by Meg O'Brien
Sol looks like a sad puppy who’s displeased his favorite owner. “Again, I apologize, Abby, for not telling you this sooner. I suppose I’ve been waiting for the right moment.”
“Well, there’s no time like the present. You say he has another lawyer?”
Sol gives a shrug.
“Don’t tell me,” I say. “Paul Ryan?”
“You got it. Ryan, it seems, has made some sort of deal with the devil. That devil being Jeffrey, of course.”
“Holy shit, Sol.” Now I don’t know what to think. Except that none of it can be good.
“Sol—what do you know about Rio?”
This time there is a small silence.
“What about Rio?” he says at last.
“Big white house out near Sao Conrado? Land of champagne, caviar and dreams?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen it,” he says cautiously.
“Well, I have, so don’t go all lawyerish on me. Do you know who’s been staying there?”
“No, Abby, I do not. But since you know about the house, I suppose I can tell you I handled that sale. Jeffrey said he was buying it for you as an anniversary present next year. He asked me not to mention it to you.”
I can’t help laughing. “You’re kidding. We’re getting divorced in a month, and that’s really what he said?”
Sol makes a what-can-I-do gesture, turning his hands palm up. “Naturally, I didn’t believe it for a minute. But that’s what Jeffrey said, and I had no choice but to accept his explanation. Meanwhile, he’s been renting it out, I understand.”
“Renting it out?”
“That’s what Jeffrey said. Why, Abby? What’s wrong?”
“Hell, Sol, what’s wrong is that he’s been hiding the Ryans down there! He told them it was for their own and Justin’s good, but it’s my bet he doesn’t want them around right now.”
Sol looks both shocked and perplexed. “Why wouldn’t Jeffrey want the Ryans around? And what do you mean about Justin’s good?”
“Dammit, Sol, you don’t know that Justin’s been kidnapped?”
He swings forward, the chair hitting his desk with a thud. “My God, no! Where did you hear such a thing?”
“From none other than the United States Secret Service. And I didn’t just hear it, my friend. I’ve been gifted with a photograph of Justin bound to a chair and gagged.”
His face turns ashen, and the shock in his voice seems authentic. “Oh, Abby. Oh, that poor, poor boy. I haven’t seen anything in the news, and Jeffrey never breathed a word. When did this happen?”
“Three months ago. July, to be exact.”
“Three months ago? But that’s impossible! I’ve never heard a thing about an investigation.”
“Well, now, Sol—about that. Jeffrey convinced the Ryans not to tell anyone, even the police. He told them President Chase put him in charge of the investigation, and that he’d be a mediator between them and the FBI. Then he hustled them off to his little hideaway in Sao Conrado. Meanwhile, apparently, no one’s been looking for Justin.”
“But that’s appalling! I don’t understand why Jeffrey would do such a thing.”
“Try this on for size, then. I haven’t any proof, but I suspect Chase is Justin’s biological father. I think either he told Jeffrey to hush the kidnapping up in order to keep the paternity question from coming out, or Jeffrey decided to do that on his own.”
Sol rubs his brow with a meaty hand. “Abby, I’m very sorry, but I’m having a hard time with this. Let me think.”
I give him a few minutes, and while he thinks, I am wondering how Jeffrey could have kept all this from his lawyer—and why. Was he afraid that if he told Sol about his machinations concerning the Ryans, Sol would have tried to talk him out of it? In fact, with an innocent child’s life involved, did he think that Sol might well have turned him in—client confidentiality or no?
“There’s something about this that doesn’t feel right,” Sol says at last.
“Hell, there’s a lot that doesn’t feel right.”
“No, bear with me, Abby. I understand that if it came out just before the election that Justin was Marti Bright’s and the president’s illegitimate son, it could be an embarrassment. The media would jump on it. They’d have a field day—especially given that the boy’s been kidnapped. But Abby, Chase’s relationship with Marti, if there was one, had to be fif-teen years ago. He wasn’t president then, and he’s never been charged with, lied about, or denied paternity. As I understand, Marti never revealed to anyone the name of the boy’s father. Isn’t that right?”
“It is, as far as I know.”
“So it’s only supposition on your part that Chase is the boy’s father?”
“Yes, but it makes a kind of sense, don’t you think? Sol, when Marti was six months pregnant she hid out in a cabin in Maine, loaned to her by a ‘friend.’ Chase has a cabin in Maine, and Marti traveled with him that year. Furthermore, when Justin was kidnapped, Chase was the first person she called for help.”
“I suppose it does fit, at least on the surface. When you add to that the fact of Jeffrey’s hiding the kidnapping, even quelling an investigation just before the election…yes, if that’s what he did, it could fit. But shit, Abby, there has to be more. Chase’s approval ratings are sky-high, even more so than Clinton’s were at the height of his impeachment troubles. I don’t think the public would be unduly upset if they learned about an illegitimate child. Especially if Chase never knew of the child and never denied him.”
“I don’t know, Sol. Mr. Squeaky-Clean?”
“Even so, I know enough about politics to believe he’d overcome this somehow. No. There has to be something else.”
I sigh. “To tell you the truth, Sol, I don’t much care what Jeffrey’s done, or Chase has done, or why. I just want to get Justin back. Unless…”
“Unless it’s too late,” he says heavily.
“Yes,” I say, steadying my voice. “And even then, I want to know.”
“Abby, of course I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Sol says briskly. “Tell me what you need.”
I pull the photograph of Justin from my purse.
“You have a friend who’s a photographer for the San Francisco Police Department. I want him to blow this up and tell me what he can about the background. Where the photograph might have been taken, whether he can come up with the specific kind of Polaroid camera that was used and when. Anything that might lead me to the kidnapper.”
Sol takes the photograph, looks at it and pales. “Dear God, Abby. This does look bad. Where did you get it?”
“I’d rather not say.”
He shakes his head, making a clucking sound with his tongue. “The poor kid. How could anyone—”
Breaking off, he looks at me. “You say the Secret Service is looking into this. Surely it’s time to bring in the FBI and the local police, regardless of what that might do to the president’s reelection.”
“One would think so, Sol. Funny that no one’s done that, wouldn’t you say?”
“Actually, I would call it damned suspicious.”
“Well, there is Jeffrey’s explanation to the Ryans—that the kidnapper threatened Justin’s life if anyone went to the authorities.”
Sol shakes his head and hands the photograph back to me. “I’ll call the photogropher right away.”
“Thanks. And Sol? I’m not letting this picture out of my hands. I want to be there when he works on it. I’ll fly up to San Francisco, and I want to do it as soon as possible. In the morning, in fact.”
“I’ll do my best. One question, Abby. How come you didn’t ask Ben to do this?”
“Ben?”
“Well, he does have access to the same facilities as my colleague in San Francisco.”
“That’s true. But Ben’s pretty busy these days.”
“Even so—”
“Even so, can we leave it at that?”
He shrugs. “I’d feel better if somebody like Ben was helping you
out with this.”
“I wouldn’t, Sol. And that’s the hell of it.”
Sol growls something unintelligible and picks up the phone. “I’ll call you when I’ve got a time set up.”
“Thanks. Or I’ll call you if I’m not home, okay?”
He gives me a look. “And if you’re not home, where precisely will you be on a night like this?”
“Following my nose,” I say.
It’s raining worse than ever when I leave Sol’s office. He tries to get me to call a cab, but I’ve had too many bad experiences with cabs around here. Sometimes I’ll get one that’s great, but the next time they stand me up and I’m late for a plane.
Besides, I doubt a cab would take me all the way out to The Prayer House on a night like this.
But will the nuns let me in? How late do they stay up at The Prayer House? And will Sister Helen even talk to me?
Well, there’s no turning back. My only alternative at this point is to go home and just sit there all night, staring at that hideous photograph of Justin. I have to know how Sister Helen got it, and if she’s had any other contact from the kidnapper. So far as I know, this is the only word anyone’s had since Justin first disappeared.
There is a point in the road up to The Prayer House where it narrows and turns to dirt for a mile or so. When I come to it I throw the four-wheel drive on and let it carry me through the mud and small rocks that have fallen from the hillsides. The engine growls, but the tranny does its job. Tree limbs, now heavy with rain, scrape the sides and roof of the Hornet, and my headlights reach ahead only ten feet or so.
I try not to think what would happen if I got stuck out here in a flash flood. When El Niño hit, entire roads were washed away. Hillsides collapsed and minor creeks became raging floods. It wasn’t unusual for cars, and their drivers, to be carried away.
Rounding a bend, I come within a few feet of crashing into a huge boulder that’s fallen onto the road. Gripping the steering wheel hard, I press the brakes lightly and swerve. The Jeep’s right-hand wheels climb a small embankment, while those on the left dig into mud only inches from the boulder. The Jeep turns partially on its side. It teeters, wobbles, and the right side raises into the air. My side window is now only inches from the boulder and in another moment will strike it. If the glass breaks, my face could be pulverized.
I grip the steering wheel harder, as if by sheer force I could make the Jeep revert to an even keel. My knuckles turn white, and my heart is in my throat.
“Dammit! Dammit! For God’s sake, help!”
The Jeep sways another moment or two, then sinks back with all four wheels safely on the ground. I am past the boulder. The road ahead is clear.
I sit with my foot on the brake, dazed, wondering how I remembered that anger in a prayer always works best for me.
There are only a handful of lights on in the residential wings of The Prayer House. I ring the bell at the main door and wait. It takes Sister Pauline several minutes to get to the door, and when she opens it, expressing surprise to see me at this hour, I see she is dressed in a black bathrobe, with the kind of white, nighttime wrap around her head that I remember from Joseph and Mary. When Marti and I were postulants we swiped all we could find once from the laundry and hid them, just so we could see what the nuns looked like at night with their heads shaved. We hid in a corner of the hallway to watch them as they made their way to the bathrooms for their nightly ablutions—and after all that we were both surprised and disappointed to see that their hair wasn’t shaved, as rumor had it, only clipped.
How young and naive we were, I think as I follow Sister Pauline down the corridor. Did Marti still have an element of that naïveté? Was she all too easily overcome and murdered?
I don’t see how that’s possible, and for the first time the thought comes to me: It must have been someone she knew, then. She would have been more cautious, more self-protective with a stranger.
Has anyone else thought of this?
Yes, of course. The police, and the Secret Service. That’s why they questioned me from the first. Marti was murdered by someone she knew.
It fits. It all fits with Jeffrey having done it.
Sister Pauline takes me to a small room with a roaring fire and asks me to wait while she sees if Helen is up. “I can’t take no for an answer this time,” I tell her. “It’s urgent. Could you please give this to her for me?”
I hand her a note I’ve written in the car. It says: I know where Justin is.
It’s a trick, of course, and for that I feel bad. But I can’t afford for her to snub me at this point.
Sister Pauline takes the note, and after what seems a long time, she comes back into the room wearing a raincoat and galoshes. “I’m sorry, but it took me forever to find her,” she says in an out-of-breath voice. “You’ll never guess where.”
“Well, outside, I’d guess, from the look of you.”
“Precisely! At this hour! She was picking vegetables for her soups tomorrow, she said—by flash-light, no less—and when I remarked that this might seem an odd time to do that, she snapped at me. ‘I’ve got to get to them before the storm ruins them all,’ she said as if I were a perfect idiot not to have thought of that!”
Sister Pauline takes her raincoat off and shakes it. Sitting on a chair, she removes her galoshes, which are thick with mud. “Poor Helen. I swear she’s getting worse every day.”
“Do you think it’s her age?” I ask.
Sister Pauline shakes her head. “I don’t know. She’s only been like this since summer.”
She holds the muddy galoshes up and looks at them despairingly. “Well, I shouldn’t let her nightly meanderings get to me. After all the poor woman’s been through, it’s amazing she manages to get around at all.”
“Being out in this rain can’t be good for her asthma, though,” I say. “Where is she now?”
“She read your note and said she’d be right in. The weather’s getting worse by the moment, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we lost some of our roof tonight, not to mention a road or two.”
She looks at me worriedly. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but I really don’t think you should try to drive back tonight. We have a couple of guest rooms for people who need to stay over.”
I’m not certain how I feel about that. It does occur to me, however, that I could keep a closer eye on my old teacher if I were here.
“May I decide after I’ve talked to Sister Helen?”
“Of course. I’m going to make myself some tea. How about if I get you a cup? I’ll try to hurry Helen along while I’m in the kitchen.”
“That would be great. Thank you, Sister.”
She hustles off, taking the raincoat and muddy boots. I stand and walk to the fire, extending my hands for warmth. I can hear the rain, now, beating on the roof. If this keeps up, the hills will be green in less than a week.
And if the Carmel River rises too much tonight, roads could be out all over the valley.
It seems an interminable time before Sister Helen appears. Her old brown pants are wet to the thigh and caked with mud. Her gray hair is plastered to her skull, and she is wheezing.
“What do you want?” she asks belligerently. She holds up the note, waving it around. “What is this about?”
“It’s about Justin,” I say, matching her tone. “And that little present you left on my mantel.”
“You said you know where he is.” She narrows her eyes. “How can you? What do you know?”
“First, I want you to tell me what you know, Sister Helen. Or Helen, I suppose I should call you now. After all, you aren’t a nun anymore, and you sure as hell don’t behave like one.”
She grabs the back of a chair, and her wheeze grows louder. “It’s none of your business how I behave. I did more than anyone for that boy, more than you, and even more than his own mother!”
“You mean Marti?”
She falls silent.
“Are you talking about Marti,” I press, “or
Mary Ryan? What is it about the Ryans? What did they do to Justin?”
Her eyes narrow again. She looks at the note, which she still clutches in a hand that’s grown blue from the cold.
“It’s a lie, isn’t it?” she says. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know where he is.”
“No, to be honest, I don’t. But I’m not going to give up looking for him, if it takes my last breath.”
“Well, it could, young lady. It very well could.”
She takes a step toward me, and the expression on her face saddens me. I see her as she must have been on the streets, raging inside at the Church she felt had let her down, determined not to let another soul harm her. She must have learned from experience to defend herself and even to attack if she felt threatened.
“Don’t try to frighten me, Helen,” I say, not backing off. “I want to know how you got that photograph, and I want to know if you’ve heard from the kidnapper.”
“If I’ve heard?” She laughs, a dull, bitter sound. “You’d have been more likely to have heard from the kidnapper, not me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, now, I’m just a poor helpless woman, stuck here in this house. Not like you, little Miss Fauntleroy. You can go flying around anywhere you want, at the drop of a hat. You do have all the money in the world, don’t you?”
Rio. She means Rio. What does she know?
“Stop playing games,” I say angrily. “Tell me what you’re talking about. And for God’s sake, tell me where that photograph came from!”
“Bothers you, does it?” she says waspishly. “Well, that’s what you did—you and that evil friend of yours. You’re the ones who strapped him to that chair! You’re the ones who left that poor child to suffer alone.”
“What evil friend? Are you talking about Marti? She loved her baby! She gave him up because she loved him.”
“Then why did she—”
Sister Helen clamps her mouth shut.
“Why did she do what? What is it you think she did?”
