No. She wasn’t that smart.
Could the missing pages point the finger at the real father, making the diary useless as a blackmail tool? That made a lot more sense. Had she destroyed them? Knowing Pammy, that didn’t seem likely, either.
“How are you going to get this Paige guy to talk?” Ginny asked. “He doesn’t know you. He’s got no reason to tell you anything.”
“That’s true, but I’ve got nothing to lose by trying.” Tricia glanced at her watch. Almost two o’clock. “I hate to keep asking you to cover for me, but-”
Ginny waved a hand in the direction of the door. “Go!”
Tricia went to get her coat from its peg at the back of the store. But first, she made a brief stop in her apartment to pick up something-something that might be the key to getting her inside Paige’s hospital room.
The medical center’s brightly lit corridors were buzzing with activity. Scrubs-clad nurses came and went, monitoring equipment beeped and buzzed, and as visiting hours were in full swing, people in street clothes seemed to be everywhere.
Tricia thought the hospital might refuse to tell her Stuart Paige’s room number, but when she asked at the lobby reception desk, they directed her to the third floor.
The door to Paige’s room was open. She stepped inside. He lay on the bed, which was cranked up to a semi-sitting position. Eyes closed, he looked pale, and older than he had a mere six hours ago.
“Mr. Paige?” Tricia called softly.
The door to the private room’s bathroom opened, and a figure stepped out. “What are you doing here? Get out!” Turner ordered.
“Jason?” came a feeble voice from within the room.
Tricia looked back to the rumpled figure on the bed. Paige’s eyes were now open.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you have an unwanted guest.”
Turner grabbed Tricia’s elbow to usher her out.
“No, let her come in,” Paige said, his voice weak.
Turner let loose, and Tricia tiptoed into the room.
“Please, sit down,” Paige said, indicating the chair next to his bed.
Tricia took the offered seat. Why was it hospitals provided only uncomfortable chairs for visitors? She clutched her purse on her lap, unsure of what to say. Paige solved that problem.
“You were at the Food Shelf’s dedication. And at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast this morning.”
“I’m sorry I arrived too late to hear most of your speech.”
His smile was weak. “I don’t think you missed much.”
“I don’t know-a new dialysis center could be a boon for Stoneham.”
“It will certainly be a boon to dialysis patients in the tristate area. A press release went out earlier today. It’ll be on the news tonight, if you’re truly interested.”
Which explained why Russ had attended this particular Chamber meeting.
“And you are?”
“Tricia Miles. I own the mystery bookstore in Stoneham -Haven’t Got a Clue.”
“And do you?” he asked.
“Do I what?”
“Have a clue?” He leaned back against his pillow. “Jason has told me about the diary and the pages your friend sent to my office. Now you’ll want to know about my relationship with Marcie Jane Collins-everybody else does.”
Tricia swallowed. The woman who’d died when Paige had crashed his car into Portsmouth Harbor. “Did she have your baby?”
He blinked. “That’s a new one. Everyone else wants to know about the night she died.”
“I read the story on the Internet. M.J. died about a year after she gave birth to a child. A child she apparently gave up for adoption. Was it your child?” she asked again.
Paige sighed, looking even more tired.
“Sir, you don’t have to answer this woman’s questions. You don’t even have to put up with her being in this room,” Turner said.
Paige waved a weak hand to quiet his employee. “It’s going to come out eventually. I’d rather tell my story to this young lady than to a TV reporter.”
“Sir, we can issue a statement. There’s no need to-”
“Jason, why don’t you go get a cup of coffee and leave us alone for about fifteen minutes?”
Turner looked ready to protest, but nodded. He backed up. “I’ll be just outside if you need me,” he said, then turned and left the room, closing the heavy door behind him.
“He’s very protective of me,” Paige said.
“I can see that,” Tricia said. Fifteen minutes wasn’t much time, and she didn’t want to waste it. “Had you ever met Pammy Fredericks?”
Paige shook his head. “I never saw the woman, but Jason tells me she called our offices several times. She mailed us some papers, asking for money or she’d reveal something about my sordid past.” The ghost of a smile crept across his lips. “As if anything else could be as embarrassing as what everybody already knows.”
“You were saying about your-” Had the woman been his friend, lover, mistress?
“M.J.” He smiled. “She liked being called that. Like in the Spiderman comics.”
“What did the papers Pammy sent you contain?”
“According to Jason, nothing. At least nothing with my name on it. Just ramblings about hooking ‘him.’ ”
Tricia opened her purse, took out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to him. He took it, fumbled to straighten it out on his lap, and gave a shuddering breath.
“That’s her handwriting, all right. Where did you get this?”
“Pammy hid the diary in my shop. I made a copy of it before I handed it over to Captain Baker of the Sheriff’s Department.”
Paige nodded. He pointed to the date in the top left corner. “See this? At the time the diary was written, I was out of M.J.’s life-had been for at least a year or so.”
“Yes, I understand you two had broken up for a while.”
He looked at her through narrowed eyes.
“I read several accounts of your colorful past online,” she explained.
He shook his head, perturbed. “I wasn’t very stable in those days. I drove too fast-drank too much. She worked on my father’s clerical staff.” He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. “After we started going out, Dad grew to love her. He hoped she’d straighten me out. Sadly, she only managed that in death. He didn’t know she was almost as wild as I was, which was part of the reason we originally broke up. When we got back together, it was as if that wild streak in her took over. She didn’t care about anything. We did a lot of foolish things together. Things I’m deeply ashamed of now.” He sighed. “No matter what good I’ve done these last nineteen years, it will never make up for what happened that rainy night in Portsmouth.”
“I read that the police theorized the car hydroplaned.”
He nodded sadly. “We’d both been drinking. Truth was, at that point, M.J. drank more than I did. She said it helped her forget.”
“Forget her child?”
He looked up sharply. “How did you know?”
“I read most of her diary. M.J. was very upset. I take it the child had birth defects. She called the baby… it.”
“M.J. made the mistake of having an affair with a married man after we had parted ways-I never did know his name.”
“What happened to the baby?”
“It went into foster care. The people who took it in eventually adopted it.”
“Now you’re calling the baby ‘it,’ ” Tricia admonished.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what sex it ultimately ended up being.”
Tricia blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Didn’t M.J. write about what was wrong with the child in her diary?”
“No.”
“It was born with multiple sex organs. The baby needed gender assignment surgery. M.J. saw it as a punishment for her affair.”
“The baby was a… hermaphrodite?”
He nodded. “I believe the more popular term now is intersex. To make things worse, M.J. suffered from postpartum depression. It wasn’t as well understood in those days. Sometimes not understood today, either.”