“The baby and I will be gone by then.”
“Of course. You want to spend Christmas with your husband.”
Vonny pulled on her blue ski jacket. Her dark hair was tangled on her shoulders. At the door she turned to her grandmother. “I’ll pick out some nice things for her. I love my baby. I loved my other babies too.” Her face twisted in pain. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“I know that, dear,” Wanda said soothingly.
She waited a few minutes, until Vonny had been gone long enough to be out of the building, then Wanda laid the baby on the couch and tucked her frayed afghan around it. Reaching for her cane, she picked up the bottle and limped into the kitchen. A baby shouldn’t drink such cold milk, she fretted.
She poured water into a small saucepan, set it on the stove, placed the bottle in it and turned on the gas. As she waited for the bottle to heat, she was troubled by the thought of Vonny and the baby on that long, cold bus ride to Pittsburgh. Then another thought struck her. On her last visit, Sister Maeve Marie had told her that the nuns were opening a thrift shop on Eighty-sixth Street. People could get clothes very cheap there, or even for nothing if they were broke. Maybe she should phone the sisters and tell them about Vonny losing the baby’s suitcase. They might have some nice baby clothes on hand.
When the bottle was satisfactorily warmed, she limped back to the couch. As she fed the baby, gently rubbing her cheek to keep her from falling asleep again, Wanda pondered the pros and cons of calling Sister Maeve Marie. No, she decided, she’d wait. Maybe Vonny would have good luck and come home with some nice baby clothes. And, after all, Vonny had said she didn’t want people looking at her baby. That probably even included nuns.
The baby finished four ounces of the bottle. That’s not bad, Wanda thought. Then she listened intently. Was that a wheeze coming from the baby’s chest? Oh, I hope she’s not catching cold, she thought. She’s so little, and it would break Vonny’s heart if anything happened to her . . .
The television was on the blink, so Wanda turned on the radio to catch the noon news. The lead story was still about the missing O’Brien baby. The caller who claimed his cousin had the baby had phoned again and had been promised a twenty-thousand-dollar reward. Authorities were waiting for him to call back and make arrangements for the delivery of the money, at which point he would take the police to his cousin’s home.
How awful, Wanda thought, as she cradled Vonny’s sleeping infant. How could anyone steal someone else’s baby?
* * *
Alvirah spent the rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday going down the list of stores where she had purchased baby clothes.
“Do you have, or did you carry a yellow bunting with a white satin border?”
The answer was always no.
Several clerks said that they didn’t get many calls for buntings these days. Especially in yellow. And a white-satin border would be impractical. Wouldn’t the bunting have to be cleaned?
I know it was yellow wool and white satin, Alvirah thought. It must have come from a specialty shop. Maybe I just saw it in a window? With that in mind, after she had inquired at a store where she had made a purchase, she walked around the immediate neighborhood in the hope that the window of another shop would trigger her memory.
In the late afternoon, it began to snow, light flurries accompanied by sharp, damp winds. Oh God, she thought as she headed for home, let whoever has the baby be keeping her warm and dry and fed.
The lobby of their building on Central Park South, so festively decorated for Christmas and Chanukah, seemed to mock her with its radiant warmth. When she got to the apartment, she made a cup of tea, phoned the hospital and was put through to Gregg.
“I’m with Joan,” he said. “She won’t let them give her any more sedation. She knows about the call and the reward. She wants to talk to you.”
Alvirah thought her heart would break as she listened to Joan’s whispered thanks for putting up the reward and her promise to pay back every cent.
“Forget the money,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Just make sure Marianne’s middle name is Alvirah.”
“Of course. I promise,” Joan said.
Alvirah added hastily, “I’m only joking, Joanie. It’s no name for a baby, at least not in this day and age.”
Willy came in just as she hung up the phone. “Good news?” he asked hopefully.
“I wish I thought so. Willy, if you knew your cousin’s wife had someone’s baby, and you’d been guaranteed the reward you asked for, why wouldn’t you just say straight out where the baby is?”
“Maybe he’s worried that the cousin’s wife will go crazy if they take the baby from her.”
“He ought to be more worried that something might happen to the baby. The reward is only if Marianne is returned safely. He knows that. Mark my words, Willy, that caller is pulling a hoax. He’s trying to figure out how to get the reward and disappear.”
Willy saw the misery in Alvirah’s face and knew she was still blaming herself for what had happened. “I was just up with Cordelia,” he said. “She phoned me right after you went out. She and the nuns are praying around the clock, and she’s got all her people praying too.”
Alvirah half smiled. “If I know her, she’s probably saying, ‘Now listen, God . . .’ ”
“Pretty close,” Willy agreed. “Except now she’s doing it while she works. Her idea of opening a thrift shop has really paid off. When I was by there yesterday, a bunch of people brought in good clothes in really nice condition.”
“Well, Cordelia won’t take any worn-out stuff,” Alvirah said. “And she’s right—just because you’re down on your luck doesn’t mean you have to be stuck with rags.”
“And now Cordelia has a sign out asking for games and toys for kids. She’s even lined up more volunteers to put Christmas wrappings on whatever people pick out for their children. She says kids should have packages to open come Christmas morning.”
“Will of iron, heart of gold, that’s our Cordelia,” Alvirah said. Then she burst out, “Willy, I feel so helpless, so damn helpless. Praying is important, but I feel like I should be doing more. Doing something . . . more active. This waiting is driving me looney.”
Willy put his arms around her. “Then keep busy. Go up to the thrift shop tomorrow and give Cordelia a hand. It was busy when you helped out there last week. And with only two days till Christmas, it’s going to be a mob scene tomorrow.”
* * *
On the morning of December 23rd, tension reached a fever pitch at One Police Plaza at the command center for the case that had become known among insiders as the Baby Bunting Kidnapping.
By then the entire team had come to seriously doubt the validity of the story told by the phone caller who claimed knowledge of the whereabouts of the O’Brien baby.
They had been able to keep the caller on the line long enough to trace the last two phone calls. Both of them came from the Bronx, not Long Island, and from phone booths within a few blocks of each other. Now undercover police were blanketing the vicinity of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, keeping the public phones under surveillance, prepared to close in on the mysterious caller.
Experts were studying December 20th security videotapes from Empire Hospital, particularly those from cameras in the lobby and the corridor to the elevators. The tape in which Alvirah and Willy could be vaguely made out revealed little of the woman carrying the infant. Only the bunting stood out, because of the wide satin border. There was still intense debate over releasing details about the yellow bunting. Of course, every police officer in New York had a description of it, but as one detective argued, “Let the kidnapper hear that bunting described, and it will show up in a trash can. At least this way there’s a chance the abductor might put it on the baby when she takes her outdoors, and that one of us might spot her.”
The informant had been due to call again at ten o’clock on the 23rd. As Joan and Gregg O’Brien clung to each other awaiting word,
ten o’clock came and went. Eleven o’clock. Then twelve, and still no call.
At three the expected call finally came in. The caller had changed his mind. “I saw all those cops laying for me,” he snarled. “You’ll never see that kid again. Let my cousin’s wife keep her.”
He’s lying. Everyone at the command post agreed on that. He was a phony right from the start.
Or was he? Had they botched the exchange? A few minutes later, the media were carrying frantic pleas. Call back. Reestablish contact. No questions asked. If you’re wanted for a crime, you’re promised leniency. Marianne’s parents are on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Have pity on them.
* * *
The baby clothes Vonny had brought back from the thrift shop near the Port Authority were much too big for the tiny infant. “They were just about cleaned out,” she had said angrily. It was after the noon feeding, and she was trying to pin an undershirt at the shoulders to keep it from sliding down the baby’s arms. “Hold still!” she snapped at the infant.
“Here, let me do that,” her grandmother said nervously. “Vonny, why don’t you go down to the deli and pick up a nice hot coffee and a bagel. You didn’t eat anything for breakfast, and you always love a toasted bagel.”
“Maybe I will.”
As soon as the door closed behind her granddaughter, Wanda limped to the phone and dialed the apartment ten blocks away where Sister Cordelia and Sister Maeve Marie lived with four other nuns. They jokingly called the apartment their miniconvent.
One of the elderly sisters answered. Cordelia and Maeve Marie were at the thrift shop, she told Wanda. They were getting some wonderful donations and sorting them as fast as possible. Oh, yes, Maeve Marie was saying they had a good supply of baby clothes. “You just send your granddaughter over and let her take what she needs.”
But when Vonny came back with her coffee and bagel, Wanda could tell that her mood was even blacker than before, so she did not dare to talk about the thrift shop to her. She knew Vonny would guess that she had discussed her and the baby with someone.
Maybe tomorrow she’ll be her sweet self again, Wanda thought, then sighed. She’d been sleeping on the couch since Vonny arrived, and the broken springs intensified the chronic arthritis pain that made getting around so hard. Nonetheless, she’d gladly given up her bed to Vonny, although she worried about her sleeping in the same bed as the baby. Suppose she rolled over on her the way she had with the first one six years ago, Wanda thought. Wanda would never forget that terrible night at Empire Hospital when they said the baby was gone. Or suppose she had one of her dizzy spells and fainted while she was bathing the baby, and the baby drowned. That had happened to the second one in Pittsburgh. It’s a shame she had a third baby so soon after getting out of the psychiatric hospital there, Wanda thought. I just don’t think she’s ready to take care of an infant yet.
* * *
Alvirah found that in one way it helped to be busy, to be working with her hands and around people. In another way, though, it was incredibly hard to sort and fold baby and toddler snowsuits and overalls and T-shirts and sweaters, all of them gaily decorated with pictures of Mickey Mouse and Barney the Dinosaur and Cinderella and the Little Mermaid. It brought home with crushing, numbing pain the realization that Gregg and Joan might never see Marianne wear outfits like these.
“I’ll work with the adult clothes,” Alvirah told Cordelia after an hour of sorting baby items.
Sister Cordelia’s steely gray eyes softened. “Alvirah, why don’t you have a little trust in God and pray instead of blaming yourself all the time?”
“I’ll try.” Tears stung the back of her eyes as Alvirah headed for the table where women’s clothes had been stacked. Cordelia’s right. Dear Lord, she thought, I’m no good as a detective this time. It’s up to You now.
Alvirah usually enjoyed chatting with people. There was no one she did not find interesting in one way or another. But today she stayed at the sorting tables, efficiently matching skirts and jackets that had been separated, sorting items by size and placing them on the appropriate counters. Still, it gave her heart a lift to see people come in and hear them exclaim over the attractive clothing.
As she was putting teenage skirts and tops on a size 6 table, a woman exclaimed, “Everything looks so fresh. You’d think they were brand-new! My daughter will be thrilled. I didn’t think I could afford to get her a pretty outfit for the holidays, but these are so reasonable. You’d think this one came right from Fifth Avenue!”
“Yes, you would.”
Alvirah stayed until the shop closed at eight o’clock. Willy had been right—being at the shop, keeping busy, had helped. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something. And that “something” was nagging, nagging at her all the way home.
Willy had dinner waiting, but Alvirah found she had little appetite and could hardly swallow even a few bites of the stuffed pork chops that were his specialty.
“Honey, you’re going to get sick,” he fussed. “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for you to go to the shop today.”
“No, it helped, it really did. And, Willy, you should have heard those people talk about the clothes they were selecting. One woman picked out an outfit for her daughter and said that it could have come right from Fifth Avenue, that it looked brand-new.”
Alvirah laid down her fork. “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s it!”
“What do you mean?”
“Willy, I was in the thrift shop last week. That’s where I saw the bunting. I’m sure of it. I was working with the men’s clothes at the time, but one of the volunteers was matching baby clothes, and she held it up when she folded it.” Alvirah jumped up, all trace of lethargy gone. “Willy, the kidnapper must have been in Cordelia’s thrift shop. I’ve got to call the police hot line.”
* * *
Christmas Eve dawned with heavy clouds gathering ominously overhead. Weather forecasters warned that by evening as many as six inches of snow would fall. A white Christmas was guaranteed.
For Alvirah it had been a long and intensely worrisome night. The Baby Bunting Kidnapping squad had agreed to meet her at the thrift shop at 8:00 A.M., when it was scheduled to open, but her call last night to Cordelia had brought disheartening news. Last week they’d sent some of their donated clothing, including baby apparel, to several other outlets sponsored by the convent. Two were in the Bronx. Another was near the Port Authority, in midtown Manhattan. Until they could round up all the volunteers and then get them to try and remember what had been shipped where, Alvirah couldn’t be sure if the bunting had been sold at the Eighty-sixth Street shop or at one of the other locations.
“I’ll have as many of my volunteers as I can reach at the shop in the morning,” Cordelia had promised. “Let’s hope that one of them remembers what happened to the bunting. And keep praying, Alvirah. You’re already getting answers.”
Alvirah had discussed the troublesome situation with Willy throughout the sleepless hours. “If we find out the bunting went to the Bronx, then there’s a strong possibility that the caller was for real and does know where Marianne is being kept. On the other hand, if it went to the shop near the Port Authority, that woman may have just stolen the baby and gotten on a bus to God knows where.”
By 6:00 A.M., Alvirah was certain she had put in the longest night of her life.
* * *
“I’m gonna go back today, Grandma,” Vonny announced as she returned to the apartment at eight o’clock that morning, carrying a bag that contained two coffees and two bagels.
She was in a good mood. Wanda could see that. Just bringing the second coffee and bagel for her grandmother proved it. Vonny could be so sweet, Wanda thought. She had yelled at the baby once during the night but then had come out from the bedroom and heated a bottle for her. So she was settling down.
Wanda decided to take a chance on upsetting Vonny by protesting. “But the weather report isn’t good, and on Christmas Eve, so many people are traveli
ng.”
Vonny smiled briefly. “I know they are, but I like that. I like to travel when there are a lot of people around.”
Wanda took another chance. “Vonny, I didn’t say anything before. You were so disappointed that the thrift shop downtown didn’t have much baby stuff. But you know, there’s a thrift shop right in the neighborhood that my friends the nuns run.” She decided a small fib wouldn’t hurt. “When Sister visited me the other day she said that they had wonderful clothes for children and babies. Why don’t you just pick up some things before you leave? The baby has a little cold, and you’ve got to be sure she doesn’t get a chill on the trip.”
“Maybe I will. What time do you expect those nuns with the Christmas basket to come by?”
“Not before three.”
“I’m getting a two o’clock bus.”
She doesn’t want to meet Sister, Wanda thought. Vonny always was a loner.
* * *
By 9:00 A.M., the investigators had interviewed all the volunteers Sister Cordelia had managed to gather at the thrift shop, and most important, they’d talked to one who distinctly remembered that the box with the yellow bunting had been sent to the outlet near the Port Authority.
“The worst possible luck,” one of the detectives admitted to Alvirah. “If it had been sold here, we might be able to hope the abductor is in the neighborhood. If it had been sent to the Bronx, there’d still be hope that the caller was for real and not just an extortionist trying to latch on to reward money. We’ll try to find out who sold the bunting, but even if we do succeed in getting a better description of the woman, my guess is that she and the baby aren’t in New York anymore.”
“I agree,” Alvirah said quietly. “But I’m going to keep hoping anyway. And praying. Has anyone talked to Gregg this morning?”
“The inspector did. There was talk of O’Brien’s wife going home today, but her doctor nixed it. She’s so depressed, he’s afraid of what might happen if she’s not under observation at least until after tomorrow. Christmas is going to be one awful day for Joan O’Brien.”