The 6:20 Man(62)
“I’m not sure. It was a place outside the city.”
“Were the doctors able to provide any information to the police? Do they know who the father was?”
“No, at least not that they’ve told us.”
Devine sat back, looking and feeling disappointed.
“If they had, would your name have come up?”
“Why would you ask that? Is it something Sara mentioned?”
“No, she was not very transparent with me on her relationships.”
“I thought you two were close. You said you talked pretty much weekly.”
Ellen looked uncomfortable with the question. “The fact is, Sara and I were estranged over the last year or so. She seemed to have changed.”
“Changed? How so?”
“She was not the girl that I raised,” replied Ellen.
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. I just want to know if you could have been the father.”
“Okay, do they know how far along Sara was?” asked Devine.
“Eight weeks. At least that’s what we were told.”
“And when did she have the procedure done?”
“In December,” Ellen replied.
“Then I was not the father. I hadn’t even met her at that point.”
“But you had sex with her? Outside of marriage?”
“Is that the reason for the estrangement? Sara was having sex outside of marriage?”
“That is not how we raised her.” She glanced at her husband. “Fred?”
He didn’t look at her or Devine. He merely said, “Young people sometimes make . . . poor decisions.”
Ellen rolled her eyes at this mild rebuke and shook her head. “Yes, very poor. She took the life of our grandchild, which is a mortal sin.”
“I’m sure it must have been an incredibly difficult decision for her,” said Devine.
“It shouldn’t have been her decision at all,” Ellen said heatedly.
He put up a hand. “I’m not going to get into all that with you right now. But she must have had a good reason. The woman I knew was kind and gentle.”
Ellen exclaimed, “Then you obviously didn’t know her. But, no, you did know her. You slept with her like the slut she was.”
“How can you say that? She was your child,” Devine snapped back. “She was a good person. And she didn’t deserve to be murdered!”
“Neither did that poor, innocent baby.”
Silence lingered for a few moments until Devine broke it. “Did anyone check Sara’s social media accounts? I know she was on Instagram.”
Fred said, “The police looked at all that and found nothing helpful. No pictures or references to current or past boyfriends.”
“But that could mean nothing, since you weren’t on any of it, Travis,” noted Ellen sharply.
“Did the police tell you that specifically?”
She looked down and didn’t answer.
“Did they ever find her diary?” asked Devine.
“They found nothing like that, as I told you before.”
“How about on her electronics? Or in her personal cloud?”
“So were you two dating?” she asked.
“Relationships like that aren’t allowed at Cowl and Comely,” said Devine. “That gets you fired.”
“You kept it secret, then?” persisted Ellen.
He ignored this. “Do you know the name of the doctor who performed the procedure on Sara?”
“Yes, why?”
“Can I have it?”
“You say you’re not the father, so what does it matter to you?”
“It matters to me because a friend of mine, someone I cared about, was killed. I’d like to find out why and by whom.”
Ellen looked at her husband. He pulled something from his jeans pocket and handed it across. It was a slip of paper. On it was a name and address of a clinic in Westchester.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll see you out,” said Ellen.
They stood on the stoop for a moment. Ellen said, “I can see you do not approve of my beliefs.”
“They’re your beliefs, so I have to respect them.”
“But not agree with them?”
“Like I said before, Ellen, this is really not the time or place to have that discussion. You have the absolute right to believe what you want, and so do I.”
Her mouth suddenly twisted in disgust, but she wasn’t looking at him, Devine observed. He looked over his shoulder to see two women on the pavement holding hands and kissing.
Devine turned back to her. The disgusted look was gone, but she said, “I can’t wait to get the hell out of this town.”
CHAPTER
40
“WELL, TWICE IN ONE DAY. What a lucky girl I am.”
Michelle Montgomery had answered Devine’s knock on the front door of her walk-up. She had taken off her business suit and wore faded, holey jean short-shorts, a white short-sleeved T-shirt, and no shoes. Her toenails were painted scarlet.
“Depends on how things turn out,” he replied.
She ushered him inside, and he took in the space. Clean, uncluttered, minimal furniture, some decent artwork, colorful rugs on the hardwood floors, a couple pieces of what looked to be African sculpture, and the scent of reefer.