Her Baby, His Secret

by Gayle Wilson

  “This is my number in case you need to get in touch with me. You can leave a message if I’m out, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. The pediatrician’s number is there as well, but...I’m afraid I would prefer that you call me first.”

  “Of course,” Rose said. “Unless it’s an emergency,” she added.

  Rose always made an effort to follow her employers’ instructions, strange as some of them seemed to be, but she wouldn’t do anything that might compromise her ability to give the care her babies needed. She made no promises on that.

  “She’s a healthy little thing. I doubt you’ll have any problems you yourself aren’t capable of handling. You come very highly recommended, Ms. Connor.”

  “Just Rose,” she corrected, still examining her new charge.

  This one certainly appeared to be well taken care of, Rose decided. Whatever problems that poor girl might be having, they hadn’t affected the baby. What she had told her new employer was certainly true. She herself had, of course, worked on more than one case where a new mother’s emotions created problems. The stresses of modern living, she supposed. Not having a granny or an aunt nearby who could help out.

  When those baby blues struck, it was always wise to have someone else step in and take over care of the baby. If only temporarily. If the parents could afford it. As these apparently could. Or at least the child’s uncle apparently could, she amended.

  “She’s a real little darling,” she said, smiling down unthinkingly, as if the sleeping baby might be reassured by her face or her tone.

  After all, Rose was a stranger. And this sweetheart would miss her mother. They always did, even when they were as young as this one.

  “She’s a good little girl,” Mr. Kimbrough said softly. “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble.”

  “Don’t you worry your head none, sir, about this dear rosebud,” Rose said, her warm heart already engaged by the baby in her arms. “I’ll take good care of her, I will. I’ll keep her right as rain, I promise you,” she said.

  The soft lilt of her native Ireland always came back a bit more strongly when she held a baby. Maybe that was because of the memories of her own mother’s gentle hands and voice. Maybe that was why Rose had chosen to do this. To care for other people’s children.

  She had never had any of her own, of course. No man had ever asked Rose Connor to marry him, but her broad, homely face and her softly rounded figure didn’t frighten the little ones. They didn’t care, bless them, how you looked, as long as you saw to it that they were fed and warm and dry. And as long as you held them when they cried. As long as you loved them. And she always did. No matter how long or how little a time they were in her care, she always loved them as if they were her very own darlings.

  Smiling, she touched the soft cheek with her blunt forefinger, delighting in the smoothness of the skin. Savoring again the sweet aroma of baby powder. She would give that poor woman credit. No matter how bad she was feeling, she had taken care of this one.

  And so would she, Rose thought, turning away from the man who had brought the baby. He had already been forgotten as she laid the little girl into the crib, smoothing its freshly laundered sheets and soft blankets with her fingers. She looked down on the sleeping baby with a satisfaction that verged on possessiveness.

  And so she missed his smile. Satisfaction as well, perhaps, but for entirely different reasons. And Rose Connor was intuitive enough that she might even have been bothered by that smile, had she seen it.

  It was probably just as well that her total attention was on the baby who had just been given into her very capable hands. Probably just as well for her peace of mind.

  “LET’S GO OVER IT AGAIN, Ms. Heywood,” the detective said patiently.

  His round face was perspiring, and the top of his damp head gleamed bone-white through the strands of thinning hair he’d combed across it. He had patted at his forehead with a folded handkerchief a couple of times in the course of the interview, but so far he hadn’t complained about the heat.

  Claire had turned the thermostat up after she’d made the phone calls. She was still shaking, however, despite the rising temperature. And the small internal clock that had begun ticking inside her head as soon as she discovered Gardner was missing had turned into a jackhammer. Almost blinding in its intensity, the pain of the headache made it hard to think. Hard to talk. Hard to hope.

  “I got home around two,” she said, wondering how many times he would want to hear this. And wondering when her grandfather would arrive. That had been the first call she had made, of course, and he had been the one who had told her that she had to notify the police.

  “And the baby-sitter was here?” the detective asked, referring to the notebook where he had carefully written everything down the first time she’d told her story.

  She nodded, her eyes moving back to the staircase. She wished she weren’t sitting where she could see the stairs and the parade of people who had climbed them in the last half hour. The detectives first and then the crime scene technicians, carrying the boxes and cases that held their equipment.

  To all of them, this was just another case. Annoying, perhaps, because they had been called out on a holiday. Interesting, maybe, because her face or her name might be familiar. But still, just another job. And for her... For Claire, this was her baby. Her life. Her heart.

  “You paid the sitter,” Detective Minger continued, his calm voice interrupting that loss of control, “and then you let her out the front and locked the door.”

  “I turned off the lights down here, and I went upstairs,” Claire said, trying to gather her thoughts as she pulled her gaze back to his face.

  Which seemed devoid of suspicion. Whatever else they thought, apparently the police had decided that she hadn’t had anything to do with her daughter’s disappearance. She wondered if she should thank her minor celebrity for that conclusion.

  “But you didn’t check the back?” he asked, referring briefly to his notes again before he looked up, waiting, lips pursed as if in thought. As if he didn’t already know the answer to this.

  “There was no reason to,” she said.

  That was exactly what she had told him before. Beth wouldn’t have unlocked the back door. Claire knew that. The teenager wasn’t careless, and despite the much vaunted safety of the neighborhood, it would be a rare teenage girl who would want to be alone in a big, empty house at night with the doors unlocked. Not given the state of the world these days.

  “And when you went upstairs...?”

  Claire swallowed, feeling the despair build again despite her attempt to hold on to her rationality, at least until she had told them every detail, as many times as they wanted to hear it. Only then would she be free to collapse in self-reproach.

  Perhaps there was no logical reason for the overwhelming sense of guilt she felt. No reason to believe that if she had done something differently, this might not have happened. She hadn’t, and it had. And there was nothing she could do about that now. Nothing but help the police as much as she could. Nothing but answer whatever they wanted to ask, as many times as they needed to hear it. Nothing but tell them the absolute truth, and then pray they could find her daughter.

  “I stopped at Gardner’s door and listened,” she admitted.

  She hadn’t gone in. She had had her hand on the knob, but for some reason—the lateness of the hour, the peaceful silence emanating from the closed door, or the fact that her feet hurt—for some unknown reason, she hadn’t turned the handle.

  She hadn’t looked in on her sleeping daughter. Something she had done hundreds of times in the past, but not last night. Not the one night out of those hundreds when it might really have made a difference.

  “But you didn’t look into the room,” Minger continued.

  There was no trace of condemnation in his voice. Of course, it didn’t matter what he thought. Not about this. Ultimately it only mattered what she believed.

  If she had turne
d that knob, could she possibly have prevented what had happened? Or if her daughter had already been taken, how many hours might she have won back from the cold, empty darkness? Hours during which the searchers might have found a fresh trail or a clue. Might have found something.

  “I went to bed,” she said simply, unwilling to elaborate on her guilt.

  She had undressed, slipping out of her shoes first and then throwing her clothes over the chair in her room, too tired to think about hanging them up. She hadn’t even removed her makeup. It hadn’t seemed important. Nothing had seemed as important as crawling between the welcoming smoothness of the cold sheets and relaxing.

  Maybe even a little tipsy, she thought again, hating herself. Sleeping off the effects of those two glasses of New Year’s Eve champagne while someone took my baby.

  “And you heard nothing until you woke up this morning... at 6:10?” Minger asked, referring to his notes for the time she’d given him.

  “Nothing,” she confirmed simply.

  Of course, she wasn’t sure that she had heard anything this morning, either. Although that had been the implication of his question, she didn’t bother to correct him.

  “And you don’t know what awakened you?”

  “Maybe the cold. The cold from the window in the baby’s room,” she suggested. She couldn’t be certain about that, but there had been nothing else that she could swear to.

  “When you went into the room, the window was open, and the baby was gone.”

  “That’s right,” she whispered.

  “Is it possible, Ms. Heywood, that for... some reason the baby’s father might have decided he should take custody of your daughter?”

  Claire knew that what he was suggesting was the most familiar scenario that played out with missing children, one the police would probably feel obligated to investigate. Only this time, of course...

  “Gardner’s father is dead,” she said.

  Nothing more. No other explanation. She had never made any. Not even to Maddy, who had certainly demanded one. Only to her grandfather had she admitted the truth. And it was also to him, of course, that she had turned this morning.

  The silence that fell after her clipped statement was awkward. She wondered if Minger believed her. Not that it mattered, not unless the thought that Gardner’s father might have had something to do with the kidnapping slowed down their investigation.

  “And you say you found no note,” Minger continued, apparently willing, at least for now, to drop the possibility that this was a noncustodial-parent snatch. “Nothing that would give you any indication as to why someone had taken your daughter.”

  Taken your daughter. With his words, the nightmare images she had fought invaded her head. Wondering if they were taking care of her. If she was warm. If she’d been fed this morning. She was used to having her breakfast before now, and if they didn’t know that...

  Claire took a breath, again denying the devastating worry. Denying it at least until she had done this job. Until she had done everything she could do to help them find Gardner.

  “I didn’t find anything,” she said. “Do you suppose it’s possible the note might have blown outside?” she asked, the thought sudden. “I mean, with that window wide-open...”

  As she made the suggestion, she felt a spurt of hope, one that she tried to control because it made no sense. They wouldn’t be that careless. Whoever had gone to all this trouble wouldn’t leave a message where it might blow away.

  Minger, however, methodically made a notation on his pad. “I’ll have them look. You haven’t been outside?” he asked, his eyes coming back up to examine hers.

  “This morning?”

  He nodded.

  “You think there might be prints?” she asked instead of answering, realizing where he was heading with that question.

  “Anything’s possible. If they did get into the room through that window, then there ought to be some evidence of that outside. If not footprints, then impressions made by the ladder they used. Something. At least we’ll hope so.”

  She nodded, although she wasn’t sure what those things would tell them that might be useful in finding Gardner. There might be evidence outside that could eventually be used in court. She understood that, of course, but evidence of that kind wasn’t what was important right now.

  “Any idea why your alarm didn’t go off?” he asked.

  Surprised, she looked up at him, wondering why they hadn’t checked that for themselves.

  “I assumed it had been cut. Tampered with in some way.”

  Minger shook his head. “We checked. As far as we can tell, it should be working. When they opened that window, the system should have gone off here and at the security office. Apparently, it didn’t.”

  “But...how could that happen?” Claire asked. If anything, the system had been too sensitive. So why last night, when it would have made such a difference...

  “We don’t know. It’s something else we’ll be looking into. We’re also in the process of questioning your neighbors, at least those close enough that there’s a chance they might have heard or seen something. We’ve already set up your phone to record incoming calls, of course,” Minger said. “And an extra line to handle our calls or any you might need to make.” He had begun to unfold his bulk out the chair as he talked.

  “How likely would it be that someone might have seen something?” Claire asked. “I mean... it was the middle of the night.”

  Claire suddenly wished for a neighbor who was a busybody or an insomniac. As far as she knew, however, she had neither. So she didn’t hold out much hope that the cops’ strategy in canvassing the neighborhood would yield anything useful.

  “It was New Year’s Eve,” Minger reminded her. “Somebody might still have been up. Or coming in from a party. Besides, we don’t know that it was the middle of the night when your daughter was taken,” the detective said. He folded his notebook and stuck it into his inside coat pocket, his lips pursing again. “Your sitter put the baby to bed a little after ten. Apparently nobody saw or heard anything out of the ordinary after that.”

  “Beth says she didn’t hear anything, either?” Claire asked, knowing, because he had told her, that they had already talked to the teenage sitter, who lived only a couple of houses down the street.

  “Not a sound. No noise of a ladder being put against the house, although that’s on the other side from where she was watching TV. No alarm. And not a peep out of the baby, although the monitor was on down here. Would that be unusual, Ms. Heywood? For the baby not to wake up after she was put down, I mean?”

  Gardner had begun sleeping through the night—at least most of it—early on. Sometimes she awoke if she were out of sorts or teething, but the fact that she hadn’t cried after Beth put her to bed wasn’t all that surprising. Or that helpful, Claire supposed.

  “Not really,” she said.

  Minger nodded, holding her gaze. “Well,” he said, drawing the syllable out as an obvious indication he was through with the questions. “You think of anything else, you be sure and let us know.”

  “What are you going to be doing in the meantime?” she asked.

  Surely he wasn’t leaving. Surely there was more to what the police needed than this? More than to ask her some questions, dust the nursery for prints and examine the flower beds. Surely to God there was something else they all ought to be doing.

  “Asking questions,” he said. “Running a match on anything they find upstairs. Checking this one against the details of other kidnappings we have on file. And waiting,” he added after a moment. “Waiting for somebody to get in touch with you.”

  “But you think they will?” Claire asked, seeking his reassurance.

  He looked around the room, evaluating. “Most kidnappings that aren’t parental are carried out for profit. In this case, your family, both sides, are pretty well known in this town. It wouldn’t be hard for somebody to dig out enough information about you to carry this off. They’ll b
e in touch, Ms. Heywood. My take on this is that somebody figures to hold you up for a nice, tidy sum in ransom.”

  “Then...you think that means they’ll take care of her?” she asked.

  She was aware that that didn’t always happen. Things could go wrong. There was the Lindbergh baby, for example. But if all these people wanted was money...

  “They got no reason not to,” he said softly. “And a lot of reasons to. At least that’s what we’re hoping for.”

  “How long?” she asked. “How long before I’ll hear something?”

  He shrugged, thick shoulders rising and holding a second, lifting the ill-fitting suit coat with them. “The sooner the better for them. It won’t be long,” he said reassuringly.

  The last was meant to be kind, she supposed, but the impression she was getting was that the cops were willing to play the waiting game, maybe because they didn’t know what else to do at this point. She wasn’t willing. Not with Gardner as the stakes.

  Claire didn’t get up and escort him out when he walked past her chair. She wasn’t sure if he would be going out the front door or back upstairs, but she was certain that she was going to stay right here, near the phone. After all, he had said it wouldn’t be long before she’d hear something.

  “Are you by any chance working on a story right now, Ms. Heywood?” the detective asked.

  She turned in surprise at the question, looking at him over her shoulder. Minger was standing in the archway that led into the front hall. His face was bland, only polite inquiry in his eyes, but as it had when she’d opened the nursery door and felt the unexpected cold, a shiver of apprehension slipped along her spine.

  “I’m a lawyer, Detective Minger. I’m not really a journalist,” she said. “The networks sometimes ask me to do analyses of their political stories. Those that have legal overtones.”

  “Guess there are a lot of them,” he said, his lips moving into a smile. “I see you on TV sometimes,” he said. “I just wondered if you were working on something right now.”