“I shall fetch the box containing them, sir,” Sims offered, “and perhaps you and Madam would enjoy a glass of champagne while you decorate your tree.”
“Fine with me,” Henry said as he rubbed callused palms together. “You’re ready for some bubbly, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
Sunday did not answer. She was staring out at a spot just past the evergreen. “Henry,” she said quietly, “please don’t think I’m crazy, but for a second, I thought I saw a child’s face pressed against the window.”
Richard Dalton glanced briefly at his wife of seven days as they turned off Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway and onto the road that led to Darien. In fluent French, he said, “I owe you a real honeymoon, Giselle.”
Giselle DuBois Dalton tucked her hand under her husband’s arm and answered in accented English. “Remember, Richard, from now on you’re supposed to speak only English to me. And don’t worry. We’ll have a real honeymoon later. You know I wouldn’t want to leave Jacques alone with a strange baby-sitter for more than a few hours. He’s so shy.”
“She speaks fluent French, dear, and that was important. The agency recommended her very highly.”
“Even so.” Giselle’s voice sounded troubled. “ Everything was so rushed, wasn’t it?”
It was rushed, Dalton thought. He and Giselle had planned to be married in May. But the date got moved up when he had been offered the presidency of All-Flav, the worldwide soft drink company. Prior to then, he had been director of Coll-ette, All-Flav’s chief competitor’s French division. They had agreed that nobody only thirty-four years old turned down that kind of job, especially when it came with a substantial signing bonus. Giselle and he had been married last week and a few days later had come to the house the company rented for them in Darien.
On Friday evening the housekeeper, Lily, who they had been told would not be available to start with them until after Christmas, had unexpectedly shown up. So on Saturday morning, Giselle’s father, Louis, urged them to go to New York for a brief honeymoon weekend. “I’ll be here with Jacques until noon on Monday. Then Lily can certainly mind him for a few hours until you return Monday afternoon after the company luncheon,” he had said.
But the company Christmas luncheon had mn longer than expected, and now, as they got nearer to the Darien house, Richard could feel Giselle’s tension building.
He understood her concern. Widowed at twenty-four and left with an infant son, she had gone to work in the publicity department of Coll-ette; it was there that they had met a year ago.
It hadn’t been an easy courtship. Giselle was so fiercely protective of Jacques, so afraid that a stepfather — any stepfather — wouldn’t be good to him.
They also had expected to live in Paris indefinitely. But then, in just a matter of a few weeks, she had to both change her wedding plans and relocate. Richard knew that Giselle’s biggest worry, however, was that the change — a new father, a new home — was too abrupt for Jacques. Besides, he was barely starting to learn English.
“Home sweet new home,” Richard said cheerfully as he steered the car into the long driveway.
Giselle was opening the passenger door even before he braked.
“The house is so dark,” she said. “Why didn’t Lily turn the lights on?”
Richard’s flip suggestion that Lily was obviously a thrifty French lady died on his lips. The house had a deserted air about it even he found ominous. Although it was almost dark, there wasn’t a single light shining from any window.
He caught up with Giselle at the front door. She was fumbling in her purse for her key. “I have it, dear,” he told her.
The door opened to reveal a shadowed foyer.
“Jacques,” Giselle called. “Jacques.”
Richard flicked the light switch. As the area brightened, he saw a sheet of paper propped on the foyer table. It read: “N’appelez pas la police. Attendez nos instructions avant de rien faire.”
Don’t call the police. Wait for instructions.
“Miss LaMonte, how are you feeling?”
She opened her eyes slowly to see a solicitous state trooper looking down at her. What had happened? she wondered briefly. Then vivid memory came flooding back. The car had blown a tire, and she had lost control. It had gone off the road and down the embankment. She had smashed her head on the wheel.
The boy. Jacques. Had he told them about her? What should she say? She would go to prison.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. She realized that a doctor was standing on the other side of the bed.
“Easy,” he said reassuringly. “You’re in the emergency room of Morristown General Hospital. You’ve had a pretty bad bump, but otherwise you’re fine. We tried to notify your family, but there’s no answer yet.”
Notify her family? Of course. She still had the card case Pete had lifted, with the real Lily LaMonte’s driver’s license, registration, medical insurance, and credit cards.
Despite her throbbing head, Betty Rouche’s ability to lie returned with lightning speed. “Actually, that’s fortunate. I’m joining my family for Christmas, and I wouldn’t want to frighten them with a call.”
Where should she say she was joining them? Where was the boy?
“You were alone in the car?”
A vague impression of the passenger door opening filtered through her clouded memory. The child must have run away. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Your car has been towed to the nearest gas station, but I’m afraid it needs major repairs,” the state trooper told her. “It may well be a write-off.”
She had to get out of here. Betty looked at the doctor. “I’ll have my brother come back and take care of the car. Can I leave now?”
“Yes, I would say so. But take it easy. And see your own physician next week.”
With a reassuring smile the doctor left the cubicle.
“I’ll need you to sign the accident report,” the trooper told her. “Will someone pick you up?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll phone my brother.”
“Well, good luck. It could have been a lot worse. A blowout and no air bag . . .” The trooper did not finish the thought.
Ten minutes later, Betty was in a cab on her way to a rental car agency. Twenty minutes after that, she was on her way to New York City. The plan had been to take the boy to her cousin Pete’s house in Somerville, but no way was she going there now.
She waited until she was safely out of town before she pulled into a gas station and phoned. Now that she was somewhere safer, she had to vent her fury on the cousin who had talked her into this crazy scheme.
“It’s a cinch,” he had told her, “the kind of break that comes along once in a lifetime.” Pete worked for the Best Choice Employment Agency in Darien. He called himself a trainee, but Betty knew his job ranged from running errands to mowing lawns for the rental properties the agency managed.
Like her, he was thirty-two; they had grown up next door to each other and, over the years, had gotten into a lot of trouble together. They still laughed about how they had trashed the high school, an adventure for which other kids got blamed.
But she should have known Pete was out of his league with this crazy scheme. “Look,” he had told her, “at the agency I heard all about them, this couple with the kid. This guy, Richard Dalton, just deposited a check for six million bucks; his signing bonus, they call it. I’ve even worked at the rental place they’ll be living in. Another executive had it six months ago. And I know Lily LaMonte. She’s been used by other people through the agency, and she’s the only one they have who is right for this job. They need a nanny who is fluent in French. Well, I happen to know she’s going to New Mexico for Christmas. So you take her place. You’re her type and age, and you speak good French. Once the couple takes off, you take the kid to my place in Somerville. I’ll handle picking up the ransom and all that. It’ll be a swap. We get a million bucks to split between us.”
“And if they call the cops?”
; “They won’t, but even if they do, what does it matter? Nobody knows you. Why suspect me? We won’t hurt the kid. Plus I’ll be in a position to watch what’s happening. Part of my job is to keep that place plowed and shoveled. We’re gonna have more snow. So I’ll know if there’s any sign of cops there. I phone and tell Dalton to leave the money in their mailbox tomorrow night and the kid’s home for Christmas. Get the cops and they won’t hear from us again.”
“And if they do bring in the cops, what do we do with the child?”
“Same thing we do if we get the money. No matter what goes down, you leave the kid in a church in New York. Their prayers will be answered.”
To Betty it sounded like trashing the school and getting away with it. Pete wouldn’t hurt the kid any more than she would. Just like it never even occurred to them to burn down the school. They wouldn’t have done that.
When he answered the phone, Pete’s voice was edgy. “I thought you’d be in Somerville hours ago.”
“I might have been if you’d made sure that lousy car had decent tires,” Betty snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She could feel her voice rising as she told him what had happened.
He interrupted her. “Shut up and listen to me. The deal’s off. Forget the money. No more contact with them. Where’s the kid?”
“I don’t know. I woke up in a hospital. Apparently the boy had run off before the cops found me.”
“If he starts talking, they’ll tie him to you. Do they know you were renting another car?”
“The cabdriver knows.”
“Okay. Dump that car and get lost. Just make sure you lie low. Remember, there’s nothing to tie us to the missing kid.”
“Sure there isn’t,” Betty exclaimed bitterly as she slammed down the phone.
“Sir, there’s no report as yet of a missing child,” the policeman told Henry. “But I’ll take the boy to headquarters; a representative of Family Services will pick him up there if no one comes for him soon. Chances are, though, that some mighty worried people are searching hard for him fight now.”
They were clustered in the library at Drumdoe. The room was dominated by the towering, still-unadorned, slightly-tilted Christmas tree, which remained exactly as it had been when Sunday spotted Jacques’s face at the window. Realizing he had been seen, the little boy had tried to run away, but Henry had rushed out in time to catch him. When their gentle questions yielded nothing but silence, Henry had phoned the police while Sunday unzipped and removed the child’s outer jacket. Gently she had rubbed warmth back into chilled small fingers, all the while keeping up a steady stream of words, hoping to win his confidence, heartsick to see the terror in his blue-green eyes.
Now the policeman squatted in front of the child. “About five or six, wouldn’t you think, sir? That’s what my sister’s kid is, and he’s about this size.” He smiled at Jacques. “I’m a policeman and I’m going to help find your mom and dad. Bet they’re looking all over the place for you right now. We’re going to go for a ride in my car to the place where they can pick you up. Okay?”
He put his hand on Jacques’s shoulder and started to ease the boy toward him. His face contorted with fear, Jacques pulled back and turned toward Sunday, grabbing her skirt with both hands as though begging for protection.
“He’s frightened to death,” Sunday said. She knelt beside the quivering boy and put her arm around him. “Officer, can’t you just leave him here? I’m sure you’ll get a call about him soon. While we’re waiting, he can help us trim the tree. Can’t you, little guy?”
Sunday felt the small boy shrinking against her. “Can’t you?” she asked gently. At his lack of response, she said, “I think he may not be able to hear.”
“Or speak,” Henry agreed. “Officer, I think my wife is right. You know he’s safe and warm here. We’ll give him dinner; certainly by then you’ll have learned who he is and where he belongs.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. I will have to take him to headquarters. We’ll need to take his picture and have an exact physical description for the teletype alert we’ll send out. Then it will be up to the Family Services people to decide if we can place him with you until he’s claimed.”
* * *
Maman had taught him a long time ago that if he ever got lost, he should go to a gendarme and tell him his name and his address and his phone number. Jacques was sure that this man was a gendarme, but he couldn’t give him his name or address or phone number. Maman and Richard had given him away to Lily, and he didn’t want her to come for him, ever.
This lady reminded him of Maman. Her hair was the same color and the way she smiled at him was the way Maman smiled. She was gentle. Not like Lily, who did not smile, and who made him change into the uncomfortably tight clothes he was wearing now. Jacques was hungry and tired. And very afraid. He wanted to be back in Paris, safe with Maman and Grand-père.
Soon it would be la Fête de Noël. Last year Richard had come to their house with trains for him. Jacques remembered that together they had laid the tracks and set up the train station and the bridges and the little houses along the tracks. Richard had promised they would set them up this year in the new house. But Richard had lied to him.
Jacques felt himself being picked up. They were going to take him away, back to Lily. In terror, he buried his face in his hands.
Two hours later, when Lily had not appeared, and the gendarme brought him back to the big house, Jacques felt the scared feeling start to go away. He knew Lily wasn’t in this house. He would be safe here. Tears of relief welled in his eyes. The door opened, and the man who looked like Grand-père let them in and led them back to the room with the Christmas tree. The tall man and the lady were there.
“The child was examined,” the policeman told Henry and Sunday. “The doctor says he’s in good health and seems to have been well cared for. He still hasn’t spoken, and he refused to eat anything, but the doctor says it’s too soon to tell if it’s a physical problem or if he’s just frightened. We have his picture and description on the teletype. My guess is that he’ll be claimed pretty soon, but in the meantime Family Services okayed his staying with you.”
Jacques did not know what the gendarme had said, but the lady who looked like Maman knelt down and put her arms around him. He could tell she was kind; he felt safe with her, a little like the way he had felt when Maman had loved him. The giant lump in his throat began to melt.
Sunday felt him tremble against her. “It’s okay to cry,” she murmured, as she stroked his silky brown hair.
Richard Dalton watched helplessly as his wife sat staring at the phone. Giselle was clearly in shock. Her pupils were enormous, her face expressionless. As the hours passed and they heard nothing from Jacques’s kidnappers, his every instinct insisted that the police be called. But at the suggestion, Giselle became almost hysterical. “Non, non, non, you cannot, you will not. They will kill him. We must do what they say. We must wait for instructions.”
He should have known something was wrong when that woman showed up unexpectedly, he told himself bitterly. The agency had been adamant that she would be away over Christmas and could not begin working until the twenty-seventh. We should have checked, of course, he thought. It would have been simple just to call the agency and confirm. But how did the woman who had said she was Lily LaMonte know to come to the house? Obviously it had all been planned; she was to abduct Jacques at the first opportunity. It was Giselle’s father who had finally convinced them to accept the woman who called herself Lily LaMonte, and who urged them to spend the weekend in New York. It was ironic as well, for he would be distraught if anything happened to Jacques. No, it was not his fault, Richard thought. We probably would have entrusted Jacques to that woman today when we went to the company luncheon. He shook his head. Maybe, maybe not, he thought. It’s too late to wonder about such things now.
He had to do something though. The inactivity was driving him crazy. He had
to believe that this was about money and that they would get Jacques back by tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Christmas Eve!
He sighed. Maybe it wouldn’t be that quick. His signing bonus had been well publicized. It was logical for the kidnapper to assume that he could put his hands on six million dollars. But surely no one would expect that he would have that kind of money available at short notice. The most he could get from a cash machine was a few hundred dollars.
The kidnapper or kidnappers had to be planning to keep Jacques overnight. If they phoned by morning, he would be able to get cash from the bank. But how much cash? How much would they demand? If it was in the millions, it would take several days to get it together. No bank had that much ready cash on tap. And large withdrawals meant questions.
Giselle was weeping now, tears that slid silently down her cheeks. Her lips were forming her son’s name. Jacques. Jacques.
It’s my fault, Richard thought. Giselle and Jacques came with me willingly, and look what I’ve done to them. He could not stand the inactivity any longer. He had promised Jacques that they would set up his trains in time for Christmas. He looked about the room. The boxes were in a corner of the family room in which they were sitting.
Richard got up, went over to the boxes, and squatted on the floor. His strong fingers ripped the seal of the first box apart, and he reached in and pulled out sections of track. Last year, on Christmas Eve, when Jacques opened the brightly wrapped packages in Grand-père house, Richard had explained that Santa had left this present early so that he could help Jacques put it together. When the tracks and the trains and the bridges and the houses were completely set up, he had pointed out the switch to Jacques.
“This is what makes it start,” he had explained. “Try it.”
Jacques had thrown the switch. The lights in the little houses blazed, the whistles blew, the crossing gates came down, and as he cautiously opened the throttle, the antique Lionel locomotive with six cars behind it chugged for a few moments, then raced forward.