Two Little Girls in Blue

  “Angie, this is crazy. We’ve got to pack up and get out of here.”

  “No we don’t. That would be the worst thing we could do. You have to write a letter to the manager of the club, whoever the new guy is, and say you’ve been offered a year-round job in Florida, and that you’re giving notice. If you just disappear, they’ll wonder what happened.”

  “Angie, I know how the feds work. Right now they’re trying to find anyone who ever had contact with Lucas. Maybe this number is in his address book.”

  “Don’t give me that. He never called you or let you phone him when you were talking about doing one of your ‘business’ ventures unless you were both on prepaid cell phones.”

  “Angie, if either one of us left just one fingerprint in that car, it could come up in the feds’ database.”

  “You wore gloves when you stole that car, gloves when you drove Lucas’s car back to his place. Anyhow, even if they find some, we’ve both disappeared. You’ve been known as Clint Downes for a good fifteen years. So stop, stop, stop!”

  Kathy had been almost asleep. As Angie’s voice rose, she slid down from Angie’s lap and stood looking up at both of them.

  In an abrupt change of mood, Angie said, “I swear Stevie is getting to look just like me, Clint. You must have done a pretty good job with the steam. She doesn’t seem so choked up. But I’ll keep the vaporizer going all night. And she did eat some cereal, so I guess that’ll keep her going.”

  “Angie, she needs real medicine.”

  “I can take care of that if I have to.” Angie did not tell Clint that she had rummaged in the bathroom cabinet and found a couple of penicillin tablets and cough medicine from when Clint had that lousy bronchitis attack last year. She’d started Kathy on the cough medicine. If that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll open the pills and dilute them, she thought. Penicillin cures just about everything.

  “Why did you have to go and say that I’d meet Gus tonight? I’m half-dead. I don’t want to go out.”

  “You have to go because that pain-in-the-neck needs somebody to bore to death. This way you get rid of him. You can even tell him that you’re going to take another job. Just don’t have a couple of beers and start crying for your pal Lucas.”

  Kathy turned and was walking toward the bedroom. Angie got up to follow her and watched as Kathy pulled the blanket from the crib, wrapped herself in it, and lay down on the floor.

  “Listen, baby, if you’re tired, you have a crib to crash in,” Angie snapped. She picked up the unresisting child and cradled her. “Does Stevie love Mommy, hmmmm?”

  Kathy closed her eyes and turned her head away. Angie shook her. “Being I’m so nice to you, I’m getting sick and tired of the way you treat me, and don’t you dare start that double-talk again.”

  The sudden piercing sound of the doorbell made Angie go rigid. Maybe Clint was right. Maybe the feds did trace him through Lucas, she thought, paralyzed with fear.

  Through the partially open door, she heard Clint moving with slow, heavy steps across the living room, followed by the sound of the door opening. “Hello, Clint, old buddy. Thought I’d pick you up and save you the trouble of driving. You can tell Angie, I promise, it’ll be a two-beer night for me.” It was the booming voice of Gus the plumber.

  He suspects something is fishy, Angie thought angrily. He did hear the two kids crying, and now he’s checking us out. Making a quick decision, she tucked the blanket around Kathy, allowing only the back of her head with its short brown hair to show, and stepped into the living room.

  “Hi, Gus,” she said.

  “Angie, hi. Is this the kid you’re minding?”

  “Yeah. This is Stevie. He’s the one you heard crying last night. His folks are at a family funeral in Wisconsin. They’ll be back tomorrow. I love the little guy, but I’m ready to get some sleep.” With a firm hand under the blanket, she kept Kathy from turning her head and letting Gus see her face.

  “See you later, Angie,” Clint said, edging Gus toward the door.

  Angie could see that Gus’s pickup was in front of the cottage. Which means that he came through the back gate, using the code. Which means that anytime he gets the idea to drop in, he’ll do it. “Bye, have a good time,” she said as the door closed behind them.

  She watched from the window until the truck disappeared down the lane. Then she smoothed Kathy’s hair. “Baby doll, you and me and our money are making tracks right now,” she said. “For once, Daddy Clint was right. It isn’t safe to hang around here any longer.”

  46

  At seven o’clock, Monsignor Romney rang the bell of the Frawley home. Steve and Margaret answered it together. “Thank you for coming, Monsignor,” Margaret said.

  “I’m glad you wanted me to come, Margaret.” He followed them into the study. They sat on the couch, close to each other. He took the chair nearest to them. “How is Kelly?” he asked.

  “Doctor Harris gave her a sedative, so she’s been sleeping most of the day,” Steve said. “She is with her now.”

  “When Kelly’s awake, she tries to talk to Kathy,” Margaret told him. “She can’t accept that Kathy’s not coming home anymore. Neither can I.”

  “There is no greater sorrow than losing a child,” Monsignor Romney said quietly. “At a wedding ceremony we pray that you will live to see your children’s children. No matter whether it is a new-born infant who barely draws a single breath, or a toddler or a young adult or, for elderly parents, an offspring who is a senior citizen herself or himself, there is no pain to compare with it.”

  “My problem,” Margaret said slowly, “is that I cannot believe that Kathy is gone. I can’t accept that she won’t come in here any minute, a step behind Kelly. Of the two, Kelly’s the leader, the boss. Kathy’s a little more timid, a little shy.”

  She looked at Steve, then at Monsignor Romney. “I broke my ankle ice skating when I was fifteen. It was a really nasty break and needed major surgery. I remember when I woke up, I only felt a dull ache, and I thought that recovering from the operation was going to be a slam dunk. Then, hours later, the nerve block began to wear off, and I was in agony. I think that’s the way it’s going to be for me. For now the nerve block is still working.”

  Monsignor Romney waited, sensing that Margaret was about to make a request of him. She looks so young, so vulnerable, he thought. The confident, smiling mother who had told him that she had put her law career on hold to be able to enjoy her twins, was a pale shadow of herself now, her dark blue eyes haunted and pain-filled. Next to her, Steve, his hair tousled, his eyes red rimmed from exhaustion, was shaking his head, as though in denial of what had happened.

  “I know we must plan some kind of service that people can attend,” Margaret said. “My mother and sister are coming up next week. Steve’s father is getting a nurse for his mother so that he can be here, too. So many, many friends have e-mailed us and want to be with us. But before we plan a Mass that people can attend, I was wondering if early tomorrow morning, you might offer a private Mass for Kathy, with just Steve and Kelly and Dr. Harris and me there. Is that possible?”

  “Of course it’s possible. I can offer it tomorrow morning, either before or after the regularly scheduled Masses. That would be before the seven, or after the nine.”

  “Don’t you call it a Mass of the Angels when it’s for a small child?” Margaret asked.

  “That’s a layman’s term that has come into use when the Mass is being offered for a young person. I’ll select some appropriate readings.”

  “Honey, make it after the nine,” Steve suggested. “It wouldn’t hurt if we both took a sleeping pill tonight.”

  “To sleep, but not to dream,” Margaret said wearily.

  Monsignor Romney stood up and walked over to her. Placing his hand on her head, he blessed her, then turned to Steve and blessed him. “Ten o’clock at the church,” he said. Looking at their grief-stricken faces, words of De Profundis rushed into his mind. Out of the depths I have cried to Thee,
O Lord . . . hear my voice. Let Thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.

  47

  Norman Bond was not surprised when two FBI agents arrived at his office on Friday morning. He knew they had been told that he had bypassed three well-qualified C.F.G.&Y. employees to hire Steve Frawley. He also assumed they had figured out that it took someone with sophisticated financial know-how to realize that some overseas banks will, for a fee, collect and pass on illegally obtained money.

  Before he told his secretary to send the agents in, he hurried to his private bathroom and studied himself in the full-length mirror hung on the back of the door. The first money he’d spent after getting a job at C.F.G.&Y. twenty-five years ago had been for expensive laser treatments to rid himself of the scars from the acne that had made his adolescence an endless torture. In his mind the scars were still there, and so were the owl-like glasses that had been necessary to cure a lazy-eye muscle. Now contact lenses gave improved vision to his light blue eyes. He was grateful for a good head of hair but wondered if he had made a mistake not to dye it. The premature gray that was in his mother’s side of the family had been bequeathed to him, but at age forty-eight he was becoming pure white rather than salt-and-pepper.

  Conservative suits from Paul Stuart had replaced the hand-me-downs of his childhood, but a glance in the mirror was necessary to ensure that somehow a stain had not materialized on his collar or tie. He could never forget the time early in his employment at C.F.G.&Y. when, in the presence of the chairman, he used a dinner fork to spear an oyster. As it fell from the tines, it had slithered across his jacket, dripping cocktail sauce. That night, burning with shame, he bought a book on etiquette and a complete set of dinnerware, and for days practiced setting a formal table and using the proper fork or knife or spoon.

  Now the mirror assured him that he looked just fine. Passably good features. Good haircut. Crisp white shirt. Blue tie. No jewelry. A flash memory of throwing his wedding ring on the tracks before an oncoming commuter train rushed briefly through his mind. After all these years, he still wasn’t certain if it was anger or sadness that had triggered that reaction. He told himself that it didn’t matter anymore.

  He went back to his desk and signaled his secretary to send the FBI agents in. The first one, Angus Sommers, he had met on Wednesday. The second, a slender woman of about thirty, was introduced by Sommers as Agent Ruthanne Scaturro. He knew that other agents were swarming through the building asking questions.

  Norman Bond acknowledged his visitors with a nod of his head. As a courtesy, he made a slight gesture of rising, but quickly settled back, his face impassive.

  “Mr. Bond,” Sommers began, “that was a pretty strong statement your chief financial officer, Gregg Stanford, made to the media yesterday. Did you agree with it?”

  Bond raised one eyebrow, a trick it had taken him a long time to perfect. “As you know, Agent Sommers, the board of directors voted unanimously to pay the ransom. Unlike my distinguished colleague, I very much believed in making the payment. It is a terrible tragedy that one twin is dead, but perhaps the fact that the other one was returned safely is a result of the payment we made. Doesn’t the suicide note left by that limo driver indicate that he had not intended to kill the other child?”

  “Yes, it did. Then you don’t agree with Mr. Stanford’s position at all?”

  “I never agree with Gregg Stanford’s position. Or let me put it another way: He is chief financial officer because his wife’s family owns ten percent of the voting stock. He knows that we all consider him a lightweight. He has the ridiculous notion that by taking the opposite viewpoint from our chairman, Robinson Geisler, he will attract a following. He covets the chairman’s seat. More than that, he is lusting for it. In the matter of the ransom payment, he has seized the opportunity to be a post-tragedy sage.”

  “Do you covet the chairman’s seat, Mr. Bond?” Agent Scaturro asked.

  “In due course, I would hope to be considered for it. For the present, after the unpleasant upheaval of last year and the heavy fine the company paid, I think it is far better for the present board to present a united front to our stockholders. I think Stanford has done the company a great disservice by his public attack on Mr. Geisler.”

  “Let’s talk about something else, Mr. Bond,” Angus Sommers suggested. “Why did you hire Steve Frawley?”

  “It seems to me that we went over that subject two days ago, Mr. Sommers,” Bond said, deliberately letting a note of annoyance creep into his voice.

  “Let’s talk about it again. There are three rather bitter men in the company who felt you had neither the need nor the right to go outside for the position you gave Steve Frawley. It’s a quantum leap for him, in terms of job level, isn’t it?”

  “Let me explain something about corporate politics, Mr. Sommers. The three men you mention want my job. They were protégés of the former chairman. Their loyalty was and is to him. I’m a pretty good judge of people, and Steve Frawley is smart, very smart. A combination of an MBA and a law degree, together with brains and personality, goes a long way in the corporate world. We had a long talk about this company, about the problems we experienced last year, and about the future, and I liked what I heard. He also appears to me to be a truly ethical man, a rarity these days. Finally, I know he would be loyal to me, and that is the bottom line for me.”

  Norman Bond leaned back in his chair and pressed his hands together, the fingers pointing upward. “And now, if you’ll forgive me, I must get to a meeting upstairs.”

  Neither Sommers nor Scaturro made a move to stand up. “Just a few more questions, Mr. Bond,” Sommers said. “You didn’t tell us the other day that you lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, at one time.”

  “I have lived in many places since I started with this company. Ridgefield was over twenty years ago, when I was married.”

  “Did your wife not give birth to twin boys who died at birth?”

  “Yes, she did.” Bond’s eyes became expressionless.

  “You were very much in love with your wife, but she left you shortly after that, didn’t she?”

  “She moved to California. She wanted to start all over. Grief separates as many people as it brings closer, Agent Sommers.”

  “After she left, you had something of a breakdown, didn’t you, Mr. Bond?”

  “Grief also causes depression, Mr. Sommers. I knew I needed help, so I checked into a facility. Today bereavement groups are common. Twenty years ago, they were not.”

  “Did you keep in touch with your former wife?”

  “She remarried fairly quickly. It was better for both of us to close that chapter in our lives.”

  “But unfortunately her chapter isn’t closed, is it? Your former wife disappeared several years after she remarried.”

  “I know that.”

  “Were you questioned about her disappearance?”

  “Like her parents and siblings and friends, I was asked if I had any knowledge of where she might have gone. Of course, I did not. In fact, I contributed to the reward that was offered for information leading to her return.”

  “That reward has never been collected, has it, Mr. Bond?”

  “No, it has not.”

  “Mr. Bond, when you met Steve Frawley, did you see something of yourself in him: a young, smart, and ambitious man, with an attractive, smart wife, and beautiful children?”

  “Mr. Sommers, this questioning has become irrational. If I understand you, and I believe I do, you are suggesting that I might have had something to do with my late wife’s disappearance, as well as with the kidnapping of the Frawley twins. How dare you insult me like that. Get out of my office.”

  “Your late wife, Mr. Bond? How do you know she’s dead?”

  48

  “I’ve always been a just-in-case person, baby doll,” Angie said more to herself than to Kathy, who was lying on the bed in the motel, propped on pillows, and covered with a blanket. “I think ahead all the time. That’s the dif
ference between me and Clint.”

  It was ten o’clock on Friday morning, and Angie was feeling pleased with herself. The night before, an hour after Clint and Gus had left for the tavern, she had the van packed and was on the road with Kathy. She had put the ransom money into suitcases, then thrown together some hastily packed clothes and the prepaid cell phones the Pied Piper had sent to Lucas and Clint. In her final trip from the house to the van, she remembered to grab the tapes Lucas had made when the Pied Piper called him, and the driver’s license she had stolen from a woman whose kid she had minded last year.

  Then, as an afterthought, she’d scribbled a note for Clint: “Don’t worry. I’ll call you in the morning. Needed to do some extra babysitting.”

  She drove for three-and-a-half hours straight to Cape Cod and the Hyannis motel where she had stayed years ago when she and some guy came up for a weekend. She’d liked the Cape so much that she got a summer job at the Seagull Marina in Harwich.

  “I always had an escape plan in mind, just in case Clint got caught on one of the jobs he did with Lucas,” she told Kathy with a chuckle. But then, seeing that Kathy was falling back asleep, she frowned and went over to the bed and tapped the little girl’s shoulder. “Listen to me when I’m talking to you. You might learn something.”

  Kathy’s eyes remained closed.

  “Maybe I gave you too much of that cough medicine,” Angie speculated. “If it made Clint sleepy when he used to take it last year, I guess it could really knock you out.”

  She went to the counter where a little of the coffee she’d made earlier still remained in the pot. I’m hungry, she thought. I could use a decent breakfast, but I can’t be lugging the kid around half-asleep and with no coat on her back. Maybe I’ll just lock her in the room and get something for myself, then go to a store and pick up some clothes for her. I’ll leave the suitcases under the bed and put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. Maybe I’ll give her a little more of the cough medicine—then she’ll really sleep.