The urgency in my voice replaced any leftover calm. “I have to keep watching everything for Vinni. I have to remember to tell her things I see when she comes back. She’ll expect me to. She’ll want to know what I saw when she wasn’t with me.”
John D’Orfini never took his eyes off me as I spoke. I studied the face behind the detective. “You’re a good mother, Maddy. Don’t forget it.” He hesitated before he uttered, “Ever.”
Something else was on his mind. As upset as he was that I had gone to Mueller’s Bakery without him, I suspected there was another reason why he had hopped the train to the city and waited for me in the lobby of my building.
“You know Detective Geronimo?” John D’Orfini said. He poured himself a cup of coffee—his fifth of the day.
“Dennis?” Everyone called the full-bellied cop with the bad knees Geronimo. Although his last name had the uncommon distinction of being shared with the feared Apache leader of the nineteenth century, his first name rarely rolled off people’s lips. Dennis couldn’t top a name like Geronimo.
“What about him?” I asked.
“He’s going to be in charge of the station for the next three months. I’ll be away for some training.” The blow came swiftly, like a medieval execution.
“No, no, no. Wait a second. You can’t do this now,” I groaned. “Geronimo? You want me to try to wake him up first when I talk to him?”
“Wait a minute. Dennis is a good guy. He’s competent. He knows the file.”
“How could he know the case as well as you?”
“It’s just three months. And I’m not going to be far away. Quantico, Virginia, is just thirty-six miles outside of DC. I applied three years ago and was put on a wait list. An opening for a new outreach program in the community leadership development unit became available. It’s a great opportunity.”
“For you, maybe, Detective,” I hurled back.
As much as I realized that John D’Orfini had traveled all the way to New York to tell me this in person, I hated the idea of his moving on like everyone else. Mother. Father. Steve. Who was next?
“Three months? Are you kidding? Are you telling me that Detective Geronimo is going to take over for you in Spring Haven for three whole months? I can’t believe this.”
“You’ve got a lot of people looking out for you. Kay is a top assistant US attorney—one of the best in the country.”
No matter what you’re told, to lose at something hurts. I had come to count on John D’Orfini’s cool sense of calm and his gentle wit, even when those of us around him were frothing at the mouth like canines. He was the one I called when I needed a comforting voice.
“Geronimo will hand over the reins when I return from training,” he said. “In the meantime, you can count on him while I’m gone. It might be hard to reach me.”
THIRTEEN
STEVE CALLED ON A SNOWY AFTERNOON IN MARCH AND asked me to meet him the next day in the city. I had seen him the month before, when he had come to New York on business, and I knew he was flying into Manhattan a few weeks later. Although we talked almost every day in the beginning, by March of the second year, Steve had lost faith. It must have destroyed him, but I was too wrapped up in my own grief to notice any change other than that his hair, now speckled with gray, had grown over his custom-tailored shirt collar.
“You have to face what’s happened, Maddy.”
Steve looked ragged and tired, like an abandoned child.
“This is my life. Finding Vinni is my life,” I said. I sat across from Steve in a new bistro that had opened in time for a Valentine’s Day launch. Steve’s formerly athletic body sagged as he leaned across the table. His jacket fell off his shoulders, leaving the seams riding at the tips of his biceps. His eyes—what had drawn me to him in the beginning—looked covered with a thin sheet of plastic, worn from hours fixed on the computer screen, trawling the Internet, responding to sightings of Vinni. We had been a good match when we both believed we could find answers to all our questions. But when faced with the biggest question of all, we failed to console each other.
I wanted the lunch to end and was about to ask for the check, when Steve brought up the topic of money. He knew I had taken a leave of absence from my job at the magazine and was freelancing.
Steve persisted. “When are you going back to work fulltime?”
“I don’t know.” I caught the attention of the waiter and lifted my coffee cup. Our small table, tucked in the corner by the window, faced East Twelfth Street.
“I’m not giving up. Vinni is out there.” The waiter returned with a hot pot of coffee. I stopped speaking. Steve sat back and looked away. When he turned to face me, he spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“She was mine, too.”
“Was?”
“I know you think I didn’t love her enough.”
When Vinni was born, Steve had tried to keep things as they had been. Sunday brunches in the West Village with the New York Times in tow got complicated with a child in a stroller who cried and needed to be fed. When I’d snuggle her into my lap, away from the confines of a harness, he’d raise his gaze above the real estate section and say, “You spoil her.”
“Steve,” I interrupted, but he spoke on top of me.
“You love too big. There isn’t room for the rest of us.”
”Don’t tell me that I don’t love ‘right.’” My voice rose higher.
“I’m not getting into this,” Steve mumbled, as he moved his chair away from the table.
Both of us stopped speaking. Neither of us wanted to bring up old pain. Steve looked down. For a moment, I thought I might see him cry for the first time, but he stayed in that position until I reached over to touch his hand. He moved back with a jerk that was more like a shake, as if flicking off any remnant of feeling that we might once have shared. Then he spoke.
“My daughter’s gone, too. All the police and the FBI know is that someone named Hilda possibly took her somewhere. That’s it. That’s all we’ve got.” He cocked his head. “I’m a realist,” he said.
“Shut up!” I couldn’t bear the finality in his tone. I refused. “I will never—never—stop believing that Vinni is alive,” I cried. Exhaustion made me want to curl up inside the sleeves of my coat.
“I hear her. She speaks to me at night when I put my head on the pillow. I dream of scooping her up in my arms.”
I stopped myself. I went to the end of my thought, leaving out the middle of a recurring dream of faces and babies and distorted figures in milk bottles.
“She’s okay because she knows I’m coming. I’m going to find her. She expects me to—”
Steve interrupted, “You’re not the only one who wants her back.”
I got up to leave the table.
“Sit down,” he said firmly. I hesitated for a few seconds, but then I sat back down. Steve cleared his throat and did this nervous twitch with his lips.
“I’ve met someone,” he said, as he looked away at the cold outside.
What should I have said? “Congratulations”? Or, “I’m happy for you”? Or ask him if he thought she faked an orgasm when his hand slowed down?
An involuntary sigh—something audible—came out of my mouth and chest.
“When? I mean . . . how did you meet her?”
“She’s a journalist in San Francisco. After Vinni . . . well, she did a story.”
“What kind of story?” I lowered my arms on the table and sank my shoulders. Their roundness shrouded the cold omelet on my plate.
“It was a feature for the holidays. At first I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but one day Gina just showed up at my office.”
Gina, I thought. Short for Regina, as in Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae. Prayer to the Virgin Mary, meaning, “Hail, holy queen, Mother of Mercy.” We used to sing it every first Friday of the month when both the elementary and high schools attended Mass.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked.
Steve cleared his throat
, took a quick glance outside, as if the gray might have disappeared, and said, “I know the timing isn’t perfect.” Then he blurted, “We’re getting married.”
The omelet churned and rumbled inside. Not enough seconds to digest between verbal hits. The one thing I did not want to do was throw up.
“Now? When?”
“We haven’t set a date. I just wanted you to know.”
I started singing, Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae in my head. I added drums, a cymbal, and a tambourine for background noise. Marriage meant the possibility of children. Did Steve think he could replace Vinni?
“I guess I’m supposed to be happy for you, aren’t I?” I said, with a lopsided smile. I wondered why we couldn’t both be happy at the same time. Was it even possible? I reached for my coat, hanging off my chair, and drew it closer around my shoulders. A cool breeze coming from somewhere stung my neck. Being alone wasn’t something I thought about when I was growing up. I believed people took care of each other the way my father took care of my mother.
Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae. I sang it in my head one more time.
FOURTEEN
I TURNED ON THE COMPUTER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE night when I couldn’t sleep. Steve and I used to argue about the location of the desktop computer. “It shouldn’t be in the bedroom,” I said. “It’s going to remind us both of work. Isn’t a bedroom supposed to be about pleasure?”
When he left, I never got around to removing it. I avoided the website he had set up almost two years ago to help find Vinni.
Why did I avoid the website? Every sighting posted had been a false lead. All 287 of them. And that gets pretty damn sorry. Whatever possessed me to check the site could be summed up only as an invitation from the gods. One lone comment had come in earlier in the day. A female from the town of Canandaigua in the Finger Lakes in upstate New York wrote: “There’s an older woman staying down the block with a young child. Both fit the description. Check out 73 Greens Lane. I live three doors down. I’m no snoop. Just a civilian doing her duty. Janice”
Steve had programmed the site so that it fell into a “read” column after he opened up the comment. So far, it hadn’t been read. I looked at the computer screen.
At first, I dismissed it. Turned off the computer and sat in the dark. If I had smoked, I would have exhaled exotic circles. I would have done anything to drive my mind somewhere else other than Canandaigua. Instead, I turned the computer back on, printed the message, and pressed DELETE.
THE NEXT DAY, Kay called as I stood in the kitchen, drinking a glass of orange juice.
“I’m late. I can’t talk,” I said. I couldn’t get Janice of Canandaigua out of my head.
Since the dinner at her home, Kay and I had gotten together a few more times. Each occasion was easier, each conversation reminiscent of the friendship we once shared. When she asked me to meet her in front of Bloomingdale’s to help her select a cocktail dress for a political fund-raiser, I suspected she was trying to regain the comfort of being together that we had lost. I agreed, even though I knew she didn’t need my approval on the silk sensation that I helped zip her into in the dressing room.
“I’ve got a feeling,” Kay said, as she shimmied the dress down another half inch, “you’ve got something on your mind. Don’t forget, we’ve been friends a long time. The tips of your ears are red, the way they always got in high school when you were hiding something.” I reached my hand up to my ear where it folded like a knit hem. I felt the heat.
“You’re right. I’m restless. I miss John D’Orfini handling the case.”
I HAD SPENT two days in Spring Haven with Geronimo.
With John D’Orfini in Quantico, I knew I should have told Detective Geronimo about the e-mail I had deleted. I held back. Trusting wasn’t easy. I was going to Canandaigua on a tip from someone named Janice about whom, although she said she was not a snoop, I had my doubts. Each time I took a step, I questioned how far I would go. Who surfs the Internet, looking for missing-person sites? Lonely people. Sick people. People who raise too many dogs in an apartment and wonder why it smells. Either Janice was one of these people, or she was someone who had stumbled upon the right site and would join me for Thanksgiving dinner for the rest of Vinni’s and my life.
Geronimo surprised me. I had driven down to Spring Haven and dropped in on the detective while he was in the middle of his lunch. As soon as I saw the fried chicken in a red plastic basket with fries piled on the side, I apologized for the interruption.
“No problem, Ms. Stewart. I was just about to put the rest away for a snack later in the afternoon,” Geronimo said, as he licked his fingers and then folded and wiped them inside a paper towel. “So, what brings you down here today?” His smile exposed a piece of chicken skin nestled between his bottom teeth. “It’s too darn cold for a walk on the boardwalk,” he said.
“All those sightings of Vinni on the website. What do you make of them? I mean, I know they’ve all been checked out, but I’ve never read a file on them or anything. I’d like to do that over the next few days.”
“You mean you’d like to read the analysis of each of them? Is that what you’re asking me? Because I want to help you out here, but I’ve got to warn you that a lot of these so-called tips are from crackpots.” He leaned in across the desk and lowered his voice. “I know you’d rather be speaking to Detective D’Orfini.” And then he did something that made me feel utterly foolish. He winked.
Did I giggle? Shit. I’m not sure. I hope not.
“I want to read the report of every one of those sightings,” I said.
“You can’t take any files out of the office, so let me see.”
The skin on the back of my neck shivered. Geronimo started to cough deep and noisy from his chest.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Darn asthma. Acts up at the most inconvenient times.”
Geronimo opened a desk drawer and reached in for an inhaler. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“About those files?” I asked. I had read some of them in the beginning, but after the first 112 false sightings, I didn’t have the stomach for them. Some people had odd ways of passing time, such as browsing a missing person’s site and fantasizing about how to spend the reward money. That had been Steve’s idea. “Money talks,” he said. So he had put up $10,000 for anyone who could lead us to Vinni. That kind of money drew the most diverse circle of liars: postal clerks, retired nurses, kindergarten teachers, college students, male strippers, architects, gardeners, anthropologists, homemakers, pornographic filmmakers . . . the list went on and on. The only thing the “sighters” had in common was that they could tell a good lie. John D’Orfini had told me he could smell a lie a mile away, but the investigative team had to follow each lead to the end, even if they knew it was a waste of time. There was always that chance.
Janice was that chance.
Janice was in a different category.
Janice was not interested in the reward money.
And I was the only one who knew about her.
DETECTIVE GERONIMO’S HABITUAL visit to the drawer with the inhaler coaxed me to say, “Detective, have you considered hiring a personal trainer or even a nutritionist for your asthma?”
“I can’t say I have,” he said. “I’m used to having a desk job with my trusty inhaler right close to me. Why’re you asking?”
“Because you seem like a man who needs someone to look after him.”
Without hesitation, Geronimo responded. “Not like your former husband, I suspect. Eh?”
“What?” When did Steve enter the room?
I shook my head in disbelief.
“It’s just that Detective D’Orfini and I have always agreed about this one until your case. He’s convinced it’s all about the German couple, but I’m not so quick to join him in this assessment.”
He paused, leaned back in his chair, and rested both hands on his oversize girth. He looked at me with a hard, cop-like stare reminiscent of act
ors playing police. He focused on me as if he thought Steve or I had been hiding Vinni all this time in a closet in the city.
But then Geronimo surprised me.
“My wife died two years ago this September,” he said. “She was the sweetest woman who ever lived. We would have been married thirty-two years on Friday. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. She was the reason I breathed.”
What moved me was how Geronimo dropped his hands from his belly and folded them on his desk, as if he were a poet giving a reading, reaching out to his audience.
As quickly as I had imagined Steve in the room, he was gone.
“I don’t know what you’re going through, but I know it hurts when no one’s there to love anymore,” he said.
As I drove home that night, I planned my trip to Greens Lane in Canandaigua.
THE STREET WAS nothing unusual, other than the fact that I was alone and hiding down the road from house number 73. I had circled the block six times, thinking that I shouldn’t draw attention to myself, but who was going to notice me anyway? I ended up parking down the street from the house and sitting behind the wheel for close to three hours. The homes on the block were modest, with attached one-car garages. It was quiet. I had thought about knocking on Janice’s door but worried about what to say. I had never responded to her, in case she was a nut. And “three doors down” could mean in either direction.
The shades were drawn throughout the house. I started the engine and moved my car across the street from number 73. I stared at the front door, willing Vinni to run out when she saw the car. I imagined leaping from behind the wheel and scooping her up. It got so real, my heart raced with excitement. I closed my eyes so the colors in my mind stayed bright.
A tapping on the window jolted me. When I looked up, I saw a police officer.
A Matter of Chance Page 9