Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  The man and the tall woman in coveralls had disappeared.

  Nick knocked on the front door. Then hammered.

  The door opened. A young peach-skinned woman with golden hair tied in a long, thick plait, and wearing blue jeans and a handsome white cable-knit sweater, looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘The balloons.’ Nick was breathless and too abrupt. ‘Where do they come from? Who operates them?’

  ‘Balloons?’ The young woman was unfazed, her blue eyes a little bemused but perfectly friendly.

  ‘Up there.’ Nick half turned, jabbed his right hand up at the sky and saw, to his horror, that there were now five balloons aloft over the valley. ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  Nick turned back to her. ‘You could say that.’ He couldn’t afford the time to explain. ‘Okay, forget where they came from – tell me where they’re going to land.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t?’

  ‘Just that.’ Her smile was easy. ‘They land where they land, within reason. It depends on the breeze, I guess.’

  Nick felt panic rising again, tearing at his heart and his guts, but he knew he couldn’t afford to let it take him over. He had to force himself to think logically. Okay. Back to square one.

  ‘Do you know the company that flies them?’ he asked.

  ‘A bunch of people.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Quite a few companies in the valley operate balloons.’ She shielded her eyes with her flattened left hand and took a good look. ‘There may be two – maybe even three – from one outfit, but I can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘Need some help here?’ A middle-aged man with silvering blond hair, casually dressed in slacks, yellow pullover and loafers, came up behind the young woman. ‘I’m Pieter Van Lindt,’ he introduced himself, ‘and this is my daughter, Helen.’ He had a slight accent that Nick thought was most probably Dutch.

  ‘The balloons,’ Helen Van Lindt told her father, pointing. ‘Any way of telling which ones belong to whom?’

  The man looked up briefly. ‘The usual people.’

  ‘Who are?’ Nick pressed. ‘Who are?’

  Van Lindt looked back at him. ‘You seem very agitated, sir.’

  ‘I am. I have to know where they’re going to land,’ Nick said, ‘but your daughter says there’s no way of telling.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Van Lindt smiled. ‘Which is why they use chase vehicles to track the balloons. They pick up the passengers from the first balloon to land, and then they all go on chasing the second, and so on.’

  ‘But they’ll all be coming down soon,’ his daughter told Nick.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s almost eight o’clock,’ she explained. ‘They have to go up early because of winds and air currents, and they’re usually all down by about eight-thirty.’

  Nick fought against a sudden urge to scream. He had to do something. He had to come up with at least a semblance of a workable strategy, but his mind was blank, too jammed with fear to have space for anything else.

  ‘Do you have a friend in one of the balloons?’ Van Lindt asked. His blue eyes were concerned, understanding. ‘Someone you’re anxious to meet when they land?’

  ‘My daughter,’ Nick said, numbly.

  ‘I see,’ Van Lindt said.

  ‘She’s just a baby.’

  The other man looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think they allow babies, or even small children, on board. I believe there is some height restriction, but I’m not sure. Is she with her mother?’

  No, she’s not with her mother. She’s with a psycho who’s either trying to terrify me and her mother to death, or—

  A vision struck him with all the dizzying impact of a baseball bat between the eyes. Holly standing near the edge of the basket with Zoë in her arms, lifting her, holding the baby out over the edge—

  He shut his eyes and swayed.

  ‘Are you all right? Sir, do you need to sit down?’

  Van Lindt’s voice brought him back. Nick opened his eyes. I don’t think they allow babies on board.

  He stared back up at the balloons.

  Please, dear God, let him be right.

  He thought, very briefly, of telling the Van Lindts the truth, but they were bound to want to call the cops, and he wasn’t about to forget the warning in Holly’s note. If you want to see your baby again, no police.

  ‘You could try calling the local companies.’ Helen Van Lindt was growing more concerned now, like her father. ‘I’m sure I could find you a list inside. They may have passenger lists, so then at least you’d know where to go.’

  Nick thought for a moment. It was either that, or a wild, possibly fruitless zigzag across the valley chasing one balloon after another, without any proof of which one they were in. He looked at the young woman. Her suggestion made more sense than anything else he was likely to come up with, with his brain fast scrambling and Zoë’s life at stake.

  He managed a ghost of a smile at her.

  ‘If you could try finding that list,’ he said, ‘I would like to use your phone.’

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Holly is calculating again.

  It’s strange the way her mind is working now. Has been ever since she first found her baby. Things were getting a little fuzzy before that, she thinks – she thinks. She can’t really remember everything about before – only some things. Key things. The rest aren’t important anymore – if they were, she would remember.

  It’s now that counts.

  Present and future.

  And her brain is like quicksilver.

  She can’t see Nick, yet she knows – she really seems to know – what he’s doing, what he’s thinking, what he’s planning.

  Quicksilver.

  Right around now, for instance, Holly knows that he’s going half out of his mind – three-quarters, at least, let’s keep it accurate – trying to work out which of the balloons over the Napa Valley she and the baby are in. And to comfort himself, to keep himself going, he’s figuring out what he’s going to do to punish her when he has it worked out.

  She knows the way he thinks.

  Ought to by now.

  Oh, but it’s so good to feel in control again, so re-energized, so renewed.

  She looks at her watch.

  Wondering if it’s time yet to make her next move.

  Not quite . . . Just a tad too soon . . .

  Almost there.

  Chapter Ninety-three

  It had taken Nick twenty minutes – twenty precious minutes – just to get to speak to a live human voice at one of the numerous hot air balloon flight companies in the valley. The voice mail recordings and answering machines had been courteous enough, even helpful, if what one wanted to learn had anything to do with weather-checking or reservations or gift certificates; it wasn’t those companies’ fault if a madwoman had kidnapped a baby and was maybe, that same morning, contemplating tossing that baby out of a basket in the sky.

  Nick had recorded extreme urgency messages at every company on Helen Van Lindt’s list. The first real human voice – even more courteous than her company’s outgoing message – called him back almost as soon as he’d put down the receiver after his last attempt.

  Babies were not, on the whole, she told Nick, permitted on board hot air balloons.

  There might, on rare occasions, be exceptions.

  Were passengers allowed to bring large bags or maybe picnic hampers along for the ride?(She might have hidden Zoë. She might have done anything, even drugged her.) No baggage of any kind was permitted in the basket, he was informed; ladies were asked to leave even their purses locked in their cars before departure.

  It became more conclusive.

  They had no reservation in either the name of Bourne or Taylor. Nor in the name of Miller. If Nick wanted to call back in a half-hour or so, by which time the passengers would all be enjoying their sparkling wine brunch, it ou
ght to be possible to confirm absolutely whether or not the woman and child had been on one of their flights.

  The woman and child. Child.

  His child, his and Nina’s. Not Holly Bourne’s.

  Nick sat in Helen Van Lindt’s chair and wanted to weep. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d done that in public, not, at least, since he was a young boy, but he felt he was getting perilously close to it now. Either to that or to a terrible, out of control rage. But neither of those things would do anything except release some of the banked-up steam that he felt was about to explode out of the top of his head. They wouldn’t help him, and they wouldn’t help Nina or Zoë.

  They wouldn’t even harm Holly.

  He asked Helen Van Lindt if he might make one more call, this time to his wife in San Francisco. He’d been hoping to have something – something – to report to Nina when he called again, but it wasn’t fair just leaving her sitting there waiting, going out of her mind.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ the young woman told him. ‘Anything else you need, just call.’

  ‘You’ve already given me coffee and let me take over your office,’ Nick said gratefully. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

  ‘I just hope you find your daughter soon,’ she said, and left the room, closing the door quietly.

  Nick picked up the receiver and slowly pressed their home number.

  ‘Yes?’

  He’d never heard Nina answer a phone that way, so cagey and hostile. (Like a woman waiting for her child’s kidnapper to call – or for her husband to give her bad news. How did you expect her to sound, jerk?)

  He told her fast.

  ‘You are going to check the balloons, aren’t you?’ Nina sounded brittle, like a piece of dry wood ready to snap or splinter. ‘She hasn’t called since way before seven, so she could have gone up.’

  ‘Of course I’m going to check,’ Nick said, ‘but it’s beginning to look like the whole thing was a hoax.’

  ‘Holly never mentioned balloons.’

  ‘That’s true, but there was nothing else on the Trail.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Nina asked.

  He was already starting to doubt himself. Yet there had been nothing else to focus on except the balloons. Wait and see, Holly had instructed him in her second note. Outside the Pieter Winery at seven-thirty. It had been around eight when he’d begun making the calls, and all he’d seen apart from the hot air balloons had been cars and scenery.

  ‘I’m as sure as I can be,’ he told Nina.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, and he knew she was fighting to hold it together.

  ‘What then?’ Her voice shook a little. ‘When you’ve done all the checking. What’s next?’

  ‘I guess I come home,’ Nick answered. Alone.

  ‘Are they certain – the people at this vineyard – are they quite sure that Holly hasn’t called or left another note somewhere?’

  ‘They’re certain, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘They’re smart, nice people.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re dealing with nice people.’ A touch of acid.

  ‘Come on,’ Nick said, gently.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so hard, you know?’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  She was silent again for a moment.

  ‘Honey, I’m going to have to get out of here,’ he pressed her. ‘They’re checking the passengers at all the post-flight brunches.’

  ‘I almost had a drink,’ Nina said suddenly. ‘I almost called the Mayflower and asked them to make a delivery.’

  Nick heard the shame in her voice, and his heart ached for her.

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘No.’ She paused. ‘How could I, when our daughter’s missing?’

  ‘It would be understandable.’ Nick found himself checking his wristwatch. He hated himself for having to cut her short now, just when she really needed to talk, but it was after nine o’clock.

  ‘Blotting out my own pain at her expense?’ Nina said. ‘It would not be understandable. It would be unforgivable.’ She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’m okay. I just needed you to know how weak I am – what a lousy coward I still am.’

  ‘You’re not a coward.’

  ‘I know what I am, Nick.’ She paused again. ‘You have to go.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If Zoë isn’t in Napa, where is she?’

  The shame and weakness had gone from Nina’s voice, and only terror remained.

  The same terror that was coursing, like an overspill from a bottomless source, through all his own veins, along all his nerves.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nick said.

  Chapter Ninety-four

  By nine thirty-five, Holly almost knows the time without checking her wristwatch. She can feel her intuitiveness increasing with each passing hour. Like her detachment from outside, trival matters. Like her power.

  The watch is an old one. She focuses on it for several seconds. Into the past. A more distant past. Blancpain. Given her by her mother and father years ago. She’s always liked it better than other watches, even the platinum and diamond Rolex – Jack’s gift – that she sold for cash before running out on him.

  Interesting the way she seems, now, to remember some things clearly, while others seem covered by that thick blanketing of fog. Gifts have never loomed especially large for Holly – though some, of course, are carved forever in her mind. Like the silk and lace panties Nick gave her that long-ago Christmas birthday. The same day she gave him their first condom concealed in the finger of a sheepskin-lined glove. A glove in a glove. And they never even used it.

  Holly glances at the baby.

  So good and sweet.

  And back at the watch.

  Nine thirty-seven.

  Time.

  Chapter Ninety-five

  The phone rang.

  Nina, in the bedroom, picked it up tentatively, saying nothing.

  ‘Nina, this is Holly.’

  Nina’s right hand wrapped itself more tightly around the receiver, her fingers like claws. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  ‘The baby’s with me,’ Holly said. ‘Safe and snug as a bug.’

  The baby. Not ‘your’ baby.

  ‘Where are you?’ Nina asked, hate expanding in her throat like choking smoke.

  ‘Nowhere near Napa,’ Holly said, lightly.

  Nina closed her eyes and thought of Nick, dementedly chasing balloons on the Silverado Trail.

  ‘I’m next door,’ Holly said.

  Nina’s eyes opened. ‘What?’

  ‘Right next door. Number 1317. I’m your next-door neighbour, Nina. Aren’t you happy?’

  In the centre of her chest, Nina’s heart gave an odd, violent thump, and for a moment or two she thought she might pass out.

  Barbara Rowe.

  She remembered Teresa telling her that was their new neighbour’s name. A private person, Teresa had said. Not friendly, like you.

  She remembered the pregnant, edgy woman on the street, dropping her bags. She thought of the woman in the bookstore in New York City, dictating the poem. The woman Phoebe had recognized in court in Los Angeles. Charlotte Taylor. Barbara Rowe.

  Holly Bourne.

  ‘I want you to come over to my house, Nina. Right away.’ Holly paused only briefly. ‘If you love this little girl, and I imagine you do, you’d better do exactly as I say.’

  ‘I will,’ Nina said quickly. ‘Anything.’

  ‘Good.’ Holly paused again. ‘Don’t think about telling anyone, Nina, because I know where you are, because I can see you right now through your bedroom window—’

  Nina’s eyes flew to the side window, narrower than those overlooking the street, and automatically she moved a little closer to see if she could see Holly next door.

  ‘Yes, there you are,’ Holly said. ‘See me?’

  Nina jerked away from the window again.


  ‘Oh, don’t be shy. Come on over right now. I’ll know if you call anyone or waste any time, and then this little baby will be gone for good. Okay? Okay, Nina?’

  This little baby.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll hurt her,’ Nina said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  More choking, suffocating hate.

  ‘I’m coming.’

  Nina cut off the call and ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs. She was breathing too hard and sweating, fighting panic and faintness. She had to get word to Nick before she left – she had to – or he might never know what had happened, where she had gone.

  For several seconds, standing in the doorway to the living room, she wavered, desperately trying to remember the name of the winery he’d called her from. She could call those people – ‘smart, nice people’ – and leave a message for him in case he went back there or phoned them for news.

  Her memory was blank. Completely blank.

  She let out one short, frantic cry that echoed through the empty house, and the small release seemed to set the shock-clogged wheels in motion again.

  If he makes another call, Nina, it’ll be to you.

  Conscious that Holly was probably counting minutes, she flew to the answering machine, pressed the rewind button on the outgoing message tape, then punched Record.

  ‘Nick, listen to me.’

  Her voice was too breathless and wild, but there was no time to think about that, no time to worry about what might happen if anyone else except Nick called and heard the message..

  ‘Holly is not in Napa,’ she went on, battling to sound coherent. ‘She’s here, in the house next door, right here on Antonia Street. Number 1317. She’s been living next door to us, right next door.’ She gulped air, steadied her voice, made it hard and clear. ‘She has Zoë, Nick – Holly has Zoë – and I’m going to get her back.’

  Nina stopped recording, wound the tape back and switched the machine to incoming message status.