Crooks and Nannies, is an intricately woven detective-thriller that begins in the sleepy southern Illinois village of Warrentown - at a time when Shelby and Rob, high-school sweethearts, realize they have made a mistake - and ends in Omaha where nearly everyone comes sooner or later.
In penance for his part of the crime, Rob is sent away in a new Corvette to finish college and upon graduation to assume a well-paying position in his father’s bank. Shelby, denied the role of motherhood at that time, and for all times, her baby adopted away at birth, her uterus damaged in the process, ran off with another boy.
While things went well for Rob, they took a downturn for Shelby. She and Taylor, her new boyfriend, whom she never did quite come to love, worked the parking lots of truck stops that sat along I-80, across Iowa. Her title: “Whore,” did nothing for their relationship, but it did provide steady income until Shelby changed careers and became a nanny.
Hired by “Network Nannies,” Shelby began stealing small jewelry items and change from the homes of those where she worked. She got the idea she would case the homes and Taylor would rob them. It sounded like a good plan until they got caught and were run out of Iowa City by a very disgruntled father.
Shelby then started working for Marshall and Trudy, owners of a five-star restaurant, “The Marshall’s Office,” watching their five-year old son Tanner. Shelby was sure her lost child had been a girl, but when instantly seeing the resemblance between Tanner and Rob, she snooped, as thieves often do, and found adoption papers stowed away at the back of Trudy’s closet that told that Tanner was first hers.
Things start going a little south in Warrentown after Rob puts together his two’s and realizes his father, Robert, is actually his stepfather, and the one who chased away his birth father, and also the one to foster the adoption of his and Shelby’s child. Further investigation reveals that Robert supports a black-market baby adoption service, “Heavenly Blessings,” by giving illegal loans to prospective parents who purchase their bundles-of-joy using the “special placement plan” that the agency provides.
Reading private papers, he finds in Robert’s desk, Rob learns who is real father is, who the adoptive parents of his child are, and that his stepfather is a murderer. He goes to meet his birth father and his child’s adoptive parents to ask them to testify against Robert in an attempt to bring down the illegal baby sales market.
Meanwhile, Shelby plans to kidnap Tanner. She gets Taylor to agree and then later changes her mind, but is surprised when Taylor says he’s going through with it anyway. At the open house, celebrating the tenth-year for Marshall and Trudy’s restaurant, Shelby is shot trying to protect Tanner, while a policeman, unaware of what is going on at the time, who is having dinner with his soon-to-be fiancée, responds when shots are fired.
Included in this tangle of suspense is a pregnant young hooker named Scarlet, a cop named Charlie Davidson, Field Agent #3 (a man who procures newborns for the illegal adoption agency), crack-heads, murderers, friends and loved ones of all the above, and two young children. Some lives end, while others take on new meaning, and all become intertwined within a complex relationship that shouts how small the world really is and whispers of sex, power, violence, and murder, when it all threatens to unravel.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
In penance for his part of the crime, Rob is sent away in a new Corvette to finish college and upon graduation to assume a well-paying position in his father’s bank. Shelby, denied the role of motherhood at that time, and for all times, her baby adopted away at birth, her uterus damaged in the process, ran off with another boy.
While things went well for Rob, they took a downturn for Shelby. She and Taylor, her new boyfriend, whom she never did quite come to love, worked the parking lots of truck stops that sat along I-80, across Iowa. Her title: “Whore,” did nothing for their relationship, but it did provide steady income until Shelby changed careers and became a nanny.
Hired by “Network Nannies,” Shelby began stealing small jewelry items and change from the homes of those where she worked. She got the idea she would case the homes and Taylor would rob them. It sounded like a good plan until they got caught and were run out of Iowa City by a very disgruntled father.
Shelby then started working for Marshall and Trudy, owners of a five-star restaurant, “The Marshall’s Office,” watching their five-year old son Tanner. Shelby was sure her lost child had been a girl, but when instantly seeing the resemblance between Tanner and Rob, she snooped, as thieves often do, and found adoption papers stowed away at the back of Trudy’s closet that told that Tanner was first hers.
Things start going a little south in Warrentown after Rob puts together his two’s and realizes his father, Robert, is actually his stepfather, and the one who chased away his birth father, and also the one to foster the adoption of his and Shelby’s child. Further investigation reveals that Robert supports a black-market baby adoption service, “Heavenly Blessings,” by giving illegal loans to prospective parents who purchase their bundles-of-joy using the “special placement plan” that the agency provides.
Reading private papers, he finds in Robert’s desk, Rob learns who is real father is, who the adoptive parents of his child are, and that his stepfather is a murderer. He goes to meet his birth father and his child’s adoptive parents to ask them to testify against Robert in an attempt to bring down the illegal baby sales market.
Meanwhile, Shelby plans to kidnap Tanner. She gets Taylor to agree and then later changes her mind, but is surprised when Taylor says he’s going through with it anyway. At the open house, celebrating the tenth-year for Marshall and Trudy’s restaurant, Shelby is shot trying to protect Tanner, while a policeman, unaware of what is going on at the time, who is having dinner with his soon-to-be fiancée, responds when shots are fired.
Included in this tangle of suspense is a pregnant young hooker named Scarlet, a cop named Charlie Davidson, Field Agent #3 (a man who procures newborns for the illegal adoption agency), crack-heads, murderers, friends and loved ones of all the above, and two young children. Some lives end, while others take on new meaning, and all become intertwined within a complex relationship that shouts how small the world really is and whispers of sex, power, violence, and murder, when it all threatens to unravel.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
