Angie could feel her good mood evaporating and recognized that when she was hungry, she always got kind of edgy and irritated. They’d checked into the motel a little after midnight. She’d hardly been able to keep her eyes open at the time and had put the kid into bed and collapsed beside her. She’d fallen asleep immediately but woke up before dawn when the kid started coughing and crying.
I never did get back to sleep, Angie thought. I just dozed off a little, which is why I don’t feel so sharp right now. But I was sharp enough to remember to bring that driver’s license, so now I’ll be officially known around here as “Linda Hagen.”
Last year she had done some babysitting for Linda Hagen, and one day Linda had come home all upset because she thought she’d left her wallet in the restaurant. Then the next time she took care of Hagen’s kid, she had to use the family car to take her to a birthday party. It was then that she spotted the wallet that had slipped down between the front seats. Retrieving it, she found two hundred dollars in cash and, more importantly, a driver’s license. Of course, Mrs. Hagen had cancelled the credit cards, but the license was a find.
We both have thin faces and dark brown hair, Angie thought. Mrs. Hagen wore thick glasses in the picture, and if I ever get stopped, I’ll put on dark glasses. Someone would really have to study the picture to know it was a phony. Anyhow, I’m checked in here as Linda Hagen, and except for the feds tracing the van if they happen to catch up with Clint, I’m okay for a while. And if I do decide to fly someplace else, with Linda’s photo ID, I can get on a plane.
Angie figured that if the feds did nail Clint, he would probably tell them that she was on her way to Florida, because that’s what he would think. But she also knew she needed to get rid of the van and use some of the cash to buy a second-hand car.
Then I can drive anywhere I want with no one the wiser, she thought. I’ll abandon the van in a dump somewhere. Without the plates, nobody could trace it.
I’ll keep in touch with Clint, and after I make sure there’s no heat on him, maybe I’ll tell him where I am so he can join me. And maybe I won’t. But for now he’s not going to have a clue. But I did tell him I’d call him this morning, so I’d better do that.
She picked up one of the prepaid cell phones and dialed Clint. He answered on the first ring. “Where are you?” he demanded.
“Clint, baby, it was better I got out fast. I’ve got the money, don’t worry. If by any chance the feds do look you up, what would have happened if I was there and the kid was there and the money was there? Now listen to me: Get rid of the crib! Did you tell Gus you were going to give notice at the club?”
“Yeah, yeah. I told him I was offered a job in Orlando.”
“Good. Give your notice today. If nosy Gussy comes around again, tell him the mother of the kid I was minding asked me to take him to Wisconsin. Tell him her father died and she needs to stay there and help out her mother. Say I’m going to meet you in Florida.”
“Don’t mess with me, Angie.”
“I’m not messing with you. The feds come to talk to you, you’re clean. I told Gus you were looking for a new car in Yonkers Wednesday night. Tell him you sold the van, then go rent yourself a car for now.”
“You didn’t leave me a dime of the money,” he said bitterly. “Not even the five hundred bucks I left on the dresser.”
“Suppose they have some of the serial numbers. I was just protecting you. Run up charges on the credit card. It won’t matter. In another two weeks or so, we’re gonna disappear from the face of the earth. I’m hungry. I gotta go. Goodbye.”
Angie snapped closed the cover of the cell phone, walked back over to the bed, and looked down at Kathy. Was she asleep or just pretending to be asleep? she wondered. She’s getting to be as nasty as the other one, Angie thought. No matter how nice I am, she ignores me, too.
The cough medicine was by the bed. She unscrewed the top and poured out a spoonful. Bending down, she forced Kathy’s lips apart and tipped the spoon until the liquid was in her mouth. “Now swallow it,” she ordered.
In a sleepy, reflexive action, Kathy swallowed most of the cough syrup. A few drops went into her windpipe and she began to cough and cry. Angie pushed her back on the pillow. “Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,” she said through gritted teeth.
* * *
Kathy closed her eyes and pulled the blanket over her face as she turned away, trying not to cry. In her mind she could see Kelly sitting in church, next to Mommy and Daddy. She didn’t dare talk out loud, but did move her lips silently as she felt Angie begin to tie her to the bed.
* * *
In the front row of St. Mary’s Church in Ridgefield, Margaret and Steve held onto Kelly’s hands as they knelt at Mass. Beside them, Dr. Sylvia Harris was blinking back tears as she listened to the opening prayer Monsignor Romney was reciting:
Lord God, from whom human sadness is never hidden
You know the burden of grief
That we feel at the loss of this child
As we mourn her passing from this life
Comfort us with the knowledge
That Kathryn Ann lives now in your loving embrace.
Kelly tugged at Margaret’s hand. “Mommy,” she said, her voice loud and clear for the first time since she had been returned to them. “Kathy is very scared of that lady. She’s crying for you. She wants you to bring her home, too. Right now!”
49
Special Agent Chris Smith, head of the Bureau’s North Carolina office, had phoned to request a brief meeting with the parents of Steve Frawley in Winston-Salem.
Frawley’s father, Tom, a retired and highly decorated captain of the New York City Fire Department, had not been pleased to hear from him. “We learned yesterday that one of our two grandchildren is dead. If that wasn’t devastating enough, my wife had knee replacements three weeks ago and is still in terrible pain. Why do you want to see us?”
“We need to talk to you about Mrs. Frawley’s older son, your stepson, Richie Mason,” Smith had said.
“Oh, for God’s sake, I might have known. Come over around eleven o’clock.”
Smith, a fifty-two-year-old African American, brought along Carla Rogers, a twenty-six-year-old agent recently assigned to his staff.
At eleven, Tom Frawley answered the door and invited the agents in. The first sight that greeted Smith was a collage of pictures of the twins on the wall opposite the door. Beautiful kids, he thought. What a damn shame we couldn’t get both of them back.
At Frawley’s invitation they followed him into the cozy family room that was an extension of the kitchen. Grace Frawley was seated in a roomy leather chair with her feet on an ottoman.
Smith went over to her. “Mrs. Frawley, I am terribly sorry to intrude. I know you’ve just lost one of your granddaughters and that you recently had surgery. I promise I won’t take much of your time. Our office in Connecticut sent us to ask you and Mr. Frawley some questions about your son, Richard Mason.”
“Sit down, please.” Tom Frawley pointed to the couch and then pulled up a chair next to his wife for himself. “What kind of trouble is Richie in now?” he demanded.
“Mr. Frawley, I didn’t say Richie was in trouble. I don’t know that he is. We wanted to talk to him, but he did not report for work at Newark Airport Wednesday evening, and according to his neighbors, he has not been seen around his apartment building since last week.”
Grace Frawley’s eyes were swollen. As the agents watched, she kept raising the small linen handkerchief she was holding to her face. Smith realized that she was trying to conceal the quivering of her lips.
“He told us he was going back to work,” she said nervously. “I had surgery three weeks ago. That was why Richie came down to visit last weekend. Could anything have happened to him? If he didn’t go back to work, he might have been in an accident on the way home.”
“Grace, be real,” Tom gently insisted. “Richie hated that job. He said he was much too smart to be shoving baggage around.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he just made up his mind on the spur of the moment to drive to Vegas or some place like it. He’s done that sort of thing at least a dozen times before. He’s okay, dear. You’ve got enough on your plate without worrying about him.”
Tom Frawley’s tone was reassuring, but Chris Smith caught the note of irritation under the comforting words he was trying to offer his wife and was sure that Carla Rogers was picking up on it, too. From the record he’d read on Richie Mason, it looked as if he had been a lifelong heartache for the mother. School dropout, sealed juvenile record, five years in the slammer for a scam that had cost a dozen investors a fortune—including Franklin Bailey, who had lost seven million dollars.
Grace Frawley had the drawn, exhausted look of someone who was in a lot of pain, both physical and emotional. She was about sixty years old, Smith judged, an attractive woman with gray hair and a slight build. Tom Frawley was a big, broad-shouldered guy, maybe a few years older than she.
“Mrs. Frawley, you had surgery three weeks ago. Why did Richie wait so long to visit you?”
“I went to a rehab center for two weeks.”
“I see. When did Richie get down here and when did he leave?” Smith asked.
“He arrived around three o’clock last Saturday morning. He got off from work at the airport at three o’clock in the afternoon, and we’d expected him by midnight,” Tom Frawley answered for his wife. “But then he called to say that there was a lot of traffic, and we should go to bed and leave the door unlocked for him. I’m a light sleeper, so I heard him when he came in. He left about ten o’clock Tuesday morning, right after we all watched Steve and Margaret on television.”
“Did he get or receive many phone calls?” Smith asked.
“Not on our phone. He had his cell, though. He used it some. I don’t know how much.”
“Was Richie in the habit of visiting you, Mrs. Frawley?” Carla Rogers asked.
“He stopped in to see us when we visited Steve and Margaret and the twins right after they moved to Ridgefield. Before that, we hadn’t seen him for almost a year,” Grace Frawley said, her voice tired and sad. “I call him regularly. He almost never answers, but I leave a message on his cell phone just saying that we’re thinking of him and that we love him. I know he’s been in trouble, but underneath he’s really a good boy. Richie’s father died when he was only two. I married Tom three years later, and no human being could have been a better father to a child than Tom has been to Richie. But when he was a teenager, he got in with the wrong crowd and never got back on track again.”
“What is his relationship with Steve?”
“Not the best,” Tom Frawley admitted. “He’s always been jealous of Steve. Richie could have gone to college. His grades were always up and down, but his SAT’s were great. In fact, he started attending SUNY. He’s smart, really smart, but he dropped out in his freshman year and took off for Las Vegas. That’s how he got in with a crowd of gamblers and phonies. As you must know, he served time in prison for a scam he got involved in.”
“Does the name Franklin Bailey mean anything to you, Mr. Frawley?”
“He’s the man who my granddaughters’ kidnapper contacted. We saw him on television, and then he’s the one who passed the ransom money to the kidnappers.”
“He was also one of the victims of the scam that Richie helped run. That investment cost Mr. Bailey seven million dollars.”
“Does Bailey know about Richie, I mean that he’s Steve’s half brother?” Frawley asked quickly, his tone at once astonished and worried.
“He does now. Would you know if Richie saw Mr. Bailey when he was in Ridgefield visiting with you last month?”
“I wouldn’t know that.”
“Mr. Frawley, you say Richie left at about ten o’clock on Tuesday morning?” Smith asked.
“That’s right. Within a half hour after Steve and Margaret were on television with Bailey.”
“Richie always claimed that he didn’t know the company he persuaded people to invest in was a scam. Do you believe that?”
“No, I do not,” Frawley said. “When he told us about the company, it sounded so good that we offered to invest in it, but he wouldn’t let us. Does that tell you something?”
“Tom,” Grace Frawley protested.
“Grace, Richie paid his debt to society for being part of that scam. Pretending he was an innocent fall guy is dishonest. The day Richie takes the blame for what he’s done is the day he’ll start to do something with the rest of his life.”
“We’ve learned that before he realized he had been cheated, Franklin Bailey struck up a very warm friendship with Richie. Is it possible that Bailey believed Richie’s story and has remained friends with him since Richie was released from prison?” Smith asked.
“Where are you going with these questions, Mr. Smith?” Frawley asked quietly.
“Mr. Frawley, your stepson Richie is extremely jealous of your son Steve. We know that he even tried to date your daughter-in-law before she met Steve. Richie is financially sophisticated, which is why he was able to deceive so many people with that phony investment. Franklin Bailey has become part of our overall investigation, and in the course of checking him out, we learned that a phone call was made from your phone in this condominium to Franklin Bailey at approximately ten minutes past ten on Tuesday morning.”
The lines on Frawley’s craggy face deepened. “I certainly did not contact Franklin Bailey.” He turned to his wife. “Grace, you didn’t call him, did you?”
“But I did,” Grace Frawley said firmly. “They gave his number on the television, and I called to thank him for helping Steve and Margaret. When he didn’t answer, and the machine came on, I didn’t leave a message.” She looked at Agent Smith, anger replacing the suffering in her eyes. “Mr. Smith, I know that you and your agency are trying to bring to justice whoever kidnapped my granddaughters and caused Kathy’s death, but listen to me and listen carefully. I don’t care whether or not Richie showed up for work at Newark Airport. I think that you are insinuating there is something going on between him and Franklin Bailey, and that it may have to do with the kidnapping of our grandchildren. That is absolutely ridiculous, so don’t waste your time or our time pursuing that line of investigation.”
She pushed the ottoman back and stood up, grasping the arms of the chair for support. “My granddaughter is dead. I am in so much pain I almost can’t bear it. My one son and my daughter-in-law are heartbroken. My other son is weak and foolish and even a thief, but he is not capable of anything so despicable as kidnapping his own nieces. Stop it, Mr. Smith. Tell your agency to stop it. Haven’t I had enough? Haven’t I had enough?”
In a gesture of utter despair, she threw up her hands, sank back into the chair, then leaned forward until her face touched her knees.
“Get out!” Tom Frawley pointed to the door, spitting out the words. “You couldn’t save my granddaughter. Now at least go out and find her kidnapper. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you’re trying to tie Richie to this crime, so don’t waste your time even thinking that he’s involved.”
Smith listened, his face impassive. “Mr. Frawley, if you hear from Richie, will you please tell him that we need to be in touch with him? I’ll give you my card.” With a nod to Grace Frawley, he turned and, followed by Agent Rogers, left the condo.
In the car, he put the key in the ignition before he asked, “What do you think of all that?”
Carla knew what he meant. “The phone call to Franklin Bailey—I think the mother may have been trying to cover for him.”
“So do I. Richie didn’t get here until early Saturday morning, which meant he could have had time to take part in the kidnapping. He was in the Ridgefield house a couple of months ago, so he knew the layout. He may have been setting up an alibi for himself by visiting his mother. He could have been one of the two men who picked up the ransom money.”
“If he was one of the kidnappers, he would have to have been wearing a mask.
Without one, even if the twins barely knew him, they still might have been able to identify him.”
“Suppose one of them did? And suppose for that reason she couldn’t be allowed to go home? And suppose Lucas Wohl’s death wasn’t a suicide?”
Rogers stared at her superior officer. “I didn’t know the guys in New York and Connecticut were thinking that way.”
“The guys in New York and Connecticut are thinking every way they can and following every single angle. They have the case, and a three-year-old child died on their watch. Somebody who calls himself the Pied Piper is still out there, and the blood of that child is on his hands and on the hands of anyone else who had a part in that kidnapping. As the Frawleys just told us, Richie Mason may be nothing more than a con artist, but I just can’t help thinking that his mother is covering for him right now.”
50
After her outburst in church, Kelly lapsed into silence. When they arrived back home, she went upstairs to her bedroom and brought down the two teddy bears clasped in her arms.
Rena Chapman, the kindly neighbor who had cooked dinner for them several times, and who had received one of the calls from the Pied Piper, was waiting for them to get home. “You have simply got to eat,” she told them. She had set the round table in the breakfast alcove of the kitchen, and it was there that they settled, Margaret holding Kelly on her lap, Steve and Dr. Harris across from them. Rena placed the platters on the table and refused to stay. “You don’t need me around now,” she told them firmly.
Piping-hot scrambled eggs, thin sliced ham on toast points, and strong, hot coffee warmed all of them. While they were having their second cup, Kelly slid off Margaret’s lap. “Will you read me my book, Mommy?” she asked.