Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (16 page)

“Or course,” Claire said. “Don’t even worry about it. It will be a pleasure having him here.” She looked up to see Max standing in the doorway, watching her. Underneath black hair as short as fur, his eyes were dark and unreadable.

Chapter Sixteen

Would an intervention really be enough to make her mother part from her beloved Qual-Prod channel? Should Claire call Dante back and try to find a way to ask if he had betrayed her? And, most importantly, would she find Zach’s sister before time ran out?

Her thoughts helped keep Claire’s mind off the hitch and strain of her body as tried to at least run more than she walked. She had planned to be on the Lieblings’ block at eight a.m., the same time she and Charlie had seen the couple leaving for work, but her calculation had been based on an overly optimistic estimate of how fast she could still cover ground. Her breath came in gasps. Her legs were leaden, her feet barely clearing the ground. Her ankle didn’t really hurt anymore, but it didn’t feel right, either.

It was the kind of false spring morning that made Oregonians decide to put away their raincoats and heavy sweaters. In another day or two, the skies would surely darken, the rain would sweep back in and the coats would come out of the closet. But for now it was warm enough that Claire was already regretting wearing her long running tights.

Without consciously making a decision, Claire found that she had stopped and was leaning over her right shoe as if to tie the lace, although it was still tied. She imagined the eyes of passing commuters upon her, seeing through her strategy. To buy herself a few seconds to catch her breath, she pulled the lace loose and tied it again. She raised her fingers to her sweat-slick throat, found her carotid artery and began counting the beats. Even after her pulse had dropped from 160 to a more reasonable 130 she found she didn’t want to start again. She looked at her watch. It was a good bet that in about five minutes the Lieblings would be backing out of their driveway in their matching BMWs. With a groan, she started running again.

Claire turned on the Lieblings’ block just in time to see the two bright red BMWs, one after another, scoot backward down the drive and then go off in opposite directions. She only caught a glimpse of David Liebling as he drove away, but she was sure he was the only occupant of his car. Monica Liebling drove right past Claire, but didn’t seem to notice her at all. Her hands were in the ten and two o’clock position, her lips pressed together. The little boy sitting behind her looked directly into Claire’s eyes as she stared at him. With his dark hair, almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones, he could have been Max and Zach’s cousin, or even a brother. But he was too young to be ten, and he was definitely a boy. Claire stopped at the telephone pole in front of the Lieblings’ house and pretended to stretch her legs for a few seconds, but it was clear just by looking at it that the house was empty.

She was about ready to give up and go back to her car when she caught sight of a young woman kneeling in a garden at the end of the block. With a little grunt, Claire forced herself to start running again, slowing when she came abreast of the young woman. On one side of her was a little girl in a stroller, on the other a coiled green garden hose.

“Could I trouble you for a drink of water from your hose?”
 
Claire didn’t need to fake her gasping. “I guess I’ve really let myself get out of shape.”

 
“Oh, here, let me get you some water from the house.” The woman stood up and pulled off her gardening gloves. She had straight blond hair cut in a shoulder-length bob and a spray of freckles across her nose “Just keep an eye on Lily, would you?”

Claire looked down at the child, who gave her a wet-gummed grin. “Sure.”

The woman left the front door open while she went inside, and Claire noticed that for all her neighborliness she was careful to keep an eye on her through the window. In a second, she was back with an unopened, chilled bottle of Cascadia and a tall glass. She twisted off the cap and offered both bottle and glass to Claire. The water was so cold that Claire’s throat closed and she choked a little. The baby flapped her hands and babbled as she swung her gaze between her mother and the stranger. She had huge blue eyes and sparse blond hair worn in the baby version of a comb-over.

“You have a beautiful child,” Claire said sincerely. She made sure her bare left hand was hidden by the water glass.
 
“My husband and I are thinking of having a baby. Is this a good neighborhood for raising kids? Right now, we just live in an apartment over in Northwest.”

The woman nodded, her hair swinging forward in two wings. “Irvington’s a great neighborhood for children. The streets are quiet. We keep an eye out for one another. There’s a block party every summer, and we have a group rummage sale every fall. I get a lot of great toys that way.” She stopped in the middle of her recitation and leaned closer to Claire. “You should, you know.”

“Should what?” Claire had already forgotten her story.

“Have a child. It was the best decision we ever made. Lily has changed our lives. You do give up some things, but you gain so much more.” She bent down and kissed the baby on the top of her head. Lily let out a trill and the sound sent an unexpected pang through Claire. The woman straightened up and pointed down the street. “That house on the corner just went on the market for three twenty-five. It’s a little dated inside, but if you’re interested, you should move on it.

Claire nodded brightly. With the average salary under thirty thousand, the house was well out of reach of any but the most affluent Portlanders. “Are there any other children on this block?”

As Claire had hoped, the woman scanned the surrounding houses and began to recite their contents. “The Guinns have a little girl who’s five and a half. The Averetts have a boy who’s four and a girl who’s seven. Let’s see, the Andersons have a little girl about Lily’s age, but she’s still a bit too young for play dates. And there’s the Lieblings, well.” She paused, then continued on, “They’ve had more than their share of troubles when it comes to children.”

“Oh?” Claire lifted an eyebrow. After years of watching Charlie, she had learned the value of keeping silent and seeing what came in to fill the gap.

“About ten or twelve years ago, their first baby died of SIDS when she was just a few weeks old. And then they had another child, another girl, and
she
died of SIDS when she was ten months old.” She looked down at her daughter. “That’s how old Lily is. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to lose your baby like that, not once, but twice.
 
I’ll bet they have a hard time not hovering over Craig, but he’s been healthy, knock on wood. He’s eight now.”

“When did that happen?” Claire said, staring.

“When did what happen?”

“When exactly did their children die of SIDS?”

“Their first child dying, that happened before we moved here. The second little girl died right after we bought this house. That was around the Fourth of July, 1989. I remember because I didn’t know the Lieblings very well and I kept wondering if I should bring them over some food. Why did you want to know when it happened?”

“I think maybe I heard that story from someone once,” Claire mumbled. “They were talking about what a tragedy it was.” Her thoughts spinning, she handed back the half-empty bottle of water as well as the glass. “Guess I’d better hit the road again before I lose all motivation. Thanks for your advice.”

She waved good-bye to Lily and her mother and began to trot back down the street. But inside, Claire was overwhelmed with grief. Here was the answer to the Lieblings’ seeming dead end: a real death. What if Lori’s other child had died years ago? If the Lieblings’ long-dead daughter was Zach’s sister, then he would certainly die. Her only hope lay in finding Amanda and Kurt’s daughter. She prayed that that girl would prove to be Zach’s sister, not this poor dead child the neighbor had told her about. After having seen Lily, it was all too easy to picture the loss the baby represented.

But something nagged at Claire about the story the neighbor had told her. And then she realized what it was. During her last visit to Dante he had brought her breakfast in bed every morning - coffee lightened with skim milk, a toasted plain bagel spread with cream cheese, and the day’s edition of the
New York Times
. Then they had spent a quiet hour interrupted by nothing but rustling pages and an occasional caffeine-tasting kiss.

One of the articles she had read while lounging on Dante’s white sheets had been about mothers who had lost more than one baby to SIDS. Once, doctors had shaken their heads and proclaimed that the tragedy of sudden infant death syndrome was sometimes horrifically compounded when it ran in families. Some parents, so the thinking had gone, just passed on defective genes. But new tests had shown that in families where more than one child had died, it was more likely that murder was involved. District attorneys were getting court orders to exhume long-buried children. One mother, Claire had read, had tearfully confessed to covering the faces of her babies with pillows, one after another. Of her seven children, none had lived to the age of two.

What if the
New York Times
article was right, and that families with multiple SIDS cases might really be hiding the dark secret of infanticide? Wasn’t that even more likely to be the case if two children were unrelated? Because the two babies who had died in the Lieblings’ house had had nothing in common but the people who were raising them.

Claire’s mind was so buy that it had stopped paying attention to what her body was doing. She realized she was walking again, not running. The body had its own agenda and the mind willingly disengaged.

Ahead of her, a yellow bike leaned against a bus stop sign. It was all yellow - handlebars, frame, tires, spokes - looking if it had been dipped into a vat of bright yellow paint. Claire had read about the yellow bike program in the
Oregonian
, but until now she had never actually seen one. The premise had been that yellow bikes would be left all around the downtown core. Riders would use one when they needed it for a brief jaunt, then leave it for the next person. Supposedly the idea had worked in some Dutch city. In Portland, however, the hundred or so donated bikes had disappeared after only a few months, stolen, stripped for parts, or ridden into the hinterland and abandoned. Like this one.

Claire threw her leg over the bright yellow seat and rode off.

OWTAHR

Chapter Seventeen

The clerk at John’s Market didn’t really focus on Claire, which was fine with her. After all, what was a woman wearing running tights and $95 Nikes doing buying a twelve-ounce package of chocolate chips and a horrendously overpriced can of salted cashews? The answer was that she hoped to try to relieve her stress with food, and it was too early for Sweets, Etc., to be open. Recently Claire had discovered that if she popped two or three salted cashews in her mouth at the same time as a half-dozen chocolate chips, she could achieve much the same taste as a milk chocolate cashew cluster. In some ways it was even better, because the salted cashews meshed with chocolate better than plain ones did. The combination covered the four basic food groups: fat, sweet, salt and chocolate.
 

After leaving the yellow bike leaning against a signpost near her car, Claire had driven back across the river to Multnomah Village. The drive had passed in a blur as she fought her conviction that Lori’s daughter had died while living with the Lieblings, quite possibly at their own hands.

Now the clerk handed her back her change and her stash, appropriately packaged in a plain brown paper bag. As she was leaving, Claire caught sight of the brass mailboxes at the back of the market. Realizing she hadn’t canceled the mailbox she had rented in Lucy’s name, she turned in her key and got back her ten-dollar key deposit.

The clerk caught up with Claire on her way out the door

“You still had mail in your box,” he said, handing her a letter with no return address. It was addressed to Lucy Bertrand, with quotes around the name.

In the parking lot, Claire opened it. It wasn’t too much of a mystery who it had come from, as only the Bradford Clinic thought there
was
a Lucy. Still, the message took her by surprise. On plain white paper, a few sentences were printed in a distinctive squarish hand.

“I know what you really wanted. There were problems afterwards
.” Next came two lines that had been crossed out so heavily that Claire couldn’t read them even when she raised the paper to the light.
“Her babies came early. And afterward she began to bleed, worse than I have ever seen. I tried massaging her belly, but it didn’t stop. It had been a hard birth, and it was three in the morning and I was so tired that I was no longer thinking straight. Dr. B. was yelling at me, saying that I shouldn’t worry, that he would take her to St. V’s and with their equipment they could help her. Check with St. Vincent’s. That’s where he said he was going.
 
I pray to God that that’s what he did.”

The world seemed to have gone very still. Claire had imagined that Ginny had given birth and then resumed her life the way she had planned. Was she hospitalized now, IVs running into her arms to replace the blood she had lost? But Vi seemed to be implying that she didn’t trust Dr. Bradford. Was she saying that maybe Ginny had never made it to St. Vincent at all?

###

Instead of turning right off Multnomah Boulevard, Claire found herself turning left, going to see Dr. Gregory instead of heading back to her empty house. Charlie would still be taking Max to school. As a physician, Dr. Gregory could give her advice. He would understand the note’s implications better than Claire. And he should also be able to shed some light on what really had happened to the Liebling’s first two children.

She knocked on his office door, and then waited. No answer. She looked at her watch. It was about nine o’clock, perhaps too early to be office hours. Just as Claire was turning to leave, the door opened. A woman brushed past Claire, her head down, walking fast. And behind her was Dr. Gregory, guilt chasing surprise across his face at the sight of Claire. The woman must be one of his conquests, Claire realized, and was annoyed at herself for minding. And maybe not one he was particularly proud of, given her downmarket appearance. She had been wearing ratty jeans, a fake leather jacket, and a pair of moon boots. Moonboots! Claire hadn’t seen moon boots since about the last time someone had walked on the moon.

Dr. Gregory adjusted his face so that it now wore his usually welcoming smile. Still, he couldn’t quite hide his agitated nervousness. “Come in, come in.” He closed the door behind her. “What brings you by this way? Ankle acting up this morning?”

Claire had been so worried by the note that she had forgotten she was still wearing running clothes. “No, that’s not it. I need your advice on a couple of medical matters. This is one of them. “ She handed him the note.

After he read it, he looked up. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it in the mailbox I rented for Lucy Bertrand.” He looked blank. “My alter ego for the Bradford Clinic, remember? I’m pretty sure that’s the head nurse’s handwriting.”

As he read the note again, Dr. Gregory took a tissue from a box on this deck and blew his nose. Even before he had thrown it away he was sniffling again. “Sorry. Seasonal allergies. Some new tree or bush someplace is putting out pollen, and it doesn’t like me.” He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Well, I know one way to figure out if Dr. Bradford did what he said he was going to do,” he said, picking up the phone.

Why was he always sniffing, Claire wondered, suddenly remembering the other times she had been with him. As he dialed the phone, she rapidly recalculated things. Was he using drugs? The idea didn’t seem so outlandish. She already had seen how he liked to drink.

“Bed control, please,” Dr. Gregory said, then tucked the phone under his chin. “I’m calling St. Vincent.” He slipped the phone back to his mouth and his voice assumed an imperious tone Claire had never heard him use before. “Yes, this is Dr. Gregory. Could you tell me if Ginny Sloop is still in the house? Probably med-surg, or maybe family nursing.” There was a pause. “She’s not? Well, then when was she discharged? My understanding was that she was admitted Friday with post-partum hemorrhaging.” He listened a few seconds more, frowning. “You’re sure? How about any Jane Does with a similar diagnosis?” After hearing the answer, he hung up without a thank you or even a good-bye. “Wherever Dr. Bradford took Ginny, it wasn’t there. They checked the records for two days before and two days after. No Ginny Sloop and no unidentified females. So either he took her someplace else - or he didn’t take her anyplace at all.”

“What do you mean?”

He waved the note at her. “Sometimes the only cure for a woman who starts hemorrhaging after labor is a quick trip to surgery for a hysterectomy. And the clinic certainly isn’t set up for that.”

“But if he didn’t go to St. V’s - where did he take her?”

“Maybe Good Sam. Or Oregon Health Sciences University, especially if he were afraid she was going to bleed out in the car. They’ve got a Level One Trauma Center. Tell you what - I’ll do some calling and get back to you.” Claire watched as Dr. Gregory rapidly tapped his pen on his desk, then he turned his attention to her again. “You said there were two things you wanted to ask me about?”

Claire had almost forgotten about what she had learned about the Lieblings. She quickly recapped what she had learned from their neighbor. “Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that two of their children died from SIDS - especially since we know one of those children was adopted?”

Dr. Gregory rocked back and forth in his office chair. “Stranger things have happened. But if I were the DA or their doctor, I’d be very interested in ruling out other causes, such as a pillow across the face.”

 
“So you think they really could have killed those two babies?” She thought of Monica Liebling, of the tight press of her lips as she drove past Claire.

“In my line of work, you quickly learn that everything is possible. I’ve seen bank presidents who beat their wives, and wives who beat their bank president husbands. I told one woman she was terminally ill, with less than six months to get her affairs in order. That was eight years ago and now her tests don’t show any sign of cancer. On the other hand, I once treated a Hmong immigrant who was convinced that he had been cursed and was bound to die. He sat right where you are now, trembling with fear, while I explained through the interpreter that he was perfectly healthy. Two weeks later, he went to bed and didn’t wake up in the morning.”

“But what about the Lieblings?” Claire demanded, a little impatient with his doctor stories.

“From what I’ve read, what sometimes happens in these cases is that the first child dies of natural causes. And that death triggers something in the mother. She craves that attention and sympathy again. Or maybe she realizes deep inside herself that she doesn’t want to be a mother, and that a dead child is much easier to deal with than a live one. And for one reason or another, maybe they’re Catholic or maybe the husband really wants children, she keeps having more babies - and then killing them.”

“Why do keep saying ‘the mother’?” Claire asked. “What about the father?” She thought about Monica’s husband, the man she had seen twice now, but only behind the wheel of his car. David Liebling had sharp-edged features and straight dark hair slicked with enough gel that it stood up in points.
 

“Because the mother is the one who’s implicated in most of these cases. When men kill children, it’s usually more violently. Men might be more likely to throw a kid down the staircase or drown it in the bathtub, even torture it “ - Claire winced, but Dr. Gregory didn’t seem to notice - “especially if they aren’t the biological father of the child. But when it isn’t a clear-cut case of abuse, from what I’ve seen and read, it’s most often the mother who is the culprit. Traditionally, mothers are supposed to the nurturers, but they are a number of women who can’t deal with the huge demands of the role of selfless caregiver. Have you heard of Munchhausen by Proxy?”
Claire shook her head.

“Basically, the mother makes her child sick over and over again, just so that
she
can get attention. The doctors are baffled, run dozens of tests, sometimes even hospitalize the kid. And all the while they are telling the mom, ‘Aren’t you a saint to put up with this uncertainty, with your child sick all the time?’ Even health care professionals - who should pick up on this sort of thing faster - can take a long time before they start suspecting that something is wrong. Last year, I saw a videotape where someone in a hospital finally got suspicious and had a hidden video camera installed. You can actually see the mom leaning over to put her hand over the kid’s mouth and nose. Even though I knew that’s what I was going to see when somebody played the tape for me, it was still shocking.”

Claire thought of the dark-eyed little boy in the back seat, the woman at the wheel with her perfect French braid and pinched mouth. “What if Monica Liebling did kill her two kids? What about the little boy they have now? Would he be in any danger?”

“How old did you say the child looked again?”

She hazarded a guess. “Six or seven.”

“If someone in that household had a predilection for killing babies, then a seven-year-old is probably not in any grave danger. Currently.” He got up and began pacing around the room. “So where are you now with the search. You had four little girls you wanted to look at, right?” He held out four fingers, then bent down his pinkie. “And one seems to have died. Whether by natural or unnatural causes, we don’t know. What about the other three?”

Claire shook her head. “One of them can’t be Lori and Havi’s daughter because her coloring is all wrong.”

He bent down another finger. “What about the people with the Hispanic last name? That sounded promising.”

“I’m going to go see them this afternoon.”

Only his index finger was left and he pointed it at her “That leaves Portland’s most famous stars, Amanda and Kurt Price. What about them?”

“I haven’t been able to think of any way to see their child without them knowing. Their estate is completely secluded. That means I have to talk to them face to face.
 
Charlie pointed out to me that we did have their phone number. I called and left a message, but no one’s called back. I feel bad invading their privacy, but I don’t see any other way to figure out whether they have Lori’s daughter. How they got their child is certainly one secret I’m sure they want to keep. And deserve to.” Remembering the delight Dr. Gregory had taken in seeing the actors’ names on the photocopy, Claire regarded him, narrowing her eyes only half in jest. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”

He drew an X on his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die, thousand needles in my eye.” He paused. “But there is one thing, Claire.”