Deadly Silence Read online

  Deadly Silence

  Kylie Hatfield Series: Book Five

  Mary Stone

  Bella Cross

  Copyright © 2019 by Mary Stone and Bella Cross

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Mary Stone

  To my husband.

  Thank you for taking care of our home and its many inhabitants while I follow this silly dream of mine.

  Bella Cross

  To my family. Thank you for your unending support, love, and patience while I navigate this exciting new world of publishing.

  Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Kylie Hatfield Series

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Description

  Silence can kill...

  Babies are going missing. Mothers are being killed. Because these women are poor and alone, no one seems to care.

  Now that Kylie Hatfield’s dreams have come true—she’s married to Linc, the man of her dreams, and she’s a real PI with her own business—everything should be smooth sailing.

  Just as she’s settling into married life and getting a foothold in the business, a pregnancy test and its little plus sign throws a wrench into her plans.

  They were going to put a hold on kids, and for good reason. With ten puppies and a business that needs to turn a profit, this isn’t the time for the added pressure of a baby. Plus, Kylie's work can be so dangerous.

  But when a big case comes across Kylie’s desk, one she simply can’t turn her back on, Kylie has to decide what is most important to her. And just how far she’ll go to protect the things she holds dearest.

  Deadly Silence, the fifth and final book in the captivating Kylie Hatfield Series, is a pulse pounding emotional roller coaster of a ride.

  1

  September 1975…

  Patricia Hastings fixed her traditional white nursing cap over her stick-straight blonde locks before jumping into her little Dodge Dart. The cap was vintage, worn by her mother and grandmother before that. She didn’t want a new one. She loved that her cap had been witness to so many years of helping others.

  Sipping at a cup of coffee, she turned up the radio loud, grooving to Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” as she headed out onto Rural Route Three toward the little town of Jolivue, Virginia.

  As she drove, she patted her fringed bag, making sure she’d remembered the card to go along with the New Mother diaper basket she gave all of her patients. In the card, she’d written, Best of luck to one of my favorite new mothers. Please don’t hesitate to call me should you and your beautiful daughter ever need anything!

  Under that, she’d written her home phone number, which she rarely gave out. Her patients usually called her through the Staunton Midwife Service, which was customary procedure. She’d also stuffed a bigger pile of diapers in the basket than usual. She had a feeling this client would need the extra supply, and she couldn’t deny that she’d miss this client more than her others.

  Maybe it was because Renee Best, the spunky little kid, reminded Patricia of her own daughters, now grown. Poor Renee. Not yet twenty with no husband, no money, no support system, but so strong and brave. The young woman had an uphill battle in front of her, for sure, whether she realized it or not. Being left by one’s significant other with no means of support would unhinge anyone, let alone a nine months pregnant, hormonal mother-to-be.

  But not Renee.

  Every time Patricia stopped by for one of Renee’s prenatal check-ups, Renee would welcome her with a big hug, put a kettle on for tea, then the two would talk like old friends. She lived in a rust-trap of an old trailer, right off the highway, probably not the best place to raise a child. She was always alone. And yet every time Patricia showed up, Renee would be there, belly a little bigger, excited to show off some new find she’d gotten at the thrift store or crocheted herself.

  A nurse midwife for twenty years, Patricia had seen all kinds of cases, but never anyone so excited to be a mother as Renee. A small blessing considering the hard road ahead of her, the delivery had gone like a dream. No complications whatsoever. Six hours of natural labor, and out popped Lyra Rose. It was women like Renee who made Patricia love her job.

  And the baby? Adorable. Healthy, chubby, a regular Gerber baby, but with a halo of inch-long red hair the color of a new penny. Patricia had never seen any mother look at any baby with as much love as Renee had, the first moment she was placed into her arms.

  Patricia smiled as she pulled off the two-lane highway, onto the dirt road leading up to the trailer park. She’d become a midwife because she loved helping women with what many would consider the most important day of their lives.

  And she cared for all her young mothers. Sometimes, too much. Goodbyes were always hard on her heart, but she couldn’t stay in their lives forever.

  Her kids said she always had trouble with the moving on. It was why she still hadn’t thrown out her daughters’ stuffed animals and kept each of their rooms untouched, looking exactly as the day they flew the nest, even though they’d been out of the house for years.

  But she loved babies and children, couldn’t wait to have her own grandkids. Maybe, one day, she’d get a letter from Renee, thanking her for her friendship through this difficult time. Maybe she’d learn one day that little Lyra Rose had become a success and gone on to do great things. A doctor. A famous actress. Maybe she could say, one day, that she’d played a small part in that. After all, one of the first babies she’d ever delivered was now a quarterback for James Madison University, and there was talk of him being recruited into the NFL.

  All in all, a very good life. But she’d thought it would get easier, saying goodbye to the babies she delivered. Unfortunately, it never had.

  The radio had just begun blaring the news of the day, the sensational story of how that heiress, Patty Hearst, had been captured and arrested for armed robbery in California. What a crazy world we live in these days, Patricia thought as she flipped the radio off.

  As she neared the trailer park, she saw something she’d never seen in these woods.

  Flashing blue lights.

  A police car.

  No, two of them. Three.

  Born and bred in this small town, Patricia had never seen three police cars congregated anywhere in Jolivue. Were there even three police officers in Jolivue? Nothing ever happened here.

  But something was definitely happening now. Something bad.

  She slowed to a near stop, creeping down the curving dirt road. When a loud horn blasted behind her, she nearly bit her tongue in surprise as she looked in the rearview mir
ror to see a large white form with flashing red lights bearing down upon her.

  An ambulance.

  One thought sprang to Patricia’s head. The baby. Lyra Rose is ill, or hurt, or worse.

  Pulling to the side of the road to let the ambulance pass, Patricia decided this was all her fault. Renee was a new mother, had so many questions, and likely hadn’t had anyone to ask once Patricia had gone away. What if Renee had made an error of judgement? A serious one? And Patricia hadn’t been there to help her.

  Patricia’s eyes drifted to the diaper basket, and the card she’d written out. Too late.

  Maybe if she’d given it to Renee sooner, she wouldn’t have felt like she had to handle this all on her own. After the birth, she’d told Renee she would make herself available if she was needed. But Renee was a sweet girl, overly accommodating and always saying she didn’t want to be too much trouble. Maybe Renee hadn’t wanted to bother her?

  And now…now something horrible had happened.

  Patricia threw open the door to her Dart and rushed through the crunching leaves toward a small gathering of grim-looking police officers as the paramedics filed inside the rusty old Airstream trailer. As she approached, an older officer with a salt-and-pepper moustache and a tired face turned to her and held up his hands. “We’ll need you to stay back,” he said gruffly.

  “Is Lyra Rose okay?” Patricia asked desperately, trying to peek over the officer’s broad shoulders to see the new mother. “The baby?”

  “Baby?” His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Were you friends with Miss Best?”

  Were?

  Patricia’s blood ran cold at the use of the verb tense. Not are. If she hadn’t been so alarmed, she would’ve explained exactly who she was, but instead she said, “Yes. Did something happen to her?”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid so. There’s been a suicide.”

  “Suicide?” Patricia said the word aloud to try to get it through her head. Not Renee. Not that peppy young thing who always had a smile on her face. “That’s not possible. I was her midwife. I delivered the baby two weeks ago. Everything was fine. It’s just…not possible.”

  “I’m sorry. A neighbor reported not seeing her or her baby for a couple of days and asked that we check up on her. It appears she overdosed on prescription medication.”

  Patricia recoiled. Prescription meds? How did she even get those? Renee had been insistent about natural childbirth. She didn’t want any medication in her bloodstream. “Prescription medication?” Patricia repeated.

  “Yes.” His gaze grew even sharper. “As her midwife, did you notice any signs of postpartum depression? Did she talk to you at all about being sad or blue or wanting to kill herself?”

  “N-no.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat, swallowing down the tears threatening to take over. “Not at all. Not even once. She was very happy, and she was thrilled to be a mom. I didn’t have the slightest concern.”

  “Well, how often did you visit with her?” he said, eyebrow cocked in doubt.

  Patricia crossed her arms, suddenly cold on this warm autumn day. “Once a week. That’s per usual. If I saw any reason to visit more often than that, I would. But I had no reason to.” She still couldn’t get over the feeling that this officer was blaming her for missing key signals to Renee’s condition, so she added, “Look. I’ve been doing this for twenty years, and I’ve seen many women who suffer from postpartum depression, and I can tell you right now that Renee Best wasn’t one of them.”

  “I see.” He sounded unimpressed.

  Patricia sighed and looked up as the paramedics wheeled a stretcher toward the door of the trailer. “Where’s Lyra Rose?”

  Ignoring her question, the officer pulled out a pen and pad and jotted something down. “What’s your name?”

  “Patricia Hastings,” she murmured, watching as the paramedic went inside the small trailer. Her eyes trailed down to her feet, where she saw something pink among the leaf-cover. With her toe, she moved the leaves away and realized it was a little pink bootie that Renee had knitted for the child. She’d been so proud of them. She said it was her first knitting project, ever.

  Patricia reached down to pick it up, then froze when the officer barked, “Don’t! Please, don’t touch anything. When did you see Miss Best last?”

  “A week ago,” she said, desperation settling over her. She tried again. “Where’s the baby?”

  He wrote something else down. “Where do you live?”

  She sighed, getting annoyed. “I’m sorry. Am I a suspect or something? What’s—”

  “No, Mrs. Hastings. These are just routine questions. Renee’s baby is missing, and as of now, you may be the last person who’s seen her.”

  Patricia’s stomach dropped. “Missing?”

  “There’s the possibility that the mother killed the baby prior to committing suicide. It’s often the case when someone feels hopeless. They may take it out on the innocent child. If that’s the case, she may have buried the child nearby.”

  “Renee?” Patricia gasped as he rounded up a couple officers and asked them to search the vicinity. “Oh, no! Never!”

  There were several other trailers around, all in various states of disrepair. At one of them, Patricia saw a couple of children’s faces peeking out from behind a dirty window.

  “Loneliness often drives people to do terrible things,” he said, shaking his head with regret. “She clearly had money troubles and no way of supporting herself.”

  “She may have been alone,” Patricia argued, her voice rising with each word, “but she wasn’t hopeless. She’d been so happy the last time I saw her. Yes, she might’ve been low-income, but she was really excited about her future, and she loved Lyra. The last time I spoke to her on the phone a few days ago, she was looking into subsidized daycares so she could start working again. She was looking forward. She wasn’t even a little bit sad about her situation.”

  The officer shrugged. “I suppose you never can tell. She might not have appeared sad because she’d already made the decision to end it.”

  So much was wrong with that, Patricia didn’t even know where to start. “No. That’s wrong.”

  He gave her a look that said he was not amused and didn’t really care to hear her opinion. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave now,” the officer said, pointing down the driveway. “We can’t have people uninvolved in the investigation loitering around here.”

  She took a step back and started to turn, her mind still awhirl, when the paramedics appeared in the doorway with a stretcher containing the black body bag of the young mother. Nausea bubbled in Patricia’s throat as they wheeled it through a square patch of dirt. Only a week ago, they’d shared tea in the little kitchenette, and Renee had talked about how she was planning to make a garden for fresh vegetables so she could make her own baby food.

  Renee. Dead.

  Suicide.

  How could this have happened?

  Patricia backed up, tripping over a tree root before righting herself and scrambling back into her car. As she turned the key in the ignition, she looked over at the diaper basket filled with the extra diapers and even a little bunny pacifier that Patricia had chosen just because Renee had loved the snuggly looking creatures.

  Tears flooded her eyes, and by the time she’d made a three-point turn and pulled out onto the main road, she was sobbing. Those poor babies. The two of them. Renee was really just a baby herself. Naïve. Maybe she’d had a flash of clarity and realized just how hopeless her situation was.

  But even if Renee was feeling hopeless, how could a mother kill a child? Or just abandon her somewhere? How could a mother not feel at least some motherly instinct toward a baby?

  Patricia gripped the steering wheel tightly, knowing that she needed to only turn on the evening news to see how a mother could do such a horrible thing.

  Not Renee. Patricia just couldn’t believe it. The moment she’d given birth, she’d cradled that baby to her breast and Pa
tricia had seen them bond. That’s why none of this made any sense.

  But how well did she really know the women whose babies she delivered? Even Renee. Seeing her a couple times a month didn’t make them best friends. Maybe there was a darkness within the young mother that Patricia hadn’t detected.

  That just didn’t seem right, though. She thought she was a good judge of character. Renee hadn’t been even remotely depressed. And why would a woman care so much about not harming her child during her pregnancy and childbirth, and then kill the helpless infant weeks later?

  Patricia reached over and rolled down the window of her car, grabbed her Virginia Slims from the glove compartment, and lit one up, her hands still shaking. She sucked on the filter, trying to calm herself, and blew out a cloud of smoke as she entered downtown Staunton, where she lived.

  Stopping at a light, she set her cigarette down in the ashtray and pulled the card from the basket with the cute little chick on the front. Welcome Chickadee! the front proclaimed.

  Reading her message inside one last time, she tore it in half, then in half again. She wiped at her eyes, tossing the papers to the passenger’s side of her car.

  Rolling down her window for some much needed air, she froze, her ears picking up a sound. A baby’s cry. An infant, from the sound of it.

  Patricia craned her neck to see an impeccably dressed woman in the passenger seat of the fancy sedan next to her. She was rocking an adorable little pink wrapped bundle to her chest, looking exasperated.