Dina Santorelli (15 page)

Knowing
him as well as he did, Phillip believed Bailino meant what he said. He was
honest and direct as much as he was ruthless. Having those qualities on his
side during the days of war, and friendship, had been a blessing, but this was
the first time he was viewing them from the other side, and it was more
terrifying than he had imagined.

Bailino
stood up. "Grant Gino Cataldi a thirty-day stay of execution," he said. "Make
any excuse you want—DNA testing or whatever—and she won't get hurt."

"How
do I know she's okay?" Phillip asked, staring at his plate, his voice a
whisper.

"You
don't. But I'm giving you my word, and you know the value of my word."

Bailino
walked out of the diner, but not before giving a friendly wave to Taryn, who
had returned and was cleaning up his dirty dishes.

"Such
a handsome man," Taryn said, wiping the counter with a rag. "Always so friendly
and courteous. He always comes alone. I don't think he's married." She looked
at the governor's untouched piece of pie. "Want me to freshen your coffee,
governor?"

Phillip
shook his head.

"Is
Mrs. Grand not joining us today, after all?"

Phillip
forced a smile. "I'm afraid not."

"Oh,
I'm sorry to hear that." Taryn looked genuinely disappointed. "Do you want me
to box that for you?" she asked, motioning toward the pie slices. "I know how
much Charlotte loves the taste of my cherry pie." She picked up the plates
before Phillip could protest. "How is the little darlin' these days?"

"Fine,
just fine," Phillip said, taking the small cardboard doggie bag from Taryn, who
smiled and shuffled off to chat with old Lester Higgins, the owner of the
downtown antique shop, who had just walked in and taken a seat at the counter.
Phillip saw from the corner of his eye that Higgins was ready to say a cheerful
hello, but the governor quickly turned away and headed toward the exit. He had
just told his first willful lie to a constituent and was eager to avoid a
second one.

Nurberg sat in his car
scribbling notes into a small notepad. He looked up to see if Phillip Grand had
left Taryn's, but there was no sign of him in the swirl of people near the
diner entrance, and the town car was still in the parking lot. He had expected
to have the governor all to himself for the day to go over the visitor lists,
political opponents, allies. He expected to see Phillip Grand sitting in his
office, his head characteristically in his hands, having called off all of the
day's appointments. When Det. Matrick phoned his cell to tell him that the
governor "was going for a drive," Nurberg thought it was odd—odd enough to
follow him. And when the governor pulled into the Taryn's parking lot, Nurberg
thought it odder still. He couldn't imagine Phillip Grand would keep his weekly
lunch appointment with his mother or tell her about Charlotte's disappearance,
especially this early on when everything was so speculative. News like that
could put an eighty-year-old woman over the edge.

Nurberg
leaned his head back on his seat's headrest. That was the part that was most
difficult for him to swallow: There were no leads. None. The cleanness of Charlotte's disappearance was baffling, and common sense dictated that it must have been
some kind of inside job. But the investigation so far had turned up nothing.
The housekeeper had no reason to dislike the Grands or betray them; by
virtually all accounts, she seemed happy and appeared to be treated rather well
there. And, in his heart, he didn't think she'd ever hurt the little girl. It
was Rosalia, after all, that Nurberg saw holding little Charlotte during press
events, right up until the cameras rolled, which is when she'd hand the baby
off to Mrs. Grand. And Rosalia had said the rest of the mansion staff seemed to
feel the same way about the little girl; they adored her.

Mrs.
Grand was another story. Disliked. Feared. Revered. Nurberg reached down to the
side of his seat and flicked a switch, tilting his seat back. He'd seen his
share of domestic disturbances, and, for the most part, the offenders were easy
to detect—drunk, high, overly nice—but he knew that things were not always as
they seemed and he suspected as much with the state's First Lady. It was quite
possible that even her sudden blowup the previous day could have been carefully
orchestrated.

Nurberg
tapped the manila folder next to him, which contained lists of names of
possible suspects. He had spent the entire morning combing through police
arrests that were conducted in the past eighteen months and were related to the
governor in any way. Most of them were college-aged pro-choice, anti-gun, and
anti-capital-punishment protestors who, minor brushes with police officers
aside, probably couldn't hurt a fly. Then there was the issue of the Grand
fortune. That was sizable enough to lure any hoodlum, and, as the only child, Charlotte was the only heir. He looked again at the governor's file. Political opponents
and gold diggers notwithstanding, Nurberg had nothing. The governor was a
veritable boy scout.

"Hey,
Nurberg."

Across
the street, a man was waving at him. He was a tall, tanned fellow accompanied
by a pretty brunette holding a little boy who was wearing a Yankee baseball
cap. The couple walked toward him as he got out of the car.

"Hey,
Mark Nurberg, right?"

"Yeah."
Nurberg couldn't place him.

"John
Callahan. From Schenectady High School?"

"John?
My God, I didn't recognize you." The two men clasped hands.

"Yeah,
not many people do since I lost all that weight."

"No,
it's just... You look so... mature. You're a dad!"

"Yeah,"
Callahan beamed. "This is my wife, Debbie. Debbie, this is Mark Nurberg. We
went to high school together."

Debbie
rearranged the little boy in her arm and said, "Nice to meet you."

"And
this is our little guy, Jack."

The
boy stuck out his hand, and Nurberg shook it.

"Wow,
a cop, huh?" Callahan said.

Nurberg
looked at his plain clothes. "Is it that obvious?"

"Well,
that, and I've googled you a few times and saw your name come up here and
there." Callahan turned to his wife. "That's what Mark always wanted—to be a
cop."

"You're
living your dream then," Debbie said with a smile.

"Yeah,
I guess so." Nurberg said.

"Listen,
we gotta go. We're meeting Debbie's parents for an early lunch, but we should
keep in touch." Callahan reached into his pocket and pulled out a business
card. "Call me, sometime. I'd love to catch up. We'll go to lunch. I work right
down the road."

"He's
the manager of Dick's Sporting Goods," Debbie said proudly.

"Debbie..."

"Well,
you didn't say..." Debbie said, and Callahan gave his wife a squeeze.

"Yeah,
sure thing." Nurberg put the business card in his pocket. "It was good to see
you, John."

"You
too."

"Nice
meeting you," Debbie said as the family crossed the street and the little boy
waved.

Nurberg
watched them go until he saw Governor Grand finally emerge from Taryn's. He was
alone, no sign of his mother, who usually arrived with a cavalcade of her
senior-citizen friends. The governor looked left and right and then hurried to
his car in the parking lot as residents, the Callahan family among them, oohed
and aahed
,
watching their elected official make his way to the parking
lot.

When
the sedan pulled out, Nurberg waited a few car lengths and then followed
behind. Something was up; he could feel it. He made a mental note to check on
the whereabouts of the governor's mother this morning. The sedan made a right
and then a left and appeared to be heading back toward the Executive Mansion, and Nurberg's thoughts turned to John Callahan. How long had it been since
he'd seen him last? Ten years? Fifteen? He couldn't remember, nor could he
remember why the two had lost touch, considering they were practically best
friends in high school. How many times had they lay on the floor of Callahan's
basement, spending hours talking about what they wanted to do with their lives?
John had wanted to be an artist, and was pretty good too, until his mother
encouraged him to major in business—"something more practical"—and that was the
end of that. Nurberg, on the other hand, wanted to become a police officer from
the time he was a little boy.

"I
want to use my powers for good," he remembered telling John one day over a
half-eaten pizza and greasy video-game controls, in the way that a child talks
dreamily about the future. Of course, like any other profession, there were
times when police work wasn't all it was cracked up to be, when the bad guys
were released on a technicality, or when his boss told him to "lose" the
paperwork on an influential offender. But then a case comes along like the
disappearance of Baby Grand, and that do-gooder feeling returns—the chance to
make a difference.

Nurberg
could sense his friend's admiration today at seeing him achieve his
professional goals, and he felt a certain pride in that. But little did John
Callahan know that Nurberg would trade it all—the respect, the commendations,
the
powers
—for the chance to have a Debbie and a Jack.

Jamie rushed Charlotte back
into the cabin. The thought of the clump of the blonde girl's hair in her palm
was making it difficult for Jamie to breathe, as if it had gotten caught in her
throat. Joey slid the glass door closed behind them, leaving it slightly ajar.

"Are
you okay?" he asked her.

"Not
really."

Somehow,
they had gotten past Benny, Tony, and Leo, who were engaged in a game of poker
on a small dining table in the yard, without many questions, despite all the
shrieking and the crying. Jamie watched the men through the glass doors. Charlotte had calmed down and was sitting on the floor playing with the zipper of a throw
pillow.

"I
think she's hungry," Jamie said. "I should give her something to eat."

"Okay.
I'll see what there is."

It
was quiet in the house with just the three of them in there, and Jamie's eyes
drifted to the computer sitting idly on the buffet. The screen was off, but it
looked as though the unit was still running. Jamie could hear Joey opening and
closing cabinets in the kitchen, but she could not see him—the wall of the
breakfast nook was blocking her view. She leaned over and casually dragged her
finger across the keypad of the laptop. The screen lit up. Charlotte had
managed to stand, pushing her palms on the glass door, and was banging on it,
drawing the attention of the men outside. Leo smiled and waved, and all the men
laughed and went back to their game.

Charlotte steadied herself and then leaned away from the
doors—one step, then another, each one carefully planted as if she were
navigating a minefield. She got about six or seven steps into the room and
turned back to look at Jamie, who smiled.

"She's
really getting the hang of that," Joey said, returning from the kitchen. "Okay,
we don't have all that much. There are Cheerios."

Jamie
winced.

"I
know, we're Cheerioed out," Joey said. "There's a banana?"

Jamie
shook her head.

"Crackers?"

Jamie
shrugged her shoulders.

"Grapes?"

Jamie
thought quickly and said, "Yes, I think grapes would be great." She turned to Charlotte. "You want grapes, baby? Yes? Yes?" Her face became a contorted smile of
overenthusiasm. Charlotte, who seemed overwhelmed by Jamie's eagerness, nodded
her head yes.

"Well,
grapes it is!" Joey said and returned to the kitchen.

The
refrigerator was located to the right of the nook, which Jamie hoped would buy
her some more time. The moment Joey was out of view, she nudged herself closer
to the computer. At the bottom of the screen, she could see that the Facebook
site was minimized, but then Joey returned with some grapes in a bowl and
handed them to Charlotte.

"Wait,
I have to wash those and cut them," Jamie said, reaching for the fruit. "It's a
choking hazard. Where do you keep your big knives?"

Joey
hesitated and took the bowl of grapes back.

"
I'll
cut them," he said, looking somewhat embarrassed.

"Oh,
okay," Jamie said, as if it didn't matter one way or the other, and returned to
the back doors where Charlotte had managed to walk back on her own and was
pressing her tiny face into the glass pane.

Jamie
crossed her fingers that Joey would cut the grapes on the table of the
breakfast nook, which is where most of the kitchen mess seemed to accumulate,
perhaps because the men were fearful of damaging Bailino's marble countertops.
Once Joey ran the bowl of grapes under cold water, he stepped again out of
sight, and at the first sound of a knife hitting the table, and with Charlotte leaning on her right leg, Jamie reached with her left hand to the computer
keyboard and maximized the Facebook page. As she did, she glanced outside at
the men, who were laughing and smoking. She didn't have much time.

Tony's
profile was still open, and she dragged her finger across the keypad, bringing
the cursor to the top right corner, and logged him out. Then, with the deftness
of a seasoned freelance writer, she typed her email address and password to log
into her account while keeping her eye on the poker game outside.

"Please
make sure the large grapes still aren't too big as halves," she called out.

The
chopping stopped. "All right," Joey said, and the chopping resumed.

Jamie's
page appeared. With a quick sidelong glance, she scanned it and clicked in the
What's
on your mind?
box. When she looked back out the window, Leo was staring at
her with a piercing, probing look that seemed to suspend time. She froze. It
was only when Charlotte began bouncing up and down on her leg that Jamie, with
her gaze still on Leo, moved her left hand, which was out of his sight, across
the QWERTY keyboard that she knew so well. She typed
H-E-L-P
and was
about to log off, but then paused. Quickly, she typed
A-L-B-A-N-Y
and
then
C-H-A-R-L-O-T-T-E
, but before she could type
Grand
, Leo
stood up from the table and began walking toward the house. Frantically,
Jamie's fingers jerked along the keypad, trying to move the cursor diagonally
to log out, but with her eyes on Leo she couldn't be sure of where it was. He
was only a few feet away when Jamie picked up Charlotte, blocking Leo's view,
and glanced at the screen.
Damn, she was off target. Her Facebook profile
was still there
. As she heard the soft swish of the glass door sliding,
Jamie leaned Charlotte down next to the laptop, pretending to check her diaper
with her right hand as her left moved the cursor and pressed the
X
in
the top right corner of the screen just as Joey entered the room.