After Anna

by Lisa Scottoline

  Kathy gestured at the room. ‘Guys, where do you want to sit? You want a view of the snow or the chewing tobacco?’

  Caleb pulled out a chair. ‘Here.’

  ‘You got it.’ Maggie pulled out a chair for her and Caleb, and Kathy sat across from them, unzipping her coat.

  ‘It wasn’t a bad drive. Except that we didn’t kill any moose.’ Kathy took laminated menus from a condiment carousel on the table and slid them to Maggie and Caleb. ‘Here’s your menus. I say we have the Chateaubriand with potatoes Dauphinoise and the molten lava cake for dessert. Then, of course, we shower.’

  Caleb giggled. ‘I want pancakes.’

  ‘You would think a waitress would come out.’ Maggie twisted around to the kitchen entrance, and Kathy waved at her.

  ‘Yoo-hoo, are you even listening? I’m giving you my best stuff here. You were in outer space the entire drive.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Maggie rubbed her face, trying to keep her emotions at bay. All she could think about was whether Anna was dead or alive, her real daughter. It was as if she were getting a second chance, all over again. A waiter appeared from the kitchen, and walked toward them with the weary smile, deflating her hopes. She doubted there was another waitperson here tonight, given the conditions.

  ‘Hello, ladies,’ the waiter said, crossing to their table with a smile. He looked about eighteen years old, with clear blue eyes and a short haircut. He was wearing a white polo shirt with jeans, with a name tag that read BOB. ‘Can I get you some water? Or a nice hot coffee?’

  ‘Coffee would be great for me,’ Maggie answered, putting the menu back. ‘I’ll have the pancakes and so will my son.’

  Kathy put her menu back, too. ‘Same for me, thanks.’

  Bob nodded. ‘We use maple syrup from Hurricane, Maine. Up near Québec. It’s the best. You folks from New York?’

  ‘Pennsylvania,’ Maggie answered. ‘Bob, I’m here because my daughter was friendly with a waitress here, named PG. Do you know her?’

  ‘No.’ Bob frowned. ‘But I’ve only been here three days. She might be on day shift.’

  ‘Do you think anybody else would know her? Are there any other waiters or waitresses on tonight?’

  ‘No, just me.’

  ‘How about the chef, or anybody else? Would they know her?’ Maggie gestured to the general store. ‘Or maybe in front?’

  ‘I’ll ask the cook.’

  ‘Great, thanks. Can you let me know what he says before you bring the food?’

  ‘No problem. I’ll be right back.’ Bob ambled back to the kitchen, but Maggie couldn’t wait. She rose, patting Caleb on the head.

  ‘I’ll be right back, honey.’

  ‘I figured.’ Kathy smiled as Maggie got up, hustled back to the cash register, and waited for the clerk, an older man, to get off his cell phone. His eyes were hooded, and reddish capillaries covered his longish nose. He was bald with gray stubble, and his sunken cheeks were bracketed by deep lines. His frame was slight but wiry, and he had on an old black T-shirt and jeans.

  ‘Miss, you need somethin’?’ he asked, though he didn’t hang up the phone, but merely held it against his chest.

  ‘Yes, I’m looking for a waitress named PG. Do you know her?’

  ‘PG? Sure.’

  ‘Terrific!’ Maggie said, thrilled. ‘She’s a friend of my daughter’s, and I was trying to find her. I don’t even know her last name.’

  ‘It’s Tenderly.’

  ‘PG is a nickname, right?’

  ‘Yes. Her real name is Patti.’

  ‘I heard PG stands for Ponygirl.’

  ‘Ha!’ The man chuckled, which turned into a smoker’s cough. ‘You’re telling me something now. I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know she liked horses.’

  Maggie didn’t bother to explain. ‘I know she’s not here, but do you know where she lives?’

  ‘Sure, right down the road. Broom Lane, it’s called. Go straight, take the second left. What’d you want to go see her for?’

  ‘My daughter was a friend of hers, and we can’t find her. I’m hoping PG will know where she is.’

  ‘Sorry about your daughter.’ The man tsk-tsked. ‘Mark my words. She’ll come back.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘PG might be able to help you. She’s one smart girl. Makes friends where’er she goes.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Maggie sensed it made it more likely that PG would have information about Anna.

  ‘She lives with her granny. Elma.’

  ‘Where are her parents?’

  ‘Her mother was never worth a damn. Never even met her father. You know how it is, with the pills.’

  ‘They were addicts?’

  ‘And drunks. Goes hand-in-hand, far as I can tell.’ He shook his head. ‘PG, she’s a good girl. The tips she made here, she give to Elma. Always nice to me, the customers, tourists. She’d ask after my wife and she’d buy a Powerball, ever’day. She even baked me a chocolate cake for my birthday.’

  ‘Doesn’t she work here anymore?’ Maggie felt confused, noticing that he’d started using the past tense.

  ‘No, she don’t. Hang on a minute. Lemme show you the cake she made me. Wrote my name on it and everything.’ The man swiveled around on his stool, shuffled through a pile of papers, then turned back with a photo, showing it to Maggie. ‘Here we go.’

  Maggie looked down at the photo. She froze at the image.

  ‘You see, there’s me, and PG, and the cake, and she wrote “Happy Birthday, Sammy” in red, so it shows up on the chocolate.’

  Maggie couldn’t speak. She felt her heart hammer. She recognized the girl in the photo. PG had short hair, big blue eyes, and a pretty smile that brought out her dimples. She looked a lot like Anna except for her haircut. The truth stared back at Maggie. PG was the girl she’d taken home, who’d impersonated Anna.

  ‘Ain’t that a nice cake?’

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Noah, After

  Noah went up to the nearest CO, who was standing against the wall under the first tier. He was a huge forty-year-old with a brushy mustache, and his name tag read BOCANEGRA. ‘Mr Bocanegra, I’m Noah Alderman and I’d like to speak with Deputy Warden McLaughlin.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I’d like to speak with Deputy Warden McLaughlin. I met with him last night.’ Noah was kicking himself. If he had known about Drover before, he would have dealt with it last night. But then again, now he had a bargaining chip.

  ‘Uh, he’s busy. Please, move along, Dr Alderman.’

  ‘It’s important. Can you contact him right away?’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it. We’ll get back to you.’ CO Bocanegra half-smiled.

  ‘This is very important. Can you take me to his office, and I’ll wait there until he’s available?’

  ‘Like I said, I’ll inform him of your request. We’ll get back to you about an appointment.’

  ‘This can’t wait.’ Noah knew the inmates were straining to hear the conversation. He was blowing his cover, but he had nothing to lose. On the contrary, the more public he went, the safer he’d be.

  ‘It will have to wait, Dr Alderman. We just got out of lockdown. There was a murder on this block last night, as you well know.’ CO Bocanegra glanced upward to Noah’s cell. ‘You see the bigwigs up there. We have our hands full. So please, move along.’

  ‘Okay, fair enough, thanks.’ Noah turned on his heel, walked through the inmates, and strode to the staircase. He climbed to the second-tier stair in full view of the entire cellblock, heading to his cell. The inmates were beginning to look up, pausing their conversations and their card games.

  Noah strode toward his cell, until his path was blocked by a big CO with a name tag that read KELLY. ‘Excuse me, Mr Kelly –’

  ‘Your cell isn’t ready yet.’

  ‘I know that, I want to see the bigwigs.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whoever is the most important person in there, that’s who
I want to see.’ Noah raised his voice, channeling the huffy doctor he used to be in his former life, the pediatric allergist who would be damned if he’d wait for a hotel room when he needed to prepare for his panel, which he was moderating.

  ‘You mean Deputy Superintendent DeMaria?’

  ‘Deputy Superintendent DeMaria is fine with me. I want to be transferred out of this prison.’

  ‘That’s not possible –’

  ‘It has to be possible,’ Noah said, raising his voice. ‘I’m in danger and I demand to be transferred immediately.’

  ‘Are you freaking kidding?’

  ‘If you don’t transfer me out and something happens to me, I’m going to make sure you’re held liable.’ Noah let his gaze fall pointedly to the name tag. ‘Mr Kelly, I’ll make sure you’re named as a defendant, individually and personally.’

  ‘Doc, hold on –’ CO Kelly put up his hands like a traffic cop.

  ‘I’m a target in this prison. And now that I said that, you’re on notice. You’re a witness to this statement. It’s on camera.’ Noah gestured at the security camera, mounted a few cells over. He could see over CO Kelly’s shoulder that two other COs were coming, with a frowning administrator in a gray suit and tie. ‘That video will be Exhibit A. Mr Kelly, you’re all going to be held liable if you don’t transfer me immediately.’

  ‘I’m Deputy Superintendent Bill DeMaria. What the hell’s going on here?’

  ‘I’m Noah Alderman, and I’m in danger as a result of the Jeremy Black murder. I was threatened at breakfast. I’m going to be attacked and I’m not about to sit on my thumbs. I’m requesting to be transferred out of the prison.’

  Deputy Superintendent DeMaria scowled. ‘Not exactly, Dr Alderman.’

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Maggie, After

  Maggie parked on Broom Lane, which turned out to be in a rural area. Snow covered the pastures like a white sheet, and there were no other houses except the Tenderlys’ dilapidated farmhouse. It was of grimy clapboard, and so small that it seemed engulfed by the snow drifting against its side wall and accumulating on its sagging porch roof. A TV flickered in the front window of the house, and there was no car parked in the driveway. If there was a walkway from the street to the front door, it hadn’t been shoveled.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Maggie turned to talk to Caleb, who’d plugged himself back into his video game, but Kathy stopped her, with a hand on her arm.

  ‘Maggie, wait. We need to talk before we go in. You ranted about PG all the way here.’

  ‘I can’t help it. She pretended to be my daughter. And worse, what did she do to Anna? Where’s Anna? I want to know. It drives me crazy, to think she could have done something to Anna.’

  ‘Well, she paid a price, didn’t she?’

  ‘That’s true. Sorry.’ Maggie dialed it back. ‘Why would she pretend to be Anna? It had to be because of the money, didn’t it?’

  ‘It seems like it would be a factor, doesn’t it? Let’s talk it over before we go off half-cocked.’

  ‘My mother used to say that.’

  ‘Mine did, too. That’s why we get along. Because we became them and now we are them and we are also each other.’

  Maggie smiled. ‘Okay. So we agree the money had to be a factor. We learned PG played Powerball. She lived in a place like this. She had friends who went to a fancy private school. Maybe she wanted to be like them.’

  ‘And somehow she meets Anna, right?’

  ‘Yes, and Jamie, and maybe Connie, at Eddie’s. Or maybe Connie works at Eddie’s, too. And Anna is lonely, so maybe PG gets to know her while she waits on her and finds out that she’s a rich girl.’

  ‘And they both notice the similarity in their appearance.’

  ‘Then, as luck would have it, Florian dies in the plane crash.’ Maggie could visualize basically how it had happened. ‘Suddenly Anna stands to inherit millions of dollars, and like we said, PG must’ve been close enough to the real Anna to know she was thinking about reaching out to me.’

  ‘Yes, or Jamie could’ve been the one to tell PG. You know how girls talk.’

  ‘Like us.’

  ‘Right. And then Spring Break comes up, and there’s no therapist and no classes, so Anna’s not seen by anybody. She doesn’t officially exist for a week. Most of the Parkers are away, and it’s the perfect time for PG to strike.’

  ‘So what do you think PG did?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it scares the crap out of me.’ Maggie felt her gut twist. ‘Worst-case scenario, PG kidnaps or hurts Anna, then gets ahold of me, and like a fool, I come running, taking her in while my own daughter is God-knows-where.’

  ‘You weren’t a fool. Anna was planning to reconnect with you or it wouldn’t have worked so well.’

  ‘Do you think Anna’s alive?’ Maggie almost couldn’t bear to give it voice, but she had to. It was the only question in her heart. ‘She has to be alive, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, I believe that.’

  ‘I don’t think PG killed her, do you? Not a seventeen-year-old girl.’ Maggie thought aloud, reassuring herself. ‘It doesn’t sound like PG. PG is a girl who brings her tip money home to her grandmother. Who bakes cakes for people. She’s a girl with dreams. She’s not a murderer.’

  ‘Right, and maybe she even got Anna’s approval. Anything could have happened.’ Kathy shrugged. ‘Maybe Anna wanted to take a break, figure things out after her father died. My Aunt Michelle traveled for six months after my uncle died. Partly it was an escape and partly it was clarifying.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Yep.’ Kathy shifted up in her seat. ‘Anna could’ve done that. She had the money. Maybe she and PG planned it together. She could have had it squirreled away. The lawyer and the therapist thought Anna was coming home with you. They wouldn’t have questioned anything. And PG was smart enough to tell the housemates that she was cleaning out Anna’s room on the lawyer’s instruction. It’s really the perfect escape. Like the prince and the pauper, they switch identities.’

  ‘But why?’ Maggie didn’t think it made sense.

  ‘Maybe Anna just wanted to live on her own for a while, to see who she was. To get away from Congreve, which she hated anyway.’

  ‘What about Jamie? What does this have to do with Jamie?’

  Kathy shrugged. ‘Possibly, nothing. You heard the FBI. They said Jamie was a runaway. Everyone is telling us she’s a runaway.’

  ‘And what about Samantha, from Lower Merion?’

  ‘Same thing. Her mother said she runs away. These are troubled kids. Borderline, lonely, vulnerable. It’s sad. I feel for them.’ Kathy sighed heavily. ‘We live in a complex time, and kids keep secrets. Boys, too. I’m close to mine, but I know they keep things from me. I know they sneak a drink. Probably experiment with pot, or worse. I want to be all over it but you can’t get in their face or they’ll back away forever. Then they’re lost for good.’

  ‘Lost for good,’ Maggie repeated, turning to the house. ‘I hope I haven’t lost Anna for good.’

  ‘Let me put it this way, honey. We’re not giving up without a fight.’

  ‘Agree,’ Maggie said, setting her jaw. ‘Do we tell the grandmother that PG is dead?’

  ‘No, it’s not our place. If she’s alone, she might want her family around.’

  Maggie flashed on going to the morgue, seeing Anna. Rather, PG. She didn’t wish that pain on anybody. ‘If I told her PG was dead, I’d have to tell her that Noah was convicted of her murder, whether he did it or not.’

  ‘Honey, he did it,’ Kathy said, keeping her voice low.

  Maggie didn’t reply. ‘Let’s go. Caleb?’

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Noah, After

  Noah sat on the floor in the isolation cell, trying to figure out how long he had been here. He was in the ACU, or Administrative Custody Unit, for inmates that were in danger from other inmates. They had given him lunch through a slot in the door and then dinner, a while ago. The twelve-by-six c
ell was a white, windowless box that had a cot, urinal, toilet, and sink.

  Noah rose. Sooner or later, Deputy Warden McLaughlin would have to see him. They couldn’t keep him in the ACU forever, and even in the RHU, he’d have been entitled to a release hearing in seventy-two hours. There was no practical difference between the ACU and the RHU. Solitary confinement was the same, no matter what you called it.

  He went to the heavy metal door and pounded hard. It was painted white but scuffed in places, and dented along the bottom, from being kicked. ‘Mr Stanislavsky!’

  There was no answer, so he pounded again. ‘Mr Stanislavsky!’

  There was still no answer, so he kept pounding. Suddenly he heard heavy footsteps in the hallway coming to his door, and in the next moment, the eye-level slot was slid open.

  ‘Knock it off, Dr Alderman,’ CO Stanislavsky said, frowning. He was lanky and tall, with wire-rimmed glasses. ‘I told you, I’ll let you know as soon as the Deputy Warden is ready.’

  ‘I want to talk to my lawyer,’ Noah shot back, changing tack.

  ‘You don’t have phone privileges yet. That account takes weeks to set up in the system. You just can’t make a call.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Calls to lawyers may go outside the Inmate Telephone System. They’re freely available and must be private and unmonitored, unlike the other calls. I don’t have a phone card and I’ll call collect.’ Noah knew the details because he had read the handbook, for which he patted himself on the back. The fact that he’d studied for prison could save his life.

  ‘I’ll be back when I see what I can do.’ CO Stanislavsky closed the eye-level slot.

  Noah could hear the footsteps walking away, then a heavy door clanging shut. He leaned his forehead against the cell door. It felt cool and calming, like a cold compress in the overheated cell. He thought of Maggie, then realized why. Because she used to kiss his forehead.

  He closed his eyes and wondered what she was doing now. He tried to think of what day it was. Tuesday, before Thanksgiving. He hated to think of what the holiday would be like for Maggie and Caleb. He prayed that they were okay, and it gave him some comfort to know that she and Caleb had each other.