them. Hadley had to handle this in a way that assured she would.
“It’s good to have the truth out in the open,” Hadley said. “I’m sure Matilda feels the same.”
Matilda nodded and mumbled a greeting.
“Is there any news?” Janice asked.
“Nothing since we talked last night.” Hadley walked over to her mother’s bed and took her hand. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“My granddaughters are missing and I’m stuck in this noisy quagmire of a hospital. I feel exactly the way you’d expect me to feel.”
“I meant physically, from the surgery.”
“I’m fine. Get me out of here. I can’t do anything to help you from this bed.”
“You’re getting well. That helps.” Hadley lifted her hand to her mother’s forehead. “You may have a little fever.”
“I have a minor infection. It’s nothing to worry about. The doctor will explain it to you. The nurse is supposed to call him when you get here.”
“Where is the nurse?”
“Having breakfast in the hospital cafeteria. Matilda and I needed a little privacy.”
“I told her the total truth,” Matilda blurted. “I’ve apologized. I’ll pay the money back she gave me for Quinton’s funeral. I did wrong and I’ll pay back every penny.”
“It’s not the money that matters right now,” Hadley said. “It’s not even that you lied about Quinton being dead.”
“I explained that to your mother,” Matilda said, her voice breaking as if she was on the verge of tears again. “He threatened to kidnap Alana and take her out of the country, said he’d sell her as a sex slave if I didn’t give him five thousand dollars to bail him out of trouble.”
A threatened kidnapping had worked for Quinton before. Had that emboldened him to do more than threaten this time?
“Listen carefully, Matilda.” She waited until Matilda made eye contact. “We can’t change the past, but it is imperative that you tell the truth now. Do you know where we can find Quinton?”
“I don’t. I swear I don’t. I would tell if I did.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?” Adam asked.
“Monday afternoon.”
“Where was he?”
“In my kitchen, but I swear this was the first time I’ve seen him since I claimed he was dead and paid him off. I wouldn’t have let him come to the house then except he called and promised me he’d turned his life around. He sounded sincere.”
“How did the visit go?” Adam asked, his voice steady and his tone more civil than Hadley could have managed.
“Okay. He was only there about a half hour. I didn’t want Sam or Alana to come home and find him there.”
“Do they think he’s dead?”
“Yes. I told them he’d died in car wreck in Vegas and that his girlfriend hadn’t let me know until after the funeral. They didn’t like her, so they believed me. I wanted him out of their lives for good, out of all our lives. Sam was young and impressionable. I couldn’t chance Quinton leading him astray.”
“Quinton is in Dallas,” Hadley said, thinking out loud. “I need to inform Detective Lane of that.”
“You won’t have to wait long to do that,” Janice said. “I’ve already called him. He’s on his way to the hospital right now to question Matilda.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Matilda insisted. “I’d never do anything to hurt any child, especially not Lila or Lacy.”
“I believe you,” Hadley said truthfully.
“But the police won’t,” Matilda said. “They’ll arrest me and take me to jail. It will be in the newspaper and Alana will be embarrassed. She’ll feel ashamed to have her mother mentioned as a suspect. So will Sam.”
“Cooperate with the detective, Matilda. If you do, they won’t arrest you.” Hadley actually felt sorry for her, but if Quinton had Lila and Lacy, Matilda could well be the key to getting them back.
The nurse returned and looked distressed to find them all in the room. “Is there news about the girls?”
“No, but we cleared up a few things about who might have kidnapped them,” Janice said.
“That’s good news,” the nurse said as she checked Janice’s temperature, pulse and blood pressure.
Janice dropped her head back to the pillow.
“Has Dr. Gates been by this morning?” Hadley asked.
“Very early this morning, before his first surgery. He asked that I let him know when you got here. Shall I let him know now?”
“Please do.” Hopefully there wasn’t a problem, but he’d said Janice needed to stay calm and that wasn’t happening.
The nurse made the call. “He wants you to meet him in the third-floor surgery waiting room in thirty minutes.”
“Perfect.