Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

mother and then for my baby. I wanted to be sure that Beckett really couldn’t hurt them, so I contacted the state records department in West Virginia. They sent me a form to fill out and return by mail to get the certificate. I had one more follow-up with Baker and told her I’d requested the death certificate, but that the records office said it would be a month. She got it for me faster. Later the copy from the records office arrived.’
    ‘Do you still have the death certificate?’ Bo asked.
    ‘I have the original one I was given by Baker in my safety-deposit box.’ She opened her handbag and took out her silver makeup compact. From it she withdrew a folded piece of paper, so worn it was falling apart. She gave Joseph a quick glance. ‘I have a copy with me. I’m giving it to Agent Carter right now.’
    Joseph stared at her for a moment before taking the worn piece of paper. ‘It’s a photocopy of a death certificate, Bo. It says Wilson Beckett, gives his date of death as the year before Daphne made the request. There appears to be a seal, looks like it’s raised on the original. It’s signed by the county coroner. Says cause of death is myocardial infarction. Beckett had a heart attack. It looks official.’
    Joseph passed it to McManus, keeping his eyes on Daphne’s face. She wasn’t looking at him and that bothered him.
    ‘We’ll check out the county coroner who signed this,’ McManus said, ‘but I think I recognize the name from other documents from that period. Why do you keep a copy with you, Miss Montgomery?’
    Yeah , Joseph thought. I want to know that too . And why you didn’t mention it when we were talking about this last night .
    Her cheeks had grown flushed with embarrassment and she kept her eyes on her hands. ‘I don’t carry a copy with me all the time. I have nightmares. Most of the time they’re about Beckett. When I wake up I have panic attacks and sometimes I get them in the daytime too. I have various methods of controlling these attacks. When they get really bad, I look at that death certificate to prove to myself he’s really dead. That he was anyway. I’ve got several properties and often decide to sleep at one versus another on short notice. I needed to keep that certificate handy, wherever I was. I hid the copy I kept at the farm in this compact. It was in the makeup bag that Maggie packed for me yesterday. I didn’t know I had it with me until I was putting on my makeup this morning. That’s all.’
    ‘Okay,’ Bo said. ‘We’ll need a description of Baker, if you remember.’
    ‘I’m happy to. It has been twenty years, but I’ll do my best.’ She finally met Joseph’s eyes and he saw apology. She hadn’t wanted to surprise him with the copy of the certificate. He wondered why she had. ‘Can we talk about the gas man now?’
    ‘In just a minute,’ he promised. ‘First we need to figure out who knew you were planning to reveal Beckett to the FBI, because somebody didn’t want you to do it. Beckett himself would have a reason to keep you from talking, but he had no way to know your plans. We have to assume your mail was intercepted by someone. Who would have had access?’
    ‘Nadine, Travis. My tutor. Any of the servants.’
    ‘Hal Lynch, too?’ Joseph asked and she frowned.
    ‘Yes. He was my bodyguard at the time. But he didn’t.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘He wouldn’t, any more than Scott would.’
    ‘Was Scott there?’
    She frowned harder. ‘Yes. Part time, but yes. Part of the agreement my mother and Nadine signed was that I’d have access to horses. It was . . . therapy.’
    ‘For the nightmares?’ Agent Kerr asked kindly.
    ‘Yes. Scott would trailer them up from the estate a few times a week for me to ride. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Nadine. She was hypersensitive to scandal.’
    Joseph remembered Maggie’s story of Ford blackmailing his grandmother. He wondered what the boy had known. He sure as hell planned to ask.
    ‘None of those people are Doug, though,’ Joseph said. ‘At some point Doug intersects with Beckett, but Doug isn’t even thirty. He was a baby when you and Kelly were abducted. Somehow he had to find out about your history with Beckett, and if the woman posing as Baker was the only one you told that has to be the intersection point.’
    ‘What about sons?’ Deacon asked. ‘Does anyone have a son Doug’s age?’
    ‘Hal doesn’t,’ Daphne said firmly. ‘Scott has three, but none of them