Worrying about someone else’s kid was a hell of a way to earn a living.
The radio weather report predicted ninety-degree heat and humidity to match. A few weeks ago Sohegan had endured just such a day, and it had been unrelievedly awful. A local pilot who ate breakfast at the Mecca had once told her the air above the narrow Ondaiga Valley was a hazardous riot of strong currents. Down below, however, in Sohegan, not a twig or leaf ever seemed to stir, leaving the town to simmer in sultry, stagnant air. Sometimes Gwen would look up at the clouds moving quickly across the sky and marvel that not a whiff of current made it down below.
The phone rang just as she was leaving to walk Jimmy to the bus.
“It’s Nick Lawrence. Tess isn’t feeling well. Priscilla’s bringing her to the doctor this morning. But I’d like you to stop by anyway to take care of her laundry and…and to straighten up the nursery.”
“I’ll be there at nine,” she said. “What’s the matter with Tess?”
Click.
She stood by the phone, hostage to a dozen questions.
“Mom, come on!” Jimmy was at the front door. “I’ll miss the bus.”
“I don’t like this,” she said when she joined him in the hallway.
“Like what?” They headed down the front walk. “Like what, Mom?”
“Like this heat! It’s only the middle of June and we’re already on our second heat wave.”
“Yeah, it sucks.”
She turned quickly to him but felt unable, just then, to deal with this latest addition to his vocabulary.
At 9:00 on the dot she punched in the access code at Penaquoit. Driving slowly toward the house, she noticed a filigree of brown covering the vast front lawn; the long branches on the massive elms that lined the driveway looked unusually listless. How many weeks had it been since the last rain?
She walked to the back door, slid her key into the lock, and nearly sprained her wrist trying to turn it. Damn, it didn’t work. She tried again, checked the key, then tried a third time. It still wouldn’t turn, but the door swung open anyway, almost taking her right arm with it.
“New lock.” Rosa Piacevic turned and headed through the pantry toward the kitchen. Gwen wrested the ill-fitting key from the lock and followed her.
“Why?”
“You think they tell me?” Rosa wiped a sponge across a spotless counter. “They tell Mett to put new lock on yesterday night. I don’t know how come.”
“How’s Tess? Mrs. Lawrence said—”
“I clean up the pool house now.” Rosa furrowed her browless forehead and headed for the back door. “That’s what she want me to do, clean out the pool house.”
Gwen went up to the nursery. The crib blanket was in a jumble at one end, along with two of Tess’s favorite stuffed animals. One sniff told her that the diaper pail hadn’t been emptied since she’d left last Friday. A few toys were scattered on the pale blue carpet.
“Good morning.”
She spun around.
“Sorry to startle you.” Nick Lawrence stood in the doorway, wearing a wrinkled white T-shirt, blue running shorts, no shoes. His hair, though neatly combed, had an unwashed sheen. He looked exhausted.
“That’s okay,” Gwen said. “Where’s Tess?”
“Priscilla took her to the doctor. They’ll be back around lunchtime.”
Three hours with the pediatrician? “What’s wrong with her?”
“You know these summer colds…” He shrugged and offered a shallow smile. “Why don’t you straighten up, take care of her laundry…you can go home when you’re finished.” He started to leave.
“I don’t mind staying,” she said. “I’ve nursed Jimmy through many a summer cold.”
He turned back. “Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. Priscilla gets pretty possessive about Tess when she isn’t feeling well. Has to be with her nonstop.” Though he managed to say this with a straight face, he turned away as soon as he was through.
“You’re sure she’s okay?” Gwen asked.
He stopped and turned back. “This place is…it’s so dead without Tess.” He glanced around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. “Penaquoit isn’t exactly a warm place, I realize that. But just knowing that she’s here…”
“She’ll be—”
“Listen!” He touched his ear with an index finger. “Perfect silence. When Tess is here, even when she’s sleeping, it’s never this quiet.”
To her the house always seemed eerily silent, whether Tess was around or not.
“I can’t practice when she’s not here,” he said. “The music doesn’t sound right, somehow.”
“She’ll be back in a few hours.”
His head snapped up.
“Of course. Sorry to disturb your work. There’s a pile of Tess’s clothes in the laundry room. Once those are done you can leave.”
As soon as he left, Gwen set about straightening up the room, starting with the crib. She turned to start picking up the toys on the floor and caught a glimpse through the window of Russell Cunningham, carrying a large duffel bag across the lawn. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth.
About fifty yards from the house he stopped and put the bag down. He waited a few seconds, breathing hard, before picking it up and going on. Now she saw Mett Piacevic heading toward him, shouting something she couldn’t hear through the closed window but assumed to be an offer of help. When the old man noticed Mett he shook his head and kept walking. Mett stood in the middle of the lawn, watching, as Cunningham reached the house and entered through the sunroom door.
Two visits in two days from the old man after a month of no appearances at all? Strange. And what was in the bag that was so precious he wouldn’t let Mett Piacevic help him carry it?
She finished tidying up the nursery and headed for the laundry room, as usual taking the main stairs. As she crossed the foyer she heard voices from the sunroom: first Nick’s, then the old man’s.
“Fuck the police!” the old man shouted. Through a window she saw the red sports car pull up. Priscilla got out and headed for the front door. Where was Tess?
The laundry room was one of a series of chambers off the kitchen; there was also a huge pantry, an unused servants’ dining room, two storage rooms stocked with a bomb shelter’s worth of canned food and paper goods, and two large closets. The laundry room was a big, old-fashioned space, obviously designed for a time when a household like Penaquoit employed a full-time laundress. Three long fluorescent lights were suspended over a large porcelain sink, a giant pants presser she’d seen Rosa Piacevic use to iron Nick’s khakis and jeans, a late-model washer and dryer, and two long trestle tables for folding clothes.
Next to the washing machine was a small pile of Tess’s things. As Gwen crossed the linoleum floor she heard the phone ring from the kitchen. It was picked up before the first ring had ended. She began to sort the clothes by color, pushing aside a steam iron and the baby monitor to make room for the two piles. A lot of laundry for three days, she thought.
She loaded Tess’s whites into the washer, poured in detergent, and closed the lid. She’d get Tess’s lunch ready while waiting for the first load to finish. Three hours with a pediatrician could make anybody hungry.
Gwen entered the kitchen a few minutes later but stopped when she heard a crackling sound from back in the laundry room. She went back and saw the tiny green light flickering on the baby monitor. Someone must be talking in the nursery. Was Tess back already? Gwen lifted it and tried to raise the volume, but it was already turned up.
“Two o’clock, Route Twenty-four.” Nick’s voice, tense and nervous. “He said to bring a cell phone. I gave him the number.”
“Where on Twenty-four?” Russell Cunningham was practically shouting. “It’s probably fifty miles long, for God’s sake.”
“He just said Route Twenty-four, Daddy.” Priscilla’s voice was calm. “I guess he’ll call us on the way.”
“This is getting ridiculous,” Nick said.
“I’m calling the police.”
“No!” Russell Cunningham’s roar sent a shudder through the monitor in Gwen’s hand. “I won’t let the police screw things up again. Everything is working out. I have the money, he…or she or it, who can tell with that—what did you call it?”
“A voice synthesizer,” Nick said.
“Right, that voice called exactly on time. We don’t need the police. Once we have Tess back, then we’ll talk about calling the authorities.”
Gwen pressed the monitor to her ear.
“If something happens to her…” Nick’s voice was higher than usual. “She asked for Gwen,” he said, sounding almost wistful. “Tess asked for Gwen on the phone.”
“Our sitter,” Priscilla added in a deflated voice.
“You mean to tell me she asked for the baby-sitter?” Russell said.
Gwen felt a rush of anxiety. She asked for the baby-sitter.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Nick said.
“Leave it to me,” the old man said. “This is a simple business transaction. If we uphold our end of the bargain, we have every reason to expect that—”
“Is that all you ever think about, business?”
“Someone has to. We can’t all sit around every day tickling the ivories, now, can we?”
“It’s called practicing.”
“Practicing for what? I don’t see any recording offers flooding in. You haven’t performed or recorded a goddamn thing since you married my—”
“Stop it, both of you!” Priscilla’s voice was deep and disdainful. “Save it for later, after Tess is back. Right now we have work to do.” She sounded tense but composed, as if giving last-minute instructions to a catering staff. “Have you told Gwen to leave?”
“I told her she could go after the laundry was done,” Nick said. “She should be through by noon at the latest.”
“I still don’t know why she had to come at all,” the old man growled.
Gwen heard Nick sigh. “Letting her get suspicious wouldn’t help in the least.”
“As it is, she may talk,” Priscilla said. “To the shopkeepers, her former colleagues at that diner.”
Colleagues? Despite everything, Gwen had to smile.
“Better to keep her here as long as possible,” Nick said. “I told her Tess was with you, at the doctor’s.”
“Good. And the lock?”
“Mett changed it last night. I told him I’d lost my key and had to break in through the window.”
“He bought that?” the old man said contemptuously.
“He seemed to,” Priscilla said. “Rosa suspects something, though. She’s getting that refugee look again.”
“So long as she keeps quiet until we have Tess back,” Russell Cunningham said.
“We’ll take my Range Rover,” Priscilla said. “Nick, I think you should wait here, in case there are any last-minute changes. Daddy and I will—”
“What?”
“Daddy and I will make the transfer.”
“If you think for one minute that I’m going to wait here while my daughter is—”
“Our daughter.”
“I’m coming with you, Priss. Your father can wait here.”
“The hell I will! That’s my five million in the duffel bag. I go where it goes.”
A long silence, punctuated by audible breathing. Gwen pictured them watching each other, assessing their relative positions.
“We’ll all go, then,” Priscilla said.
The two men mumbled their assent.
“Where were you just now?” Nick asked a moment later.
“Out,” Priscilla answered.
“Out where?”
“I needed to get away for a bit. I went for a drive.”
“A two-hour drive?”
“She doesn’t need your permission,” the old man snarled.
“I’m going to check on Gwen,” Nick said.
“I think she can manage without you,” Priscilla said.
“What’s that supposed to—oh, fuck it.” Footsteps, leaving the room.
Gwen flicked off the monitor and was hiding it in a drawer under the counter when Nick entered the room.
“How’s the laundry coming?”
She had her back to him as she transferred the white clothes from the washer to the dryer.
“Fine.”
“When you’re done, you can go home.” He sounded tentative.
She nodded, still not facing him. “Is everything all right?”
“Of course, why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
He walked to the window and looked out. “Going to be a hot one today.”
Gwen said nothing.
“Did you always know you wanted a child?” he asked.
Her hands froze for a moment inside the dryer.
“No,” she said softly. In fact, the pregnancy had been an unpleasant surprise, coming long after the marriage had deteriorated into angry silences punctuated by infrequent sexual skirmishes. She’d thought about ending the pregnancy every day until it was too late.
“But once he was born you felt differently, right?”
“I never wanted to be a mother, and that didn’t change even after Jimmy was born.”
“But you—”
“But I knew right away, the moment I saw him, that I wanted to be Jimmy’s mother.”
“Destiny,” he said softly.
She shook her head. “I believe in biology.”
The crumbling marriage, the virtually fail-safe diaphragm, the canceled appointments at the abortion clinic…Jimmy had willed his way into life. Maybe destiny was the right word. Jimmy was her fate, and she his.
“I always wanted a child,” he said, still facing the window. “I always knew it wouldn’t…couldn’t end with me.”
“It?”
Their eyes met.
“You have a way of seeing through me,” he said. She shook her head. “No, you do. It’s not what you say so much as how you look at me. You see things.”
She turned and resumed folding. Though her back was to him and he was wearing sneakers, she knew the second he left the room.
Chapter 8
Alone in the laundry room, she felt so shaky she had to sit down. Someone had taken Tess and the Lawrences weren’t calling the police.
She tried to piece together what she knew. Tess had been gone since at least yesterday morning. The kidnapper had broken into the house through the back door, smashing a window to unlock it from the inside. The Lawrences had been contacted at least once yesterday, when they learned that the ransom was five million dollars. The transfer was to take place that afternoon, somewhere along Route 24. They—
The dryer buzzed. She unloaded it, then transferred the other pile of clothes. She started folding the laundry, clumsily, her hands still shaking.
Should she call the police herself? She smoothed one of Tess’s white cotton T-shirts with her palm, then held it to her face.
“Nothing smells clean like the laundry.”
Gwen spun around to find Rosa Piacevic staring at her. How long had she been there?
“Is Tess back yet?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
Rosa shook her head, somewhat mournfully, and turned to leave.
“Wait.” She turned back. “Did Mr. Cunningham have some kind of trouble with the Sohegan police?”
“Mr. Cunningham?”
“I don’t mean legal trouble, it’s just that he seems very hostile toward them.” Rosa seemed to consider her for a beat, then frowned and turned to leave.
“Please,” Gwen said. “It’s important.”
“Why important?” Rosa pivoted slowly around.
“I’m not sure, but—”
“If Mr. Cunningham is hostile at the police, why not? After that business with his son.” Another mournful shake of her head.
“Mr. Cunningham had a son?”
“Russell the Third, called Russ, sometimes Trip. A year older
than Priscilla. A sweet boy, but trouble. They sent him to boarding school, very expensive place, but he had the eye for the local girls.” Rosa pursed her lips.
“What happened to him?”
“He comes home for Christmas holiday, twenty years ago, and one night he drinks too much with a girl, a Sohegan girl. They go for a drive; then a policeman, he sees the blue Lincoln Continental on the wrong side of the road. He put on his flashing light, but Russ won’t pull over. He was not for nothing a Cunningham.” Rosa smiled sadly. “They have a chase, then Russ and the girl go over the side of a hill, both dying right away.”
“And Mr. Cunningham blames the police for his son’s death?”
“He won’t let them on the property, not even when we have a break-in.”
Rosa turned slowly in the direction of the rear door, then back to Gwen.
“What about his wife?”
“Maxine Cunningham never gets over her son’s death. Never leaves her house except to go to church on Sunday. She reads her Bible all the day long.” Rosa stepped closer to Gwen. “And she drinks. Too much, I think.”
“How sad.”
“The old man, he keeps a pistol by his bed. I know this because I clean there, next door, once a week. And he got one for Priscilla, for her bedroom, too. ‘We defend ourselves now,’ I heared him tell her.” Rosa shook her head again and left the room. “Too many guns in this place,” she muttered as she crossed the kitchen.
Gwen folded the remaining items and carried the two piles of clothes up to the nursery, taking the back stairs for a change. Nick had been right: the house was unusually quiet. If only a breeze were blowing…
She glanced down the long second-floor hallway at the closed door to the master bedroom. Priscilla was behind that door; perhaps Nick had joined her there. Was the old man still with them? She entered the nursery and stopped short.
Russell Cunningham sat on the wicker rocking chair next to Tess’s crib. His lips were slightly parted, as if he was about to say something. His eyes were wide open but unblinking. For a moment she thought he’d died right there in the nursery rocker.
He was the grandson of the founder of T & H, a product of boarding school and the Ivy League—everyone in town knew every detail of the family’s story. Yet Russell Cunningham looked anything but pampered. His face had the deep creases and ruddy coloring of a man who worked out of doors, or sweated over heavy machinery in a hot factory.
Disillusions Page 6
