by Susan Shreve
“To Venice Beach,” Teddy said to Jess. “That’s where they think Ruby might have been seen.”
“Are you doing okay back there?” he called.
“Fine,” Jess said. “We’re good.”
“We’re going to meet another squad car and get some information,” he said. “So tell me what you know, Jess.”
“What I know is that I was tied up and gagged and blindfolded so I didn’t see anything. I just heard things and what I heard was from the two people, a man and a woman, Jack and Angel. Jack was in the front seat and I was on the floor by the passenger seat, Angel was in the back and they were getting out of town, maybe with a baby, and maybe that baby was in the car after Jack delivered the money to Angel’s sister, whose name is Maria. Usually it was Angel whimpering, but after we stopped at Maria’s and before I was taken out of the car, I heard a different whimpering sound, like a kitten.”
“How did you end up in the car in the first place?” he asked.
“I was walking along the line of cars and taxis by the hotel and a man reached out and pulled me in the car.”
“And you know the baby wasn’t in the car then.”
“If there was a baby, it wasn’t Ruby.”
“Ruby cries a lot,” Teddy added.
“Also, they talked about another baby, who seems to be in the cemetery, and then we stopped someplace after Jack robbed the 7-Eleven. He had to rob the 7-Eleven of a thousand dollars to get the money to pay Maria for something that had to do with a baby. Angel cried a lot.”
“So you overheard quite a bit.”
“I know — at least I think I know — that the man is the same one I saw at the hotel on the sixth floor and who I chased in the garage.”
“And what about the woman?”
“She was the one who smelled of rosemary.”
“They’re married?”
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “They fought.”
“How did they treat you?” Van Slyde asked.
“They were nice to me, especially the man.”
“Do you think he could have been armed?”
“You mean with a gun?” Jess asked.
“With a gun.”
She had never thought he would have a gun, had not even been afraid that he was armed with a weapon at all. The only terror she had was to be thrown in the ocean with the gag and blindfold and rope around her ankles and wrists. But everything moved quickly and the smell at the bottom of the car was so strong that she didn’t have time to worry about her future.
“They didn’t seem like criminals,” Jess said.
“Why not?” Teddy asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “They seemed too upset and like ordinary people to be criminals.”
“Because they were afraid of being caught?” Detective Van Slyde asked.
“Maybe,” Jess said. “But what they really seemed upset about was something else.”
“Like what?” Van Slyde asked.
“We went to a cemetery because of a baby and Angel cried a lot. It drove Jack a little crazy.”
“So we’re headed to this house where we have a report a baby was put in a car tonight. One of the neighbors who had been listening to the radio report of Ruby’s disappearance called in that report.”
The squad car slowed and they turned left away from the ocean down a narrow street almost too thin for a car.
“I don’t know if we were here before. They drove all over the place,” Jess said. “I wouldn’t have known even without a blindfold, but I know we stopped at the sister’s house.”
They pulled up to a small pink cottage and Van Slyde got out.
“I’m going to break with one more protocol and ask you to come with me, Jess. Just hold back, not up on the porch,” he said. “I’m interested if anything about the woman is familiar to you.”
“Only her voice would be,” Jess said. “And I don’t even know about that.”
The garden in front of the pink house was illuminated and full of flowers. There was a statue of Jesus or St. Francis of Assisi, and birdhouses and little decorative frogs, and wound around hibiscus trees were flashing Christmas lights.
Jess climbed out of the backseat.
“You okay, Teddy?” she asked.
“I’m going to throw up.”
“No, you’re not, Ted.”
“Panic attack?”
“Not that either,” Jess said. “We’ll be right back.”
The woman stood with her arms folded across her chest, her chin up, her eyes narrowed.
“This is my property, you know,” she said.
“We had a call that a woman at this address came out of the house about an hour ago,” Van Slyde said. “She had a baby in her arms and handed the baby through a half-open window on the driver’s side. The people in the car — or one person, maybe one in the back, the caller was not clear — drove out of this street, turning left.”
“So who called?”
“Someone who saw this happen.”
“Nobody comes on this street but the people who live here.”
“So I guess it was someone who lives here.”
“No one who lives here would do that,” she said. “So what are you going to do now?”
“I’d like you to respond to my question about the baby. Did you put a baby in a car tonight?”
She paused.
“Please,” Van Slyde said.
“I did do that,” the woman said. “The baby was my brother’s baby and I was keeping the baby while he went out on a date.”
“It was three in the morning when we got the call.”
“He went out on a late date. I didn’t ask. Okay?” She turned, went in her house, and locked the door.
“Now what?” Jess asked as they pulled away.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Van Slyde said. “We can’t arrest her.”
Jess leaned forward and rested her arms on the seat in front.
“I know there was a baby because Angel and her sister were talking about it, but I don’t know if the baby was Ruby and I don’t know if that woman with frogs in the yard is the sister.”
“They were headed north when they dropped you off on the ground where we found you,” he said. “Did they say anything that would give you an idea where they were headed?”
“Wherever they were going, I think they were going to drive. They talked about planes to Canada and buses and other kinds of escape. It would be hard to get out of here with a baby and without a car, but I know there were bus tickets. The sister had bought them bus tickets.”
“Police are combing the area up and down the coast,” Van Slyde said.
Jess wriggled next to Teddy. Even with the tension, she was so tired she could hardly feel her arms and legs.
“I think they are nearby,” Jess finally said.
“How come?” Teddy asked.
“Because if they have Ruby now and they’re trying to get out of town, they need Pampers and bottles and milk and a pacifier and a lot of stuff they probably don’t have with them. They’ve been driving all night long with me in the car.”
“So you don’t think they had anything for the baby to eat or wear?” Teddy asked.
“I don’t. I saw Angel, I think it was Angel, in the hotel. Then I walked along the curb looking into the windows of the cars. Then the guy called Jack pulled me in the car and Angel was in the backseat. They couldn’t have had time to get food and stuff, right?”
“I suppose,” Teddy said.
“They stopped at the 7-Eleven, where they might have picked up stuff for a baby, but he went to the 7-Eleven because it’s open all night and he needed a thousand dollars for the sister, Maria, and he got it.”
“We’re up-to-date on that,” Van Slyde said. “There was a robbery about an hour and a half ago, and the guy working there was discovered by a customer, tied up. He gave a pretty accurate description of Jack.”
“Santa Monica?” Jess asked.
“Yes, it was in Santa Monica.”
“So what might they do now?” Van Slyde asked.
“If that was Baby Ruby handed through the window and if the Venice lady was Maria, then they’ve got to escape L.A. Except they probably don’t have stuff for the baby, who is probably screaming.”
“I’m sure that’s what they’d have to do,” Teddy said. “But where?”
“So they’d go get stuff for the baby at an all-night CVS,” Jess said.
Jess and Teddy, Van Slyde leading the way, got out of the squad car, parked in a strip mall just under a streetlight, and went into the CVS.
“You two can do the talking but I’m going to be right there.”
The store was empty as far as they could tell. A young man with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail was standing behind the counter.
“We are looking for a short man in a rumpled green shirt who may have been here in the last hour or so,” Jess said.
“We’re a busy place and I don’t have a thing for shirts, so I don’t know.”
“Getting baby stuff?” Teddy asked. “Bottles, Pampers, pacifiers, that sort of thing.”
“Hmmm,” he said, eyeing them with some suspicion. “Who are they? Hollywood?”
“He’s a friend,” Jess said, picking up packages of M&M’s and crackers.
“Not an actor?”
“Actors aren’t short,” Teddy said.
“Actors are short,” he said. “Most of the famous ones. I’m into actors, so I check it out. Five three. Five five. Pretty much my height.”
“So maybe you saw him?” Jess asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “If he’s the guy I think he is, he bought all that stuff. Then he got cigarettes, two packs of them, and milk and a flashlight. He was short and sort of cute, you know.”
“Do you happen to know when he left?” Jess asked. “We’re hoping to catch up with him.”
“Not long ago,” the cashier said. “He dyed his hair blond. I could tell that under the light. Maybe half an hour ago, maybe less. He lit up when he left the store. I was watching.”
Van Slyde paid for the merchandise.
“Policeman’s with you, I guess?” the blond boy asked.
“He’s my father,” Jess said. “We’re catching up with our friend.”
They walked on, passing the patrol car, heading toward a line of parked cars, Van Slyde in the lead again.
“I can’t protect you if I’m walking behind you,” he said when Jess objected.
They stopped under a light and opened the pack of M&M’s, filling their hands.
“I think we ought to be talking to each other like we’re a couple of girls with nothing going on. So while we’re walking we can check whether any of those cars is his.”
“Would you know?”
“The car was small and blue, boxy, the same one that was in the garage. And it smelled.”
“Maybe he’s unpacking the stuff and giving Ruby a bottle,” Teddy said. “Probably Ruby screamed bloody murder and he had to stop and get the bottles at CVS.”
“I hope,” Jess said.
For the first time, Jess was beginning to think they might find Ruby. She would be alive and fine and somewhere close in a car with Jack and Angel.
And they would find her.
Teddy and Jess. SLEUTHS LLC.
“How’s everything at the hotel?”
“Better than you might think,” Teddy said. “It could have been terrible but it’s not.”
“Like how?”
“Mom’s a wreck but she’s not falling apart. Not like you’d imagine. Dad is being very sensible, and Danny is — well, Danny is Danny. And Beet has actually been pretty amazing.”
“And Whee?” Jess asked.
“Whee found the lipstick on her dress.”
“Great,” Jess said.
“She was okay about that. Mostly she’s scared about Ruby.”
“So they hate me.”
“They won’t hate you if you come back to the hotel with Baby Ruby.”
“True,” Jess said, reaching down and taking her sister’s hand. “They will be so excited to see Ruby that they’ll forget what happened.”
The sun was starting to rise, and it was bringing enough light that they could see into the empty parked cars.
“Why do you think these cars have been left here all night?”
“I don’t know,” Jess said, straining her eyes, looking ahead at a small car toward the end of the line of cars. She thought she saw movement. Something in the front seat. She couldn’t make out whether it was a person.
“Teddy.” She grabbed her arm. “Look.”
“Where?”
“Do you see over there in that small car? Something is moving.”
Teddy grabbed her arm back. “In the driver’s seat?”
“Let’s go really slowly and, hush — his window might be open.”
“Oh man,” Teddy said. “I am so scared.”
“I am going first and you can be right behind me,” Van Slyde said.
Softly, moving very slowly, they slipped along the side of the next car, Jess’s hand gripping her sister’s.
Someone in the backseat, a dark form in the shape of a moving pile of laundry, a hand, something in the hand.
Jess closed her eyes tight for a second and the form materialized as a woman. The woman, certainly it was Angel, was holding a baby in one arm, a bottle in the other hand, and the baby — she had to be. A little fluff of hair, her legs kicking and kicking, her little hands reaching around the bottle.
Jack must have seen them coming in his side mirror, seen Van Slyde.
“Shit,” he said.
“Drive,” Angel said from the back. “Please, drive now, Jack.”
But Van Slyde was walking up to the driver’s side, his hand on the open window. He did not take out his gun.
At headquarters — they had to go to headquarters first so they could file a report — Jess held Baby Ruby — kissing her fuzzy hair, her cheeks, her nose, her ears, pushing the nipple of a half-full bottle of formula into her mouth.
“Do you have your cell?” Jess asked. “Call Delilah.”
“I texted,” Teddy said.
The man, Jack, leaned back with his head against the wall, and Angel, sitting a distance away on a bench, was sobbing quietly.
They took a statement from Jess, and another one from Teddy, and sat in the open office while Angel and Jack were questioned.
“Are you married?” Detective Van Slyde asked.
“Married,” the man said.
“Did you take this baby from room 618 in the Brambles Hotel?”
“I did,” he said quietly.
“What were you planning to do with her?”
“Keep her,” Angel said, almost inaudibly. “Keep her for our very own.”
“Keep her? Where were you going to take her?”
“Someplace. We were not sure. Canada. Maybe Nebraska.”
“I had a baby,” the woman said between sobs. “One month ago and it was a baby girl and she died and now she’s in the cemetery and so Jack knew how sad I was and got me another baby. I wanted a baby too much.”
“Maybe you’ll get another baby,” Teddy said quietly.
Jess sat with Ruby, her finger in Ruby’s mouth so she wouldn’t cry.
The woman didn’t speak.
“We are very sorry,” the man said. “It was wrong and I should not have done what I did but Angel was crying all the time —” He threw up his hands. “I couldn’t stand it.”
“I hope that you will let them go home now,” Jess said as she and Teddy were leaving with Van Slyde.
In the squad car, Ruby was whimpering.
“Will you let them go home now?” Jess asked Detective Van Slyde.
He didn’t reply.
“You won’t, right?” Teddy asked.
“Kidnapping is a very serious crime.”
“But they were so sad,” Jess said. “Will they be treated lik
e criminals?”
“They have committed a crime.”
She slid down in her seat in the back, next to Teddy.
“I feel terrible,” she whispered to her sister.
“I know,” Teddy said. “Me too.”
Dawn, the sun rising over the water in the distance, almost fully morning, as the squad pulled into the entrance to the Brambles Hotel.
“So it’s today already,” Teddy said.
“And we’re invited to a wedding,” Jess said, resting her head on her sister’s shoulder.
In 618 at the Brambles, the room was full of women and girls. Even Baby Ruby was on the bed while Beet changed her into her dress for the wedding: little white tights and Mary Jane shoes and a white, smocked dress and a hat that Ruby was not happy to be wearing.
Jess got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around her chest, and Teddy blow-dried her hair.
“You’re going to look beautiful,” Teddy said, and Jess smiled in spite of herself.
“Maybe you’d like to try some of my makeup, Jess?” Whee said, getting ready to shower.
“Jess already tried and rejected your makeup last night, Whee,” Teddy said. “She’s wearing my black mascara and wild-grape blush.”
And everyone laughed. They laughed with relief that Ruby had been lost and found, and with surprising happiness that they were all together in Los Angeles for Whee’s wedding and that they actually loved one another better than they knew.
Even Whee, who had moved the seed pearls on the bodice of her wedding dress so the tiny stain of lipstick was invisible.
Her family had been in the room when Jess and Teddy arrived with Baby Ruby. They sat on the bed side by side and there was a rush for the baby — Beet and Danny and Delilah. Aldie held back.
Beet took her, put her on her back, and removed her onesie and diapers to check for damage.
“Well, thank god, thank god,” Beet said, pressing Ruby close to her chest. “I thought …”
“Don’t even mention what you thought, Beet,” Whee said. “We know. We all thought.”
“I am so sorry,” Jess said.
