“Does she have a chance of winning?” Peggy asked timidly.
“I’m afraid she does. She’s very persuasive. She had some of us convinced.”
“There must be something we can do,” Marc exclaimed. “What about bringing the police in on this?”
“Fitzgerald says they’re already looking into the disappearance of the body, and they’ve come to a dead end. No pun intended,” Tyler said. “What’s more, the police want this kept quiet, or they’ll have every weirdo in town turning up a body.”
“We can ask them to investigate this phony!”
Tyler shook his head. “This is not a police matter. It’s a private—” He stopped for a moment, then said thoughtfully, “You know…”
“What?”
“We could hire a private investigator to try to expose her.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Do you know one?”
“No, not locally. But we could ask Fitzgerald to find someone. Or…” He hesitated. “I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard about a private detective the district attorney in Chicago uses a great deal. He has an excellent reputation.”
Marc spoke up. “Why don’t we find out if we can hire him?”
Tyler looked around. “That’s up to the rest of you.”
“What can we lose?” Kendall asked.
“He could be expensive,” Tyler warned.
Woody snorted. “Expensive? We’re talking about millions of dollars.”
Tyler nodded. “Of course. You’re right.”
“What’s his name?”
Tyler frowned. “I can’t remember. Simpson…Simmons…No, that’s not it. It sounds something like that. I can call the district attorney’s office in Chicago.”
The group watched as Tyler picked up the telephone on the console and dialed a number. Two minutes later, he was speaking to an assistant district attorney. “This is Judge Tyler Stanford. I understand that your office retains a private detective from time to time who does excellent work for you. His name is something like Simmons or—”
The voice on the other end said, “Oh, you must mean Frank Timmons.”
“Timmons! Yes, that’s it.” Tyler looked at the others and smiled. “I wonder if you could give me his telephone number so I can contact him directly?”
After he wrote down the telephone number, Tyler replaced the receiver.
He turned to the group, and said, “Well, then, if we all agree, I’ll try to reach him.”
Everyone nodded.
The following afternoon, Clark came into the drawing room, where the group was waiting. “Mr. Timmons is here.”
He was a man in his forties, with a pale complexion and the solid build of a boxer. He had a broken nose and bright, inquisitive eyes. He looked from Tyler to Marc to Woody, questioningly. “Judge Stanford?”
Tyler nodded. “I’m Judge Stanford.”
“Frank Timmons,” he said.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Timmons.”
“Thank you.” He sat down. “You’re the one who telephoned, right?”
“Yes.”
“To be honest, I don’t know what I can do for you. I don’t have any official connections here.”
“This is purely unofficial,” Tyler assured him. “We merely want to trace the background of a young woman.”
“You told me on the phone she claims to be your half sister, and there’s no way of running a DNA test.”
“That’s right,” Woody said.
He looked at the group. “And you don’t believe she’s your half sister?”
There was a moment’s hesitation.
“We don’t,” Tyler told him. “On the other hand, it’s just possible that she is telling the truth. What we want to hire you to do is provide irrefutable evidence that she is either genuine or a fraud.”
“Fair enough. It will cost you a thousand dollars a day and expenses.”
Tyler said, “A thousand…?”
“We’ll pay it.” Woody cut in.
“I’ll need all the information you have on this woman.”
Kendall said, “There doesn’t seem to be very much.”
Tyler spoke up. “She has no proof of any kind. She came in with a lot of stories that she says her mother told her about our childhood, and—”
He held up a hand. “Hold it. Who was her mother?”
“Her purported mother was a governess we had as children named Rosemary Nelson.”
“What happened to her?”
They looked at one another uncomfortably.
Woody spoke up. “She had an affair with our father and got pregnant. She ran away and had a baby girl.” He shrugged. “She disappeared.”