“I was napping when that happened. Jimmy was here. Jimmy told me someone came and took Zerena to the nursery so I could sleep better.”
The two men behind Lois Belcher exchange glances. One turns his attention to the beat-up clipboard he’s carrying while the other asks, in a low voice, “Zerena? Who’s Zerena?” Both men are linebacker big and meaty, tall, muscular men with electric gizmos in their ears and walkie-talkies holstered to their belts, but it takes me an extra moment to realize neither are doctors: they’re hospital security staffers.
“Ma’am . . . please think carefully,” the man with the clipboard says. Despite his huge size, he’s got normal-sized hands and the kind of chubby face that under any other circumstances would give him a friendly appearance. Now, though, he speaks with a slow, deliberate voice. “Was there anything suspicious earlier today before you fell asleep? Where did Jimmy go? Is it possible to talk to him right now? It’s real urgent we get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.”
“Where’s Zerena?” I ask, though I’m already afraid what the answer might be. “Why haven’t you brought her to me like you said you were going to do?”
“Your daughter’s missing,” Lois Belcher says.
The news knocks me senseless, overwhelms me, muscles into the very core of my being. I feel things draining inside me, my hopes and dreams washing away. I stutter, “Miss-ss-ing?”
“Ma’am. We’re doing our best to locate her.”
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know, ma’am. She’s missing.”
Everyone—the security officers, Lois Belcher, even my mother—seems to be saying that word at once: “missing.” I lower the bed railing so I can hop to the floor. I’m not about to take any of this lying down, but as I lower my feet to the floor, dizziness comes over me. In my clumsiness, my IV cord snags on something. It’s been days since I last stood up on my own power, and it’s like I’m a baby wobbling on my feet, and the next thing I know is that the IV stand smashes against the wall.
“Ma’am. Stay calm. We’re doing everything we can.”
“Oh my god. Before I fell asleep, Tricia was here,” I say, catching my breath. I remember dreaming about her in the room, but as I think about it, it seems like it was more than a dream. A fuzzy memory, maybe. A sickly green feeling rushes over me. I remember her lifting up the box of chocolates Jimmy bought her, how she cursed my name. Strange, hexagonal boot tracks covered the floor. Surely, those were her boots that made those marks. I can’t believe Tricia would run off with my baby—but then, thinking it over, I can totally believe it. Everything clicks in place in my mind. However many times that snake sheds her skin, she’ll always be a snake. Tricia was with me before I fell asleep—I’m convinced of this. She was the one who changed Zerena’s diaper. When I woke up, my IV cord was wrapped around the bed railing, cutting off the antibiotic’s flow into my arm. At the time, I thought somehow I snagged it myself, but now there’s no doubt in my mind she was responsible. “Tricia. She must have done it.”
My mother, alarmed, reaches over and places a hand on my shoulder. “Honey? Who’s Tricia?”
Chapter Twenty-One
JIM
Simpkins’s entire office is about 150 square feet, not much bigger than the interior of the cargo vans parked in the parking garage just beyond the room’s hollow-core metal door. The decor is minimal—a coat rack, upon which hangs his sheepskin jacket; metal chairs; metal desk; metal filing cabinets; and a credenza—all the furniture painted battleship gray to match the concrete floor and the shadows that hang below Simpkins’s eyes. Maybe camouflage is what he’s after, but some office-supply store must’ve had a serious gray sale around the time Simpkins started up his little operation. Even the coffee mugs and the computers and inkjet printers are gray.
Simpkins rises from his chair and extends his hand in greeting. “I didn’t know if you’d show up.”
“A successful man abides by his schedule,” I say. The lone plant in the office, a hanging philodendron, looks like it died six months ago, so shriveled are its vines. With no windows or appreciable air circulation, spending eight or more hours a day in this cramped space must be seriously soul sucking, the kind of fate you wouldn’t wish on anyone but your boss. Something hisses on the other side of the shared concrete block wall where, likely, the building’s boiler room is located. “Dude, you’ve got a sweet little detective cave going on in here!”
Simpkins lifts his wire-rimmed glasses and rubs his eyes. “To be frank, I’m trying to save on office expenses. It’s all part of my master business plan. For now, I’m working in this pit. That’s why I don’t like to meet new clients here. In a couple weeks, though, if I play my cards right, I should be able to afford better office space.”
I swivel my chair around to take in the sports posters on the walls. “Simpkins, trust me. You’re making a smart move, eschewing pricier office space so you can pocket more money for yourself. Who wants to pay more rent than they have to? Who needs flash? Who needs a penthouse suite or an office window when you have money in your pocket?”
Everything about Simpkins looks turgid and bloodshot. A newbie to the world of boozy bonding, he’s still hungover from our encounter last night, but I’ve got just what he needs. Having stopped off at Potomac Wines & Spirits, an M Street purveyor famous throughout the city for its selection of Scotland’s finest exports, I lay on his desk a bottle of twenty-one-year-old Macallan single-malt Scotch I purchased with three of Tully’s Benjamins. I pull open the bottle’s cork top and inhale the peaty vapors.
“This’ll go down way smoother than the rotgut we drank last night,” I say, tilting the Macallan toward Simpkins. “Drink up, sport!”
Simpkins, green at the gills, takes a pusillanimous swig, barely enough to wet the whistle. His bloodshot eyes widen as the Scotch scorches his throat. He winces.
“Pretty smooth, eh?”
Simpkins nods, his lips braced tight as if in pain.
“So suppose we get started. Did you pass on any information about that Laurel Bloom to the spurned wife?”
Simpkins lifts up his wire-rimmed glasses and, tilting his head, squints at me. Without his glasses, he looks older, wiser, and prone to bouts of alertness. “How did you know the woman’s name?”
“Huh?”
“Laurel Bloom. You said her name. How’d you know her name?”
I’m not sure what he’s getting at—but then it hits me: he’d been operating under the assumption I had no personal knowledge about the case, which is good because that means he truly has no clue who I am. Nothing is to be gained if he knows of my involvement with Laurel. Or with Trish. “You must have mentioned it last night. At the bar.”
“No, I didn’t,” Simpkins says, his voice firm, insistent. “I never publicly acknowledge the name of someone I’ve been investigating.”
“Sure you did. Maybe after your second or third drink.” I weave my hands together, plant them on my knee. “Liquor loosens lips. Everyone knows that. Otherwise, how else would I have known?”
Simpkins puts his glasses back on but continues to stare at me.
“So tell me: Did you pass on any information about the girl in the hospital to the wife?”
“You told me you’d make it worth my while if I don’t. I held on to my end of the bargain. This is America. Now make it worth my while.”
Money. It always comes down to money. I grab $2,000 out of Tully’s paper lunch sack, matching the amount Simpkins said Trish gave him yesterday. Simpkins reaches for the moola. Many of the bills are crumpled, mangled, or otherwise greased and torn at their edges. But money is money: it’s all good. Simpkins, however, wrinkles his nose at it.
“Don’t you like money?”