Dina Santorelli (11 page)

He
did. Charlotte Grand couldn't have asked for a more dutiful or loving caretaker
than his aunt, the woman who had been a second mother to him and his brothers
after their mother died. Reynaldo reached across the car and put his arm around
Rosalia, and as she leaned onto his shoulder, he stroked her wiry, gray hair.
He could smell her perfume, the same brand his
mamá
had worn; the
familiar fragrance conjured up happy memories of large family gatherings,
crowded rooms filled with cigarette smoke and laughter, always laughter.
Rosalia had taken it upon herself to keep the family together when her sister
died. Once a month, for as long as Reynaldo could remember, she cooked a giant
meal for the whole
family—a tradition set by his mother
when he was a little boy. Over the years, fewer people attended—many of the
older relatives died, his cousins moved downstate, and his father retired last
year, leaving only him and his brothers, and these days Pedro and Ricardo would
use any excuse to avoid having to visit with Aunt Ro, who didn't have cable
television. But Reynaldo showed up every time. He remembered asking her once as
a child, "
Tía
, don't you get tired of cooking and cleaning and looking
after everyone?" And she had told him, "Some people are meant to care for
others, Reyito."

"Where
could she be?" Rosalia asked. "She is an innocent child."

"We
will find her,
Tía
. What did you tell the police?"

"I
told them the truth. What I told you."

Reynaldo
thought for a moment. "I'm going to take you home with me," he said. "I don't
want you to be alone."

"No,
no..." She put her used tissue into her purse. "I need to stay in my house. I
gave them my telephone number. They said they would call if they needed to
reach me. I want to follow directions."

"What
about your cell phone?"

"They
took it."

"Who?
The
policía
? Why?"

"I
don't know, Rey. But what do I need it for anyway now? I have nowhere to go."
Rosalia choked up on those last words, as if the thought of being alone and
unneeded was too much for her to bear, and Reynaldo felt a pang of guilt for
reveling in those two very things earlier that evening.

"Then
I will stay by you," he said.

"Oh,
Reyito," she said, patting his cheek. "You are a good boy. I will make you some
jamón quesadillas
in the morning. Your favorite."

"Okay."
He knew it was fruitless to argue and that cooking would help keep his aunt's
mind busy. He pulled back onto the street and drove toward her house, the city
seeming very big to him all of a sudden—unprotected, vulnerable—particularly with
no cars on the road. The beams of the car's headlights were like flashlights
searching in the shadows, looking for Baby Charlotte with every turn. It had
only been a month ago that Reynaldo had seen the little girl last, her blonde
curls springing up and down as the governor bounced her on his knee while
sitting on the mansion's wraparound porch, her smile bright and sincere, her
laughter carried across the grounds by the evening breeze, and his heart sank
at the thought of a world without Charlotte Grand.

It wasn't unusual for
Detective Nurberg to be at the station before sunrise, but 4:30 a.m. was a new
record even for him. After spending most of the night tossing and turning,
unable to get out of his mind the heartbreaking image of the Grands' nanny
Rosalia—her distress, the pleas to find her charge—and the strange,
melodramatic performance of Mrs. Grand, Nurberg found himself meticulously
running through the procedures he'd conducted, as if on a loop, to make sure he
hadn't left anything out. Every mansion staff member, including kitchen workers,
drivers, tour guides, and security guards, had been interviewed. All video of
those coming and going had been checked again and again, as were the grounds,
which weren't too expansive, but because they were so close to the street
traffic, it was easy for someone to slip into a parked vehicle—although nothing
had been captured on video and the entire area was under continuous
surveillance.

Nurberg
entered his small office and threw the folder containing the mansion's visitor
manifest on his desk. All twenty-five pages had been laid out on his bed only
hours earlier, and he could probably recite each name from memory. No one
seemed strange or out of the ordinary. No police records. No red flags. There
had been quite a few tour groups at the mansion yesterday, including elementary
school children who had been bused in from outlying areas, and it was possible
that someone had slipped in as a teacher or school aide and had gotten upstairs
undetected. It was mansion policy for visitors to have ID with them upon
arrival, but, even in these days of shoe removals and full-body scans at
airports, it was rarely checked; so other than a roster of visitors who were
supposed
to be
at the mansion, there really was no way of knowing exactly who
had
been there that day. Truth be told, there had never been an incident at the Executive Mansion for the two years he'd been on the Albany force or as far back as he
could remember for that matter, so he could see why security may have been a
bit lax. But even so, was it possible for someone to have gotten out of the
building undetected with a baby who, unless she was drugged or worse,
presumably would be crying?

Nurberg
sat back in his creaky swivel chair. He dreaded having to face the Grands this
morning with the news of no progress on the investigation. Besides the
interviews and videotapes, his men had checked every air duct, stairwell, and
alcove on the premises, but Charlotte hadn't turned up, nor had evidence of any
wrongdoing. Nurberg was used to having a clear perpetrator in the cases he'd
handled: a drunk dad, a frustrated mom, a jealous sibling. This was killing
him.

There
was a brief commotion outside his office door, where several detectives walked
in the entrance chatting idly with Missy Giles, his domestic-violence advocate.
The abduction of Baby Grand, as she was known among the locals, had the
officers working overtime, and Nurberg's boss, Det. Lt. Grohl, had pulled men
from the force's other divisions to lend a hand, so there were no less than
twenty detectives working a case that had absolutely no leads. When the group
saw Nurberg, they stopped and seemed to collectively catch their breath until
Nurberg shook his head no, and then they continued across the station floor.

Behind
them, Grohl walked in, and before Nurberg could hide and pretend to be on the
phone, his boss called him into his office.

"Well,
Ice?" Grohl asked, setting his car keys and the newspaper on his desk.

"I
filed my report last night, sir."

"Yeah,
yeah, I read it. Nothing."

Nurberg
groaned. Grohl was more anxious than usual. It wasn't every day that the
governor's daughter disappeared, and he wasn't one for the spotlight. "Anything
happen last night?"

"Well,"
Nurberg said. "Matrick called me from the Grands when there was a suspicious
phone call."

Grohl's
eyes opened wide.

"But
it was a false alarm," Nurberg added. "Telemarketer on a personal line that
only two people know the number for."

"Well,
obviously more than two people if you include the telemarketer. Did you run the
number?"

"Detective
Matrick gave me the number left on the automated voice-mail message. It checked
out. It was for a twenty-four-hour customer-service center for Citibank, which
is the bank behind Governor Grand's MasterCard. Seems legit."

Grohl
nodded. "Anything else?"

Nurberg
shook his head.

"Damn."
Grohl leaned back in his chair. "This isn't good."

"I'm
doing everything I can, sir."

"Well,
keep on it. There's gotta be something we're missing." Grohl pushed a pencil
across his desk. "How about the First Lady? What's your take on Mrs. Grand?"

Nurberg
tempered his response. Katherine Grand was the odds-on favorite in the station
pool for being behind this. "What's her motive, sir?"

"That
she's a bitch and a half?" Grohl said.

"I
don't know. It doesn't make sense," Nurberg said. "She's a smart woman with her
political sights set way beyond Albany. Say what you want about her, but I
can't imagine her doing anything that would put that career path in jeopardy."

"Doesn't
a baby put that career in jeopardy?"

"Not
when your husband's voting base is the traditional family. In terms of
political career advancement, Charlotte may have been the best thing to happen
to Katherine Grand. And I think she knows it."

"Okay,
I'll buy that." Grohl picked up the newspaper on his desk. "Well, here's one
good thing. Glad to see that the press hasn't gotten wind of things yet." The
front-page headline of the
Albany Times
read "Bridge to Nowhere" and
showed the halted construction of the new Bay Park Bridge.

"Yeah,
a few reporters were skulking around asking questions," Nurberg said, "but they
seemed to buy that we were performing drills at the mansion over the next few
days."

"Good.
The more time we have without the media on our backs, the better."

"I agree."

"Well,
all right," Grohl said, picking up his phone. "Keep me posted, Nurberg."

"I
will," Nurberg said, taking the hint. He left Grohl's office and returned to
his own. There was a steaming hot cup of black coffee on his desk; next to it,
on a small paper plate, was a frosted brownie. He glanced up and saw Missy
Giles talking to a few officers near the front of the main office. She saw him
and smiled. He smiled back and, for an instant, forgot all about the
beleaguered investigation into the disappearance of Baby Grand.

The glow outside the bedroom
windows was bright and cleansing, but did nothing to alleviate the filthy
feeling that gnawed at Jamie's insides. Just several minutes earlier as she
pretended to sleep, Bailino had stepped into the bathroom and shut the door.
The shower water had been turned on, and she could hear him humming.

Although
Charlotte had gone back to sleep while Jamie fed her a bottle of formula, she
stalled as long as she could in the nursery, terrified of returning to
Bailino's bed. But there was no way around it—she
had
to go back. What
choice did she have? It was only when she heard him shuffle to the bathroom
that she slipped under the covers, praying that he would leave her be. When
Bailino returned, there was a pause before he climbed into bed, and then he
fluffed his pillow, kicked out the flat sheet until it was tucked under his
feet, and before falling asleep, slid his hand between Jamie's legs. And that
was where it remained.

Jamie
had been awake ever since. She spent hours thinking about Edward, trying to
create a time frame in her mind as to when her brother would realize that
something was wrong, that she was missing and start looking for her and then
how long it would take to find her. It was only now, in the blinding light of
day, that the truth hit her hard:
No one knows where you are.

This
was the first time that Jamie could remember ever being truly alone. It seemed
as if her entire life, there had always been somebody—her mother, her brother,
even Bob—running around beneath her with a net while she was walking the high
wire of her life. She attended the same college as Edward—now that she thought
about it, she never even entertained going anywhere else other than Hofstra,
which was so close to home. Talk about a safety school. And it was the
recommendation—a strong one made over the phone—of her journalism professor
that had secured Jamie's first job at a local newspaper. And it was her mother
who had picked the venue for her wedding reception. Jamie began thinking about
every major milestone of her life, and suddenly it seemed as if she had little
to do with any of them, and a hopelessness descended upon her as she lay in the
unfamiliar bed. Plus, her last totally spontaneous decision, made on her own—to
eat in Bryant Park rather than inside Frank's Deli yesterday—was the thing that
had landed her in this mess.

A
soft coo came from the nursery, and Jamie got out of bed and, still feeling
woozy and sore, hurried across the bedroom. The baby was sleeping soundly in a
corner of the crib, making sweet little gibberish sounds as she exhaled. Her
little chubby legs were bare, having kicked off the blanket Jamie had placed on
them during the night, and her little socks had fallen off too. As she lay
there, peaceful, in the bright daylight, there was an unmistakable familiarity
about the little girl, and Jamie wondered if she'd seen her before. She
dismissed the idea, thinking that perhaps she was being reminded of Peter and
Sara, since she practically lived with Edward and Tricia when the kids were
born.
You have no connection to this child
, Jamie chided herself,
although she knew that was untrue. A bond had formed the moment she saw her
lying helpless on the basement table, and in her heart Jamie knew that any
thoughts she had of escape were going to include the little girl. But just how
do you sneak a baby out of a second-story room without anyone noticing?

With
her eye on the bathroom, Jamie hurried over to the bedroom door, but was
confounded by the strange mechanism there in place of a doorknob. A small light
in the corner of the device glowed red. She needed a key.

She
pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand, expecting, for some reason, to
find a copy of the Bible inside, but instead found only loose change and some
toiletries. She surveyed the wide room, whose edges seemed to crystallize in
the daylight, and wondered if there was anything she could use to get out of
there or as a weapon. At the far left were a dresser and chest of drawers and
over to the right, a baby grand piano she hadn't noticed last night. She
tiptoed past the bathroom door and opened a drawer or two of the dresser,
finding nothing but clothing, but was so afraid Bailino would open the bathroom
door and catch her snooping that she abandoned her plan and went back to the
other side of the room, near the windows.