Gemini Rising (Mischievous Malamute Mystery Series, Book 1) Read online

  “Well, I do,” she huffed, but then laughed. “Let’s get this show on the road—no pun intended.”

  We grabbed the FedEx box and settled on my living room floor. Nicoh thought it was some sort of game, so he situated himself in the middle of the action, which meant across both our laps. Did I mention Nicoh is not a lap dog?

  Anyway, working around said canine, we pulled the documents out and reviewed them one-by-one as Leah took notes. There wasn’t as much in the box as I would have anticipated coming from an organization like UCMC, but it was still a pretty healthy-sized stack. Enough to take us through the end of the afternoon, anyway.

  During that time, we managed to weed through enough standardized hospital forms to uphold my conviction of a child-free existence. If Leah had been on the fence about wanting children, she wasn’t by the time we managed to make it halfway through the stack. It wasn’t all for nothing, however.

  We located the requisite medical insurance forms, which contained employment information that would be useful. Martin Avery Singer, MD/PhD, was a Geneticist, employed by GenTech. Alison Marie Anders, was employed as a Research Assistant of Developmental Biology, Gene Expression and Histopathology at Alcore Ltd.

  Crazy titles aside, one thing was for sure, I found it hard to believe two extremely left-brained individuals—scientists, to boot—managed to produce a severely right-brained photographer. I mean, seriously? If I remembered correctly, Victoria’s undergraduate degree from Columbia had been in Biomedical Sciences, so one out of two wasn’t bad.

  Leah immediately noticed the same thing and commented, “Gosh, if it wasn’t for you, they would have had the ideal gene pool.”

  “Sensitive, Leah, real sensitive,” I replied sarcastically.

  “Sorry, that was bad.” In all honesty, her words hadn’t offended me. I simply had to take the opportunity to yank her chain when the occasion presented itself.

  “There’s the soap, should you feel so inclined.” I pointed to the pump container on the counter.

  “Perhaps I should pace myself,” she retorted. “In the meantime, should I add GenTech and Alcore to my research, to find out what they do and what, specifically, your bios did for them?”

  “Bios?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I figured we could come up with a shortened version of biological parents—a sort of code—to reference them,” she replied.

  “Ahh, gotcha. Bios works for me, but are you sure you haven’t already got enough on your plate? I mean, we haven’t even breached this pile yet.” I gestured to the plethora of documents in front of us.

  “No worries, it might actually help me in researching Martin’s suicide. Might give me another angle, too.”

  We moved on to the medical history forms, which, for our current exercise, contained nothing of merit. Next was the mass of legal documents—living will, things of that nature—you could literally hear the trees crying.

  I was glazing over when Leah commented, “I don’t understand most of this mumbo-jumbo, but have you noticed what all these documents have told us so far?”

  “Do tell,” I responded, eager for even a remote break.

  “Even though Martin Singer and Alison Anders claimed one another as beneficiaries, they weren’t married, nor did they reside in the same location.”

  “So they conceived out of wedlock. Big whoopee.” I had noticed that too, so my response came out a bit more snarky than I’d meant it to.

  “I think it’s interesting. Could be something there.” She pouted.

  I’d hurt her feelings. “No, you are absolutely right. It could tie into the bigger picture. What if they worked for competing companies or something?”

  “Exactly.” She brightened at the thought.

  The legal documentation also included final requests and wills, which is where things got interesting. Martin and Alison had included a legal document that expressed their wishes in the event they both passed. In that document, the Sterling Joy Agency would serve as guardian to any living minor children of the couple upon death.

  As we read through it, I asked, “Do you think this is the standard procedure, to give something like this to the hospital?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they provided it because neither had family,” she replied as she wrote on her notepad. I nodded, and we continued reading through the pages, which from both of our expressions, were above both of our legalese-comprehension levels. The last page was signed by Martin and Alison; the Sterling Joy Agency representative, Mavis Baumgardner; a witness named Sophie Allen and finally, the lawyer, Jonathan Silverton.

  We looked at one another for a long moment before Leah broke the silence, “Silverton seems to keep popping up all over the place, doesn’t he?”

  “You’ve got that right,” I responded. “I hope Anna can track down some more info for us because there was definitely something fishy going on with him ...and the Baumgardners.”

  “No doubt.”

  “No doubt, indeed.”

  We made our way through the rest of the legal documents without finding anything that sparked our interest. Next were Alison’s medical records, charts, etc. while she had been admitted, which I allowed Leah to review. Apparently, reading medical records was a skill she’d picked up during her reporting assignments. Uh, yeah. Let’s just leave it at that.

  According to Leah—who paraphrased the documents—Alison had arrived at the hospital late on June 18 with contractions and gave birth to twin girls in the wee hours of June 19. As they were several weeks premature, the twins were placed in intensive care, but were doing fine. Though exhausted, Alison was also resting comfortably. Three hours after giving birth, she complained of chest pains. Minutes later, she went into cardiac arrest, but the hospital staff was unable to revive her. Alison was officially declared dead three and a half hours after she had given birth to her daughters. Someone had noted the father was not present when she had expired. A signed death certificate was enclosed, in which the cause of death was listed as heart failure. End of story. Like I said, Leah had been paraphrasing. I was certain she had done so for my benefit.

  We looked at the next set of documents, which included the twins’ medical charts, progress reports, etc. as they stayed on in the hospital. Pretty much what you’d expect until we reached the release forms. The documents indicated a change of guardianship had occurred during their stay. As per the request of Martin and Alison, the Sterling Joy Agency had taken guardianship of the twins, as both parents were deceased at the time. Enclosed was a second death certificate bearing Martin’s name. The official cause of death was listed as suicide by drowning, dated five days prior to the change of guardianship. Martin Singer had taken his life less than two weeks after the birth of his daughters and the death of the mother of his children.

  While the situation seemed to become more disturbing and confusing with each document we read, something in particular had been nagging at me.

  “When Alison arrived at the hospital, she couldn’t have known she would be giving birth prematurely—the contractions had come on quickly, without warning—yet she and Martin had all the adoption documentation ready to go. It’s almost like they already knew they wouldn’t be alive to care for their children.” Leah shrugged in response, as though there was nothing that would have surprised her.

  We continued sifting through the last of the items in the box. At this point, it was mostly notes and follow-up documentation—cover-your-booty type of stuff. One thing that caught my eye was the billing statement. Even with today’s prices, you could have bought a house and furnished it with the amount that had been due. However, the most intriguing thing about the bill wasn’t the total. It was that Martin’s company, GenTech, had paid the balance in full.

  When I pointed it out to Leah, the look on her face spoke volumes. Maybe there was something left that could surprise her after all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Leah was called back to the office. How she was able to be absent from her job fo
r extended periods of time was beyond me. When I asked, all I got in response was a mumbled “external research.” I sighed. Leah was a big girl and could handle herself.

  I looked at the little pig pen we’d made in the middle of the living room floor and decided I’d better get the papers cleaned up before Nicoh went tromping across them. He was currently dozing beyond the periphery of the mess. He’d had a hard afternoon—napping—after all. I marveled at how he could manage to sleep so much. Honestly, I was a bit jealous.

  As I reorganized, I found the Sterling Joy guardianship documentation, which made me think—not once had I seen a reference to Martin and Alison’s request. The one where Victoria and I were to be adopted by separate parties. In fact, we only had the Baumgardner’s word for it.

  I plopped the repacked FedEx box on the counter, the envelope from Suzy catching my eye. In my excitement over Cheryl’s delivery, I’d forgotten all about it. I looked at the handwritten address again, only this time I noticed the sender’s error. It was addressed using my name, but the street number was off by one house—no wonder it had erroneously been delivered to Suzy. Perhaps I was getting that trip to the Bahamas after all, I chuckled as I ripped the flap.

  The envelope contained a single photo of several unfamiliar faces enjoying themselves at what appeared to be a holiday party. There wasn’t anything written on the back, though the photo lab had graciously stamped their proprietary information in multiple places. I laughed, it appeared the envelope had been meant for Suzy all along. Surely these people were her friends or family. I picked up my cell phone to call her when it rang. Leah’s exuberant voice filled my ear as I answered.

  “You were right,” she cheered, nearly bursting my eardrum in the process, “GenTech and Alcore were competitors. Both were into genetic engineering. You know, messing around with genes by introducing new DNA?”

  “Uh, yeah, how very Wikipedia of you. Anyway, assuming I understand that, go on,” I urged.

  “Well, remember how scientists cloned that sheep back in the late 1990s?”

  “Vaguely,” I replied, seriously hoping this wasn’t going to be a science lesson. It hadn’t been one of my stronger subjects.

  “GenTech and Alcore were involved in genetic mutation long before that—specifically with regards to cloning—only they bypassed Mary’s little lamb and went directly to Mary.”

  “Are you telling me they were able to clone humans nearly thirty years ago? Almost fifteen years before the sheep was cloned?” Now things were getting interesting.

  “More like attempting to clone humans, but yes, they definitely preceded the sheep. Anyway, GenTech and Alcore were both privately funded, sometimes by the same benefactors. This created a hugely adversarial relationship between the two companies,” Leah explained.

  “Whoever led the human cloning race received the bulk of the funds,” I added.

  “Exactly,” she confirmed. “Of course, even back then, cloning was controversial, so they concealed their efforts behind other projects—the ones promoted to the public. Again, the more progress a company made, the greater the assistance they received from the benefactors.”

  “Where do Martin Singer and Alison Anders play into this?” I asked.

  “Martin was one of five scientists on the human cloning project at GenTech and Alison was the lead researcher on the same project at Alcore,” she replied.

  “Wow, that’s a serious conflict of interest—which explains why they couldn’t come out as a couple—it was probably outlined in their contracts, in triplicate. Both of them could have been terminated if their respective companies had found out about their relationship.”

  “Interesting choice of words,” Leah mused. “Perhaps they had to give up their first-born children and then they were terminated.”

  “Oh my gosh, Leah—do you know what you are suggesting?” I growled at her.

  “Calm down, it’s not like it hadn’t occurred to you.”

  “True,” I bristled, my voice several pitches calmer. “I hadn’t said it out loud though—that Martin’s and Alison’s deaths were related to the adoptions.”

  “Well, I apologize for being insensitive,” she said sincerely, “but now that it’s out there, here’s the real question—were you and Victoria adopted through Sterling Joy because your bios were both dead? Or, did your bios already have to be dead in order for you to be adopted?

  “While I’m on a roll, let me add more food for thought. I also researched Martin’s suicide. According to witnesses, he walked off the Skyway Bridge on the morning of July 1 during rush hour.” She paused to allow me to reflect on the fact Martin Singer had taken his life by jumping off a bridge.

  “Though his body was never recovered, based upon the eyewitness’ accounts, the location where he went in and the condition of the water, he was officially declared dead and a death certificate subsequently issued. No note was ever found in his apartment or at the lab.”

  Leah paused again, before adding, “You know, he could have simply been distraught over Alison’s death and overwhelmed by the prospect of raising twins alone. Of course, no one would have known about either because he and Alison had been careful to keep their lives separate.”

  “Someone knew. GenTech footed Alison’s hospital bill,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, there’s that,” she replied.

  “So, what happened to the project after Martin’s death?” I asked.

  “Interestingly, it immediately fizzled, but not only for GenTech. Within a month, Alcore went out of business altogether. They had essentially put too many eggs in one basket. No pun intended. GenTech, on the other hand, elected to put their focus elsewhere, claiming the timing wasn’t right for human cloning. They are still in the game today, mostly doing medical research, stuff of that nature, but they are nowhere near the industry giant they once were.”

  “It’s almost as though the opportunity slipped through their fingers thirty years ago,” I reflected. “Kind of coincidental, don’t you think?”

  “I guess it depends. Do you believe in coincidences?”

  Chapter Twenty

  After talking with Leah, I decided to check in with Abe, Elijah and Anna to see how things were going on their end and at the same time, fill them in on what Leah and I had discovered. I hadn’t had a chance to find out how she’d gotten that last bit of research so quickly. Leah likely would have claimed trade secrets, which I could have easily gotten her to divulge with a batch of my white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, but perhaps it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.

  Anna put me on speakerphone and I began by telling them the medical records from UCMC had arrived, which elicited raucous cheers.

  “Nice work, AJ,” Elijah exclaimed.

  “Cheryl Earley is the one we should be throwing a parade for,” I chuckled at their enthusiasm, “but if you like that, then you’ll like what Leah and I found in the documents.”

  I proceeded to tell them everything we’d learned, from the guardianship document to the details of Alison’s medical records. From there, I explained how Martin and Alison had worked for competing genetics firms while managing to keep their relationship secret, how both companies were involved in human cloning projects that were privately funded by similar benefactors and how the projects fizzled, and the money dried up after Martin and Alison had died, ultimately, putting one out of business while forcing the other to pursue alternate projects. And finally, how Martin’s company footed Alison’s entire hospital bill.

  “Wow, you got all of that—from medical records?” Abe asked.

  “Well, from that and the research Leah managed to scrounge up afterward,” I replied.

  “Shoot, that girl works fast. Maybe we should offer her a job?” Elijah said, only halfway joking.

  “After this, she might need one. I’m not exactly sure how she’s getting the info, but her editor is going to catch on sooner or later.”

  “For the sake of this case, let’s hope it’s later,” Abe a
dded. “But after that, let her know we’d like to talk.”

  I laughed. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”

  “In the meantime,” Anna gracefully shifted gears, “we should fill you in on what we’ve discovered the past couple of days.”

  “Absolutely, let’s do it,” I replied, thoroughly excited to hear what they’d learned. I wished Leah was on the call. She would have loved this. I mentally kicked myself for failing to think of that earlier, but made a note for the next time.

  “Actually, your research filled in one of our blanks,” Elijah began. “When we dug into Sterling Joy’s background, we found they were owned by a genetics firm by the name of GenTech. At the time, it didn’t mean much, but when you told us they were Martin Singer’s employer, a piece of the puzzle fell into place.”

  “GenTech owned the Sterling Joy Agency?” I asked as another thought rumbled around in my brain. “Wait…that means GenTech undoubtedly would have already known about Martin and Alison’s relationship before Victoria and I were born.”

  “It certainly appears that way, doesn’t it?” Abe agreed, then pressed forward, “We also believe Silverton was Sterling Joy’s inside man. We aren’t completely sure how the whole thing worked, but he typically served as the lawyer for both sides of the adoption. We think the Baumgardners recommended him and encouraged the adoptive parents to utilize his services as a means of ensuring the adoption went smoothly. If this was the case, the Baumgardners essentially used the adoptive parents’ insecurities—knowing they wouldn’t risk losing the opportunity to have a child—to successfully cover their own bases.”

  “What about Silverton’s other clients?” I asked, still reeling from what I’d heard.

  “Regardless of what the man told his wife, we couldn’t find any,” Abe responded.

  “So, what happened to the Baumgardners?”

  “They disappeared into thin air. We haven’t found a trace of them since they closed the agency. We think Silverton’s files went wherever they did,” Elijah said.