“Tuck told me that you’d called.”
“Did he also tell you what we talked about?”
“That was a mistake, Sean. I’m sorry. We should have been truthful with you from the very beginning.”
“Yes, you should have.”
“I was concerned about the… the…”
“Your brother screwing around on his wife?” he said helpfully.
“That it would reflect badly on the president’s reelection campaign.”
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?”
“Please don’t be cynical. I don’t need that right now.”
“Your concern was well justified. But it took me down a detour I didn’t need to go down. A waste of time we couldn’t really afford.”
“So you think it has nothing to do with Willa’s disappearance?”
“Can I tell you that for sure? No. But my professional instinct is telling me that it doesn’t.”
“So what now?”
“Talk to me about Willa.”
“What about her?”
“Pam only had two children, both by C-section.”
Ice seemed to congeal in Jane’s bloodstream. “Pam had three children as you very well know.”
“Okay, but she didn’t give birth to all three. The postmortem confirmed that. I told Tuck about this. I thought he would have told you.”
Tuck of course had told her, but she had no intention of revealing this to Sean. “So what exactly are you saying?”
“That one of the kids was not Pam’s. Was it Tuck’s by another woman? And was the child Willa?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Why is this at all relevant?”
Sean sat up in his hotel room bed. “Are you serious? It’s relevant because if Willa isn’t Pam’s daughter, then her real mom and/or dad could be behind her kidnapping.”
“Willa is twelve years old. Why would someone wait all this time?”
“I thought that too, but the fact is I don’t have the answer to that. And I’m convinced that I need the answer to that question if we’re going to solve this thing and find Willa. So can you help me out?”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“Well, if she is Pam’s daughter, then the lady had to be pregnant with her all those years ago. Was she?”
“I… She… Now I remember, they weren’t living in the U.S. back then. They were in Italy. Tuck’s business. And now that I think about it, they returned shortly after Willa was born.”
Sean leaned back against the headboard. “Well, that was convenient. So you don’t know for sure if she was pregnant? Never saw any pictures? Mom and newborn in the hospital? No baby showers? Didn’t visit them over there?”