Two Little Girls in Blue

  In her rush to get first to Rena Chapman’s house, and then to their other neighbor for the second call, she had not even been conscious of the media vans parked on the street. But now the reporters were outside the house clamoring for a statement.

  “Have the kidnappers contacted you?”

  “Has the ransom been paid?”

  “Have you confirmation that the twins are alive?”

  “There will be no statement at this time,” Carlson said brusquely.

  Ignoring the questions that were shouted to them, Margaret and Steve darted up the walk. Captain Martinson was waiting for them on the porch. Ever since Friday night, he had been in and out of the house, sometimes conferring privately with the FBI agents, other times simply a reassuring presence. Margaret knew that his officers at the Ridgefield Police Department and the Connecticut State Police had distributed hundreds of posters with the picture of the girls standing by their birthday cake. One of the posters she had seen had a question printed on it: DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO OWNS, OR OWNED, A ROYAL MANUAL TYPEWRITER?

  That was the typewriter on which the ransom note for the twins had been written.

  Yesterday, Martinson told them that people in town had pledged a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information that would lead to the safe return of the twins. Could someone have responded to that? Had someone come forward with information? He looks upset, but surely it can’t be bad news, Margaret promised herself, as they stepped into the foyer. He doesn’t know yet that a ransom drop has already been arranged.

  As though afraid that they would somehow be overheard by the media, Martinson waited until they were in the living room before he spoke. “We’ve got a problem,” he said. “Franklin Bailey had a fainting spell early this morning. His housekeeper called 911 and he was rushed to the hospital. His cardiogram was okay. His doctor thinks he had an anxiety attack brought on by stress.”

  “We’ve just been told by the kidnapper that Bailey is to be in front of the Time Warner building at eight o’clock tonight,” Carlson snapped. “If he doesn’t show up, whoever has the children will suspect a double cross.”

  “But he’s got to be there!” Margaret heard the hint of hysteria in her voice, and bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. “He’s got to be there,” she repeated, this time in a whisper. She looked across the room at the pictures of the twins that were on top of the piano. My two little girls in blue, she thought. Oh, God, please bring them home to me.

  “He’s planning to be there,” Martinson said. “He wouldn’t stay at the hospital.” He and the agents looked at each other.

  But it was Steve who voiced what they all were thinking: “Suppose he has another weak spell and becomes confused or passes out while he’s getting the instructions on delivering the cash? What happens then? If Bailey doesn’t make contact, the Pied Piper said we’d never see our children again.”

  Agent Tony Realto did not reveal the concern that had been growing in his mind to a virtual certainty. We never should have let Bailey get involved. And why did he insist on “helping”?

  20

  At twenty minutes past ten on Wednesday morning, Lucas was staring out the front window of his apartment, puffing nervously on his fifth cigarette of the day. Suppose the Pied Piper gets the seven-million-dollar wire transfer and decides to dump us? I have the voice recording of him, but maybe that isn’t enough, he thought. If he pulls out, what do we do with the kids?

  Even if the Pied Piper plays it straight and arranges delivery of the million in cash, it will take both me and Clint to try to make the pickup and get away without being caught. Something would go wrong. Lucas knew it in his bones, and he respected this kind of warning. It had proved accurate when he was a juvenile and was caught by the cops. Ignoring it as an adult had sent him to prison for six years. That time, when he broke into the house, he had sensed that he shouldn’t set foot in it even though he had successfully bypassed the alarm.

  And he’d been right. Cameras on a separate system had recorded his every move. Tonight, if he and Clint got caught, he’d be facing life.

  And how sick was the one kid? If she died, it could be a lot worse.

  His phone rang. It was the Pied Piper. Lucas turned on his recorder.

  “Things are going smoothly, Bert” the Pied Piper said. “The wire transfer went through. It’s very clear to me that the FBI won’t jeopardize getting the children back by following you too closely.”

  He was using the phony growl that he thought passed for a disguised voice. Lucas ground out the rest of his cigarette on the window sill. Keep talking, pal, he thought.

  “It’s your ball game now,” the Pied Piper continued. “If you want to be counting money tonight, listen very carefully to my plan. As you know, you will need a stolen vehicle. You have assured me that Harry is capable of securing one easily.”

  “Yeah. It’s the one thing he’s good at.”

  “We will begin making contact with Franklin Bailey at eight o’clock this evening in front of the Time Warner building on Columbus Circle. At that time, you and Harry must be parked on West Fifty-sixth Street, at the passageway to Fifty-seventh Street that is just east of Sixth Avenue. You will be in the stolen vehicle. You will have replaced the license plates of that car or van with plates from another vehicle.”

  “No problem.”

  “Here is the way we’re going to work it.”

  As Lucas listened, he grudgingly admitted that the plan had a good chance of succeeding. Finally, after unnecessarily assuring the Pied Piper that he would be carrying his special cell phone, he heard the click that meant the connection was broken.

  Okay, he thought. I know what we’re doing. Maybe it’ll work. As he lit a fresh cigarette, his own cell phone rang.

  The phone was on the dresser in his bedroom, and he hurried to answer it. “Lucas,” a weak and strained voice began, “this is Franklin Bailey. I need you this evening. If you are already engaged, please use your replacement driver for that engagement. I have a most important errand in Manhattan and must be in Columbus Circle at eight o’clock.”

  His brain racing, Lucas jammed the phone against his ear, at the same time grabbing the half-empty pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “I do have a booking, but maybe we can work it out. How long do you expect to be, Mr. Bailey?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lucas thought of the funny way the cop had eyed him on Friday when Bailey had driven over to the Frawleys’ house to offer to be the go-between. If the feds decided that it was a good idea for Bailey to have his own driver, and then found out he was unavailable, they might start asking what was so important that he couldn’t accommodate a longtime client.

  I can’t refuse, Lucas thought. “Mr. Bailey,” he said, trying to make his voice strike its usual eager-to-please timbre, “I’ll get someone for my other job. What time do you want me, sir?”

  “At six o’clock. We’ll probably be quite early, but I cannot take any chance of being late.”

  “Six on the button, sir.”

  Lucas threw his cell phone on the bed, went back the short distance to his dingy living room and picked up the special cell phone. When the Pied Piper answered, Lucas brushed nervously at the sweat on his forehead and told him what had happened. “I couldn’t refuse, so now we can’t go ahead with the plan.”

  Even though the Pied Piper was still trying to disguise his voice, the note of amusement in it crept through. “You’re both right and wrong, Bert. You couldn’t refuse, but we are going ahead with our plan. In fact, this little development may work beautifully for us. You’re planning to go for a plane ride, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, after I get the stuff from Harry.”

  “Make sure that the typewriter that was used for the ransom note goes with you, as well as the clothing and toys that were bought for the children. There should be no trace of children having been present in Harry’s cottage.”

  “I know. I know.” They’d already gone over this part of the
plan.

  “Have Harry phone me when he has secured the car. You phone me as soon as you drop Bailey off at the Time Warner building. I’ll tell you what to do next.”

  21

  At ten thirty, Angie was at the breakfast table with the twins. Now on her third cup of black coffee, her head was beginning to clear. She’d had a lousy night’s sleep. She looked at Kathy. She could tell the vaporizer and aspirin had done some good. Though the bedroom reeked of Vick’s, at least the steam had loosened her cough a bit. She was still a pretty sick kid, though, and had been awake a lot during the night, crying for her mother. I’m tired, Angie thought, really tired. At least the other one slept pretty well, even though sometimes when Kathy was coughing hard, Kelly would start coughing, too.

  “Is she getting sick, too?” Clint had asked a half-dozen times.

  “No, she isn’t. Get back to sleep,” Angie had ordered. “I don’t want you to be half-dead tonight.”

  She looked at Kelly, who stared back at her. It was all she could do not to slap that fresh kid. “We want to go home,” she kept saying every other minute. “Kathy and I want to go home. You promised you would take us home.”

  I can’t wait for you to go home, Angie thought.

  It was obvious Clint was a nervous wreck. He’d taken his coffee over to the sofa in front of the television set and kept drumming his fingers on the piece of junk that passed for a coffee table. He’d been watching the news to see if there was anything more about the kidnapping, but he knew enough to keep the remote on the mute setting. The kids’ backs were to the TV.

  Kelly had eaten some of the cereal Angie had fixed them, and Kathy had at least a few bites. They both looked pale, Angie admitted to herself, and their hair was kind of messy. Maybe she’d better try brushing it, but on the other hand, she didn’t need them yelling if there were knots to untangle. Forget it, she decided.

  She pushed back her chair. “Okay, kids. Time for a little nap.”

  They had gotten used to being shoved back into the crib after breakfast. Kathy even raised her arms to be picked up. She knows I love her, Angie thought, then cursed under her breath as Kathy’s elbow hit the dish of cereal, which then spilled down the front of her pajamas.

  Kathy began to cry, a sick wail that ended in a cough.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” Angie snapped. Now what do I do? she wondered. That jerk Lucas is getting here soon, and I was told to leave the kids in their pajamas all day. Maybe if I just pin a towel under the wet part, it’ll dry.

  “Shush,” she said impatiently as she picked up Kathy. The sopping pajama top dampened her own shirt as she carried her into the bedroom. Kelly got down from the chair and walked beside them, her hand reaching up to pat her sister’s foot.

  Angie put Kathy in the crib and grabbed a towel from the top of the dresser. By the time she pinned it under the pajama top, Kathy had folded herself into a ball and was sucking her thumb. That was something new, Angie thought as she picked up Kelly and dropped her into the crib.

  Kelly immediately struggled to her feet and put her hands tightly around the railing. “We want to go home now,” she said. “You promised.”

  “You’re going home tonight,” Angie said. “So shut up.”

  The shades were pulled all the way down in the bedroom. Angie started to raise one of them but then changed her mind. If I keep it dark, the kids might fall asleep, she decided. She went back to the kitchen, slamming the door behind her as a warning to Kelly not to cause trouble. Last night when the kid had started to rock the crib, a good pinch on her arm had taught her it wasn’t a good idea.

  Clint was still watching the television. Angie began to clear the table. “Pick up those Barney tapes,” she ordered him as she dumped dishes in the sink. “Put them in the box with the typewriter.”

  The Pied Piper, whoever he was, had ordered Lucas to dump in the ocean anything they had that could be connected to the kidnapping. “He means the typewriter that we used for the ransom note, any clothes or toys or sheets or blankets that might have their DNA on them,” Lucas had told Clint.

  None of them know how well that fits in with my plans, Angie thought.

  “Angie, this box is too big,” Clint protested. “It’ll be hard for Lucas to dump it.”

  “It’s not too big,” she snapped. “I’m putting the vaporizer in it. Okay? Okay?”

  “Too bad we can’t put the crib in it.”

  “When we drop off the kids, you can come back here and take it apart. Tomorrow you get rid of it.”

  Two hours later, she was prepared for Lucas’s explosive reaction when he caught sight of the box. “Couldn’t you have found a smaller one?” he barked.

  “Sure, I could have. I could even have gone to the grocery store and explain why I wanted one and what I’d put in it. This one was in the cellar. It will do the job, okay?”

  “Angie, I think we have smaller boxes downstairs,” Clint volunteered.

  “I sealed and tied this box,” Angie shouted. “This is it.”

  A minute later, she watched with intense satisfaction as Lucas carried the heavy, bulky box to his car.

  22

  Lila Jackson, a sales clerk at Abby’s Quality Discount on Route 7, had become something of a celebrity to her family and friends. She had been the one to sell the twins’ blue velvet dresses to Margaret Frawley two days before the kidnapping.

  Thirty-four years old, small of stature, and bustling with energy, Lila had recently quit her well-paid secretarial job in Manhattan, moved in with her widowed mother, and taken the job at Abby’s. As she explained to her astonished friends, “I realized that I hated sitting at a desk, and the most fun I’d ever had working was when I did part-time at Bloomingdale’s. I love clothes. I love selling them. As soon as I can do it, I’m going to open my own place.” To that end, she was taking business courses at the community college.

  The day the news of the kidnapping broke, Lila had recognized both Margaret and the dresses the kidnapped twins were wearing in the picture she saw on television.

  “She was the nicest person,” Lila breathlessly told a widening group of people who were fascinated by the fact that only a couple of days before the twins were stolen, she had been in contact with their mother. “Mrs. Frawley is real class, in a quiet, nice way. And she really knows quality. I told her that the same dresses cost four hundred dollars each in Bergdorf’s all season, and that at forty-two dollars, they were a steal. She said that was still more than she wanted to spend, and I showed her a lot of other stuff, but she kept coming back to those. Finally she bought them. She kind of laughed when she was paying and said she only hoped she’d get a good picture of her twins in the dresses before something got spilled on them.

  “We had a nice chat,” Lila reminisced, dragging out every detail of the encounter. “I told Mrs. Frawley that another lady had just been in, buying matching outfits for twins. They couldn’t have been hers, though, because she wasn’t sure what size to get. She asked my opinion. She said they were average-sized three-year-olds.”

  Lila caught the noon news on Wednesday morning as she was getting ready to leave for work. Shaking her head in sympathy, she stared at the video of Margaret and Steve Frawley racing down the street to a neighbor’s home, and then a few minutes later, running to another house farther down the block.

  “Although neither the family nor the FBI will confirm it, it is believed that this morning the Pied Piper, as the kidnapper calls himself, has communicated his demands for paying the ransom by calling the Frawleys on their neighbors’ phones,” the CBS anchorman was saying.

  Lila watched as a close-up of Margaret Frawley showed her anguished expression and the deep circles under her eyes.

  “Robinson Geisler, chairman of C.F.G.&Y., is not available to answer questions as to whether or not a transfer of funds is in process,” the reporter continued, “but if that is the case, it is clear that the next twenty-four hours will be crucial. It is the sixth day since Kathy and
Kelly were taken from their bedroom. The kidnapping took place around nine P.M. last Thursday night.”

  They must have been in their pajamas when they were taken, Lila thought as she reached for her car key. It was a thought that teased her as she drove to work, and stayed with her as she hung up her coat and ran a comb through the mop of red hair that had been tousled in the windy parking lot. She pinned on her WELCOME TO ABBY’S—I’M LILA badge, then went to the cubicle where the accounting was handled.

  “I just want to check my sales from last Wednesday, Jean,” she explained to the accountant. I don’t remember the name of that woman who bought clothing for twins, she thought, but I can tell by the receipt. She bought two sets of matching overalls and polo shirts, underwear, and socks. She didn’t buy shoes because she didn’t have any idea of size.

  In five minutes of thumbing through receipts, she had found what she wanted. The receipt for the clothes had been signed by Mrs. Clint Downes, using a Visa credit card. Should I get Jean to phone Visa now and get her address? Lila wondered. Don’t be a fool, she told herself, as she hurried onto the sales floor.

  Later, still unable to shake the feeling that she should follow up on her uncomfortable hunch, Lila asked the accountant to try to get the address of the woman who had purchased the identical outfits for three-year-olds.

  “Sure, Lila. If they give me any grief about releasing the address, I’ll say that the woman may have left a package here.”

  “Thanks, Jean.”

  At Visa, Mrs. Clint Downes was recorded as living at 100 Orchard Avenue, in Danbury.

  Now even more uncertain of what to do, Lila remembered that Jim Gilbert, a retired Danbury cop, was having dinner with her mother that night. She’d ask him about it.

  When she arrived home, her mother had held dinner for her, and she and Jim were having a cocktail in the study. Lila poured a glass of wine for herself and sat on the raised hearth, her back to the fire. “Jim,” she said, “I guess Mother told you I sold those blue velvet dresses to Margaret Frawley.”