Two Little Girls in Blue (5 page)

“Did you get them on tape?” Lucas snapped.

“Oh, sure. We got them both to say, ‘Mommy, I love you. Daddy, I love you.' They sound real good. Then one of them started yelling, ‘We want to go home,' and Angie got sore at her. She raised her hand like she was going to hit her, and they both started crying. We got all of that on the tape, too.”

That's the first smart thing you've done, Lucas thought as he pocketed the tape. By pre-arrangement with the boss, he drove to Clancy's Pub on Route 7, arriving there at ten thirty. As instructed, he left the limo
in the crowded parking lot with the door unlocked, and the tape on the seat and then went in for a beer. When he returned to the limo, the tape was gone.

That was Saturday night. On Sunday night it had been clear that Angie's patience was wearing thin. “Damn dryer is broken, and of course we can't call anyone to fix it. You don't think ‘Harry' knows how, do you?” As she spat out the words, she was taking two sets of identical long-sleeved T-shirts and overalls from the washing machine and draping them on wire hangers. “You said it would be a couple of days. How long am I supposed to keep this up? It's been three days already.”

“The Pied Piper will tell us when and where to drop the kids off,” Lucas reminded her, biting back the desire to tell her to go to hell.

“How do we know he won't just get scared and disappear, and leave us stuck with them?”

Lucas had not intended to tell Angie and Clint about the Pied Piper's plan, but he felt it was necessary to appease her. “We know because he's going to make a ransom demand sometime between eight and nine o'clock tomorrow morning on the
Today
show.”

That had shut her up. You got to hand it to the boss, Lucas thought the next morning, as he watched the show and witnessed the dramatic response to the Pied Piper's phone call. The whole world will be wanting to send money to get those kids back.

But we're the ones taking all the risk, he thought hours later, after listening to the commentators on every station jabbering about the kidnapping. We grabbed
the kids. We're hiding them. We're the ones who will pick up the money when they raise it. I know who the boss is, but there's nothing to tie him to me. If we get caught, he could say I was nuts if I say he's behind it.

Lucas had no jobs scheduled until the next morning, Tuesday, and at two o'clock decided there was no way he could sit in his apartment and stew. The Pied Piper had told him to be sure to watch the CBS evening news, that another contact would be made then.

He decided he had time to go for a plane ride. He drove to Danbury Airport where he was a member of a flying club. There, he rented one of the single-engine prop planes and went for a spin. His favorite trip was to fly up the Connecticut coast to Rhode Island, then go out over the Atlantic for a while. Flying two thousand feet above the earth gave him a sense of complete control, something he badly needed to experience now.

It was a cold day with only a slight breeze and some clouds to the west: fine flying weather. But as he tried to relax in the cockpit and enjoy the freedom of being airborne, Lucas could not shake off the persistent worry that was plaguing him.

He felt certain he had missed something, but figuring out just what—that was the problem. Grabbing the kids had been easy. The babysitter only remembered that whoever had come up behind her smelled of perspiration.

She got that one right, Lucas thought with a brief grin, as he flew over Newport. Angie should stick Clint's
shirts in that washing machine of hers every time he peels one off.

The washing machine.

That was it! Those clothes she was washing. Two sets each of identical shirts and overalls. Where did she get them? The kids had been wearing pajamas when they grabbed them. Had that stupid airhead gone shopping for twin outfits that would fit three-year-olds?

She had. He was sure of it. And soon some clerk out there would start putting two and two together.

Icy with rage, Lucas involuntarily yanked back on the yoke, forcing the nose of the plane to rise nearly perpendicular to the earth below. His anger increased when he realized what he had done, and he quickly tried to level off. His action was too late, however, and the plane entered a stall. His heart beating faster, he pushed the nose down, recovered his air speed, and averted the stall. Next thing, that stupid broad will probably take the kids to McDonald's for a hamburger, he thought frantically.

T
here was no way to put a good face on delivering the latest communication from the kidnapper. On Monday evening, Walter Carlson received a phone call and went into the living room where Margaret and Steve Frawley were sitting side by side on the couch. “Fifteen minutes ago, the kidnapper called the network during the
CBS Evening News,”
he said, grimly. “They're replaying that segment now. It has the same tape of the twins' voices they played this morning on Katie Couric, with an addition.”

It's like watching people being thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, he thought, as he saw the agony on their faces at the sound of a childish voice protesting, “We want to go home . . .”

“Kelly,” Margaret whispered.

A pause . . .

Then the wailing of the twins began.

Margaret buried her face in her hands. “I cannot . . . cannot . . . cannot . . .”

Then a harsh, obviously disguised voice snarled, “I said
eight million. I want it now. This is your last chance.”

“Margaret,” Walter Carlson interrupted, his tone urgent,
“there
is
a bright spot here. The kidnapper is communicating with us. You have proof that the girls are alive. We are going to find them.”

“And are you going to come up with an eight-million-dollar ransom?” Steve asked bitterly.

Carlson did not know whether to raise their hopes yet. Agent Dom Picella, heading a team of agents, had spent the day at C.F.G.&Y., the global investment firm at which Steve was a new employee, interviewing Steve's co-workers to learn if any of them knew of someone who resented Steve, or who perhaps had wanted the job Steve had been hired to fill. The firm had recently suffered bad publicity because of insider trading accusations, and Picella had learned that a board of directors meeting had been hastily scheduled with conference call links to directors all over the world. The rumor was that the company might offer to put up the ransom money for the Frawley twins.

“One of the secretaries is a world-class gossip,” Picella told Carlson late that afternoon. “She says the firm has egg on its face for some of the fast stuff it pulled. It just paid a whopping five-hundred-million-dollar fine imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and has gotten tons of bad press. Her guess is that paying the eight-million ransom gives C.F.G.&Y. better publicity than if they hired a slew of PR agencies to whitewash their image. The board meeting is scheduled for eight o'clock tonight.”

Carlson studied the Frawleys, who, in the three days since the twins went missing, seemed to have aged ten
years. Both were pale, their eyes heavy with fatigue, their shoulders slumping. He knew that neither one of them had touched a morsel of food all day. He knew from experience that this was a time when relatives usually rallied around, but he'd overheard Margaret begging her mother to stay in Florida. “Mom, you can do me more good by praying round the clock,” Margaret had said, her voice breaking during the phone call. “We'll keep you posted, but if you were here crying with me, I don't think I could handle it.”

Steve's mother had recently had knee replacements and could neither travel nor be left alone. Friends had flooded the house with calls but had been asked to get off the line quickly in case the kidnapper called the Frawleys directly.

Not at all sure that he was doing the right thing, Walter Carlson hesitated, then spoke. “Margaret, Steve, I don't want to raise your hopes only to have them dashed, but, Steve, the CEO of your company has called an emergency board of directors meeting. From what I understand, there's a chance that they'll vote to pay the ransom.”

Don't let it go the other way, he prayed, as he saw hope come alive in their faces. “Now I don't know about you two,” he said, “but I'm hungry. Your next-door neighbor gave a note to one of the cops. She has dinner cooked for you and will send it over anytime you want.”

“We will eat something,” Steve said firmly. He looked at Carlson. “I know it sounds crazy. I'm a new employee at C.F.G.&Y., but in the back of my mind it
did occur to me that maybe, just maybe, they'd offer to put up the money. Eight million dollars is peanuts to them.”

Oh, my God, Carlson thought. The half brother may not be the only bad egg in this family. Could Steve Frawley be behind all this?

K
athy and Kelly looked up from the couch. They had been watching Barney tapes, but Mona had switched to the television and listened to the news. They were both scared of Mona. A little while ago Harry had started yelling at her after he got a phone call. He was mad at her for buying the clothes for them.

Mona had yelled back, “I suppose they should have been running around in pajamas for three days? Of
course
I bought some clothes, and some toys, and some Barney tapes, and in case you forgot, I bought the crib from a medical supply company. By the way, I also bought cereal and orange juice and fruit. And now shut up and go out and get some hamburgers for all of us. I'm sick of cooking. Got it?”

Then, just when Harry came back with the hamburgers, they heard the man on television say, “We may be receiving a call from the kidnapper of the Frawley twins.”

“They're talking about us,” Kathy whispered.

They listened, as over the television they could hear Kelly's voice, saying, “We want to go home.”

Kathy tried to squeeze back tears. “I
do
want to go home,” she said. “I want Mommy. I feel sick.”

“I can't understand a word of what the kid is saying,” Harry complained.

“Sometimes when they talk to each other, I can't understand it, either,” Angie snapped. “They have twin talk. I read about it.” She dismissed the subject. “Why didn't the Pied Piper tell them where to leave the money? What's he waiting for? Why did he just say, ‘You'll hear from me again'?”

“Bert says it's his way of wearing them down. He's going to make another contact tomorrow.”

Clint/Harry was still holding the McDonald's bag. “Let's eat these while they're hot. Come over to the table, kids.”

Kelly jumped up from the couch, but Kathy lay down and curled up into a ball. “I don't want to eat. I feel sick.”

Angie hurried over to the couch and felt Kathy's forehead. “This kid is getting a fever.” She looked at Clint. “Finish that hamburger fast and go out and get some baby aspirin. That's all we need for one of them to get pneumonia.”

She bent over Kathy. “Oh, sweetie, don't cry. Mona will take good care of you. Mona loves you.” She looked angrily at the table where Kelly had started to eat the hamburger, then kissed Kathy's cheek. “Mona loves you best, Kathy. You're nicer than your sister. You're Mona's little girl, aren't you?”