Lullaby and Goodnight

by Staub, Wendy Corsi

  Anne Marie punched Margarita Taylor in her pinched little face on the playground and Father Joe, the principal, called her grandmother to the school. Anne Marie remembered thinking Grace didn’t seem as angry as she expected. She didn’t say much on the walk home. When they got there, Anne Marie asked her, once again, when her mother would be coming back.

  Instead of offering her usual shrug or vague “soon, I suppose,” Grace gave her the dreaded answer.

  Never.

  Never? But . . . how do you know?

  There are things a mother just knows if she listens to her heart, Anne Marie, without having to be told.

  Of course she cried then. They both did. But Anne Marie cried so hard and for so long that she still remembers the way her eyes ached, the terrible headache that lasted all day. Grace offered cold cucumber compresses, one of her old Sicilian remedies. Anne Marie finally accepted them, but refused to speak to her.

  She so wanted her grandmother to be wrong. For years, she hoped she was.

  In the end, of course, she wasn’t. Lisa never did come home to her daughter—or her mother—again. Anne Marie still doesn’t know what happened to her. Grandma assumed she was dead, but for all she knows, her mother might still be out there somewhere, an aging flower child with a wreath of roses in long gray hair.

  Probably not.

  But . . . maybe.

  That’s the thing about the not knowing.

  Hope.

  You get to keep hope in your heart, carry it with you, resurrect it when days seem darkest.

  “Are you going to say goodnight to the boys?” Jarrett’s question startles her back to the present.

  “Oh . . . No.”

  He looks at her, raising his eyebrows.

  She opens her mouth to rationalize her choice, to point out that they’re probably asleep, that if they aren’t, they’ll cry if they realizes she’s leaving. They might ask when she’s coming back. And then what will she tell them? That she isn’t sure?

  Of course, she’s coming back eventually. Sooner or later, she’ll reclaim this charmed life that never quite seemed to belong to her in the first place. Of course she will.

  A mother—a good mother, like Anne Marie Egerton—doesn’t abandon her own children. A mother stays with them, protects them, until they no longer need her care. And even then, she’s perpetually on watch.

  A painful lump rises in her throat.

  “You’re ready, then?” Jarrett asks, lifting her heavy bag.

  Somehow, she manages to reply. “I’m ready.”

  She kisses her fingertips and presses them to the doorknob of the boys’ room as they pass.

  Downstairs, in the hall, she regains her composure to ask Jarrett, “What if I’m wrong about this?”

  “You could be right.”

  “What if I’m right?” she asks with a bleak, staccato laugh, before she walks out the door.

  Rita is standing on the corner waiting for the light to change when she feels the sudden vibration of her cell phone in her back pocket.

  She curses under her breath. There are times when she wholeheartedly welcomes the interruption.

  This isn’t one of them.

  She pulls out the phone and flips it open. Seeing the unfamiliar number in the caller ID window, she’s tempted not to answer it.

  But of course, she has to. Twenty-four-seven.

  “Rita?”

  Hearing the familiar voice that greets her, she promptly bids farewell to her plans for the next twenty-four hours, and perhaps beyond.

  “Wanda! Tell me what’s going on.” She steps briskly away from the pedestrians clogging the curb, heading for the relatively secluded storefront of a Duane Reade drugstore.

  Rather than rushing headlong into a series of physical symptoms, Wanda asks only, “Did I get you at a bad time?”

  She doesn’t sound like a woman in labor, or even like a woman going on two weeks overdue with her first baby. She sounds oddly . . . calm.

  Well, that proves you never know. Rita would have pegged her as a screamer.

  “Not a bad time at all, sugar pie,” she says soothingly. “I was just on my way to pick up J.D.’s dry cleaning. What’s happening? Contractions?”

  “No, no contractions.”

  “Well, any day now,” Rita says automatically, just as she has for the past week. She mentally reclaims her evening plans, even as she takes mindless inventory of the back-to-school window display before her.

  Black-and-white marble notebooks, packets of yellow pencils, pink erasers . . .

  “Actually, Rita . . . I had the baby.”

  The plans instantly evaporate, taking the array of school supplies with them.

  “What?”

  “Eric came over early this morning and said his wife and sons were going out to their beach house in the Hamptons for the weekend, so it would be a good time for me to have the baby.”

  Barely able to keep the rage from her voice, Rita says, “Let me get this straight. He told you when to have the baby? Because it would be convenient for him?”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Wanda gives a nervous laugh that tells Rita it was exactly like that. “He said he wanted to be there for me, no matter what. For me and the baby. And this way, he wouldn’t have to figure out how he could get away, or leave to go back home as soon as she was born. Oh, I had a girl, Rita. Just like I thought.”

  “Congratulations,” she says tightly. “Just how did you manage to accomplish that on command?”

  “You mean, having a girl?”

  “I mean, having a baby.”

  “Well, Eric made me a cup of this special tea he brought with him, and the next thing I knew, I was having contractions.”

  “Special tea?” she echoes in disbelief. “What the hell was in it? How do you know it was safe?”

  “Don’t worry, it was just herbs, Rita. He got it up in Harlem from some—”

  “Voodoo shop?” Rita cuts in, familiar with the thriving uptown culture of island “medicine.”

  “Not a voodoo shop,” she protests, her voice laced with uncertainty.

  “Wanda, I have legitimate medication that will induce labor, if that’s what you wanted.”

  The uncertainty gives way to a sassy retort. “It is what I wanted, two weeks ago, when I begged you to get this baby out of me. Remember?”

  True. But . . . “You hadn’t even reached your official due date then. And you know that I don’t believe in induction unless the baby is either very large or very late. I told you we’d think about it on Monday if you still hadn’t delivered.”

  “Well, I couldn’t wait until Monday.”

  “Wanda, why didn’t you at least call me?”

  “I wanted to, really, but Eric . . . he didn’t want me to deliver at home, and he didn’t want me to go through it without drugs for the pain. He said he watched his wife suffer through labor and he didn’t want that for me.”

  She says it with pride, as though it’s proof that he loves her more, somehow, than the woman who wears his wedding ring and lives in his suburban mansion—oh yes, and Hamptons beach house.

  Rita bites back the harsh words Wanda deserves, the even harsher expletives her lover deserves. She manages to sound positively civilized when she asks, “Where did you deliver?”

  “At Saint Luke’s Roosevelt. He brought me to the ER here once the contractions were regular and they admitted me. They gave me drugs, and an epidural, and . . . here we are. Only it wasn’t that easy.” She gives a bitter laugh that sounds almost like a sob. “They had to do a C-section in the end.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, it wasn’t progressing, and the baby was in distress. . . .”

  Due, no doubt, to the “tea” provided by that wretched excuse for a father.

  “But she’s fine now.” Wanda clears her throat, then proudly elaborates, “Her name is Erica.”

  Of course it is, Rita thinks grimly.

  “Where are you now, Wanda? In the
hospital?”

  “Yeah. They’re keeping me for a few days because of the surgery. Dr. Lombardo’s office was already notified. I wanted to tell you myself, though. I’m sorry, Rita. I didn’t want to upset you, but . . . I didn’t want to upset Eric, either.”

  Rita shakes her head. What is there to say to this pathetic woman?

  At last, she manages a heartfelt “Good luck.”

  Wanda and poor, innocent, undeserving little Erica are certainly going to need it, for the rest of their lives.

  “Because you absolutely cannot pay every single time we go out to eat, that’s why!” Peyton informs Tom, holding the check out of his reach with one hand as she reaches for her purse on the back of her chair with the other.

  “Why not? I like treating you.”

  “Well, I might like treating you, too, if I ever had the chance.”

  He makes another grab for the check, reaching past the crumb-laden plate upon which they just shared a sinfully rich wedge of chocolate cake.

  Laughing, she pulls it farther from his reach, digging blindly in her bag for her wallet as she says, “You just can’t take no for an answer, can you?”

  “You should talk!”

  “Come on, Tom.” Aware of other diners starting to glance over, she hisses, “Stop making a scene and let me pay in peace, will you?”

  “Sorry,” he says calmly, “I was brought up to believe that a gentleman should always pay the check.”

  “Well, I was brought up to believe that a lady should be allowed to pay the check at least once in a while,” she returns, which is, of course, a complete lie.

  Her mother spent years in a desperate quest to find a man who would take care of them both. Even back when Peyton was in high school, she often asked if Gil was treating her well—meaning not just, Is he protecting you from the big bad world? but also, Is he keeping you in burgers and Cokes?

  If not for Beth’s many weaknesses, Peyton probably wouldn’t feel so compelled to reinforce her own strengths. One of which is being capable of—and entitled to—picking up dinner for two in an upscale Manhattan restaurant like this one.

  “Aha!” she exclaims, locating her wallet at last by touch in the zippered pocket where she keeps it, well away from muggers’ prying hands.

  She pulls it out and opens it, whipping her American Express Gold card from its protective slot with a flourish. She thrusts both the card and the bill at a fortuitously passing waiter and turns to shoot a smug but good-natured look at Tom.

  But Tom isn’t looking at her. He’s gaping at something over her shoulder.

  She spins around and realizes that what he’s looking at is the waiter; that the waiter is standing there, still holding her credit card and the bill, both of which are smeared with what looks for all the world like blood.

  Glancing over the autopsy report that just came across her desk, Detective Jody Langella mutters, “‘Death occurred due to massive trauma.’ Yeah, no kidding.”

  Her partner, Sam, looks up from the report he’s filling out. “What’s up?”

  “That subway push case from a few weeks ago.”

  “The one at Pelham Bay?”

  “The one at Bayview Avenue.”

  “No perp on that one yet.”

  “Nope.” And she doubts they’ll nail a suspect if it really was a dangerously deranged street person. At least, not this time. Not until he—or she—pulls another stalk, shove, and split. There’s no question that’ll happen sooner or later with the lunatic left on the street.

  What is still in question, as far as Jody’s concerned, is the perp’s motive.

  Random madness? Or is there something more?

  “Only thing that’s certain,” Jody tells Sam, “is that there was, indeed, a perp.”

  “Yeah? What do you mean?”

  “I mean he wouldn’t be the first married guy I’ve ever known to off himself on the heels of getting a Dear John letter.”

  Yes, if it weren’t for the witnesses who indisputably saw Linden Cordell being pushed in front of a southbound number 5 train in the early hours of that July morning, Langella might very well have concluded it was a suicide.

  “You mean a Dear John e-mail,” Sam corrects with a roll of his eyes.

  “Right, e-mail.”

  That little nugget of information came from Cordell’s old pal Richie, whose name was listed after the wife’s on the emergency contact card the welder dutifully carried in his wallet.

  Poor guy was pretty shaken up by the news of his friend’s untimely and gory demise at the Baychester Avenue Station, a stone’s throw from the block where the two of them played stickball as kids.

  “Does Derry know?” Richie asked when he finally pulled himself together. “Did you find her and tell her?”

  “Find her?” Jody echoed, sensing a tantalizing new angle the way a seasoned bomb-sniffing German shepherd smells nitrates.

  And so the sad marital tale came pouring out of Richie. Amidst shuddering sobs of genuine grief for his lost friend, he managed to inform Detectives Langella and Basir that Richie’s wife Derry had left him “out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever.”

  She simply took off from their apartment one night, sending her husband a brief e-mail that said she was leaving, and that he shouldn’t bother trying to find her.

  “An e-mail?” Sam asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah, I read it myself. He got it when he was staying at my place. He and Derry e-mailed each other all the time. That’s how they met in the first place.”

  Ah, love in the Information Age, Jody thought at the time, shaking her head, laying a comforting hand on Richie’s trembling shoulders.

  Now, she can’t help wondering . . .

  It’s been a month.

  Linden Cordell’s remains have been cremated and interred, based on instructions from his distraught elderly mother in a Florida nursing home. The case was virtually open-and-shut: a random homicide in a terrorism-ravaged city that rarely bats an eye these days at a lone, albeit tragic, death. Even the tabloids relegated the item to relative obscurity, caught up in a feeding frenzy that day over another missing fuel tanker from a local airport.

  The tanker turned up the following day in Jersey.

  Linden Cordell’s wife never did.

  And yes, now, even after a month, Jody Langella can’t help wondering . . .

  The witnesses weren’t sure whether the homeless perp was a man or woman.

  What if it was a woman?

  What if the crime wasn’t random after all?

  What if Derry Cordell is simply lying low, waiting to cash in on her husband’s life insurance?

  No, it wouldn’t be the first time Jody Langella has seen such a crime.

  “We need to get a search warrant executed for tomorrow,” she briskly tells Basir, who’s packing away his papers for the night.

  “Search warrant? For what?”

  “For the Cordells’ apartment.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Sam’s bushy black eyebrows meet in a crease above his aquiline nose. “Haven’t we got enough to do tomorrow?”

  “We’ll add this to the list,” Jody says with a shrug, and he groans.

  “Come on, Sam, something tells me there might be more to this thing than meets the eye.”

  “Yeah? Something tells me you’re looking for complications where there are none.”

  She can certainly understand his reaction. There are enough cases to keep them going around the clock, and they probably would if they didn’t have spouses and kids at home.

  However, busy as they are, Jody figures the least they can do—if only out of respect for poor, dead, jilted Linden Cordell—is dig a little deeper.

  Not tonight, though. It’s getting late, and there’s no reason to execute a night search warrant.

  Time to head downtown to her own family, where she’ll throw Tater-Tots and frozen chicken nuggets into the oven, open a can of corn, and call it dinner.

  But tomorrow, they’ll
pay another visit to the Co-op City apartment building the Cordells called home.

  Last time, the building manager let the detectives into the deserted apartment, where they sniffed around for any evidence that might show the crime was anything but random. Just as they expected, there wasn’t a shred.

  This time, however, they’ll be more meticulous.

  Maybe they’ll even find the e-mailing Widow Cordell—or, perhaps, the e-mailing Black Widow Cordell—in residence.

  Peyton’s first thought is that she might have cut herself when she reached into her bag.

  The fingers that dug for her wallet are sticky with what looks like blood. She turns her hand over and back again, looking for the source. But there’s not an open wound to be found, not even a bleeding hangnail.

  “My God, Peyton,” Tom is saying, having come around the table to kneel beside her. “What did you do to yourself ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it lipstick?”

  “I don’t think so.” She doesn’t own a bright scarlet shade. And this doesn’t feel waxy, like lipstick. It feels . . . tacky.

  Like blood.

  The waiter has set the card and bill gingerly on the table and is quickly retreating, undoubtedly eager to wash his hands.

  Peyton finds herself wondering vaguely if she should at least go after him and assure him that he has nothing to worry about where her blood is concerned.

  But she can’t be sure it’s even her blood.

  Tom has taken her purse from the back of her chair and is peering into it.

  “Let me see.” She snatches it from him and looks inside. In the flickering candlelight, it’s difficult to see anything. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” Tom calls after her as, bag in hand, she scurries toward the ladies’ room, a familiar route she’s already taken twice since they arrived here.

  She finds it empty, thank goodness, and deposits the bag on the counter by the sink. She briefly considers washing her contaminated hand, but tells herself that can wait.

  In the bright overhead light, she looks into her purse . . . and gasps.

  There, tucked in among her belongings—her wallet, her hairbrush, her date book, her roll of Tums—is a coiled length of something gelatinous and bloody.