He had a sudden thought and went down to the garage and unlocked her Mini Cooper. He searched through it and found the RFID card in the console. This should get him into the office okay. He decided he might as well drive her car the short distance to the office rather than firing up his motorcycle. He also searched the car to make sure she hadn’t left the phone in here. But he didn’t find it. He called the phone to see if it had perhaps slipped down between the seat and the console, but he heard no ringing or vibrating.
There were some stains on the front seat that he wiped away with his hand. Tapshaw was not the cleanest or most organized person in the world. When they had ridden over to the bar in her car, he had been in the backseat with Valentine. His feet had been resting on top of mountains of old fast-food containers and used Starbucks coffee cups. And her car’s interior smelled like a Dumpster.
He drove over to the strip of shops where Hummingbird was headquartered. The RFID card did its magic and the door unlocked. He went inside and flicked on the lights. Since Tapshaw had given him a tour through the office he knew the layout.
There was a large, open work area with a dozen computer screens flashing the Hummingbird home page, smartboards on the walls, desks and iPads and stacks of papers and marketing materials and files, copier machines, a water dispenser, a small kitchen and bathroom, and everything else one would normally see in an office.
He knew the cloud that ran the Hummingbird platform was housed elsewhere, because Tapshaw had told him.
Tapshaw’s office was in the back corner. He tried the door, but it was locked. Then he saw the reader port and waved the RFID card in front of it, and the door clicked open.
He turned on the light and looked around at the messy space.
He again had the idea of calling her phone to see if it would ring somewhere in the mounds of all the stuff in here, but it didn’t. She might have it on silent. But he didn’t hear vibrating anywhere, either. The battery might have died for all he knew.
He started to slowly search the space. The woman’s workload was immense, if all the docs he was looking at were an indicator. It was no wonder she looked tired all the time.
He looked through all the file cabinets until he came to one that was locked.
He hesitated and then decided to see if the other key on the ring would open it. He didn’t know why she would lock her phone up in there, but he had seen her rushing around enough times trying to find stuff at the town house. Her car keys had once ended up in the refrigerator for some odd reason.
The key worked and he slid the drawer open. There was a mass of papers in here and some colored files. He moved them out of the way to see if perhaps the phone had slipped down to the bottom when he saw the red file. He slowly pulled it out.
It was from the doctor’s office of Jonathan Wyman, more specifically his clinic for women wanting to undergo artificial insemination.
A stunned Devine slowly opened it and started to read what was inside.
The patient’s name was Sara Elise Ewes.
The procedure was artificial insemination using donor sperm.
Then, written on a Post-it note, was a name: Sperm donor: Dennis Tapshaw.
Jill’s twin brother was the sperm donor for Sara Ewes’s pregnancy?
Devine was so overwhelmed by these revelations that he could barely think.
He turned when he heard the noise behind him.
Jill Tapshaw was standing in the doorway, pointing Devine’s Sig at its owner.
CHAPTER
82
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, Travis?” she demanded.
He let the file drop to the desk. “Looking for your phone. Your mother called. She wanted to reach you. I knew you didn’t have your phone with you at the hospital. I was trying to find it. It wasn’t at—”
She held up her hand. “Just stop, okay? Please, just stop. Who cares about a phone or my mother?” She glanced down at what he had been holding. “Wonderful Dr. Wyman.”
“Who?”
“Don’t pull the stupid act, okay? I’m really tired from sucking in all that gas.”
“Okay. Then let’s talk about this, but not with the gun pointed at me.”
“I told you to drop the stupid act. The gun is going nowhere.”
She seemed like a totally different person now. He also had the impression that perhaps the Jill Tapshaw he thought he knew was an act. Maybe this was the real version.
He picked up the file. “You and Sara were having a baby together?”
“That was the plan. It didn’t end well. But you know that, right?”
“And your brother was the sperm donor?”