Lullaby and Goodnight (37 page)

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Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub

BOOK: Lullaby and Goodnight
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“Who’s the man?” Antares asks.
Anne Marie hears the reply just before the door closes. “Says he’s a friend of the woman’s, and his name is Gil Blaney.”
 
If only he’d hurry and call back.
He must have gotten the messages by now.
If he hurries, he might be able to get here before their child is born.
That would be good. Then he’ll be able to help me get rid of
her.
It would be nice, for a change, not to have to be the one to lug the body, still bloated with all that pregnancy fluid, onto the wheelbarrow. The ground is muddy today, making it harder to push the thing down to the edge of the pond, where the stack of concrete cinder blocks is waiting.
He doesn’t know the ritual, but it’s not all that complicated.
Haul her into the little rowboat, take her out to the middle, weigh her down, and drop her in so she can sink into the depths with the others.
Except the first, Heather.
And Derry Cordell.
Although, she wasn’t a donor.
Neither was Wanda Jones.
Fitting, then, that their remains will rest elsewhere. The pond is strictly reserved for donors.
Funny.
That’s actually kind of funny.
Maybe I should make a little memorial stone for it someday.
Here lie the wicked, whose progeny have been rescued
.
But then some trespasser might stumble across it and get suspicious.
Not that it will matter.
We’ll be long gone by then, the three of us. We’ll be a family at last, living far away from here. Maybe we’ll go to California. Or Europe. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe.
A fitful whimper escapes the next room.
Oh well. Time to put the knife aside and get back to the patient.
 
At the sound of footsteps moving through wet grass, Jody looks over her shoulder.
Dr. Lombardo’s nurse, Nancy, is making her way toward the detectives.
Jody sees Sam’s hand rest briefly on the holster concealed beneath his jacket as he calls, “Why are we here, Nancy? What’s this about?”
“I needed you to see it for yourselves, so you’ll believe me.”
“What are we supposed to see for ourselves, Nancy?” Jody asks as the woman comes to a stop a few feet away with a shudder.
“The graves.” She pauses, then reaches into her pocket.
Jody instantly goes for her gun, as does Sam.
But Nancy has merely pulled out a packet of tissues, using one to dab at her teary eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice quavering. “I haven’t been in a cemetery since . . .” She pauses, takes a deep breath, goes on. “Since my mother died suddenly, the week before Mother’s Day. She and I were really close. We lived together, my whole life. It was a heart attack, and I found her—” Her voice breaks.
Jody looks at Sam, who shrugs, nonplussed. He opens his mouth as if he’s about to prod the nurse along, but Jody cautions him to wait.
“I don’t have a husband or children, and Mommy . . . she was all I had. It’s hard for me to talk about her, even now.”
Having lost her own mother last year, Jody is struck by the poignant sorrow in her voice.
But Sam is getting impatient, gruffly asking, “What about the graves, Nancy? What did you want us to see?”
“All these years, she’s been talking about her sons, John and Paul. The surgeon and the pediatrician.”
“Who, Nancy?” Jody asks, trying to follow
Caught up in her meandering tale, the woman has knelt on the soggy ground to touch the small granite stones, running her fingers over the letters.
“She lost them the day they were born, both of them. Maybe that’s what put her over the edge. Maybe that’s why she lied about everything—being a mother, being married. She doesn’t have anyone at all. She lives alone. Her neighbor told me her husband left her years ago for another woman. He’s remarried, has a family of his own. I guess that’s why he left her. Because she couldn’t give him children.”
“Who are we talking about, Nancy?” Jody repeats, her heart pounding.
“Rita. Rita Calabrone.”
 
“It’s okay, sugar pie,” a familiar voice croons, and Peyton opens her eyes again to see Rita standing over her bed.
“Thank God,” she murmurs. “What’s wrong with me? I feel—”
“Shhh, I know.” Rita pats her arm. “You’re in labor.”
Labor.
“It’s too soon,” Peyton grunts, trying to gather her thoughts as a strong contraction wracks her body.
“No, it’s early, but the baby can survive just fine if you deliver now. Here, sit up and drink this . . . it’ll help ease the contractions.”
“Wait,” Peyton moans, writhing. “No.”
“Try to breathe.”
“Make it . . . stop!”
“Don’t fight it,” Rita says abruptly in an oddly harsh tone.
“If you fight it, you’re going to hurt worse. Just let it happen.”
“Ow . . . o www,” Peyton howls, trying to focus, but unable to think of anything but the searing pain.
“Come on, don’t waste your energy on crying. You’re not a baby, you’re having one. Just breathe, and get through it.”
She breathes.
And she gets through it.
When the contraction subsides, she sips from the steaming cup Rita holds up to her lips. The liquid is bitter.
“What is it?” She makes a face.
“Special herbal tea.”
She shakes her head, pushes it away when the cup is raised again.
“Drink it, Peyton,” Rita orders. “Unless you don’t mind the contractions?”
Another twinge of agony has already begun to take hold, as if cued by Rita’s words.
Peyton seizes the cup from her hand and gulps the hot liquid, not caring that it burns her throat all the way down.
No pain, she tells herself, oblivious of her last, rapidly dwindling moments of naïveté, can compare to the torment of labor.
“Good,” Rita tells her, taking back the empty cup with a smile. “That should kick in any second now.”
In the midst of a full-blown contraction now, Peyton cries out, reaching desperately for something, anything to grab on to.
Her flailing arm encounters a wooden bedpost.
She clings to it.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurs to her that hospital beds have metal rails, not wooden bedposts.
Frightened, she turns toward her friend for reassurance . . . and spots the odd trickle of blood that has emerged beneath the fringe of Rita’s overgrown bangs.
 
At last Detectives Antares and Jacobs have returned to the interrogation room, accompanied by a shaken-looking man they introduce as Gil Blaney. His female friend, on the verge of giving birth and becoming a single mother, is missing from her apartment.
“Mrs. Egerton,” Jacobs asks, “do you know a woman named Rita Calabrone?”
“Rita Calabrone?” She frowns, shaking her head.
“She may also use the aliases Rose Calabrone, and . . .” He consults his notes before adding, “Rose Cascia. Although she may not have used that one in years.”
“Rita . . .
Cascia?
”
“You know her?”
“She’s a saint.”
“She’s no saint, Mrs. Egerton,” the detective says grimly. “She’s a suspect in—”
“No, I mean Rita of Cascia is an actual Catholic saint.”
“That’s right, she is!” Gil Blaney exclaims, as Anne Marie’s thoughts pivot back to parochial school, to the time she had to write a report about the origin of her name.
That was when she found out Grace had named her after Anne, the patron saint of pregnant women. But Margarita Taylor claimed that
she
was named after the patron saint of pregnant women. Anne Marie argued with her until the teacher, Sister Mary, stepped in.
She explained that both girls were right. Saint Anne was the patron saint of pregnant women. Saint Rita of Cascia, whose real name was Margarita, was the patron saint of pregnant
and
infertile women.
Anne Marie remembers being jealous, thinking her own boring essay paled compared to mean old Rita Taylor’s interesting report about the enigmatic saint, who became a nun after tragically losing her sons and husband.
“What do you know about this Saint Rita?” the detective asks now, obviously intrigued.
He glances from Anne Marie to Gil, who shrugs and admits, “I don’t remember much. Just the name. What about you?”
Anne Marie frowns, trying to remember, pulse racing and skin crawling at the possibility that a stranger boldly invoking a saint’s name might have something to do with her daughter’s death.
“Tell them what you know.” Jarrett touches her trembling hand. “It’s okay.”
“She, um, lived in the fifteenth century and . . . there were supernatural legends associated with her. . . .”
“Like . . . ?” somebody asks when she trails off, lost in her memories.
She settles on the starkest image, the one that frightened her as a child and stayed with her all these years.
“She was a recipient of stigmata.”
Realizing nobody but Gil comprehends that, Anne Marie quickly manages to explain, “That’s a word for inexplicable bleeding on the site of Christ’s wounds.”
Blaney concurs. “It’s been documented by the church to have happened for centuries to especially pious people.”
The detectives exchange a dubious glance.
“Saint Rita always had a mysterious, bleeding gash in her forehead that corresponded with the crown of thorns,” Anne Marie tells them. “Oh, and the bees! There were—”
She breaks off, realizing something else, to ask, “You said she was going by Rita
Calabrone?
”
“And Rose Calabrone.”
Rose.
Yet another shock jolts through Anne Marie. “Neither of those can possibly be her legitimate name.”
“How do you know that?”
She explains as quickly as she can the two most relevant miracles associated with Saint Rita.
The first miracle: when she was born, a strange swarm of snow-white bees appeared above her cradle and buzzed around the infant, inexplicably without harming her. The bees, which are unable to sting, reputedly continue to appear every year on the Feast Day of Saint Rita in the convent where she died.
The second miracle: as she was dying on a harsh January day, Rita asked a visitor for a blooming rose from her family’s estate. There was no hope of finding one, but the visitor was compelled to look. On a seemingly dead bush, against a stark winter landscape, one perfect rose was found in bloom.
“So you think that’s why this woman is using the name Rose?” the detective asks Ann Marie, and she nods.
“What about the bees?” Jarrett asks. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Anne Marie, whose grandmother Grace frequently lapsed into her native tongue, informs them all, “The word
calabrone
means ‘bumblebee’ in Italian.”
“So you think this woman is some kind of deluded religious fanatic?” the detective asks.
Anne Marie reaches into her bag, pulls out the red leather Bible, and slides it across the table with an icy hand. “I know she is.”
 
“Your head,” Peyton manages to tell Rita, her mouth clenched in pain. “It’s . . . bleeding.”
Rita reaches up to touch the trickle of red above her brow. An unsettling look comes over her face, yet she says nothing.
Another monstrous contraction attacks without warning.
“It . . . still hurts,” Peyton moans, thrashing in the bed.
Her friend nods, merely watching, an oddly detached expression in her eyes.
There’s something different about her, Peyton realizes, through the haze of pain.
When at last the intense cramping has briefly subsided, she manages to ask, “Where are we?”
“My house. Out on Long Island.”
Bewildered, Peyton reaches for Rita’s hand, mere inches from the bed but just beyond her grasp. Rita looks down but makes no move to touch her.
“Why?” Peyton asks, dread washing over her like a bone-chilling wave that comes out of nowhere. “Why are we here?”
No reply.
“What about—” She winces. Oh God. Here it comes again.
“What about the hospital?” she asks in a rush, while she can still speak.

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