Colton Baby Conspiracy (The Coltons 0f Mustang Valley Book 1) Read online

  “No, ma’am,” Callum politely assured her, “it’s not a joke.”

  Marlowe spoke up, moving closer to her brother. “We’re really trying to find any information we can about those births.”

  Irene paused to think for a moment, then shook her head. “That’s way before the hospital began digitizing its data. My guess is that those records, if they’re still around, would have been placed in the batched files stored in the basement. I’m really sorry,” the young woman said, addressing her words to Callum rather than to the both of them, “but we don’t have the resources or the time to just drop everything and go digging through files that are more than a quarter of a century old.” She sat up a little straighter in an attempt to sound more official. “I’m afraid that you’re out of luck,” she told Callum.

  “Are you sure you can’t just—” Marlowe began but got no further before the admissions clerk cut her off.

  “Yes, I’m sure I can’t,” Irene said curtly, sparing Marlowe a quick, dismissive look and acting like this was her kingdom and she was the first line of defense.

  “Ms.—” Pausing, Callum glanced down at the nameplate sitting on the desk in front of the woman. “—Ryan,” he said, attempting to create a bond between them by using her name. “In the heat of the moment, I completely forgot to introduce my sister and myself. I’m Callum Colton and this is my sister, Marlowe Colton.”

  The woman looked as if she had suddenly been fed a rock and was desperately trying to get it to go down. “Colton?” she repeated uneasily.

  “Yes,” Marlowe confirmed, abandoning all pretense of attempting to be nice to the woman. “You might have seen it written on some of the dedication plaques scattered around here in the hospital.”

  It was easy to see that Irene was a mouse, easily intimidated by authority. Placing her palms on her desk, she pushed herself up to her feet. Marlowe noticed that her hands were shaking.

  “Um, yes,” Irene answered nervously, her eyes now as large as saucers. “Wait right here...let me go get Anne Sewall. She’s the hospital’s administrator,” the young woman told them, stumbling backward as she tried to make a graceful exit—and failed. “I’ll be right back,” she mumbled under her breath.

  Marlowe turned toward her brother, putting a look of satisfaction on her face. “I knew that pretty face of yours would get us results,” she told Callum.

  “I tend to think that it was hearing our last name that got Miss Would-Be Efficiency moving as if there was a fire lit directly under her,” Callum contradicted. Marlowe knew he wasn’t the type who needed or wanted to have his ego stroked.

  “Hey, I’ll settle for whatever works,” Marlowe replied with a laugh.

  She crossed her fingers, hoping that one way or another, they would wind up getting the information they were after. Forty years was a long time, she readily admitted. Who knew what kind of state those old records would be in, once they were found? If they could even be found.

  “Uh-huh, looks like it’s showtime,” Callum whispered to his sister as the admissions clerk returned to her desk.

  “Mr. Colton, Ms. Sewall will see you now,” the young woman told Callum. Her voice had taken on a formal cadence. “You, too, Ms. Colton,” she added, as if suddenly remembering that she hadn’t addressed the woman standing next to Callum. “Her office is right down the hall. Step that way,” Irene added, pointing in the direction she had come from.

  “One step closer,” Marlowe murmured to her brother as they passed the desk and retraced her steps to an office where Anne Sewall waited.

  Anne was a tall, thin woman in her early sixties with a blond bob, wire-rimmed glasses and a heavyset face. She gave the impression of being overworked even when she was sitting down and not moving a muscle.

  The woman rose to her feet the moment that Marlowe and her brother walked into her office.

  “Ms. Colton, Mr. Colton, this is a great honor,” she gushed, shaking first Marlowe’s hand and then Callum’s. She made Marlowe think of a lapdog that was desperately trying to gain favor. “Please, sit, sit,” she cried, as if repeating the word somehow made the request that much more urgent. She gestured toward the two chairs in front of her antique desk.

  Once Callum and Marlowe had both sat down, Anne took her own seat, sliding forward and sitting on the very edge like a bird waiting to take flight at the slightest provocation.

  Her brown eyes darted back and forth between her two visitors, as if she didn’t know whom to address first.

  “What is it I can do for you?” Anne asked eagerly.

  Callum took the lead. “We need to take a look at your hospital records, Ms. Sewall. Specifically, we’re interested in records about a baby or babies born in the hospital on Christmas morning forty years ago.”

  The administrator looked somewhat puzzled and uncertain. “Did you say forty years ago?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Callum answered.

  “May I ask why?” Anne asked.

  “We’d rather not go into the particulars right now, Ms. Sewall,” Marlowe told the other woman.

  “But we assure you that there is nothing underhanded going on. The records concern our brother, Ace. He was born here on Christmas morning,” Callum explained, then repeated his request again. “May we see those records, please?”

  Anne continued to look nervous and uncertain. “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” she told him.

  Marlowe sighed. “We know about the privacy issues,” she interjected. “But the records have to do with Ace’s birth. If we could just take a look at those records—”

  “That’s just it. There are no records,” the woman informed them.

  Callum scowled. “How is that possible?” he asked. “My father witnessed his wife giving birth to his first child. All of that has to be documented somewhere—”

  “I’m sure what you’re saying is all very true. However, I’m afraid that there was a fire in the maternity ward that very morning and it destroyed all the recent records regarding all the births that had taken place in that time frame, not to mention the names of the hospital staff who were on duty the night before as well as that morning. It also destroyed the nearby nurse’s station. I’m sure everyone was grateful that the fire was contained and gotten under control before it could do any more damage, and fortunately, the infants were never threatened.

  “Like I said,” the administrator told them, her voice sounding a little strained, “this was all before records were kept on a computer and archived.”

  She flashed them a contrite look. “I am really sorry, but I don’t have anything to show you.” The woman looked almost eager to usher them out of her office. “I will do everything I can to shed some light on how the fire started and if anything at all survived the isolated blaze. But as for the information you’re looking for, I’m afraid that it just no longer exists,” she told them with finality.

  “If I hear of anything, though,” she went on, “I promise I’ll give you both a call.”

  That was clearly their signal to leave, Marlowe thought. Callum rose to his feet, as did Marlowe. “I guess we can’t ask for more than that,” Callum told the administrator. “Thank you for taking the time to see us,” he said.

  “Of course, of course,” Anne said, shaking each of their hands again. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t have been of more help,” she added, looking genuinely contrite in Callum’s opinion.

  * * *

  “Well, that was awfully convenient, don’t you think?” Callum asked his twin as they walked out of the hospital. “A fire breaking out just after the real Ace and our Ace were switched?”

  “I suppose it could have happened,” Marlowe allowed. “But you’re right. It just sounds like much too much of a coincidence. If you want my opinion, the person who switched the babies most likely set the fire,” she concluded.

  “No argument,” Callum
agreed. The same thing had occurred to him. “Now what?”

  The entrance doors closed behind them and they began to walk toward the parking lot and Callum’s car.

  “Now we keep digging,” Marlowe answered. “Maybe we can find out who was working at the hospital around that time. If we’re lucky, maybe someone saw something but didn’t know what they were seeing at the time. There had to have been a great deal of pandemonium and panic during the fire, what with everyone rushing around, trying to save the babies and their mothers.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Callum didn’t seem so sure about the scenario she had just verbally sketched.

  “What do you mean?” Marlowe asked.

  “Dad would have mentioned something like that at some point. Maybe the fire was purposely a very small, isolated one,” Callum theorized. “Just big enough to destroy the records, but not big enough to threaten anyone else, including the babies.”

  “Sounds like a good theory to me,” Marlowe agreed. The more she thought about it, the more likely it sounded to her.

  “We just need to find someone who worked at the hospital in the maternity ward at the time to confirm that,” Callum said. He made it sound simple, but she knew it was anything but that.

  Marlowe said it out loud for both of them. “Easier said than done. But then,” she reflected, “what fun is easy?”

  Callum shook his head. “You do have a very unique way of looking at things.”

  “I’m a Colton,” she said as they got into his car. “I was born unique.”

  “And humble,” he said with a laugh, putting his key into the ignition. “Don’t forget humble.”

  “Never,” she replied with a straight face. “I wouldn’t forget that.” And then Marlowe’s expression became serious. “I think we need to call the board together for another meeting so we can tell them what we found out—or didn’t find out,” she amended. “Maybe one of them has a better idea of what to do next.”

  “Are you saying my idea wasn’t good?” Callum asked, pretending to take offense.

  She slanted a look in his direction. “I’m saying that the more ideas we have to work with, the better our chances of resolving all this are. Besides, I think it’s time we get everyone involved in searching for any and all hospital personnel who worked at the hospital forty years ago. This isn’t a job for just one or two people, not with all of us having our own set of responsibilities when it comes to running Colton Oil.”

  Callum sighed. “Yes, there is that.” Rather than race through a light the way Marlowe was wont to do, he slowed down as it turned yellow, then red. “There’s also another factor.”

  Marlowe shifted in her seat to look at her brother. “Which is?”

  Callum took his time in responding. When he did, what he said wasn’t anything that she’d expected. “How are you feeling?”

  Nauseated as hell, she thought, but since she’d managed to keep everything down, she wasn’t about to say anything about it to her brother.

  “Okay,” Marlowe answered. “Why?”

  “Why?” Callum echoed incredulously.

  “Yes, that’s what I just asked, Callum. Why?” Marlowe repeated.

  “Because you’re pregnant.”

  Marlowe rolled her eyes. She was trying to get away from talking about her condition, not dwelling on it. She thought he would have understood that. He was her twin, and there were times when each knew exactly what the other was thinking. “C’mon, Callum, don’t you start.”

  “Hey, I’m just worried about you. I’ve seen you turn green a couple of times in the last few hours, and green is not your natural color. Are you getting enough rest?”

  “I am fine, Callum,” Marlowe insisted.

  He tried again. “Okay, what did the doctor say?”

  She kept her face forward, not wanting to make any eye contact. “What doctor?”

  “You haven’t been to see your doctor yet?” he cried. “Hell, what are you waiting for?”

  “Um, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little busy, with my oldest brother suddenly not being my brother and some crazy person taking a shot at me inside my condo. That doesn’t exactly leave much time for me to go sashaying off to my ob-gyn’s office to read two-year-old magazines while I wait three hours for a consultation with her—if she doesn’t cancel at the last minute because she’s been called away to make a unscheduled delivery.”

  “Not good enough, Marlowe. You know you’re just making up excuses,” he told her. “You need to see your doctor.”

  “Fine,” she said from between gritted teeth. “First spare minute I get,” she told him.

  “Make an appointment or I’ll carry you there myself,” he told her.

  “You need a woman, Callum. Someone you can drive crazy other than me.”

  “Until that happens,” he informed her, “you’re stuck with me.”

  She slid down in her seat, staring through the windshield. “Terrific,” she muttered. But deep down, she did appreciate the thought.

  Chapter 14

  “Looks as if the board meeting has to be postponed,” Marlowe told her brother as they got back to Colton Oil headquarters. Just before they’d left the hospital parking lot, she had sent out messages to all four of the other members on a group chat. It had seemed strange to Marlowe to delete Ace’s name from the list of included members, but for the time being, for the sake of peace, she knew it had to be that way.

  Three of the texts that she had sent out were answered before Callum pulled up.

  “Why?” Callum asked. “Who can’t make the meeting?”

  She slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Dad, Rafe and Ainsley are all busy for the rest of the day.”

  “I’m sure one of them is available, right?” Callum said.

  “Oh no, we’re not having a meeting with just her,” Marlowe declared with feeling. “I might be tempted to hold a meeting if the other three are there and dear old Selina wasn’t, but there’s no way in hell that we’re going to have a meeting with just her at the table.” Taking out her phone, she looked at her schedule for the next day. “Ask them if tomorrow at ten works for them,” she said, getting out of the car. “If not, we’ll keep pitching different times until we find one that works for everyone.”

  “Including ex–Stepmommy Dearest?” Callum asked sardonically.

  Marlowe sighed. “Yes, her, too,” she answered, although not happily.

  Marlowe felt her phone buzz. She took it out, paused to look at the screen and saw she had a new text.

  “Someone letting us know that they’ve changed their mind?” Callum guessed.

  “No.” Marlowe quickly read the message. Several emotions wafted through her simultaneously as she tried to figure out just how she felt about the text from Bowie. “This has nothing to do with the meeting.”

  Callum tilted his head, peering at his sister’s face. “Robertson?” he guessed.

  Marlowe looked up sharply. “Since when did clairvoyance become part of your makeup?” she asked.

  “I’m not clairvoyant,” Callum denied. “But if I were you, I’d really try to work on my poker face,” he advised. “Your whole countenance changed when you looked at your phone screen. You lit up.”

  “You’re imagining things,” Marlowe insisted dismissively. Getting out of Callum’s car, she shut the passenger door.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “Hey, do you have feelings for this guy?” He quickly added, “Because it’s okay with me if you do—that is, if he’s treating you right.”

  Oh no, she was not about to get into this with her brother. She loved Callum dearly, but this was none of his business—especially since she wasn’t 100 percent sure just what she was actually feeling when it came to Bowie.

  “Callum,” she told him, “the last thing I need right now is to play Twenty Ques
tions with you.”

  “Okay,” Callum said, retreating and raising his hands as if in surrender. “But you’re going to have to figure it out sooner or later—for your own sake,” he underscored. “Not for Dad, not for Mother or for anyone else, but for your own sake,” he insisted firmly.

  She knew he meant well and that she was being decidedly far too touchy about the matter. “Yes, O Wise One, I know.” Smiling at Callum, she stood up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his cheek. “Now go and try to coordinate the troops while I see what this wild card in my life wants.”

  “You,” Callum told her as if there was no question about it. “That would be my guess.”

  If she were being perfectly honest with herself, Marlowe didn’t know if that was what she was afraid of, or what she was hoping for. So she said nothing. Instead, she hurried off, leaving her brother in the lobby. When she called Bowie, she wanted to be able to talk to him in private.

  That privacy turned out to be available only in her office.

  The minute she walked in, she closed the door. Rather than call Bowie, she crossed to her desk, sat down and proceeded to text him back. The message she sent read: I’m back in my office. What did you want to tell me?

  In less than a minute after she had hit Send, her cell phone rang. She didn’t have to look at the caller ID.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you planning on staying put?” Bowie’s deep voice rumbled against her ear.

  A warm shiver danced through her in response to his voice. She needed to get that under control, she told herself.

  Rather than answer Bowie one way or another, she had a question of her own. “Why?”

  “Because I need to see you.” As if realizing how that had to sound to her, Bowie added, “I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”

  Now what? she wondered. She wasn’t exactly feeling very social. “Listen, now’s not a very good time,” she began, getting ready to put him off.

  As if he’d anticipated this move on her part, Bowie deftly blocked it. “No time is a very good time with you,” he commented. “Stay put,” he ordered. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”