The Couple Next Door (21 page)

‘Yes?’ His voice is cold. He will never forgive her for lying to the police.

‘Marco,’ Cynthia purrs, as if the last few days had never happened, as if his child were not missing, and everything was the same as it used to be. How he wishes that were true.

‘What’s up?’ Marco says. He wants to keep this short.

‘I have something I want to talk to you about,’ Cynthia says, a little more businesslike. ‘Can you come by the house?’

‘Why? Did you want to apologize?’

‘Apologize?’ She sounds surprised.

‘For lying to the police. For telling them that I came on to you when we both know
you
came on to me.’

‘I’m sorry about that. I did lie,’ she says, with an attempt at playfulness.

‘What the fuck? You’re
sorry
? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?’

‘Can we discuss it?’ She’s not playful anymore.

‘Why do we need to discuss it?’

‘I’ll explain when you get here,’ Cynthia says, and abruptly hangs up the phone.

Marco sits at his desk for five full minutes, drumming his fingers on its surface, trying to decide what to do. Finally he gets up, closes the blinds, leaves his office, and locks his door. He feels uneasy about ignoring her. Cynthia is not the kind of woman you ignore. He’d better see what she has to say.

When he gets to his own neighborhood, Marco realizes that if he’s going to see Cynthia, even if only for a couple of minutes, it’s better that Anne not know about it. And he wants to avoid the reporters. So he’d better not park in front of the house. If he parks in the garage, he can go to Cynthia’s through the back for a couple of minutes first and then go home.

He parks the Audi in his own garage and then goes through the backyard gate over to Cynthia’s and knocks on the back door. He feels furtive, guilty, as if he’s sneaking around on his wife. But he isn’t – he just wants to see what Cynthia has to say, and then he’ll get the hell out of there. He doesn’t
want
to sneak around on his wife. He glances aimlessly over the patio as he waits for her to answer the door. This is where he was sitting when she crawled into his lap.

Cynthia comes to the door. She looks surprised. ‘I was expecting you at the
front
door,’ she says. It’s as if she’s insinuating something. But she’s not as flirtatious as she usually is. He sees right away that she’s not in a sexy mood. Well, neither is he.

He steps inside the kitchen. ‘What’s this about?’ Marco says. ‘I’ve got to get home.’

‘I think you’ve got a couple of minutes for this,’ Cynthia says, and leans back against the kitchen counter, folding her arms beneath her breasts.

‘Why did you lie to the police?’ Marco asks abruptly.

‘It was just a
little
lie,’ Cynthia says.

‘No it wasn’t.’

‘I like to tell lies. Just like you.’

‘What do you mean?’ Marco spits angrily.

‘You’re
living
a lie, aren’t you, Marco?’

Marco starts to feel a chill. She can’t know. She can’t know anything. How could she? ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ He shakes his head as if he has no idea what she’s getting at.

Cynthia gives him a long, cool look. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Marco, but Graham has a hidden camera, in the backyard.’ Marco says nothing, but he feels cold all over.
‘And it was recording on the night you were here, the night your baby
went missing.
’

She knows
, Marco thinks.
Fuck. Fuck.
He starts to sweat. He looks at her beautiful face, so ugly to him now. She is a manipulative bitch. Perhaps she’s bluffing. Well, he can bluff, too.

‘You had a camera on? Did you get anything on the kidnapper?’ he asks, as if this is good news.

‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘I sure did.’

Marco knows he’s finished. She has him on video. He can tell by her face.

‘It was
you.
’

‘Bullshit,’ Marco scoffs, trying to act as if he doesn’t believe a word of it, but he knows it’s no use.

‘Would you like to see it?’

He would like to wring her neck. ‘Yes,’ he says.

‘Come with me,’ she says, and turns to go upstairs.

He follows her up to her bedroom, the one she shares with Graham. He thinks how foolish she is, inviting a man who she already knows is capable of a kidnapping up to her bedroom. She doesn’t appear to be afraid. She appears to be in total control. But that’s what she likes – to be in control, to pull people’s strings and watch them dance. She also likes a little spice, a little danger. She’s obviously going to blackmail him. He wonders if he’s going to let her.

A laptop lies open on the bed. She clicks some keys, and a video begins to play, with a date and time signature. Marco blinks rapidly as he watches the video. There he is fiddling with the light, going into the house. He comes out a couple minutes later with Cora in his arms, wrapped in her white blanket. It is unmistakably him. He glances around to make sure he’s unobserved. He looks almost directly at the camera,
but he has no idea that it’s there. Then he walks quickly to the rear door of the garage and reappears about a minute later, walking back across the lawn without the baby. He’d forgotten to reset the light. Seeing it all now, after everything that’s happened, Marco feels overwhelming regret, and guilt, and shame.

And anger that he’s been caught. By her. She will show the police. She will show Anne. He is finished.

‘Who else has seen this?’ he asks. He’s surprised at how normal his voice sounds to him.

She ignores his question. ‘Did you kill her?’ Cynthia asks, almost with her old playfulness.

He is sickened by her, by her morbid, unfeeling curiosity. He doesn’t answer. Does he want her to think he might be capable of killing? ‘Who else?’ he demands, looking fiercely at her.

‘No one,’ she lies.

‘Graham?’

‘No, he hasn’t seen it,’ Cynthia says. ‘I told him I checked the camera but the battery had died. He didn’t question it. He doesn’t know anything about this.’ She adds, ‘You know Graham. He doesn’t take much of an interest.’

‘So why are you showing this to me?’ Marco asks. ‘Why didn’t you go straight to the police?’

‘Why would I do that? We’re friends, aren’t we?’ She gives him a coy smile.

‘Cut the bullshit, Cynthia.’

‘Fine.’ The smile disappears. ‘If you want me to keep this to myself, it’s going to cost you.’

‘Well, that’s a bit of a problem, Cynthia,’ Marco says, his voice very controlled, ‘because I don’t have any money.’

‘Oh, come on. You must have something.’

‘I am stone broke,’ he says coldly. ‘Why do you think I kidnapped my own child? For fun?’

He can see the disappointment in her face as she readjusts her expectations.

‘You can mortgage your house, can’t you?’

‘It’s already mortgaged.’

‘Mortgage it some more.’

The cold bitch.
‘I can’t. Not without Anne knowing, obviously.’

‘So maybe we need to show Anne the video, too.’

Marco takes a sudden step toward her. He doesn’t have to play the part of a desperate man – he
is
a desperate man. He could throttle her right now if he wanted to. But she doesn’t look scared, she looks excited. Her eyes glitter, and he can see her breasts rising and falling rapidly as she breathes. Perhaps it’s danger she wants, more than anything else. The thrill. Perhaps she wants him to throw her onto the bed they’re both standing beside. For a brief moment, he considers it. Would she not blackmail him then? Not likely.

‘You’re not showing that video to anybody.’

She takes her time responding. She looks right in his eyes. Their faces are mere inches apart. ‘I would rather
not
show it to anybody, Marco. I would like this to be just between the two of us. But you’ve got to work with me here. You must be able to get some money.’

Marco thinks furiously. He doesn’t
have
any money. He doesn’t know how to get any. He will have to buy time. ‘Look, give me some time to figure things out. You know what a shit show my life is right now.’

‘Things haven’t exactly turned out as you planned, have they?’ she says. ‘I presume you expected to get the baby back?’

He wants to hit her, but he stops himself.

She looks at him appraisingly. ‘Fine. I’ll give you some time. I won’t show anyone the video – for now.’

‘How much money are we talking about here?’

‘Two hundred thousand.’

It’s less than he was expecting. He would have expected her to ask for more, an amount more in keeping with her flamboyant nature. But if he pays her, she’ll ask for more, and more – that’s the way it is with blackmailers. You never get out from under them. So the amount she’s naming now is meaningless. Even if he pays her and she destroys the video in front of him, he’ll never be certain there are no copies. His life is totally destroyed, on so many fronts.

‘I think that’s fair,’ she says.

‘I’m leaving now. Stay away from Anne.’

‘I will. But if I get impatient, if I don’t hear from you, I might call.’

Marco pushes past her out of the bedroom and goes down the stairs and out the sliding glass kitchen doors without looking back. He’s so angry he can’t think straight. Angry and scared. There’s proof. Proof that he took the baby. This changes everything. Anne will know. And he could go to jail for a very long time.

At that moment he doesn’t see how things can get any worse. He enters his own backyard through the gate from Cynthia’s patio. Anne is out there watering some plants.

Their eyes meet.

ANNE SEES MARCO
come from Cynthia’s backyard, and her eyes go wide. She is shocked into perfect stillness, the watering can in her hand. Marco has been at Cynthia’s. Why? There’s only one reason he would be at Cynthia’s. Anne asks him anyway, from across the yard. ‘What were you doing over there?’ Her voice is cold.

Marco’s got that deer-in-the-headlights look, when he’s caught red-handed and doesn’t know what to do. He’s never been good at improvising. She almost feels sorry for him. But she can’t feel sorry for him, because right now she hates him. She drops the watering can and runs past him and through the back door into their house.

He follows after her, calling desperately, ‘Anne! Wait!’

But she doesn’t wait. She runs upstairs; she’s sobbing loudly now. He follows on her heels up the stairs, pleading with her to talk to him, to let him explain.

But he has no idea how he will explain. How will he explain why he was sneaking over to Cynthia’s without revealing the existence of the video?

He expects Anne to go into their bedroom and throw
herself down on the bed in tears, which is what she usually does when she’s upset. Maybe she’ll slam the door in his face and lock it. She’s done it before. She’ll come out eventually, and it will give him time to think.

But she doesn’t run into their bedroom and fling herself, crying, onto their bed. She doesn’t lock him out of their bedroom. Instead she runs down the hall into the office. He’s right behind her. He sees her drop to her knees in front of the air-intake grate.

Oh, no. God no.

She tears the grate off, sticks her hand inside, and rips the cell phone off the side of the air duct. He feels sick. She puts the phone in her palm, holds it up to him, the tears streaming down her face. ‘What the hell is
this
, Marco?’

Marco freezes. He can’t believe this is happening. Suddenly he has to fight the urge to laugh. It’s comical, really, all of it. Cynthia’s video. This.
What the hell is he going to tell her?

‘This is how you’ve been communicating with Cynthia, isn’t it?’ Anne accuses him.

He stares at her, momentarily baffled. Just in time he stops himself from saying,
Why would I use a cell phone to call Cynthia when she’s right next door?
His hesitation suggests something else to her.

‘Or is it someone else?’

Marco can’t tell her the truth – that the hidden cell phone she now has in her hand was the only way he could communicate with his accomplice in the kidnapping of their baby. With the man who is now dead. Marco has hidden an untraceable, prepaid cell phone in the wall, to use for calling his partner in an unforgivable crime. She thinks he’s been having an affair – with Cynthia or someone else. His immediate instinct is to keep her away from Cynthia. He will make something up.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he begins. ‘It’s not Cynthia, I swear.’

She screams and throws the phone at him, hard. It clips him on the forehead and bounces to the floor. He feels a sharp pain above his right eye.

He pleads with her. ‘It’s over, Anne. It meant nothing. It was just a few weeks,’ he lies, ‘right after Cora was born and you were so tired . . . It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do it – it just happened.’ He’s blurting out every excuse he can think of.

She glares at him in disgust and rage, tears smearing her face, her nose running, her hair a tangled mess. ‘You can sleep on the couch from now on,’ she says bitterly, her voice edged with pain, ‘until I figure out what to do.’ She pushes past him into their bedroom and slams the door. He hears her turn the lock.

Marco slowly picks the phone up off the floor. He touches his forehead where the phone struck him; his fingers come away bloody. Absently, he turns the cell phone on, automatically swipes the pattern to unlock the phone. There is a record of his calls – all are to one number. All unanswered.

Marco tries to find a way through his fear and confusion. Who could have known that Bruce had Cora? Had Bruce told someone else about their plan, someone who then turned on him? It seemed unlikely. Or had he been careless? Had someone seen the baby and recognized her? That also seemed unlikely.

Idly, Marco looks down at the cell phone in his hand and, with a jolt, notices the missed-call symbol. It wasn’t there the last time he looked. The ringer is turned off, of course. Who would be calling him from Bruce’s phone? Bruce is dead. Marco presses redial, his heart hammering behind his ribs. He hears the phone ring. Once, twice.

And then a voice he recognizes. ‘I was wondering when you’d call.’