I took it out slowly and sat at his desk to open it. Inside were more news clippings, a theological debate printed in a religious newspaper, and more stories on so-called miraculous healing, some of which I had seen on the Internet. Almost lost between the pages of these documents was a slip of paper with what looked like a telephone number. I recognized the area code. It was outside of Phoenix. Whose number was it? Could it be hers?
I sat there for nearly an hour, reading all the information John had collected, hoping that something would provide a concrete lead about Mary’s abduction and what exactly John was searching for. I kept returning to the Arizona phone number. Why was it here with these papers? Was this how to reach Sister Alice Francis? If I called her, would I spook her and drive Mary even further underground? But maybe if I did speak to her, I would learn something specific that would end this agony.
Before I could reach for the phone, it rang. This time, I wouldn’t pretend not to be home. If it was John calling from the FBI office, I was determined to ask him why he kept the file and whose number it was.
It was Sam. He sounded like someone who had lost all he owned and loved. “Grace, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“What is it?”
My whole body tightened like the body of someone who was about to be hit and hit hard with a belt or a whip. I could feel myself closing, my whole body turning into a fist. Mary, I thought. Something terrible has happened to her. Margaret was right. Satan was out there walking the earth.
“I just came out of a meeting with my chief. I have to leave the case. I’m on suspension,” Sam said.
I felt both relief and terrible disappointment. “Why?”
“John’s lawyer made a formal complaint about me and you. David Joseph at the FBI is very upset. My chief almost exploded in front of me. He was that angry. Everyone knows about us, and now it looks like I am deliberately trying to implicate John to further my relationship with you. It’s a bite on the ass, all right. I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I should have known better.”
“I had the feeling John knew about us. I could hear it in his voice when he left a message on the answering machine just a short while ago, telling me he was going into the FBI office. If he knew about us, why would he keep that to himself until now? How did he find out?”
“I don’t know, Grace. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not even supposed to make this phone call. I’m making it from the only pay phone I know nearby. That’s how paranoid I’ve got to be and you’ve go to be. Maybe you should go visit your parents for a few days. It’s a crazy world. People do crazy things. I’m not there to protect you.”
“I can’t believe John would be violent,” I said.
“Everyone who is ever questioned about neighbors who went on a rampage says the same damn thing, Grace. If anything happened to you, I’d . . . I don’t know what I’d do.”
“I’m not thinking about myself right now, Sam. I searched John’s office. He has a file on this Sister Alice Francis,” I said. “News clippings, articles in religious digests, articles about miraculous healing. I’ve been sitting here reading it all, trying to find some clue. I did find a slip of paper with an Arizona phone number. Maybe it’s hers. Maybe if you—”
“I can’t do anything about it now. You’ll have to call David Joseph. Any evidence I hand over or even mention could be discredited. There’s a pretty obvious conflict of interest here. I mean, everything is now on the table, even that you . . .”
“Even that I what? Say it!”
“Even that you or you and I might have arranged your own daughter’s kidnapping.”
“What?”
“Maybe you’re trying to frame John. Maybe I’m part of it. Don’t you see?”
“This is insane.”
“Of course it is, but I don’t doubt some idiot will propose it as a possibility. I’m so sorry. I still think you should go stay with your parents for a while.”
“I can’t go to my parents’,” I said. “I couldn’t deal with their hysteria about it, and I would feel I was letting Mary down if I just went into hiding, Sam. I’m going to go over to see Margaret. She’s been a rock of support for me. She’ll be just as upset about all this.”
“Just call David.”
“You just said I could even be a suspect in my own daughter’s kidnapping.”
“No one has anything but conjecture.”
“Conjecture? Tell me something, Sam. If they think everything you say and do is tainted because of our affair, why won’t they think the same of me?”
“There’s a better chance they’ll believe you because you’re her mother.”
“So I go and have an affair with the detective investigating her disappearance and corrupt all the evidence? Some mother,” I said dryly. “At the least, I’m sure they have a very bad impression of me.”
“Grace, please.”
“Okay. I’ll get Margaret, and we’ll call David Joseph. She can explain more about this Sister Alice Francis thing.”
“I wish I could be there with you. I’m sorry.”
“Sam, if you say that one more time, I’ll clobber you with the phone.”
I thought he laughed. It might have been a sob, but I didn’t wait to find out. I hung up and glanced at the slip of paper with the Arizona telephone number on it. Without hesitation now, I lifted the receiver and tapped it out. Almost immediately, the voice of a recorded operator came on stating that the number was no longer in service. No forwarding number had been left.
Frustrated and with the file in hand, I went out of the house and over to Margaret’s. There was only a single lamp on in the living room, but I could see that the kitchen was well lit. I pressed the door buzzer and waited. She didn’t come, but when I reached to press it again, I listened first. I could hear the recording of Latin hymns sung by monks. She loved playing them in the evening. I recognized one of her favorites, Gloria in Excelsis Deo. It begins with words that the angels sang when the birth of Christ was announced to shepherds in Luke 2:14. Margaret had explained it to both me and Mary so many times we could recognize and recite it at the drop of a hat.
I thought she was playing it rather loudly tonight and that was why she didn’t hear the door buzzer, which wasn’t very loud anyway. Her house was actually fifteen years older than ours, and as John was fond of telling her, it desperately needed to be renovated. Margaret would just laugh and say, “Just like you Americans. You want to renovate everything, especially your faces.”
I recalled how that brought a particularly crimson blush to John’s face. He was not a fan of any plastic surgery except for reconstruction after an accident or operation. Margaret was the only one he permitted to tease him, however.
I tried knocking and then walked around to see if I could get her attention through a window. She wasn’t in the living room, and from what I could see, she wasn’t in the kitchen, either. I saw that she had a pot on the stove and a setting on the table, but it didn’t look as if the range was lit under the pot. I went directly to her back door. I didn’t expect it to be unlocked, but to my surprise, it was. Margaret was too damn trusting, I thought, and then immediately thought, who was I to say that about anyone now?
“Margaret?” I called from the opened door. There was no response. Now that I was in the opened doorway, I realized that the music was very, very loud. I entered and closed the door behind me. “Margaret?”
The back door was right behind the kitchen. I realized that I hadn’t been in Margaret’s two-story house for some time now. She had tried to have John and me over for dinner a few times, but John always had some conflict, or I wasn’t up to it. Relentless, she would simply bring her home-cooked meals over to us.
As I passed through her kitchen and into the short hallway that went by her small dining room to the living room and the stairway, I thought that John had been right
about the house. It had a very tired, worn look. The rugs were thin, the molding nicked and stained, the wallpaper faded. Maybe with it in that condition, Margaret was reminded of her old home in Ireland.
“We don’t fear old things and age like you Americans do,” she would say. “A modern cooker isn’t going to make your food taste better if the cook doesn’t have a well-tried recipe, you know. How many Colonial homes get ripped down to make way for the chicken coops you call condos or what’s that other word, projects?”
John would shake his head at her but usually not disagree too strongly.
I started up the stairway. The steps creaked, and I remembered her telling us that she liked them creaking so she could hear the devil if he dared to come up while she was asleep.
“Margaret?” I called as I ascended. Damn, that music is loud.
I paused in the hallway. Other than the flickering light that appeared to be coming from candles lit in the last room down, the hall and the other rooms were dark.
“Margaret?”
I stepped forward slowly.
Where was she?
When I reached the last room and turned in the doorway, I felt my heart bob under my breast like a yo-yo. Around a nine-by-twelve photograph of Mary in a gilded frame was a semicircle of burning white votive candles, the sort usually placed before statues of saints. But the large framed photograph at the center wasn’t the only picture of Mary. There were a half-dozen on either side of the semicircle, all in frames and hung on the walls. Over a maple rocking chair lay Mary’s dress, the light blue one she had worn the day she was abducted. It had a fringed white collar. Beside it was the ribbon she had worn in her hair, and at the foot of the chair was her pair of blue thong sandal shoes. I stood there mesmerized for a few moments and didn’t even realize that the recording of the singing of the hymn had been turned off. Very slowly, I turned to look back down the hallway toward the stairs. Margaret stood there gazing at me.
“Margaret,” I said, stepping forward, “where were you?”
“I was only in my bathroom, Grace, fixing my hair. It’s time to pray.”
“Pray?” I looked back into the room with the candles and Mary’s pictures and clothes. “Why do you have Mary’s things, the things she wore the day she disappeared? How could you have those? And all her pictures on the walls, the candles? You have it set up like a shrine.”
“It is a shrine, Grace.” She stepped toward me slowly. “I’m sorry. I told a little white lie when you asked me what I believed about our Mary. The miraculous work she’s done was not just an episode or two of God’s grace, Grace.” She smiled. “You’re so lucky to have that name, Grace.”
“What white lie?”
“Mary is special. Mary’s an angel, Grace. She has God’s blessing to do good work on earth. She will heal many more people, bring health and happiness to so many more people. You shouldn’t worry. She’s safe.”
“You have her clothes. You know where she is,” I said, just realizing what she was saying and what it meant.
“She’s in the lap and embrace of the Lord,” Margaret replied, and stopped to look up. “Blessed be His name.”
“It was you,” I said, approaching her faster now. “You were the one who beckoned to her at the mall that day. That’s why she walked away without any fear. You pretended you were going to surprise me or something, didn’t you? You led her down that escalator and . . . and to what, to whom?”
“To where she belongs, Grace. To where she can pray comfortably and be nurtured and protected like the blessed others.”
Her angelically peaceful smile vanished and was quickly replaced by an expression of anger and disdain.
“She wouldn’t reach her God-given powers in a home where her mother challenged the Word and her father tolerated it.”
“John doesn’t know what you’ve done,” I said, coming to my second realization. I held up the file. “It’s this woman, isn’t it? But then, why . . . why did he research Sister Alice Francis?”
“Oh, I told him to do that. I tried to get him to see, but your John is such an analyst. He prays and believes in scripture, but he’s skeptical, too. He doesn’t think anything wonderful has happened since the crucifixion. His damn facts. I told him more than once that he was turning his back on God’s good work.” She nodded at the file. “Sister Alice knows. She brought that angelic woman to that poor young girl’s bed that day and saved her. She has a gift, our Sister Alice. She can see who has the angelic light inside him or her. She knew Mary had it and needed her love and guidance so she could grow into the angel she was meant to be.”
“How did she know? You told her about those other children?”
“Of course I did, and one day, she came to see her, too. I arranged it, just a walk on the street with Sister Alice passing by, just a few words, a touch, and she knew. She knew I was right about Mary.”
“Then you arranged for the kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping isn’t the right word. I delivered Mary to her. She was waiting for her in the mall parking lot. It was like Jesus finding his disciples. Remember? ‘Come with me and be a fisher of men.’ Only Sister Alice would softly say, ‘Come with me and be a healer of men.’”
“Where did she take her?”
“To sanctuary, of course,” Margaret said. “Come with me now, and we’ll pray together.” She nodded at the shrine of Mary that she had created. “You still might be saved, Grace.”
She reached out for me. I pulled my arm away from her.
“What sanctuary? Where?”
She stood back, looking surprised at my outrage.
“You’re out of your mind, Margaret. You’ve done a terrible thing, and you’ll burn in hell for it.”
“He sows weeds among the wheat,” she said, now glaring at me angrily. “Matthew Thirteen.”
“You’re insane. Where is my daughter? Where is Mary?” I screamed and charged at her, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her as hard as I could. She just smiled back at me. I threw her against the wall.
“You can’t bring down the angelic.”
“I’m calling the police, Margaret.” I started away.
“You mean your lover?” she said. “No whoremonger, no unclean person hath an inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God. Ephesians Five: Five.”
I turned on her. “You told John this, didn’t you? You’ve not only been watching me constantly, you’ve been following me.”
“I knew you didn’t deserve Mary,” she said. “And you want to have an angel returned to you to live within your home? We would never allow it.”
“Mary is not an angel. She’s a living, normal little girl. You can quote all the biblical text you want, but you’re still nothing more than a kidnapper. You and . . .” I waved the file in her face. “This madwoman. We’ll soon put an end to all the misery you’ve caused in God’s name.”
I started for the stairway again. There was just a slight turn, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw her start toward me and stepped to the side just as she lunged, her hands clenched. Her left fist struck my right shoulder but glanced off, and the force of her assault continued to carry her forward. I heard her scream as she tumbled head over heels, snapping her back sharply when she hit the bottom steps. For a moment, I just stood looking down at her in shock. Then I descended slowly. I heard her groan. She opened her eyes and looked up at me.
“Why didn’t the God you serve stop your fall?” I asked.
Her eyelids fluttered and then closed.
“What’s the matter? No biblical retort?”
I studied her for a moment. She didn’t look as if she was breathing. I knelt down and felt for a pulse, but I couldn’t find any. She looked as if she was still smiling. I pulled back in horror and then turned and hurried to the phone in the living room. My first phone call was to 911.
“There
has been a very bad accident,” I said, and gave the operator Margaret’s address. I started to call Sam next but stopped. Instead, I dug into my purse and came up with David Joseph’s card. As soon as someone answered, I gave my name and asked for him. I was told he was in the field and that they would contact him and he would get back to me.
“You’ve got to have him get back to me immediately!” I shouted into the phone. “I know who took my daughter!”
“Okay, Mrs. Clark,” the agent said in placating tones. “I’ll get to him as soon as I can. Are you home?”
He sounded so unimpressed. What, did the FBI think I was still trying to implicate my husband as part of a conspiracy with Sam?
“No, I’m . . . I’m next door. My neighbor, Margaret Sullivan, was part of this. She’s had an accident on the stairway. I’ve called nine-one-one.”
“An accident? Did you call the police?”
“I just said I called nine-one-one.”
“Fine. Stay there. Someone will be there soon, I’m sure.”
I went back to the stairway and looked at Margaret. Did she think she had died with the secret of Mary’s whereabouts? Was that why she looked as if she was smiling? Maybe she had reason for her confidence. Sam was inaccessible, and the FBI would take their own good time about it because my affair with Sam had poisoned the well. All this while Mary was in the hands of some religious fanatic doing who knew what to her. I felt like pounding on Margaret’s body until she was resurrected long enough to give me the information I needed to rescue my daughter.
Instead, I went mad in her house, tearing open drawers in the kitchen and sifting through anything and everything, looking for some clue. Then I went through everything I could find in the living room that might hold some answer—books, armoire drawers. There was nothing.
I heard the sirens and went to the front door just as the ambulance followed by two patrol cars pulled into the driveway and in front. The paramedics opened the ambulance and got out their gurney, and the policemen hurried to greet me.
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