I’ve taken six or eight Valiums, and thoughts zip through my head with a jangled alacrity that, in and of itself, takes my breath away. Motherhood, I tell myself, is a great adventure: where you get on is not as important as where you get off. Taking Anne Elise was a crime of opportunity, but by the time I stick the key in the ignition, plans have solidified in my head. Already my thoughts plow forward to the future. I’ll be a better mother than Laurel could ever be. Anne Elise’s girlhood will be a magical adventure of foreign-language-immersion classes and petits fours, horses and purebred puppies. I will be the mother every child dreams for. Together, we’ll stroll into the Ritz-Carlton for mother/daughter tea dates, we’ll shop till we drop, dress in matching skirts, subscribe to Kennedy Center ballet performances, and drink chocolate milkshakes whenever we damn well please.
But now, not having a proper baby seat, I conceal Anne Elise under my bubble jacket while we drive into Chinatown. Emerging clouds cast gloominess onto what had been a bright afternoon, the streets slick with February frost and slush, prompting extra caution and a light foot on the gas pedal. Anne Elise’s soft downy head wobbles against my chest. Such a bright, inquisitive baby; she’s probably trying to peek out from my bubble jacket, the curiosity in her surroundings almost palpable in how she opens her eyes to take in not only my Mercedes’ nut-brown napa leather interior but also the bustling city blocks around us, the honking traffic, and the flashing lights and bright signs of the storefronts around us. Her first taste of DC is of bumper-to-bumper traffic and street-side vendors standing behind tables piled high with T-shirts, baseball hats, and shot glass kitsch geared toward the tourist trade. Pedestrians crowd the sidewalk.
All my life, I’ve maintained control of situations and emotions, but twenty minutes with Anne Elise have transformed me into a reckless felon. At the next stoplight, I pop a Valium and another, and then guilt overtakes me, for the prescription bottle warns against operating automobiles while under Valium’s influence. I don’t want to endanger Anne Elise. Already, I’m discombobulated by the fear of being apprehended. I haven’t thought this through. How could I not think this through?
I can’t remember where I’m going, but then I remember the appointment with my private investigator. He’s due to present evidence that Laurel’s not fit for motherhood—which, now that I’ve stolen her baby, is information I no longer need. However, if I fail to keep the appointment, Simpkins will become suspicious. I can’t just barge into his office one day and demand he dig up the nastiest secrets and foulest deeds someone committed and the next day lose all enthusiasm in the subject. And yet he’ll be more suspicious if, on the same day Laurel’s baby disappears, I show up in his office with a newborn child I can’t account for. He’s a smart man. He’ll find out Laurel’s baby is missing. He’ll connect the dots, and when he does, I wouldn’t put it past him to call the police.
I breathe deeply, count to ten, gather my wits, and channel my father’s wisdom and the inner Riggs ruthlessness of my bloodlines. My father once told me I can handle any situation thrown in my path. That’s what makes me different from my mother—I’m not taking James’s affair lying down, sulking, in bed. On the most stressful day of his life, my father called me into Savory Mew’s hideaway office. Leaked documents had just revealed that money laundered through his bank financed the al-Qaeda 9/11 terrorist attacks. Journalists were harassing him. Senators and congressmen called the house trying to make sense of what happened. “Dogs may bark,” my father said, looking up at me from the pile of papers scattered around his desk, “but the caravan needs to move on. We’ve got the diligence, you and me, to keep the caravan moving. That’s what Riggses do: we shove past the barking dogs.”
I grab my phone at the next stoplight, call Simpkins’s office. When he picks up, I ask, “What did you find out about Laurel Bloom?”
Simpkins hems for a moment as if trying to place who I am. “Weren’t you supposed to come by my office? In a half hour?”
“I can’t meet with you today, actually. But what did you find out?”
“There’s nothing to tell. I searched. I searched big time. There’s no dirt out there on Laurel Bloom.”
“How can that be?”
“Because she’s clean. That’s why. She’s a decent person who happened to get knocked up by your husband. It happens. In all my time investigating people, I’ve never seen anything like this before: a person with no skeletons in her closet. Besides hooking up with your husband, that is.”
I think back to Laurel’s awkwardness, her brusqueness, her downright rudeness and disdain toward me. These are not the traits of a young lady with a proper upbringing or someone with no skeletons in her closet or the traits one expects of a law-abiding citizen, but rather they’re harbingers of criminal activity, drug and alcohol use, licentious behavior, disciplinary actions, academic expulsions, a string of mental health issues, and perhaps a spate of homelessness, moral failings that will induce queasiness in anyone. Though I no longer need to petition the city to take away her child, Simpkins’s refusal to dig in to Laurel’s past angers me. Why can’t he do his job right? If something goes wrong with my plan to keep her baby, I’m going to need all the dirt I can get on her to blackmail her into not pressing charges against me. Why can’t Simpkins give me the satisfaction of finding out the details?
“Do you want to know what I think?” I say, just as Anne Elise erupts with a loud cry.
“What’s that?”
I rub Anne Elise’s back, worried that Simpkins might have heard Anne Elise’s cry. It’s been hours since Laurel last nursed her, but miraculously, I succeed in soothing her within moments, making me think I really am cut out for motherhood. She looks at me with her big baby-blue eyes, and my attention on her is total. I adjust her newborn’s cap, tickle her chin, which, surprisingly, produces no reaction from her, and yet I sense the affection in her eyes, the latent mirth about to explode from her pink lips.
“Ma’am. You were saying?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t have all day. You were going to tell me what you think about my findings?”
“Mr. Simpkins, how do I know you even bothered to investigate Laurel Bloom? How do I know you’re not a scam artist? For two thousand dollars, a client deserves evidence that you’ve at least tried to do a proper investigation.”
If I wanted to be nasty, I could phone my lawyer and petition the appropriate city regulators to revoke Simpkins’s license. That much I’m sure of. But the process would take months, depriving me of the immediate satisfaction I crave. “Mr. Simpkins. Do you want to make a deal? I’m not going to file a complaint about you. I don’t want the city to strip you of your license, which I’m sure they’d do in light of all the money you’ve so far defrauded me of.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want you finish the job. Destroy that woman. Do you understand? Tell me everything about her. Tell me significant dirt, even if it means, well, accidentally accessing confidential legally protected databases. Am I making myself clear?”
The temperature around me seems to increase by ten degrees. The light changes. I step on the gas. Simpkins clears his throat. “Mrs. Wainsborough. You do understand the risks you’re asking me to undertake will come at an extra fee, don’t you?”
“I’ll give you, say, fourteen hundred more dollars if you finish your investigation to my satisfaction,” I say, making up the number on the fly. “One thousand, four hundred dollars. But only if you dig up something really incriminating on that woman.”
“You said yesterday you didn’t have any more money.”
“I miscalculated. So do we have a deal?”
“I think there’s a fair chance I can find something of interest for you,” Simpkins says. “Give me another day, and I promise I’ll move things forward on this investigation to your satisfaction. Shall we meet tomorrow? In my office? Say, about noon?”
Chapter Twenty
LAUREL