CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The sudden ring of the telephone startles Peyton awake.
Reaching for the receiver on the bedside table, she glances blearily at the clock and sees that it’s six-thirty. The last time she looked, having watched the minutes tick by for the duration of the night, it was five forty-five.
That was right after she popped the two blue pills Rita handed over with sympathetic reluctance.
“Peyton, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“Tom?” Heart pounding, she struggles to shake off a numbing wave of grogginess. She sits up and looks warily around the shadowy room, almost expecting to see the unwelcome caller lurking in a corner.
“I’m going to go pick up bagels and come over.”
“No!” Tempering her panic, she manages to say, “I mean, don’t come now. Please. I didn’t sleep well all night and I need to rest.”
“I knew you wouldn’t sleep after all that. You’ll feel safer if I’m there. I’ll just hang around and keep an eye on things while you rest.”
“No, really. I just want to be left alone for a while. Please.”
He hesitates. “Do you mean left alone so you can sleep this morning? Or left alone for a while . . . period?”
She groans. “Please, Tom, I’m exhausted. I took some Tylenol PM and it’s knocking me out. I can barely speak right now.”
“You’re not supposed to take anything like that when you’re pregnant.”
Irked by the gentle scolding, she opens her mouth to tell him that she checked with Rita first. That will only require complicated explanations she isn’t prepared to give, and he doesn’t deserve.
“Look, just let me sleep,” she says wearily. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay. Call me if you need me.”
She mumbles an unintelligible reply and hangs up, collapsing against the pillow again.
“I knew he’d call first thing.”
She gasps at the sound of the voice and looks up to see Rita standing in the doorway.
“Sorry . . . I didn’t mean to scare you, sugar pie.”
“I know, I’m just jumpy. Did you sleep?”
“Not much.” Rita runs a hand through her disheveled gray hair, her eyes barely visible beneath her unkempt fringe of bangs. “Listen, I’m going to make some coffee. The locksmith will be here in a little while. You just rest.”
“Call me when he gets here, okay?”
“I will.”
Peyton closes her eyes, already drifting away on a billowing cloud of unconsciousness.
Last night’s delightful little stunt was never part of the plan.
Unlike the Bible, the meaningful gift all the donors receive, this was an afterthought. Peyton Somerset won’t learn anything from it, other than that she isn’t in charge of every element of her life.
It’s an important lesson, one they could all have stood to learn. But Peyton, more than anyone else. She exudes an inner strength of character that most donors either conceal, or lack entirely. She isn’t the least bit leery of the prospect of raising a baby without a loving father to share the blessing.
No, she thinks she can do it all, have it all. She’s brazenly claimed as her own the God-given right denied to scores of deserving couples.
For that, she must be punished. This is no longer about the work: the methodical inverted process of take-and-give.
No, and I’ll be the first to admit it.
This has become a personal vendetta.
Peyton Somerset is the epitome of the self-indulgent donor, manipulating the natural order of the universe to suit her own greedy needs.
That’s why this time, particularly from here on in, things are going to be different.
Of course there was a momentary lack of organization. First, the unforseen elimination of the Cordells as adoptive parents, then the Khatirs’ refusal to accept the proposal. Then there’s the cloying recollection of holding a pillow over an innocent man’s face until he ceased to breathe.
And a priest, at that.
But you do what has to be done for the greater good. You do whatever it takes to preserve the clandestine nature of the work, do it all without flinching, and then you move on.
As I have.
Everything is under control once again.
Perhaps Peyton Somerset will be the final donor. Perhaps there will be more, but chosen, in the future as in the past, at random once again.
Live and learn.
In any case, the Somerset baby will come into the world to find both a mother and father waiting.
He’s going to be so thrilled, and so surprised. I can’t wait to tell him . . .
But I will. I’ll wait until the time is right.
And in the meantime, there’s plenty to do. The bloody gift in Peyton’s handbag was the perfect way to knock the infuriating Ms. I’ve Got It All Under Control off balance.
It was so satisfying that it’s tempting to do it again . . . and again . . . if only to banish the impatient boredom that always sets in during the last trimester, when everything is in place, and there’s nothing to do but wait.
Mary opens her eyes abruptly to see the sun seeping into the crevices around the perimeter of the drawn aluminum blinds. Slashes of its rays even manage to push through a few of the slats that didn’t close all the way, caging the bed beneath the window in strange bars of light.
The angle is all wrong, Mary thinks vaguely, in the moment before it occurs to her to glance at the clock.
No wonder. It’s late.
Past ten, already.
A frisson of panic takes hold, and she bolts from the bed, racing for the baby’s room.
Dawn has never made it through the night without waking to be fed. Three o’clock, seven o’clock . . .
She should have awakened Mary at least twice by now. Unless Javier got up with her . . .
But he leaves for his Saturday job at the loading dock well before six. Even if he’d given her that first feeding . . .
A frantic, sick feeling washes over Mary as she steps over the threshold into the baby’s room, where the blinds are still drawn and the night-light still shines.
How many tragic crib death accounts did she hear about in the bereaved parents’ support group she went to for a short time after her first stillbirth? She still recalls the ravaged expressions on the faces of women who described oversleeping, then rushing to check on their babies, only to find them stiff and cold.
Mary remembers thinking, even then, At least you had them for a little while. At least you got to hold them, feed them, feel like a mother . . .
I was denied all of that.
Now, as she approaches Dawn’s cradle, guilt courses through her. This loss is more terrible, even, than the crippling losses she’s already suffered. She’s held Dawn, fed her. . .
I’m her mother. And I’ve lost her.
She closes her eyes as she takes the last few steps, whispering a prayer, asking God for a miracle she doesn’t deserve, for strength to face what lies ahead if there can be no miracle.
Then she leans over the cradle, where the white crocheted blanket she tucked securely around her daughter last night lies rumpled at the bottom . . .
And she realizes the cradle is empty.
“I can think of a hundred places I’d rather be,” Detective Sam Basir says wistfully.
“I can think of a thousand,” Detective Jody Langella replies. Chief among them, down at Breezy Point with her firefighter husband and kids at the annual August beach party.
“Yeah? You’re probably wishing you were down at Breezy with Jack and Mandi and Jackie Jr.”
Okay, so her longtime partner has the uncanny ability to read her mind. Jody shrugs. “Drunken firemen, burnt hot dogs, jellyfish stings . . . who needs that?”
“You do,” Sam tells her. “Maybe you’ll get down there in time to have a cold one and see the fireworks.”
“I doubt it.”
Leaving behind the blazing afternoon sunlight, they walk into the towering Co-op City building.
Jody flashes her badge at the building manager she met last month, and learns that nobody has been picking up mail for the Cordells’ apartment.
“What am I supposed to do? Just let it keep piling up?” the manager asks, wringing his hands.
“You could always just open it.”
The swarthy little man’s eyes shoot toward his receding hairline at Sam’s brazen suggestion.
“He’s just kidding.” Jody shakes her head at her partner, wondering why he insists on riling the innocent.
Moments later, they’re being escorted to the fourteenth-floor apartment where Linden Cordell lived with his wife Derry.
After unlocking the door, the manager asks, “Do you need me to stay here this time? Because I have to get back—”
“Go, go.” Jody is already in the living room, intent on looking the place over with a fresh perspective.
Nothing has changed in the month since she was here, aside from a staler smell, more cobwebs, a thicker layer of dust. Particles are stirred to dance in the air wherever she walks, glinting like glitter in the sunlight streaming in.
The place is stuffy; Sam swiftly opens every window.
Glancing over a stack of CDs beside the stereo in the living room, he plucks a few off the shelf to examine them. “Check it out, Langella. I haven’t even heard of most of these bands since high school. AC-DC? Rush? Hey, I’d love to hear—”
“Come on, we’re not here to relive our youth, Sam.”
Obviously still convinced they’re wasting their time investigating a random murder, he tosses the CDs aside and asks, “So what is it that we’re looking for?”
“Whatever we can find.”
“I’d like to find something cold to drink.” He steps into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, and makes a face, quickly closing it. “God, that reeks.”
“What did you expect? Nobody’s cleaned it out in over a month.” Jody shakes her head and leaves him there, heading to the bedroom.
The closet isn’t full, despite the fact that there is only one, and it contains both a man’s and a woman’s wardrobe. Jody is no fashionista despite her thirteen-year-old daughter’s efforts, but even she can tell by the labels and fabric quality that the Cordells’ clothing budget was limited.
There are a number of empty hangers on the woman’s side. Plastic hangers, unlike the wire ones that hold all but two of the remaining garments: inexpensive summer blouses that still have tags on them. One is blue with ruffles, the other peach with a wide collar. Both are from Strawberries, marked down with final clearance prices, probably from the end of last season. Thanks to Mandi’s obsession with clothes, Jody recognizes the style as having been popular last summer.
“What’d you find?” Sam asks from the doorway.
“She must have packed a lot of her stuff.” Jody stares at the blouses. “But not everything. Wouldn’t you think a woman who was leaving her husband—a woman who had very little clothing in the first place—would take everything? Or at least, almost everything?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe she wanted to travel light.”
“But she left behind stuff that’s new. Why would she do that? Wouldn’t she want to bring the new stuff with her, at least?”
“Maybe she had other new stuff.”
Jody shakes her head, lost in thought.
Something definitely isn’t adding up.
“I still can’t believe you forgot to tell me about Wanda last night,” Peyton can’t help chiding Rita as they step out of an air-conditioned cab into a blast of humid midday heat.
“Yeah, well, we were both a little preoccupied, remember?” Rita struggles to balance a large bouquet in one arm as the driver hands her the gift-wrapped boxes from the trunk.
“Here, give me the roses.” Peyton reaches for them.
“No, the vase is heavy. I’ve got it.”
“I’m not an invalid, Rita. I can help. At least give me a couple of boxes. They’re not heavy, and it was my idea to buy all those little pink outfits, so it isn’t fair that you have to lug them all.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve got them.” Rita shakes her head good-naturedly. “I should have known better than to take a pregnant woman to the layette department at Lord and Taylor.”
“You’re just lucky I didn’t buy stuff for my own layette.”
“Oh, I think that saleswoman figured you’ll be back.”
Peyton can’t help smiling.
Rita was right earlier when she said shopping for baby gifts would be therapeutic. It was just what Peyton needed this afternoon to sweep away the bitter aftertaste of last night’s trauma. She knows it’ll come rushing back later, when at last she’s forced to go home again, but for now, she has other things to think about.
As they make their way across Amsterdam Avenue to the entrance of Saint Luke’s Hospital, she finds herself looking forward to seeing Wanda and her newborn baby girl, though certainly not the controlling philanderer who put them both in danger.
She still can’t get over the shock of learning that Wanda delivered her baby girl without letting anyone know she was in labor. Anyone other than Eric, that is.
Peyton isn’t hurt, exactly, that she didn’t get a phone call. She’s just surprised. Wanda promised to call her.
As for Rita—well, she’s definitely hurt over the slight. Troubled, too. She wasn’t thrilled with Peyton’s suggestion that they bring the baby gifts they’d bought right over to the hospital this afternoon.
“I don’t know if she wants to see anyone,” was Rita’s uncertain response. “Eric is probably there.”
“Well, then we’ll just have to meet the bastard, won’t we?”
“I’m not up for that. You go.”
“Come with me, Rita. Come on. We owe it to Wanda. She probably needs to know we care.”
Peyton’s little speech might have swayed Rita, but she privately has to admit to herself that her motives aren’t entirely noble. She figures holding an infant in her arms will remind her of her own priorities, and help take her mind off everything—not to mention, keep her away from home . . . and Tom.
At least he can no longer get into her apartment. The locksmith arrived right on schedule this morning and had the new locks in place before Peyton even emerged from a welcome, much-needed slumber. By the time she woke up, Rita had paid him and sent him on his way, not to mention having made a large, healthy breakfast and cleaned the apartment.
“What would I do without you?” Peyton asks her again now, as they walk through the doors into the hospital.
“You’d be fine. You must have reminded me a dozen times last night and this morning that you can take care of yourself. . . remember?”
“I can take care of myself. Absolutely. It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a good friend.”
“Unlike certain other people we know.” Rita follows up with a tight-lipped shake of her head as they stop to look at the building directory.
“Come on, don’t be mad at Wanda.”
“I’m not as much mad as I am disappointed. How could she put herself and the innocent baby in jeopardy out of convenience for a man like that? I gave her more credit than that.”
“She’s insecure.” Peyton shrugs. “She’s not as strong as you are. Or as strong as I am. She thinks she needs him.”
“Well, I need J.D., but I’m not going to compromise myself to keep him happy.”
Peyton says nothing, just leads the way to the visitor registration desk, thinking about Tom.
As Rita gives the security officer Wanda’s name, Peyton wonders whether Tom has been trying to call her all afternoon. Or maybe he came over, tried to use his key, and found out the locks have been changed.
“I’m sorry, what was the name?” the guard asks, after tapping a few keys and scrolling down the computer screen.
“Jones,” Rita repeats. “Wanda Jones.”
He checks the screen again. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any patients by that name.”
“She’s a maternity patient. She was admitted yesterday through the emergency room. She delivered by C-section so she could be in surgical recovery.”
“She’d show up on here no matter how she was admitted.”
“Was she already released?” Peyton asks, puzzled. Surely they wouldn’t let somebody go home less than twenty-four hours after major surgery.
“Figures,” Rita mutters, rolling her eyes. “Big Daddy probably got tired of sitting around a hospital room.”
“Can you check and see when she was released?” Peyton asks the guard. To Rita, she says, “We can always just take a cab down to her apartment and—”
“I don’t have to check,” the guard interrupts. “I have all the information I need right here. According to our records, your Wanda Jones was never a patient here at all.”
Jody hangs up the telephone and looks at Sam. “Richie said Linden’s wife definitely didn’t have a laptop. She had a big old white desktop computer with a clunky tower and bulky monitor.”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning she brought the computer with her when she left,” Jody says, crossing over to the desk, where the computer must have stood. A surge protector power strip still occupies the outlet underneath.
“I wonder if she sent her husband the e-mail saying she was leaving him before or after she actually left. Is there any way to tell where it was sent from, and exactly when?”
“Not unless somebody saved it, and even then . . .” Sam shrugs.
“Richie doesn’t know what Linden’s password is—I already asked him,” Jody tells him. “But he did see the e-mail when Linden opened it. He said he remembers it word-for-word.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at with all this stuff.”
Jody isn’t quite sure, either. But she knows there’s something here, something she might be missing.
Thinking aloud, she says, “She took a big old P.C. with a clunky monitor, and she left the surge protector behind. Wouldn’t she need it where she was going?”
“Maybe she forgot to grab it.”
“She also left behind two relatively new blouses with tags on.”
“Ah yes. The scintillating fashion angle.”
Jody ignores his sarcasm, musing, “She didn’t have a car. Did she get into a cab with all that stuff? She couldn’t have lugged it on the subway or a bus—”
“Unless she had help.”
“Even then . . . do you know how bulky those old computers are? And she’d have had luggage with her, too.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Sam, there isn’t a single piece of luggage in this apartment. Not a suitcase, not a duffel bag.”
“Maybe they don’t travel.”
“Everybody has some kind of luggage. Which means either one or both of the Cordells packed and took all whatever they had.”
“Well, if that’s the case, and it was her, with bags and a computer out on the street, she would have been pretty noticeable. We can start canvassing neighbors, bus drivers, regulars on the subway . . . but I still don’t get it. Why? Why not just go with the random murder theory? That makes more sense to me than anything here.”
“Because something just isn’t adding up. And because I have a gut feeling about this, Sam,” Jody says simply.
Before he can make the anticipated comment about her “woman’s intuition,” a voice calls from the hall.
“Hello?”
They turn to see an elderly woman standing in the doorway of the apartment, a purse in one gnarled hand and a shopping bag in the other. Clad in baggy stockings, terry cloth scuffs, and a nondescript housedress, she has white curly hair, glasses, and a hearing aid Jody can hear whistling from even across the room.
“Hi, can we help you?” Sam asks.
“I’m Myrtle Steiner. I live next door. What’s happened now?”
Jody and Sam look at each other.
When Sam doesn’t speak up, Jody reluctantly begins, “I’m afraid Mr. Cordell—”
“What’s that?” the woman asks, motioning at her hearing aid and coming into the room.
“I said, Mr. Cordell had an accident a few weeks ago—”
“He was run over by a train. I heard about that.”
“Did you know the Cordells then?” Jody’s voice is still raised, but the woman talks over her as if she doesn’t hear.
“I felt so bad about that poor man. What a terrible way to go. And what about her, poor thing? I haven’t seen her around at all. Maybe she went to stay with family. I would, if I were widowed with a baby on the way.”
Jody’s heart skips a beat and she has to hold back a gasp.
She shoots a look at Sam, who barely raises an eyebrow as he calls out, “I’m sorry, what did you say, Mrs. Steiner? I must have heard you wrong.”
“And they all tell me I’m the one who’s deaf,” she mutters good-naturedly, then shouts, “I said, poor thing was widowed with a baby on the way.”
“Derry Cordell was pregnant?”
“You didn’t know? She was pretty far along, I think. She was really showing.”
“I just don’t get it,” Peyton is saying as she follows Rita across the broad sidewalk toward the towering brick and glass apartment building. “Why would she lie about where she delivered the baby?”
“I don’t get it, either. And I don’t like it.”
Walking from the bright afternoon sunshine into the dimly lit lobby, it takes a moment for Rita to adjust her eyesight.
When she does, she’s disappointed to see that the uniformed doorman is a stranger. If Jamil were here, he’d recognize her.
“We’re here to see Wanda Jones in 28J,” Peyton tells him.
“Your names?”
Rita looks at Peyton. “Think we should make something up so she’ll let us in?” she asks under her breath, only half facetiously.
Peyton shakes her head disapprovingly. To the doorman she says, “Just tell her it’s Peyton and Rita.”
“Peyton and Rita?”
“She’ll know us.”
“Hang on a second.”
She’ll know us . . . but will she want to see us?
Rita has a feeling this is futile. She should never have agreed to come down here. Wanda obviously doesn’t want to see either of them. Why else would she lie about where she delivered the baby?
The doorman has the desk phone up to his ear, head cocked, obviously listening.
Rita clenches and unclenches her hands, her short fingernails digging painfully into her palms.
The doorman hangs up the phone.
Rita knows before he speaks what he’s going to say, yet a disappointed sigh escapes her when he informs them, “Nobody home up there. Sorry.”
“Are you sure? Maybe she just couldn’t answer the call,” Peyton suggests. “She just had a baby. She’s probably got her hands full.”
“Can we just go on up?” Rita asks, knowing what the answer will be.
“Sorry, no.”
“If we go up,” Peyton persists, “we can knock and she’ll let us in if she’s up to it.”
He shrugs, shaking his head. “I can’t help you, ladies. I can’t let you up without the tenant’s permission.”
“Thanks anyway.” Peyton turns away. Looking at Rita, she says simply, “She has to be here.”
“Obviously, she doesn’t.”
“She has a newborn. Where else would she possibly be?”
“I don’t know . . . the boyfriend’s house?”
“With his wife and kids? I doubt it.”
“She told me they’re out East this weekend,” Rita points out.
“She told you a lot of things. Who knows if any of it is true?”
There’s nothing for them to do but walk toward the door, their shoes making hollow tapping noises on the polished marble floor.
The door might as well be a mile away. Rita’s legs suddenly feel like shoelaces, the sleepless night catching up with her at last. She covers her mouth to stifle an enormous yawn, wishing she were home, curled up in bed . . . which, as Peyton pointed out, is precisely where one would expect to find somebody who just had a baby.
Something occurs to Rita, then, a thought so outlandish, so chilling, that she stops in her tracks.
Peyton, two steps behind, almost walks into her. “Rita! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I . . . I’m sorry.”
Not daring to even mention to Peyton the preposterous idea that’s forming in her mind, she resumes walking, her mouth set grimly.
Peyton is silent as she follows her out the door, but her earlier question echoes ominously through Rita’s mind.
Why would she lie about where she had the baby?
What if, Rita can’t help wondering, Wanda didn’t just lie about where she had the baby?
What if she lied about having had the baby at all?