Stolen Grace

by Arianne Richmonde

  Grace wanted to wash her hands. She had touched his wet mouth with her finger. She would have to keep this a secret. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want anybody to know about this ever, ever, ever—there was something stinky about it all. She wondered if her mom could see from Heaven, if she had seen the priest playing Pinocchio with them. She hoped that she was busy doing something else, playing with Mrs. Paws, perhaps.

  Because she never, ever wanted her mom to find out.

  CHAPTER 44

  Sylvia

  Using Elodie’s ear-buds and connecting the recording pen to Tommy’s iPhone, Sylvia spent the taxi ride, and every minute after, listening to Grace’s recordings. It broke her heart to know that her daughter had visions of her dead in Heaven, to be taken any minute in a black limousine down to Hell to burn and fry with the Devil if Grace said a word to anybody about who Ruth was, or if she tried to speak English. Poor Grace. That witch had filled her head with images of horror: a spiteful God, Bogeymen, trash dumps in Rio. She’d killed off Pidgey O Dollars—of course she had, he was in the photo they’d posted everywhere on the Internet: Grace smiling with her teddy. No wonder Grace hadn’t told a soul—she was terrified. Wetting her bed proved it.

  Sylvia listened over and over to each session, starting from before Mrs. Paws’s poisoning and culminating with whole tracts of Spanish. Grace was no longer speaking her own language, except for more complicated words and phrases that had no translation, like blasphemous.

  Ruth was even more malevolent than Sylvia had feared. Melinda was right—she’d had designs on Tommy all along. But she was all messed up, too. Traumatized by a five-year-old wetting the bed even though it was she, Ruth, who was provoking her to do so. Grace hadn’t wet her bed for two whole years, previously. Poor little thing. What was Ruth’s plan? Dump Grace and take up with Tommy in her new guise? Just leave Grace with Lucho, and hope for the best? Or, hope for the worst? Sylvia noticed how, not even once, had her daughter declared that she hated Ruth, not once had Grace yelled “I hate Ruth.” Yet by God, was that woman hateable.

  Sylvia and Elodie met up with Melinda. They were sitting at a restaurant in the town of Chinandega. Melinda had dumped her backpack at a guesthouse, and now all three were waiting for some dinner. Despite having eaten at Angela’s, Sylvia still felt hungry, as if food could sop-up the ache of anxiety and pain. Earlier, she’d found a couple of schools, although they were obviously closed until tomorrow. She didn’t know what more she could do that night—be patient, wait until light.

  Elodie’s camera had been pulled out several times, but most of the people to whom she’d shown the photos were more fascinated by the gadget itself than the images it portrayed. Nobody, so far, had seen the little girl in the photos.

  “Boy, is she one sick bitch,” Melinda spat out, having just re-listened to the poisoning of Mrs. Paws.

  Sylvia took a long swig of water. “It just amazes me that this pen was with Grace the whole time. Tommy and I’d forgotten all about it.”

  Melinda asked, “What I don’t understand is how Grace got it past Ruth? Where did she hide it and when did she do all those secret recordings?”

  Elodie had been doing her best to follow the women’s conversation. “She had it inside her teddy bear. I saw her once.”

  “You mean she hid it in her pajama-case teddy, Carrot?” Sylvia asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Sylvia grinned. “Of course, what a clever place! So smart. She’s hidden stuff inside him before. She’s quite a magpie.”

  “What did you get me again?” Melinda asked, who had been in the bathroom while they ordered earlier.

  “You said you wanted something simple, so I just asked for a gallo pinto.”

  “And that is?

  “Basically, red beans and fried rice with onions and peppers. That’s how Angela made it, anyway.”

  “Perfect,” Melinda said. “What are you getting?”

  Sylvia took a glug of Coca Cola. It tasted delicious. “Me? I ordered a nactamale, whatever that is. Thought I was still hungry but I’ve lost my appetite.” She looked at Elodie. “Your English is good, Elodie. So you and Grace never spoke in English?”

  “I had no idea she could speak English. No idea, at all.”

  “All that Brimstone and Fire that Ruth threatened her with, I guess. Grace was just too scared, poor honey. Where did you learn your English, Elodie?”

  “I went to work for my uncle in New York. Did a crash course, you know.”

  Sylvia shifted in her chair with embarrassment and tried to hide a quiet curl of her lips—“Hell O.D.” as Grace called her in the recording. Elodie was sweet, though, once she warmed up. But Grace had obviously been jealous. Being little didn’t exempt her from feelings of love, even with a man old enough to be her father.

  Sylvia had been so preoccupied by the recording pen that she forgot to see if either Tommy or Agent Russo had replied to her latest message. She scrolled down her iPhone and saw:

  Darling,

  Ruth has supposedly been spotted. Three times. The Lonely Planet forum again. On the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, if you can believe it. What she is doing amidst all those tourists is beyond me – she’s really pushing her luck. Another trap of hers? I think it very well could be. Will keep you posted.

  Love Tommy

  She quickly replied:

  Tommy,

  Watch out – she’s used the forums before to her advantage – definitely think it’s a trap. S x

  Sylvia looked up from her cell phone and noticed a gaggle of young teenage girls approach the restaurant, chatting. American.

  “Excuse me?” Sylvia began. “I’m looking for a little girl who looks like a local child and I’m showing everyone and his cousin her photo—would you all mind taking a look?”

  One of the girls, with slightly rounded shoulders, long stringy hair, and perfect train-track trained teeth, sat down. It seemed incongruous, Sylvia thought—a band of teenage girls in a non-touristic town in Nicaragua.

  “Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name’s Sylvia. This is Melinda . . . and where’s Elodie? She’s got the camera.”

  “Went to the bathroom,” Melinda said.

  “Hi, I’m Casey and this is Amy and Sonia. We’re here with Christ’s Little Workers, a charity.”

  “Good for you.” Sylvia sucked in a breath and asked, “Have you visited any schools by any chance?”

  “Yes, we did the rounds. Played baseball with the kids—they’re crazy for baseball here, or as they say, béisbol. We read them stories, you know, stuff like that,” the girl called Casey told them.

  “Uh, oh, here they come!” her friend Sonia exclaimed, a cherubic blonde who looked as if she’d stepped out of rural Ireland a hundred years ago. “Brace, brace!”

  A host of little boys, barefoot and wild, swarmed around their table like locusts on ripe wheat. For such a ravenous lot as they obviously were, they were effervescent and cheery, as if being hungry were incidental. “No girl here, you give to boy tonight, boy have good food,” one shrieked through a wide and cheeky smile.

  “Fuera, niños!” The restaurant manager, a portly man with a handlebar moustache, came storming from inside, booming and yelling into the small crowd, waving his arms and fending them off like a pack of hyenas feasting on his—the lion’s—meat. These were his customers and he didn’t want to lose their business. “Fuera!”

  The boys ran off.

  “We’re used to this,” Casey told Sylvia. “The children come every night. Even if we pick a different restaurant, they’ll track us down all the same.” She was smiling, though. Scary, thought Sylvia, how one can harden to extreme poverty so soon. “We give them our leftovers,” the girl continued. “We did invite some little girls to come tonight as our guests, real guests—not scraps, but a proper meal—but they haven’t shown. You say you’re looking for your daughter?”

  Sylvia sat erect, her eyes shining with hope. “Yes, she was kidnapped and then abandone
d. Good, here comes Elodie. Elodie, show the girls the photos of Grace.”

  “Grace? Why does that ring a bell?” The three teenagers moved toward Elodie and crowded around the camera. “Oh my goodness, it’s her. It’s that little girl with the mesmerizing eyes! She’s the one who should be coming tonight to have dinner here!”

  Sylvia’s insides made a loop. “You saw her?”

  “Yes. Last night. She was with another girl. Another beggar girl.”

  “Are you sure it was her?”

  “Yes, those eyes and that pixie-cut hair. It was her. Sorry to say this but she was, like, really poor. I mean skinny and dirty with no shoes and like, totally filthy.”

  Melinda looked as if she was having heart palpitations. “She’s alive. Grace is alive!”

  “That’s right. I remember now. She said her name was Grace, but she was speaking Spanish. She’s your daughter? She looks—”

  “Like a local. I know,” Sylvia said.

  “Except for those eyes,” the girl said, her gaze wide. “They were haunting—I’ve never seen anybody with such a soulful, sad look.”

  Soulful yes. Sad? Sylvia had never perceived her daughter that way. It made her wilt to contemplate her five-year-old as being unhappy. But she was, as Melinda pointed out, alive. Sylvia explained the adoption to her listeners. It was beginning to irk her. Never before had she had to expound on the subject of her motherhood so incessantly and convince people that Grace did, yes really did, belong to her.

  “Did she tell you anything about herself?” Sylvia pressed, unaware that her jaw was clenched from tension, her molars clamped together like a vice. Fear, excitement, hope—all glimmered in her keen eyes like silver goblets waiting to be filled with fine wine.

  “No, she was really shy.”

  “That’s not like Grace. She’s usually so confident.”

  The teenager said, “Not this little girl. She was quiet, very reserved. When she spoke, she whispered.”

  Sylvia clutched the girl’s wrist. “What did she say?”

  “Anyone remember what she said?” the girl asked her friends.

  Everybody looked clueless.

  Sonia spoke. “Actually, the other girl she was with said they lived together. She lived at her house. She was the one who did all the talking.”

  “Where?” Melinda asked.

  Casey said, “A lot of them live near the dump. Be prepared though, it’s real disgusting there.”

  Sylvia leaned over and grabbed the girl’s other wrist. “What time did you see them here last night?”

  “About eight o’clock. They should have arrived here by now.”

  Sylvia looked at her watch. “It’s past that now. We’ll wait a couple of hours—see if they show. Actually, no! Melinda, you and Elodie wait here in case she turns up. And I’ll go to the dump.”

  “We can show you where,” Sonia offered.

  “Really no, finish your dinner, I—” Sylvia stopped herself mid-sentence. Why had she spent her whole life denying help? Feeling like she was strong enough to handle things, always alone? The tough one. The Amazonian woman. Somebody was offering her help and she should accept. “You know what? Thank you for your offer. I would be extremely grateful if you could show me the way. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What did this other child look like? The little girl she was with?” Sylvia asked.

  “Kind of cute. Older. Maybe six or seven. A sort of wide, open face, darker skin. Wild and grubby looking. Outspoken. Kind of adorable.”

  “Okay you guys. Let’s get going. Elodie, can I take your flashlight?”

  Elodie stood up. “I’m coming too.”

  “No, you stay with Melinda,” Sylvia said assertively. “Let’s go, girls. Let’s find Grace.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Tommy

  Finally—it seemed like finally after forty-eight, long hours—Tommy had tracked down his target: Ruth.

  Tommy was somewhat of a computer nerd, it was true, but it was his old coder friend at his last company—a loner who lived with his pet snake—who had nailed it. At least, Tommy was pretty convinced that the guy had zoned in on Ruth’s whereabouts, tracked back to her IP address, from the three new messages that had been sent to the Lonely Planet forum. The messages came from different e-mail addresses, yet were pinned down to the same source by his friend. Ruth was obviously still in Rio. But Tommy would need to move fast—he wanted to get to her before the police did.

  For personal reasons.

  It was the first time he had been alone at nights, and it made him uneasy. His family, college, the army, friends, work—he had always been with someone, always with a group or a team. As each new moment marked itself off, he understood the vows he’d made to Sylvia as he had never done before. Marriage really was sacred. He longed for her, aching with desire for even a crumb of what they had once shared. Quiet, distant, aloof, the more unkempt the better, he’d take her any which way she came—in jeans, woolly hats, ugg boots, no make-up—he didn’t care—all the more tangible she’d be, all the more possible for her to accept his faults. To love him. He—who was nothing, really, when he thought about it. Just a passably attractive guy with a basic skill, a smattering of talent—a dime a dozen. He was a speck of sand without her and without Grace.

  He’d been through the wringer in the last forty-eight hours. His stupidity about Ruth, finding out that Grace was not at the beach cabin, but had gone missing. Everything seemed so hopeless—like a gaping wound waiting for flies to ravage. Sylvia and Melinda had kept him up to date, and his wife’s conversations with Agent Russo (Sylvia had assured the detective of Tommy’s innocence and ignorance about who Ruth, aka Ana, was) had kept the FBI off his tail. Agent Russo was no longer beckoning him to come in for questioning, but letting him know what was going on. The FBI was making progress, she assured him. Tommy guessed it wouldn’t be long before they’d swoop down on Ruth. But he’d get there before them. Ruth must have counted on them expecting her to jump ship and leave the country, so she’d do the opposite. Call their bluff. Clever.

  The game of chess which, up until now, she’d been playing so well.

  Tommy had hung around, too. After much contemplation and reflection on Ruth’s character, something told him that she, far from getting out of Rio as soon as she could, would be lying low, biding her time before she made that Burma exodus. It would be easy to hide in such a huge metropolis like Rio. She’d be waiting for the fuss to die down, waiting for Grace’s parents to reunite with their daughter at the beach cabin when, soon, it would all seem like a mishap, not a kidnap. She’d be downgraded from “most wanted” to just “priority.”

  But Ruth wouldn’t have reckoned that poor little Grace would do her own thing in an effort to be heard. Tommy knew his daughter. She was independent but liked being the center of attention. Normal, he thought, she was an only child, and a bright one, too. Not so much spoilt, but treasured. She needed love, mental stimulation, and if she didn’t get it, she’d hunt for it. It hadn’t surprised him that she’d pottered off on her own. Grace was a curious teenager in a five-year-old’s body. Sylvia had still not invited him to join her search in Chinandega. Too many cooks? Or she still couldn’t bear to see his face?

  Tommy’s mind had been playing volley with malevolent plans, although, when he analyzed it, he didn’t perceive it that way, except in glimpses. He saw it as pure justice. He wanted Ruth gone—no future threats, no lurking about his family, no possible schemes that could bring them down. He wanted her out. Neat. The job done and dusted. He was aware that some people might perceive that as crazy, psychotic even, but if they had been through what he’d been through, perhaps they’d understand.

  He had organized himself a precision rifle which, in one hour, he’d collect from the seller. They’d made a deal. He’d rent the weapon, not buy it. After all, once he was done with the piece, the last thing he’d want to deal with was finding it a new home. His international arms license had ex
pired long ago. And he could hardly try to explain his way through customs, even if the gun was US made—it wasn’t the sort of thing you went about with on a Sunday afternoon. Plus, there would be no tracing from the FBI, or local police. The key was to be clandestine. It had been a long haul tracking the right weapon down because of the relatively new gun control laws in Rio—the ban on possession and sale of firearms—despite half the population illegally owning one. But with help from an old army buddy who had a contact here, Tommy found himself a nice Barrett M107 from a gang-leader in a favela on the edge of a shantytown, up in the hills. A place called Rocinha. Ironically, not far from where his snake-loving ex-colleague had located Ruth.

  Tommy knew he’d be happy with his find. A sleek, Long Range Sniper Rifle .50 caliber with attached optics that would do nicely in all weather, day or night. Accurate at two thousand yards. Not bad to be able to hit your target at over a mile away. And possible, too, with the clear light of a full moon, as it was now.

  There were drug gangs everywhere, all weaponed-up to the nines, controlling the cocaine trade. It was part of life in Rio and beginning, even after his short stay here, to feel normal—the eyes in the back of the head, the gut reaction, the sixth sense, all of which had been missing when he was duped by Ruth.

  Melinda had rung him on his cell and recounted in detail Grace’s recordings on the magic pen. The poisoning of the neighbor’s cat, the threats Ruth had made about plunking Grace on a dump and giving away her teddies, the merciless scolding about wetting the bed. Ruth’s malicious cruelty made his blood bubble over. She deserved a taste of her own toxic medicine.