A car was parked in front, and they pulled up behind it and walked to the front porch that spanned the front of the house.
It took several moments for them to hear movement inside after they knocked. Finally an old woman opened the door. She looked to be in her late seventies, with wispy gray hair and a lined face. She was wearing slippers and a faded housedress.
“I’m not buying anything,” she said as she stared through the screen door at the man and woman on the porch. “And I’m not interested in any religious lectures.”
Stephanie shook her head. “We’re not selling or preaching. Are you Mrs. Dubour?”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to talk to you about your son, David.”
She stiffened. “What about him?”
“We’re staying at Mrs. Marcos’ bed and breakfast, and we were talking to her this morning. She told us that you were treated at the Solomon Clinic before David was born.”
“What about it?”
“Our mothers were both treated at the same clinic, and we wanted to find out what you knew.”
Her expression had become less hostile as she listened to Stephanie speak. “I guess you’d better come in,” she said.
Craig let out the breath he’d been holding as the older woman stepped aside. They followed her into a small, neat sitting roomfurnished in old maple pieces and a bulky sofa and overstuffed chairs.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing toward the sofa.
They sat, and she took one of the chairs opposite, where she watched them with speculative interest.
“You say your mothers went to the same clinic that I did?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“It goes back to my twin brother’s being killed by mobsters in a restaurant when I was eight.”
The old woman sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m so sorry.”
“After Sam died, I remember hearing my mother trying to contact someone at the Solomon Clinic, but it was already closed by then.”
“She wanted to have another child?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Weren’t there other clinics she could have gone to?”
“Maybe she only had faith in Dr. Solomon.”
“Yes, he had a way of projecting strength and reassurance.”
Stephanie got back to the original question. “We looked through some of my mother’s papers and found literature and application forms from the clinic.”
“And how did the two of you get together?” Mrs. Dubour asked.
“I got some information on who might have caused my brother’s death. I came down to New Orleans to investigate and found Stephanie,” Craig explained, giving an abbreviated version of how they’d happened to hook up.
The old woman looked from one of them to the other. “Did you think it was odd that the two of you ended up meeting each other?”
“I wasn’t thinking about it,” Craig said.
