by AR Simmons
“Richard,” she said. “It’s inconvenient not having my car, and it will soon be too cold for you to walk home. Find us a reasonably priced second vehicle.”
“Another car? How much can we afford?” he asked as he finished peeling the vegetables.
“Payments of one fifty maybe.”
“A BMW is out I suppose,” he said with a grin. “How about a pickup?”
She grimaced and then shrugged. “It will be yours. Suit yourself,” she said, taking off the apron and stepping out of the high heels she still had on.
“Just cut those in one to two-inch pieces and put them in a baking dish coated with a little oil,” she said.
“The dish or the vegetables?”
“Both. Put them in the oven in forty-five minutes.”
“Where are you going?”
“To soak in the tub. Vanity has its price. I should have worn sensible shoes. I knew I would be on my feet all day.”
“Go ahead. I got it covered in here,” he assured her.
She went to the stove and set the timer. “When this goes off, put in the vegetables and then reset the timer for another thirty minutes. If I’m not back by the time it goes off the second time, remove the chicken but not the vegetables and turn off the oven.”
“Never knew KP could be so much fun.”
Suddenly her arms were about him and she was nuzzling the nape of his neck.
“What’s this all about?” he asked as he leaned back.
Her lips brushed his bristled cheek. “I just love you, that’s all,” she murmured, tears in her voice.
“Hey. Me too, kid,” he said, patting her forearm at his abdomen.
•••
The meal and the evening were what they were meant to be. In the afterglow, they held each other in bed, speaking softly in the dark of things both dear and inconsequential. Richard “forgot” to mention his meeting with Molly and did not speak of the missing child. Jill tried not to think of past ghosts or future fears and contented herself with just having her man safely in her arms.
•••
October 23
He was keeping the car today. Although he maintained his end of their conversation, Richard’s attention strayed to thoughts of Molly, Mancie, and the Allsops as he and Jill plowed through a light but insistent cold rain toward the campus.
Preoccupied at work, he performed his required tasks, responded when spoken to, and remembered the substance of none of it. No doubt it was a dry hole, but he had to check out the Allsops. Yielding to compulsion, he skipped lunch and drove down to the ill-fated housing development on Lake Taneycomo as soon as he got off, planning to return in time to pick up Jill at four.
Myrtle Grove’s grandiose gate befitted a venerable estate, not the scraped earth barrens he saw before him. A lone completed structure thrust multiple brick-clad facades skyward, attempting perhaps to inspire envy. To Richard, it said, “Look at what I can afford!”Like many of the lower middle class, he was afflicted with inverse snobbery. Unlike most, however, he realized that he was inspired by envy.
The Allsops aren’t all that rich, he reminded himself as he surveyed the area looking for an alternate way in.
The gate required a passkey. The pavement ended not fifty feet past the entrance. Beyond, a road of graded chat flanked by waist-high weeds now gone to seed led to the house. He had approached over a circuitous road of new concrete devoid of houses or other structures save signs advertising lots for sale. Myrtle Grove had all the earmarks of a costly and ill-conceived scheme well on its way to bellying up. Impressive as the view was, the project clearly stood on the wrong side of the lake. The terrain presented few good sites for homes. All the high ground was well back from the lake. Everything close to the water was a mud flat. He wondered idly if a Venetian project was feasible.
Probably not. No tide to carry the sewage away.
Thinking of the construction problems brought Pat Allsop to mind. Having a key made him an obvious suspect, but Molly’s unlikable ex had no apparent feelings for the child.
Richard looked across to the isolated manor, imagining Mancie safe in the care of a loving but misguided grandmother.
How would you handle the legal problems of raising a child with no birth certificate?
Only an extremely impulsive and naïve person would get into a situation like that, certainly not a businessman already up to his ears in financial problems.
Plus everyone knows about their granddaughter’s disappearance, so how could they ever explain having a child at their age?
They would be believable suspects had they moved to a place where no one knew of the disappearance. Was such a move in the offing?
“Maybe all their money’s in this boondoggle,” he mumbled.
People thinking clearly don’t pull off family abductions. It takes the heat of passion and no thinking through to the consequences. Besides, how does Katie Nash’s murder fit something like that? A sociopathic husband cleans up his wife and son’s mess? Too much passion. Too much shared stupidity.
He stared across at the pretentious house, realizing that he had wasted his time and gas in coming. Clearly, he couldn’t approach it, much less find a way to talk himself inside. Even if he did, the house was too large to examine surreptitiously. Its seclusion made it a good place to hide a child one had no business of having, but it didn’t make sense. Reasonably intelligent people didn’t kidnap their grandchildren. Besides, the Allsops could probably have successfully challenged Molly’s fitness as a mother. Small town politics being what they were, it would have been their best bet.
The main drawback to an Allsop conspiracy theory was that it lacked believable conspirators. There was a father uninterested in custody, a disinterested grandfather, and a grandmother who reportedly went hysterical when the child disappeared. Add an unknown fourth person enlisted to drug Molly. It was a hell of a stretch, especially when he added the complication of Katie Nash’s murder.
I wonder what percentage of family abductions result in premeditated murder of someone outside the family?
He thought about the baby at the dump. Coupled with Mancie’s abduction it suggested the existence of a predatory pedophile. But no frantic parents had come screaming to the police about a second missing child. There was a simpler explanation for the body in the dump: someone had “solved” their problem by simply throwing an inconvenient baby away like so much trash. It happened too often.
One pathetic little victim at a time, Richard. Find out who drugged Molly, and you’ll find out who took Mancie.
Tinsley seemed most likely since he and Molly had shared drinks both at the club and later at his apartment. Molly claimed there was no sex that night. Maybe adult women didn’t appeal to Tinsley. Everyone at the bar knew about Molly’s little girl because she had shown them pictures. Had the photos of the beautiful child ignited Tinsley’s passion? Richard imagined the man waiting until Katie was gone and Molly dead to the world, and then going inside to take the baby.
He shuddered.
But maybe Tinsley was only a helper. Maybe his job was only to drug Molly. Maybe it got complicated and took longer than he thought it would. Perhaps Molly came home late, throwing off the timetable. He imagined the kidnapper arriving at her home expecting just to go in and take the child. Only when he got there, Katie Nash hadn’t left yet. Crimes don’t always come off as planned. Richard learned in Somalia the difficulty of coordinating activities, even simple and straightforward ones. So perhaps Katie saw him or his car, or he thought she might have. Then he killed her and staged it as a sex crime.
The next time Adams seemed in a receptive mood, he would suggest checking out Tinsley’s phone records.
“Speculating without facts, Richard,” he reminded himself as he turned the car around to leave. “Let’s just find out who drugged Molly.”
•••
On the way through town, Richard detoured left on Market and drove past The Honeycomb. He didn’t have time to stop.
The BMW that had almost backed into him sat crookedly taking up two handicap spots near the door and partly obscuring a real estate agent’s sign leaning against the brick wall.
It surprised him that McComb had his place up for sale because it seemed to do a good business. Of course, income was only half the equation. Bobby McComb could be in financial straits for any number of reasons both business and personal. Money was the essence of most criminal enterprise.
Kidnapping for ransom?
His pulse quickened at the thought, but his rash enthusiasm evaporated immediately. Molly Randolph had no money for ransom, and no one knew that better than McComb. He was the one paying her at the time.
He drove on out to the college thinking about the three reasons he knew for stealing a baby. Ransom was out unless someone was trying to shake down the Allsops, which he doubted. Someone desperate to be a parent, like perhaps Katie Nash, could have taken the child, but cases like that seemed almost always to be impulsive, involving children left unattended. Mancie’s abduction involved two premeditated acts, drugging Molly, and breaking into the house. That meant it was planned, perhaps for a more sinister motive, one no normal person could understand. For the first time, he wondered if knowing what happened might not be worse for Molly than not knowing.
•••
When he turned onto campus, he saw Jill walking toward him two blocks from the steps where he normally picked her up. She checked traffic and then crossed as he leaned over to open the door.
“I almost missed you,” he said as she got in. “What were you doing way down here?”
“I got tired of waiting,” she said, looking straight ahead as she buckled in.
Catching her irritation, he glanced quickly at the dashboard clock. “Sorry I was late.”
“You weren’t that late.”
“I’m not very late but always late, right?”
“Not always,” she said. “Just most of the time. I should adjust my schedule accordingly.”
“What else is wrong?”
“Forget it, Richard. A man was bothering me. I walked away from him. End of story.”
“If I had been there on time, you wouldn’t have had to, right?”
He noticed her clenched jaw. Jill’s refusal to really accept his apology and her continued anger irritated him. She was making a big deal out of nothing.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s not do this. We don’t need it. Forget about that creep.”
“I know how to handle unwanted attention, Richard. It’s inattention that …”
“I don’t ignore you,” he objected too loudly.
“No. You yell at me when I tell you how I feel.”
Richard felt the sickness inside she always caused when she became oversensitive. When that happened, there was no pleasing her.
Probably hormonal, he thought, but he had a little too much sense to say so.
“What do you want from me, Jill? We’re sitting here arguing over nothing. I was exactly fourteen minutes late, and some creep sees you standing around and hits on you—which is perfectly understandable because you’re a good-looking woman, and you’re on a college campus—and I get the blame for it all?”
“If this were the only time you have forgotten about me—”
“I didn’t forget about you.”
“What were you doing that it took you so long to get here then?”
“I was out of town, and it took longer to get back than I expected.”
“It usually takes about as long to come back from a place as it does to get there,” she observed icily.
They drove two blocks in silence.
“Tomorrow get another vehicle,” she said as he turned onto their street. “Then I can come home when I wish without having to depend upon you.”
He pulled into the drive and jammed the car into park.
“Can we call a truce now?” he asked sharply.
She turned away. They sat in silence, neither making a move to get out. Richard felt that something terrible was happening, something he had not the slightest chance of changing. No serious accusations had been hurled. No names had been called, but disaster loomed. Jill’s small hand found his. Face averted, she stared out the window. Wordlessly, she squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. Then they got out and went into the house. They didn’t take the fight inside with them, and during the evening both pretended that it had never happened.
•••
October 24
Richard spent the afternoon filling out forms and running. At the end of his paper chase, he owned a fifteen-year-old Ford 150. Its two hundred thousand miles showed, most notably in its bed and upholstery. The engine and steering were tight, but the brakes needed work. The tires failed to pass inspection, which ran the actual cost up twenty-five percent, but by the end of the day, he had his own ride, and Jill was no longer dependent upon a negligent husband.
Without Molly’s customary visit, things approached normality in the evening until he mentioned his investigation.
“Jill, I’ve come up with three reasons someone might want to abduct a child: to raise as one’s own, to hold for ransom, and the pedophilia thing. Is there another reason you can think of?”
“No, Richard. It’s horrible, and I don’t really want to think about it.”
“Well, I have to.”
“Of course you do,” she said, closing the book she had been reading and standing up. “I have laundry to do. Are all your coveralls in the hamper?”
He nodded.
Clearly, Jill wanted his total disengagement from Molly, but Richard knew that without her (misplaced) confidence in him, Molly would lose hope and crash back to meth. Having failed so often, he just couldn’t live with that on his conscience. Through his ineptitude or her weakness that might happen anyway because the story wasn’t likely to have a happy ending. So many things were unclear, but not his duty. Molly could—probably would—descend into ruin, but he couldn’t walk away and just allow it to happen. He had to keep going, as much to save himself as to save Molly.
Later that night, he lay beside his bride in that twilight world between sleep and consciousness as half-formed and loosely connected thoughts drifted through his mind. Or perhaps he dreamed it.
•••
Molly was drowning—dragging him to the depths with her as he tried to save her.
“A promise is a promise,” said Jill as she treaded water nearby. “A promise is a promise.”
Molly gasped, “She’s down there. My baby’s down there.”
•••
He jolted upright, and then got out of bed carefully so as not to awaken Jill. On the way to the kitchen for aspirin, he pieced together what it meant. Molly “knew” that Mancie was still alive. Richard had to believe it because if he could only find her, he could kick himself free of the clutching darkness.
He got carefully back into bed and adjusted the covers.
“And he became as one dead.”
He recognized it as a “fever thought,” one of those obsessive phrases that had tormented him since childhood whenever he was sick. He jerked reflexively away from it. Jill moaned softly and adjusted her position.
If you have to think, think to a purpose, he scolded himself.
But where to start?
Find a loose end to pick at.
He settled on the Honeycomb. Molly had spent the entire afternoon and most of the night there when Mancie disappeared.
McComb suddenly wants to sell the place? It’s busy. So why? Has he been living beyond his means? Maybe he’s just tired of it. Maybe he plans to buy a different one. Maybe he won the lottery!
He wanted to turn it off and get to sleep, but his restless mind recycled its stale thoughts like pasteboard ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. Baseless speculations refused to stay dead whenever he shot them down.
Gambling can run up debts in a hurry—drugs too. Owing enough to the wrong kind of people can make a guy desperate enough to turn to crime.
<
br /> He sighed aloud. Jill stirred.
Right! Grandma Allsop paid him a bundle to steal her granddaughter. So let’s fill in the rest of this jewel. Daddy suddenly gets an attack of parental concern and decides his momma should raise Mancie. Granddad catches the responsibility virus and suddenly has time for the baby too. Somehow they tumbled to McComb’s need for quick cash. He agrees to drug Molly and drive the getaway car when Pat goes in to kidnap the baby. Then Gram and Gramp move out to the Taneycomo mudflats to keep the baby from prying eyes. Granddad gets Dillard to keep the story low key in the paper. Might as well throw in Adams too since he’s obviously botching the investigation on purpose.
Irritated that he allowed himself to elaborate the ludicrous conspiracy, he turned on his side and tried once again to find sleep. But his mind wouldn’t let it go.
Richard gave up his quest for sleep in disgust, got carefully out of bed, and tiptoed to the kitchen. While coffee drizzled slowly through the maker, he thought of a conspiracy that might have happened, only not such a wild one—complicated, but not crazy. It also involved the same two motives. The person who wanted Mancie had hired someone desperate for money to drug Molly and put her out of commission.
He poured a cup of coffee, thinking that there were no benign reasons for taking the child, only less malignant ones than pedophilia. Katie Nash’s pronouncement echoed in his mind.
“Some baby stealer snuck in and took her.”
Knowing that some men hunger for children, slapped away his hope that Mancie was safe and in the care of some misguided person who loved her.
What would I do if Mancie were my child, and one of those animals killed her?
“And he became as one dead,” he murmured.
“What?”
He turned to see Jill standing in the doorway, cinching the belt of her robe.
“Just talking to myself,” he said. “On your way to the bathroom, or should I pour you some coffee?”
“I’m up. What time is it?”
“Only four. Sure you don’t want to go back to bed?”