Midnight Baby

by Wendy Hornsby

  I nearly lost it when I saw the penciled hash marks on one wall, Hillary, age five, Hillary, age six, marked all the way up to age fourteen. And all made on the same date, November 1. The worst part was the thick line a couple of inches higher than Mike’s head. “Dad” was written next to the line, and below it were nine dates. Every year as Hillary grew, Dad had remained a measurable constant.

  Mike was looking at the same marks, looking as sad as I felt. I put my arms around him.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “Daddy doted on his little girl. Tough competition for a wife. Come to think of it, I don’t see any wifey pictures here at all.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Mike said.

  “I’d sure like to talk to Randy.”

  “I have a real bad feeling about that.”

  “Would it hurt anything if we peeked in his desk?”

  “Sorry, kid. Much as I’d like to take a shot at it myself. That’s a private zone until we get a different warrant. But we can go upstairs. Want to see Hillary’s room?”

  I was still looking around the room.

  “Maggie?”

  “I keep thinking about Casey and her dad. We abandon children in so many ways. Why should they ever trust us?” Mike caught my hand as I turned for the door.

  “What?” I said.

  “Trust me.” He kissed me, a brush across the lips that left a cool streak.

  “Try it again,” I said. He’s so cooperative. There was nothing cool about any part of me when I drew away.

  “Ready now?” he said, cocksure.

  “Stunned,” I said, working to breathe normally. “Lead the way.” Once I had found Hillary in the house, she seemed to be everywhere. It was tough going, walking where she had walked, seeing her things. Mike had done a good deed when he embraced me.

  As we approached the room where Hillary must always have slept between clean sheets, the bathroom where she could shower whenever she wanted to, I thought about the first time I had seen her. The street had been so noisy. A big contrast to the warm, quiet, orderly house.

  I had to remind myself that danger comes in many guises. Sometimes wrapped in pretty packages.

  I held on to Mike, because the contact made me feel better. And he made sure he was available to hold.

  The carpet on the stairs was deep. It muffled the sound of our steps. All the way up I could hear the other police talking somewhere above us, and voices from outside coming in through an open window. They had grown very loud and excited, like a block party.

  I looked up at Mike. “Do you think Martha has been passing around more bourbon?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  We turned into the first doorway at the top of the stairs and nearly collided with Mahakian on his flight out.

  “Sorry,” he panted.

  “In a hurry?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He sidled past us and fled down the stairs. “The outboard is coming up.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “It’s bringing some shit up with it. Probably more trash bags. Those candy-ass lifeguards are screaming for help.”

  We went into the master bedroom, an enormous expanse done in peach and vanilla ice cream, like Randy’s pajamas. The sheer silk draping the windows billowed in the breeze from the French doors. Very ethereal, very feminine. And very sexy.

  The two detectives who had come in with Mahakian were outside the French doors, standing on a narrow balcony that overlooked the terrace below and the dock. Mike joined them.

  I was far more interested in looking around Elizabeth’s room than watching the lifeguards raise Regina’s outboard motor.

  The room was dramatic for its starkness. There was very little furniture to distract from the focal point: the high canopied bed covered with a puffy satin comforter. An oversize bed, with lots of room for rolling around, even for a man like Randy, who, by all accounts, was a big man.

  No one was paying any attention to me, so I pillaged the night-table drawers. I was looking for something to humanize the place, define its inhabitants. The electric dildo I found helped a lot. I found it among a variety of interesting things: K-Y Jelly, many dime-store silk scarves, wrinkled as if they had been knotted, reading glasses.

  In the dildo drawer I also found a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. One of my favorite books. I flipped through the pages. Then I looked back at the window where the detectives were calling down to someone below. Just like a scene from Rebecca.

  I tossed the book onto the bed and went on through the room to the adjoining dressing room and walk-in closets.

  Her closet was bigger than his. Either closet could have been converted into a good-sized bedroom. The odd thing was, while her closet was crammed, his was absolutely empty. I knew where his things were, out there on the dock. That wasn’t the puzzler.

  When my ex, Scotty, moved out, it took me a while to decide to spread my things into his closet space. A week, maybe two. Elizabeth had had a couple of months. And she really needed more closet space. Unless she was expecting Randy to come back, what was her hang-up?

  I was puzzling over this when I closed the closet door behind me. I walked back into the bedroom and saw the men still leaning over the balcony railing. Just as in Rebecca when her sailboat was found at the bottom of the sea. With her in it.

  “Mike?” I picked up the book and walked toward the windows. “I want to show you something.”

  The noise outside crescendoed, a collective groan. The detective standing shoulder to shoulder with Mike covered his mouth, ducked away, and, green-faced, ran past me headed for the bathroom.

  “Mike?” I started for the balcony.

  Mike met me, blocking my way. He was green-faced, too. “What is it?” I asked.

  “I think we found Randy.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Bloated, half his face eaten away by the fishes, poor Randy didn’t have any looks left to be vain about when I finally met him. He was a big man, though. Puffed up even bigger by the gases that come with putrefaction.

  The breeze off the water lifted his fine, light hair and ruffled through the shirt of his creamy silk pajamas, so that he looked as if he were panting after a hard swim. His last, best effort. Around his legs was still wound a shroud made from a luscious peach-colored satin sheet, accessorized with three anchors on chains.

  When I looked down at him from the balcony, he had been a beached absurdity, a Macy’s Parade balloon that had strayed. Up close, however, he was beyond grotesque. Poor Randy.

  Mike had Mentholatum smeared under his nose, like the other police and the county coroner’s people. I could smell it ten feet away. I could smell Randy, too, though he wasn’t as bad as I had expected.

  I wondered how many men leave home forever wearing their monogrammed pajamas.

  Mike stayed with the locals until Randy was zipped into a green plastic body bag. Green about the same shade as the trash bags that held a few cubic yards of his personal treasures. Odd, the tomb he had been taken from. Like the pharaohs, buried with the junk that gave him pleasure in this world. Had he, like they, planned to take it with him? Or had someone simply done a very thorough housecleaning, emptied the closets along with the occupant snoring on the left side of the big satin-covered bed?

  Mike stripped off surgical gloves, dropped them into a receptacle for contaminated waste. Then he got down on his belly at the edge of the dock and scrubbed his hands in the dark water. I wouldn’t have done that. Randy had come out of the same water.

  Martha had given me a vacuum bottle of coffee before she went inside to stay, to lie down she said. Regina had long since called her husband to pick her up.

  I poured Mike the last of the coffee and carried it over to him. His hands were still wet when he took the china mug from me.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “What happened to Randy?”

  Mike inhaled the steam rising from the cup. “Throat was cut. Deep. Severed the trachea.”

 
“That makes three, if you count the raft. So, is it over? I mean, don’t bad things come in threes?”

  “Sure. Unless they come in fours or fives.”

  “I was looking for reassurance.”

  “I can’t give you any, Maggie.”

  “So, tell me. What sort of madman would sink a raft right over the very spot where he had left one of his victims? A victim, need I say, he had gone to great lengths to keep on the bottom.”

  “Couple of possibilities. One, he didn’t know Randy was down there. Two, he wanted us to find Randy. I’m inclined toward number two, because I don’t believe in coincidence of the magnitude implied by number one. Two also makes this raft business a crime of opportunity, suggesting he didn’t know who the hell you are.”

  “Meaning he didn’t follow me here?”

  “That’s what I would like to believe.” He filled his lungs.

  “I’m finished for now. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m staying over with Martha tonight.”

  “I think that’s a real bad idea.”

  “She’s scared, Mike.”

  “She should be.”

  “I can’t leave her alone.”

  “She must have family.”

  “She asked me.”

  “Is there any point in arguing with you?”

  “Is there ever?”

  Tired, stressed, he sighed.

  I took Martha’s empty cup from him and poured the coffee dregs into the water. “Why don’t you stay with us?”

  “No.”

  “Martha thinks you have a nice ass.”

  He wasn’t ready to be jollied.

  “She told me she takes her hearing aids out at night. Can’t hear a thing.”

  He looked up at me from under furrowed brows. “Did she really say that?”

  “Not exactly. She said it was pleasant to watch you walk away.”

  “Uh huh.” He wasn’t buying yet. “Sure she did.”

  “I can’t leave her alone, Mike.”

  “She isn’t expecting to climb into bed with us, is she?”

  “Maybe.” I smiled; he had come around. “You never know. She might be a lot of fun. Ben Franklin said all women are the same in the dark. And older ones are so much more appreciative.”

  “He was old his own damn self when he said it.” Mike wiped at the Mentholatum under his nose. “I don’t have any clothes.”

  I glanced over at the pile on the dock. “Maybe Randy will lend you something.”

  “Maybe I’ll do without.”

  “Even better,” I said.

  Martha put us up in a downstairs guest room that faced out on the Ramsdale side of the house. As cheerful as her chatter was, I knew she was scared half to death. While her house was equipped with a state-of-the-art alarm system, it wasn’t enough for her that night. She was immensely relieved to have our company. She walked around the house with Mike, checking every window and door with him. When we called a moratorium on fussing and saw her up to her room, she was still edgy.

  “To think he was next door all the time. Right there under the dock.” She had a grim thought that crossed her lined face like a gas pain. “What if he had floated up?”

  “Then we would have known what we know now, just sooner,” Mike said.

  Martha shuddered.

  “Try to sleep,” I said. “We’re right here if anything happens. Don’t worry.”

  She wasn’t so upset that she had lost her sense of humor. She stretched up to kiss my cheek. “I’ve always been one to believe that I could take care of myself. But, now and then, it is nice to have a man around the house, isn’t it, dear?”

  I had Mike by the hand. I gave it a pat. “It’s nice to have this man around.”

  Martha had found toothbrushes for us, and a razor for Mike. He shaved, and then got into a hot shower.

  I folded my clothes over a flowered chintz easy chair and slid, naked, between the crisp sheets.

  According to my watch, it was just after eleven. I dialed my home from the bedside telephone to make sure Casey had gotten in from Denver on time and intact. The machine came on after the fourth ring.

  “It’s me,” I said after the beep. Then I gave Martha’s number. “Call me if you have a problem. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you in the morning. Lyle, the muffins were wonderful, but I think you were too skimpy with the pineapple in this batch.”

  Mike had given me the code so I could check his answering machine for messages from Lyle. I called Mike’s number, pushed the code, and listened.

  Mike’s ex had called to tell young Michael she would be home late. Michael called. He was home safely but had left his calculus book in Mike’s car. He needed it for class Monday morning. Lyle called. Casey’s plane had arrived on schedule at nine, but Casey wasn’t on it. At ten-thirty he had called again. He was still at the airport. No Casey.

  I quit breathing.

  Shaking so hard I almost could not hit the buttons, I dialed the airline, and got nowhere. I called the San Francisco airport and had Lyle paged. He must have been listening for the call, because he came right on the line.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice tight. “Except she’s not here.”

  “Did you call Scotty?”

  “Constantly. No one answers.”

  “Lyle, will you stay there? If she missed her plane, she knows to page you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I gave him Martha’s number. Then I hung up and dialed Denver. Scotty, my ex, answered just as his machine kicked on. He fumbled to shut off the outgoing message, muttering crankily. Finally, he said, “Hello.”

  “Scotty, where’s Casey?”

  “What the fuck?”

  “She didn’t arrive in San Francisco.”

  “Shit, Maggie. We put her on the plane. Where could she be?”

  “It was a nonstop flight, Scotty. If you put her on, one way or another, she would have to get off at the other end. She didn’t.”

  He blew off some air.

  “Did you actually see her get on the plane?”

  He blew again.

  “Scotty, answer me now, or so help me, I will reach through this telephone and rip off your face.”

  “Calm down, Maggie.”

  “I will not. You lost my daughter.”

  “Everything has a rational explanation.”

  “Give me one.”

  “Well, we didn’t actually see Casey get on the plane. We had a very pressing appointment. So we dropped her at the airport an hour or so early.”

  “At the curb or at the gate?”

  “Maggie, this child has more flight time than most commercial pilots. She can get herself from the curb to the departure gate unassisted. She only had carryon.”

  “But she didn’t make it,” I shouted.

  Mike came running out of the bathroom at that point. “Maggie, what?”

  “Casey is missing,” I gasped.

  “Where?” He wanted more, but I still had the telephone to my ear.

  Scotty demanded, “Who’s there with you?”

  “The best sex I ever had.” I hissed it. “Where is our daughter?”

  “I’ll check it out. I’ll call you.”

  “Damn right you will.” I gave him Martha’s number and slammed down the receiver. I needed to scream some more. When I looked up at Mike, all that came out was: “She’s only fourteen.”

  The telephone rang under my hand. I snatched it up. “Lyle?”

  “There’s one sorry little teenager here,” he said. “Want to hear her last words on earth?”

  “Lyle, have I ever told you I love you?”

  “Too often. Here she is.”

  “Mom?” Casey was really sweating. I could hear it.

  “What happened?”

  “The flight was overbooked.”

  “But you had a reassigned seat. You’re an unescorted kid. They couldn’t b
ump you.”

  “I volunteered. They gave me coupons for two free tickets if I took the later plane. Round-trip coupons. The next two times I go to Denver, it won’t cost anything.”

  “Oh my God.” I fell back on the bed.

  “I only had to wait two hours.”

  “And during those two hours Lyle died a thousand deaths. Didn’t you call?”

  “I left a message.”

  “If Lyle was at the airport, how would he know you called him at home? Why didn’t you page him?”

  “Mom.” She was crying. “I’ve already gone through this with Lyle, okay?”

  “Not okay. Have you learned something here?”

  “Yes,” she sobbed. “I’m never going to Denver again.”

  “Go home,” I said. “I’ll yell at you some more tomorrow. And Casey?”

  “What?”

  “After you drop down to your knees and kiss Lyle’s feet and beg his forgiveness?”

  “What?”

  “Call your father.”

  “Bye,” she said, and then she was gone.

  Mike was standing by the bed, naked except for a damp towel, face worried. “So?”

  “She took a later flight.”

  “So she’s all right?”

  “She’s fine. The rest of us may die of apoplexy. But she’s fine. Just another example of independent thinking.”

  “Gotta nip that in the bud.”

  I shook my head. “Gotta get both of us cellular phones. Little hand jobs.”

  “We’ll go shopping tomorrow.”

  Mike turned off the lights and slipped into bed beside me. For the third night in a row. I was getting used to rolling up against him in the dark. Three nights in a row. Three different beds. I was still juiced with adrenaline. We lay quietly in the dark, parallel bumps under Martha’s sheets, letting our minds slow down. It was very companionable.

  I reached out for his towel on the nightstand and used it to cool my face. “My God, Mike. It’s so easy to lose them.”

  He shook his head. “No it isn’t. You raise them right, they know how to take care of themselves. Casey’s okay.”