Lullaby and Goodnight

by Staub, Wendy Corsi

“She’s insecure.” Peyton shrugs. “She’s not as strong as you are. Or as strong as I am. She thinks she needs him.”

  “Well, I need J.D., but I’m not going to compromise myself to keep him happy.”

  Peyton says nothing, just leads the way to the visitor registration desk, thinking about Tom.

  As Rita gives the security officer Wanda’s name, Peyton wonders whether Tom has been trying to call her all afternoon. Or maybe he came over, tried to use his key, and found out the locks have been changed.

  “I’m sorry, what was the name?” the guard asks, after tapping a few keys and scrolling down the computer screen.

  “Jones,” Rita repeats. “Wanda Jones.”

  He checks the screen again. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any patients by that name.”

  “She’s a maternity patient. She was admitted yesterday through the emergency room. She delivered by C-section so she could be in surgical recovery.”

  “She’d show up on here no matter how she was admitted.”

  “Was she already released?” Peyton asks, puzzled. Surely they wouldn’t let somebody go home less than twenty-four hours after major surgery.

  “Figures,” Rita mutters, rolling her eyes. “Big Daddy probably got tired of sitting around a hospital room.”

  “Can you check and see when she was released?” Peyton asks the guard. To Rita, she says, “We can always just take a cab down to her apartment and—”

  “I don’t have to check,” the guard interrupts. “I have all the information I need right here. According to our records, your Wanda Jones was never a patient here at all.”

  Jody hangs up the telephone and looks at Sam. “Richie said Linden’s wife definitely didn’t have a laptop. She had a big old white desktop computer with a clunky tower and bulky monitor.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “Meaning she brought the computer with her when she left,” Jody says, crossing over to the desk, where the computer must have stood. A surge protector power strip still occupies the outlet underneath.

  “I wonder if she sent her husband the e-mail saying she was leaving him before or after she actually left. Is there any way to tell where it was sent from, and exactly when?”

  “Not unless somebody saved it, and even then . . .” Sam shrugs.

  “Richie doesn’t know what Linden’s password is—I already asked him,” Jody tells him. “But he did see the e-mail when Linden opened it. He said he remembers it word-for-word.”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at with all this stuff.”

  Jody isn’t quite sure, either. But she knows there’s something here, something she might be missing.

  Thinking aloud, she says, “She took a big old P.C. with a clunky monitor, and she left the surge protector behind. Wouldn’t she need it where she was going?”

  “Maybe she forgot to grab it.”

  “She also left behind two relatively new blouses with tags on.”

  “Ah yes. The scintillating fashion angle.”

  Jody ignores his sarcasm, musing, “She didn’t have a car. Did she get into a cab with all that stuff? She couldn’t have lugged it on the subway or a bus—”

  “Unless she had help.”

  “Even then . . . do you know how bulky those old computers are? And she’d have had luggage with her, too.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Sam, there isn’t a single piece of luggage in this apartment. Not a suitcase, not a duffel bag.”

  “Maybe they don’t travel.”

  “Everybody has some kind of luggage. Which means either one or both of the Cordells packed and took all whatever they had.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, and it was her, with bags and a computer out on the street, she would have been pretty noticeable. We can start canvassing neighbors, bus drivers, regulars on the subway . . . but I still don’t get it. Why? Why not just go with the random murder theory? That makes more sense to me than anything here.”

  “Because something just isn’t adding up. And because I have a gut feeling about this, Sam,” Jody says simply.

  Before he can make the anticipated comment about her “woman’s intuition,” a voice calls from the hall.

  “Hello?”

  They turn to see an elderly woman standing in the doorway of the apartment, a purse in one gnarled hand and a shopping bag in the other. Clad in baggy stockings, terry cloth scuffs, and a nondescript housedress, she has white curly hair, glasses, and a hearing aid Jody can hear whistling from even across the room.

  “Hi, can we help you?” Sam asks.

  “I’m Myrtle Steiner. I live next door. What’s happened now?”

  Jody and Sam look at each other.

  When Sam doesn’t speak up, Jody reluctantly begins, “I’m afraid Mr. Cordell—”

  “What’s that?” the woman asks, motioning at her hearing aid and coming into the room.

  “I said, Mr. Cordell had an accident a few weeks ago—”

  “He was run over by a train. I heard about that.”

  “Did you know the Cordells then?” Jody’s voice is still raised, but the woman talks over her as if she doesn’t hear.

  “I felt so bad about that poor man. What a terrible way to go. And what about her, poor thing? I haven’t seen her around at all. Maybe she went to stay with family. I would, if I were widowed with a baby on the way.”

  Jody’s heart skips a beat and she has to hold back a gasp.

  She shoots a look at Sam, who barely raises an eyebrow as he calls out, “I’m sorry, what did you say, Mrs. Steiner? I must have heard you wrong.”

  “And they all tell me I’m the one who’s deaf,” she mutters good-naturedly, then shouts, “I said, poor thing was widowed with a baby on the way.”

  “Derry Cordell was pregnant?”

  “You didn’t know? She was pretty far along, I think. She was really showing.”

  “I just don’t get it,” Peyton is saying as she follows Rita across the broad sidewalk toward the towering brick and glass apartment building. “Why would she lie about where she delivered the baby?”

  “I don’t get it, either. And I don’t like it.”

  Walking from the bright afternoon sunshine into the dimly lit lobby, it takes a moment for Rita to adjust her eyesight.

  When she does, she’s disappointed to see that the uniformed doorman is a stranger. If Jamil were here, he’d recognize her.

  “We’re here to see Wanda Jones in 28J,” Peyton tells him.

  “Your names?”

  Rita looks at Peyton. “Think we should make something up so she’ll let us in?” she asks under her breath, only half facetiously.

  Peyton shakes her head disapprovingly. To the doorman she says, “Just tell her it’s Peyton and Rita.”

  “Peyton and Rita?”

  “She’ll know us.”

  “Hang on a second.”

  She’ll know us . . . but will she want to see us?

  Rita has a feeling this is futile. She should never have agreed to come down here. Wanda obviously doesn’t want to see either of them. Why else would she lie about where she delivered the baby?

  The doorman has the desk phone up to his ear, head cocked, obviously listening.

  Rita clenches and unclenches her hands, her short fingernails digging painfully into her palms.

  The doorman hangs up the phone.

  Rita knows before he speaks what he’s going to say, yet a disappointed sigh escapes her when he informs them, “Nobody home up there. Sorry.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe she just couldn’t answer the call,” Peyton suggests. “She just had a baby. She’s probably got her hands full.”

  “Can we just go on up?” Rita asks, knowing what the answer will be.

  “Sorry, no.”

  “If we go up,” Peyton persists, “we can knock and she’ll let us in if she’s up to it.”

  He shrugs, shaking his head. “I can’t help you, ladies. I can’t let you up without
the tenant’s permission.”

  “Thanks anyway.” Peyton turns away. Looking at Rita, she says simply, “She has to be here.”

  “Obviously, she doesn’t.”

  “She has a newborn. Where else would she possibly be?”

  “I don’t know . . . the boyfriend’s house?”

  “With his wife and kids? I doubt it.”

  “She told me they’re out East this weekend,” Rita points out.

  “She told you a lot of things. Who knows if any of it is true?”

  There’s nothing for them to do but walk toward the door, their shoes making hollow tapping noises on the polished marble floor.

  The door might as well be a mile away. Rita’s legs suddenly feel like shoelaces, the sleepless night catching up with her at last. She covers her mouth to stifle an enormous yawn, wishing she were home, curled up in bed . . . which, as Peyton pointed out, is precisely where one would expect to find somebody who just had a baby.

  Something occurs to Rita, then, a thought so outlandish, so chilling, that she stops in her tracks.

  Peyton, two steps behind, almost walks into her. “Rita! What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I . . . I’m sorry.”

  Not daring to even mention to Peyton the preposterous idea that’s forming in her mind, she resumes walking, her mouth set grimly.

  Peyton is silent as she follows her out the door, but her earlier question echoes ominously through Rita’s mind.

  Why would she lie about where she had the baby?

  What if, Rita can’t help wondering, Wanda didn’t just lie about where she had the baby?

  What if she lied about having had the baby at all?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Somebody’s home, Anne Marie realizes, as she walks up the creaking, slightly listing front porch steps of the house she’s visited before, but only undercover of darkness.

  Now, the peeling paint, missing spindles, and broken shutters are boldly visible, yet the house lacks the forlorn, run-down air of others on the block. Bright, dappled sunshine filters through a leafy canopy of old trees onto a dandelion-spotted lawn and overgrown blooming shrubs. Rather than seeming unkempt, there is a somehow a wild, natural beauty to the surroundings.

  Fittingly, a lone butterfly flits close to the vibrant Rose of Sharon hedge that borders the porch rail.

  Seeing it, Anne Marie is reminded of the day at the Bronx Zoo, the day when she glimpsed the face that triggered a year’s worth of renewed agony . . . and led her to this very spot.

  There are no coincidences in life, Grace DeMario used to say, and Anne Marie knows now that she was right about that.

  She was meant to be in the butterfly garden that day, meant to make the earth-shattering discovery, meant to see this through to the end.

  Music floats through the screen door and open windows, the kind of music that once drove Anne Marie crazy. Back when it infiltrated her own home day in and day out, she called it bubblegum pop.

  She wonders what they’re calling it these days.

  It certainly sounds the same. Lyrics that contain lots of baby, babys and yeah, yeahs, a strong base beat, a synthesized background version of the vocalist echoing herself in falsetto.

  There was a time when Anne Marie was certain she would scream if she heard any of those redundant songs again.

  Then, as though her wish had been granted by a sadistic genie, the music, and the girl who used to sing along, were silenced forever.

  She arrives on the no-frills, black rubber mat emblazoned with the word Welcome.

  Welcome.

  Yeah, I doubt that, she thinks with the closest thing to irony that remains of her long lost sense of humor.

  She won’t be welcome. But she’s here anyway. And she’s not leaving until she gets some answers.

  Anne Marie takes a deep breath and rings the doorbell.

  “If Derry was pregnant, I would have known about it,” Linden Cordell’s friend Richie insists, leaning back on a sofa that’s seen better days, hands folded across his Harley Davidson T-shirt.

  “Maybe they wanted to wait awhile before they told people,” Jody suggests. She herself kept the news of both pregnancies secret until she was safely past her first trimester.

  “I ain’t ‘people.’” Richie’s furrowed brows descend beneath the swoop of his bandanna do-rag. “Linden and me were like brothers. He woulda told me right away if she was pregnant. I knew all about how hard they were trying for a kid for all those years. . . .”

  “So they had difficulty conceiving?”

  “She couldn’t get pregnant. That what you mean?”

  “That’s what we mean,” Sam says dryly. “So if Linden was like a brother to you, is Derry like a sister?”

  “Nah. She don’t like me that much.”

  Jody wants to ask him to elaborate, but Sam has already moved on to, “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Oh God, who knows? I guess March? April, maybe?”

  So it’s possible Derry was pregnant but not showing at the time, Jody concludes.

  But why didn’t Linden tell his closest confidant? Or his elderly mother?

  Jody spoke to the elder Mrs. Cordell herself, when she broke the news about her son’s death. After the initial shock and extended silences Jody perceived as emotionally reflective, she asked about her daughter-in-law.

  But she never mentioned a baby on the way. Nor did she seem particularly distressed when she found out Derry had left Linden.

  “I never expected that to last,” is what she said offhandedly, with a detachment that didn’t sound like any mother—or even mother-in-law—Jody has ever encountered.

  “Do you think Linden didn’t tell you because the baby wasn’t his?” Sam asks Richie, echoing Jody’s next thought exactly.

  “Nah. If she was pregnant by another guy, trust me, he woulda said something. I asked him if she left because of someone else, and he said no way. She didn’t cheat. He was positive about that. Look, the guy was desperate to find her. By the end, he was going crazy trying to figure out where she was. He musta talked to every single person she ever knew in her life.”

  “But he didn’t file a missing-person’s report.”

  “Nah. Why would he? She wasn’t kidnapped or anything. She wasn’t some runaway kid. She was a wife who took off and left her husband. She even told him she was going, remember?”

  “But he never heard from her again, after that one e-mail?”

  “Nope. Not a word. She didn’t want to be found, just like she said in the e-mail.”

  “What did she say again?” Jody asks.

  “She said, ‘I’m leaving New York. I need space to get my life together. Don’t look for me. I’ll come back if I’m good and ready.’ ”

  “She said that? ‘If I’m good and ready’? Not ‘when’?”

  “Somethin’ like that,” he concedes. “Let’s put it this way: she didn’t have a round-trip ticket to wherever she was headed.”

  “So you’re saying Linden was pretty sure she left. That she wasn’t abducted.”

  “Right. He said they were fighting a lot lately. He spent a lot of time at my place.”

  “And you’re saying,” Jody muses, “that she couldn’t have been pregnant, because if she was, it would have been Linden’s baby, and if it was, you would have known about it? Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But she was pregnant,” Sam reminds her a few minutes later, as they walk down East 222nd Street, away from Richie’s building. “The deaf old lady wasn’t the only one who knew that. All the neighbors we asked said the same thing.”

  “I know. But . . . why wasn’t there anything even remotely related to pregnancy or babies in that apartment?”

  “Maybe she took it all with her.”

  “That would explain the empty hangers, and why she hadn’t worn the new blouses. If she was showing, she was in maternity clothes. She must have packed them all.”

  “Why wouldn
’t the husband tell the best friend she was pregnant?”

  “And why wouldn’t he at least check in with the police after she left? I still find it hard to believe there’s nothing in our files, not a single report involving this. If he was so worried he was asking everyone she ever knew if they’d heard from her, wouldn’t he have at least checked to make sure she didn’t, I don’t know, get run over by a bus?”

  “Or a subway train. What, you’re thinking it runs in the family, huh?” Sam smiles at his own gallows humor.

  “I’m thinking Linden Cordell didn’t want the police involved.”

  Sam’s smile fades. “Yeah, I’m starting to think the same thing. You think he offed the wife, then put up a big concerned-husband front, pretending he was looking all over for her? Maybe he even sent himself that e-mail, huh?”

  “Maybe. But that still doesn’t explain the pregnancy.”

  “Maybe these people are wrong. Maybe she wasn’t pregnant. Maybe she just gained a lot of weight.”

  Jody rolls her eyes. “She told all the neighbors she was pregnant, Sam. She said she was due in October. She wasn’t trying to hide anything. You heard what that old man, Abe, said. He said she was thrilled about it.”

  “Maybe her husband wasn’t.”

  “Right. If he didn’t tell his friend about the baby, the friend he confided in about absolutely everything else, it’s because he wanted to keep it a secret. Why? The rest of the world already knew. Everybody who saw her knew.”

  They reach the light, and Sam looks at his watch. “So what’s next? How about cold beers at the beach?”

  “How about track down Derry Cordell’s obstetrician and talk to him?”

  “How about you’re no fun at all?” He sighs. “Let me guess, we have to haul ourselves back to Co-Op City and try to figure out who her ob-gyn is, then wait for a search warrant?”

  “Nope.” Jody reaches into her pocket and pulls out the appointment card she found on the dusty floor beside a wastebasket in the Cordells’ master bedroom earlier. It must have missed the trash and fallen, unnoticed, just out of sight beneath the hem of the dust ruffle.

  Sam looks over her shoulder, reading the card. “Dr. William J. Lombardo. Are you sure he’s the one?”