The Mortal Groove (7 page)

 

 

“Is that you, honey?” called Sigrid from the bathroom.

Peter had just come through the front door of their apartment. “How come you're home so early,” he called back, feeling momentarily panicked. He searched the top of the credenza in the dining room, looking for the day's mail.

“My last client canceled,” called Sigrid. “Hey, what do you say we go out for a drink, maybe some food. I know it's late—”

“Sounds good to me.”

“I just got out of the shower. I'll be there in a sec.”

Peter darted into the kitchen, looked around, then returned to the dining room. His eyes cruised the living room until he saw the stack of letters on the coffee table. Sweeping them up, he turned away from the hallway door and flipped through them. If Sigrid had brought the mail in, she might have already found the letter—if it had come. On the other hand, if she'd seen it, read the con-tents, she would've been waiting for him with a loaded shotgun.

The letter he'd been waiting for was at the bottom of the stack—unopened. He quickly stuffed it in his pants pocket, then sat down on the couch, depositing the rest of the mail on the end table next to him. He couldn't believe he'd nearly blown it. Retrieving the mail before Sigrid got home wasn't usually a problem. When his dad had called and asked to meet him at the Lyme House, he'd assumed that he'd still get home before she did. So much for dumb assumptions. If Sigrid discovered what he was up to, he wasn't sure what she'd do. That's why he couldn't let her find out, not until he had all the information he needed.

“Did you see the letter from that TV station in Maine?” asked Sigrid, coming into the room. She was wearing a blue terry cloth bathrobe, drying her short blond hair with a towel. “I didn't open it. I thought it might be another job offer.”

A muscle twitched in his neck.

“Something wrong?” asked Sigrid, standing over him. She let the towel drop to her shoulders.

“I glanced at the mail, but I didn't see it.”

“Here,” she said. She bent over the stack and found it for him.

“Maine, huh?” He worked to keep his hands steady as he opened it. After reading the letter, he handed it to her. “You want to move to Bangor?”

“Sounds better than Oklahoma. I hate hot weather.”

“Are you saying you'd actually consider moving out East?” It sounded like the end of the earth to him.

Sigrid rubbed the back of his hair with the towel. “I don't know, Peter.”

“Let's not go there tonight, okay?”

“There was another letter for you. I think the postmark was New Jersey.”

As she reached for the stack again, he caught her arm. “And
no more talking about my lack of employment, either. Let's just have a nice, relaxing evening.”

Her expression softened. She sat down next to him, laid her head on his chest. “That's sounds good to me. How come you're home so late?”

“My dad wanted to meet with me and Jane at the Lyme House. Hey, get this. What if I told you I might have a job offer here in town?”

She gazed up at him with a puzzled look. “That would be great, but I thought you'd checked out every station and nobody was hiring.”

“I wouldn't be working for a TV station. Dad wants me to come work for his campaign. He said he has to check it out, but he's pretty sure he can offer me a paid position.”

“Wow, Peter, that would be a fantastic opportunity for you.”

He pulled her closer to him, felt the warmth of her body through the thin fabric of his shirt. “I love you, Siggy. I don't ever want to lose you.” He tipped her chin up. And then he kissed her.

Right about then they both forgot about dinner.

 

The clock on the nightstand read 3:27
AM
. Easing out of bed, Peter found his pants hanging over a chair. He carried them into the bathroom and turned on the light. Digging the letter out of his pocket, he tore the back flap open and removed an invoice with a scribbled note attached.

“Shit,” whispered Peter, reading through it quickly. This wasn't what he'd expected. He'd hired a private investigator to locate and then send him a copy of the adoption papers Sigrid had signed ten years ago. The lawyer who'd brokered the deal in New Jersey, Vaughn Cabot, had drawn them up. Sigrid said she
would never forget the names of the people who'd adopted her baby—Matt and Carrie Tanhauer, residents of New York. Cabot told her they'd named the baby Margaret. Peter had never met Cabot, but it didn't matter. He loathed him on general principle.

Glancing back down at the note, he read it again:

No birth certificate on record. And no adoption record in either New Jersey or New York. That means whatever your wife signed was never filed. Found an address for Matthew Tanhauer in Manhattan. Don't know if it's the same guy who adopted Margaret, but will investigate further if you want. Tanhauer's address is
—

570 Parkway West

New York, NY 10010

Unlisted phone number. I included an invoice, in case you don't want to pursue this further.

Shifflet

The invoice was for five hours' work at $125 an hour.

“Margaret,” whispered Peter, sitting down on the side of the tub. In the past few months, with little to do but brood about his life, finding Margaret had become an obsession. Margaret was the reason Sigrid refused to have another child. Nobody in the family knew about the baby Sigrid had given birth to while living in New York—nobody except Peter. Everyone thought Sigrid had gone off to the Big Apple after graduating from high school to “find herself.” It was such a hopeless cliche, people laughed and then let it go. Sigrid had returned home the following year, entered the University of Minnesota in the spring, and gone on with her public life as if nothing had happened. But privately, it was a different matter.

Because of Margaret, Peter and Sigrid would never have a child together. That knowledge clawed at his insides until he felt like screaming. The one thing he wanted most in the world—a child with the woman he loved—was never going to happen.

It wasn't that Peter was angry at Sigrid. Far from it. When she'd come clean, told him why she refused to get pregnant, he was horrified to hear how her high school boyfriend had treated her, how Sigrid had agonized over her decision, whether to abort or give birth to the child, whether to keep her or put her up for adoption. In the end, Sigrid said she found the best family she could to raise her child and had given her up. Peter tried to make her see that what she'd done was the best thing possible for both of them, but Sigrid didn't agree. Of course she knew that as a young, single mother with no skills and no education, she could easily have ruined the child's life. Or the child could have ruined hers. She'd done the best with the cards she'd been dealt, tried to act responsibly, but she also said she had to be honest. Her decision was selfish. She'd put herself and her future before her child's.

Sigrid had only seen Margaret briefly in the hospital, but after carrying her for nine months, the sight of her cemented an already strong bond. The idea of hurting her a second time was too much. She asked Peter a question. What if Margaret came looking for her one day and found her. And what if Sigrid was living with Peter and their child. The idea of looking into Margaret's eyes and seeing the pain and rejection just stopped her cold. At least, if she didn't have another child, it would present a different picture. Maybe Margaret would think that Sigrid wasn't the maternal type. That she'd done her a favor. But if Margaret saw her with a child—or children—around her, children
she loved and who loved her in return, what could Sigrid say? Gee, too bad about that, Margaret. Bad timing. Hope you had a nice childhood. Sorry I didn't have time to be around.

It was impossible.

Peter tried to get her to see that she could simply ask Margaret to forgive the seventeen-year-old girl she'd once been, that her decision had been the right one for both of them, but nothing he said made a dent in her resolve. Sigrid insisted that giving Margaret up was the biggest mistake of her life, that Margaret should be with
her
—not the Tanhauers, no matter how super a set of parents they turned out to be.

And that's what got Peter to thinking. If, for some reason, the Tanhauer family hadn't turned out to be the Brady Bunch, then maybe there was a chance he could reunite Margaret and Sigrid. He didn't have a clue how it would actually happen, but before he could come up with a plan, he had to find Margaret. He'd hired the PI in New York five days ago. He still had money from his severance package and he intended to use it to find the little girl. It made no rational sense, but he'd pretty much come to the conclusion that the Tanhauers were poison. He didn't like to think that Margaret had spent the last ten years living with monsters, but he'd convinced himself it was the truth. Peter felt a sense of urgency now.

“I'm coming, Margaret,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Just hold on a little while longer.”

 

 

O
n Wednesday morning, Jane opened her eyes to a wet brown nose. Mouse, her chocolate lab, was standing by her bed, his chin on her pillow, whining softly.

“What's wrong, baby?” She stroked his head. Struggling out of her blankets, she glanced over at his bed in the corner. Lucifer, one of Cordelia's cats, was curled up in it, licking his paw. It was the third morning in a row Lucifer had decided to evict Mouse. Jane had had enough.

She pulled on a robe and loomed over the nasty feline. “You're evil, you know that? You belong in an Anne Rice novel. I don't care what Cordelia says. No more fun and games with my dog.” She scooped him up, walked across the hall to Cordelia's bedroom, and dropped him on top of her sleeping form.

Cordelia barely moved.

Lucifer, being a practiced suck-up, nestled right down next to her and closed his eyes.

“As if,” said Jane, hands rising to her hips. “You think I don't know what you're up to? These little games of yours have got to stop.

Cordelia gave a snort, pulled the quilt up over her head, and turned over.

“That's it,” said Jane, checking the clock on the nightstand. It was just after eight. “I'm going to take a shower now, Cordelia.” She said it loudly. “When I'm done, I expect you to be downstairs cleaning up the mess you and your poker friends made last night.” Sure, Cordelia was hurting because of Hattie, but if she felt well enough to throw a party, then she was well enough to clean up after herself.

Jane stormed out. Fifteen minutes later she was back with Mouse by her side.

Cordelia hadn't moved.

“Get up,” said Jane.

No response.

“Come on, boy. Let's go look up recipes for fried cat.”

After letting Mouse out into the backyard, she fixed him a bowl of kibble. The kitchen was such a disaster that she could barely find a clean space on the counter to set the bowl. Since Mouse seemed to be taking his old sweet time in the yard, she crossed through the dining room, glancing at the beer bottle collection on the table, and headed for the stereo in the living room. It only took her a second to find what she was looking for.

As the opening strains of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” shattered the silence, Jane smiled to herself. She waited at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed.

It took the better part of two minutes, but Cordelia finally stumbled into view. She still had on her one-piece red flannel PJs and her striped red-and-white nightcap with the seven-foot-long
tail. Her auburn curls were a tangled mess under the cap and her eyes looked scrambled.

“Not funny!” Cordelia yelled. She thumped down the stairs, one step at a time, dragging the round furry ball at the end of her hat after her.

“Morning,” yelled Jane.

Cordelia tossed visual thunderbolts at her as she marched past into the living room and snapped off the music. “Well, alert the friggin' media,” she shouted. “Cordelia Thorn made a mess.”

“You're going to clean this up all by yourself.”

“Can't we call a maid service or something?”

“You've been here for what? Four months? Have you ever seen a maid?”

Cordelia shrugged.

“Get busy. Start with the living room and dining room.”

“Generally, Cordelia was a great houseguest, but she got an F when it came to cleaning up after parties—and she loved giving parties.

Jane let Mouse in the back door and fed him his kibble. As she was bagging up some garbage—in an effort to look a little less like Simon Legree—she heard the opening strains to a John Philip Sousa march roar in from the living room. A little better than Iron Butterfly, but not much.

An hour later, Cordelia was in the kitchen putting the last dish in the dishwasher. “In case you're interested, I fired that English PI yesterday—and hired another.”