” Kate asked. “Like mine?”

“Lighter,” Chet said. “You’re more mahogany. She was more...”

“Strawberry blonde?” Sara asked.

“Yeah. A sort of blonde with red in it.”

“What about her face?” Jack asked. “Pretty girl?”

“As I said, I just glanced at it. Very quickly. I didn’t see her very well,” Chet said softly.

Kate said, “If she’d just lost a baby and that had driven her to kidnapping, I’d say that at that moment she wasn’t in her right mind.”

Sara said, “Okay, so you realized you may have seen the kidnapper. What did you do next?”

“I got a sketch artist to draw a picture for me. I lied, said it was for another case.” He got up, went into the dining room, and opened a box. When he returned, he held out a drawing. It did indeed look like a Renaissance painting. The head was too long, too perfect. No one looked like that in real life.

“It’s a bit fanciful, I know, but that’s how I remember her,” Chet said.

“You’re right.” Sara was looking at the drawing. “No one looks like this. You didn’t see anything identifiable?”

Chet took his time answering. “She had a heart-shaped birthmark very low on her left breast.”

“You can identify her!” Kate said.

“So who do we arrest? Women with faces like an angel and a heart-shaped birthmark in a place that isn’t exposed in public? That lineup would draw most of the squad in to look.”

They took a while to imagine that. No, it wouldn’t have worked.

Kate changed the subject. “Okay, so let’s look at the facts. Janet Beeson had a bootie that was part of an old kidnapping.”

“A very brief, long-ago kidnapping,” Sara said.

“Right,” Chet said. “The statutes on it ran out years ago.”

“That means there’s no danger to the person who did it?” Kate asked.

“Maybe not jail time but morally...” Sara said.

“Yeah,” Chet said. “Morals and misery. If Gage reveals who did it, her life is over. She’d have to move to Timbuktu to keep the press off her door.”

Sara smiled at Chet. “I’ve been there.”

“Have you? I’d love to see the world. I’ve been to London and that’s all.”

“I’ve been—”

“Excuse me!” Jack said loudly. “We’re trying to solve a murder. You two can visit the Outer Hebrides later.”

“I’ve been there too,” Sara said. “It’s—” She cut off at Jack’s look. “So where did someone as bland as Janet Beeson get a baby’s slipper that was part of a kidnapping?” She glanced at Kate’s disapproving expression. “Really! The woman was a bully’s delight. Picked on by everyone. Humiliated when she was noticed, but mostly ignored.”