CHAPTER 41 - Cedar Creek, Nevada Thursday, August 1, 2024

CHAPTER 41

Cedar Creek, Nevada Thursday, August 1, 2024

SLOAN’S HEART FLUTTERED AND A WAVE OF HEAT COURSED THROUGH her body, bringing with it a spell of dizziness. She held onto the car door for support.

“You . . .” Her eyes squinted to slivers. “You gave me up for adoption?”

“I ain’t proud of it,” the woman said, still standing on the other side of the Mazda. “I tried to hide from the guilt by telling myself that all’s I did was help a baby find loving parents. But part of me knew something was wrong with the whole thing. Over the years I told that part of myself that even if the baby had been taken, you know, from her actual parents, that she wouldn’t know no difference—she’d still be loved. I never had parents who loved me when I was growing up. So I convinced myself I wasn’t really hurting you none. You were still gonna be loved by that couple who wanted a baby so bad. I seen ’em on the news this morning—Dolly and Todd. Still remember their names.”

The woman wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

“Anyway, I tried real hard to believe the lie I told myself. That I hadn’t done nothin’ wrong. I needed the money so bad back then. Hell, I’d have believed anything I told myself.”

“How did you find me?”

“Back then?”

“No—well that, too. But start with today. How did you find me here, in Cedar Creek?”

“Story’s all over the news. Plus, I follow the Unsolved podcast and Ryder Hillier was the one who first broke the story ’bout baby Charlotte turning up after nearly thirty years. I’d heard the story before. I mean, everybody knew about it when it happened. But I never put it together ’til I heard the lady’s name who put you up for adoption.”

“Wendy Downing.”

“Yeah. That’s the name the lawyer told me to use.”

Sloan blinked and worked to understand what this woman was telling her. “You’re Wendy Downing?”

“No, I’m Margot Gray. But in 1995 a lawyer named Guy Menendez paid me ten grand to pretend my name was Wendy Downing so that he could, what he told me at the time, make sure a little girl was adopted by a couple who deserved her.”

Sloan looked around the quiet cul-de-sac and finally shut off her engine and closed her car door.

“How did you track me down here in Cedar Creek?”

“Got a friend who’s good with computers. He hacked into the system or, I don’t know, whatever he did, and figured out that you rented this house. He knew the dates and everything. So, I figured I’d sit on your porch ’til you showed up.”

If this woman could find her, Sloan knew it wouldn’t be long before Ryder Hillier and the rest of the press corps showed up. She hoped she had at least enough time to hear Margot Gray’s story.

“Let’s talk inside.”

A few minutes later Sloan and Margot sat in the kitchen nook.

“Start from the beginning,” Sloan said. “How did you meet Guy Menendez?”

“I was twenty-three years old in 1995 and working at a diner in Mobile.”

“Alabama?”

“Yeah. I started seeing this guy come into the restaurant every morning. He always sat in my area. He was real nice and polite and always left big tips. I thought he was maybe gonna ask me out or something, but he never did. Instead, he asked if I’d do him a favor.”

Sloan listened intently. “What was the favor?”

“He told me he was a lawyer. Gave me a business card and everything. Said he worked for an adoption agency and that there was a problem with one of the adoptions he was overseeing. He was having trouble cutting through red tape to get this one baby to a couple that wanted her. He told me he needed me to watch the baby for a couple of months until he could organize the adoption. Offered me fifteen grand to do it. And another ten if I’d pose as the baby’s mother when the adoption went through. Back then . . . I mean, hell, even today, that was a lot of money. And I needed it real bad. So I told him I’d do it.”

“So you took care of me?”

“Yeah, for ’bout four months ’til he could get the adoption finalized.”

“What happened after four months?”

“To make the adoption legit, he needed to take some pictures of me and show them to the couple who wanted to adopt the baby. So he snapped some pictures while I stood in front of a white background. Couple of weeks later we met again, and he showed me a driver’s license and passport with my picture on it. But not my name. The name on the IDs was Wendy Downing. He told me that for my protection I had to hide my real identity during the adoption process. ’Course, this got me nervous. And suspicious. Like, maybe the whole thing wasn’t as legit as I thought. But when he gave me the passport and driver’s license with that fake lady’s name on ’em, he also gave me another five grand. He’d get me the rest after we were finished.”

Sloan saw Margot Gray look up at the ceiling. Tears welled in her eyes again.

“I knew I was doing something wrong, but I felt trapped. After I took the first half of the money, I felt . . . I don’t know, obligated or something, to go through with it. After I met the couple who wanted to adopt you, I told myself there were worse things in the world than helping a nice couple find a baby to love. I just sort of blocked out thoughts about where Mr. Menendez had gotten you from. Blocked out the idea that you might have already belonged to loving parents.”

“When was this?” Sloan asked. “When you first met the attorney?”

“July of ’95. I remember the date ’cause it was my birthday the first time we talked. It wasn’t until November that we actually went through with the adoption. In September and October of that year, I met the couple who was gonna adopt you. We met twice for lunch, and I asked them a bunch of questions that Mr. Menendez wrote out for me, sort of like I was interviewing them.”

Sloan slowly cocked her head. “I was . . . with you? When you met that couple?”

“Yeah,” Margot said with a shrug. “I was supposed to be your mom, so ’course you were with me.”

Sloan swallowed hard. She urged herself to think clearly, like she was back in the cadaver lab in medical school following the route a cranial nerve took through the brain. She forced herself to focus and get past the flood of adrenaline that came with somehow stumbling over what was certainly the biggest break in the case in decades.

“And you had no idea how Mr. Menendez originally gained custody of me?”

“No. Other than that he said he worked for an adoption agency.”

“So how did you figure it out? That I was baby Charlotte Margolis?”

“I didn’t back then. I never put two and two together. I remember that family going missing. Their story was all over the tabloids. But the way the news media told it, the entire family disappeared. I never thought what I was doing for Mr. Menendez was related to the missing Margolis family. After it was over, I took the money and got far away from Mobile. Tried to forget about the whole thing. But I couldn’t. At first it really bothered me, and I became depressed about what I’d done. Even thought about going to the cops. Couple years went by and the guilt sort of faded. For a while I even thought it was gone. But that type of guilt never goes away. It just sort of becomes part of you. Then, the other day, I turned on my podcast lady, Ryder Hillier, and she broke this story about baby Charlotte from the nineties who had just resurfaced after being missing for nearly thirty years. Then I heard the name of the woman who had put baby Charlotte up for adoption—Wendy Downing.”

Margot shrugged.

“That’s when I put it all together and knew I needed to find you. I needed to tell you the truth ’bout what I’d done.”

“This man, Guy Menendez. The attorney. Do you know any more about him?”

“A little. He’s kept in touch over the years. Every couple of years I hear from him. Even if I move to a different state, and I’ve done that a lot, he somehow finds me.”

“Finds you how?”

“Sometimes it’s just a phone call. Sometimes he shows up in person to ask how I’m doing. He’s helped me out with money a few times.”

Sloan noticed that her fingers and hands were cold, as if all her blood had redirected to her cerebral cortex as she tried to understand what was happening. Guy Menendez, she suddenly knew, was the missing piece of the puzzle she’d been looking for. And Margot Gray was the link to him.

“When was the last time you spoke with him?”

“’Bout a year ago. He gave me his cell number in case I ever needed anything.”

“Would you share his number with me?”

Margot shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

She dug in her purse until she found her phone, then swiped the screen to pull up the number. She pushed the phone over to Sloan. Sloan glanced at the screen and saw that it was a 530 area code. The same area code as Aunt Nora.

Guy Menendez was in Harrison County. Guy Menendez was probably in Cedar Creek.