Cry Mercy (16 page)

“Are you kidding? They have peanut-butter-and-chocolate-chip pancakes and you have to ask?”

He gestured for the waitress and gave her their order. When she'd turned away from the table, he said, “So you told your donor siblings that you were getting together with Emme.”

“Not really everyone.” She appeared to Emme to be debating with herself. “Well, really just Ava.”

“Ava's one of your sisters?”

Hayley nodded. “She's the oldest. I always go to her when I have a problem or anything. You know.”

“Because every girl wants to have a big sister. I do understand,” Emme said, because she did, although her wanting had stopped long ago. “Hayley, how old are you?”

“I'm sixteen. I know, I look younger, but I was sixteen on my last birthday.”

“How old is Ava?” Nick asked.

“She's old. Like, twenty-four. Everyone says we look the most alike.”

“And that makes you happy.” Emme could tell that it did.

Hayley nodded again.

“Where does Ava live? What's her last name?”

“She lives in Boston. She's in graduate school. And we don't do last names. Just first names.”

“Why no last names?” Nick asked.

“Because they don't matter,” Hayley said simply. “We all have different last names, so we decided none of us would use them.”

“Because you're bonding as siblings, and you want to stress what you have in common, not what's different,” Emme noted. “I get it.”

Their beverages were served, coffee for Emme and Nick, soda for Hayley.

“How many are you, all together?” Emme asked.

“There are ten on the message board. We know there are others, but for whatever reasons, they're not into it.”

“Maybe you could tell me about the ones who are,” suggested Emme.

“There's Ali—she's eighteen. She lives in Pittsburgh. She's going to college at Bryn Mawr next year, so I'm going to apply there, too, when I'm a senior. We thought it would be fun to go to the same school and see each other more often.”

Emme took a small notebook from her bag. “I have to write this down. I'll never remember everyone.”

“I thought you just wanted to know about Belle.” Hayley frowned.

“I do want to know about Belle. But I need to know the people she cared about, if I'm going to be able to understand where she might have gone.”

“Hayley, you don't think she would have gone to stay with one of the other kids, do you?” Nick asked as if the thought had just occurred to him.

Hayley shook her head. “Uh-uh. Someone would have said.”

“So we have you, Belle, Ava and Ali—who are the others?” Emme tapped her pencil on the tabletop.

“There's Henry—he's twenty-two and he lives in Connecticut. He just graduated from college. Lori is his sister—they're from the same donor and the same mother so they're, like, full siblings. She's twenty and goes to Yale. Jessie—she's nineteen—she used to live in Florida but last year her dad moved them to France. She used to be on the board a lot, but now, not so much.” She thought that over for a moment before amending, “Not ever anymore. Wayne and Will, they live in North Carolina. They're seventeen and they're twins. No one's met them except for Belle.”

“When did Belle meet them?” Nick asked.

“She drove down to meet them one time last year. She said they're both really sweet guys but their mom doesn't want any part of the donor-sib thing, so they don't get to come to any of the get-togethers.”

“Why would Belle drive all the way down there just to meet them?” Emme wondered aloud.

“Because they never got to meet anyone and they were both feeling left out, I guess.” Hayley shrugged. “Belle didn't make a big deal out of it, she just went. The rest of us probably wouldn't have even known if the guys hadn't posted a picture of the three of them on the board. That was Belle, though. She'd do something nice but never talk about it.”

“So that makes nine, if I counted correctly,” Nick said.

“There's Justin, he's twenty-one and lives in Virginia. He's in college so we don't hear from him very often.”

“Where does he go to school?” Emme looked up from her notes.

“I don't know. He transferred someplace but didn't say where. He's pretty much dropped out.”

She rested an elbow on the table and planted her chin in the palm of one hand and looked wistful. “That happens sometimes. People drop out, they drop in, they drop out again, depending on what's going on in their lives. They get busy.”

She smiled ruefully and added, “Sometimes they get grounded. That's sort of what we thought about Belle, that something was going on and she didn't have time for us for a while. We—me and Ava and Ali—figured she'd be back when it suited her.”

“So it's really not unusual to not hear from someone on the list for a while.” Nick said. “But you wouldn't have thought it odd that someone dropped out for several months?”

“No.” Hayley shook her head. “Sometimes you just get overwhelmed with work. Plus, Belle said she was getting really busy with sorority rush coming up. We all thought she'd be back at the end of the school year.”

“Have you met, face-to-face, with everyone on the board?”

“No. Just Ali, Ava, Henry, Lori, and Belle. We've gotten together a few times. Well, Ava only once, ′cause she's in grad school and is real busy.”

“How about last January?” Nick asked.

Hayley turned to Emme. “That's the day you said she had on her calendar? The day she disappeared?”

“Yes. Did you get together that day?”

“We met in Philadelphia, me, Ali—she was in the area to visit Bryn Mawr—Belle, Henry, and Lori. I told my parents I had to go to the Philadelphia Art Museum for a school project, and that's where we all met. We went through the museum together and then we had lunch there. It was so much fun.” Hayley rested her elbow on the scarred tabletop, her fingers absently tracing a heart that someone had carved long ago, the inscription
AS & MR
still visible. Emme noticed the entire top of the table was one mass of carvings, as if people had been leaving their mark for generations.

“Did anything unusual happen?” Nick asked.

Emme kicked him under the table.
My job
.

He sat back against the seat.
I got the message. She's all yours
.

“I can't think of anything,” Hayley told him.

Emme sat back to permit the waitress to serve their pancakes. The aroma reminded her that she hadn't eaten since six thirty that morning. By the way Nick was eyeing his plate, she suspected that he'd had an early breakfast as well.

“Anyone following you? Or maybe paying too much attention to your group, or to Belle?” Emme waited for Hayley to finish with the syrup.

“No.” Hayley shook her head, then a moment later, her eyes widened slightly. “Oh. Well, there was this guy in the restaurant when we went downstairs to have lunch who was kind of flirting with her.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall, kind of thin. Real, real light blond hair.” Hayley shrugged. “I didn't pay much attention to him. I just remember that much because she sat across the table from me, and Henry said something like, ‘Hey, Belle, your boyfriend's back,’ and I turned around and saw him sit down at a table behind us.”

“What did he mean, he's back? Had he been hanging around her, following her?”

“I don't know. I hadn't noticed if he did.” She bit her bottom lip. “I guess I should have been more observant. I should have noticed—”

“No, no,” Emme assured her. “It's probably nothing. But just for the record, after lunch, where did you go? Did you go back to the exhibits?”

“Lori, Henry, and I went upstairs to the second floor, because he wanted to see the arms and armor display. He's all into that Knights of the Round Table
thing. Ali and Belle wanted to look at the photography exhibit on the ground floor. We all met up later outside, on the front steps. Then everyone sort of went their own way.”

“How did everyone travel that day, do you know?” Emme continued to make notes.

“Lori, Henry, and I all came in by train, so we shared a cab back to Thirtieth Street Station. My train was already there, so I left as soon as we got there. Ali and Belle both had cars.”

“Do you know where Ali and Belle parked?”

“Ali got to park in the museum parking lot because she was early, but Belle was parked on some street somewhere.” Hayley nodded. “I remember that because Ali said she'd drive Belle to her car but Belle said it was okay, she'd walk, ′cause it was such a nice day.”

“Have you heard from Belle since the day at the museum, Hayley?”

Hayley stared into space, as if trying to recall.

“Maybe … but I'm not really sure. Maybe I did … but maybe not. I don't know when I last heard from her. I didn't really pay attention.” She shook her head. “I … I don't remember. But you said that was the day she disappeared, right?”

Emme nodded.

“So whatever happened to her, it must have happened to her there, right?” Horrified, Hayley looked up at Emme. “Something bad happened to her right there, that day, and none of us even knew.”

“There's no way you could have known.” Emme put her arm around Hayley in an attempt to comfort her. “And there's no way to prove that whatever happened,
happened there and then. Something could have happened on her way back to school, or once she got there.”

“Or someone could have kidnapped her after she left us!” she sobbed softly.

“Hayley, I'd like to have the email addresses and phone numbers of the other donor siblings,” Emme told her, while making a mental note to find out if the art museum has surveillance cameras in the restaurant. “Can you give me those? I think it's time we spoke directly with them.”

“They might not like it.”

Tough
.

Aloud, Emme said, “I think they'd like it far less if they knew that something really bad could have happened to Belle, and that any one of them might know something that could lead us to her.”

“All right.” Hayley found a tissue in her bag and wiped her face. “I have the list at home. I can email it to you.”

“That would be great. Can you do it tonight?”

Clearly reluctant, Hayley nodded, and Emme suspected she might be worried what the others were going to say when they found out she was the one who gave out their information.

“Hayley, did Belle get along with all of the others?” Emme asked, an attempt to find out if all was well among the siblings.

Hayley nodded. “Everyone liked Belle. She's the best.”

“We spoke with Dr. Drake at the fertility clinic,” Nick told her. “She mentioned that Belle had been there, hoping to find some information on Donor
1735. She said Belle had described herself as the spokesperson for the group.”

“When we started talking about maybe trying to find a way to figure out who Donor 1735 is—maybe even meet him—Belle volunteered to go to the clinic and see if they'd let her look at her mother's file.” Hayley smiled weakly. “Which we all figured they wouldn't let her do, but she wanted to give it a shot.”

“There was interest in finding Donor 1735?” Emme asked.

“Sure. There's a kid, Aaron? He actually did it, and he started out with only the little bit of description the clinic gave his mother, and the donor number,” Hayley replied. “There was a whole magazine article about him. It was pretty cool.”

“How complete was the description?” Emme asked.

“I don't know, but my mom said they told her that our donor was tall, blond, of Slovak and Irish background, athletic build, and that he was born in Philly Just that kind of stuff.”

“Someone was able to trace a donor with nothing more than that type of information?” Nick appeared impressed. “This Aaron must be one determined kid. How did he do it?”

Hayley shrugged. “I don't know. He did almost all of it on the Internet, but we all talked about how cool it would be if we could find 1735. Have a big reunion, you know?” She played with a strand of her hair. “Of course, it wouldn't really be a reunion, you know, ′cause we'd never met him before.”

“Hayley, do you remember when this discussion took place?” Emme asked.

The girl thought for a moment. “I'm pretty sure it was sometime last year.” She paused as if trying to remember. “Yeah, it would have been. Because Jessie said she was going to do what Aaron did, but then her dad got transferred, like I said, and she pretty much forgot about it, I guess. Then it all came up again in the fall, and we were all still talking about it when we got together.”

“You talked about this when you were at the museum?” Emme asked.

“Yeah. Someone said how cool it was that we were in Philly and that he had been born in Philly, you know, back then. And how maybe he could even have been there, at the museum, right then. And then someone else said that maybe he'd been going out when we were coming in and we'd walked right past him and didn't know him and he didn't know us. Stuff like that.”

“Was anyone in your group thinking about tracking down Donor 1735, besides Jessie?” Nick's fingers closed around his coffee cup.

“Belle was. She'd already gotten in touch with this kid, Aaron, the one who found his donor? She said he told her what he did, and how he did it, and she was pretty sure she could do it, so we were all pretty psyched about that.”

“Do you know how far she got? Was she able to identify him?” Emme asked.

“I don't know, but I kinda think she might have been getting close.” Hayley sucked the rest of her drink through her straw in a loud whoosh. “When we asked her about it, she just smiled and said ‘Stay tuned.’”

“Stay tuned.” Nick repeated flatly.

“Yeah.”

“Hayley, was Belle particularly close to any one of your siblings? Someone she might have confided in?”

“Ali, maybe. But she was pretty friendly with all of us.”

“So everyone knew she was looking for Donor 1735.”

Hayley nodded. “Sure. It wasn't a secret. And Belle was scary smart. If she said she'd find him, we all knew it was only a matter of time until she did.”

W
ell, so much for Belle's father not being a factor in her life,” Nick said after they'd exchanged email addresses with Hayley and headed back to Emme's car. “Wendy got that wrong.”