“I will, sweetheart,” Steve said. “You bring it down to me.”
Margaret waited until Kelly was out of the kitchen before speaking. She knew the reaction she would receive, but she had to tell them what she felt. “Kathy is alive. She and Kelly are in touch with each other.”
“Margaret, Kelly is still trying to communicate with Kathy, and she’s also beginning to tell you about her own experience. She was afraid of that woman, whoever it was who was minding them. She wanted to come home,” Dr. Harris said gently.
“She was talking to Kathy,” Margaret said firmly. “I know she was.”
“Oh, honey,” Steve protested. “Don’t break your heart by even holding to a whisper of hope that Kathy is alive.”
Margaret wrapped her fingers around the coffee cup, remembering how she had done exactly the same thing the night the twins had disappeared, trying to warm her hands with it. She realized that now the despair of the last twenty-four hours had been replaced by the desperate need to find Kathy—to find her before it was too late.
Be careful, she told herself. No one’s going to believe me. If they think I’m going crazy with grief, they might want to sedate me. That sleeping pill last night knocked me out for hours. I can’t let that happen again. I’ve got to find her.
Kelly came back with the Dr. Seuss book they had been reading to her before the kidnapping. Steve pushed back his chair and picked her up. “We’ll go inside to my big chair in the study, okay?”
“Kathy likes this book, too,” Kelly said.
“Well, we’ll pretend that I’m reading to both of you.” Steve managed to get the words out in a steady voice even as his eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Daddy, that’s silly. Kathy can’t hear. She’s asleep now, and she’s all by herself, and that lady tied her to the bed.”
“You mean the lady tied you to the bed, don’t you, Kelly?” Steve asked quickly.
“No. Mona made us stay in the big crib, and we couldn’t climb out of it. Kathy’s in the bed now,” Kelly insisted, then patted Steve’s cheek. “Daddy, why are you crying?”
* * *
“Margaret, the sooner Kelly gets back to a normal routine, the easier it will be for her to become used to not being with Kathy,” Dr. Harris said later, as she prepared to leave. “I think Steve is right. Taking her to nursery school was the best thing for her.”
“As long as Steve doesn’t let her out of his sight,” Margaret said fearfully.
“Absolutely.” Sylvia Harris put her arms around Margaret and gave her a brief hug. “I have to run down to the hospital to check on some of my patients, but I’ll be back tonight, that is if you still feel I’m any help to you.”
“Remember when Kathy had pneumonia, and that young nurse was about to give her penicillin. If you hadn’t been there, God knows what might have happened,” Margaret said. “You go down and check on your sick kids, and then come back. We need you.”
“We certainly found out the first time Kathy had penicillin that she must never have it again,” Dr. Harris said in agreement. She then added, “Margaret, grieve for her, but don’t read hope into what Kelly may continue to say. Believe me, she is reliving her own experience.”
Don’t try to convince her! Margaret warned herself. She doesn’t believe you. Steve doesn’t believe you. I’ve got to talk to Agent Carlson, she decided. I’ve got to talk to him right away.
With a final squeeze of Margaret’s hand, Sylvia Harris left. Alone in the house for the first time in a week, Margaret closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, then hurried to the phone and dialed Walter Carlson’s number.
He answered on the first ring. “Margaret, what can I do?”
“Kathy is alive,” she told him, then before he could speak, she rushed on, “I know you won’t believe me, but she is alive. Kelly is communicating with her. An hour ago, Kathy was asleep and tied to a bed. Kelly told me that.”
“Margaret . . .”
“Don’t try to placate me. Trust me. You have only the word of a dead man that Kathy is gone. You don’t have her body. You know that Lucas got into his plane carrying a big box, and you’re assuming that Kathy’s body was in it. Stop assuming that and find her. Do you hear me? Find her!”
Before he could respond, Margaret slammed down the phone, then collapsed into a chair and held her head in both hands. There’s something I have to remember. I know it has to do with the dresses I bought the twins for their birthday, she thought. I’ll go up to their closet and hold the dresses and try to remember.
51
Early Friday afternoon, FBI Agents Angus Sommers and Ruthanne Scaturro rang the bell of 415 Walnut Street in Bronxville, New York, where Amy Lindcroft, Gregg Stanford’s first wife, resided. In contrast to the large and elegant homes around her, she lived in a modest, white, Cape Cod house, with dark green shutters that glistened in the sunlight of the suddenly bright afternoon.
The house reminded Angus Sommers of the one in which he had grown up, on the other side of the Hudson River in Closter, New Jersey. A familiar regret passed through his mind: I should have bought the house when Mom and Dad moved to Florida; it’s doubled in value over the past ten years.
This property is worth more than the house, was his next thought, as he heard the sound of footsteps approaching on the other side of the door.
It was Sommers’s experience that even people with an untroubled conscience can experience a nervous reaction at a visit from the FBI. In this case, however, Amy Lindcroft had phoned and asked to see them, saying she wanted to discuss her former husband. She greeted them with a brief smile as she glanced at their credentials and then invited them in. A slightly plump woman in her mid-forties, with flashing brown eyes and salt-and-pepper hair that curled around her face, she was wearing a painter’s smock over jeans.
The agents followed her into a living room tastefully furnished in Early American décor and dominated by an excellent watercolor painting of the Hudson River Palisades. Sommers walked over to study it. The signature in the corner was Amy Lindcroft.
“This is beautiful,” he said sincerely.
“I make my living as a painter. I’d better be pretty good,” Lindcroft said matter-of-factly. “Now, sit down, please. I won’t keep you long, but what I say may be worth hearing.”
In the car, Sommers had told Agent Scaturro to take the lead in the interview. Now she said, “Ms. Lindcroft, am I correct that you have something to tell us that you feel is relevant to the Frawley kidnapping?”
“May be relevant,” Lindcroft emphasized. “I know this is going to sound like the woman scorned, and maybe it is, but Gregg has hurt so many people, and if what I’m going to tell you hurts him, so be it. I was the college roommate of Tina Olsen, the pharmaceutical heiress, and was always invited to visit the family’s various homes. Looking back, I realize that Gregg married me so he could worm his way into Tina’s world. He succeeded admirably. Gregg is smart, and he knows how to sell himself. When we were first married, he was working for a small investment firm. He kept ingratiating himself with Mr. Olsen, who finally asked him to join his staff. He managed to work his way up to becoming Olsen’s right-hand man. The next thing I knew, he and Tina announced that they were in love. After ten years of marriage, I finally had become pregnant. The shock of my husband and my best friend cheating on me caused a miscarriage. To stop the hemorrhaging, I had to have a hysterectomy.”
She’s much more than a woman scorned, Angus Sommers thought as he observed the look of sadness that rushed into Amy Lindcroft’s eyes.
“Then he married Tina Olsen,” Scaturro prompted sympathetically.
“Yes. It lasted six years, until Tina found he was cheating with someone else and got rid of him. Needless to say, her father fired him as well. You must understand—Gregg is simply incapable of being faithful to any woman.”
“What are you telling us, Ms. Lindcroft?” Angus Sommers asked.
“About six and a half years ago, after Gregg remarried,
Tina phoned and apologized to me. She said she didn’t expect me to accept the apology, but she had to extend it anyway. She said it wasn’t only his womanizing that got to her; her father had learned that he’d been milking the company with phony expenses. Mr. Olsen covered the expenses himself to avoid a scandal. Tina said if it was any satisfaction to either one of us, Gregg may have bitten off more than he could chew with his new bride, Millicent Alwin Parker Huff. She’s one tough lady, and Tina heard that she made him sign a prenup that says if the marriage doesn’t last seven years, he gets zip, nothing, not a dollar.”
Amy Lindcroft’s smile had no mirth in it. “Tina called again yesterday, after she saw Gregg’s interview with the press. She said he’s trying desperately to impress Millicent. The prenup expires in a few weeks, and Millicent has been spending a lot of time in Europe, away from him. The last husband she booted out didn’t know what was coming until he tried to get into their Fifth Avenue apartment and the doorman told him he wasn’t allowed in the building.”
“You’re telling us that if Gregg is afraid that may happen to him, he might be behind the kidnapping because he’ll need money? Isn’t that a stretch, Ms. Lindcroft?”
“It might be if it weren’t for one more fact.”
Trained as he was to be impassive, the one more fact that Amy Lindcroft passed on with a certain amount of gleeful malice nonetheless elicited a startled expression from both FBI agents.
52
Margaret sat on the edge of the bed in the twins’ bedroom, the blue velvet dresses she had bought for their birthday draped across her lap. She tried to push aside the memory of a week ago, when she’d dressed the twins for their party. Steve had come home from work early, because after the party they were going to the company dinner. The twins had been so excited that Steve finally had to hold Kelly on his lap while Margaret fastened the buttons on Kathy’s dress.
They were giggling and talking twin talk, she remembered, and she was convinced they could read each other’s minds. That’s why I know that Kathy really is alive: She has told Kelly that she wants to come home.
The image of Kathy being scared and tied to a bed made Margaret want to scream with rage and fear. Where can I look for her? she anguished. Where can I begin? What is it about the dresses? There’s something about the dresses I need to remember. What is it? She ran her hands over the soft velvet fabric, remembering how, even though the price had been reduced, they still cost more than she wanted to pay. I kept looking through the racks, she thought, and I kept coming back to them. The salesgirl told me how much they’d cost at Bergdorf’s. Then she said that it was funny I was there because she’d just finished waiting on another woman shopping for twins.
Margaret gasped. That’s what I’ve been trying to remember! It’s where I bought them. It’s the clerk. She told me that she’d just sold clothes for three-year-old twins to a woman who didn’t seem to know anything about what size to buy for them.
Margaret stood up and let the dresses slide to the floor. I’ll know the clerk when I see her, she thought. It’s probably just a crazy coincidence that someone else was buying clothes for three-year-old twins in that same store a few nights before the girls were kidnapped, but, on the other hand, if the kidnapping was being planned, it would be obvious that the twins would be in pajamas when they took them, and that they would need a change of clothes. I have to talk to that clerk.
When Margaret went downstairs, Steve was just returning with Kelly from the nursery school. “All her friends were so happy to see our little girl,” he said, his voice heavy with false cheer. “Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”
Without answering, Kelly dropped his hand and began to take off her jacket. Then she started to whisper under her breath.
Margaret looked at Steve. “She’s talking to Kathy.”
“She’s trying to talk to Kathy,” he corrected.
Margaret reached out her hand. “Steve, give me the keys to the car.”
“Margaret . . . ”
“Steve, I know what I’m doing. You stay with Kelly. Don’t leave her for a minute. And make note of whatever she may be saying, please.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not far. Just to the store on Route 7 where I bought their party dresses. I have to talk to the clerk who waited on me.”
“Why don’t you call her?”
Margaret forced herself to draw a long, quiet breath. “Steve, just give me the keys. I’m all right. I won’t be long.”
“There’s still a media van at the end of the street. They’ll follow you.”
“They won’t get a chance. I’ll be gone before they realize it’s me. Steve, give me the keys.”
In a sudden gesture, Kelly spun around and threw her arms around Steve’s leg. “I’m sorry!” she wailed. “I’m sorry!” Steve grabbed her up and rocked her in his arms.
“Kelly, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
She was clutching her arm. Margaret pushed up the sleeve of the polo shirt and watched as the arm began to turn red in the same spot over the faint black and blue mark they had noticed when she returned home.
Margaret felt her mouth go dry. “That woman just pinched Kathy,” she whispered. “I know she did. Oh, God, Steve, don’t you get it? Give me the keys!”
He reluctantly pulled the car keys from his pocket, and she yanked them out of his hand and ran for the door. Fifteen minutes later, she was entering Abby’s Discount on Route 7.
There were about a dozen people in the store, all of them women. Margaret walked up and down the aisles, looking for the clerk who had waited on her, but she did not see her anywhere. Finally, desperate for answers, she approached the cashier, who directed her to the manager.
“Oh, you mean Lila Jackson,” the manager said when Margaret described the sales clerk. “It’s her day off, and I know she took her mother into New York for dinner and a show. Any one of our other clerks will be happy to help you in any of . . . ”
“Does Lila have a cell phone?” Margaret interrupted.
“Yes, but I really can’t give that to you.” The manager, a woman of about sixty, with frosted blond hair, suddenly became more formal and less cordial. “If you have a complaint, you can speak directly to me. I’m Joan Howell, and I’m in charge here.”
“It’s not a complaint. It’s just that Lila Jackson was also waiting on another woman who bought outfits for twins and didn’t know their size when I was here last week. I want to ask her about that woman.”
Howell shook her head. “I can’t give you Lila’s cell phone,” she said positively. “She’ll be in at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You can come back then.” With a dismissive smile, she turned her back on Margaret.
Margaret caught Howell by the arm as she tried to walk away. “You don’t understand,” she pleaded, her voice rising. “My little girl is missing. She’s alive. I’ve got to find her. I’ve got to get to her before it’s too late.”
She had drawn the attention of the other shoppers in the area. Don’t make a scene, she warned herself. They’ll think you’re crazy. “I’m sorry,” she stammered as she released Howell’s sleeve. “What time is Lila coming in tomorrow?”
“Ten o’clock.” Joan Howell’s expression was sympathetic. “You’re Mrs. Frawley, aren’t you? Lila told me that you bought the birthday dresses for your twins here. I’m so sorry about Kathy. And I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I’ll give you Lila’s cell phone number, but the odds are that she won’t have taken it with her to the theatre, or at least she’ll have turned it off. Please, come into the office.”
Margaret could hear the whisperings of the shoppers who had heard her outburst. “That’s Margaret Frawley. She’s the one whose twins . . . ”
In a rush of grief that staggered her with its violence, Margaret turned and rushed outside. In the car, she turned on the ignition key and floored the gas pedal. Not knowing where she was going, she began to drive. Later, she remembered being on I-95 North and going as far as Prov
idence, Rhode Island. There, at the first sign for Cape Cod, she stopped for gas, and only then realized how far she had gone. She turned onto I-95 South, and drove until she saw the sign for Route 7, then followed it, sensing that she needed to find Danbury Airport. Reaching it finally, she parked near the entrance.
He carried her body in a box, she thought. That was her casket. He took her on the plane and flew over the ocean, then he opened the door or the window and dropped the body of my beautiful little girl into the ocean. It would have been a long fall. Did the box break? Did Kathy tumble out of it into the water? The water is so cold now.
Don’t think about that, she admonished herself. Think about how much she loved diving into the waves.
I have to get Steve to rent a boat. If we go out on the ocean, and I drop some flowers, maybe then it will feel as though I can really say goodbye to her. Maybe . . . ”
A light suddenly shone in the driver’s window, and Margaret looked up.
“Mrs. Frawley.” The state trooper’s voice was gentle.
“Yes.”
“We’d like to help you get home, ma’am. Your husband is terribly worried about you.”
“I just ran an errand.”
“Ma’am, it’s eleven o’clock at night. You left the store at four o’clock.”
“Did I? I guess that’s because I stopped hoping.”
“Yes, ma’am. Now let me drive you home.”
53
Late Friday afternoon, Agents Angus Sommers and Ruthanne Scaturro went directly from Amy Lindcroft’s home to the Park Avenue office of C.F.G.&Y. and requested an immediate meeting with Gregg Stanford. After a full half-hour wait, they were finally admitted to his office, which obviously had been furnished to reflect his own rather grand taste.
Instead of a typical desk, he had an antique writing table. Sommers, something of a furniture buff himself, recognized it as being early eighteenth century and probably worth a small fortune. Instead of book shelves, an eighteenth-century bureau-cabinet on the left wall reflected the late-afternoon sunlight that was filtering through a window that overlooked Park Avenue. In lieu of the usual executive desk chair, Sommers had opted for a richly upholstered antique armchair. In contrast, the seats in front of his desk were side chairs upholstered in a rather plain fabric, a clear indication to Sommers that visitors were not considered to be on the same social level as Gregg Stanford himself. A portrait of a beautiful woman in an evening gown dominated the wall to the right of the desk. Sommers was sure that the haughty, unsmiling subject of the portrait had to be Stanford’s current wife, Millicent.