Tell Me Who I Am by Marcia Muller

Author:Marcia Muller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

Ramona Pitts had given me a list of addresses where she thought other members of her family could be found, but they were all at a distance, and it was getting on toward midafternoon. So I went back to the airport, got the overnight kit I always carry in the plane’s baggage compartment, and checked into the tidy-looking Shady Grove motel. I updated my office on my whereabouts by e-mail, then lay back on the bed to think over the bits and pieces I’d gleaned about Pamela Stanton’s disappearance.

Mr. Stanton was this big, easygoing guy. But that morning he seemed kind of nervous.

He kept asking Mrs. Stanton if Pamela was ready.

Why would a kid be dressed up when it’s just supposed to be an ordinary day playing around the house?

…mobile-health unit for tests on her thyroid…

I got up and went to my laptop. Googled hospitals and found the number of the Colusa Regional Medical Center. The switchboard directed my inquiry to a Mr. Henry in administration. He was friendly and helpful, saying, “Let me see if I can access the information you need. Thanks to a generous benefactor, we have a new automated system, and our volunteers have put records on it that go back many years.” Tippety-tapping of a keyboard.

“Yes, here it is,” Mr. Henry said. “We still use the same mobile-health testing company as we did in the period you’re asking about.”

He read off the phone number and gave me a contact name, Felicia Parr.

The mobile-health firm put me through to Ms. Parr with a minimum of delay.

God, I thought, how pleasant it is to be operating in this kind of environment instead of the urban areas, where every request is met with suspicion!

Felicia Parr also had a fully automated system. There had been no mobile unit testing for the thyroid in Colusa on the date I asked her about.

I lay back on the bed again.

The Stantons—father and mother—had gone somewhere on the day their daughter Pamela vanished. But not their stated destination.

…dressed up…

For a while afterwards we seemed to have more money than usual…

I reached for my folder on the case, turned to the newspaper clippings with the two-year-old’s photo. She had been an exceptionally pretty child. The word “marketable” came to mind.

Back to the laptop. For a few minutes I couldn’t come up with an appropriate term for what I was looking for. “Adoption.” No, I needed to refine it. “Adoption agencies.” Too broad a category, and there were thousands of them.

What about private adoption? That was what mine had been. It was a perfectly legal method of placing an unwanted infant or even an older child in the home of a family who did want her or him. Or an infant such as I had been, whose mother couldn’t care for her and relinquished her to distant relatives who could.

But the case of Pamela Stanton didn’t have the feel of either category.

An illegal adoption? What else did they call that?

Black-market adoption.

My fingers were flying over the keyboard now.

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