I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(61)

But this was a number neither my phone nor I recognized, area code 804. Abby Stewart.

Dev and I got inside the car and Abby Stewart let me put her on speaker, so that when she broke the news that she’d never heard anything about a John Blanchard or an Edith Herron from her mother, had never heard any names at all, Dev and I were able to be disappointed together.

“Even though this was all going on while I was in high school, I never knew a thing about it until after my dad died and my mom told me. I do know that my father was just a cog in the wheel, a big cog for sure—he took a lot of risks—but he wasn’t the one running the machine. He wasn’t the mastermind; another man had the idea and sought my father out, recruited him I guess you could say. When the women and children left my father’s church, not even my father knew where they were going. A car picked them up and took them away. My mother didn’t share that information with the reporters because she didn’t want them digging around, trying to find the guy. She only told me that he existed shortly before her death.”

“Who was it?” asked Dev.

We held our breaths.

“Someone with deep pockets,” said Abby Stewart. “My mother told me that my father never used his name in front of her, just referred to him as Mr. Big City. He was from someplace up north, she said. My father said he was a man with power and money and a load of rage. He’d channeled it toward doing good, obviously, but it was rage nonetheless. My dad said a man with that much anger must have had firsthand knowledge of domestic violence.”

“Do you know how long your father was part of this operation, this underground railroad?” I asked.

“Until the midfifties, I think. Fifty-six, fifty-seven. It ended abruptly. For reasons unknown to my dad or my mom, Mr. Big City just called the whole thing off. My dad felt guilty about stopping, but the tide was already turning. In the early sixties, my dad and other like-minded people began to establish shelters, small ones, and my dad spent the rest of his life working to educate his congregation and the public about domestic violence. He was a good man.”

“He was,” I said.

“And your mother was obviously a good person, too,” said Dev. “She helped establish the women’s center and everything.”

“She was tireless.” Abby Stewart chuckled. “And relentless about raising money to keep the place up. People used to say that Lillian Pfeiffer could squeeze money out of a stone.”

“Thank you for talking to us,” I said.

“It’s my pleasure,” she said. “I mean that. I haven’t talked about my parents much recently, although I think about them and miss them every day. I’m truly grateful for the chance to tell someone about them. Now, you have to promise to let me know if you find out anything else. And, oh Lord, let Selby know, too. You’ve got her interest piqued. That woman loves a good mystery.”

We promised. After we hung up, we sat for a minute, not talking.

“Rich, powerful. It doesn’t sound like John,” said Dev.

“I know.” I could hear how crestfallen that I know came out, but even so, my tone didn’t come close to conveying how let down I felt.

“Hey,” said Dev, tugging a lock of my hair. “We found out a lot on this trip, didn’t we? A lot more than I thought we would.”

I looked at Dev. Of all the people whose bubbles I hated bursting, Dev topped the list, but it seemed wrong not to tell him what I was thinking. I groaned.

“Okay, I hate saying this, but if I don’t say it, I might fret about it for weeks, and I might do that anyway, but since we’re in this thing together, I just think I should say it. What do you think?”

“Go for it,” said Dev. “We can at least fret together.”

“Well, isn’t it possible that Mr. Big City’s machine and Edith’s shadow ledger aren’t related at all? That it’s just a coincidence? There’s nothing here really to absolutely connect Edith or John to any of what we’ve dug up.”

“I agree that some kind of irrefutable proof would have been nice, and, sure, it’s possible that what you’re worrying about is true, but I don’t think so. Mr. Big City called it quits at right around the same time as Edith left and John got arrested. Everything fits too well. They were all in it together.”

Even though I knew Dev couldn’t be 100 percent sure of that, not as sure as he sounded, I felt relieved anyway.

“So Edith and John were other cogs in the machine. The shadow guests stayed at Blue Sky House for a night or two and then someone, maybe John, took them to wherever they went next,” I said.

“Probably not John, though,” said Dev. “It could have been, but it might have aroused suspicion, the police chief leaving town mysteriously on a regular basis. Mr. Big City probably sent a car to Edith’s house, too.”

“And Sarah and her baby? How do they fit? I mean, they kind of don’t. Sarah wasn’t from Virginia; she was a local woman; she had killed her husband; and she wasn’t written down in the shadow ledger. All of that makes her different from the others.”

“Okay, so Sarah and the baby weren’t part of Mr. Big City’s escape machine, not at first. Relocating her and her baby was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I think it probably all unfolded a lot like John said it did in court.”