Dina Santorelli Read online

  She reached for the toilet paper, pausing a moment in surprise to see that the ends of the paper had been carefully creased on both sides into a neat point. She flushed and reached across the shiny porcelain pedestal sink to wash her hands, splattering water on the smooth curves of the gleaming chrome faucets. The hand soap gave off a milk-and-honey fragrance. The entire bathroom had a springy freshness about it, as if it had been scrubbed with daisies. While she washed her hands, out of habit Jamie glanced into the vanity mirror and gasped at the horror of her own reflection: A large, red bump burst through the skin just above her hairline. Her tousled, matted hair looked glued to the sides of her face, which had large, blood-speckled scrapes along them. Her coloring, normally fair, was ashen, and her eyes were red and puffy, sagging at the corners in sadness. Or was it shame? She looked away and pressed her back up against the cool tiled wall, finding comfort in the geometrical order of the tiled walls and floors surrounding her, as if she were in a protective cage. If only she could stay in there. She again looked into the mirror, at her unrecognizable self, and reached her hand out, her finger tracing the sides of her reflected face and leaving smudge marks on the glass. NEVER LOOK BACK the headline had read on O magazine. Jamie grabbed the corner of the mirror and pulled, and the door to the medicine cabinet opened with a click.

  The cabinet shelves were rather empty, containing only three items: a half-used bottle of Old Spice aftershave, an electric razor, and a clear, plastic makeup bag, which Jamie picked up. Inside she found some hair clips, makeup in an array of childish fluorescent colors, body lotions, and a nail clipper. She took out the nail clipper and studied it, running her index finger along the sharp edge. She folded out the attached nail file and held it up to the vanity light. How much damage could it inflict? she wondered. Could it kill him? Could it kill her? Could she kill anybody? She pressed the edge of the nail file into the soft skin of her left wrist when loud, muted wails broke the silence.

  The baby!

  Jamie replaced the nail file in the makeup bag, returned it into medicine cabinet, and threw open the bathroom door.

  The light from the bathroom shone into the dark bedroom, revealing a pile of bed linens but an otherwise empty bed, and Jamie ran over to the door of the nursery, again suppressing the pain she felt between her thighs. Bailino stood in the small room, facing her, the screaming baby held out in front of him by her armpits, her legs kicking down.

  "The baby's crying," he said, pushing the child out toward her like a newborn's weary father.

  Jamie reached for the little girl, who, upon seeing her, screeched louder and extended her hands. When released into Jamie's arms, she clutched her neck and rested her head on Jamie's shoulder.

  "Feed her, and get her back to sleep," Bailino said, leaving the room. "Then come back to bed."

  Chapter 17

  Rosalia was standing just outside the front gates of the governor's mansion when Reynaldo pulled up. For such a large, stately home, the mansion, with its wide, lavish grounds, was set so far back from the iron gatework of its perimeter that you could almost miss it while driving down Eagle Street, especially in the dark. The front gate was still open, and his aunt was chatting with Henry, the night guard, and another man, whom Reynaldo recognized to be a policeman as he drove closer. The entire first floor of the mansion was dark, with only a few lights on upstairs. Reynaldo heard his aunt utter a soft good-bye, and she hurried into the passenger seat of Reynaldo's car, which he had cleared of paperwork and soda cans. She held up her hand when she saw that Reynaldo wanted to talk and said, "Drive." Without hesitation, he obeyed.

  As he drove, Reynaldo glanced at his aunt, who was looking straight ahead. Sitting like that, quiet and introspective, she looked even more like his mother than he remembered, and a feeling of tremendous loss came over him, but it was Rosalia who began to cry.

  "Aunt Ro, what is it?" Reynaldo asked. He extended his arm across to her.

  "The baby..."

  "Baby? What baby?" Reynaldo asked. "You mean Charlotte?"

  "Yes," Rosalia sobbed. "They took Carlota."

  "Who took her? Where?"

  "I don't know," Rosalia said. "The policía were here today asking me questions. It's my fault."

  "Qué?!" Reynaldo pulled over to the side of the road, and the car jerked to a stop. He faced his aunt. "What is your fault? Why are the police here?"

  "I put Charlotte down for her nap, and when I went to check on her, she was gone."

  "What do you mean 'gone'?"

  "Ay, Rey, she wasn't there anymore. She... disappeared." Rosalia reached into her pocketbook, pulled out a tissue and blew her nose. She looked so tired, Reynaldo thought.

  "Could she have climbed out?"

  "No, no... I would have heard. I heard nothing. I look at the baby monitor all the time. You know how I am..."

  He did. Charlotte Grand couldn't have asked for a more dutiful or loving caretaker than his aunt, the woman who had been a second mother to him and his brothers after their mother died. Reynaldo reached across the car and put his arm around Rosalia, and as she leaned onto his shoulder, he stroked her wiry, gray hair. He could smell her perfume, the same brand his mamá had worn; the familiar fragrance conjured up happy memories of large family gatherings, crowded rooms filled with cigarette smoke and laughter, always laughter. Rosalia had taken it upon herself to keep the family together when her sister died. Once a month, for as long as Reynaldo could remember, she cooked a giant meal for the whole family—a tradition set by his mother when he was a little boy. Over the years, fewer people attended—many of the older relatives died, his cousins moved downstate, and his father retired last year, leaving only him and his brothers, and these days Pedro and Ricardo would use any excuse to avoid having to visit with Aunt Ro, who didn't have cable television. But Reynaldo showed up every time. He remembered asking her once as a child, "Tía, don't you get tired of cooking and cleaning and looking after everyone?" And she had told him, "Some people are meant to care for others, Reyito."

  "Where could she be?" Rosalia asked. "She is an innocent child."

  "We will find her, Tía. What did you tell the police?"

  "I told them the truth. What I told you."

  Reynaldo thought for a moment. "I'm going to take you home with me," he said. "I don't want you to be alone."

  "No, no..." She put her used tissue into her purse. "I need to stay in my house. I gave them my telephone number. They said they would call if they needed to reach me. I want to follow directions."

  "What about your cell phone?"

  "They took it."

  "Who? The policía? Why?"

  "I don't know, Rey. But what do I need it for anyway now? I have nowhere to go." Rosalia choked up on those last words, as if the thought of being alone and unneeded was too much for her to bear, and Reynaldo felt a pang of guilt for reveling in those two very things earlier that evening.

  "Then I will stay by you," he said.

  "Oh, Reyito," she said, patting his cheek. "You are a good boy. I will make you some jamón quesadillas in the morning. Your favorite."

  "Okay." He knew it was fruitless to argue and that cooking would help keep his aunt's mind busy. He pulled back onto the street and drove toward her house, the city seeming very big to him all of a sudden—unprotected, vulnerable—particularly with no cars on the road. The beams of the car's headlights were like flashlights searching in the shadows, looking for Baby Charlotte with every turn. It had only been a month ago that Reynaldo had seen the little girl last, her blonde curls springing up and down as the governor bounced her on his knee while sitting on the mansion's wraparound porch, her smile bright and sincere, her laughter carried across the grounds by the evening breeze, and his heart sank at the thought of a world without Charlotte Grand.

  Chapter 18

  It wasn't unusual for Detective Nurberg to be at the station before sunrise, but 4:30 a.m. was a new record even for him. After spending most of the night tossing and turning, unabl
e to get out of his mind the heartbreaking image of the Grands' nanny Rosalia—her distress, the pleas to find her charge—and the strange, melodramatic performance of Mrs. Grand, Nurberg found himself meticulously running through the procedures he'd conducted, as if on a loop, to make sure he hadn't left anything out. Every mansion staff member, including kitchen workers, drivers, tour guides, and security guards, had been interviewed. All video of those coming and going had been checked again and again, as were the grounds, which weren't too expansive, but because they were so close to the street traffic, it was easy for someone to slip into a parked vehicle—although nothing had been captured on video and the entire area was under continuous surveillance.

  Nurberg entered his small office and threw the folder containing the mansion's visitor manifest on his desk. All twenty-five pages had been laid out on his bed only hours earlier, and he could probably recite each name from memory. No one seemed strange or out of the ordinary. No police records. No red flags. There had been quite a few tour groups at the mansion yesterday, including elementary school children who had been bused in from outlying areas, and it was possible that someone had slipped in as a teacher or school aide and had gotten upstairs undetected. It was mansion policy for visitors to have ID with them upon arrival, but, even in these days of shoe removals and full-body scans at airports, it was rarely checked; so other than a roster of visitors who were supposed to be at the mansion, there really was no way of knowing exactly who had been there that day. Truth be told, there had never been an incident at the Executive Mansion for the two years he'd been on the Albany force or as far back as he could remember for that matter, so he could see why security may have been a bit lax. But even so, was it possible for someone to have gotten out of the building undetected with a baby who, unless she was drugged or worse, presumably would be crying?

  Nurberg sat back in his creaky swivel chair. He dreaded having to face the Grands this morning with the news of no progress on the investigation. Besides the interviews and videotapes, his men had checked every air duct, stairwell, and alcove on the premises, but Charlotte hadn't turned up, nor had evidence of any wrongdoing. Nurberg was used to having a clear perpetrator in the cases he'd handled: a drunk dad, a frustrated mom, a jealous sibling. This was killing him.

  There was a brief commotion outside his office door, where several detectives walked in the entrance chatting idly with Missy Giles, his domestic-violence advocate. The abduction of Baby Grand, as she was known among the locals, had the officers working overtime, and Nurberg's boss, Det. Lt. Grohl, had pulled men from the force's other divisions to lend a hand, so there were no less than twenty detectives working a case that had absolutely no leads. When the group saw Nurberg, they stopped and seemed to collectively catch their breath until Nurberg shook his head no, and then they continued across the station floor.

  Behind them, Grohl walked in, and before Nurberg could hide and pretend to be on the phone, his boss called him into his office.

  "Well, Ice?" Grohl asked, setting his car keys and the newspaper on his desk.

  "I filed my report last night, sir."

  "Yeah, yeah, I read it. Nothing."

  Nurberg groaned. Grohl was more anxious than usual. It wasn't every day that the governor's daughter disappeared, and he wasn't one for the spotlight. "Anything happen last night?"

  "Well," Nurberg said. "Matrick called me from the Grands when there was a suspicious phone call."

  Grohl's eyes opened wide.

  "But it was a false alarm," Nurberg added. "Telemarketer on a personal line that only two people know the number for."

  "Well, obviously more than two people if you include the telemarketer. Did you run the number?"

  "Detective Matrick gave me the number left on the automated voice-mail message. It checked out. It was for a twenty-four-hour customer-service center for Citibank, which is the bank behind Governor Grand's MasterCard. Seems legit."

  Grohl nodded. "Anything else?"

  Nurberg shook his head.

  "Damn." Grohl leaned back in his chair. "This isn't good."

  "I'm doing everything I can, sir."

  "Well, keep on it. There's gotta be something we're missing." Grohl pushed a pencil across his desk. "How about the First Lady? What's your take on Mrs. Grand?"

  Nurberg tempered his response. Katherine Grand was the odds-on favorite in the station pool for being behind this. "What's her motive, sir?"

  "That she's a bitch and a half?" Grohl said.

  "I don't know. It doesn't make sense," Nurberg said. "She's a smart woman with her political sights set way beyond Albany. Say what you want about her, but I can't imagine her doing anything that would put that career path in jeopardy."

  "Doesn't a baby put that career in jeopardy?"

  "Not when your husband's voting base is the traditional family. In terms of political career advancement, Charlotte may have been the best thing to happen to Katherine Grand. And I think she knows it."

  "Okay, I'll buy that." Grohl picked up the newspaper on his desk. "Well, here's one good thing. Glad to see that the press hasn't gotten wind of things yet." The front-page headline of the Albany Times read "Bridge to Nowhere" and showed the halted construction of the new Bay Park Bridge.

  "Yeah, a few reporters were skulking around asking questions," Nurberg said, "but they seemed to buy that we were performing drills at the mansion over the next few days."

  "Good. The more time we have without the media on our backs, the better."

  "I agree."

  "Well, all right," Grohl said, picking up his phone. "Keep me posted, Nurberg."

  "I will," Nurberg said, taking the hint. He left Grohl's office and returned to his own. There was a steaming hot cup of black coffee on his desk; next to it, on a small paper plate, was a frosted brownie. He glanced up and saw Missy Giles talking to a few officers near the front of the main office. She saw him and smiled. He smiled back and, for an instant, forgot all about the beleaguered investigation into the disappearance of Baby Grand.

  Chapter 19

  The glow outside the bedroom windows was bright and cleansing, but did nothing to alleviate the filthy feeling that gnawed at Jamie's insides. Just several minutes earlier as she pretended to sleep, Bailino had stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. The shower water had been turned on, and she could hear him humming.

  Although Charlotte had gone back to sleep while Jamie fed her a bottle of formula, she stalled as long as she could in the nursery, terrified of returning to Bailino's bed. But there was no way around it—she had to go back. What choice did she have? It was only when she heard him shuffle to the bathroom that she slipped under the covers, praying that he would leave her be. When Bailino returned, there was a pause before he climbed into bed, and then he fluffed his pillow, kicked out the flat sheet until it was tucked under his feet, and before falling asleep, slid his hand between Jamie's legs. And that was where it remained.

  Jamie had been awake ever since. She spent hours thinking about Edward, trying to create a time frame in her mind as to when her brother would realize that something was wrong, that she was missing and start looking for her and then how long it would take to find her. It was only now, in the blinding light of day, that the truth hit her hard: No one knows where you are.

  This was the first time that Jamie could remember ever being truly alone. It seemed as if her entire life, there had always been somebody—her mother, her brother, even Bob—running around beneath her with a net while she was walking the high wire of her life. She attended the same college as Edward—now that she thought about it, she never even entertained going anywhere else other than Hofstra, which was so close to home. Talk about a safety school. And it was the recommendation—a strong one made over the phone—of her journalism professor that had secured Jamie's first job at a local newspaper. And it was her mother who had picked the venue for her wedding reception. Jamie began thinking about every major milestone of her life, and suddenly it seemed as if she
had little to do with any of them, and a hopelessness descended upon her as she lay in the unfamiliar bed. Plus, her last totally spontaneous decision, made on her own—to eat in Bryant Park rather than inside Frank's Deli yesterday—was the thing that had landed her in this mess.

  A soft coo came from the nursery, and Jamie got out of bed and, still feeling woozy and sore, hurried across the bedroom. The baby was sleeping soundly in a corner of the crib, making sweet little gibberish sounds as she exhaled. Her little chubby legs were bare, having kicked off the blanket Jamie had placed on them during the night, and her little socks had fallen off too. As she lay there, peaceful, in the bright daylight, there was an unmistakable familiarity about the little girl, and Jamie wondered if she'd seen her before. She dismissed the idea, thinking that perhaps she was being reminded of Peter and Sara, since she practically lived with Edward and Tricia when the kids were born. You have no connection to this child, Jamie chided herself, although she knew that was untrue. A bond had formed the moment she saw her lying helpless on the basement table, and in her heart Jamie knew that any thoughts she had of escape were going to include the little girl. But just how do you sneak a baby out of a second-story room without anyone noticing?

  With her eye on the bathroom, Jamie hurried over to the bedroom door, but was confounded by the strange mechanism there in place of a doorknob. A small light in the corner of the device glowed red. She needed a key.

  She pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand, expecting, for some reason, to find a copy of the Bible inside, but instead found only loose change and some toiletries. She surveyed the wide room, whose edges seemed to crystallize in the daylight, and wondered if there was anything she could use to get out of there or as a weapon. At the far left were a dresser and chest of drawers and over to the right, a baby grand piano she hadn't noticed last night. She tiptoed past the bathroom door and opened a drawer or two of the dresser, finding nothing but clothing, but was so afraid Bailino would open the bathroom door and catch her snooping that she abandoned her plan and went back to the other side of the room, near the windows.