Capturing Angels (19 page)

Of course, I knew that Sam had these thoughts, too. For a few moments, I considered all of this from his point of view. He was a good man, and a good man by definition couldn’t help but feel guilty, feel he was simply taking advantage of me for his own pleasure. It struck me that neither he nor I would completely get over this possibility, ever.

We both fell asleep, but I knew that I had to get up very early and get back to my house. Sam knew it, too, and was up ahead of me. He was half dressed when I opened my eyes.

“I’ve got some coffee on. You want to shower?”

I looked at the clock and sat up quickly.

“No, I’ll shower at home,” I said. I reached for my clothes. “Margaret will be calling me in an hour or so to see how I am, and she’ll go into a panic of some sort if I don’t answer.”

“And John?”

“He won’t call early. He’ll squeeze me in between a breakfast meeting and something else.”

“I’ll put some coffee in a hot cup. You can take it along. I don’t want you driving in your sleep.”

“Oh, I’m awake,” I said, smiling. It took me only a minute to get my clothes on, but he was standing in the entryway with a cup of coffee anyway.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” I said. I took the coffee, kissed him on the cheek, and went to the door.

“Grace.”

I turned and waited. I could see that whatever it was, it was something he had agonized about. There was that look on his face, the look of someone who was struggling with his own tongue to formulate the words.

“What is it, Sam?”

“Can I ask you to do something without you asking me any questions why?”

“Probably not, but I’ll make every effort.”

“I’ll promise to explain as soon as I can. Will that be good enough?”

“I guess it will have to be, otherwise I’ll be on social security before I open this door.”

He smiled. “Okay. I want you to call me when you get home. I want you to give me the address of that costume shop in Pomona and the numbers on that receipt you found.”

“But what—”

He held up his hand. “Something occurred to me last night, and I want to follow up on it today. Trust me?”

I nodded.

“And when you call, no questions. Just give me the information.”

“All right, Sam.”

I walked out to the elevator. My heart was racing so hard and fast I thought I might faint in the hallway before the elevator door opened. I went down to my car, finished what I wanted of the coffee, and dropped it into a garbage bin in the garage. Then I got in and drove out.

The city was just coming to life, so the traffic was very light. It took me half the time to get home, and the first thing I did was go into John’s office and get the receipt. Then I picked up the phone and called Sam. I gave him the information.

“When will I hear from you?” I asked.

“Soon. I promise,” he said.

After I hung up, I went upstairs to shower and change. As I was on my way down, the phone rang. I rushed to it, thinking it might be Sam already with some information, but it was John.

“So,” he began, “how was your night?”

It was always difficult for me to tell from the tone of John’s voice what he really meant or what he was really thinking. He was like that with most people, however. It was a power he enjoyed, the power to keep from revealing himself unless he wanted to. Sometimes, when he was having fun at the expense of one of his friends at a dinner party or elsewhere, he would deliberately take a contrary position on an argument and seem perfectly believable. It wasn’t until he had driven whoever it was to frustration that he would break a smile and admit that he was just teasing. Some believed him; some didn’t. Everyone agreed that he would be a terrific poker player, although he hated gambling of any kind and wouldn’t even play church bingo.

“Tired,” I said.

“So, you didn’t take a pill?”

“If I do, I still wake up tired, John.”

“Okay. I might cut things short here and come home earlier than I expected tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“I thought that would make you happy.”

“Of course it does,” I said.

“Right. I’ll phone from the airport if that’s what occurs. What are you doing today?”

“A little grocery shopping,” I said. “Not much more.”

“I gotta go. I see someone waving to me. The meeting’s starting. Call you later,” he said.

John was never one to say “I love you” at the end of a phone call, so I wasn’t surprised not to hear it this morning. When he told me that he thought things said routinely lost their meaning because they were like words without passion, I hit back, reminding him of prayers recited mechanically in church.

“Not me,” he countered. “I don’t recite what I don’t feel.”

Maybe he was telling the truth. Who was I to deny that he always brought a devout passion to his church and his Bible? When he read his favorite psalm or any psalm, he read it so dramatically that anyone listening would hear how much he believed in the words he spoke.

Even though I, like any woman, needed and wanted to be cherished on an almost daily basis, I saw merit in what he was saying. Precious things lose their value when they become too abundant, too common. So be it with “I love you,” I thought, and let it go. Now, however, it was something I desperately needed to hear. Why didn’t he see that? Was it me, keeping that wall up between us?

I made some breakfast for myself and sat thinking about how I might spend the day.

The phone rang, and again I thought it might be Sam. It was Margaret. I tried not to sound disappointed, knowing that might bring her right over to mother me.

“How are you, dear?” she asked.

“I’m okay, Margaret. John might come home earlier tomorrow.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Do you need anything? I’m going to the supermarket.”

“I’m fine.”

She hesitated and then asked, “Did I see you drive in this morning?”

“What are you doing, sitting by your living-room window all morning? You really are watching over me, Margaret. I asked you not to do that.”

“I wasn’t there to watch your comings and goings, dear. You know I like to look out at the street. Were you visiting your parents?”

“No, Margaret.” I didn’t add anything, and there was a brief silence.

“Oh, well, is there anything new about Mary?”

“Not yet.”

She was obviously waiting to hear more.

“Thanks for calling, Margaret,” I said. “I’ll speak to you later.”

“Yes.” Her voice seemed to drift off before I hung up.

I did have to do some grocery shopping myself, but most of what Sam had told me the night before about missing children lingered in my thoughts. I went to my computer and sat reading up on various missing-children cases and then read about reported incidents of miraculous healing. It went from the ridiculous to the sublime, stories about people who were healed over the telephone, even over the Internet. There were people advertising their pamphlets guaranteed to teach someone how to heal through prayer, and of course, there were those selling miraculous objects, stones, jewels, and pieces of cloth worn by prophets. I realized that there was an entire industry for miracles out there, obviously a very profitable one.

If people were willing to pay so much for something their every instinct should tell them was phony, what would they pay if they had evidence that it was not? There were pages and pages of testimonials made by people who were supposedly healed of their cancers, addictions, diseases, and even inherited malfunctions. Nothing was off the table when it came to miracles.

Something occurred to me, so I shut down my computer and went into John’s office and turned on his. I knew how to check to see what he had in his bookmarks, the sites he had gone to and wanted to remember. Because of his penchant for facts and information, John was an expert when it came to surfing the Net. Almost everything I knew about computers I knew because of John’s instruction.

He had so many sites bookmarked. Most of them had to do with business and Internet software, but not far down the list, there they were: some of the same sites I had gone to in order to read about miraculous healing. I tried to convince myself that this really shouldn’t surprise me. Once a topic was raised in his presence, John ravished any information about it, whether it was political, social, or religious. He would never argue without detailed facts and references, which was why most people avoided arguing with him, especially if they wanted to hold on to their beliefs. It did them no good to try to attack the source of his information, either. He always had cross-references. In college, after all, he was a champion debater.

I shut down his computer and sat there thinking.

What was Sam pursuing now? What had come to his mind last night? Why was he so confident Mary wasn’t in any physical danger?

The only way to keep myself from obsessing about it constantly was to busy myself with something else. I went grocery shopping and decided to go to a Whole Foods on Montana because I could prolong the day by walking the avenue first and looking in at the boutiques. I bought myself a frozen yogurt with fruit and cereal for lunch and then finally went into the grocery store and accumulated three full bags of groceries. After I got home and put everything away, I watched television to keep myself from agonizing about the investigation.

I didn’t hear from Margaret all day. I think my tone of voice had shut her down for a while, and I was grateful for that. I knew she meant well, but I thought my dependence on other people was actually doing more to weaken me at a time when I needed to find new strength. I had no idea how I would go about it, but somehow, I told myself, I was going to get more active in the investigation and the search for Mary.

Then, as if the devil himself could listen in on my thoughts, the phone rang. I knew almost the instant I heard his voice that Sam was going to say something that would bring thunder and lightning right into my house.

“David Joseph has decided to call John in for a formal interrogation,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“Because of what I’ve told him.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What bothered me last night and has been troubling me ever since we met that day in the mall and went through how Mary disappeared from your side was why would a little girl so bright and so devoted to you let go of your hand and let herself be led away from you so easily? Why wouldn’t she call to you?”

“And?”

“Not only from what you told me but from what I learned from others, she seemed too smart to be fooled by just someone dressed as Santa. Besides, why wouldn’t she call to you to tell you Santa wanted her?”

“Yes. I suppose that was why I didn’t put much credence in the idea, either, when it first surfaced.”

“You were right not to,” he said. “That was why we were thinking Santa might just be a diversion, but what if Mary recognized who the Santa was, and what if whoever it was put his fingers to his lips, indicating that she should be silent so they could both surprise you?”

“What are you telling me, Sam?”

“John wasn’t just keeping a record for the company. He was the one who picked up the costume.”

“But it could still have been for the company party. You said so yourself, right?” I asked with a note of desperation.

“No,” he said. “The man who played Santa at the party already had his own costume. He’s had it for years. This was the fourth time he played that role, because he’s the president of John’s company. That’s when he gives out the Christmas bonuses.”

“But then, why would John . . . why would he do that? She’s our daughter.”

“I’m working on that. It’s why I have to speak to him.”

“Oh.”

“Look, there might very well be a perfectly innocent reason for it, but I’m not calling you just to tell you this.”

“What else do you have, Sam?”

“That Sister Alice Francis you told me about, that so-called miraculous abortion that saved the woman’s life . . .”

“Yes?”

“I looked up the story. Her picture in the papers . . .”

“Yes, what?”

“I faxed it to those people I interviewed yesterday. They said they think it was the same woman.”

“Well, does the FBI know? Are they looking for her?”

“Yes, but so far, no result. She left the hospital and the area without any forwarding address.”

“What about her sister, Carla Shanley? She might know where she is.”

“I visited her about an hour ago. She hasn’t heard from her in years. She said it was as if she disappeared off the face of the earth.” He paused and then asked, “Did John ever mention her again or recently . . . anything?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Neither he nor Margaret ever discussed her or that case again.”

“Okay, but there’s another reason I called, Grace.”

“What?

“What did you do with the receipt?”

“I put it back where it was.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“For now, it might be better if John doesn’t suspect that you gave me the information on that receipt.”

16

Trust

What Sam was implying left me so cold that I felt as if I was moving into rigor mortis. I stood there for almost a full minute after he hung up and clung to the receiver like someone who was afraid to let go of a strap on a subway. The earth did seem to tremble under my feet, and I thought the room swayed. Shadows born out of the descending late-afternoon sun shoved the sunlight away from the windows, and the darkness unfurled like a shroud being cast over me. I heard a small gasp and realized it had come from me. Then I returned the phone to its cradle and stepped back, as if I thought it might leap off the wall and attack me.

It rang again, the sound slicing through my breasts and across my heart. Frozen, I let it ring and ring until the answering machine went on and I heard John’s voice.

“Grace, where are you? I’ll try your cell phone, but just in case, I’m on my way to the FBI office in L.A. I had to come home earlier than expected. I’ve been asked to answer some questions. You haven’t been asked, or I’d have heard from you, right? Or would I? Bob Mercurio is meeting me there in about five minutes. Innocent people need lawyers more than guilty people these days. On second thought, I’m not going to call your cell phone, Grace. Why be repetitive? I think you already know all this. I think you have what we call insider information, don’t you?”

I heard the click and then the dial tone before the answering machine went off. The panic that stung me exploded and fanned out through my body the way a crack in a windshield would fan out into a glass spider web. What did John know? More important, what had John done?

My first instinct was to call Sam, but what would I say, and how would I sound? I could feel that I was losing myself, falling into a frenzy. I fought it back and tried to think rationally—ironically, to think the way John would think. What was it Sam had asked? Had John ever spoken again about Sister Alice Francis? Not to me, I thought, but he certainly could have discussed her with Margaret. I would ask her, but first I thought I would look in John’s office. This time, when I entered, I didn’t feel any awe. It might be his temple, but it wasn’t mine, not now. I went to his file cabinet and began to search. I didn’t know what I was looking for, exactly, but John was so organized that it took me less than a minute to place my fingers on a file labeled “Sister Alice Francis.” He had never told me he was keeping this file.

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.”