Page 56 of Holmes Is Missing

As Holmes turned, she stopped cold. Her chin poked forward. Her eyes narrowed. She slumped back against the doorjamb. “My God,” she muttered. Holmes read no fear in her eyes. No confusion. Just resignation—as if she’d always known this day might come. He fixated on her scent as he started toward her. No sweet perfume. Just lemony deodorant and drugstore shampoo. Her hair was grey now, but it was still full and parted in the middle, an ashier version of the blond locks he remembered.

Now that he was facing her, a wave of emotions rose in his chest. Bitterness. Resentment. Anger. For a few seconds, for the first time in his adult life, Brendan Holmes was actually tongue-tied. Slowly, he reached into his pocket. He pulled out the letter he’d taken from his safe and held it up. The page unfolded and fluttered in the midday breeze.

“So tell me, Mother. Was this a lie too?”

CHAPTER60

LIKE THE HEADQUARTERSof Holmes, Marple & Poe, Silvercup Studios in Queens had once been a thriving bakery. But the vast property had been converted to soundstages in the early 1980s, for movies and TV shows. In the offseason and on slow days, the smaller studios were often busy with more mundane productions. Corporate videos. Instructional films. Music videos.

And today, a diaper commercial.

In a dimly lit side room adjacent to one of the smaller soundstages, three beautiful baby girls were lined up in three identical cribs. The babies were almost perfect matches. Same pale skin. Same cherubic cheeks. Same rosebud lips.

The similarities were not coincidental. In fact, they had been a casting spec. Rose, the baby in the center crib, was the star of a new disposable diaper commercial. Her companions were her doubles.

The PA, a young woman described as “the baby wrangler,” looked over her charges, all napping peacefully at the moment. The infants were all around nine months old, prime crawling age. The wrangler had helped the director assess their mobility,which had resulted in baby Rose winning the lead role. This was not Rose’s first rodeo. She had been featured in a Gerber commercial at six months and had already earned enough in residuals to make a healthy start on her college tuition.

Through a small window in the soundproofed door, the baby wrangler could see the film crew moving cameras and lights into position around a nursery-room set with a colorful animal-themed rug. She looked up at the industrial clock on the wall. Almost time.

The mothers of the babies were in a separate room nearby in front of a bank of monitors and speakers nicknamed Video Village. From there, they could see the activity on the set. The wrangler was usually the person in charge of focusing the babies’ attention while the cameras rolled, but if there were issues, the moms would be called in to encourage their children to move or smile on cue.

In the meantime, it was the wrangler’s job to keep the babies safe, warm, and well rested. She moved from crib to crib, patting, rubbing, whispering calming words. She knew that one outburst could quickly spread to the whole bunch. Fortunately, the wrangler had a way with babies. Especially American babies.

Maybe it was her quirky Liverpool accent.

Of course, she had a special reason to be tense today. In exactly ten minutes, before one frame of the commercial was shot, she would help two accomplices spirit these beautiful girls into a waiting delivery truck.

The plan had taken months to set up—an enormous amount of effort for three babies. But these three were gems, well worth the wait.

Quality over quantity.

CHAPTER61

HOLMES STARED AThis mother from across her sparsely furnished living room. Now that the initial shock was over, he was trying to sort out his feelings. So far, she hadn’t said anything beyond inviting him in. Her voice was exactly as he remembered it—just deepened a bit by age.

“So you call yourself Holmes now,” she said, assessing him from head to toe. “It suits you.”

They sat in opposite armchairs, both frayed and faded. Holmes glanced around the room, finding it difficult to meet her gaze. The coffee table between them was marred by whitish cup rings. The pictures on the walls looked as if they had been lifted from a motel room. A faint whiff of mold emanated from behind the paneling.

“And you’re calling yourself Charlotte Drummond?”

Nina’s eyebrows went up.

“It’s on the title to the house,” Holmes said.

“Well, I suppose I needed to become somebody else. Cut ties to the past. You can understand that.”

“Are you clean?” Holmes asked.

“Twenty years this week,” said Nina. She gave him an appraising look. “You?”

“Work in progress.”

“I had a suspicion. I’m sorry. I’m afraid you got that gene from me.”

“Yes. Along with the one for disappearing without a trace.”

Holmes was doing his best to tamp down his anger at the deception, the years lost. He loved his mother. Yet now he felt entirely betrayed by her.

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