Serious Moonlight(98)

“Call the cops, then,” Daniel said, defiant. “I’d expect nothing less from you, hiding in your big house, paying other people to take care of all your problems. Pretending to be someone else. Do you even write your own books, or do you hire someone to do that, too?”

A low-level panic prickled the back of my neck. I’d never seen Daniel act like this. He was inordinately aggressive, and Darke was teetering on fury, and I was on the outside of it all, overflowing with information that I could barely comprehend.

“Daniel,” I pleaded, but he ignored me.

“Should I call you Bill or Raymond?” Daniel said to the man. “Or maybe you have another name you prefer?”

The author’s neck and shoulders visibly stiffened. He waited until an extravagantly dressed couple passed, nodding politely when they greeted him. When they stepped into another box, he squinted at Daniel. “Do I know you?”

Daniel snorted. “Do you?”

“I’ve seen you before,” the author said, his brow a ledge that shadowed his eyes. “Where?”

“Take a good, hard look, motherfucker,” Daniel challenged. “Strain that memory. Strain it all the way back, twenty years ago, to the face of the girl you knocked up.”





“I just know that any time I undertake a case, I’m apt to run into some kind of a trap.”

—Nancy Drew, The Clue of the Broken Locket (1934)





30




* * *



Raymond Darke’s face blanched. He looked as if he might be sick. I was feeling that way myself.

Daniel knew.

He already knew!

“Hello, Dad,” Daniel said. “Surprise! Cherry didn’t get that abortion that you wanted her to get. You do remember her, right?”

Darke’s features turned stony. “I don’t know what you want me to say. That was twenty years ago. Do you want money from me? Is that why you’re here?”

“You can’t buy my silence. I’m here to expose you for the fraud you are.”

Darke struggled for words, scratching the back of his head, looking around the corridor as if someone would come save him. He finally said, “I have a right to use a pen name. I just want a peaceful life, and—”

“Why is that?” Daniel asked. “I keep asking myself why you’d want to be anonymous. See, my mom didn’t tell me who you were. She kept it secret and said you weren’t worth the hassle. It was my grandfather who spilled the beans to me last year. I’ve been trying to hunt you down for months. Imagine my surprise when fate dropped you right into the back seat of my van, and I overhear you yelling at your agent on the phone.”

Fate. Imagine that, I thought, frantically trying to piece together what I knew and when I knew it and all the signs I’d missed. That afternoon I found Daniel in the market, in front of the magic shop. I know a real-life mystery going on at the hotel.

“Fuck,” Darke mumbled, scrubbing his hand over his mouth, as if he could somehow rub away the conversation. “That’s where I know you from. The Cascadia.”

“Bingo, Dad.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sucks that you didn’t put a hat on your jimmy, but here we are. And yeah, you know me from the Cascadia. See, we followed you and your wife to room 514. We know you were meeting Ivanov there. We have evidence you left behind—your list from a Ukrainian company that doesn’t exist? I’m sure a newspaper would love a juicy scoop about an illegal international sex ring.”

“Sex ring?” Darke bellowed.

“Whatever nefarious thing you’re up to with your ‘facilitator,’ Ivanov,” Daniel said, throwing up air quotes.

“He’s helping my wife and me adopt a child!”

The din in the theater below floated up through the private box as Daniel stared at Darke in disbelief.

“Adoption from the Ukraine,” I said in a daze, thinking back to the list of the names we found. Males and females. Dates. Birth dates.

Darke glanced at me. “My wife can’t have children, and I got snipped years ago, after . . .” His eyes flicked to Daniel. “Adoption takes time. We’ve been on a list in the United State, since last summer. They told us it could take five years for a healthy newborn. My wife and I aren’t young. We don’t have that long.”

“Fran Malkovich. Your wife is Ukrainian,” I said, suddenly placing her accent.

He nodded once. “She found Ivanov. He makes things happen quickly. There are too many laws about adopting newborns—it’s complicated. And expensive.”

Everything suddenly became clearer. “You’ve been giving Ivanov adoption payments every week. In room 514.”

“It’s none of your business,” he snapped. “That’s between me and my wife. It’s personal, and you had no right to spy on me. I’ll have you both fired.”

“Oh, will you?” Daniel said. “Because what you’re doing still sounds pretty fucking illegal. And there’s the fact that we know who you are, Bill Waddle.”

“What do you want from me? An apology? It was twenty years ago, and we only saw each other for a few weeks. I can’t even remember her last name, for the love of God. But I was up front with her about our relationship. We weren’t exclusive. I dated a lot of women. She knew I wasn’t ready to start a family.”