“We restored it ourselves.” She told Grace about the ugly brick facade, the discovery of tiles from Europe.
“It’s beautiful. I noticed it as soon as I came in.”
“We tackled a few projects to make this house a home. The carport outside. Painting and carpeting. We replaced the kitchen backsplash in just one weekend. Leo and I worked hard, so hard to make a home for our baby. Our dream house . . . a dream life.”
“You did a good job with it,” Grace said.
“But a house can be a prison.” Chelsea bit her lips. “That’s what happened here. Once Annabelle was born, nothing worked out as we’d planned. I couldn’t do anything right. I don’t have the energy to get off the couch, much less take care of a baby. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel and . . . I’ve failed. I always prided myself on conquering challenges. They used to call me the ‘DIY Girl.’ I could do anything. I was so independent and capable. But not anymore.”
“You have postpartum depression,” Grace said. “I know it because I’ve been there. My son, Matt, he’s almost a teen now, and I can’t imagine this world without him. But twelve years ago, I came this close to killing us both, and back then people didn’t have patience for anything beyond the baby blues. But I get it, Chelsea. It’s very real, but it can be treated. You need help.”
“I don’t deserve help. I’m a terrible mother. What if I left the door unlocked? Or maybe I left my baby outside last night. I don’t deserve to be here now. Annabelle should be here, and I should be the one out there.” Out in the cold. The property of some stranger. Or worse . . . dead and already buried. She pictured Annie’s little body frozen like a little doll. A doll left out in the cold. Why could she see that so vividly when she couldn’t imagine her daughter squirming in her arms or reaching for her hair or nestled in her crib once again?
The prickly ball twirled inside her, cutting her to ribbons, and she closed her eyes and rode the pain. Her penance.
Chapter 23
Leo squirmed in the narrow seat of the jet, wishing against time, wanting to be home now. The thought of his ex-wife getting her mitts on Annie had festered inside him through the flight, and now that they were in their final descent, his fingers clenched into fists at the prospect of facing Jennifer.
Oh, he would gladly have a showdown with her.
He winced against the nauseating dip in altitude and thought about the list. He’d hit on the profile of a typical infant abductor when he’d done an online search while waiting at the airport. He’d just about memorized the bulleted list of traits.
The typical infant abductor was a female of childbearing age.
Check.
Compulsive, manipulative, deceptive. A liar.
Check. Check. Check. Check.
Lived in the community where the abduction took place.
Well, she did now.
Frequently indicated she had lost a baby or was unable to have one.
Check.
Leo pressed his eyes shut. How could you do this to me, Jen? You’ve stepped over the line . . . way over the line.
The second the wheels bounced on the runway, Leo fished his cell phone out of his pocket and fired it up. If someone complained, what could they do? Throw him off the plane?
His first call was to Jennifer, and as luck would have it, she answered.
“Well, look who’s finally getting around to calling me back. I knew you’d come around once you got my message.”
“Enough is enough, Jen.” It was a strain to keep his voice low, his tone even. “Is this your idea of a bad joke?”
“It’s no joke, sweetie. This is for real. I am really here in town and I am really going to stay, so you’d better get used to it.”
He gritted his teeth, annoyed that she was beating around the bush. She always was a ball buster. “Stop playing games and—” He cut himself off, knowing that Jennifer would only play wilder if he pushed her. “You know what? Don’t waste my time. I’m coming over there. Now.”
“Are you really? That’s great. I have to ask, what swung you to my team after all these years and months?”
In the background he heard a sound that rent his heart—a baby’s cry.
“You have her! She’s there with you. I hear her!” he shouted. An inappropriate voice level for the cabin of a commercial flight—he knew that—but he couldn’t help himself.
He turned away from the woman beside him, who looked like she was about to drop her teeth, but everyone else was staring, too. The other passengers gawked, then the bell released them from their seats and their interest slipped away with the urgency to pop up and jockey their bags down and get off the plane.
“Excuse me?” Jennifer copped a pouty attitude. “What are you talking about?”
He pressed into the emptying aisle and yanked down his duffel bag with his free hand. “Don’t try to pass this off as a cute attention-getting device. It’s kidnapping!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Annabelle. Bring her back right now.”
“Calm down, and don’t use that tone with me.”
She was getting mad . . . and Jen was a terrible driver even sober in the sunshine. Besides, she probably didn’t have a car seat. She probably didn’t know a baby needed one. “No, wait! Stay right there and I’ll come get her.” He pulled out a pen to write on his hand. “What’s your address?”
“Go to hell!” She cut the line.
He marched up the jetway, calling her again. She didn’t pick up, and the call went to her voice mail. He shoved the phone into his pocket and started running.
Annie’s cry rang through his mind, a haunting echo. He had to get to her.
Now.
By the time he got to his car in long-term parking, his pulse was thrumming and sweat ran down the center of his back, despite the cold. He thought about calling that detective and telling her that he knew who stole Annabelle, but he didn’t want to take the time now.
He needed to see the cops in person, let them know how much of a threat Jennifer Green could be . . . let them know that he had heard Annie’s distinctive cry.
He had heard it himself. Annabelle was with Jennifer—kidnapped by her!
Memories smacked Leo in the face as he tore out of the airport parking lot. Memories of horrible things Jennifer had done to him over the years. The time she went through his cell phone while he was sleeping and deleted the number of every female in his directory. The sexual harassment complaint she filed against him at Sparklet when he asked for a divorce. The time he broke up with her and she sent him a gift box with a tiny coffin and a condolence card that read: I have AIDS. Although it had turned out to be false, he had gotten tested and walked around in a sick state for weeks. “It was just a joke,” she said. “What happened to your sense of humor?”
Jennifer was a lunatic, but he blamed himself for ever falling for her, for confusing obsession with love. He just hoped that his mistake hadn’t jeopardized his baby girl. He floored it onto the interstate, hell-bent on getting home and finding his Annabee.
Chapter 24
“The next-door neighbor is back,” Officer Viloria called from the open side door. Her hat was in her hand, and her long dark hair was pinned at the back of her head, regulation style. At five feet two, Angie Viloria was a petite cop, but Grace had learned that size wasn’t always helpful in law enforcement. Strong negotiating skills could bring a big man to his knees if you did your job right.
“Thanks.” Grace grabbed her jacket and hurried around the kitchen table. “I definitely want to catch her.” Chelsea Maynard was upstairs pumping breast milk, trying to keep it going, hoping the supply would be needed.
“No rush,” Viloria said. “This one has ‘cop buff’ written all over her. She’s talking with Sgt. Balfour, and I don’t think she’s budging anytime soon.”
“Let’s see if we can work her fascination to our advantage,” Grace said, following Angie Viloria out the door.
Wit
h the arrival of the media and their vans with satellite dishes snaking up into the snowy sky, a carnival atmosphere had overtaken the street. The cops had moved their cruiser acting as temporary headquarters up into the driveway, establishing the sidewalk as a line of demarcation that the reporters were not allowed to cross.
Grace fixed her gaze on the woman who seemed to soak up Mike’s every word, as well as the gestures of the two cops behind him. Pickler struck Grace as a woman who’d gotten caught in a time warp back in the eighties. Long hair, too much makeup, and clothes from the original “Let’s Get Physical” video. Olivia Newton-John plus twenty years and fifty pounds. The conversation was punctuated by barking from a rat-like dog that scurried around, sounding an alarm.
“A real honest-to-goodness kidnapping on Maple Lane?” Louise Pickler’s fake eyelashes batted the floating snowflakes. “That’s quite a scoop. Now cut it out, ChiChi.” She snapped her fingers at the dog, who circled behind her, then continued barking.
Someone hadn’t heard of the leash law.
Pickler shot a curious look over at the Maynard-Green house. “And right next door to me. Should I be scared, officer?” she asked Balfour.
“It always pays to be cautious,” Balfour told her.
“Ms. Pickler?” Grace stepped into the conversation holding up her detective shield. “I’m Grace Santos, a detective with the Missing Persons Squad.”
“A lady detective?” Pickler tapped a finger on the tin of Grace’s shield, as if testing it. “Just like on TV.”
Grace forced a smile. “I’m wondering if you have a minute to talk with us about anything you might have seen around your neighbor’s house.”
“Sure. I can tell you a thing or two about Chelsea and Leo. I spend most of the winter down in South Carolina, but I see plenty when I’m here.”
“We heard you had a place down there,” Balfour said. “It’s nice. I bet you don’t miss weather like this.”
“That’s for sure.”
“We were beginning to worry that you wouldn’t be back until the spring thaw,” the sergeant added.
Grace bit back a smile. Balfour was good at shooting the bull, loosening people up.
“I got back Monday. This morning I was just at the gym. It’s the morning routine for ChiChi and me.” Pickler adjusted the terrycloth headband holding down her hair.
“Really?” Grace stepped away from the small dog dancing at her heels. “Do they have doggy daycare at this gym?”
“ChiChi likes the gym, but he stays in the van.” The dog was yapping rapid-fire, and she leaned down to swoop him up. “He goes everywhere with Mommy, don’t you?”
ChiChi just panted, his ears twitching nervously.
The dog thing was annoying, especially with Louise calling herself Mommy, but it fit part of the profile of an infant abductor. That desire to have a child, so strong that the abductor set up a “fake” family with the stolen child.
“Ms. Pickler, would you like to step inside out of the snow?” Grace asked, pointing toward the woman’s house. She wouldn’t mind having a look inside.
“Do you have a search warrant?” Pickler asked.
When Grace’s brows shot up, Louise Pickler grinned. “I’m just giving you a hard time. But we can talk out here.” Pickler’s eyes snared Balfour and the other cops talking by the cruiser.
Viloria was right; she was a buff. “Okay. What kind of relationship would you say you have with your neighbors?”
“I’ve always been a big help to Chelsea and Leo. Young couples starting out, they don’t know anything about when to take the trash out or how you have to protect the parking spot in front of your house. I filled them in, but really? They don’t want to hear it.”
“So you’d say you have a good relationship with Leo Green and Chelsea Maynard?”
“Let’s just say a good fence is important. I never complain when they play their music in the backyard in the summer. I figure they don’t know that it drifts right up to my window. And I happen to know that they’d been ripping things out. Taking apart my friend Gloria’s house, brick by brick. But I don’t say anything. And that baby—they got a screamer for sure. You know, I went to South Carolina early last year because I couldn’t listen to that baby howl anymore. That voice . . .” She pointed to her house. “It went right into my bedroom window. Cut a hole in my head.”
Balfour scratched his jaw. “I can see where that would bother you.”
Grace frowned. Mike was too kind.
“Not that you can pick your child the way you do a dog, but that baby . . .” Pickler winced. “She’s a crier. She woke up ChiChi and me the other night, howling like a wild animal. She was so loud, I looked out and saw that the baby was out in the street. That was just crazy. So I called and reported it.”
“Ms. Pickler, where exactly was the stroller?” Grace asked.
“Right there, plain as day.” She pointed to the Green-Maynard driveway, the area under the carport. Not the street, but still not a safe place to leave your baby alone at night.
“And last night?” Grace asked. “Was the baby out in the stroller, crying again?”
“I don’t know. I picked up some earplugs from CVS, and they worked like a charm.” Pickler was looking back at her own house now, watching as a small woman in a parka backed up from the sidewalk and brought a microphone up to her face.
“That’s my lawn you’re on!” Pickler shouted. Her dog barked and twitched, no doubt eager to leap from her arms and drag the offending reporter from the lawn.
The reporter sidled back onto the sidewalk with a friendly wave. “Sorry! Just looking for a good angle.”
“They’ll have to pay a fee if they want to put my house on television,” Pickler muttered. She stroked the dog, glaring at the woman Grace recognized as Suki Dinh from News 4 New York. “Maybe they want to talk to me. I could be on television.”
Grace felt the interview slipping away. “Ms. Pickler, did you notice anything unusual in the neighborhood last night? A strange car on the street? Someone walking after dark?”
“No . . .” Pickler’s voice was distant, her focus shifted to the news crew. “Louise . . .” Grace stepped into the woman’s line of vision. “I’m trying to find a little baby who’s missing. I need you to concentrate. Do it for Annabelle Green.”
Pickler rolled her eyes. “I can’t tell you anything if I didn’t see anything.”
“Maybe if we went inside . . . just another few minutes of your time . . .”
“That would be an invasion of piracy,” Pickler said sternly.
Balfour cleared his throat, and Grace bit the inside of her cheeks to keep a straight face.
“Yes, I know my rights, detective.” She adjusted her sweatband and turned toward her lawn. “I wonder what my story would be worth to them.”
Grace wanted to stop her, but what could she do?
“Just make sure the camera gets your good side,” Balfour called after her.
“Mike . . .” Grace glared at him. “Don’t encourage her.”
“She’s got nothing for us, Grace. And if she gets an interview, maybe she’ll incriminate herself.”
“We’ll have to watch the noon report. Though I don’t know why she’s so excited to get on camera when she’s so secretive about her house.”
“You heard her. It’s an invasion of piracy.” Balfour looked over at the two-story cape, a mirror image of the Green-Maynard house. “But there’s something weird in there. When you get up to the porch, there’s a bad odor.”
“Mildew? Mold?”
“Something foul. And when you got a stink like that this time of year, in the cold, you know it must be potent. Maybe she’s a bad housekeeper. Maybe worse. If you’re going for a look in there, I’d recommend you suit up first.”
As they talked, a car moved down the center of the street, negotiating among the parked cruisers and news vans a little too fast for comfort. When the car stopped in the street in front of Annabelle Green’s house,
both Grace and Mike turned to watch.
“Who the hell is that?” Balfour asked.
The car bounced to a stop. The driver’s door flew open and a dark-haired man in his twenties was out in a flash, running up the driveway.
“That’s got to be Leo Green,” Grace said. “The father.”
Chapter 25
It was like some macabre festival. Getting past the cluster of cop cars and news crews in the street in front of his house was like trying to find street parking at Yankee Stadium on game night.
He sneered when a cop stopped him halfway up the driveway. “It’s my baby you’re looking for. I’m Leo Green.”
“Okay, sir. Go on ahead.”
Leo lunged under the carport and leaped up the steps. Inside, it was warm and disheveled and oddly quiet. He could see the back of Chelsea’s head, and from the way she sat alone in her spot on the sofa, you would almost think it was any ordinary day.
Except for the circus outside and the fingerprint powder darkening kitchen surfaces.
“Chelsea . . .”
She sprang up, more alert than he’d expected. Her blue eyes glistened with tears.
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I fell asleep and . . . when I woke up she was gone, and I can’t sort out the details in my head about whether I left her down here alone or put her in her crib or left her outside in the stroller. I can’t remember and . . . she’s gone.” A tear streamed down her face, but her eyes remained locked on his, strong, determined, and frightened. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I slept through it . . . whatever happened to her.”
He closed the space between them and folded her into his arms. “It’s not your fault. We’re going to find her. Where is that detective? Detective Santos.”
“Right here, Mr. Green.”
He eased away from Chelsea to glance back at the side door, where a petite woman in a brown coat stood beside a cop.
The woman, a brunette with intense black eyes, introduced herself as Grace Santos. The cop, Sgt. Balfour, was in charge of the police investigation.
“They took fingerprints,” Chelsea said breathlessly. “And they used dogs. They tried to sniff out a trail, to see where she is, but it didn’t work.”
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