Babysitter, page 6
Jody wanted, naturally enough, to find out more about his marriage. She had the alcoholic’s interest in all human disasters, probably because it was encouraging to know that others had suffered, too, and had triumphed over their suffering. But he wanted to discuss his book.
“I’ve become a good friend of both Doc Coyle and the police chief. They both go back several decades here.”
“Yes?” She had no idea where this was leading.
“Well, I just thought I’d do a little checking if you didn’t mind.”
She was about to ask him what he meant by “checking” when Samantha appeared.
Sam had gotten the best physical qualities of both Jody and Jody’s first husband, a dashing but faithless airline pilot who six years after the divorce ended up crashing into the Everglades while guiding a charter plane loaded with insurance executives. She’d always wondered if he’d been sober.
Sam, with her cheekbones and her enigmatic smile and her sloe brown eyes had easily won a place in the lower echelons of New York City modeling. No Vogue covers but plenty of work in J.C. Penney catalogs and lots of runway jobs for the mass market designers who imitated to the legal limit the designs of Perry Ellis, Bill Blass, and Ralph Lauren. Unfortunately, along with great looks, an easy sense of humor, a spectacular five-ten body, and a really good mind, she had also inherited her parents’ addictive personalities.
She stood now, wan from her latest cocaine run, wearing a red summer cable sweater and jeans, her baby blond hair tumbling down to her shoulders. Even though she wore no makeup, she looked wonderful, and Jody had to admit to two different feelings—pride in a daughter she loved beyond words and a small pang of jealousy at the way David stirred in his chair when he saw her.
“Hi,” she said. Then she offered them both her smile. “I have to admit, I kept the bathroom door open and I sort of overheard your conversation.” She crossed the dusky room and shook David’s hand. “You’re David Fairbain. I’ve been hearing about you all my life.”
Her mother laughed. “Thanks for all the help.”
“I mean, I assume,” Sam said, “that you know the kind of crush my mother used to have on you. We’re talking major heartbreak, right, Mom?”
David smiled but looked a bit embarrassed. He was not completely easy around women, and Jody found herself liking him for that. She’d had a lifetime of glib men and their lines.
“Anyway,” Sam said, more seriously. “I really am glad to meet you.”
It was during these periods, completely away from drugs, completely resolved to never take drugs again, that Jody and Sam rediscovered their old relationship, the one that had bloomed in Sam’s late teen years when Jody had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and begun, for the first time, to really be a mother.
Sam came over and sat down next to her on the couch. “How did it go with the shrink and Jenny?”
Jody felt herself tense. She cleared her throat.
Sam, who knew her too well to be misled, obviously sensed right away that something was wrong. She said, with surprising calm, “What happened?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Mom, please just tell me.”
Jody cleared her throat again. “She—threw some kind of fit. That’s all I can say.”
“Some kind of fit? I don’t understand.”
“She became violent. Overturned furniture. Tried to slap Dr. Peary.”
“Jenny? My little daughter?” Now her voice was rising. Now her voice reflected concern and perhaps even panic. She licked dry lips. “And we don’t know what caused it?”
“Jenny hinted that something happened the other night.”
“The other night? Did she say which night?”
“No.” Jody thought of telling her about the strange drawing, the hideous thing she recalled from her own girlhood. But she decided that would only make things worse. She said, “Were you with Jenny all the time the past few days?”
“Yes.” Then she shook her head. “All but three nights ago.” She flushed, glanced at David. “I—” She shrugged. “I went out one night with some people I met downtown. I left Jenny with a babysitter that your friend Iris recommended.”
For some reason, her mention of a babysitter seemed to interest David as much as it did Jody.
“What did the babysitter say when you got home?” Jody asked.
“Well,” Sam began hesitantly. “To tell the truth—” She paused again. Sighed. “To tell the truth, I was pretty wrecked. I remember paying her exorbitantly and I remember her leaving. That’s about all.”
“And Jenny didn’t say anything to you?”
“No.”
“Nothing about anything going wrong?”
“No. Nothing that I can remember.”
“How was she the next day?”
“Fine but—” Then she stopped. “No, wait a minute. The next night I heard her crying, really sobbing. I assumed it was because I’d been out the night before. She knows me well enough to know when I go back on the—stuff. I just assumed she was crying because she knew what I’d done.”
David said, “You didn’t happen to write down the name of the babysitter, did you?”
“I might have it somewhere,” Sam said. “Maybe it would help to talk to her.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Jody said, still curious about David’s sudden interest in the babysitter.
Sam said, “Why all the interest in the babysitter?” She sounded both vaguely irritated and vaguely upset by the idea.
“I just thought that she could help us know what happened here that night—if something did,” David said. “It just seems an orderly way to proceed.”
Jody took Sam’s hand. Whenever Sam was coming off a drug binge, she was first physically sick and then mentally unstable. Her reactions were not unlike those of premenstrual syndrome—great anxiety and depression crossed with an almost complete inability to relax. Jody said, “He’s just trying to help, hon.”
Sam visibly relaxed then. “Sorry I got cranky.”
“That was cranky? You should work on a newspaper sometime,” David said. “Then you’ll know what cranky is.”
Sam smiled. “Or be around my mother when she hasn’t had enough sleep.”
Jody patted Sam’s hand again. “Time for family secrets now?” She stood up. “I’ll call Iris Manners and get the babysitter’s name from her. You just stay here and talk with David.”
With that, Jody left the living room, walked through the small, empty dining room with its tanned, stained carpet crying out for a cleaning, and then into the kitchen where a yellow wall phone rested against a bright red wall. The people who had owned this house before it was a rental must have been color blind.
As she dialed, she looked over at the wobbly kitchen table with the cardboard box full of picnic supplies—paper plates, plastic forks, paper place mats—and she felt again an abiding pity for her daughter. Sam still lived this way, rarely with a stable man around, even more rarely in any one particular place for any length of time. She was always changing apartments and small rental houses on the outskirts of New York City, always trying to find somewhere outside her own heart for that sense of peace she had sought so desperately and for so long.
The kitchen window was cracked. Behind it the screen had been pulled away and hung dangling and rusty. A loud wasp slammed against the window. Far off Jody could hear the roar of Interstate 80, and even further off the clatter of a fast train.
On the sixth ring, Iris Manners answered. Iris had been one of Jody’s favorite classmates, a plump woman with a yen for the kitchen and raising very well-behaved children, and an absolute indifference to the opinion of other people.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Iris, it’s me. Jody.”
“Say, do I have some news for you,” Iris said, before Jody could even get a word out about the reason she’d called.
“You do?”
“Fred Phillips saw you at the store today. You remember Fred?”
“Sort of.”
“He was in our class and he’s now the swim coach at the high school.”
“Oh. Right. Fred.”
“Well, you should have heard what he said about you.”
She’d never been able to accept compliments well, so now Jody giggled like a girl and said, “Something pretty bad, huh?”
“Well, in case you don’t know, he keeps himself in very good shape not only swimming but lifting weights, and he’s a widower. And he wanted to know if I’d sort of reintroduce you.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“Boy, you really sound excited, Jody.” She laughed. “I guess when you look like I do, you’d just naturally go a little crazy if anybody had an illicit thought about you at all. And I think ole Fred had a lot of illicit thoughts about you.” Now it was Iris of the dishwater hands and six children who was doing the giggling. She said, “You didn’t actually have a reason to call me, did you?”
Jody grew serious. “I’m afraid I did, Iris.”
“Something wrong?” Iris said, sensing her mood at once.
“I’m afraid there is.”
“Sam?”
“No. Jenny.”
“Jenny? My God.”
“She had some sort of—spell this afternoon. Got very upset when we took her to see Dr. Peary.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve heard good things about her. The Emersons went to her when Jan Emerson was seeing that fellow from Center City. Mike Emerson always likes to say that Ruth Peary saved his marriage. Jan gave up the Center City fellow, at any rate.”
“I had a good impression of her, too.”
“So what about Jenny?”
“Well, apparently she told Ruth Peary that something happened the other night. I just wondered if you knew the number of the babysitter you recommended to Sam.”
“Oh, God, Jody, you think that babysitter did something?”
“Do you know this girl?”
“Not real well. Agnes Thorp recommended her to me, actually. I couldn’t think of anybody for Sam so I called Agnes and I got this girl’s number.”
“Do you have it written down?”
Jody could hear Iris leaning away from the phone. “Let me see if I still have it on this little blackboard I keep over by the refrigerator. Just a minute.” There was a moment of silence. Jody could hear walking-away footsteps. In a few moments, Iris spoke again. “Just be grateful that I never clean this dump up,” she laughed. “Here’s the number.” She gave it to her and said, “How’s Jenny doing now?”
“As soon as I hang up, I’m going to go in and check on her. But you don’t know anything about this girl, then?”
“Sorry. Wish I did. All I know is that Agnes used her once and said she was reliable.” She coughed and then said, “Remember how we used to compete for babysitting jobs? How much we wanted to make a dollar an hour? These kids today—” She stopped herself. “God! Don’t I sound like those old biddies we used to hate? ‘These kids today.’ Like Mrs. Crumb. Remember Mrs. Crumb and how much she used to hate ‘new-fangled kids,’ as she liked to put it?”
A vivid image of a gnarled old woman filled Jody’s mind. “Her and her walking stick and her Camel cigarettes.”
“Smoked more than any man I ever knew. And what a bitch. Pardon my French.”
“Yes, Iris, that is a pretty shocking word.”
“I forgot. You’re from the big city now. You probably use the F word and everything.”
“You mean you never do?”
“Not so’s I’d admit it.”
Jody laughed, liking Iris all the more. “You’re a good friend, Iris, and I appreciate your help.”
“Well, you try that number and see if you have any luck.”
“Thanks, again.”
“My pleasure, hon. I just hope you’re still planning to have lunch with me before you leave.”
“You promise not to bring Fred Phillips along?”
“How much will you pay me?”
“Bye, hon,” Jody said sweetly, and hung up the phone.
She immediately dialed the number Iris had given her. She could tell from the connecting ring that something was wrong with the line. On the third ring a recorded voice said, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. If you wish assistance, please stay on the line.”
Jody opted to stay on the line.
After a minute or so an operator came on. “May I help you?”
Jody gave her the number. “Is there a forwarding number?”
“If there was,” the operator said pleasantly, “it would be on the recording.”
“Oh.” Then she said, “Do you have any way of telling me the address of this phone number?”
“I’m sorry. We’re not permitted to do that.”
“I see.”
Now the operator had grown impatient. “Is there any other way I can help you?”
“I guess not. Thanks.”
After replacing the phone, Jody went down the hall, first to the bathroom where she peed. Then she washed up, freshened her lipstick and started back down the hall to Jenny’s room.
She sensed immediately that something was wrong because the door stood ajar. Then she decided she was being paranoid. Maybe Jenny had gotten up and gone to the bathroom and then gone back to bed, leaving the door partially open on her way back.
Jody looked inside. The room was bare except for a small, lumpy roll-away bed. A few dresses hung in the otherwise empty closet. A happy teddy bear sat on the floor next to a scratched-up bureau. The place had been advertised as “furnished.” That was employing a very liberal interpretation of that word.
Jody went immediately to the living room. What she hoped to do was round the corner and find Jenny sitting there on the couch with Sam.
Jenny was not in the living room.
Jody’s panic must have been pretty transparent. Within seconds of each other, both Sam and David asked what was wrong.
“I just wondered if you’d seen Jenny,” Jody said, trying to sound calm and casual.
But it was too late for calm and casual.
Having sensed Jody’s concern, Sam and David were on their feet. They each began searching the house with a distinct air of desperation.
It quickly became clear that eight-year-old Jenny was gone.
Chapter Three
1
They started by asking the nearest neighbors if any of them had seen Jenny. Because Sam and Jenny had been here for about three weeks, most of the neighbors had no idea what the eight-year-old looked like.
After turning up nothing in this manner, they explored a shallow wooded area to the east of the house. Jody and Sam had flashlights. David carried a rake with which he combed the thick brush of bloodroot, ginseng, wild ginger, and berry.
By this time, half an hour after discovering the girl gone, the three of them were hoarse from shouting her name. Sam had started sobbing so much that the other two had to stop and just hold her until the tears abated, at least for the moment.
Then it was onward into the shallow woods, heat, darkness, and mosquitoes making their passage uncertain and somewhat difficult.
On the ground, their flashlights picked out beer cans, candy wrappers, pages torn from magazines, and sleek red Trojan wrappers. But no sign of a little girl. No sign whatsoever.
“Hank, this is David Fairbain.” He spoke from the kitchen of Sam’s rental house.
“Hello, David.” The Winthrop Police Chief cupped the phone a moment and asked his wife to turn down the TV set. “How’re you doing?”
“Not too well at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“Oh?”
“I’m afraid we’ve got a missing child on our hands.”
“Oh.” He offered this second “Oh” with much more concern in his voice.
“You remember Jody, don’t you?”
“Sure. One of the prettiest girls in our class.”
“Well, it’s her granddaughter, Jenny.”
“How old is she?”
“Eight.”
“How long she been gone?”
“About an hour now.”
“You’ve checked with the neighbors?”
“Yes. We’ve even done a little exploring into a woods close by. Nothing.”
“Any evidence of violence around the house?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you?”
“Any indication she was abducted?”
“No. Somehow she just got out the back door. I checked the window in her bedroom and it doesn’t show signs of tampering inside or outside. And if she’d tried to get out the front door, we would have seen her.”
“She having any disagreement with her parents?”
“She’s here with her mother. And yes, she has been upset, but I’m not sure that has any bearing here.”
“Well, a lot of time we find that kids between her age and twelve have disputes with their parents and wander off for a little while.” Chief Carella seemed to be offering the hope, however slender, that this might not be so dire a moment as it seemed. “And they always show up soon after. They start hearing the stray dogs barking and seeing how dark it gets at night, and they get scared and come back.”
David Fairbain, leaning against the wall in Sam’s kitchen, said, “I’m not so sure, Hank.”
“Well, whatever’s going on, I’m going to send a car out there right now.”
“I’d appreciate that, Hank. In the meantime, I’m going to try and locate this babysitter who stayed with Jenny three nights ago.”
“You think she’s mixed up in all of this somehow?”
“We don’t really suspect her of anything, if that’s what you’re getting out. We’d just like to piece together the last few days of Jenny’s life to try and get a handle on all this.”
“Like maybe something that happened while the babysitter was there might have brought all this on?”
“Right.”
“You want me to help?”
“No, I thought I’d drive over there when I got the address and just do a little checking around myself. But I would appreciate it if you’d send that car out so we can get a description of Jenny on TV and radio. In case somebody sees her.”
