Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Hey, are you any relation to the Mayflower Madam?” Stef asks her.

  “To whom?”

  “You know—that woman who got busted for running the high-class prostitution ring, two or three years ago.”

  Barnes jumps in. “Sydney Biddle Barrows. I just saw a preview for a TV movie coming out in a few weeks. Candice Bergen is playing her.”

  “Oh, yeah? Candice Bergen is a classy dame, too.”

  Stef may be rough around the edges, but he isn’t one to call women dames. Barnes has seen him use the tactic before. He’s trying to shake up Kirstin Wayland—that’s Kirstin Eaton Billington Wayland to them—so that she’ll let down her guard.

  She stiffly informs them that she is absolutely no relation to the Mayflower Madam, and they move on. She confirms the basic details about Perry. Yes, he’s a hedge fund manager. Yes, he’s blond and blue eyed. Yes, he’s thirty-four. No scars or birthmarks that she knows of, but yes, he does have a distinguishing physical characteristic.

  “What’s that?” Stef asks.

  Kirstin chews her lower lip before answering. “He has a tattoo. Not where anyone would see it, thank God. He got it years ago, when we were at Brown. He knew I’d be upset, so he hid it from me for months. He’d gotten drunk at a frat party, and the next thing he knew . . . It wasn’t like him, but I guess we all have our moments. I always tell him to have it removed, but he’s not good with pain.”

  Or maybe he wants to keep the ink. Unlike scars, tattoos are deliberate mementos. Barnes has one himself—CB on his right bicep. His father’s initials.

  “Where’s the tattoo?” Stef asks Wayland’s wife.

  “On his . . . uh . . .” She gestures at her left breast. “Here.”

  “Chest?” Barnes supplies when Stef fails to come up with delicate phrasing. Not that Kirstin Wayland has much . . . chest to speak of. She’s built like a prepubescent boy. Barnes prefers women with a little more meat on their bones.

  “Somewhere around there, yes. I’ve only seen it a couple of times.” Seeing them raise eyebrows, she adds hastily, “You know—in the light.”

  Stef shoots Barnes a look, as if that revelation has confirmed everything he’s ever said—and Barnes has ever assumed—about marital sex.

  “What’s the tattoo?”

  “A pony.”

  Whatever Barnes was expecting . . . that wasn’t it.

  “A pony?”

  “You know. A little horse.”

  “Not the same thing,” Stef says, as if it matters.

  “Does he ride?” Barnes asks Kirstin, who shakes her head. “Do you?”

  She seems like the equestrian type, but doesn’t ride, either.

  Barnes files away the little horse—or pony—aware that the slightest anomaly, like a tattoo on the last man in the world you’d expect to have one, might hold the key to a case.

  “How are things between you and your husband, Mrs. Wayland?” Stef asks.

  “Are you asking if I think he walked out on me?”

  The words clatter into the room and lie there in a brief, awkward silence.

  She clears her throat and shifts her position on the couch. “I’m not stupid. I know what you’re thinking. But Perry would never leave me. Never. Not in a million years.”

  If there’s one statement Barnes has heard so far from every person whose loved one has gone missing, it’s that. He has yet to meet anyone who suspects that their spouse or child willingly walked away, though a good many do. People have dirty little secrets—affairs, drug habits, legal problems, financial problems. They want to escape. Or they’re chasing after another woman, another man. Or they’re just plain bored.

  “Would you say that your marriage is solid, then?” Stef asks. “No problems?”

  “Yes, it’s solid. No problems. If you’re going to talk to my help, then believe me, they’ll confirm that. They’ll tell you that they’ve never once heard us argue.”

  Don’t all married couples argue? Maybe not in front of the “help,” but no relationship is as perfect as the picture Mrs. Wayland continues to paint. She hands over a stack of photos, interspersing additional biographical details with squirm-inducing memories of breakfasts in bed, foot rubs, pet names.

  “He calls me Kirstie, and I call him Perfect Per’, because he’s perfect, and together we make the perfect pair, you know?”

  She and her husband went to neighboring Connecticut boarding schools, and started dating as undergrads at Brown University. They became engaged after he earned his Harvard MBA, and he quickly landed a job at a top Wall Street firm. Following a large Newport wedding and South Pacific honeymoon, they moved to Manhattan. Her father-in-law died before they were married, her mother-in-law just this past summer, “Rest her soul.”

  “You got along well with her?”

  “We adored each other. Perry has always said we were two peas in a pod. I guess most men want to marry a woman like their mother, right?”

  Barnes suppresses a shudder.

  She tells them about the villa Perry rented in the South of France for their tenth wedding anniversary in August, and shows off the diamond tennis bracelet encircling her thin wrist. “This was my gift. He loves to spoil me. It’s from Cartier.”

  “Very nice,” Barnes dutifully comments.

  She looks at Stef. His silence seems to make her uneasy.

  “Listen, I know what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong. Perry and I spent all last Saturday and Sunday house hunting. He wouldn’t have done that if he wanted to leave. He hates to waste time.”

  “You’re moving?”

  “No, he’s wanted a beach house for years. Waterfront, and a sailboat, too. He’s going to name it The Kirstie.”

  “So he sails?”

  “Yes. Growing up, he summered on Block Island.”

  “Is that where you were looking for a beach house?”

  “Block Island? Do you know how remote that is?”

  “Never been. Where, then? Down the Jersey shore?”

  “God, no!” she says, as if Stef had suggested Iowa. “We were looking in the Hamptons!”

  Ah, where else? So, a seaside Hamptons house, sailboat, pricey jewelry, fancy European vacations . . . Perry Wayland obviously enjoys spending his money as much as his wife does.

  “What about Monday?” Stef asks.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Saturday and Sunday, you were house hunting in the Hamptons. Then on Monday, the market bottomed out. Was your husband upset?”

  “Who wasn’t? But he wouldn’t run away because of it.”

  He tilts his head. “You sure about that? Because—”

  “Positive.”

  “—because I gotta say, Mrs. Wayland, he wouldn’t be the first Wall Street guy to, you know, need to take a little step back, or . . .”

  Forward. Right off a bridge, or over the edge of a subway platform in front of an oncoming train. Every NYPD cop is aware of the suicide copycat phenomenon, and Black Monday triggered a rash. One person jumps, and others will soon follow. It doesn’t just happen here; it happens everywhere. But in New York, daily life is inherently stressful, and potentially lethal skyscrapers, bridges, and rapid transit tracks lurk at every turn. Mentally stable people don’t have a bad day and decide on a whim to end it all, but an emotionally disturbed person might—especially when tabloid headlines blast news about someone else’s successful escape from this miserable world. An EDP might idly glance out a twentieth-floor window, realize how easy it would be to take a dive, and do it.

  Kirstie shakes her head so vigorously that her hair flutters momentarily out of place. “Perry wasn’t like that. I mean, he was upset, of course.”

  “So you talked about that?”

  “Not directly. He was stressed. Working late. He had calls from investors at all hours. But other than that, everything was normal. He’s been looking forward to this weekend.”

  “More house hunting?”

  “No, my parents are in town, so we’re h
aving dinner tonight with them. Tomorrow morning, Perry’s taking the twins to FAO Schwarz to buy a birthday gift for their friend Ainsley, and then to her Eloise tea party at the Plaza Hotel in the afternoon. Tomorrow night, we’re seeing Burn This on Broadway.”

  “The new Lanford Wilson play.”

  “You know it?” She raises a dubious eyebrow at Barnes.

  “Barnes is a theater buff,” Stef says. “Opera, too. Right, Barnes?”

  Wrong. But he does enjoy seeing a show now and then, and the play, with its controversial homosexual themes and three-hours-plus running time, has been in the news ever since it opened a few weeks ago.

  “I wish Perry were like that,” Kirstin says. “But he’s not into that sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Culture. Arts, literature, theater.”

  “Then why was he looking forward to tomorrow night?”

  “Because I’m looking forward to tomorrow night. When you love someone, you just want them to be happy.”

  Barnes weighs a Wall Street businessman who, after the most difficult week of his career, eagerly anticipates a weekend spent dining with the in-laws, sitting through a long theatrical production, toy shopping, and attending a tea party with five-year-old girls.

  Kirstin picks up her still-untouched glass of water, and puts it down. Probably worried about the calories.

  Stef turns a page of his report. “All right, Mrs. Wayland. You say you last saw your husband yesterday morning?”

  “That’s the last time he was home, but I didn’t see him. I just heard him in his bathroom and dressing room, getting ready for work.”

  “And you were . . .”

  “In bed.”

  “What time was this?”

  “His alarm goes off at five thirty.”

  “You didn’t get up with him?”

  “At five thirty? No. I was exhausted.”

  “From . . .”

  “The day before.”

  “Wednesday? What happened then?”

  “Every day is exhausting. I have three children. Two are twins.”

  Picking a hangnail would probably exhaust Kirstin Wayland, if her fingers weren’t as impeccably groomed as her toes.

  “So you don’t know what your husband was wearing when he left?”

  “A black wool suit and white shirt, both custom-made. French cuffs, monogrammed cufflinks. Black suspenders, black tie, black wing tips.”

  Black, black, black . . . and a horse inked on his chest. Johnny Cash fantasy?

  “Then you did see him?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she tells Stef. “He wears the same thing every day. Well, not the same actual clothing. He has a few dozen suits and white shirts, and they all look exactly alike to me. I tell him to jazz things up a little, maybe a yellow power tie once in a while, but he’s not that guy.”

  “Yeah, me, either,” Stef says, as if she might have assumed otherwise.

  Thinking of the secret tattoo, Barnes isn’t so sure Perry Wayland doesn’t have a wild side.

  She tells them that her husband usually leaves for work by six thirty, driving himself downtown. His secretary, who’s on their short list of people to interview, has already confirmed that her boss spent the day at the office as usual. His Mercedes was in the usual parking garage near his office building yesterday from 7:12 a.m. until 5:44 p.m.

  It didn’t turn up on the bridge until almost midnight. Where was he in the interim?

  Kirstin Wayland says that she didn’t speak to her husband during the day, which wasn’t unusual.

  “Sometimes he calls, but he didn’t yesterday.”

  “Did you worry?”

  “I didn’t even notice. It was a crazy day. I had a million things going on.”

  “You were out?”

  “I was home.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. With my housekeeper, and the nanny.”

  Alone by her standards.

  Still, the concern in her pale blue eyes appears genuine when she asks them what they think might have happened to her husband.

  “We can’t speculate, Mrs. Wayland.”

  “There is absolutely no way Perry jumped off the George Washington Bridge last night. Even if he did kill himself—and again, I can assure you that he did not—he’d never do that. He’s absolutely terrified of heights.”

  Barnes glances at the skyline beyond the French doors and terrace.

  She follows his gaze. “Perry wouldn’t go out there even if I let him.”

  “If you . . . let him?”

  “I don’t mean it like that. I had all the French doors removed when the twins were born.”

  Barnes frowns. “But aren’t those—”

  “Dummy knobs. They’re just tall windows now, with shatterproof glass. They don’t even open. You hear awful stories about children falling.”

  “That’s what window bars are for,” Stef points out.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to feel like I’m in prison.”

  Your husband might have.

  “You need to check and make sure no one fitting his description is in any of the hospitals.”

  “First thing we did,” Barnes assures her. “But we’ll check again.”

  “Maybe he hit his head and he’s wandering around the city with amnesia.” Seeing Stef’s expression, she insists, “I’m serious! It happens all the time!”

  Yes. It happens all the time . . . in movies, on TV, in books. Seldom does it happen in real life, though it is within the realm of possibility. But in this case?

  Barnes’s gut is saying that the last time Perry Wayland put on his contaminated shoes and exited this hermetically sealed palace with the white queen and pouty princesses, he knew he wasn’t coming back.

  He and Stef discuss the theory in the elevator back down.

  “I feel like we’re hunting down a stray puppy that ran away from the kill shelter,” Barnes says.

  “If he wanted to leave, he should have done it like a man. Not for his wife’s sake. For his kids. I might not be father of the year, but there are some things you don’t do. You’ll see, some day when you have kids.”

  Barnes has nothing to say to that.

  Amelia unlocks the graffiti-covered front door of the yellow brick apartment building on East 125th Street, just off Lexington Avenue. The vestibule has gone dark again. Bulbs never burn out here, or along the corridors and basement laundry room. The building’s residents steal them to use in their apartments.

  She pauses to check the mailbox, hoping to find a letter from her lost biological family, finding only more bills they can’t afford to pay, and useless catalogs filled with items they can’t afford to buy. Six flights rise before her in the dim, dank stairwell. She climbs five of them and trudges past a row of doors, behind which babies wail and voices argue as onions fry and soup bubbles on stovetops that give off a faint hint of gas.

  At the end of the hall, she lets herself into the silent apartment. With luck, it will be empty. With three jobs, Calvin is never home . . .

  “Dad?” she calls.

  “Yeah.”

  . . . except when she doesn’t want him to be.

  She adds the mail to the untouched heap collecting dust in a dime-store wicker basket by the door, then drops her backpack on the pullout couch where she’s slept for as long as she can remember. Long-unlaundered sheets snake around soda cans, papers and books, and a week’s worth of discarded clothing. Bettina had insisted on folding the bed closed every morning and stashing the bedding in the closet.

  “Make sure you do that every day while I’m in the hospital,” she said last spring, about to walk slowly out the door for the final time.

  Voice clogged with emotion, Amelia had promised she would.

  Please come back, Mama. Please, please don’t leave us.

  A futile plea, silently uttered by a stranger, to a stranger.

  She turns on the TV. Her two favorite General Hospital characters are in t
he midst of a scene. She sits at the edge of the mattress, inches away from the television, trying to figure out what’s going on.

  Behind her, Calvin appears in the doorway of the small bedroom, bleary eyed and gray stubbled. He rarely sleeps anymore, even at night, prowling the apartment at all hours. Amelia hears him opening and closing kitchen cabinets, running water, pacing restlessly around her as she feigns slumber so they won’t have to talk to each other.

  “Aren’t you late for work?”

  “I’m going.”

  “Like that?” She eyes his boxer shorts and a too-snug sleeveless white tee shirt that hugs the rolls of fat around his middle.

  “Don’t be fresh. How was school?”

  “Fine.”

  “Working hard?”

  “All As so far.”

  He returns to the bedroom. She turns back to the TV and adjusts the rabbit-ear antenna, foil crumpled around the tips because she once read that it helps get a better signal. Cable would be more effective, but Bettina always said it would be a waste of money.

  She stares absently at the snowy screen. Tony Jones and Lucy Coe are arguing. Ordinarily, their problems captivate her. Today, she has too many of her own to care.

  How could Marceline leave like that? Doesn’t she know Amelia was counting on her to help unravel the past?

  Maybe she does know. Maybe that’s why she left. It sure feels that way.

  Calvin is back, wearing dark trousers, buttoning on a light blue uniform.

  “This is my last shirt. The laundry has to be done.”

  One of many household responsibilities that’s now become hers—and by far her least favorite. How many times in the last seven months has she lugged a heavy load to the basement community laundry room only to find clothes sudsing and spinning in every working washer and dryer, and a line of impatient neighbors waiting their turn?

  “I’ll do it later. Too crowded down there right now.”

  “You checked?”

  “I don’t have to. This time of day, everyone’s doing laundry.”

  “Well, make sure you do it. And you need to clean up this place, Amelia.”

  “I will, later.”

  “Everything with you is later.”

  “I just need to chill for a few minutes, okay? I had to walk all the way home.”