by Susan Shreve
“No,” Teddy said. “I don’t.”
“Well, it was just lovely,” she said, looking in the mirror, pushing hairpins into her chignon. “I like a good wedding, don’t you? And then it was over and I went up to the twelfth floor, but my room isn’t on the twelfth floor, and now I simply can’t remember for the life of me where my room is.”
There was a pause.
“Do you happen to know where my room might be?” she asked.
“I don’t,” Teddy said.
“And this hoopla. Do you know about the hoopla?”
Teddy shook her head.
“Well, a baby has been kidnapped. A little baby girl from the sixth floor. That’s what I heard.”
The elevator stopped at three and Teddy got off. She walked the rest of the way downstairs and went across the lobby to the office where Detective Van Slyde should be, and there he was on the telephone.
“News?” he said, still on the phone.
She pulled up a chair beside him.
“I can’t reach Jess,” she said. “I keep trying.”
“We are doing everything we can. They’re searching for her everywhere, a full-court press.”
“What do you think?”
“We don’t think anything yet, but we’re investigating everything and interviewing everyone and trying to keep the gossip level down while we talk to people.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Our job is information. We follow every lead until it proves to be a dead end. Time is important. We know what time your baby disappeared from your room, and anything could have happened. We need to work fast.”
“So what you’re thinking …”
“Someone took Ruby and that someone had to be either on the staff or a guest in the hotel.”
“Jess saw a woman in the linen closet on the sixth floor. She was just sitting on the floor where all the sheets and towels are kept.”
“What was Jess doing in the linen closet?”
“Hiding.”
“And the woman?”
“That’s all I know.”
Jess rubbed her wrists together, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, hoping to loosen the ties. She began to feel a little give, as if it might be possible to stretch them slightly, enough to wriggle her left hand, her smaller hand, out of the grip of the rope.
Her shoulders were tense. So was her back and stomach. Her head felt detached from her body, like a heavy wooden box sitting on her shoulders. If Jess didn’t find Ruby, she would die. If she didn’t actually die of shame and sadness, she would go to a poor country and work in an orphanage until she was very old.
She could see light, probably slipping under the cloth tied around her head covering her eyes, possibly from a streetlight.
Jack and Angel had been gone a long time. At least it felt as if they had been gone a long time. Every now and then, she stopped to listen. The windows of the car were shut, but she could hear a few cars driving by, though none stopped. She thought she heard the sound of shouting. She tried to be very still so she could hear what was being said but couldn’t make out the words or whether they were coming from a man or a woman.
And then there was a fight.
Two women screaming at each other and Jess could hear them clearly. The voices were moving closer to the car.
“You helped me, yes, but you never asked for any money and I don’t have it to give you!”
“You should have let me know that. I would have done nothing. Nothing if I had known you were going to do this to me!”
“Do what to you?”
“What you done. Ask me to help you out and then just scramble off with the goods and leave me poor as ever!”
“So what do you want?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“What about the girl? I could give you the girl and you could ask for money to give her back. These families who go to the Brambles are rich.”
“I don’t want the girl.”
“You don’t want the girl?”
“That’s what I said. I don’t want the girl.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Dump her in the ocean.”
“You’re a terrible woman, Maria. I wouldn’t do that. She’s a girl.”
“So?”
And the door to the car opened. Someone was getting in the backseat and the door closed.
Rosemary.
Jess could tell that it was Angel in the backseat and she was whimpering.
The door opened by the front seat, the key in the ignition, the engine on.
“What did you expect, Angel?” said Jack.
“We don’t have a thousand dollars.”
“You’re right. We don’t.”
“Then we have to get it.”
“How?”
“Use the girl. We can use the girl.”
The car was moving slowly.
“Those people have money. They’ll pay to get her back.”
“This is too complicated for me, Angel. We’re going to be in trouble and then we’ll have nothing. Not each other, not a life. Nothing.”
The car was going in circles, round and round, right turn after right turn, Angel whimpering in the backseat.
Jess lay very still.
“I’d rather get the money from the 7-Eleven than use the girl.”
“Rob the 7-Eleven?”
“It’s faster.”
“You think a 7-Eleven has one thousand dollars in its cash register?”
“I don’t know, Angel, darling. Maybe they only have five dollars. But it’s night, they’ve been open all day. We drive by. See if the 7-Eleven is empty, and if it’s empty, I go in, tie the guy up if there’s only one guy. I won’t go in if there’s two.”
“But you wouldn’t know how to open the cash register.”
“I’ve been around. I’d ask for a pack of cigarettes, give him a ten, he’d open the cash register, and then I’d jump the counter, tie him up, take what’s in the drawer, and stroll out with my cigarettes.”
“And what about the girl?”
“I don’t know what about the girl. Maybe drive north and leave her on the beach. Let me find an empty 7-Eleven around here and see if I come out with one thousand dollars, and then we’ll decide about the girl.”
“We’ll go back to Maria’s first and give her the money.”
“That’s what we’ll do, baby.”
The car was quiet except for the sound of Angel whimpering. They were moving at a normal pace and Jess heard the whoop of a text message.
Angel heard it too.
“Did you hear that?”
“I did,” he said.
“It’s a cell phone.”
“It is.”
“The girl got a text message.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Angel.”
“Get it from her and read it.”
The car pulled to the right and stopped.
“Read the text to me and then throw the phone out the window.”
Jess lay very still while he lifted the blanket, took the phone out of her back pocket, and replaced the blanket over her.
Her heart was beating too fast. If she lost her phone, then what?
JESS, it said. Call me. We’re terrified about you.
And then Jess heard the sound of a window opening and the crack of the phone as it hit the pavement and the car was moving again.
The man turned on the radio to a music station, turned it up so the sound of Latin music filled the car.
“What did you do that for?” Angel called from the backseat.
“To relax, baby.”
“It’s making me feel worse.”
“Listen, Angel. With any luck, I’m about to rob a 7-Eleven and come out with one thousand dollars to pay your sister, and I haven’t got the nerve to do this if you are crying in the backseat. So I turned on the radio.”
“Well, turn it off.”
Nothing happened for a while except a tappin
g of his hand on the steering wheel and then he turned the music down but not off.
“Do you think someone will find the girl’s phone?”
“Of course they’ll find it.”
“And then find out who it belongs to and then find us.”
He had begun to sing along with the music in a low, melancholy voice. Jess, her cheek against the carpet, felt panic setting in. The smell of the carpet, the tightness of the ties around her wrists and ankles, a rising fear that Ruby was gone forever. If she saw her family again, they would not speak to her. Poor Danny. Ruby was his only joy. And Whee, her dress smudged with stolen makeup, her wedding ruined, and her mom — crazy Delilah. Jess would be sent to one of those places that people go when they are sick from a broken heart.
Only Teddy would forgive her, but too late.
Whoop, whoop sounded in Jess’s head and she pretended it was Teddy texting.
What’s going on? she imagined Teddy texting. You could’ve ditched the country and headed to Kathmandu for all I know. I’m sitting up in bed in the middle of the night and it is almost morning and I haven’t slept at all and NO WORD FROM YOU.
Whoop, whoop.
Ted, I have been kidnapped by the kidnappers. Lying facedown in the front of this guy’s car, tied up on the floor, and the carpet smells of pee and gasoline. I’ll probably die in the next hour. I love you. Your favorite sister.
Whoop, whoop.
Negative. You’re not going to die. You’re going to find this baby and bring her back to her parents and everyone will be so happy that they’ll forget it ever happened because you are my amazing sister and you can do anything.
Sometime in the midst of pretending to text, the music playing, the car moving, but slowly, Jess fell asleep.
Teddy was sitting on the couch in Detective Van Slyde’s temporary office at the Brambles Hotel when the alert came that the 7-Eleven just north of Pacific Palisades had been robbed.
Officer Jones opened the door to the office.
“You got the call for the 7-Eleven?” he asked. “They’re short-staffed at the station tonight.”
“Are you taking the call?”
“I’m headed there now,” Officer Jones said. “When do you go off duty?”
“I’ll be here.” Van Slyde checked his phone. “I’m not leaving until we get some results.”
“I’ve got something from one of the domestic staff I interviewed just now,” Officer Jones said.
“Tell me.”
“She’d seen a woman today who used to work here, and this woman went on maternity leave about three months ago but the baby died.”
“Okay.”
“You told me to tell you everything I heard whether it seemed important or not.”
“Of course,” Detective Van Slyde said. “I meant it.”
“She tried to chat with the woman, who was nervous and skittered away and disappeared.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all the information she had. One of the questions we were asking the staff was did you see anything out of the ordinary today, and that’s what she said.” He checked his notebook. “Her name is Mary Coin and skittered is my word, not hers.”
“The domestic you interviewed is Mary Coin?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t get the name of the former employee?”
“She didn’t remember the name, but since she was on maternity leave, I’m sure the hotel could identify her. See you later.” He closed the door behind him.
“What about Jess?” Teddy asked after Officer Jones left for the 7-Eleven.
Detective Van Slyde rested his hand on her arm.
“Baby Ruby can’t talk and move on her own, so the LAPD is focusing a lot of their search on Jess right now and hoping she and Baby Ruby might be in the same place.”
“Me too,” Teddy said. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
“I am going to need to depend on you here. We need as much information as you can give us and I count on the fact that you’re levelheaded.”
Levelheaded!
Her parents would be astonished to hear that. No one had ever called her levelheaded before.
Teddy’s phone rang and she reached into her back pocket.
“Your sister?” Detective Van Slyde asked quickly.
Teddy looked at the phone and shook her head.
“My mother,” she said.
“Teddy!” Delilah said, loud enough that her voice filled the small office. “Where are you?”
“In the office where Detective Van Slyde is working.”
“He still hasn’t a clue about Jess or Baby Ruby?”
“I don’t think so, Mom.”
“I’m coming down, okay?”
Teddy looked at Detective Van Slyde, who nodded, reaching out for the phone.
“You can certainly come down, Mrs. O’Fines. Just understand that we are working on every lead we get and, though we haven’t found her yet, we’re not going to bed until we do.”
Van Slyde was a tall, large man, flushed in the cheeks, with big hands, a soft belly, and a wide, generous smile. He gave the phone back to Teddy and leaned over, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands folded, and spoke quietly.
“Tell me about Jess.”
“She’s the good girl in the family,” Teddy said. “The do everything you’re asked to do girl. She gets good grades and doesn’t complain. We call her the Save-the-Marriage Baby because she’s the baby my parents had in order to save their marriage.”
“If you were to guess, what do you imagine she might be doing right now?”
“I am pretty sure she’s trying to find Baby Ruby herself.”
Teddy told Detective Van Slyde again about the small man in the bright green shirt that Jess had seen just before Baby Ruby disappeared.
“The man saw Jess holding Ruby. He was walking in her direction when she closed the door. The same man she chased through the lobby, down the steps into the parking garage, and lost.”
“I have that in my notes.”
“And then there was the woman hiding in the linen closet and smelling of rosemary,” Teddy said.
“Rosemary?”
“Jess is an amazing sniffer.”
Teddy pulled her knees up under her chin.
“There’s another thing,” she said. “After my parents were divorced and it was only Jess and me at home, my mother wanted to find a new husband, so she was out a lot at night. So Jess and I had a detective agency and we, especially Jess, imagined crimes. After school, we would solve the crime and find the criminal. Jess was excellent at this game.”
“So you think she has taken matters into her own hands?”
“I do,” Teddy said. “I think that when I lost touch with her it was because she saw maybe the man whom she followed through the garage, or else the woman she saw in the linen closet. She’s fearless, Jess.”
“You’d recognize the man?”
“I think so. He looks like a boy. A black-haired sort of soft-faced boy.”
“I’ll add that to the description.”
“Also,” Teddy said, feeling the need to tell this detective the truth, “I should tell you that I live in a home for girls in trouble because I’m a shoplifter.”
Detective Van Slyde’s expression did not change at all, his blue eyes warm as the sea.
“You are?”
She nodded.
“That’s not the worst thing,” he said. “Shoplifting is against the law but it doesn’t hurt anyone,” he said. “I am in the business of finding people who hurt other people. You’re an exceptional young woman, Teddy. You’ll get over shoplifting.”
Tears were spilling down Teddy’s cheeks as the door to the office opened and Delilah was there.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but you must be on vacation, Detective Van Slyde.”
“I can tell you what little we know so far. Nothing confirmed, of course, except that it appears your daughter, Jess, has taken ma
tters into her own hands and she still isn’t answering her cell phone.”
Jess woke up when the car stopped and the music was turned off.
“There’s someone in the 7-Eleven,” Angel said from the backseat.
“I see her. She’s buying milk and walking to the cash register. So she’ll pay and leave with her milk and then, unless somebody else comes, I’ll have a little time.”
“Be careful.”
“I’ve never robbed a store. I don’t know what be careful means.”
“The person at the cash register looks like a boy. He’s probably younger than sixteen, so as long as no one else is working there …”
The door opened and Jess could feel the driver’s seat empty. In the backseat, Angel was whimpering.
“Here comes the woman with her milk,” Angel said. “Act casual, like you’re just doing an errand.”
But there was no answer.
The whimpering stopped.
“He’s in the store now,” she said. “Can you hear me, girl?”
Jess lay very still. She had a cramp in her leg and was counting over and over again — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, 3, 4 — to distract herself.
“Of course you can hear me. I know you,” Angel said. “I saw you in the linen closet a few hours ago and you saw me. We spoke.”
Angel was silent for a moment, but nervous. Jess could tell by the short, fast breaths she took, the tiny birdsong in her throat.
“Jack’s looking at the magazines,” she said. “I don’t know why he’s spending time looking at the magazines when someone could come in any second. Now he’s gone to the counter and the boy is handing him a pack of cigarettes from behind the counter and he’s getting his money out of his pocket and, oh my god, I can’t look.”
She was whimpering again.
Jess kept counting and it helped. She didn’t think about the cramp if she kept counting, didn’t miss a beat, but if her mind wandered just for a second, the pain was unbearable and she wanted to jump out of her skin.
“Oh no, oh my god,” Angel whispered from the backseat, and then the door opened and he was back in the driver’s seat — the smell of him was cigarettes and something sweet — Jess didn’t recognize the smell, maybe coconut, stronger than it had been before. The car was in reverse, the squeaking sound of rubber tires, a right turn, and they were moving at a regular speed.