The Baby Snatchers (28 page)

There was also the possibility of exhuming
the bodies of those babies who hadn’t been cremated. It would only
take one to know the truth. He was sure it was only a matter of
time before he’d uncover enough evidence to make an arrest.

His thoughts returned to Georgie and the way
she’d rushed from the bar, so pale and distraught. He worried for
her safety, but it would also be wise to remind her that aiding and
abetting criminals was an offense. Warning her not to speak with
her family about the ongoing investigation wouldn’t do anything to
repair the damage between them, but it had to be done. It was his
stupid ass on the line. He couldn’t take the risk. Tugging out his
phone, he sent her a text.

R u OK? Don’t talk 2 anyone. Call me.
Please.

He waited for a few minutes and then cursed
again. His phone remained frustratingly silent. Striding to the low
table that stood between the matching deck chairs where he and
Georgie had sat and flirted a lifetime ago, he picked up the half
empty bottle of beer he’d left there and swallowed the rest of its
contents. The beer tasted yeasty and was cold on the back of his
throat—but it wasn’t alcohol he wanted.

He wanted Georgie. He wanted her to answer
her phone; to call him or text him and tell him she was fine. He
wanted to go back to when they were two young single people
attracted to each other and not frightened to admit it. He wanted
life to be simple and not have the prospect of a personal,
complicated investigation getting in the way of what could possibly
be the real thing.

He wished he could talk to the woman who’d
quietly stolen his heart. He wanted to reassure himself she’d
arrived home safely and he wanted to apologize. He was ready to
hear her explanation, if she’d give him one.

He checked his phone again to make sure he
hadn’t mistakenly switched it to silent mode, but the device
remained stubbornly quiet. He composed another text.

I understand ur upset, but please just let
me know ur OK. Call me.

He sent the text and hoped this time she’d
respond. At least then he’d be able to go to bed and try and get
some sleep before working out a battle plan for the morning. It
wasn’t late, but he was beat. It had been a difficult few days and
the next few promised to be even worse.

* * *

Georgie heard her phone beep for the second
time, but paid it no heed. She swung her Mazda into the driveway of
the palatial Darling Point home where her parents now lived alone.
She climbed out and locked the door behind her, all the while
swiping angrily at the stupid tears that continued to scorch a path
of devastation down her cheeks. She’d been crying since she’d run
out of the bar, leaving Cameron to stare after her.

She’d sat across from him and listened to
his words, but it had taken some time for her to accept the awful
truth. Now, as she looked back over her time on Ward Seven, she
wondered why she hadn’t suspected or even noticed.

She’d been told about the deaths of the
three babies she’d helped deliver and it hadn’t occurred to her to
ask if there had been others.
Would her mother have told her the
truth?
She didn’t know. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly
as she could manage and fought off the shaft of pain that forced
its way into her heart.

According to Cam, twelve other babies had
“died” over the course of the past year and her mother and aunt
were likely responsible. She didn’t want to believe either woman
capable of such evil, but Cam’s explanation made an awful kind of
sense. It also explained her mother’s strident and judgemental
attitude toward the patients in their care.

The fact that Georgie had been oblivious to
the possibility of their evil deeds was unforgivable. She should
have asked more questions, demanded to see the bodies. Instead,
she’d blindly accepted her mother’s explanation.

Another shaft of pain nearly bent her over
and she gasped from the agony of it. She thought of the other
nurses on the ward and could only assume they were just as clueless
as she had been.

Cameron had put it all together. She didn’t
know how, but he’d said he had the proof. He had no reason to lie
to her. She had to accept that what he’d told her was the truth.
All except the part about her father’s involvement.

Even with her mother’s recent revelations
about his insistence that she give her baby up for adoption, she
refused to believe he had any culpability for the evil that had
occurred on Ward Seven. He might have signed the death
certificates, but it didn’t mean he knew what his wife and
sister-in-law were up to.

Finally, reaching the heavy double front
doors that led into her parents’ home, Georgie drew in a ragged
breath and keyed in the security code. She heard the corresponding
click. Putting her shoulder to the wooden panel, she pushed open
the doors and stepped inside the marbled foyer.

Twenty-foot ceilings and wide open spaces
greeted her. Custom-made hall tables and silk-embroidered chaises
lined both sides of the entryway. Walls covered in priceless
artworks that normally gave her pause left no impact this time. She
headed straight for her father’s den, calling out to him as she
went.

“Dad! Where are you? It’s Georgie. Dad! I
need to talk to you!”

She rounded the corner and slid open the
pair of carved wooden doors that closed off the room where her
father spent most of his leisure time. Her heart pounded against
her ribs. The room had been furnished with dark, masculine pieces
that reminded Georgie of a gentleman’s smoking room from centuries
ago. In desperation, she looked around for him.

Several leather armchairs stood across from
the occasional two-seater and were positioned to encourage
conversation. Crowded floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined one wall.
An ornate sandstone fireplace took up most of another. An enormous
window framed the magnificent city view and added to the opulence
of the room. Amidst all of the luxury, Georgie spied her mother
standing by the window. She came to a sudden halt.

Marjorie stood with her back to her, nursing
a glass of scotch. She turned slowly and Georgie gasped. The look
on her mother’s face was terrifying.

“Whatever are you carrying on about
Georgina? You’ll disturb the entire neighborhood.”

Her mother’s tone was so mild and soft,
Georgie was taken aback. It was so at odds with the coldness in her
eyes, she couldn’t help but shiver. A frisson of fear slid down her
spine, but she told herself not to be silly. This was her mother, a
woman she loved and who loved her in return.

“I-I was looking for Dad,” she
stammered.

“Your father isn’t here. He’s been called
into the hospital. Apparently, some undeserving, drug-addicted
wretch requires his services during a long and difficult
delivery.”

The rancor in Marjorie’s voice and the
bitterness in her eyes shocked Georgie to the core.
How had it
taken her so long to become aware of how much her mother despised
the patients they worked with?
Like the news of stolen babies,
it seemed inconceivable that she’d spent two years on Ward Seven
and until recently, had never noticed. If she hadn’t caught a
glimpse of this other side to her mother the last time they’d been
together, she’d never have believed Cameron’s accusations.

Now, in the privacy of her home, Marjorie
appeared to have dropped all pretenses of caring one iota for the
desperate women in their care and in that moment it was obvious to
Georgie: The woman she had admired and respected and loved could
very well be guilty of the crime. The knowledge horrified her and
her hand flew up to her mouth to hold in a distraught gasp.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” she cried, coming
toward her mother.

Marjorie just stared at her with pity in her
eyes. “Poor Georgina. Always the last to know. We had such high
hopes for you, but alas, you’ve let us down.”

Tears streamed down Georgie’s cheeks as she
listened to her mother’s words. Marjorie hadn’t even tried to deny
it. “Those babies didn’t die, did they? You were all in on it. You,
or Aunt Rosemary would break the sad news to the distraught mothers
and then spirit the babies away. You set up an adoption agency to
make things easier and got rid of the infants that way. I assume
you paid Uncle Bernard handsomely to go along with it and to
pretend he’d taken possession of the bodies.”

Her mother nodded. “Of course. How else do
you think we got him to agree? That lazy, no-good undertaker didn’t
have a penny to his name until we came along. Your aunt
purposefully sought him out. She knew he’d be good for
business.”

Georgie gasped. “How long has this been
going on?”

“I think we facilitated our first adoption
toward the end of nineteen seventy-three. Rosemary and I were young
nurses. Rosemary was approached by Matron. It was all Matron’s
idea. Rosemary was initially taken aback, but once Matron explained
her reasons, my sister was fully supportive. It didn’t take her
long to convince me it was the right thing to do. I’m curious
though, how did you know about the agency?”

“Cameron Dawson told me.”

“Ah, the detective. Cynthia’s brother. You
made mention of the existence of a brother the day she delivered,
but if I’d known he was a police officer, we would have let her
baby be.”

Anger ignited in Georgie. “So, you took
Josephine, too. Just like Cam thought. I… I just don’t believe it!”
She rounded on her mother, her fury finding its feet. “How
could
you? How could you
steal
their babies?”

Marjorie’s laughter rang out in the room and
her expression turned ugly. “Those women are a blight on our
society! Single, without means of support and often teenagers,
destroying their lives with alcohol and drugs. They don’t deserve
to be mothers! A child is a precious gift from God! It deserves
only the best love and attention. How can those women give a child
what it needs? Surely you must agree!”

“I don’t, but even if I did, it doesn’t give
you the right to steal their babies and give them to someone else!”
Georgie shouted, fresh tears streaming down her face. “I assume
that’s what you’re doing.”

Her mother’s lips twisted up in a sick
imitation of a grin. “Well, you’re almost right; all except the
giving away part. There’s nothing free about adoption. There are
people who’ll pay a fortune for a baby of their own, even one going
through a heroin withdrawal.”

With a wave of her arm around the room, she
continued. “How do you think we got this place? Not to mention the
top private school, ballet lessons, sax, flute, clarinet and piano
lessons, overseas holidays, 5-star restaurants and hotels. You and
your siblings have wanted for nothing and there’s plenty more where
that came from. You’ll get your fair share, don’t worry.”

Georgie stood there, too horrified to speak.
She’d always assumed her parents’ wealth came from legitimate
means. To discover she’d been raised with money from the sale of
stolen babies… It was too much.

Bile rose up from Georgie’s stomach and she
thought she was going to be sick. She stumbled around the room
before collapsing on one of the leather couches. Tugging out her
phone, she spied Cameron’s messages and frantically sent him a
text. She couldn’t stay there another minute, but she was in no fit
state to drive. The way she felt, she could cause an accident and
that was the last thing on earth she needed.

Her mother came toward her, the scotch glass
no longer in her hand. Her narrowed gaze was fixed on Georgie’s
phone. In a flash, Marjorie snatched the phone right out of
Georgie’s hand and scrolled through her messages. When she turned
back to stare at her daughter, her eyes were like shards of black
ice.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Georgina. I
wanted to keep this between us.”

“You’re insane! Cam already knows! How do
you think—?”

“Ha! That young detective knows nothing! You
don’t think we’ve done this for more than forty years without
learning to cover our tracks. He’ll dig around and ask his
questions, but in the end, he’ll come up with squat! Certainly not
enough to press charges. The four of us are much cleverer than
that.”

Blithely, she typed in something on
Georgie’s phone. A moment later, the
swish
of a text message
being sent could be heard in the silence. She tossed the phone back
to her daughter.

Georgie stared at her mother, dazed and
confused by her shocking revelations. “The
four
of you? You
mean, Daddy? No! I won’t believe he’s part of this!”

Her mother laughed without humor. “Believe
what you want, Georgina. It means nothing to me.”

Georgie’s anger stirred at the contempt in
her mother’s voice. Her head still spun with confusion. She stared
at her mother, trying to understand. “You and Rosemary were both
young nurses forty years ago. You couldn’t have left school very
far behind you. How? Why? I… I don’t understand.”

“And you don’t need to. Let’s just say, the
history lesson’s over. It’s time we made a move before that
boyfriend gets concerned.”

Georgie’s eyes widened in surprise and
Marjorie snorted. “Oh, yes, I read the messages about getting
together for dinner and the rest. I’m not stupid.”

“On your feet,” another voice ordered.

In some distant part of her frantic mind,
Georgie recognized her aunt’s voice. Swiveling on the couch, she
spied Rosemary who held a wicked-looking handgun. It was pointed
straight at Georgie.

Georgie stared at it in shock and terror.
“What…?”

“We’re going for a little ride, you and your
mother and I. Up to the cottage in the mountains. I’m sure you
remember it. Such a pretty spot. Now, get up.”

Prodding her with the barrel of the gun,
Rosemary forced Georgie to her feet. Georgie’s heart thumped so
hard, she could barely breathe. Panic clutched at her belly and
fear tangled her feet. Tears poured down her cheeks. In
desperation, she turned to her mother.