“That’s all that’s down here.”
“Okay, let’s go upstairs.” The thumping sound was louder in Vin’s room than it had been in the living room.
He led me past a confused Beauty and an annoyed Manfred, back up the stairs, through the foyer and down the hallway. Family pictures, including several of Bungee, were hung asymmetrically all along the pale green walls. The thumping got louder. “What is that?”
“It’s just Joey. He does that all the time...now.” I wondered if now meant since his father’s death or since his sister’s disappearance.
The first room was light pink with a white daybed and a trundle. I assumed this was for Miriam and her daughter, and Danny confirmed this was so. Though very small, it was nicely furnished and cozy. I opened the closet.A few clothes hung there, mother’s and daughter’s. A suitcase was in the back. I opened it and found it empty. A couple pairs of child’s shoes were lined up neatly on the floor beside an inexpensive pair of women’s low-heeled black pumps. As I closed the closet door, I noticed three curly-headed dolls propped up on the upholstered window seat, which looked out to a view of Riverside Park and the Hudson River. Two of the dolls looked new and pricier than the clothes and shoes in the closet.
The next room was a bathroom. Blue walls, unmatched colored towels, a white shower curtain with cartoon characters scattered over it. “This is our bathroom—Joey and me. Miriam and Anna use it, too.”
In the next room we found Joey, the eight-year-old, sitting on the edge of the lower bunk bed, bouncing a soccer ball with both hands. The bunk beds were against the wall to the right. Straight ahead were two desks, each bearing a modest computer. A host of things were assembled rather haphazardly on shelves, and attached to the walls were posters, photos and memorabilia from sporting events that they had either attended or participated in. I supposed that it was the younger boy who was in his dinosaur phase. The largest poster was of Tyrannosaurus rex, and various other extinct reptiles randomly grazed or hunted around the room. A few of the flying variety were suspended from the ceiling. There were also miniature cars, motorcycles and, in the corner, what looked like an instrument case. Perhaps the size for a clarinet. A fair number of books seemed to litter the place. Some were even on the shelves, including a hardcover set of Harry Potters. The room was messy but not filthy. Claudia was not a control freak. When I opened the closet door, I felt Sugartime smile. On the floor was a pile of stuff that included papers and dirty clothes crammed in, no doubt at the last minute, because they were told somebody was coming over and would probably look in their room.
I sat down on the bunk bed next to Joey. “Hi. I’m Shiloh.”
The boy acknowledged my presence with a nod but did not break his Zen-like concentration to keep the ball bouncing.
“Do you like Harry Potter?”
“He’s not real.” Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. “You can’t like someone who’s not real.”
I rephrased. “Do you like reading the Harry Potter books?”
“I like the movies better.”
“Are you a good soccer player?”
“Not yet.”
Joey was a mini version of Danny. Both boys seemed small for their ages, both had sandy hair, dark blue eyes and freckles across their noses.
“Granduncle tells him to stop doing that.” Danny nodded toward the bouncing ball and flopped into one of the desk chairs.
“Does your mother tell you to stop?” I asked Joey.
“No. She says it’s okay. As long as I don’t do it after six. She says the downstairs neighbors might get bothered, but I don’t think they can hear it. Danny was downstairs once in Christopher’s apartment and I bounced as hard as I could up here in my room and he said they didn’t hear anything, so I think it’s okay.”
“I think it would be very satisfying to bounce a ball for as long as I wanted to,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“He drives everybody nuts.” Danny picked up a puzzle cube and began to fiddle with it.
“Can I have a try at it?” I asked Joey.
“Sure.” Somewhat reluctantly, Joey handed me the ball.
I bounced the ball a few times. “Tell me about your granduncle.”
“Well, he’s just granduncle. And there’s Phoebe.”
“You don’t think of her as grandaunt?”
He shrugged.
Danny offered, “She doesn’t like to be called anything but Phoebe. Except for the things granduncle calls her.”
“What does your mother call her?”
“Phoebe.”
“Do you like your granduncle?”
“He’s okay. He bought me my computer. And Danny’s. Danny got one first, because he’s older but mine is better because it’s newer.”
I looked at Danny, and he just rolled his eyes.
“What about your grandfather?” I stopped bouncing the ball but held on to it.
Danny answered, “He’s okay. He paid for our camp. And he’s paying for riding lessons for Joey.”
“How about you. Don’t you like horses?”
“They’re okay. I’d rather ride a bike. When I’m old enough he said he’d get me one.”
“Aren’t you old enough for a bicycle?”
“Not a bicycle. A motorcycle. A red one. Like this.” He held up a model of a red motorcycle.
“You like your uncle?”
Both boys smiled. Danny said, “Uncle Mike? He’s cool.”
“Does he buy you stuff?”
“No. He doesn’t have any money.”
“He bought us hot dogs at the game,” Joey corrected his brother.
“Oh yeah. Mom doesn’t let us eat hot dogs. She says it’s junk food. Uncle Mike said we shouldn’t tell her. You won’t tell her, will you?”
“No.”
Joey asked me, “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“My eyes are fine.”
Danny reprimanded him, “Shut up! Father Ryan told us not to.”
“Well, he didn’t say she would look so weird.”
“I do have a weird look. I can’t help it.” I bounced the ball again. “It’s just how I look.”
“Oh.That’s cool.”Joey was still eyeing me with great interest. “Can you do somebody else? Father Ryan said you sometimes turn into somebody else. Let’s see you do it.”
“I’m not a party game, boys. If it happens you’ll know it. Can I talk to you again if I need to?”
“Sure. Will you turn into somebody else then?”
“Maybe.”
“Cool.”
“Wow.”
“I’m very sorry about your father.”
Joey lowered his gaze and reached for the soccer ball.
“Do you like Miriam?” I bounced the ball to him and he caught it.
“She’s okay. Well, she used to be. Now all she does is cry.”
“She was teaching us some Russian,” Danny said.
Joey stopped bouncing and announced, “I can say, Dos vee don ya. You know what that is? That’s goodbye. And I can say, My name is Joey. Min ya zah voot Joey.”
“Yeah, like you’ll ever go to Russia.” Danny went back to fiddling with his puzzle cube.
“I might. Granduncle said he’d take me.”
“Granduncle escaped from there, he’s not going to go back, moron.”
“Well, perhaps if he has a reason to go back, after all these years, to show off his grandnephews, he might go,” I said. I didn’t want to start a sibling squabble.
“Yeah, right.” Danny rolled his eyes again.
I got up and Danny put down his puzzle cube and led me to the next room.The nursery door was wide open, revealing a crib, monitor, stuffed toys, a bassinette, a rocking chair. Everything a baby or a new mother could possibly want. I stepped into this catalog shot for Bellini Baby. The room had pale yellow walls and white curtains sprinkled with tiny rainbows in primary colors. A chenille rug in multicolored checks warmed the highly polished wood floor. A mobile of jungle animals fl
oated over the crib.
My eyes were beginning to hurt. On one wall was a huge laminated poster of the alphabet illustrated with the appropriate birds and beasts. Bethy-June was crying again. Lance crooned, Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree-ee, merry merry king of the bush is he–ee.
A lifelike baby doll and an oversized Raggedy Ann rested forlornly in the rocking chair. Barbie in many of her incarnations populated a high shelf, out of reach until Charlotte would be old enough to prefer them to the stuffed bears and pink fluffy pigs and green plush frogs that were scattered about and piled in the corner of the crib. Everywhere was color and whimsy and comfort. A loved child. A wanted child. Sula whimpered in raw longing. Laugh kook-a-berry, laugh kook-a-berry. I felt my people teetering at the edge of a yawning mouth of misery from which they were never far removed. Gay your life must be. If this is the feeling that Ray wants me to experience—no, thank you very much.
We had to get out of this room before they started howling. Danny ran after me. There was only one room left at the end of the hall. The master bedroom.
Its walls were pale blue-green with sheer panels of beige and brown over the windows. Next to the king-size bed was a nightstand with a lamp, an alarm clock and the baby monitor. The dresser was covered in family photographs. A La-Z-Boy chair, television, a small writing desk and another bedside table completed the furnishings. Walk-in closets. Spacious master bath and gleaming white tiles, white towels and rugs. Wooden shelves laden with plants were in place in front of the opaque glass windows.
I stepped back into the bedroom considering what I had seen so far: the doors, closets, windows—all possible entrances, exits or hiding places. All the windows had child guards. The place was safe, large and homey. I could see a very happy family here before the death of Mr. Keating. I saw a widow picking up the pieces with her sons and her new daughter, and then, this terrible thing happened. If we didn’t get the children back, I couldn’t envision happiness ever dwelling in this place again. I wanted very much that it should.
I heard Bungee go off almost simultaneously with the doorbell. I stepped into the hall and watched the housekeeper scoop up the dog and open the door to a man who resembled Manfred Burke but who was younger and slighter in build. His dark blue suit, white shirt and blue bow tie were crisp, perfectly tailored, conservative. He had more hair than his older brother and it was allowed to be its own steel-gray color. He carried a briefcase and smiled a toothy smile.As I approached, he hesitated only a second before offering me his hand in a businesslike way. The housekeeper distracted Spencer with an agile “How about a glass of iced tea, Mr. Burke? Or, I just made fresh coffee if you’d ruther.” His southern accent poured over Burke like warm syrup. “Ms. Shiloh has asked everyone to congregate in the living room.”
Vin didn’t actually touch Spencer Burke, but he seemed to turn him around and herd him to the steps, reminding me of a collie I’d seen once on TV dancing a ram into a corral. With Spencer Burke headed downstairs, Vin put Bungee down, arched an eyebrow at me, and then queried the congregants below, “Who wants tea?” He took a mental count of nods, spun on the balls of his feet, and sallied back to the kitchen.
Bungee was in Claudia’s lap before I reached the bottom step. Spencer Burke was apologizing. “I’m sorry I’m late. The meeting ran over.” Michael Keating rose to offer him his chair close to Claudia. He declined with a wave of his hand and Michael resumed his seat. “And then there was a holdup on Eighty-sixth Street right in the park so we couldn’t go back, we couldn’t go forward. We couldn’t go around.”
He had no accent. Spencer had been born after the family arrived in the United States. He did not wear glasses and his faded blue eyes were more searching, less confrontational than Manfred’s. He looked at me with curiosity and, I thought, a little hope.
“Spencer,sit down.”Manfred motioned his brother to a chair although he himself was standing, and it occurred to me that he had been pacing back and forth since he came downstairs. He threw a loose gesture in my direction. “She took a tour of the premises. Now that she has intruded herself into every corner of my niece’s home, perhaps we can get to business.”
We heard a muffled ringing and Spencer took a small cell phone out of his suit pocket, looked at it, pressed a button, and put the phone back in his pocket. Manfred continued to twitch.
Spencer’s eyes rested on his daughter for a moment, then he said, “Manfred, why don’t you sit down. Pour yourself a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink. Do you want a drink?” he challenged his brother.
“No.”
“Why do you think I want one then? You will give her,” he pointed at me, “the impression we are alcoholics—we sit around drinking at four thirty in the afternoon.”
Spencer found a chair. Manfred seemed about to throw a tantrum when Vin cakewalked down the stairs balancing a tray heavy with frosty glasses of iced tea and made the rounds offering everyone a glass. Even Manfred took one, though he did not sit down with it.
Vin left the tray with its sugar bowl, spoons and plate of lemon slices on the coffee table. “Help yourselves,” he said. He paused to say a few more words that were audible only to Claudia. She nodded and he murmured something to Miriam who gave him the same glazed expression she had shown me. He patted her knee and went back up the stairs to his kitchen.
Phoebe left her overstuffed chair to spoon sugar into her glass with plump little hands. She seemed shaped and confined only by the panty hose and shoes, the bra, and waist and neck bands, the wrist bands at the end of her blousy sleeves, the bracelets. Without them she’d have been just a dollop of yesterday’s vanilla pudding. Her white skin untouched by sun or weather, hair the color of a baby chick, blue eye shadow—bluer than her faded, slightly protruding eyes—red pouty lips, matching red nails with old-fashioned round, almost pointed tips reminded me of a kewpie doll, old, carefully-kept, grotesque, since the paint on her lips seeped into the creases around her mouth, and mascara was smeared around her eyes. All she needed to complete the picture were a few dusty feathers stuck in her hair.
Claudia wore no makeup at all. Not even in the wedding picture that I’d seen on her dresser in which she and her husband looked like two happy children, playing at getting married.
Manfred Burke came to Phoebe’s side and took some sugar. His liver spots were even more pronounced next to her white skin. They seemed—not an unlikely couple, but an unnatural one. He, some desert dweller, sun-dried and parched, and she an inhabitant of a damp, sunless cave. She clearly did not join him in his outdoor activities. Both the pink tint in his hair and the yellow in hers looked like the results of color jobs from bottles purchased by the case from their local discount drugstore.
I’ll bet he gets his rings and watches wholesale. People like him always do.
Hester, how would you know anything about people like that?
People who have money buy wholesale. That’s how they keep their money. Everybody knows that. Look at his eyebrows. I’ll bet he colors them with the same stuff he uses on his hair. They need waxing.
“My petal, would you like anything else?”
The ends of her cupid’s bow lips rose almost imperceptibly as she shook her yellow curls.
They are an absolutely horrible couple. Dracula marries Baby Jane!
Hester giggled in spite of the fact that she hated giving Olive credit for anything, even a good line. She said, But there are a lot of horrible people in the world who do not kidnap and murder children.
And a lot who do.
“I’m going to speak with your housekeeper,” I told Claudia. She nodded. “Then I’ll speak to each of you.”
As I mounted the stairs to the landing I heard Manfred say in a lower voice, but one still audible, “Aghh! She is a freak!”
O’Hagan tried to soothe him. “Mr. Burke, she is highly recommended by a good friend of mine.”
“Who? Who is this good friend of yours who recommends a freak?”
“Uncle,
I hired her. Please.”
“Freddy.”
This was a new voice. I turned around.
“Yes, my darling?”
“Sit down, dear.” Phoebe had taken a place on another small sofa at an angle to the larger one inhabited by Claudia, Miriam and Bungee. Manfred took his sweet drink and sat beside her, muttering to the room at large, “What is this? A cruel joke? I thought she wanted to talk to us?”
“I do. And I will,” I said from the top of the stairs. “Wait your turn.”
Smiles ghosted across the faces of the two priests. Spencer grinned outright. Claudia turned her head and looked at me squarely for the first time. She seemed oddly composed.
The short passageway leading from the foyer to the kitchen was lined with built-in closets. Opening doors, I found rows of canned goods, boxes of cereal, spices, packaged foods of every kind, enough to last this family through a siege of several months, plus cans of an expensive brand of dog food that would keep Bungee well fed for months as well; cleaning supplies, including mops and brooms, dusters and a top-of-the-line vacuum cleaner. I pushed on the shelves. They were solid and did not move.
The eat-in kitchen was modern: the white-tile-and-stainlesssteel look softened by a vase of pink carnations on the table, white café curtains and a multitude of children’s drawings stuck to almost every vertical surface. A grinning orange and yellow papier-mâché creature squatted on top of the refrigerator.
Command of Silence Page 4