Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007 Read online

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Some kind of complicated under-the-hood problem and the mechanic needs a part from another shop. It looks like we won’t be able to leave today.”

  After my stomach dropped from the penthouse to the basement, I brightened. “No problem. We can take my car.”

  “I don’t think so. I left Melissa’s booster seat and CDs in the car. I can’t ask the dealer’s driver to go back to get them. He’s taking me and three other people home. He just stopped to get gas. Besides, it’s being towed to another location and this driver doesn’t know where. So leaving today’s off. Melissa is going to be devastated.”

  “Not if I leave now and go to Kiddie Korner and buy another one and some CDs for the trip,” I quickly offered.

  Pause. “I don’t like to trouble you.”

  “No trouble, a pleasure.”

  “You’re wonderful. I’ll reimburse you. And I’ll try to get to the cabin tonight. This will work out.”

  And it did work out, at least the logistics part of the plan on my end. I went to Kiddie Korner, bought the booster seat and several children’s CDs. I set the booster seat into the backseat of my car and strapped it in. At twelve-ten, I arrived at the library and waited outside as Greg had asked until he arrived via bicycle with Melissa on the child’s seat.

  “This is fun,” Melissa called. “I hope Daddy always picks me up on a bike.”

  “Not likely,” he grinned, mopping his forehead. “I’ll take Melissa into the children’s room to get Emma and the Playful Platypus.” And to me he said, “Wait for me in the adult section, okay? I need to go over a few grown-up things with you.”

  After settling Melissa with her book, he rushed into the room and with no preliminaries, launched the knockout punch.

  “I called the dealer before I left home. The car won’t be ready until tomorrow.”

  “That’s no problem. We’re taking my car anyway.”

  He ruffled my hair. “It’s not that simple. I’m going to have to wait till tomorrow. I can’t go away and leave it at the dealer’s after I hassled him to do a rush job. Stan’s a friend as well as a constituent and he promised to drive it to my place himself. I’ll come up tomorrow.”

  Taking a backseat to Stan the dealer hurt, but I refrained from losing my cool. A well-trained political operative, I knew better than to come between a candidate and a constituent.

  Ironically, we stood by a paperback section labeled Romance Novels as he matter-of-factly assigned me the Nanny role with instructions about Melissa. She didn’t need to stop for bathroom breaks — a veritable camel, that child; she should eat her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and carrot sticks in the car — they were in her backpack along with juice; and she should sing along with the CDs I bought — because listening to the car radio with its news about fires and floods upsets her.

  I was about to say, Yes, Mr. Rochester, but bit my tongue as I remembered that Jane Eyre did marry her boss.

  “One more thing,” he said as we headed back to Melissa. “I looked up directions to your cabin on a map. Then I checked highway conditions. You should take the alternate route. There’s major construction on the main highway to the Poconos.”

  At the entrance to the children’s room he hugged me.

  “I’ll really miss you tonight, but I’ll make it up to you tomorrow night,” he whispered, then squared his shoulders and slipped to the side of the entrance, out of Melissa’s sight.

  “Listen, Melissa’s been terrible about goodbyes ever since her mother died. I don’t want her to make a scene. She’ll be all right if she doesn’t see me. I explained everything to her and she’s okay with you taking her and she’ll be asleep before she realizes I won’t be there till tomorrow. I’m going to slip out the back.”

  He kissed me and murmured, “I’m a worrier, so please call me after Melissa’s asleep, usually by eight, and let me know you arrived safely. My phone number is on a card in Melissa’s backpack.”

  Warm from the kiss, I watched him leave, then went into the children’s room and hugged Melissa. “Let’s go,” I said.

  She looked around then started to cry, “Where’s Daddy? I didn’t give him hugs and kisses.”

  So much for Daddy’s slipping away to avoid a scene. I tried to soothe her, but she howled. Several mothers and children looked our way. The librarian frowned.

  I picked her up and hugged her. She dropped the book. I retrieved it and hurried out the door, hoping Greg hadn’t gotten far so he could perform the goodbye ritual. I couldn’t see him. When we got to my car, I pointed to a stack of children’s CDs.

  “You pick out which one you want to play first.”

  Her cries reduced to hiccups, she browsed through them and selected Mother Goose Rhymes. “Can we play them all?” she asked.

  “Each and every one,” I answered as she went unresisting into the booster seat. After a silent thank-you to Mother Goose, I drove off. After singing along with her, and quite enjoying it, I was given permission to pick out the next CD, a medley of children’s songs.

  “ ‘Old MacDonald,’ ” I said and slid it in.

  After e-i-e-i-o-ing it through all the animals in the barnyard, I begged for a break.

  “Oh, all right,” she answered, “as long as you play the ‘Are You Sleeping, Brother John?’ song next.”

  I agreed, but first she sipped some juice.

  “Okay,” she announced, “my whistle is wet. Now we can sing again.”

  “Whistles are wet,” I said, “who taught you that? Daddy?”

  “No. Jeff did.”

  Jeff again. To keep from probing the child about Jeff, I quickly slid in the tape and my unconscious beamed up a disturbing wordplay. Instead of the song’s “morning bells are ringing,” I sang, “warning bells are ringing.”

  Was I warning myself that Greg might have more than a friendship with this Jeff? The sight of the cabin surrounded by spruce trees and set near a cliff with a spectacular view of mountains haloed by an October haze swept anxieties away. This cabin held warm memories and would log many more, I hoped.

  As soon as I unstrapped Melissa, she ran to the porch to hug Max, the smiling wooden bear my father had carved for my fifth birthday.

  When we went into the retro living room — knotty pine panels and Early American furniture — Melissa ran to the glorious stone fireplace.

  “Can we have a fire? Can we? And can we invite the bear in?”

  “We can have a fire, but I think we’ll have to wait for Daddy to bring the bear in.”

  Next Melissa and I climbed the stairs to the loft. When she opened the door to the smaller room, she squealed with delight. It was decorated in a Heidi theme: mountains, wildflowers, and a Swiss-type bed. She jumped on it and hugged the pillow.

  Being in the bedroom reminded me of sleeping gear. Being new at nanny-hood, I had forgotten to get a suitcase from Greg.

  “Sweetheart,” I confessed, “I forgot to ask Daddy for your night things. And he might not get here until after your bedtime.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, fluffing up a pillow, “we keep pajamas and my extra Emma doll and extra toothbrush in my backpack in case I get tired in Daddy’s office if he’s working late. So if I fall asleep, Daddy carries me to the car and puts me to bed.”

  “Smart Daddy,” I said as another warning bell tolled. Had Daddy lied about the car not being ready today because he wanted a child-free night to spend with someone else?

  Melissa’s tugging on my arm steered me away from dark places.

  “You said we were going to build a fire,” she pouted.

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go outside and gather some twigs for kindling.”

  After filling a basket with twigs, we tossed some onto the large logs already positioned in the fireplace. When the firestarter worked on the first try, we settled onto the sofa and watched the tiny flames mature into a blazing fire. Melissa clapped her hands at the sight and beamed at my suggestio
n that we eat our macaroni-and-cheese dinners in front of it.

  After eating, Melissa snuggled close to me. I could love this child, I thought. Before she could fall fully asleep, I walked her upstairs, brushed her teeth, and put on her pajamas. After tucking her in, I started reading Emma’s adventure with the playful platypus. By page five, she had fallen asleep.

  I went downstairs and added more logs to the fire. The night had grown very cold. Sleet scratching against the windowpanes reminded me that winter comes early to the mountains. Since it was slightly after eight, I retrieved Greg’s phone number from Melissa’s backpack and tapped it into my cell phone.

  He picked up on the first ring. Before I could say hello, he panted, “Who is this?”

  “It’s Anne.” I laughed. “You sound, Mr. Lawyer, as if you’ve been chasing an ambulance.”

  “Anne who?” he choked.

  “Anne who,” I echoed calmly, preferring his playfulness to his initial panic and then answered, “Anne, the Mountain Maiden.”

  “How is Melissa?” he shouted.

  I paused and tried to make sense of his mood. Acute separation anxiety, I concluded as he repeated, “How is Melissa?”

  “Greg, calm down. She’s fine. She’s sleeping.”

  “She’s not hurt?”

  “Of course not. Oh, you must be worrying about the drive up here. We did fine and managed the hilly terrain quite well.”

  “Is she crying for me?”

  “No, Greg. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I gave her dinner and read to her and she’s sound asleep.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “Just her clothes.”

  “You’ll have to tell me where you are.”

  “In the living room of the cabin.”

  He dropped the phone. I heard rustling in the background. Rummaging noises? Looking for a pen? Why the need to write down the word clothes? But maybe he wanted to know more about the weather to include boots and rain gear. I heard a door close. Was Jeff there? Was Greg shooing him out?

  Then I heard nothing.

  Silence. A broken connection. I tried again and heard a busy signal. I paced the living room, waiting for a callback. Surely he had Caller ID. Minutes ticked by. Exasperated, I lay down on the sofa and pulled an afghan over me. Too tired to worry if his acute anxiety was a harbinger of our life to come, I fell asleep. And had a weird dream. Max, the wooden bear on the porch, had invited other wooden bears to a party. Their heavy paws thumped against the floor and one of them bumped against the switch next to the door, sending beams of light boring through the windows.

  I tried to cover my eyes but a non-bear advised me to put my hands behind my back and told me I had the right to remain silent. As I tried to make sense out of this nightmare, someone ran past me and bounded up the stairs.

  By the time I blinked my vision back I saw Greg rush past me, carrying the sleeping Melissa in his arms.

  During the times when I’m not longing for the day before my arrest as a kidnapper, when I was attending to mundane chores, unaware that I was experiencing the best day of my life, I replay the story of my role in the perfect non-crime devised by Greg and his college roommate, Jeff — the oppo who had called me Machiavellian Mama. I marvel how I cooperated in my own victimization. Sure, Greg was clever and I was vulnerable. In the words of the tabloid — Caught! — I was a “lonely single longing for love and a child of her own.”

  Not included in Caught! was Greg’s intense ambition to break into the political scene. He had the charm and the looks, but he also had a past, a past that would have been discovered by a skilled oppo like me. Jeff knew I would have tagged Greg out before he reached first base. To defuse me, Greg and Jeff, whom I totally underrated, systematically played me to perfection by throwing out the McKenna name to the party and betting that once I met Greg and learned his real name I’d be smitten and would not research him. The other part of their plan — establishing a relationship between Melissa and me so that she would be unaware of her “kidnapping” — evolved successfully in all the children’s places we visited.

  Blinded by my eagerness for time away with Greg, I walked blissfully into the trap — never doubting that his car had broken down; never suspecting that, contrary to what he said, Melissa would cry if he stole away without her seeing him; never turning off the children’s CDs in my car to listen to the radio; never leaving the alternate route to go on the highway that flashed the Amber Alert; and never realizing that his strange “separation anxiety” was make-believe anguished parent-talk to a kidnapper for the ears of the FBI agents who simply needed to read Caller ID for my number and subsequent identification.

  To ensure that Melissa was asleep when the raid occurred, Greg had to buy time at least until eight P.M. He rushed back into the library as soon as we pulled away and slipped into the role of distraught father. The librarian described me to him. As a delaying tactic, Greg offered up to the FBI the name of a freelance court reporter who had been friendly to Melissa. She also resembled me. After being shown a driver’s-license photo of her, the librarian identified her as the kidnapper. Unable to contact her at the courthouse or home, the authorities immediately issued an alert. Not until six-thirty did a friend of hers inform the FBI that the woman was vacationing in Nassau, a fact known to Greg. That subterfuge gained Greg the time needed to wait until I called and told him Melissa was asleep. I also learned that an anonymous caller had dialed the Amber Alert number, saying that she had seen a car driven by a woman with a young girl who resembled Melissa go down Tamarac Road in the Mountain Top Development. The FBI learned my identity from my cell phone number and my location from the caller, most likely Jeff’s new girlfriend.

  No longer lacking face time and name recognition, Greg captured the hearts and votes of viewers as the scene of the father/child reunion played over and over on local TV. If Melissa had asked about me, no one could have heard her. Greg held her tightly and smothered her with kisses. Anything she said went into his shoulder. A teary-eyed interviewer cooed about “happy endings” before asking Greg about me.

  He sighed. “The poor woman. I met her once at a cocktail reception and Melissa spilled juice on her skirt and apologized adorably. She must have fixated on her then and stalked us.”

  Melissa. I love that child and I wonder what Greg told her about me. That I went away like her mother did?

  Eve visited me in jail and brought me a printout on Greg McKenzie.

  “You should have let me check him out,” she chided.

  Aside from minor college hijinks like stealing the mascot of his alma mater along with Jeff, the incident that might have sunk his career had I found it occurred on a winding road in Colorado. Greg’s car skidded and careened into a ditch, killing Melissa’s mother. Suspecting drunkenness, the police on the scene advised the Midlothian Hospital medical personnel to test him for alcohol.

  He was never charged. His blood test mysteriously disappeared from the hospital.

  “Something so convenient arouses my hunter’s instinct,” said Eve. “So I checked the background of Jeff Cobb. Found out that he worked at Midlothian in maintenance while he was studying for his master’s. Same time as McKenzie’s accident. He quit the job the day after. McKenzie’s sister-in-law and her husband petitioned the court for custody of Melissa, but were turned down. This data is useless now. He’s got everyone so charmed that no one will care about the accident.”

  The knowledge of the accident and Melissa’s mother’s death would have impelled me to don my oppo hat and interview police, EMT responders to the scene, and hospital personnel and have them swear Greg was drunk. Machiavellian Mama would have vaporized his chances, but she was otherwise engaged.

  Aside from Eve, my only other visitor was Will Stafford. He believes I’m innocent, but he chuckled in admiration at the “best damned oppo dirty trick” he’d ever seen. He’s paying for my lawyer, who raised both eyebrows when I told him my story.

  “Look, you say you went all
those places with McKenzie and his daughter, yet no one’s come forward who saw you with them. There’s not one phone call from his cell or home phone to your cell or home. And there’s only one call from you to him, from your cell to his home phone on the night of the kidnapping.”

  “Alleged kidnapping,” I snapped. “We made arrangements when we were with Melissa. And he did call my office twice, once to set up our first date and again the day I picked up Melissa. I know the last call was from a pay phone. Isn’t there a record of either call?”

  “Yes, but there’s no proof the pay-phone calls came from him. There’s no proof of any connection with him or with the child, and she can’t testify. Give me something concrete.”

  He called for the guard, then opened his briefcase and handed me some books.

  “My wife went to your condo and picked up those books you asked for.”

  Wondering why I even asked for them since they belonged to the day before, I tossed them onto the bed in my cell. Ruefully, I watched as the volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets From the Portuguese hit the floor. I had actually been reading those poems on the day before when my fatal romantic side held me captive. A white card bookmarked a particular poem. Masochistically, I picked up the book to read what I had once considered so meaningful.

  I smiled. “Something concrete, you said. How about fingerprints?”

  The card that marked my place was much more interesting to me than the poem. It was literally my ticket to freedom and perhaps Melissa’s return ticket to relatives in Colorado who wouldn’t manipulate her. It accompanied the roses sent by Greg as an apology for spilling wine on my skirt, asking me to lunch at McDougal’s. And even better, silly old starry-eyed me had clipped a memento to the card. It was the receipt from McDougal’s that Greg had left on the table. I had taken it for insertion into a future scrapbook to be labeled “Our First Meal Together,” a romantic lunch consisting of one adult McDougal burger, one adult garden salad, and one child’s Fun Meal.