Authors: Sharon Potts
C
HAPTER
10
Her mind settled into a familiar track. Step one, make observations. Step two, gather data. Step three, derive predictions as a logical consequence. Step four, test hypothesis by conducting experiments. Step five, interpret results.
But the scientific method only worked in a controlled environment, which this definitely was not. Aubrey was outside her comfort zone.
A sailboat glided across the bay, glowing in the fading sunlight.
Thirty hours.
She sat up straighter. Just because she couldn’t test the hypothesis didn’t mean she couldn’t analyze the situation in a logical manner.
“Let’s start with the note,” she said to her mother. “You said it was in the square envelope. I noticed it on the bed. It was stamped but not postmarked. Isn’t the FBI checking the mail for ransom notes? How could they have missed it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Someone must have slipped it in with the mail after the FBI went through it.”
Her mother frowned, as though considering this.
“Which means someone who was in the house today most likely put it there.” Aubrey took out her iPhone. “Let’s make a list of everyone in the house.” She started tapping in names as she said them aloud. “Detective Gonzalez, Special Agent Smolleck, and the people on their teams.”
“You think someone with the police or FBI is involved?” her mother asked.
“We have to consider it.” Aubrey thought for a minute. “Unfortunately, there’s no way we’ll be able to figure out if there’s some rogue agent or cop embedded with the legitimate team without revealing we know about the note.”
“And then the kidnappers might harm Ethan,” her mother said.
Her mother was right. Telling the FBI, even if they were able to do it secretively, could end any chance for Ethan’s safe return.
Several joggers pounded the path as they ran behind the bench. Aubrey turned to look at them as they continued around toward the bay. A man in sunglasses glanced back at her, slowing his pace, then he took off after the others. Had he been sent to watch them?
There was no one she and her mother could trust. They were on their own.
“What about the reporters?” she asked her mother. “Did any of them come inside? Maybe to use the bathroom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyone else come inside the house?”
“I don’t think so.”
Aubrey continued tapping on her phone. “We also have Ernest and Prudence Simmer, Kevin and Kim, and Dad.”
“You’re putting them on the list?” her mother said. “But no one in the family would put Ethan in danger.”
“We can’t rule out anyone.”
“Kevin and Kim wouldn’t kidnap their own child,” Mama said.
Aubrey didn’t want to believe it, either, but she considered the possibility.
Her brother and his wife could have set up the kidnapping and the threat to Jonathan as a way of punishing Mama for the wedding incident, but it seemed like an over-the-top reaction, and they had never shown signs of being viciously vindictive. Besides, they were loving, protective parents—not the kind of people who would use their child as a pawn.
“I don’t think they would,” Aubrey agreed. “Let’s focus on the others who were in the house earlier and consider if anyone else could have something against Jonathan.” She thought about the Simmers. “Could Jonathan’s appointment to the Supreme Court impact Prudence’s interests in Baer Business Machines? BBM has come under fire recently for acquiring competitors, and Jonathan has been outspoken about being against large corporate mergers. If he’s appointed, Prudence could take a major financial hit.”
“You’re right.” Her mother leaned toward her, nodding. “The Simmers are bringing in their own investigators. That would make it easier for them to come up with their own facts and interpretations and keep attention away from themselves.”
“True, but—”
“But that means Ethan is safe.” Her mother’s cheeks were flushed. “Prudence and Ernest would never hurt him. Never.”
A scenario in which the Simmers had orchestrated the kidnapping had appeal. Her mother was right—they would never hurt their grandson—but their best chance for getting Ethan back safely was to consider every angle. “The Simmers might be behind this, but what if they’re not?”
Her mother’s face fell.
“I asked you earlier if Jonathan has enemies,” Aubrey said. “Can you think of any? Someone upset by a ruling he made as a circuit-court judge or threatened by his possible nomination?”
“Not that I can recall.” Her mother looked out toward the darkening horizon. “But wait . . . I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. If this is about his Supreme Court nomination, I can just talk to him. I’m sure he’ll withdraw from consideration.”
It seemed like a good solution. Too good. “Did the kidnappers offer that as an option?” Aubrey asked.
“Well, no.”
“Wouldn’t they have? If this were just about keeping Jonathan off the bench, they could have simply demanded he withdraw. They wouldn’t have told you to kill him.”
“Maybe they knew I’d tell him about the note and are using it to frighten him into stepping away from the nomination.”
“You could be right,” Aubrey said, “but let’s go back to the people who had an opportunity to leave the note in the house today.” Like her father.
She watched a pelican sail across the sky, then abruptly dive into the water and scoop up a fish. So innocuous, then, without warning, going in for the kill. Just like her father had done eight years ago. And none of them had been prepared.
Was her father capable of kidnapping his own grandson?
He had been acting oddly in the backyard—his exaggerated anger at Mama, his body language not matching his words. He’d been lying about something.
“Could Dad have a reason for wanting Jonathan dead?”
“Your father?” Mama got quiet. A mockingbird’s raspy call cut through the silence. “I don’t see it,” she said finally.
“Does Dad know him?”
“I don’t think so, but it’s possible. They may have met at a law convention or on a case.”
Aubrey thought about Smolleck’s questions. Now it occurred to her that he may have had something specific in mind. “What about back at Columbia?”
Her mother flinched. “Columbia?”
Something Aubrey had said had hit a nerve in her mother, but she couldn’t imagine what.
“Jonathan was at the law school when your dad was an undergraduate,” her mother said. “I doubt they knew each other there. But even if they had met, I think you’re taking this in the wrong direction. Why would your father want me to kill Jonathan?”
“Jealousy that you’re finally happy?”
“No, sweetheart. Put that out of your mind. Your father and I may have issues, but he’s not capable of killing anyone, and he certainly wouldn’t set me up to do so. And he never would have kidnapped Ethan.”
“You don’t think Star could manipulate him?”
“Not that far. And why would she want Jonathan dead?”
“Who knows? But what do we really know about her? Only that she appeared in Dad’s life eight years ago, and suddenly he’s obsessed with her. How could she have such power over him?”
Her mother looked sad. “It’s not that hard to charm a man after he’s been in a marriage for over thirty-five years, especially when his wife spends too much time with her patients and not enough with him.”
Did her mother believe this? Aubrey knew her parents’ marriage had been shaky for years, but all four of them had pretended everything was fine. Keeping the family together had been everyone’s mission. At least, that’s what Aubrey had always thought. Until Dad walked. But maybe he had become tired of pretending.
Maybe he had a point.
“Where’s the note, Mama?”
Her mother squeezed her bag.
“You have it with you, don’t you?” Aubrey said. “Show it to me.”
“I don’t see what that would accomplish.”
“Please. Maybe when I read exactly what it says, I’ll get an idea.”
Her mother glanced around. It was growing dark and most everyone, including the joggers, had left. Only a couple of people remained in the dog park with their dogs.
Mama reached into her handbag and pulled out a square envelope, then slid out a greeting card. There was a picture of a child on the front.
Aubrey sucked in a sharp breath. An innocent-appearing greeting card. Someone’s idea of a cruel joke? Who would do such a thing?
Her mother took a small piece of paper out of the card and handed it to Aubrey.
She read it, her pulse accelerating like a Geiger counter approaching radiation.
WE HAVE ETHAN. HE IS SAFE.
WE WILL RETURN HIM UNHARMED IF YOU DO ONE THING.
KILL JONATHAN WOODWARD.
Seeing the threat in print, holding the piece of paper—it wasn’t just her mother’s words.
It was real. Terrifyingly real.
Her mother mumbled something.
“What?” Aubrey couldn’t hear anything over the pounding in her ears. “What did you say?”
“Turn the note over.”
“There’s more?” Aubrey looked at the other side of the paper. In smaller, lower-case letters was written:
you have until midnight tues. if we don’t have physical proof of jonathan woodward’s death, ethan will die.
if you talk to the cops or fbi, ethan will die.
Her mother had said they might hurt Ethan, but kill him? Kill a six-year-old boy who had just lost his first baby tooth and liked to make jokes about boogers? Then Aubrey reminded herself—Ethan wasn’t their ultimate target, Jonathan was.
Or was he?
“Oh, God,” Aubrey said.
“What is it?” her mother said.
Aubrey tried to formulate her thoughts, to make sure she got it right. “Why would someone go to the trouble of kidnapping Ethan if what they really want is to kill Jonathan?”
“I’m not following you.”
“Kidnapping a child, planting an extortion note—it’s very complicated. And when a child’s life is threatened, look at all the publicity and law-enforcement involvement. Wouldn’t it have been simpler for them to have killed Jonathan themselves?”
Her mother frowned. “That’s true. Whoever is doing this can’t be sure I would kill him.”
“Which means killing Jonathan may not be their ultimate objective.”
The last rays of sunlight fell on her mother’s face, reflecting the recognition in her eyes. “Someone wants to hurt me by making me choose between my grandson and the man I love.”
“Not just hurt you.” Aubrey glanced down at the greeting card on her mother’s lap, then met her eyes. “I think someone’s trying to destroy you, Mama.”
C
HAPTER
11
Diana was numb. She was the real target of the kidnappers’ ultimatum.
“Let’s get out of here, Mama.” Her daughter rose from the bench and tugged on her hand. “It’s not safe to stay here.”
“It wouldn’t serve their purpose to hurt me,” Diana said. “Not after they’ve gone to the trouble of kidnapping Ethan and sending me the note.”
“Maybe, but we have to go back home. We need to figure out who put that envelope in the mail.”
“You go.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone. We don’t know who these people are or what they’re capable of.”
“Please let me stay awhile. I need to think. If someone’s out to get me, I must know this person.”
Aubrey’s brow formed a deep frown. “You think you know who it is?”
“I’m just being logical.”
Aubrey seemed to hesitate. “Dad could have left the card.”
Diana was glad the sun had gone down so Aubrey couldn’t read the doubt on her face. She kept her voice even. “We’ve been through this. A lot of people could have left it.”
“Are you protecting him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I protect him?”
“I don’t know,” Aubrey said. “Why would you?”
“I wouldn’t. I told you that already.” She took a breath to calm herself. “Now, please, leave me be for a little while. I have my phone. You and the police are on speed-dial if there’s any kind of problem.”
Her daughter looked around, as though considering what to do. There were lights on along the paths, and some brightness in the sky that would probably last for another half hour or so. A woman sat alone on a bench inside the dog park with her small dog.
“Please, Aubrey. I need a little time.”
“Okay,” she said, her tone skeptical. “If that’s what you need.”
Diana watched her leave the park, then turned back toward the boats bobbing in the grayish light.
Why had Aubrey asked whether she was protecting Larry? Neither she nor Larry ever talked about the past, so Aubrey had no way of knowing about the unspoken agreement between them. Yet, her daughter had asked the question as though she had some sixth sense.
Diana stared at the gray-black ripples tinged with red from the setting sun.
The same setting sun, the same bay, but so much was different.
They had moved here from New York when she was thirty-two, right after Kevin had been born. She’d wanted to be near her mother, who had been eager to watch the baby while Diana continued practicing medicine. In those first few years, she and Larry would often sit at the edge of the bay at sunset with a bottle of wine. Larry had liked to talk about the exciting adventures ahead of them. But maybe, even then, he could see through her fixed smile and know she didn’t buy in to his programs the way she once had. Not that she hadn’t loved him—she had. That was one thing that had never changed. Even after their charade almost disintegrated twenty years ago.
She hated thinking about it, but whether she acknowledged it or not, the appearance of a man claiming to be Jeffrey Schwartz and the terrible reminder of their college years had redefined their marriage.
Even after the media had reported that the man had been a fraud and the story had disappeared, she and Larry had realized the past was something they could never escape. They had tried to go back to their normal life, but it was as phony as the man who had garnered the headlines.
Maybe keeping up the facade was why Larry had sought refuge in another woman. Of course, at the time, Diana had been so shaken by his demand for a divorce that she had fallen apart, seized by an irrational fear of being on her own. In her distorted view of things, she had believed she and Larry had an obligation to each other—their own private, mutual-protection pact. How dare he throw her aside? Then, on top of that, Larry had told Kevin she had faked her illness, further driving a wedge between her and her son.
She had stewed in fear and anger until finally, with Jonathan, she had rediscovered joy. Now someone wanted to rip that happiness away from her.
Was it possible that just as she had felt when Larry deserted her, her ex-husband now viewed her engagement to Jonathan as a breach of their shared bond—a violation of their ugly secret?
Impossible,
she thought, as another memory seeped in. The Larry she had once known would never turn on her like this.
They were calling it Indian summer, and no one wanted to do any work, even though it was the end of September, a month into classes, and everyone should have been in study mode. The stagnant ninety-degree air, heavy with smoke, made them all lazy, including Di. She leaned back on a patch of dried grass on Columbia University’s sprawling lawn, surrounded by dozens of other students. Beyond loomed what looked like the Pantheon with its Ionic columns and domed roof, but was actually Columbia’s Low Library, the soul of the campus, as its statue of Alma Mater proclaimed. The building’s broad steps were covered with students. Many, like the ones on the lawn, were smoking pot, and even though Di wasn’t a fan of marijuana, she couldn’t help but inhale the sweet fumes that seemed to be part of the atmosphere.
She stretched out her legs and examined her faded tan, a remnant of sunbathing at Crandon Park Beach, back home in Miami. She hadn’t expected to need summer clothes up in New York, but her mother had packed this pair of pastel madras shorts and a pink sleeveless blouse, just in case. She knew she was different from most of the other Barnard College women in their blue jeans and tie-dyed shirts, and it bothered her that she looked like someone who didn’t know that the
Donna Reed Show
had been off the air for three years. But mostly, she was genuinely mystified by how different people were in New York from those in Miami. And it wasn’t as though she were a hick. But something had happened this summer while she was off in Europe with her parents. Maybe it was Woodstock. Or the first man to walk on the moon. Or maybe the escalation of the Vietnam War. But when she’d returned home from vacation, then left for college with a suitcase filled with tailored dresses from Burdines Sunshine Fashions, she had found herself in a very different world.
She glanced at the lethargic students parked on blankets or tossing Frisbees in their cut-off shorts and T-shirts, some of the guys with their long hair in ponytails, strumming guitars or passing joints, the girls holding sun reflectors to tan their faces. A number of professors had brought their classes outside, where the students sat in semicircles beneath spreading oak trees, pretending to listen to lectures on the wisdom of Sophocles and the declines of Rome and civilization.
She took in another lungful of sweet, sleepy air, surprised to see her roommate hurrying toward her, full of energy and purpose, a jarring contrast to everyone else. But then, Gertrude was unlike anyone Di had ever known before. So much her own person, she even bragged about her ugly name as though it were a badge of honor.
Gertrude was puffing on a cigarette, her black hair in a single braid that swung from side to side behind her as she glided between the students on the lawn. She wore what she always wore, regardless of the weather: a long-sleeved white-cotton blouse with embroidery around the scooped neckline, which was not quite sheer enough to show her braless breasts, but close, and tattered blue jeans that dragged in the dirt and hadn’t been washed since the two girls had moved into their freshman-dorm room a month before.
She stopped beside Di and extended her free hand. “Come on,” Gertrude said, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Time to split.”
Di took her hand, slick with sweat, and allowed herself to be pulled up. “Where are we going?”
“A meeting,” Gertrude said. Behind her rose-tinted glasses, her eyes looked violet. “We’re already late.” She had an awful Brooklyn accent that was incongruous with the graceful way she moved.
“What kind of meeting?” Di asked, trying to keep up with Gertrude’s rushed pace.
“Some guys I know,” Gertrude said. The sun glinted off the stainless-steel dog tag she wore around her neck that had belonged to her brother. She never took it off, even to shower. “We’re gonna fix this damn world.”
“Fine,” Di said. “But don’t get angry if I leave in the middle. I told you I don’t care about political stuff.”
“I don’t care about political stuff,” Gertrude mimicked, capturing Di’s hyperenunciated speech pattern and hand gestures. She was a natural chameleon. “I can’t believe I’m rooming with goddamn Pollyanna.” Gertrude said it lightly, in her coarse voice. It was their roomie joke, how they referred to themselves. Pollyanna and Che Guevara.
They walked around the outside of the imposing library, through a courtyard, then into a building Di had never been inside. Since all her classes were at Barnard this semester, she usually only came over to Columbia to use the main library.
Gertrude threw down her cigarette, pulled open the door to a stairwell, and ran up the stairs, the pounding of her wooden clogs echoing against the concrete steps. Di stomped out the cigarette, then followed her friend to the second floor.
The hallway was deserted. There were classrooms on both sides but no classes in session. Gertrude stopped by a door and looked in through the glass upper half, as though she were deciding what to do. She scratched the beauty mark on her right cheek. It made her look sexy, but Di knew better than to ever tell Gertrude that. Gertrude was an intellectual, not a sex object. She had no interest in attracting men, she’d said often enough. Fucking them was a different matter.
She tugged on the classroom door, shooting a quick glance at Di. “Okay, let’s go.”
They stepped into a room where a half-dozen students, mostly young men with mutton-chop sideburns and longish hair, sat in a semicircle. There was one pretty blonde girl, whose darting blue eyes and long neck made her resemble a fledgling egret. Di recognized her from the dorms. Linda something.
Di followed their gazes to the front of the room. A lean, good-looking guy with a white bandanna over wavy blond hair that reached his shoulders was perched on the desk. He had on torn jeans and a flowing white shirt that a Renaissance poet might have worn, except his was open almost to his waist, revealing a tanned chest with golden hair.
“Peace,” Gertrude said, holding up two fingers in the symbolic gesture. She went over to him and kissed him deeply on the mouth. Then she pulled away and said, “I brought my roommate. Di Hartfeld.”
The guy smiled at Di. He had clear blue eyes and an adorable cleft in his chin. “I’m Lawrence Lyndberger,” he said. “Welcome to the coolest group of revolutionaries on campus.”
The light was almost completely gone from the sky, and dark waves lapped against the rocks. Diana had once believed she knew Larry as well as she knew herself. The truth was, she didn’t know him at all. She wondered whether she ever had.