Friday
Fiction is hosted this week over on Karlene A. Jacobsen’s blog. If you came
here first, make sure you get over there to find the Linky widget and the other
submissions for your weekend reading pleasure.
Starting
sometime in the next week or two, “Marta’s Pod” will get the professional
editing in preparation for publication. When I first wrote “Cardan’s Pod,” I
finished that story, but the characters just wouldn’t leave me alone. I
immediately launched into writing the sequel, which not only became “Marta’s
Pod,” but also ended up as the longest single story I’ve written to date. At
one time, I considered trying to divide it into two stories, but there were so
many things happening concurrently in that time span of the tale, that any attempt
to make it into two books would inevitably result in spoilers. One book would
reveal key outcomes of the other. I elected to leave it as one book, though I
have pared it down by around 15000 – 20000 words from its peak length.
This
week, I thought it would be fun to post a “teaser,” with the opening events of
the book. This is about five years after the closing events of “Cardan’s Pod.”
Marta’s
Pod
Prologue
Trouble
is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
~
Soren Kierkegaard
Gerald
Lawton removed the mail from the box, and sorted through the stack. The junk
mail was gathered together beneath the important pieces, which included several
bills and statements from insurance companies. An envelope from a County
Recorder was held separate from the other mail, as he stepped back through the
open front door.
He
glanced momentarily at his son. Mark Lawton sat in a wheelchair, silently
watching a television talk show. The young man’s expression revealed nothing of
his thoughts on the program. Mark had the same reaction regardless of what was
on the screen. “You want me to change the channel?” Gerald asked.
Mark
shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I doubt there’s anything better on, anyway.”
He
shook his head. “Up to you,” he said. “You could do something else besides
watching junk.”
“Sure,
Dad. Maybe I’ll go for a run. Oh wait - I can’t. I don’t have any stinkin’
legs.”
I know, son, Gerald thought. You remind me every chance you get, it seems. What happened to the
smiling, upbeat kid we raised? Did they have to amputate your sense of humor
after the accident, too?
Entering
the kitchen, he dropped the junk mail in the recycle bin without slowing his
step, and took the bills to the sorter by the refrigerator. Once his hands were
free, he used his pocket knife to slice open the end of the remaining envelope,
and removed the document inside. He unfolded it, and looked it over as he
reached for his mug of coffee. “Linda?” His hand stopped shy of the cup handle.
“Is
that Mark’s Birth Certificate?”
He
shook his head. “It’s not his.” He handed the document to his wife. “They sent
us one for some gal named Marta Lawton. You’d think they would have checked the
parents’ names and seen that they didn’t match.”
“Gerald?”
She handed the certificate back to him. “They do match. We’re listed as Marta
Lawton’s parents.”
“What?
How?” He read over the form. “This lists Anthony Marcel as the delivering physician,
too, but this one is dated six years after Mark was born. I know we used to
have a copy of Mark’s birth certificate, and everything was correct. Where did
this one come from?”
“I
don’t know.” She turned her head in the direction of the living room. “I would
certainly remember if I’d ever had any other children besides Mark.”
He
slapped the certificate onto the dining table. “I’ll have to call them today,
and get them to send the right certificate. They’d better not charge me for the
correct copy.”
***
A
week. That was all it had taken for what should have been dismissed as a stupid
clerical error to turn into a family crisis. I got a thirty-four year old son acting like his life is over, and now
I have to deal with Linda wondering if I’ve cheated on her, because some
suspicious friend of hers suggested maybe I’d fathered a child with another
woman, and tried to hide it by using her name. I don’t need this stress.
Retirement was supposed to be relaxing.
Gerald
read over the listing of Private Investigators on the computer, and selected
one that specialized in searching for people. This is going to be expensive, I know it, but it’s gotta be cheaper
than a divorce, which is where we’re headed if we don’t figure out who used our
names and why.
Chapter
1
Mothers
are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they
are their own.
~
Aristotle
Linda and Gerald sat on the couch,
facing the Private Investigator over the coffee table. A gap large enough for
another person remained between them, which would not have been as likely
before the suspicions and doubts caused by the wrong certificate.
The investigator looked over the notes
in his hand. “The County Recorder’s Office had no explanation for how you
received the wrong birth certificate in the first place.” He flipped to another
sheet. “Errors of this nature are not supposed to happen. They verified that it
is genuine, though they expressed confusion. About eight years ago, they
changed formats, and while Mark’s certificate is the old style, Marta Lawton’s
is the new. Considering it lists her birth date as almost twenty years before
the new form was even considered, let alone adopted, it suggests this
certificate was issued well after her birth.” He dropped the papers on the coffee
table. “I explored several options on this, not the least of which is that both
of your identities were ‘appropriated’ by someone for whatever reason. The
easiest way to have verified that would have been to talk to Dr. Marcel and
determine if he recalled the parents of Marta Lawton and what they looked like.
Unfortunately, Dr. Marcel was killed in a lab accident almost ten years ago.
However, his former associates all attested to his remarkable memory for names
and faces. If he had strangers claiming to be you, they say he would have known
immediately, especially considering how much time you say you spent with him. I
would say this also tends to rule out that another woman was posing as you,
Mrs. Lawton, since Dr. Marcel would have spotted that as well. He might have
accepted that Gerald had divorced and remarried, but he would have questioned
the coincidence of both wives having the exact same first and middle names.
It’s not impossible, but the likelihood is very slim. I found it odd as well
that, according to one person I spoke with, Dr. Marcel was no longer practicing
obstetrics when Marta Lawton was supposedly born; he was working strictly
research at the time.”
He sat back and folded his hands
together. “I thought maybe Marta Lawton had been a non-entity, created for the
purpose of defrauding the government or something. It wouldn’t be unheard of
for someone to falsify birth records to try and gain some kind of funding for
either their personal or departmental usage. However, no records existed of any
such claims made on her behalf. In fact, I could find no childhood records of Marta Lawton at all. I considered that Marta
Lawton was a new identity created for someone for purposes of hiding,
explaining the lack of any records of her youth. That’s still a possibility,
but in cases like that they usually take the name of someone who died in
infancy, instead of creating a whole new personage. After all, if you’d had a
daughter named Marta who’d died as a baby you wouldn’t be suspicious to find
her birth certificate, would you? Now, finding her marriage license after you’d
thought her dead? That would raise eyebrows. You’ll find a copy of that
particular document in the stack I just gave you.”
He gave them a moment to look it over.
“The pastor who married them would not tell me anything about her either,
claiming confidentiality issues. Whoever she is, she apparently exists and is
now married to Joshua Cardan, a rather wealthy if somewhat reclusive man. He
gets out in public, but he doesn’t play the typical social scene much. I can
find plenty of information about him, including a rather juicy story of his
first wife trying to kill him for his money, and loads of pictures and records
of his life. Marta Lawton Cardan, however, is a phantom. Their marriage license
was issued without her present; no newspaper carried any mention of the
wedding, even though Cardan would certainly merit scrutiny from at least the
local gossip columnists. Marta Lawton Cardan does not have a driver’s license,
though she does have a Social Security number. Even talking with some of
Cardan’s associates, none of them have ever seen Mrs. Cardan, though they
report that Mr. Cardan speaks lovingly of her and seems happier than he’s ever
been.”
“What do we do now?” Gerald leaned back
and crossed his arms.
“Every avenue I tried in contacting
Marta Cardan was closed to me. I tried to find out where they live, but wasn’t
able to get any clear answer. Joshua Cardan owns a number of properties, but he
sold his house soon after the murder attempt. I tried contacting him, but he
refused to take any of my calls. Very shortly thereafter, I was contacted by an
FBI agent who advised me very strongly to drop my investigation. I might have
narrowed down where he lives with a bit more time, but frankly I’m not going to
call the FBI’s bluff on this. If the government’s involved, my hands are tied
and I can’t even really give you advice; however, the number for Joshua
Cardan’s office is in my report in your hands. Maybe if you get this wild idea
to call and tell him you’re his wife’s parents, he might talk to you.”
“But we can’t be his wife’s parents.”
Linda looked from the investigator, to Gerald, and then back. Say something, Gerald. Give me something
reassuring.
The investigator gave them a smile. “My
curtailed investigation was inconclusive, so maybe he doesn’t know whether you
really are or aren’t. If he knows you’re just two people whose names got tagged
onto his wife’s birth certificate, he may talk to you in order to figure out
how to get you to drop this inquiry. Or, he might just talk to you because he
thinks you are his in-laws. The worst that happens is you don’t get anywhere,
in which case you’re in the same boat you’re in right now. But, of course, I
can’t tell you to try anything like that.”
