A Matter of Chance

by Julie Maloney

  “Sorry enough to omit crucial information? Suppress evidence?” John D’Orfini said.

  Katherine’s voice shifted into high-high gear. The muscle in her neck danced. “I did no such thing, John. I answered all the questions addressed to me during the time of the investigation. I resent what you’re implying here.”

  “I’m questioning why a nice lady like you holds back information from an ongoing police investigation.”

  “I’m no gossip, John D’Orfini. Ask your mother. Why I know things about every person in this town and no one’s going to get them out of me. They’ll go to the grave with me and up to Saint Peter and the gates of heaven.”

  “What else did Hilda tell you?”

  “Think!” I said, in a voice coming from the pit of my stomach. Harsh. “What else did Hilda say to you?” By now, I was standing and so was John D’Orfini. The temperature in the room skyrocketed.

  “The day she came in to the shop would have been her daughter’s birthday. One thing I do remember is how sad she looked—like her heart had been ripped out. Something about her touched me. She was a sad, sad woman, John.”

  “And what about the sad, sad woman standing right here in your shop who lost her little girl the day Hilda disappeared? What about her? Have you thought about her these past five years?” John D’Orfini picked up a statue of a crystal Virgin Mary and rolled it back and forth in his hands before returning it to the shelf next to St. Joseph.

  “I pray for all of them,” Katherine said. “I’m deeply sorry for you,” she said, looking at me through her tears.

  John D’Orfini dropped his hands to the table. His body filled the space as he stretched across it. “What’s that commandment your children memorized when they were attending St. Rose’s? Oh yeah . . . the eighth: thou shalt not lie.”

  “I’ve done no such thing, John. No one asked me if I had ever spoken to Hilda. I told the police she had come into the shop a few times, but it was only on that one day that she had a conversation with me. Her daughter’s birthday—that’s all she told me. I swear it.”

  “And she never showed you a picture of her daughter?”

  “Never! I swear it!”

  John D’Orfini reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, but then, as if struck by a bullet, he dropped his hand by his side. He looked around the store without focusing on anything. “Thanks for your time, Katherine,” he said, as he headed toward the door. “If you remember any more about your conversation with Hilda Haydn, I want you to call me.” He dropped his voice further into that authoritative spot in his belly. “You have a duty to call me, Katherine. St. Peter aside.”

  Right before he opened the shop’s door into the late afternoon, he turned and said, “Merry Christmas.”

  Outside, a few stragglers carried shopping bags in both hands. A white Christmas was predicted for the northeast. “I’ll meet you back at your place,” I said. I tossed the words behind me and ran out the door.

  Hilda had a child who died. Was this why she wanted mine?

  I drove to the boardwalk. The ocean’s roar was nothing like its sound in the summer. A biting wind swooped over me as I walked to the spot where I had last seen Vinni. What had Hilda and Rudy seen when they had watched Vinni play on the beach? A child the same age as theirs when they had lost her. Had their pain wormed its way out of a wound that never had a chance of healing?

  By the time I arrived at John D’Orfini’s house, I was frozen.

  “My God! Where did you go? You’ve been gone for over an hour,” he said.

  I ignored his question even as he held me close to his warm body. I spoke out loud as I laid my head on his shoulder, away from his face so he couldn’t see me.

  “What was the purpose of having me at the shop with the two of you?” I said.

  He shrugged. “A hunch, maybe.”

  A lie—even when well intentioned—disturbs the natural flow of things. Everything changes. I knew my sweet detective wanted to tell me something. It was why he called me from the train the day before. But if withholding information impregnates a lie, then we were both guilty. His silence, as well as mine, rested alongside the other. Many nights later, it came to me, when my head hit the pillow, that whatever was in John D’Orfini’s pocket had prompted him to rethink what information he’d share with me.

  IF I HAD known sooner, if my sweet detective and I had not exchanged kisses in the middle of the night, would he have told me about the picture of Hilda’s girl in his pocket at Katherine Mulvey’s shop . . . having floated on down and landed at his feet when he was rifling through the pages of book after book, looking for a clue at Hilda and Rudy’s house, nine months after my own girl disappeared?

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  KAY HAD CONTACTED THE MUSEUM IN COLOGNE TO SEE if there had been a reserved list of those attending the panel discussion. Indeed there was, but no one named Hilda Haydn was on the list. The museum had sent Kay and John D’Orfini copies of the weekend’s guests for both the reception and the afternoon panel discussion. The name Ada Weber was near the end of the list. A name as quiet and undisturbed as a blade of grass, it slipped unnoticed in alphabetical order.

  When I returned from Cologne, I experienced a strange numbness in my feet, undiagnosed by the two doctors I visited at Stanley’s insistence. John D’Orfini had decided to take the train to the Doll and Clock Shop in Brooklyn on a windy day in March. Even though I couldn’t feel the bottoms of my feet, I wished I had been there.

  Retelling always loses something, especially when you hear a story’s end first.

  “KOSINKI’S BEEN ARRESTED,” Kay said. “They picked him up this morning. Al Dobson was with them.”

  When Kay called, I was sitting at home, wiggling my toes, trying for the life of me to regain some feeling in the bottoms of my feet. I could walk, but it was an odd sensation not to fully feel the ground underneath me. Stanley said it was stress related.

  “I just received notice at the office. John will be calling you later, but I can tell you it’s been a busy day in Brooklyn at the Doll and Clock Shop,” Kay said. “Our Mr. Kosinski won’t be visiting Mueller’s for a long time.”

  My thoughts went to Hannah and George. What had prompted the arrest now?

  THE DOORBELL RANG at exactly 6:32 p.m. I didn’t wait to hear who it was before I buzzed him in. I knew it was John D’Orfini. He hadn’t called, so I had expected him to come in person.

  I flung open the door and met him at the landing one floor down. “Kay told me about Kosinski,” I said. “What happened?” I stepped lightly around my words. “I mean, why now?”

  “That’s Dobson’s domain. He alerted me so I could have another shot at him before things went down.”

  “What kind of shot?” I couldn’t look at him when I said it.

  “I had some questions about his work. When I showed up, he did some explaining about a set of three bisque dolls. One had a large crack running down its left cheek into the neck. It was also missing most of a leg. Another had a piece gone from the head, and broken fingers—half off—on both hands. The third was on its way to almost full repair. I even watched Kosinski paint a fresh mouth and eyebrows and scale back the cheeks to smooth their surface with plaster of paris.”

  “Where’s this going?” I said. By now, we were standing a few feet from the door to my apartment. “Why the details on doll repair?”

  “That’s just it. That’s who Kosinski is—a detail man.” He pointed at my foot. “He did that, didn’t he?”

  He placed his hand under my chin and turned my face toward him.

  “Don’t make me do this,” I said.

  I could see he was thinking how far to push me. I was afraid if he touched my cheek he’d break me and break my silence.

  He dropped his hand from my face.

  He let me breathe, but not for long. The teakettle began to whistle. I had filled it before he rang the bell and had forgotten all about it. Steam blew through the top, as if announcing an urgent message.<
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  “I’ve done a little investigating on the work of a dollologist. A friend of my mother’s, a woman named Irene O’Hara, used to repair dolls out of her home in the Heights, about five miles in from the ocean. Irene is ninety-two, living peacefully in Spring Oaks Nursing Home on the highway across from Doolan’s Funeral Parlor. Up until a few years ago, when her eyesight began to fail, she repaired dolls for people living as far north as Canada. One afternoon, I visited Irene and asked her a question.”

  “About what?”

  “That,” he said, with a hard glance at my foot.

  “It was an accident.” Even as I said it, I knew how weak I sounded. John D’Orfini continued as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “Everyone in Spring Haven knew how skilled Irene was with a needle and thread or a spade and weed whacker. Irene knew what tools did what, including for her dolls. At sixty-eight, she took classes on doll repair. Irene was sure that any good dollologist would have the right tool to slice off a person’s toe nice and clean.”

  All this time, I thought John D’Orfini’s silence meant he had forgotten about my “wound.”

  “Do you mind if I make myself a cup of coffee?” he said, jolting me out of the imaginary conversation I was having with my own fleet of failures.

  I waved my hand for him to walk inside.

  John D’Orfini went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet for the coffeepot. He raised his voice so I could hear him above the sound of the water. “Hannah was at the shop with Kosinski. She was there when I arrived. She pretended she’d dropped off a watch for repair.”

  “Pretended?” I called out, as I followed him to the kitchen.

  “The way she moved—another detail—as if she knew her way around him, even though she kept her distance. And those damn clocks. She jumped a foot in the air when they chimed in unison. Kosinski, on the other hand, raved about her. ‘You must stop by Mueller’s Bakery before you head south to Jersey,’ he said. ‘Hannah and George are the best bakers in Brooklyn!’”

  “What about . . . I mean, did you question him?”

  “No. Not directly. I didn’t ask him about Vinni. After Hannah left, I questioned him on how well he knew the bakers— particularly Hannah. We want to find out how far he’d go to help them or even protect them if they needed it. All he said was, ‘The bakers are good people. Sensitive people.’ He barely took his eyes away from working on one of those bisque dolls. The guy does delicate work. That’s for sure.”

  JOHN D’ORFINI STAYED the night.

  TWO WEEKS LATER, my feet miraculously came back to life and I accepted a four-part feature assignment for Hot Style. I needed the money. My next show was at the end of June. Tuba, who told me it was already creating a “buzz,” coordinated things with Helen Henning, the curator of Evelyn’s last exhibition. I had moved past wailing babies to babies inside the womb. The pain wasn’t less, but I was trying to find a way to paint hope, latching on to the journey of the babies down the birth canal, the explosion of the crowning heads. Since I had helped the girl down the alleyway, something inside me had changed and I found myself waking up glad I had another day to live.

  Kosinski was locked up. In the months that followed—before summer took over—I walked by the Doll and Clock Shop many times. The sign on the door said CLOSED. I’d stop and stare through the window at the painted faces of the dolls, waiting for their owners to claim them. Hannah and George were nearby, baking bread at Mueller’s, but Al Dobson—Neighbor Man—was gone from the neighborhood. Now that Kosinski was in prison, I wondered if I should leave Brooklyn, but I held on to my room across from the bakery. I slept through the night, no longer watching for a black limousine to pull up to the curb across the street. In the city, I worked on paintings Number Twenty-One through Number Twenty-Eight. Shuffling back and forth between eight paintings was crazy, but I loved the frenzy of it. After a good day, I’d fall into bed exhausted.

  Keep working, I thought. Just keep working. That’s how time passes.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE CALL CAME IN AT 8:12 A.M. I HAD RETURNED FROM a job in Los Angeles on the red-eye and had fallen into bed as the bodegas on Second Avenue were brewing their first pots of coffee.

  “Hello?”

  “I want to speak to Madeline Stewart. Please . . .”

  “Who is this?” I asked, with my eyes closed. My mouth was dry from the six-hour plane ride.

  “I want to speak to Madeline Stewart,” the voice on the other end repeated.

  I pulled myself up on one elbow.

  “Is this Madeline Stewart?”

  I opened my eyes and tried to unwind myself from the tangled sheets.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “My name is Meta Adler. I call you today from outside Füssen.”

  “Where?” I heard a woman’s voice with a strong accent. Yugoslavian, or Czech, or . . . German.

  “Germany. I have a message for you, Madeline Stewart. You are Madeline Stewart, ya?”

  “Yes.” I bolted up, letting the sheet fall around my waist. My naked breasts hung sleepily near the top of my ribs.

  “You are to come and get your daughter and bring her home.”

  My body trembled. The words I had longed to hear now spoken.

  “How . . . how . . . do you know I have a daughter?”

  Answers are important only if the questions keep us awake.

  “Your Sophie is here. Just outside Füssen.”

  “Sophie?” I barely whispered, “I have no daughter named Sophie.”

  “Ya, ya. I am sorry. Hilda told me her name was Vinni . . . before Sophie. I didn’t know. I only know now. You come and take the child home. Hilda wants you to take the child home. So you come. You come to Neuschwanstein. Immediately. Go to the Luitpoldpark-Hotel in Füssen. Wait for the driver to take you here.”

  “Where? Neusch . . . Spell it.” I wrote the word on the back of an unused prescription for Zoloft.

  “Do not tell the police. It will do you no good. Hilda is in the hospital . . . very ill. She is dying. She slipped into a coma ten days ago. The doctors say it will be soon. She is sorry for your pain—but I will tell you all when you get here.”

  “I don’t know who you are. How do I know Vinni is there with you?”

  “I am Meta Adler, caretaker of the farm estate owned by Hilda Haydn these many years. I only just find this out. I have papers for you. So you come, yes? Soon, you will see Sophie and you will be happy.”

  “Tell me something about my child.” And then she said it. She told me all I needed to know.

  “Sophie . . . no, Vinni . . . has a blue garden. She told me she always wanted a garden with only blue flowers, and so my husband and I, we helped her plant a garden of blue flowers. This made her smile.”

  I heard Vinni in my head.

  “When I grow up, I want a blue garden. Only blue flowers. You can come visit, and I’ll show you all the kinds of blue.”

  “I will leave here tonight,” I said.

  “Gut. Gut.”

  When I hung up, I shook uncontrollably.

  Tears fell down my cheeks. I didn’t scream or wail like the babies in my paintings. I dressed and walked down the same city streets I had wandered for the past five years. I stopped and sat on the steps of the New York Public Library and pulled out the photo of Vinni that Mr. Kosinski had shoved into my hands five months earlier.

  I traced my fingers over her body, smoothed her hair across her face, and imagined what it would be like to feel her skin. Kiss her sweet neck. Watch her sleep in her bed. Everything inside tightened into a chain of knots. My mouth clamped shut.

  I knew whom I needed to see to open it.

  AS I WALKED from the subway to Mueller’s Bakery, I wondered if I should speak to both Hannah and George or just Hannah. When I arrived at the bakery, Hannah was emptying loaves of fresh bread onto the shelves behind the cash register.

  “Hannah?” I said.

  “Mmm . . . yes?” She spoke as she turned, and
I saw she had been crying. The lines around her face folded into creases of flesh, old and worn.

  “The phone call,” I whispered. “The phone call came early this morning.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “You know about the call?” I asked.

  Hannah walked from around the counter. She wiped her hands on her apron and then took my face in her hands. She kissed me on both cheeks and said one word.

  “Go.”

  “And bring her back?” A slight question hung perilously at the end of my voice.

  Hannah wrapped me in her arms. I heaved sobs onto her shoulder as she stroked the back of my head. Hannah kissed me again.

  “Go,” she said. “We are almost free. Both of us.”

  As I left the bakery, I looked in through the glass front windows and saw George with his arms around Hannah, rubbing her back in small circles.

  AFTER META’S CALL, I’d bought two seats for Munich on United Airlines. I had to get myself to Füssen. The message had been clear: no police. Hilda was dying from a recurrence of ovarian cancer. She had slipped into a coma.

  I called John D’Orfini on his cell phone.

  “I need you to listen and not to question anything I’m about to tell you,” I said.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Please just listen to me.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve made two plane reservations for Munich for tonight. I’m going to bring Vinni home, and I want you to come with me. Not as a police detective. As someone I want with me. I received a phone call—one I’ve been waiting for for five months. One I was told would come.”

  “From whom?”

  “I can’t tell you this.”

  “Go on.”

  “The plane leaves JFK at eight o’clock tonight. I’ll leave your ticket at the United Airlines customer service counter.” I hesitated before I said the next part, but I felt there was a chance that he wouldn’t come, and I couldn’t involve myself with a bureaucratic mess.