Phantom of Riverside Park (28 page)

“He’s
Taylor’s
child.”

“He’s my child, too, and by snatching him
from me ...” Elizabeth had to stop and compose herself. Just
thinking about the way they’d taken her son brought tears. “Don’t
you realize what you’ve done to Nicky? How would you feel if
somebody had taken Taylor from you when he was four years old? How
do you think Taylor would have felt?”

“
Stop
!” Anna Lisa covered her eyes
with one hand and waved the other at Elizabeth. “I can’t
take
this anymore.”

Elizabeth found compassion in her heart for
the woman who had only recently lost her only child, too. She knelt
and put her hand on Anna Lisa’s head.

“Please,” Elizabeth pleaded. “Let’s work this
out together. For Nicky’s sake. Because we both love him.”

The door burst open and Ralph Belliveau stood
on the threshold, red-faced and scowling.

“Anna Lisa,” he roared. “Don’t say another
word.” He pointed his finger at Elizabeth. “You. Get out.”

“Nobody talks to my granddaughter that
way.”

When Papa got his feathers ruffled he
stretched his neck till his goiter looked like it was going to pop
out. He strutted forward like a peacock, and Elizabeth actually
thought he was going to hit the man who was at least twice his
size.

For the second time that day she put a
restraining hand on his arm. Then she stood in front of him and
faced her adversary.

“I’m leaving,” she said quietly, “but not
before I’ve had my say.”

Ralph’s face turned the color of a beet.
“Young woman, you’re pushing your luck.”

“I’m not afraid of you. Men who strike women
don’t raise sons like Taylor. He might have been a snob, but he
always had manners.”

Ralph lost some of his bluster. “We can’t
talk to you without our lawyer.”

“I’m not asking you to talk. I’m asking you
to listen. We don’t have to be enemies. If you love my son, if you
love Taylor’s son, please call off the witch hunt. Let’s just sit
down together and work things out.”

She couldn’t tell whether she’d made any
impact or not. Taylor’s daddy had his son’s height and coloring,
but none of his easy charm. He might as well have been a mountain,
for all the good Elizabeth’s pleadings did.

“Please ... can’t we be friends for the sake
of Nicky?”

A sob rose up from Anna Lisa that conjured up
fresh graves with the rich black Delta earth piled high and
golden-haired boys smashed to bits and hearts torn asunder.

Ralph walked over to his wife’s chair and
stood looking down at her as if she were somebody he’d once known
and perhaps loved, somebody now lost to him.

“I think you should leave now,” he said.

Elizabeth and Papa left without saying
goodbye, and set out to their joyless house on Vine Street. The
road back home seemed a thousand miles long.

Nicky was scared in the big house he lived
in. But he tried to act brave. Papa said always be brave.

He didn’t like the lady that brought him
here. She scared him. She had a Halloween mouth. She was mean and
didn’t smile. She made his Mommy cry.

He had lots of toys in his room, but he
didn’t play with them. They didn’t belong to him. Only his fire
truck and Bear.

The lady who lived here said
call me
Carol,
but he didn’t. She tried to get him to eat green peas.
He hid them under his bread when she wasn’t looking. Mommy knew he
didn’t like peas.

Carol patted him on the head and called him
pumpkin
. He wondered if he was turning orange from all the
carrots he’d had. She smelled nice, but she didn’t read good
stories. She didn’t sing either, or listen to his prayers.

Maybe she didn’t like God. He’d even heard
her blast fuming.

Nicky didn’t know what that was, but it must
be bad ‘cause Papa got mad at Uncle Fred when he did it. Nicky
didn’t want to blast fume. He wanted to be a good boy. And he
wanted his Mommy.

He tucked Bear under the covers. “Shh. Be
real quiet,” he said, then he ran to the door to see if anybody was
looking.

The hall was empty and scary looking. The big
ole clock standing at the end looked like a monster. Nicky hurried
back to bed and grabbed Bear. That made him feel better. Then he
got on his knees to talk to God. Papa said God was his friend and
was never too busy to listen.

“God, it’s me,” he whispered. “Nicky. An’
Bear, too. We want to go home.”

Nicky shut his eyes tight and listened, but
God didn’t say anything. Papa said you have to listen with your
heart. Nicky tried real hard, but he still didn’t hear
anything.

“God, me and Bear’s gonna be real good. We
pwomise. If we be real good, can we see Mommy and Papa?”

He cocked his head to listen, then climbed
into bed, pulled the covers over his head and whispered in Bear’s
ear, “He said
yes
.”

o0o

Elizabeth awoke with her heart pounding and
the certain knowledge that Nicky needed her. She went to the window
and looked out into a night as black as the inside of a hole. The
darkness had completely swallowed up the stars and the moon.

It was a night befitting her mood. Papa was
exhausted from their futile journey to the Delta. Although it had
only been seven o’clock when they got home, he’d gone straight to
bed. She could hear his snores through the thin walls.

She should be so lucky. Sleep eluded her,
driven away by the certain knowledge that her chances of getting
Nicky back were slimmer with each passing day. She’d only made
matters worse by talking to the Belliveaus.

She leaned her head against the windowpane
and whispered, “Be brave, my Nicky. I’ll never stop trying.”

It was almost daylight when she finally fell
into a troubled sleep. She didn’t even hear the phone ringing until
Papa came to her door.

“Elizabeth, it’s for you.”

She groaned. “Tell whoever it is that I’m
sick. Tell them I’m dead. Tell them anything. I don’t care. I can’t
talk to anybody.” She pulled the covers over her head.

“I think you’ll want to take this call,
Elizabeth. It’s from David Lassiter.”

She ran all the way to the kitchen, dragging
the sheet behind.

“David? You’re home. Oh, thank God, you’re
home!”

o0o

It was funny how everything could look the
same, even when you were about to take a step that would alter the
course of your life. What David was about to do would forever
change the way he lived. He couldn’t say he was sorry about that,
for the way he had lived hadn’t really been living at all: it had
merely been an existence, a biding of time. He didn’t know what he
had been waiting for. Perhaps, this moment. Maybe all the years
he’d spent in self-imposed exile from life had been leading up to
the moment when Elizabeth Jennings would walk through his door
tonight.

He’d never been as nervous in his life. The
room was exactly the way it had been on her previous visits, shades
drawn, no lights on except for the lone lamp shining down on the
chair where she would sit.

David fingered his tie. It was brand new.
Burgandy silk. He’d had it sent up earlier that afternoon. A new
suit, too.

He laughed at his own foolish vanity. Who in
the world would notice his clothes? Certainly not Elizabeth, for in
spite of what he intended to tell her, he planned to remain totally
hidden from her view, as always.

His security manager’s voice came through the
intercom.

“She’s on the way up, Mr. Lassiter,”

He’d thought himself fully prepared, but when
he saw Elizabeth standing in his doorway, all his preparations and
rationalizations became lies.

Her trials had taken a physical toll. She’d
lost weight, and she was so pale her skin looked translucent. She
looked as if she were made of spun glass and the least little jolt
would cause her to shatter. Instead of detracting, the fragility
only enhanced her beauty, giving her an ethereal quality that made
her the stuff of dreams.

“Thank you for sending the car,” she said. “I
don’t think I could have driven here alone. Not with...” Her voice
caught on a sob, and she took a while to compose herself. “Not with
everything that has happened,” she said, finally, and so softly he
had to strain to hear.

The need to hold her, to comfort her was a
beast screaming and clawing at his insides.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I would have come
home sooner if only I had gotten a message.”

“I thought...” She raked her hand through her
hair, then briefly massaged her temples. “I don’t know what I
thought. Desperate women seldom do.”

“I’m here to help you, Elizabeth. I want to
help you. And that’s my only motive.”

“I believe you, David.”

He drew a ragged breath.
So far, so
good.
The problem was, he only half believed himself. Was
there a hidden agenda behind the plan he was about to propose, or
was his motive purely altruistic?

“As soon as I found out you had called, I
asked my assistant Peter Forrest to find out what was happening in
your life. He told that Nicky had been taken from you, that your
lawyer is a real estate specialist and that the judge who will hear
your case is a personal friend of Ralph Belliveau and is also
deeply indebted to him for campaign contributions.”

He studied her as he talked. She had the look
of a woman who had been knocked flat by the worst punch fate could
throw and had not only risen before the final count but had come
back fighting.

“You mean the judge is against me, too, even
before he hears my side of the case?”

“So it would seem.”

She closed her eyes for a minute, and the
light from the lamp fell on two tear drops that squeezed from
underneath her lids. She made a broken sound in her throat, like a
deer caught suddenly in a steel trap. Then, angry, she knuckled her
tears and lifted her chin.

“They can’t have him. I won’t let them take
my child away from me.” Her anger spent, she sagged. “Not again,”
she whispered.

“I have a plan that might work. Two, in fact,
but before I go into that, has anything else happened that I should
know about, anything that might affect the outcome of your
case?”

“Yes. I went to see Taylor’s parents, the
Belliveaus.”

“I know of them.”

“Do you know the story in the Bible of the
dispute over the child, and how the mother agreed to give him up
rather than see him torn apart?”

“Yes.”

His answer pleased her. He could tell by the
ghost of a smile that played around her pale lips.

“I thought that if the Belliveaus loved him
they would be willing to work out a compromise.”

“What happened?”

“Papa went with me. Taylor’s mother came home
first, and I think she might have been won over, but then Ralph
Belliveau came home.”

Elizabeth didn’t have to tell the rest of the
story for David to know what happened. He could see the outcome of
that fateful visit plainly written in her face.

“He was very angry. I think I only made
things worse, if that’s possible.” She stared into the darkness as
if she were searching for his face. “It all seems so hopeless.”

“Don’t give up, Elizabeth. We haven’t begun
to fight.”

“Oh, no. I’m not giving up. If I have to
spend the rest of my life trying to get my child back, I will.
Nicky is a brave and very fine little boy. He’s probably a little
scared right now, and somewhat confused, but he’ll come out all
right. It’s Papa, I’m worried about. He seems so fragile these
days.”

“I hope we can solve this problem in less
than a lifetime, Elizabeth. I’m not a young as you.” The ghost of a
smile flickered across her face once more, and David felt
triumphant, as if he’d won a Hero of the Year Award.

He leaned back in his chair, suddenly feeling
mighty fine in his new suit and tie, but more than that, in his new
feeling of connectedness.

“Now, then... I have two proposals to make to
you, Elizabeth, and I’d like for you to listen to them carefully
before you make any comment, ask any questions or make a decision.
Will you do that?”

“Yes. Before you begin, I’d like to ask one
question.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“What do you think are the chances that
either of these plans will work?”

“I don’t have an answer to that, Elizabeth. I
do believe that your chances are better with one of my plans than
without.”

She bowed her head for a moment and pressed
the flat of her hand against her forehead. Then she stared across
the darkened space, and it seemed she was looking straight into his
eyes.

“Fair enough,” she said. “Go ahead. I’m
listening.”

David decided to propose the least innocuous
plan first. Besides, he needed to work up courage before proposing
the second.

“I think you can weaken the Belliveaus case,
and even topple it altogether by moving into a better neighborhood
and hiring a competent credentialed nanny, who might not be as good
as your Papa, mind you, but who will be much younger. Also, I think
you need the best child custody lawyer you can get because the
Belliveaus not only have a cracker-jack lawyer in their corner,
they have a judge.”

He paused briefly, watching her face. She’d
opened her mouth to protest about replacing her Papa, as he’d known
she would, and that’s why he’d added the caveat. It was fascinating
how much you could learn about a person simply by observation.
Loyal to the bone was one of the terms that came into mind when he
thought of Elizabeth.

“To do all that, you’ll need the million
dollars I propose to give you. And because the Belliveaus’ lawyer
will try to put a nasty spin on your sudden wealth, I will reveal
myself not only as your donor, but as the donor of many millions
over the past ten years.”