The Search for Baby Ruby

by Susan Shreve

  “Very nice for her.”

  “Have you seen my little sister, who was here in this room taking care of my baby niece when we left to go to the rehearsal dinner?”

  “I’ve seen nothing except that dress. When I came on this floor to turn down the beds, the door was open.”

  “Not even a baby?”

  “I heard a baby but I was working, so —” She hesitated. “Babies are all over the hotel, you know. I may have heard a baby, but it wasn’t necessarily your baby.”

  She started to pull the door shut. “See you later,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll send your sister up here if I see her.”

  “Thanks,” Teddy said, sitting down on the end of the bed.

  She took her phone out of her purse.

  WHAT is going on? she texted Jess. I’m in the room.

  She waited. She waited and waited, counting to a hundred, counting to a thousand. No answer. No text returned.

  Something was very much the matter.

  Jess knew.

  Standing beside the closed door wearing Whee’s wedding dress, unzipped and too long with just the smallest amount of lipstick staining the inside of the top of the bodice — nothing to worry about, Jess hoped. But she simply knew that when she opened the door she would see the towel on the floor where she had left Baby Ruby before she went into the bathroom in the first place. And Baby Ruby would be gone.

  She stood beside the door without opening it. Waiting. Waiting for Ruby to cry, waiting for Teddy to leave the rehearsal dinner and rush into room 618 to help her.

  It felt like hours that Jess waited in the bathroom, and when finally she opened the door, the terry cloth towel was still spread out on the carpet, the door to 618 was closed, and there was no evidence that anyone had come into the room.

  But Baby Ruby was gone.

  Still in Whee’s wedding dress, she rushed into the corridor of the hotel to check if the kidnapper was still there. She dashed toward the bank of elevators, but the hall was empty. She turned back to their room and crumpled to the floor, her heart beating in her chest so loud she could hear it, her brain scrambled eggs.

  She pressed her face into the thick carpet, wishing to melt into the rug, wishing for an earthquake or fire or some great catastrophe to overtake the fact that Baby Ruby was gone.

  Mainly, she wished that Teddy were there.

  She reached for her cell phone on the end of the bed.

  Help! Terrible trouble.

  Teddy O’Fines had had experience with trouble. Real life-threatening trouble.

  Just the thought of Teddy gave Jess the strength to get up from the floor.

  The strength to take off Whee’s wedding dress and toss it carefully on the bed, to slip into her shirt and jeans, push her cell phone into her back pocket, and hurry down the corridor in the direction of the elevators, where less than an hour ago she had seen the suspicious man.

  She replayed what had happened. How odd the man had seemed standing by the bank of elevators as if he were going to get on an elevator. And then he didn’t.

  Jess had been in the doorway of room 618, holding Baby Ruby, when the man turned abruptly and headed in her direction. Alarmed, she stepped back into the room, shut the door, and put Baby Ruby on her back in the middle of the bed.

  She opened the door again, just a crack, to check if he was still in the corridor, and the man was now in sunglasses. Just as she saw him, Baby Ruby began to scream. Had she closed the door when she rushed to pick her up?

  Had she closed the door completely or not? Or had she been in too much of a hurry? Too distracted?

  She had put Baby Ruby on the bed, spread a large white bath towel on the carpet, picked up Ruby, and put her on the towel on her back.

  But had she actually shut the door? Or simply let it swing shut behind her while she picked up Ruby.

  It was possible — she had to admit to herself — it had not been completely closed. She didn’t test it to be certain it was locked.

  The man certainly had seen Jess. He would also have seen Baby Ruby in her arms. He might have stopped at the door to room 618, waited, maybe even peered in if the door was not completely shut. Or perhaps the man had lurked in the hallway until Jess went into the bathroom. And then he had slipped into room 618, seen Baby Ruby on the terry cloth towel, grabbed the baby, and left for nowhere.

  Nowhere was how it felt.

  A baby stolen from a room in a huge hotel could be anywhere in the hotel or out, in Los Angeles or beyond.

  It had taken only a second to steal her, and then, maybe, there was a car waiting in the back of the hotel. The corridors were dark, the baby was wrapped in the man’s jacket as he hurried down the exit steps. A leap into the car and Baby Ruby was gone, gone, gone.

  The corridor was empty, but Jess could hear an elevator advancing — the light above the elevators indicated it was stopped at the fourth floor on its way up. Maybe it would stop at six and maybe — who could tell — someone in her family was in it. Maybe it was even Teddy escaping from the wedding, slipping out of the Bay Room to come help her sister.

  Jess looked quickly around for a place to hide and, spotting the door just to the left of the elevators where she’d seen the housekeeper with a stack of towels, she opened it, slipped in, and left it open a crack.

  A small room or a large closet, stacks of towels and sheets, boxes of soaps, shampoos, body cream. She closed the door behind her, edging her body between the sheets and towels, and listened to the sounds outside the door.

  The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and then quick-stepping heels on the hardwood floor. A tall figure flashing by in the slit of the doorway, then silence as the footsteps faded away. It wasn’t Teddy. Jess shut the door.

  She leaned against the stack of starched sheets and closed her eyes. The room was almost dark, light coming under the door, but gradually her eyes adjusted to the darkness, to the silence of a room full of sweet-smelling linen. For the moment, she was invisible. She had to decide what to do. No time to wait.

  She checked her phone. Five minutes. Only five minutes since she had first realized that Baby Ruby was gone, five very, very long minutes, and now she was sitting in the hotel linen closet.

  Of course what she should do, what she had to do, was go down to the lobby and tell the person at the desk that her baby, Danny’s baby but her responsibility for the night — Baby Ruby, of whom she was entirely in charge — had been stolen from room 618 while she tried on her sister’s wedding dress in the bathroom with the door closed.

  She leaned against the perfectly folded sheets and wished they would unfold and grab her in their starchy arms and swallow her up.

  Then, just as she stretched out her legs, she felt the whoop in her back pocket where she had stuffed her cell phone.

  WHAT is going on? Teddy texted. I’m in the room.

  I’ll be right there, Jess texted back.

  She pushed herself up from the stack of sheets, her heart bubbling in her chest, rehearsing in her head what she would say to Teddy. Her sister was certainly the best member of her family to tell about this kind of trouble. Nevertheless, even if Teddy mostly hated the O’Fineses, and especially Danny, she was going to be horrified that her perfect little sister had lost the baby and ruined the family.

  And that is how Jess saw it. Ruby had evaporated into thin air. The chances of finding her anywhere in this huge hotel were not good. And even if Ruby were found — poor Baby Ruby, counting on Jess to take care of her, to keep her from harm — what good would that do since Jess had been the one to lose her in the first place. She would never be forgiven. Not by Danny or Beet or even Aldie and Delilah, who would look at their youngest daughter as some kind of criminal.

  They would never trust her again. They would never truly love her again. She would be better off in prison. Better off dead.

  She opened the linen closet door, and there was a rustle behind her, the sound of breath, a presence or a ghost, and light crept into the dark room
.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  A woman’s voice, high and girlish, an accent, probably Spanish.

  “Me?”

  “You!”

  Jess looked into the darkness in the direction of the voice, into the corner of the room, at a shadow of a woman, a small woman the size of a child, sitting on a short stack of sheets. She had long hair in braids hanging over her shoulders. Her feet were bare.

  “You must leave,” the woman said. “This room is for sheets and belongs to the hotel.”

  “I am leaving.”

  It struck Jess, a fly-by thought, floating in and then out of her mind, that the woman did not belong to the hotel either. So what was she doing in the linen closet?

  “Good-bye,” Jess said while closing the door. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  There was no answer, no sound from the corner of the room, and when Jess crinkled her eyes, focusing on the spot where she had seen her, there was nothing. Only more white sheets.

  Teddy was sitting on the edge of the bed, breathing into a paper bag, when Jess burst through the door.

  “I had a full-on panic attack and now this.” Teddy dropped the paper bag on the bed. “How in the world did Baby Ruby disappear?”

  “She just did. Vanished! I was in the bathroom —”

  “I know you were in the bathroom trying on Whee’s wedding dress —”

  “I was only in the bathroom for a second, Teddy.”

  “Long enough to also dump Whee’s makeup. And look at you, lipstick, mascara, blush. Jeez, Jess.”

  “I want to die,” Jess said through her tears.

  “You can’t die until we find Ruby.”

  They ran down the hall to the elevators, pressed the button, and stepped inside.

  “But we’re not going to ruin the rehearsal dinner, Teddy.”

  “You mean not tell Mom and Dad?”

  “Or Danny and Beet.”

  “Or anyone in the family?”

  “We’re going to find Baby Ruby by ourselves,” Jess said.

  Her heart was still hammering away in her chest, but she had stopped crying. There was still a chance they could find Baby Ruby somewhere in the huge hotel or even Los Angeles.

  “Remember SLEUTH, Jess?” Teddy said softly, looping her arm through her sister’s, punching the LOBBY button of the elevator.

  Jess nodded.

  “It’s going to come in handy now.”

  “So you agree, we’ll find Ruby ourselves.”

  “We’ll tell the concierge what has happened because we have to, and then we’ll find her ourselves,” Teddy said. “We’re certainly very experienced with crime.”

  The game of SLEUTH just happened out of the blue the night the O’Fineses announced that they were getting a divorce. When the conversation with their parents — not a conversation exactly, since what little Aldie and Delilah had to say had been cut short by Danny — was finally over, Aldie and Delilah left for the Woody Allen film, and the O’Fines children scattered. Teddy went upstairs to her bedroom and Danny headed out the front door with Whee. Lots of luck on ever seeing me again, he called, the last to leave, slamming the door behind him. Jess waited until Danny’s car pulled out of the driveway and then went upstairs to Teddy’s room.

  The door was locked.

  “Teddy?”

  “Teddy O’Fines doesn’t live here any longer.”

  “That’s okay,” Jess said, sitting on the floor and leaning against the door to Teddy’s room. “I can wait until she comes back.”

  She waited, occasionally pressing her ear to the door, but there was no sound from Teddy’s room. And then she heard shuffling, a window closing, bare feet slapping the hardwood floor.

  “So come on in,” Teddy said when she opened the door. “I’m sleeping. I’m planning to sleep for the rest of my life.”

  “I want to sleep too,” Jess said. “With you.”

  “No problem,” Teddy said. “Just stick to your side of the bed.”

  “Tonight has been a very bad night so far.”

  “It’s not going to get any better, so crawl in, get under the covers, and tell me a story.”

  Jess lay very quietly next to her sister, her favorite sister. Tonight, this terrible night, which felt as if it were the end of her childhood, Teddy was the only person in the O’Fines family she truly loved.

  “Did you know this was going to happen?” she asked.

  “Sort of. I saw signs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Daddy didn’t sleep with Mom any longer. He slept on the couch in the TV room.”

  “I thought he was working late.”

  “Every night?”

  “He’s a very busy lawyer. That’s what he told me. ‘I’m a very busy lawyer, Jess, and I need to stay up late to work.’ Like that, he told me.”

  “He may be a very busy lawyer, but that’s not why he was sleeping on the couch,” Teddy said. “So tell me a story, Jess. A made-up story.”

  “Well.” Jess propped up a pillow behind her.

  “Like a fantasy story,” Teddy said.

  “This is a fantasy with us in it and it starts: Once upon a time, there were these two sisters, Jessica and Teddy O’Fines. Very pretty and very smart and they lived alone on Elm Street in Larchmont, New York, where their parents used to live until they decided to bolt, leaving them without any money to buy food or to pay the rent or to get Tylenol when they had a fever. So the sisters needed a job.”

  “What about school?”

  “They didn’t go to school. They didn’t need to go to school because their parents weren’t there to tell them what they could do or could not do. So one day while they were lying around in bed trying to decide whether to get an ice-cream sundae or go on a bike ride, they heard a terrible scream and Jess ran to the window to see what had happened and there in the backyard next to their old jungle gym was the body of a very fat woman lying facedown so all they could see was her blond hair and big bottom.”

  “Was she dead?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Jess said. “Let’s go to the window and check.”

  “You mean she’s there in the backyard. Our backyard?”

  “Of course.”

  Teddy followed Jess to the window above the back garden and they both looked down.

  “She looks pretty dead, doesn’t she?”

  “I don’t think she’s breathing if that’s what you mean,” Teddy said, looking out the window at their dog, Chaucer, tearing up a basketball. “Chaucer is so very stupid that he doesn’t even notice the fat woman on her stomach in our garden.”

  “Call the police, Ted,” Jess said.

  “Pronto,” Teddy said, and she pretended to dial the police. 911.

  “Come fast,” she said. “There’s a dead woman in the backyard of 301 Elm Street.”

  “Are they on their way?” Jess asked.

  “Hear the sirens?”

  The police came, two squad cars with their sirens whirring, parking outside the front of the house, and Teddy answered their knock.

  “Glad to see you, gentlemen,” she said, opening the door to the police. “My partner is in the back garden with the victim.”

  “Your partner?”

  “My sister and I are partners in SLEUTH LLC. We’ll be glad to help you out with this victim of some terrible crime. We are expert investigators.”

  And so SLEUTH LLC began that evening.

  Jess and Teddy were in the back garden when Delilah got home from the movies.

  “What’s going on?” she called to them. “It’s after nine.”

  “We’re busy.”

  “Well, busy yourself into the house and get ready for bed.”

  “We’re busy,” Teddy called. “And afterward we’ll go to bed.”

  Jess took on the role of the policeman.

  “Ever see this woman before?” she asked.

  “No, but then, I can’t see her face,” Teddy said.

  “Any cl
ues?” Jess asked.

  “Well, she’s a stranger and it looks as if she jumped from the second floor of our house, but as far as we know she was never in our house,” Teddy said.

  “No more clues?” Jess asked.

  “Someone must have brought her here, someone very strong, strong enough to carry this victim and lay her facedown on our grass.”

  All summer, Jess and Teddy played SLEUTH, and in the fall after school started up again, they played most afternoons. A latchkey child now that Delilah had gotten a job in a bank, Jess would come home at three, let herself in the front door, walk Chaucer around the block, make herself a peanut-butter-and-cracker sandwich, and then set up a crime scene. A body might be hidden under their mother’s bed, halfway under, just the feet showing. The drawers with Delilah’s jewelry would be dumped on the carpet in the bedroom where Aldie O’Fines used to sleep in the bed with Delilah, and there’d be no other clues. Or the body of a man might be sitting on the chaise lounge where he’d been reading a book, the book in his lap, a bullet in the middle of his head leaving a bloody circle on his forehead.

  During the fall semester Teddy had basketball, but after practice she would rush home and race up the steps to the second floor, where Jess had arranged a new crime scene.

  The house was empty of men that year. Aldie was in the city, not even in Larchmont for weekends. The girls took turns going into the city to see him, but Whee was in her last year of college and Danny was a sophomore at Tufts, so only Teddy and Jess were in the house with Delilah.

  It was the year of Delilah’s First Boyfriend, and he would often call at the last moment to go out to dinner, so Delilah would leave the girls, her daughters — her precious daughters — to what she called your own devices.

  “What is devices?” Jess had asked Teddy, sitting on the front porch swing while Teddy watched the eighth-grade boys pass the O’Fines house on their way to football practice.

  “It means that we can do whatever we want to do. Our own devices.”

  “Good,” Jess said. “I want to do whatever I want to do. I just don’t like Mom’s boyfriend.”