by Sharon Potts
“Okay. Fair enough,” he said. “Tell me why you think there’s a connection to Ethan’s kidnapping.”
“I believe my parents had some kind of involvement with a revolutionary group in college. Is it possible someone believes they had something to do with the 1970 explosion, which killed several students, and kidnapped Ethan out of revenge?”
“We’ve been looking into members of Stormdrain who may have had ties to your parents.”
So the FBI was considering this theory as well. Finally, she was getting some information. She steeled herself against what he might reveal about her parents.
“One is a man named Jeffrey Schwartz,” Smolleck said. “He went underground after the explosion, then was involved in a fatal bank robbery a few years later. We haven’t been able to locate him.” He ate another shrimp, as though he were sharing bureaucratic details, not revelations that might turn her world upside down.
“The interesting thing is that around twenty years ago, a man claiming to be Jeffrey Schwartz marched into an FBI office insisting he had secret information about the 1970 explosion.”
“What information?”
“He said the brownstone explosion hadn’t been an accident, and he knew who had blown it up.”
This man knew who blew up the brownstone? She shuddered at the possible significance. But if her parents had been involved, Smolleck wouldn’t be talking to her so matter-of-factly.
“Did he tell you who did it?” she asked.
Smolleck shook his head. “No. He didn’t know anything. We checked out his story. He wasn’t Schwartz, and he hadn’t been anywhere near New York at the time of the explosion. Turns out he was psychotic, suffering from a delusional disorder. He was apparently obsessed with the incident and wanted to get himself in the limelight.”
An idea nagged at her.
Twenty years ago her parents had had a major fight. Earlier today, Kevin had said he believed it had been about a friend of his, because he’d overheard Mama say, “Jeff’s going to be the end of us.” What if her parents had actually been arguing about this Jeffrey? Or was that too much of a stretch?
“And the real Jeffrey Schwartz?” she asked. “What happened to him?”
“We’re trying to find him, as well as a woman named Linda Wilsen. She was badly burned in the explosion. She’s also off the radar.”
“People just disappear?”
“All the time,” he said. “They go to Canada or Mexico, or even hide in plain view with a new identity.”
A breeze brought a strong fishy smell into her nostrils. “What about BBM? Is it possible someone from the company is taking revenge on my parents?”
“BBM? Why are you bringing them up?”
“Baer Business Machines was started by Prudence’s grandfather.”
“We know that.”
“I saw several BBM employees at the Simmers’ command post.”
He frowned, his gray eyes becoming eerily light from the angle of the sun. “Why does that concern you?”
“Because Prudence’s grandfather, Emmet Baer, was on Columbia’s board of trustees from 1965 through 1970.”
He had stopped eating. “I’m listening.”
“Stormdrain was active on campus from 1969 to 1970 and would have been a major thorn in the administration’s side.”
“What does that have to do with BBM?”
“I watched a documentary that was filmed in 1969 of a student takeover of several university buildings. In the documentary, the voiceover claimed that Columbia University was hooked into big corporations who were financing the war machine. One of the corporations they mentioned was Baer Business Machines.”
“So you think there may be some residual anger toward members of Stormdrain from that period?”
“I have no idea what to think. I don’t know what my parents had to do with Stormdrain. I’ve looked them both up on the Internet but found nothing on either of them.” She swallowed. “Tell me. The FBI knows things the public doesn’t. What did my mother or father have to do with the brownstone explosion in April 1970?”
He studied her for a long minute. “I’m sorry, Aubrey, but I’m not at liberty to say.”
And her parents refused to say.
She looked out toward the bay. A couple of boats were sailing into the wind, doing a graceful pas de deux.
So many secrets.
So much she didn’t know.
What she did know was that the FBI was trying to find Ethan and bring him home safely, but they were doing it with their hands tied. The note could help them. And the dark question she kept pushing away—what if her little nephew died because she hadn’t told them?
“There is a note,” she said softly, knowing she was going against her mother’s wishes, hoping she’d made the best decision for Ethan.
He sat up straighter. “You have it?”
She shook her head and took a sip of water. “No, but I saw it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Someone slipped it into Monday’s mail after the FBI had checked everything. It was in a greeting card.”
“Did you see the envelope? The card?” He took out his phone and started tapping into it.
“I only saw the top of the envelope. It had a postage stamp that hadn’t been postmarked.”
“I see,” Smolleck said. “That’s why you were so interested in who’d been inside the house. Where is it now?”
“My mother has the envelope and card. I saw the front of the card when she showed me the note.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
“It was for a child. There was a drawing of a little boy on the front. And the card said, ‘Today is your special day.’”
“Printed as part of the card?”
“Yes.”
“Anything distinctive about the card? What did it say on the inside?”
“I didn’t see the inside. Just the front. The little boy was riding a red tricycle.”
Smolleck frowned. “If you didn’t see the inside, how do you know about the threat?”
“The note was separate.”
“And you saw that?”
“Yes. It was on a piece of paper, like from a small pad. The note was typed.” She had committed it to memory. Had recited it to herself over and over, as though chanting the message might change it, or reveal some inner secret. “On one side it said in caps: We have Ethan. He is safe. We will return him unharmed if you do one thing.”
She took another sip of water. Smolleck was waiting.
“On the back of the paper, it gave my mother until midnight tonight to do what they asked. They said if she told the authorities, Ethan would die.” Her abdomen convulsed. It was out and she couldn’t take it back. “Please say I did the right thing in telling you. That this will help get Ethan back safely.”
“And the one thing they want your mother to do?” he asked, his voice formal.
She looked down at the discarded shrimp tails on his plate.
“They want my mother to kill Jonathan Woodward.”
“Jesus.” Smolleck’s face got red. “And you kept this from us?”
Rage rose in her gorge. “Don’t you dare judge me or my mother. They threatened to kill Ethan if we told you about the note. What would you have done if your child’s life was at stake?”
He let out a breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me now. It’s just, we’ve lost so much time.”
He reached into his wallet and took out a couple of bills, which he threw down on the table.
“This changes everything,” he said, standing up. “We need to get back.”
“You’ll be careful with what I told you, won’t you?” she said, following him out to the car. “Promise me you won’t do something that will endanger Ethan.”
“Of course we’ll be careful. But we’ll need the note. It could contain forensic evidence.”
“I told you, my mother has it.”
His phone rang as they reac
hed his car. He took the call. Aubrey watched his face change to something like disbelief.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll head over in a minute.”
He put his phone in his pocket and looked at Aubrey, a cold, unreadable expression on his face. “Where’s your mother now?”
She didn’t like the hard edge to his voice. “She went to Jonathan’s apartment. Why?”
“Because Jonathan Woodward is dead.”
CHAPTER 28
“Dead?” Aubrey was stunned. It wasn’t possible. Then a more terrifying thought hit her. “Is my mother okay?”
“We don’t know where your mother is,” Smolleck said. “Her cell phone is off, so we can’t track her with GPS.”
Mama was okay, but Jonathan was dead. “What happened to him?”
“He apparently fell, or was pushed, from his balcony.”
Pushed from his balcony.
“I have to go.” Smolleck opened the car door.
“She didn’t do it.” Aubrey could hear the pleading in her own voice. “Agent Smolleck, my mother would never do such a thing.”
“Even to save her grandson?” he barked.
What was he saying? Had the kidnappers’ ultimatum been satisfied? She took a step toward him, hope pushing against fear. “Has someone been in touch about Ethan? Is he okay?”
The anger in Smolleck’s face evaporated. He shook his head. “No news on Ethan.”
“Nothing?”
“I’m sorry,” Smolleck said.
She began trembling all over. Jonathan was dead. Because of what Aubrey had just told Smolleck, her mother was likely a suspect in his murder. And Ethan was still missing.
Smolleck was saying something to her.
She blinked, trying to focus. “What?”
“Do you need a ride back to your house?” His voice was gentle.
She shook her head, conscious of the tears running down her cheeks. “He’s my nephew,” she whispered. “We have to find him.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. It was a light touch, like Wolvie’s when he would rest his paws on her, knowing she was upset. “We’re trying,” Smolleck said. Then he turned, climbed into his car, and drove away.
The trembling became more intense. Aubrey wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed them. Her teeth chattered, and she went over to the curb and sat on a bollard. If she’d told Smolleck about the note sooner, maybe this tragedy could have been prevented. Jonathan might still be alive, and her mother might not be a suspect. Maybe the FBI could have found Ethan by now.
She wiped the tears away with a rough hand. Just like the compliant child she had always been, Aubrey had listened to her mother about the note, rather than doing what she believed was best.
She took out her phone and touched the speed dial. It went straight to her mother’s voice mail. She left a message. “Call me. Please.”
Shakily, she stood up. She had to find her. She hurried out of the parking lot and headed up the bluff toward her house, trying to convince herself of her mother’s innocence. Mama had been considering giving Jonathan a drug to slow his heart and fake his death, but she would never have murdered him, even to save Ethan.
Then where was she, and why wasn’t she answering her phone?
She slowed a short distance from her house, panting, but not only from exertion. The out-of-control feeling came from a place deep inside.
She had lost her center.
Her mother wasn’t the person she had believed she knew so well. She may have been a college revolutionary. Someone who had been involved with something so terrible that now, many years later, it was likely that her grandson had been kidnapped and her fiancé killed because of her actions. But Aubrey still didn’t know what her mother had done then, or what she was capable of doing now.
Her childhood home loomed in front of her. Faded salmon-colored walls covered with vines, dark-red gabled roof, bougainvillea that hung over the arched windows.
Sleeping Beauty. That’s what her father had always called her. His Sleeping Beauty princess.
Sleeping Beauty had lived hidden away in this house, content to work on her still-life oil paintings, collecting snow globes of scenes that would never change.
Aubrey had been sleepwalking through her life. Unwilling to look beyond what she was told, sensing her questions would somehow alter things. It was time to wake up and confront the truth. Time to learn who her mother really was.
Because too much time had already elapsed, and Ethan was still missing.
CHAPTER 29
Diana put on her dark glasses and staggered toward the red-and-blue lights in front of Jonathan’s building as sirens screamed around her.
Dozens of men and women pulled her along with them—horrified and excited by this intrusion in their routine lunch breaks.
“A jumper,” someone next to her said. “My friend saw him falling.”
“I heard he was pushed,” someone else said.
Her abdomen convulsed. She knew she should run away, but she couldn’t stop herself. She had to see.
Crowds had formed at the edge of the police barricades. Reporters stood near their vans as their cameramen filmed. She caught bits and pieces. Don’t yet know. Suicide or murder. Swarming with FBI agents. High-profile individual.
She pressed through the gawking crowd and got up against a barricade. Everyone was filming with their phones, arms extended in Nazi salutes.
She took in the people in uniforms and suits who filled the small grassy square beneath Jonathan’s balcony. She strained to see what was behind them. Several people were kneeling beside a tarp. The tarp that covered the body.
She looked up. Forty-two stories. People on Jonathan’s balcony. So many people. But she knew none of them was Jonathan.
A scent wafted toward her. Eau Sauvage.
She heard a choking sound.
“Are you okay?” someone beside her asked.
No. Not okay. I’m dying inside. No words came out.
On the other side of the barricade, one of the men in suits was checking out the crowd. He looked familiar. Smolleck.
Quickly, she lowered her head and turned back into the crowd. Can’t stay here. Run away.
I can’t leave him, her heart screamed. I love him. I love him.
Her feet kept moving, weaving through the horde, carrying her away.
The voice in her head quieted the one in her heart.
Not now. Not here. You can grieve for him later.
You’ll have all the time in the world later.
CHAPTER 30
Aubrey didn’t know where she might find her. She only knew her mother had been at Jonathan’s apartment earlier, so that was where she was driving.
Cars streamed past her. People everywhere, but Aubrey had never felt more alone. Her phone rang, startling her. She pulled it out of her handbag and glanced at it. “Unknown caller.”
She answered. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” her mother said in a trembling, barely audible voice. “Meet me at the Circle.” Before Aubrey could ask anything else, her mother had hung up.
Her heart pounded. This was what she’d wanted. To talk to her mother and find out what she’d done before the FBI caught up with her, but she hesitated. The right thing to do was to call Smolleck. But if someone from her mother’s past had been behind Ethan’s kidnapping, her mother was more likely to tell her than the FBI. It was their best chance to get Ethan back.
Aubrey glanced at the phone in her hand. She turned it off. With no GPS in her mother’s old car and the phone off, no one would be able to track her.
No one would find them at the Circle.
She continued driving, feeling like a fugitive herself. If her mother was charged with murder, Aubrey might very well be arrested as an accessory by not turning her in. It was a disturbing and unfamiliar sensation. She had always been the good girl, the one who never bucked authority.
Except for the time she had insisted on marching at the Miami Cir
cle. She had just turned twelve and was self-conscious about the new braces on her teeth. At school, she had learned about a real estate developer who had uncovered an archaeological site that was close to two thousand years old. A perfect thirty-eight-foot circle made by the Tequesta Indians. The developer wanted to relocate it so he could build a high-end condo. Aubrey had been furious about destroying the past and had begged her mother to take her to the protest march to “Save the Circle.”
Mama had said absolutely not. Demonstrations were dangerous—people got hurt, and good rarely came of them. Aubrey had dug in her heels until Mama reluctantly agreed. They had marched together with dozens of others at the torn-up construction site, chanting, “Save the Circle!”
Aubrey had felt exhilarated and couldn’t understand why her mother seemed so angry and upset, especially since they had been victorious. A couple of days after the march, Mama gave Aubrey an easel with canvases and oil paints, and books filled with still-life paintings. Mama never said so, but Aubrey understood that painting would make her mother happy; marching would not.
Now, she wondered if there was some special reason Mama wanted her to meet back there after all these years.
Traffic slowed as Aubrey continued up Brickell Avenue. In the distance, she could see flashing red-and-blue lights. The Circle was on the Miami River, a few blocks north of Jonathan’s building, so she would have to pass the crime scene. As she got nearer, she could see the crowd that had amassed near the news vans and emergency vehicles, probably gawking at Jonathan’s broken body.
She glanced up at the looming building. She wondered what Jonathan’s last thoughts had been as he flew through the air. Whether he had seen the person who pushed him. If he had been pushed.
Part of her wanted to pull over and say good-bye to this man who had loved her mother. Whom she was certain her mother had loved. But Smolleck was probably there. If he saw Aubrey, he would very likely send someone to follow her when she left, and she didn’t want to risk that.
She continued on toward the Circle, praying that when she saw her mother face-to-face, the doubts that were continuing to multiply in her head would miraculously evaporate.
