by Susan Shreve
“Why don’t you drive faster?” Angel asked.
“Why drive faster and call attention to ourselves? Maybe get arrested for speeding. Now that wouldn’t be too smart, would it, Angel.”
“Did you get the money?”
“Weren’t you watching me?”
“I was too scared to watch.”
“I got the money. It was quite easy and the boy was a wimp. I grabbed him around the shoulders, gagged him, dropped with him to the ground so we weren’t visible behind the counter, tied his arms and legs. The cash register was open, so I took all the bills — a ton of bills — and skipped the change and left.”
“Now what?”
“Now someone will come into the 7-Eleven any moment — the 7-Eleven is busy around here on a Friday night and I was very lucky — they’ll see the boy behind the counter, ungag him, untie him, and call the police. When the police come he’ll give them a description of me — probably the boy didn’t see the car — he’s not the sharpest tack in the drawer — so we need to go somewhere pronto.”
“Venice Beach,” Angel said. “A lot of cars, a lot of people. No one will notice.”
“I don’t think so, Angel. I don’t think you’re a very good criminal.”
“Then where?”
“We’re going back to your sister’s, around back, park in the space behind her house, and count the money.”
“What about the girl?”
There was a long silence and in the front of the car, her face pressed into the carpet, her eyes wide open, Jess stopped counting. Would she have a chance to talk to them? She was good at talking. She could save herself by talking. And did they have it in mind to hurt her or take her with them? And for what reason would they take her with them? Better to dump her somewhere dark where no one would see her until the morning light. They probably wouldn’t take out the gag or untie her, but if they did, she would talk. She would congratulate Jack for robbing the 7-Eleven, tell him how clever and capable he was at robbery; that her sister was also a robber, but of things, not money; she would tell them that they were not bad people, not criminals, at least. Only people who needed something they didn’t have, and she wondered, it had just crossed her mind, if what they wanted was a baby.
“So what about the girl?”
“We’ll dump the girl,” he said, taking a left turn and then a right, slowing to a stop.
“She’ll be able to identify you when the police talk to her.”
“I won’t be around to identify, Angel, and nor will you.”
“Why do you think no one will find us?”
“We’ll be in Kansas.”
“Kansas?”
“The girl has ears, Angel, so do you think with her in the car, knowing what’s going on, I’ll tell the truth about where we’re going?”
The car turned, probably into a driveway, and the engine turned off.
“Don’t turn the light on inside the car,” Angel said. “Someone will see us.”
“I have a flashlight so I’m counting the money, and if there’s enough, I’m heading in the house to pay your sister. Did you notice the light is on in her bedroom?”
There was a long silence except for the ruffle of paper and Jess rubbing her face against the carpet.
“Done,” he said.
“How much?”
“Eight hundred and twenty-five dollars,” he said. “I have plenty in my wallet to make up the difference.”
The car door opened.
“Scrunch down, Angel. I don’t want anyone driving by to see you.”
Delilah insisted on a meeting in room 618 with her family and Detective Van Slyde.
“As far as I can see, we’re getting nowhere,” Delilah said to Detective Van Slyde as they went up in the elevator. Teddy, her eyes closed, her head resting against the mirror, had her hands over her ears. Her mother was making her sick.
“From our point of view, we have small but not insignificant leads,” Van Slyde said.
“It’s all conversation,” Delilah said. “No baby has been heard from and the only thing I’m interested in is Ruby.”
“And Jess,” Teddy said.
Even with her hands over her ears, she was unable to close out her mother’s voice.
“Of course, Jess. Jess …” Her voice thinned to a ribbon of sound as she spoke her daughter’s name.
Delilah called Danny to alert him that they were coming upstairs for a conference, and NO there was NO news about Baby Ruby and Jess was MIA.
“Missing in Action,” Delilah added.
“Do we have to do this, Mom?” Danny asked.
“We have to do EVERYTHING we can possibly do.”
When they opened the door, Whee was lying on the bed, a pillow over her face, in jeans and a T-shirt and bare feet.
“She’s getting married tomorrow,” Delilah said to Van Slyde.
“I’m not getting married tomorrow.” Whee’s voice was matter-of-fact.
Beet had shut herself in the bathroom and asked not to be disturbed.
“They had a fight,” Victor told Delilah in a stage whisper, indicating the bathroom door. He was sitting at the end of the bed next to Whee’s feet. “Danny and Beet.”
“Tension is very high in here, Delilah,” Aldie said. “Probably not a good idea to have the police at this moment.”
“Too late,” Delilah said. “The police ARE here.”
“We’re a peace-loving family and never fight,” Aldie said apologetically. “But we’re all so upset about Jess and Baby Ruby that we’re taking it out on each other.”
“I would just like to know what you guys have found out so far,” Danny asked the officer who followed Delilah through the door.
“We’ve come up to get your help if you can give it,” Van Slyde said.
“Officer, we know nothing at all,” Aldie said. “We left Jess in charge of the baby while we went downstairs in the hotel for the rehearsal dinner and came back to find the baby and Jess missing. That’s the full extent of information we have.”
“We have no more confirmed information than that,” Detective Van Slyde said, standing next to the door, his arms folded across his chest. Teddy was beside him, leaning against the wall. Her eyes were closed so she didn’t have to witness her family’s crazy sadness. “But we have some unconfirmed information and we could use your help as we try to follow Jess and what action she might have taken to find the baby. It would be helpful to have your conjecture on what she might do in this situation.”
“I have no intelligence on Jess,” Danny said. “I expected her to be able to take care of a four-month-old baby and I guessed wrong.”
“You forgot to get a babysitter knowing that, of course, Jess would do it,” Teddy said. She could not help herself. “Jess had no choice.”
“Enough,” Aldie said. “Go ahead, Officer.”
“We know — and it may mean nothing at all — but a former member of the hotel domestic staff, who left because she was pregnant and lost the baby, has been seen at the hotel with a well-dressed man who may be her boyfriend. This is the kind of lead we follow,” Detective Van Slyde said. “It may take us to a dead end. And it may not.”
The door to the bathroom opened and Beet stood in the semidarkness.
“What are you saying?” she asked the detective.
“I am trying to construct a possible story since all we have are hints. Leads that we follow until we discover whether they make sense or not.”
“Is that all the story you have?”
“We know that Jess followed a well-dressed man who she thought may have been the one to take the baby, followed him into the garage where he’d gone to get his car, and then she lost him. Teddy believes that the man knew Jess was following him and that he recognized her from the sixth floor.”
“And we know that Jess is gone. Zilch!” Delilah said. “That’s the whole story.”
“We locked down the hotel at eleven fifteen tonight, which is the procedure when there h
as been a criminal event, in order to question as many people as possible and to keep anyone from leaving or entering.”
“So have you found anything out?”
“Nothing conclusive but we do know that a member of the hotel staff saw a girl meeting Jess’s description leave the hotel just before lockdown.”
“This is absurd,” Beet said, her voice breaking.
She slipped back into the dark bathroom and closed the door.
“You are suggesting that a member of the cleaning staff had a baby and the baby died,” Delilah was saying, “and then today she came back to the hotel with her well-dressed boyfriend to steal some poor baby who happened to be staying as a guest.”
Delilah had moved across the room and was now sitting on the bed next to Victor.
“That is a possible story. All we know is the information about the staff member on maternity leave. Nothing else.”
“It makes very little sense,” Delilah said.
“I’m making a story out of the few facts we have to determine if we can fill in the blanks,” Detective Van Slyde said. “I could be completely wrong, of course, but this is the way we follow a lead.”
“Well, if you want to know what Jess is doing, ask Teddy. Teddy is the only member of the family she talks to,” Delilah said.
“I’ve already told him that I knew Jess would follow the man if she ever saw him again,” Teddy said. “And if she found the woman who was hiding in the sixth-floor linen closet, she’d follow her too.”
“This sounds like hokeypokey just to quiet us down.”
“Of course it may be just hokeypokey,” Detective Van Slyde said, reaching in his pocket where his phone was ringing.
“Yes?” he said.
He looked over at Teddy and gave her a thumbs-up.
“No kidding? At four o’clock in the morning? Who’s around then?”
There was a long pause.
“Where? Yup, good news and thanks.”
He put his phone back in his pocket.
“That was Officer Jones. Jess’s cell was found by someone changing a flat tire on the highway going north of Santa Monica just before Pacific Palisades. It’s at the station now.”
Jess waited, listening to Angel’s breathing — long breaths followed by a sigh. Something was about to happen. She could feel it in the dank air stinking of motor oil, in Angel no longer whimpering in the backseat. It seemed like hours — the ties around her wrists cutting into her skin — before anything happened, and then the car door opened.
“Shhhh,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
Jess heard a woman’s voice, not Angel’s.
“Here’s your package,” the woman said.
The man climbed into the front seat, turned on the engine, then a car door again, a slip of air around Jess’s face.
“Maria was fine,” the man said. “I gave her a thousand.”
“No other requests?”
“For what? A thousand is plenty.”
The car backed up, turned quickly enough to roll Jess into the door, and then headed forward at a reasonable pace. They drove for a while, city driving, stop start, red lights, stop signs, and then they were on the highway, the pace increasing.
“Jack, when?”
“Soon,” he replied.
What would happen soon? Jess wondered. Would they kill her? Throw her into the ocean, tied like she was so she would drown? Was she frightened? she asked herself, thinking that of course she was frightened, her heart in her throat, her breath thin. But she wasn’t frightened to death. If she had thought of this moment while safe under her covers at home, she would have imagined it so terrifying she couldn’t survive. And this moment did not feel like the end of her life.
The car felt different than it had felt before Jack had gone into the house with money for Maria. For one thing, Angel wasn’t whimpering in the way she had been — she seemed to be humming deep in her throat. Jess heard a sound behind her, a kind of mewing, and then Jack turned the music on again, but softly.
“Do you know what we’re doing?” Angel asked from the backseat.
“I know we’re not going to talk about it in front of the girl,” he said. “That much I know, Angel, and I hope you’ll pay attention.”
“I mean what we’re doing about the girl?”
“Count on it. I’m going to do something about the girl.”
“Okay,” she said, humming again, and Jack turned the music up.
Jess had no sense of time except even through her blindfold, she sensed the night was fading. Lightening, not light, so maybe it was coming on morning. Certainly the drive was going on and on forever without any more conversation, only the low sound of Angel in the backseat.
Her family would be desperate — the baby gone, now Jess, no chance without Jess of finding the baby. Maybe no chance of finding her even with Jess’s help. Just the police in room 618 at the Brambles, and Delilah hysterical like Danny was hysterical, and Whee lying on the bed still as stone. Victor thinking maybe he should bolt. Aldie taking charge, maybe even grateful for this opportunity to be the man of the family again.
Terrible things would be said about Jess. Of that she was certain, especially from Danny and Delilah. Irresponsible. Selfish. Foolish. Childish. Self-involved. That’s what they said about Teddy’s shoplifting. Self-involved. Of course she was self-involved. Who in the world wasn’t?
Thinking of Teddy made her less frightened. Maybe stronger, maybe simply important enough not to die on this highway in California.
The car slowed, turned, the road now bumpy. They came to a stop.
“Where are we?” Angel asked.
Jack didn’t reply.
“Do you know where we are?”
“Of course I know, Angel.”
The car door opened and Jess could sense him getting out. Then another car door, the blanket removed, and Jess was lifted out, gently, she thought later. He put her down on hard ground. Earth, not asphalt.
“Sorry, kid,” he said.
The car door shut again, a revving of the engine, and she could hear the car moving away, a bumpy road. Then racing along asphalt until it was only a low purr in the distance.
So — she thought, relieved. She had not been killed. She had not been injured. She was lying somewhere in the real world, a living girl with rope burns on her arms and legs and an empty belly roaring with hunger. Sometime, maybe even in the early daylight, someone would find her.
But not Baby Ruby. She had failed Baby Ruby, and the hot tears spilled through the cloth over her eyes and down her cheeks.
Jess’s cell phone was found on the highway, on the right bank of the road headed north before Pacific Palisades. It lay on the soft earth lining the asphalt. While the man who discovered it was changing his flat tire, he heard it ringing. The phone was dented at the top, probably where it initially hit the asphalt. Then it must have bounced to the edge of the highway.
There were seventeen messages, all from Teddy.
Tears of relief gathered behind Teddy’s eyes.
That the phone was discovered, that it still worked, and that the glass wasn’t shattered was a sign. A good sign, she thought, willing herself not to think about the worst.
“So this is good?” she asked Van Slyde.
“That we found the phone is good but not important. It’s where we found the phone that is helpful.”
“So?” Danny asked.
“Daniel.” Aldie’s voice had an authority Teddy had rarely heard in her father. “The police are not trying to annoy you. It’s very important to work with them.”
“We’re dispatching police all over the area,” Van Slyde said. “We assume that Jess was in a car headed north and that someone, probably not Jess, threw the phone out the window of the moving car.”
“So you do think there’s a connection between Jess’s disappearance and Baby Ruby,” Delilah asked quietly. “Is that your thought, Detective Van Slyde?”
“That’s the thought we�
�re going with now that we have a tangible clue,” Van Slyde said. “The phone and a defined geography. That is why several cars have been dispatched to comb the area. I am going to check it out.”
“They could both be dead, of course, and all we’ll be left with is the cell phone,” Danny said.
The bathroom door opened and Beet leaned out.
“Don’t talk anymore, Danny.”
“I was just saying …”
“I mean, don’t talk at all,” Beet said. “You are making me sick.”
Van Slyde turned to go.
“Are you leaving now?” Teddy asked.
“Now and quickly. I’m following up on the cell phone.”
“I want to come,” Teddy said.
“With me?” Detective Van Slyde said. “I don’t think so, Teddy.”
“Please, I need to go. If we find her, and we will, Jess would want me there.”
“It’s not safe, Ted,” Delilah said. “Is it safe, Detective Van Slyde?”
“There are risks, certainly. These people are criminals — they have two children they’ve kidnapped, at least we assume that is where Jess is. And we don’t know whether they’re armed. We do have information on the employee who lost a baby and may be involved — but that’s not definite and her reputation at the Brambles was good. Nevertheless.”
“I’ll do everything you ask me to do, Detective Van Slyde. Everything. I won’t take any risks. Please. I’ll be helpful, especially with Jess.”
“Okay,” Van Slyde said. “I will let her come if you agree. She could be helpful.”
“No,” Delilah said.
“Let her go, Delilah,” Aldie said. “These two girls know each other very well, and who knows how Teddy can help.”
In the elevator, Van Slyde was silent.
“Thank you,” Teddy said.
They walked across the lobby, through the doors, and into his police car parked on the circle.
“Where are we going now?” she asked. “To the police station?”
“There is reason to assume that the phone was thrown from a car and Jess was in that car,” he said.
“This is my first time in California and I don’t have any idea where things are, like the airport.”
