Shakespeares Christmas Page 0,27

remember at all."

"The Macklesbys must have money." Hiring a private detective for all those years would be expensive, and paying for the extra services of Aunt Betty and Jack.

"They're well-off. Simon Macklesby reacted to the kidnapping by throwing himself into his work. He's a partner in an office supplies business that's taken off since offices became computerized. No matter how much money they've got, the Macklesbys were lucky they went to Roy instead of to someone who would really soak them. There were months when he didn't have anything to show them, no work to do. Some guys... and some women... would've made things up to pad the file."

It was a relief to find that Roy was as honest as I'd always thought him, after Jack's obvious admiration at Aunt Betty's creative lying. There was a separation, thank God, between lying on the job and relating to people in real life.

"What do you know?" I asked him, my fear finally showing in my voice.

"I know that the O'Shea girl is adopted, at least that's what the O'Sheas' neighbors in Philadelphia recall."

I remembered the slight change in Jess O'Shea's face when I'd asked him how the big-city hospital had been different from the tiny one in Bartley.

"You've been to Pennsylvania?"

"Their Philadelphia neighbors were seminary students like Jess, so naturally they've scattered. I've used other PIs in Florida, Kentucky, and Indiana. According to the people who'd talk to us, the O'Sheas arranged to adopt the baby girl of the sister of another seminary student. The O'Sheas had gotten a pretty discouraging work-up from a fertility specialist in Philadelphia. The sister had to give the baby up because she was in late-stage AIDS. Her family wouldn't take the baby because they believed the baby might be carrying the disease. It didn't matter that the baby had tested negative. In fact, the couple in Tennessee, the one I interviewed myself, are still convinced the little girl might have been 'carrying' AIDS, despite the testing the doctors did."

I shook my head. "How do you get people to tell you this?"

"I'm persuasive, in case you hadn't noticed." Jack ran his hand down my leg and leered at me. Then he sobered.

"So why are the O'Sheas still on your list?"

"One, Krista O'Shea is in the picture that Roy got. Two, what if this isn't the same girl they adopted?"

"What?"

"What if the tests were wrong? What if that child was born with AIDS, or died from some other cause? What if Lou O'Shea abducted Summer Dawn to take her place? What if the O'Sheas bought her?"

"That seems so far-fetched. They were up in Philadelphia for at least a few months after they adopted Krista. Summer Dawn was abducted in Conway, right?"

"Yes. But the O'Sheas have cousins living in the Conway area, cousins they visited when Jess finished the seminary. The dates coincide. So I can't rule them out. It's circumstantially possible. If they bought Summer Dawn from someone who abducted her, they would know that was illegal. They maybe pretended the baby was the one they'd adopted."

"What about Anna?" I asked sharply.

"Judy Kingery, Dill's first wife, was mentally ill."

I'd resumed studying the pictures. I turned to stare at Jack.

"Her auto accident was almost certainly suicide." His clear hazel eyes peered at me over his reading glasses.

"Oh, poor Dill." No wonder he'd taken his time dating Varena. He would be extra cautious after a hellish marriage like that, yoked to a woman with so many problems after his upbringing by a woman who was not exactly compos mentis.

"We can't be sure the wife didn't do something crazy. Maybe she killed their own baby and stole Summer Dawn as compensation. The Kingerys were living in Conway at the time the baby was taken. Maybe Judy Kingery snatched Summer Dawn and gave Dill some incredibly persuasive story."

"You're saying ... it might be possible that Dill didn't know?"

Jack shrugged. "It's possible," he said but not with any great conviction.

I blew out a deep breath of tension. "OK, Eve Osborn."

"The Osborns moved here from a little town on the interstate about ten miles from Conway. He's worked at furniture stores since he got out of junior college. Meredith Osborn didn't make it through a whole year of college before she married him. Emory Ted Osborn ..." Jack was peering through his glasses at a page of notes. "Emory sells furniture and appliances at Makepeace Furniture Center. Oh, I told you that when I told you Betty went to meet him there."

Makepeace Furniture Center