All She Ever Wanted

by Rosalind Noonan

  Chapter 31

  In Chelsea’s dream she was walking through an open-air market in an arid Middle Eastern city. Baghdad or Istanbul. Walls of ancient stone rose behind the market, hemming everyone into the square blooming with color and music like the plaintive wail of a baby. Men in turbans and women concealed by veils moved past her like dancers, and all the fruits and olives and carpets for sale were hidden behind flowing veils.

  A man with a machete stood alert and ready to hack down the veil concealing anything she chose to buy, but she didn’t want anything but Annabelle. He kept pointing the machete to a curtain and asking, “You want to buy?”

  But she couldn’t afford anything except her daughter, and if he slashed the curtain it might hurt the baby.

  “You want?” he kept asking as she hurried from one curtain to another, shiny silks and satins in red and purple, pink and turquoise.

  Suddenly, a wind rose from the earth, blowing the curtains so that she could have a look inside. She moved toward a pink curtain, certain that Annabelle was behind it. . . .

  And she was pulled from sleep by the squeal of a baby.

  What? Annabelle!

  She sat up in bed, shaking in a panic, and realized that it was not her baby crying but the howling of the dog next door.

  Louise’s dog, ChiChi.

  And where was Annabelle? The wound was still fresh, exacerbated when she saw the empty bassinette against the bedroom wall. Her breasts were heavy with milk for her baby.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as a small whimper squeezed from her throat. The dream had been so vivid . . . she had been close to reaching out and touching Annabelle’s smooth skin, pressing her nose into the creases in her little neck.

  She wanted to tell Leo about the dream, but the bed beside her was empty. He had never made it upstairs. Didn’t it mean something that she wanted to find their daughter? That she had refrained from choosing a curtain for fear that Annabelle would be cut by the machete?

  For the second night in a row, she had escaped to sleep, although last night it was a restless daze. She had floated on the surface of sleep, unable to sink down into oblivion. A good mother probably wouldn’t have slept at all, but then she’d given up all pretense of goodness.

  She pushed the covers aside and let her feet drop to the carpeting. It was dark outside, but a pasty dawn pinched the sky.

  After she pumped, she pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and headed downstairs. When she poked her head out from the staircase, she saw Leo on the couch with the computer on his lap.

  “Since you didn’t wake me, I know nothing good happened,” she said, coming down the stairs.

  “You’re right.” Leo rubbed his eyes as he explained that the detectives had interviewed Krispy, but they didn’t think he had any involvement with Annabelle’s disappearance.

  “Oh.” She carried the bottle of breast milk into the kitchen to store it. Inside the fridge, more than a half dozen bottles were lined up and labeled, and as she added the new one she realized she would need to sterilize bottles soon. She needed her dishwasher working again, but then the plumber was supposed to come today.

  How long did breast milk last? It had never been an issue before, as Leo enjoyed giving Annie bottles so much, the expressed milk had never sat in the fridge for long. She looked at the clock. Barely seven. She would wait until noon to pump again—every five hours, as Dr. Chin had suggested.

  The kitchen was tidy now. Leo had straightened up, put away pots. He must have washed dishes by hand. She went into the bathroom to fill the coffeepot with water. When she peeked out of the kitchen again, Leo was dozing, the computer open in his lap. He must have been searching online for clues to find their baby.

  She tiptoed past him, wanting to touch the bristled line of his jaw.

  How she loved this man.

  The smell of brewing coffee and the yapping dog next door made things seem almost normal again. She put bread in the toaster, but ChiChi’s barking was growing frantic.

  She went to the window, but she couldn’t see anything from the angle of the kitchen. “What is the problem out there?” she murmured.

  “Welcome home, ChiChi.” Leo’s eyes were still closed.

  Chelsea brought him a cup of coffee. “Maybe I should call the police about that barking dog.”

  “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he said. “I say it’s only fair, after Louise called the cops on us for a crying baby.”

  “An abandoned baby,” she corrected, sitting beside him on the couch.

  “Sitting right outside the door at, like, seven o’clock at night. It’s not a crime,” he said. “This is not your fault. And just so you know, we’re going to find our daughter.”

  Holding his hand, she felt a kernel of strength taking hold. Something had shifted inside her and she felt more steady, more like her old self. Maybe it was the medicine, maybe it was having two nights of sleep in a row, or maybe it was the sharp dagger of crisis prodding her along, but now she felt ready to stand and help search for her daughter.

  “You’re right.” She squeezed Leo’s hand. “We are going to find her, and she’s going to be fine. She’s okay, Leo. I can feel it. Our baby’s okay. We just have to get to her.” Her eyes filled with tears, but she swiped them away with her free hand.

  “She’s okay,” he said.

  “I know that Annie’s all right. It’s just that I know she needs us. I never really got that before but she needs her mom and dad. She’s probably looking around for you, wanting the sound of your voice when you sing those silly songs. And she needs me to feed her. I hate to think of her missing that.”

  Leo pulled her hand close and kissed it. “I’m glad to have the old Chelsea back.”

  The old Chelsea, for better or worse. “I’m not sure you’re going to want the old Chelsea when you hear what I have to say.”

  “Try me.”

  She thought of the dream again—the feeling that Annabelle was just inches away, within reach, if only she made the right choice. “This is going to sound crazy, but I’m going to say it and then maybe it’ll help me get it out of my system and move on. Emma and Jake are talking about moving to Chicago. Like . . . soon.”

  He nodded. “Jake mentioned the job offer.”

  “The crazy part? It’s a perfect setup if she really did have a miscarriage and took Annie. They could go and just raise her there, and no one would ever know.”

  Leo took a sip of coffee. “You’re right. It’s crazy, but probable. It fits the profile of most infant abductions. But this is your sister we’re talking about.”

  “I know. It’s not real but . . . I just had to give voice to it to disqualify it from reality.”

  “You know what?” He stared off, his eyes dark and tormented. “Right now it would be a relief to know that Annabelle was with Jake and Emma. Even if we never could see her again, just to know that she was safe—”

  “Don’t go making any deals with the devil,” Chelsea said.

  They were interrupted again by the sound of the yapping dog.

  “Give me a break.” Leo looked at the clock. “Isn’t it time for the old witch to be at the gym?”

  It had always been Ms. Pickler’s schedule: out of here by six a.m. But it was after seven and ChiChi was in the adjoining yard, barking up a storm.

  Chelsea went to the door, but couldn’t see anything. “You don’t think maybe Louise got kidnapped last night?”

  “Wishful thinking.” Leo went upstairs to get a look from the bedroom.

  Chelsea went into the living room and picked up one of Annabelle’s squishy blocks with a big purple Eeyore etched on the side. She was thinking of Annie trying to mouth the block when a muffled curse came down the stairs.

  “What the hell . . . ?”

  “What is it?” she called up.

  “Call Detective Santos,” he shouted, appearing on the top landing. “Louise is out in her backyard, digging. I think she’s burying something in the yard.”


  “Why would she be out this time of year, digging in . . .” The horrifying answer to her own question sent Chelsea scrambling for the phone.

  Chapter 32

  The buzzing sound drew Grace’s gaze away from the birth certificate on the monitor. She pushed away from her desk, turned off the alarm, and put a call through to Matt. Long-distance parenting was never ideal, but with technology there were still ways to stay in touch. She usually made a point of giving him a wake-up call on mornings when she couldn’t be with him, and Matt had enjoyed Skyping last summer when he’d gone on an extended trip with his father.

  “Good morning,” she said. “How’d everything go last night?”

  “Good.” He yawned. “Ethan’s dad made spaghetti sauce with turkey.”

  “How was that?”

  “Pretty good. You’d never guess it was different.” Matt paused. “Mom? Did you go to sleep at all last night?”

  “I dozed off for a while, but no, I didn’t go home to bed.”

  “So you didn’t find the baby yet?”

  She spun her chair back toward her desk. “Not yet, but we will.” She had to believe that was true, though there was no denying the discouragement she felt every time a new lead was snuffed out. The ex-wife, the sitter’s boyfriend . . . they had seemed like strong suspects in the moment.

  “Do you think you’ll find the baby by this weekend?” Matt asked. “I mean, what’ll I do if you have to work?”

  “This is your weekend with your dad.” For once, Steve’s weekend had coincided with the demands on Grace’s life.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And Dad said to tell you he got the tickets.” Often Matt had to be cajoled into spending time with his father, but Steve had told her Matt would be psyched about this weekend. “What kind of tickets?”

  “Hockey! Dad got the Rangers tickets. He said he would.”

  The joy in Matt’s voice soothed Grace’s worries for the weekend. Glancing at the photo of Matt on her desk, Grace remembered how he would twist and shriek in her arms.

  Not a happy baby.

  Those had been dark days . . . uneventful except for the anguish of trying to soothe the baby writhing in her arms, and the reminder in the mirror, in the mail, and in her empty bed that her life was over.

  Twelve years ago, when Grace had suffered the same depression that Chelsea was going through, no one really had a name for it. It went untreated until it wound down on its own two years later. When the dust settled, Grace was a single parent, behind on her bills, and missing her husband, who had been driven away by her insanity. PPD had cost her a marriage, and despite the knowledge that it wasn’t her fault, she still felt a twinge of guilt over alienating Steve when she went “all kinds of crazy.”

  Chelsea Maynard was fortunate that her husband seemed to be in it for the long haul.

  She ended the call with Matt and turned back to the birth certificate on her monitor. It showed a child born—Anthony Zika—to Eleni Zika, a year ago. The mother’s birth date showed that she’d been sixteen when the baby was born.

  “I got you a decaf.” Chris put a paper coffee cup on her desk. “I know that caffeine keeps you up all night. Oops . . . you were up all night.”

  “Thanks. And you got a call while you were gone. Jay Leno wants to know if you’ll take the Tonight Show, since no one is as funny as you.”

  “Ouch. Stabbing humor at this sick hour of the morning.” He nodded at the computer screen. “What you got?”

  She told him about the birth certificate. “She was barely sixteen when she got pregnant—just a kid herself. No father listed.”

  “Do you think Krispy was the father?” Chris blinked. “Hold on. Did they sell that baby?”

  She shook her head. “I found adoption records that match. A private adoption, straightforward and legal.”

  “Okay. Where does that leave us?”

  Grace warmed her hands on the coffee cup. “I feel for Eleni, but I also wonder if the girl still longs for her baby. Does she regret giving him up for adoption? Would she be desperate enough to steal Annabelle to try and replace what she lost?”

  “But we checked her pedigree. The girl lives at home . . . where is she keeping the baby?”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t gotten that far, and maybe it’s a dead end. It’s just another thing that’s got to be checked out.”

  He nodded. “And the boyfriend, Krispy Kritter, he seemed clueless.”

  “Right. If Eleni Zika took Annabelle, I doubt Krispy was involved.”

  Just then her cell buzzed and she glanced at the caller ID. “Chelsea and Leo,” she told Chris as she picked up the phone. “Good morning.”

  “Louise Pickler is digging a hole in her backyard,” Chelsea said breathlessly. “A big hole. She won’t talk to us and she won’t let Leo come into the yard. She’s got a box there that she . . . she’s trying to bury something.”

  Grace winced. Judge Costantini wouldn’t sign the search warrant, and now this. “Hold tight. We’ll be right there.”

  “But you said the judge wouldn’t sign the search warrant.”

  “Things have changed. The digging could be construed as suspicious behavior.” Grace grabbed her jacket as Chris tossed his empty cup into the trash. Some judge wouldn’t be happy about getting called out of bed, but they would get their warrant.

  While Chris drove, Grace made the calls.

  The first call was to her boss, Sgt. Bruce Hopkins, who understood the urgency. “We’ll get two uniforms over to the Pickler residence,” he said. “I gotta ask, this woman’s digging now, with the ground frozen? She must be using a pickax.” He was sending over someone from the canine unit to help with the search. Next Grace called the prosecutor’s office to request the warrant be run by another judge in light of the new evidence. The assistant prosecutor wasn’t sure of the outcome, but she promised to get the search warrant before a judge, “even if I have to drive it over to some judge’s house with a latte.” Grace knew that a verbal okay was enough to start searching.

  They arrived to find Chelsea, Leo, and the uniforms standing in Louise Pickler’s side yard. One cop kept watch while the other spoke to Louise over the wooden fence.

  “Where’s our warrant?” Chris asked as he cut the engine.

  “Any minute. At least she’s communicating with them.” Grace got out of the car and flew across the lawn.

  “She won’t let anyone in,” Chelsea said, tugging on the sleeves of her hoodie.

  “Why isn’t anyone breaking through the gate?” Leo demanded. “Any of us could hop over the fence. We need to stop her.”

  “Please.” Grace held up her hands in an attempt to calm him.

  “Don’t you dare tamper with my property, Leo Green!” Louise shouted from the other side of the fence.

  “What about the search warrant?” Chelsea asked.

  “We don’t have it yet,” Grace told her. “We really need to try to deal with this, and I have to ask you to move back. Wait inside.”

  “Tell the persecuting attorney to back off!” Louise barked.

  Leo was shaking his head, but Grace insisted. “Please. I know you want us to make progress here.” She lowered her voice. “She’s highly agitated.”

  Chelsea pressed the cuffs of her sweatshirt to her face, nodding. She touched her husband’s arm and gave him a tug. Reluctantly, Leo backed off, too.

  “I’m one of the good guys,” Louise lamented. “One of the true American heroes, like George Washington and Elvis. I cannot tell a lie.”

  One of the cops cracked a grin, but he was turned away so that Pickler couldn’t see.

  “Ms. Pickler?” Grace called. “Louise? It’s Detective Santos. We talked briefly yesterday.” She leaned close to the fence, trying to peer through the narrow slits. “We would really appreciate it if you’d open the gate and come talk to us.”

  “Talk is cheap, and so are you,” Pickler responded. “Where’d that cop go? The good-looking black dude in the uniform?�
��

  So much for female bonding, Grace thought.

  “I’m right here, ma’am.” Jefferson stepped up to the fence again. “Like I said, we don’t mean to inconvenience you, but it would help our investigation if you would let us come into your yard and look around.”

  That’s it, Grace thought, impressed with the officer’s approach.

  “No, no, not gonna happen,” Louise said in a singsong voice. “In fact, you shouldn’t even be standing on my lawn. If you don’t watch it, I’ll call the FDA and the FCC.”

  Grace shot a look behind her at Chris, who grinned in a mixture of amusement and bewilderment. They’d dealt with emotionally disturbed persons, but it wasn’t often that they came wrapped up in such a colorful facade.

  Jefferson turned away from the fence and shrugged in defeat as Grace’s phone buzzed. She answered, got the message from the prosecutor’s office, and nodded.

  “That’s it. We got the warrant.”

  The two cops straightened and went to either side of the fence. Everyone knew the procedure: knock and announce. The police had to knock on the door and announce themselves. This often meant giving a resident time to pull on some clothes or get down the stairs in the dark. In a case when the police needed the element of surprise, like a drug bust in which the resident could be flushing evidence down the toilet, knock and announce could be suspended. But Ms. Pickler deserved a formal warning.

  “Ms. Pickler?” Grace called, knocking on the gate with her knuckles. “The police have a warrant to search your home. It would be helpful if you would open the gate and cooperate with us.”

  Silence. Then, in a quiet voice, Louise said, “Go away.”

  “That’s it. She’s denying us entry.” Chris gestured toward the door. “We can go in.”

  “Ms. Pickler,” Jefferson said, “we’re coming in.”