“On the surface, Mr. Bell is what he appears to be. He has a thriving legal practice, mostly corporate. He’s a fine lawyer. Being benevolent, he doesn’t advertise that he brokers baby deals. It’s not something he does on a regular basis. From what we can gather, he does it several times a year. Once the deal is done, all the legalities are worked out, and everyone signs off on it, he’s finished. An example is Rachel and Tom Dawson. Mr. Bell brokered their deal. I hate using that particular term, but that’s what it was, a deal. As subsequent events made clear, the babies the surrogates bring to term are nothing more than commodities as far as Mr. Bell is concerned.

“Mr. Bell put the Dawsons in touch with a surrogate, who would conceive a child using Thomas Dawson’s sperm. The Dawsons paid Mr. Bell one hundred thousand dollars. The surrogate had her own attorney, but we can go into that later. Right now we’re just concerned with Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell’s role in the matter was to end the minute the surrogate gave birth and the papers were signed.

“But when the surrogate gave birth to twins, which was not expected, as the second baby hadn’t shown up on the ultrasound, things changed. The surrogate demanded more money for the second child, and the Dawsons didn’t have it. They said they would try to come up with the money. Here is where Mr. Bell entered the picture again, presumably because more money from the Dawsons was involved. The Dawsons took the twins home. They managed to come up with a few thousand extra, but nowhere near what Bell and the surrogate wanted.

“Then the surrogate filed a suit with her own lawyer, saying she’d changed her mind and wanted to keep the twins. Bell bowed out and refused to talk or meet with the Dawsons. Not only couldn’t the Dawsons defend a lawsuit—they were bankrupt—but since they couldn’t come up with the rest of the money, they had to surrender the twins to the birth mother.

“Mrs. Dawson went through what she described to Lizzie as a mini-breakdown. Mr. Dawson wanted to kill someone. The couple’s marriage is suffering because of all this. Then Mrs. Dawson got angry. She pulled up her socks and started to check on things on the Internet. She also spent a lot of time in the park, talking to nannies and young mothers, and came up with another case similar to her own. That’s when she went to Nikki’s firm, and the office manager sent her to Lizzie.”

“Were the Dawsons given back their money by Bell?” Annie asked.

Charles shook his head. “No. Nor did the surrogate give back the monies they paid for her care during her pregnancy. The Dawsons could sue for the money, but they have no funds to work with.”