The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [51]
The silence between them stretched wide before being filled by the sound of the dog scratching behind his ear and a clock on the mantel ticking.
“I think I would like you to leave.” Jude stood up, her back ramrod straight, her face grimly resolved.
“Mrs. McDermott, I found you. Very easily, I might add, once I knew who to look for.” Simon remained seated. “How long before someone else finds you, too?”
“I can’t imagine what Betsy was thinking.” Jude’s eyes filled with tears.
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing.” Simon removed the envelope from his pocket and took out the photograph of Blythe that he’d taken from the Pierce home, then placed it on the table between them.
Jude turned from it as if she could not bear to look upon the face. “Please leave, Mr. Keller.”
“Mrs. McDermott, how do you explain the fact that your ‘daughter’ looks like a clone of your best friend? Your friend who has been dead for almost thirty years. And your daughter is how old?”
Jude went to the front door and opened it. “Please leave now.”
Simon stood and leaned over to pick up the photograph but made no move to the door.
“What is it that you want from me?” Her eyes pleaded in a way that words could not, her fear strong enough that it reached toward Simon from across the room. “Are you blackmailing me?”
“No, no, of course not,” he tried to reassure her. “I just want the truth, Mrs. McDermott. I’m only looking for the truth.”
She merely shook her head and gestured for him to leave.
“Does she know?” Simon asked. He took a card bearing his name and phone number and placed it on a table near the door.
Jude turned her head away.
“Please . . .” Jude pleaded as she opened the door.
“Does she know that her birth mother died when she was just a baby?” Simon whispered, sympathy welling in him for the woman in spite of his compulsion to search out the story. “That she was deliberately run down on a city street and that the police made little more than a cursory effort to find the car that killed her?”
Jude stood silent.
“Or that her father was a former President of the United States?” The random, impossible thought that had been lurking in the far recesses of his mind slid from his lips before he even had time to examine it.
The stricken look of sheer terror on Jude’s face told Simon all he needed to know.
Simon stepped through the open door and paused on the top step. “Who does she think her father is, Mrs. McDermott?”
Jude reached out and with one hand slammed the door in his face.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simon watched Miles Kendall take bites out of the small chocolate-covered mint patty, one of several Simon had stopped to pick up on his way to St. Margaret’s. When the chewing had ceased, Simon settled against the hard wooden back of the chair and studied the face of the old man before him. He seemed quite cheerful and alert. His eyes were clear and bright. It looked like he might have found Miles on a good day. He could only hope.
“Miles, can we talk about Blythe?” Simon asked. “Do you remember Blythe?”
Kendall nodded slowly. “She had lavender eyes.”
“Yes, I know.” Simon nodded and thought of Dina.
Simon’s hand slipped into his pocket and switched on the recorder. “Miles, can we talk about Blythe’s death? Do you remember when she died?”
Kendall stared straight ahead, and for a moment Simon thought he’d lost him.
Then the old man spoke, his voice barely a whisper: “She’d only been back for a few days. Less than a week.”
“Where had she been, Miles? Do you remember?”
“Where her friend was.”
“Who was her friend?”
“Jude. Blythe left the baby with her, and came back.”
“Blythe left the baby with Jude?”
Miles nodded.
“How do you know about the baby, Miles?”
“I saw her.” Kendall looked up, a tiny smile on his lips.
“You saw Blythe after she had the baby?”
“I saw the baby. She was just . . . perfect. Perfect, just like her mother. Dark straight hair, big round eyes. Just as beautiful as her mother. He wept when I told him about her.”
“By ‘he’ who do you mean, Miles? Who wept when you told him that