Two Little Girls in Blue (30 page)

Today she and Debby went back to her house in Hyannis and baked cookies. “How's your pretend friend doing?” she asked as Debby spooned the batter filled with chocolate morsels onto the baking pan.

“Oh, Nana, you forgot. I don't have a pretend friend anymore. I had her when I was little.” Debby shook her head emphatically, causing her light brown hair to bounce on her shoulders.

“Oh, that's right.” Elsie's eyes crinkled when she
smiled. “I guess I was thinking of your pretend friend because there was a little boy in my restaurant today. His name was Stevie, and he has a pretend friend named Kathy.”

“I'm going to make this a really big cookie,” Debby announced.

So much for her interest in pretend friends, Elsie thought. Funny how that little kid sticks in my mind. The mother was in some kind of hurry. She didn't let the poor child eat more than a few bites.

When they put the baking pan in the oven, she said, “All right, Debs, while we're waiting, Nana's going to sit down and read the paper for a few minutes. You start coloring the next page in your Barbie doll book.”

Elsie settled in her La-Z-Boy recliner and opened the newspaper. A follow-up story on the Frawley twins was on the front page.
MASSIVE FBI SEARCH FOR KIDNAPPERS
was the headline. A picture of the twins in front of their birthday cake brought tears to Elsie's eyes. She began to read the article. The family was in seclusion. The FBI had confirmed that the suicide note left by the man known as Lucas Wohl had contained his confession to unintentionally killing Kathy. Wohl's fingerprints identified him as being Jimmy Nelson, a convicted felon who had served six years in Attica for a series of burglaries.

Shaking her head, Elsie closed the paper. Her eyes strayed back to the front page and the picture of the twins. “Kathy and Kelly on their third birthday” was the caption. What is it . . . ? she wondered, staring at the
photograph, trying to figure out why something about it seemed so familiar.

Just then the oven timer went off. Debby dropped the crayon she was holding and looked up from the coloring book. “Nana, Nana, the cookies are finished,” she called as she ran to the kitchen.

Elsie let the newspaper slide to the floor and got up to follow her.

W
hen Captain Jed Gunther left the Frawley home, he drove directly to the Ridgefield police station. More shaken by what he had witnessed than he had allowed the Frawleys or the FBI agents to see, he reminded himself that he did not believe that there was anything to twin talk or twin telepathy. He did believe that Kelly was acting out the memory of her own experience with the kidnappers, but that was all.

He was also now firmly convinced that Kathy Frawley had been alive when Kelly was left in the car with the body of Lucas Wohl.

He parked in front of the police station and hurried through the steady rain across the pavement to the front door. Clearing by early afternoon, he thought dismissively of the earlier weather report. Tell me about it.

The desk sergeant confirmed that Captain Martinson was in his office, then dialed his extension. Gunther took the phone. “Marty, it's Jed. I just left the Frawleys and I'd like to see you for a couple of minutes.”

“Sure, Jed. Come on in.”

Both now thirty-six years old, the two men had been friends since kindergarten. In college they had independently decided to opt for careers in law enforcement.
The leadership qualities they possessed had resulted in early and regular promotions, Marty in the Ridgefield Police Department and Jed with the Connecticut State Troopers.

Over the years they had dealt with many tragedies, including the heartbreaking accidents that claim young victims, but this was the first ransom kidnapping either of them had ever encountered. Since the night the 911 call came in from the Frawley home, their departments had been working closely together, in conjunction with the FBI. The lack of any lead so far that would help to solve the crime was agonizing to both of them.

Jed shook Martinson's hand and took the chair nearest his desk. He was the taller of the two by three inches, and his hair was thick and dark, while Martinson's was already receding and showing premature hints of silver. Still, an observer would have recognized the characteristics they shared. They both exuded intelligence and self-confidence.

“How is it going at the Frawleys'?” Martinson asked.

Jed Gunther gave a brief account of what had transpired earlier, finishing with, “You know how suspect Wohl's confession is. I absolutely believe now that Kathy was still alive early Thursday morning when we found her sister in the car. When I was in the house today, I took another look around. It's plain that two people had to have taken part in the actual kidnapping.”

“I keep going over it, too,” Martinson agreed. “There were no curtains or drapes in the living room, only
shades that were partially lowered. They could have looked in the windows and seen the babysitter on the couch, talking on the cell phone. A credit card would have opened that old lock on the kitchen door. The back staircase is next to the door, so they could have counted on getting upstairs quickly. The question is whether or not they made one of the children cry to lure the babysitter upstairs. My guess is that that's the way it happened.”

Gunther nodded. “That's how I see it. They turned off the upstairs hall light and were carrying the chloroform to knock out the girl, and they may have been wearing masks in case she had a chance to see them face-to-face. They never could have risked walking around upstairs looking to see which room the children were in. They must have known their way around, so one of them has to have been in the house before that night.

“The question is,
when
was one of the kidnappers in there?” he continued. “The Frawleys bought an ‘as is' house from the estate after old Mrs. Cunningham died, which is why they got it for the price they did.”

“But no matter how ‘as is' it was, it had to pass an inspection before the mortgage went through,” Martinson pointed out.

“That's why I'm here,” Gunther told him. “I've read the reports, but I wanted to go over them with you. Your guys know this town inside out. Do you think there is
any
chance that someone was in the house and got the layout of it just before the Frawleys moved in? That's a long hall upstairs, and the floorboards creak. The doors
of the three bedrooms the family isn't using are always kept closed. The hinges creak. The kidnappers had to have known the twins were in one of the two bedrooms at the very end of the hall.”

“We spoke to the house inspector,” Martinson said slowly. “He's lived here thirty years. Nobody came in while he was there. Two days before the Frawleys moved in, the real estate agent sent over one of those local services to do a thorough cleaning. It's a family-owned business. I'll vouch for them myself.”

“What about Franklin Bailey? Was he any part of this?”

“I don't know what the feds think, but in my opinion, absolutely not. From what I hear, the poor guy is on the verge of a heart attack.”

Jed got up. “I'm going back to my office to see if I can find anything we missed in our files. Marty, I'll say again that I don't believe in telepathy, but remember how Kathy was coughing when we heard her on that tape? If she
is
alive, she is one sick kid, and what scares me is that the so-called suicide note may turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. They may not
mean
to kill her, but it's a cinch they're not going to take her to a doctor. Her face has been in every newspaper in the country. And without medical attention, I'm worried that she won't live.”

A
t LaGuardia Airport, Clint had the driver leave him at the drop-off for Continental Airlines. If the feds were closing in on him, the last thing he needed was for them to know he had been left at the entrance to the shuttle, a dead giveaway that he was heading for either Boston or Washington.

He paid the taxi fare with his credit card. Even as the driver zapped it through, he found himself sweating that Angie had done more shopping on it before she took off, and the card was maxed out. If that happened, every nickel of the eighty dollars he had in his pocket would be gone.

But it went through. He sighed with relief.

His anger at Angie was building, like the rumbling that precedes a volcanic eruption. If they had left both kids in the car and split the million, Lucas would be running his limo service and driving Bailey around just like always. And by next week, he and Angie would have been on their way to the phony job in Florida, with no one the wiser.

Now, not only had she killed Lucas, she had also blown his cover. How soon before they caught on to his old cellmate pal who had dropped out of sight? he wondered.
Very
soon. Clint knew how the feds thought. Then Angie, in her dumb, stupid way, had charged those clothes for the kids on his credit card, and even that dopey sales clerk had been smart enough to know that something phony was going on.

Carrying the small bag that held just a couple of shirts, some underwear, socks, and his toothbrush and shaving kit, Clint walked into the terminal, then went outside again and waited for the bus that would take him to the terminal where he could get the US Airways shuttle. There he purchased an electronic ticket. The next plane for Boston was leaving at six
P.M.
, giving him forty minutes to kill. He hadn't eaten any lunch, so he walked back to a service bar and ordered a hot dog, French fries, and coffee. He'd have loved a scotch, but that would be his reward later.

When the food arrived, he took a huge bite of the hot dog, and washed it down with a gulp of the bitter coffee. Was it only ten nights ago that he and Lucas had sat at the table in the cottage splitting the bottle of scotch, feeling good about how smoothly the job had gone?

Angie,
he thought, as the rumbling anger intensified. She's already had a run-in with a cop on the Cape, and now he knows the license plate on the van. For all I know, he's looking for her right now. He ate quickly, looked at the check, and slapped worn single-dollar bills on the counter, leaving the server a thirty-eight-cent tip. He slid off the stool. His jacket had ridden up over his stomach while he was seated, and he yanked it
down as he shuffled toward the gate for the Boston-bound plane.

With contempt in her eyes, Rosita, the third-year college student who had waited on him, observed his departure. He still has mustard on that pudgy face, she thought. Boy I'd hate to think that guy was coming home to me at the end of the day. What a slob. Oh, well, she thought with a shrug, at least you don't have to worry about him being a terrorist. If anyone is harmless, that jerk is.

A
lan Hart, the evening manager of the Soundview Motel in Hyannis, came on duty at seven o'clock. The first thing David Toomey, the motel manager, did was to brief him on the theft of the car seat that Linda Hagen, the woman in A-49, had reported to Officer Tyron. “I'm sure she was lying,” Toomey said. “I'd bet the rest of my life that she never had a car seat. Al, did you by any chance get a look at her van when she checked in last night?”