by Sharon Potts
CHAPTER 31
Her mother stood facing the narrow river at the edge of the Miami Circle. She wore a white blouse and jeans, and her dark hair flapped in the breeze. The torn-up construction site of Aubrey’s childhood was now a small park at the base of a brand-new condominium tower.
She turned when Aubrey was a few feet away, as though sensing her presence. Despite the dark glasses, Aubrey could read the agony in her down-turned mouth and collapsed cheeks.
This was her mother, yet she no longer knew this woman.
Without speaking, they went over to one of the benches carved from rock that surrounded the ancient circle, which had been buried beneath plants and mulch.
“Jonathan’s dead.” Mama’s voice was flat.
Aubrey took in a sharp breath. Did she know this, or was she seeking confirmation from her? Innocent, she told herself. Her mother was innocent. “Yes, he’s dead.”
Her mother nodded. Tears ran down her cheeks from behind her sunglasses. “I loved him very much.” She reached into her bag and took out a tissue. “What do the police think happened?”
Why was she framing the question this way, as though she knew what had happened? Innocent. Her mother was innocent. “Smolleck said he may have jumped or been pushed. I don’t know anything more.”
“He didn’t jump,” her mother said. “Jonathan had everything to live for.”
“Yes, he did.” This was the man her mother had loved. Aubrey still believed that. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
Her mother reached over and ran her hand over Aubrey’s cheek, touching her as lightly as a silk scarf. “I’m sorry, too.”
Aubrey tensed. “About what?”
“Who knows how much of this was my fault? Ethan. Jonathan.”
Aubrey felt sick. “Why do you think any of this is your fault?”
Her mother stared down at the shrubs that covered the circle.
“Where were you, Mama? You told me you were going to his apartment.”
Her mother took her sunglasses off and wiped her eyes with the tissue. “I did go, but then I left. I needed some time alone, so I decided to walk home.”
“Did you and Jonathan have an argument?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Because that’s the most logical explanation for you to have left and walked home.”
“I told you I wanted to be alone.”
“What did you argue about?”
“Are you listening to me? I told you I wanted to be alone.”
Her mother sounded unhinged. Aubrey softened her voice. “Why did you turn your phone off?”
Mama looked confused. “It’s not off. The battery’s dead. I borrowed someone’s phone to call you.”
Should she ask to see her phone? But if it had been turned off, Aubrey would know she was lying.
Then she would have to accept that her mother was a murderer.
“Aubrey.” Her mother’s voice jolted her. “Look at me.”
She met her mother’s intense gaze. There was a resolve that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“I didn’t push Jonathan off that balcony.”
Aubrey felt light-headed, but it was because she had stopped breathing. She wanted so much to believe her. She filled her lungs with river air, which carried the faint scent of gasoline. “Smolleck thinks you did.”
“Why would he think that?”
“I told him about the note. He knows about the ultimatum to kill Jonathan and save Ethan.”
“Dear God. You told him? But what will happen to Ethan? What if they hurt him?” Her mother looked panicked. She glanced at the people strolling along the river walk, at the boats, and the condominium that towered over them. “Why hasn’t anyone gotten in touch about Ethan?”
Her mother’s fear seemed genuine. She pulled her phone out of her bag and touched it, but the screen stayed dark.
“The battery’s dead. I’d forgotten the battery’s dead.” She held the phone out to Aubrey. “How can they tell me where he is if they can’t reach me?”
She hadn’t lied about the phone.
“They don’t have to call anyone to give Ethan back,” Aubrey said. “They can just do it, if that’s what they intended to do.”
“But it wasn’t,” her mother said. “They want to watch me suffer. First, Jonathan. And now . . . oh, God.” She stood up.
“Tell me who these people are. Why do they want you to suffer?”
“I need to go,” her mother said. “I have an idea why all this is happening.”
“Is this connected to your past?”
“It could be.”
“Do you know who has Ethan? Where he is?”
“Not yet, but I may be able to figure it out.”
“There’s a better way,” Aubrey said. “Come with me to Smolleck. Show them the note. Let them analyze it. Tell them your theory. Maybe they can help.”
“They won’t listen. They’re focused on who’s behind Jonathan’s murder, not who has Ethan. They’ll lock me up, then it’ll be too late. We’ll never get our little boy back.”
Was Aubrey once again falling into the same trap, wanting so much to appease her mother that she was willing to go along with her, or was this Ethan’s best chance?
“You have to trust me, sweetheart. Please, just a little longer. If I can’t find what I’m looking for, I’ll go to the FBI.”
If she turned her mother in to Smolleck now, she was eliminating an important avenue for finding Ethan. Mama knew things about the people from her past and would be in a far better position to investigate if she weren’t locked up in an interrogation room.
“Tell me where you’re going,” Aubrey said.
Her mother hesitated. “If I do, that will put you in a difficult spot with the FBI.”
She was right. It was better if she didn’t know. “Promise you’ll call me if you find anything,” Aubrey said.
“Of course.” Her mother squeezed her hand. “I won’t let you down, sweetheart.”
Aubrey’s throat tightened. This woman was her mother, not some stranger.
Mama put her sunglasses back on, hands shaking. Her fiancé had just been murdered, and her grandson was missing. Was she up to this? Would the people who had taken Ethan and killed Jonathan try to hurt her, too? Was Aubrey doing the right thing letting her go?
It was Ethan’s best chance.
Her mother started walking away, then stopped and glanced down at the plants that covered the buried circle. “I was very proud of you that day, sweetheart.”
“What day?”
“The day we ‘Saved the Circle.’”
Why was she bringing this up now?
“If you feel I kept you from being the person you wanted to be, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t—”
Her mother held up her hand. “Wait, please. I need to say this.” Her lower lip trembled ever so slightly. “I only wanted to protect you, to keep you safe, but maybe I smothered you somehow.”
“We don’t need to talk about this now.”
“But we do. In case there is no other time.”
“Mama, don’t—”
“I want you to know.” Her mother’s voice broke. “I want you to know that even if . . . even if you end up hating me, I love you and Kevin more than life itself.”
She walked away quickly, before Aubrey could say anything.
Aubrey stared at the pretty plants covering the old Indian circle, which was buried deep beneath. Most people didn’t even know it was there.
She had once marched with Mama to save the Circle. All that trouble, all that passion to save the past, just so that it could be hidden again.
She wanted to cry out after her mother to come back. Because she was terrified she would never see her again.
And it wasn’t fair to have come all this way and have it end like this.
CHAPTER 32
The vein in Smolleck’s right temple throbbed as he stood in the foyer of her mother’s house
.
Aubrey had been hoping to avoid him—not only because she wasn’t sure how she would talk her way out of where she’d been the last hour, but also because she was anxious to get to her computer.
I did the right thing, she repeated to herself. Letting her go was Ethan’s best chance.
“Can you come with me, please?” Smolleck didn’t wait for her to answer, just led the way to her mother’s office in the back of the house.
He sat down at the desk and gestured for her to sit on the other chair.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
She glanced out the window at the trees in the backyard. A blue jay was perched on one of the branches. Stay as near to the truth as possible. “Looking for my mother.”
“May I have your phone?”
She handed it to him, hoping he didn’t notice her hands were shaking. She had turned the phone back on when she had pulled into the driveway.
He examined it. “Why did you have it turned off earlier?”
“Were you trying to reach me? Is there news about Ethan?”
“There’s no news about Ethan, and yes, I’ve been trying to reach you. You received a call from your mother, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What did she say?”
Even though Smolleck had said they weren’t monitoring her calls, she wouldn’t be surprised if their entire conversation had been recorded. “My mother asked me to meet her at the Circle.”
“Which is?”
“Well, I thought she meant the park where we used to go when I was a kid.”
“What park?”
She hesitated. “Ponce Circle. It’s in Coral Gables.”
The vein in Smolleck’s temple wasn’t pulsing as furiously. “Was she there?”
“No,” Aubrey said. “I drove over and waited, but she didn’t show up. I guess I misunderstood where we were supposed to meet. She may have meant Alhambra Circle or Cocoplum Circle or even Miami Circle Park.” She was explaining too much. Giving more than he had asked for, something liars often did thinking it made them look innocent.
He touched the face of her phone, probably checking her Received and Sent call lists.
She looked back out the window. The blue jay was gone.
He put her phone down on the desk, apparently not finding anything of interest to him. “We’ve put out an ATL on your mother.”
“ATL?”
“‘Attempt to Locate’ bulletin. She’s a suspect in the death of Jonathan Woodward.”
“I assumed you would think so after I told you about the ransom note. But that’s not enough to arrest her.”
“So you’re a lawyer now?”
Her face grew warm.
“Then you probably know that harboring a fugitive is a serious crime.”
“Is my mother a fugitive? Has a warrant been issued for her arrest?”
“Not yet, but we have more than just your report about the note’s existence.”
“You do? What?”
They stared at each other until the vein in Smolleck’s temple began pulsing hard again. “I’m not about to give you information until you start leveling with me.”
“I don’t know how I can help you,” she said. “Are you certain Jonathan was pushed? Could he have fallen accidentally?”
“It’s highly unlikely that it was an accident.”
There was a discoloration in the oak desk where she had once spilled nail-polish remover when she was doing her nails. Her mother had been matter-of-fact about the ruined wood, but Aubrey had been very upset with herself. Would Mama forgive her if she told Smolleck the truth?
“I know you don’t trust me right now,” she said. “I understand why you wouldn’t, but I told you about the ransom note. If you think about it, whoever wrote it was probably more interested in hurting my mother than in killing Jonathan.”
“So why is he dead?”
“Maybe whoever sent the note intended to make it look like my mother killed him. They would know you or the police would automatically suspect her if you were aware of the note.”
“It’s a theory.”
It was. A good one. “My mother is not an impulsive woman,” she said. “I don’t believe she killed Jonathan.” Was she repeating the mantra to convince herself, or did she truly believe it?
Her eyes flitted over the photos of Ethan.
Some she had taken herself, but others she had gotten from her father and brother. She had sent them all to her mother, knowing how much joy she received from the photos of her grandson. There was one of Ethan on a horse, another at Disneyland, and a recent silly one Ethan had taken of himself making an ugly face.
He loved taking selfies and had learned how to send them to her.
Something about the “ugly face” photo stopped her. She got up and took the framed picture from the shelf. Ethan was in the foreground, but behind him was a woman she didn’t recognize. An older woman with gray hair, who was staring at him, her chin pushed forward, her brow in a frown.
“What is it?” Smolleck asked.
“This woman. There’s something familiar about her.”
“You don’t know her?”
Aubrey shook her head.
“Do you know where the photo was taken?”
She recognized the black-leather furniture and a black-and-white painting of a maze that was a favorite of her father’s. “This is my father’s apartment in LA. The photo was taken a couple of weeks ago. I can tell because Ethan was missing his front tooth.”
“The woman could be a neighbor or a friend,” Smolleck said.
“Yes. Probably.” She put the photo back on the shelf. She had the original on her computer where she could study it more carefully. There was so much to do, and here she was using up precious time.
“Anything else you’d like to distract me with?” Smolleck asked.
“Agent Smolleck. My nephew is missing. I’m concerned that Jonathan’s death and looking for my mother has shifted everyone’s priorities away from finding him.”
His shoulders stiffened. “Finding Ethan is our number one priority.”
“Good,” she said, as she headed out of the room. “I’m glad we’re at least agreed on that.”
CHAPTER 33
Aubrey closed her bedroom door behind her. She had just lied to the FBI, but that was the least of her problems. Her mother was definitely a suspect, and Ethan was still missing.
She opened her laptop.
Earlier today, her father had told her he believed someone involved with Stormdrain or the explosion at the brownstone could be connected to Ethan’s kidnapping. He had hinted that he or her mother had played some role in that catastrophe, then denied it.
But Smolleck was also interested in Stormdrain, and Mama had gone off to do something related to her past.
Aubrey googled “Stormdrain, brownstone explosion, April 1970,” and viewed the search results. A few were travel websites, identifying the brownstone as an interesting, off-the-beaten-path place to visit. There were before-and-after photos—the blackened shell of the brownstone in 1970 after the explosion, and a modern, angular building with large windows and a plaque out front. Then there were blogs and articles going back several years about Stormdrain, and a Wikipedia article she decided to read first.
According to the article, Stormdrain had been an American, radical left-wing organization that began in late 1969 on the campus of Columbia University and was briefly a faction of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, before it broke away. Its goal was to create a revolutionary party for the overthrow of the US government.
Aubrey still had a difficult time seeing her parents as revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the government.
She read on. Stormdrain had conducted a campaign of bombings from December 1969 through April 1970, targeting patriotic statues, like one of George Washington in Union Square Park, as well as banks and government and corporate buildings. Stormdrain had taken credit for explosions
in the lobbies of the Manhattan headquarters of Mobil Oil, IBM, General Telephone and Electronics, and Baer Business Machines.
Another connection to BBM and Prudence.
She continued reading about the bombings. Although there was destruction of property, no one was ever injured or killed. Stormdrain always took precautions that people would not be around when they detonated their bombs.
The article went on to talk about the founding members of the group, all Columbia University and Barnard College students, though neither of her parents was mentioned.
She read the names of the founding members: Steve Robinson, Jeffrey Schwartz, Albert Jacobs, Linda Wilsen, and Gertrude Morgenstern, noting that Schwartz and Wilsen were two people Smolleck had said the FBI was looking for. Twenty years ago, a psychotic man had claimed to be Jeffrey Schwartz, a publicized event that coincided with her parents’ big fight.
She clicked on the link to an article about Schwartz. The photo was a blurry black-and-white of a skinny, scowling man with longish dark hair and mutton-chop sideburns. She skimmed the article. Attended Columbia Law School. One of the leaders of Stormdrain Underground, a militant faction of Stormdrain that was associated with a number of bombings that occurred after April Fool, between late 1970 and 1981. Was involved in a foiled bank robbery in 1981, which resulted in the death of a teller, a security guard, and a police officer. Still at-large and on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
She read the paragraph entitled “Jeffrey Schwartz Sham,” which essentially said what Smolleck had told her. A man claiming to be Jeffrey Schwartz had insisted he knew who was responsible for the 1970 brownstone bombing but had turned out to be lying.
Although this seemed to be an inconsequential footnote, she wondered whether someone had set up the fake “Jeffrey Schwartz” for the purpose of frightening her parents. There was no way of knowing without speaking to the man who had posed as Schwartz, something Aubrey couldn’t do but planned to ask Smolleck to follow up on.
She pulled up the article on Linda Wilsen, the other person the FBI was looking for, hoping for a photo she could match to the one in her mother’s box. There were none, just a brief write-up on how Linda had survived the April Fool explosion but had suffered severe and disfiguring burns over most of her body. She had never been charged with any crimes but had dropped out of Barnard and returned home to Arkansas. There was nothing about her life since. She googled “Linda Wilsen Arkansas” but came up with no matches that could be a sixty-something-year-old woman. Of course, if it had been so easy, the FBI would know where she was.
