“So, to your knowledge, who was the last person with the baby before she disappeared?” Adderly asks.
“Tricia Wainsborough. She’s married to the baby’s father. There’s bad blood running there because of it.”
“So you know for a fact that Tricia was the last person in the hospital to be with the baby?”
I tell Adderly about the dreams I had of Tricia in the room, how she was holding my baby with rage in her face. I tell him that the dreams were so real, more like a hazy form of consciousness than the fantastical and make-believe things I usually dream. I tell him about the soiled diaper on the bassinet and the crazy boot tracks that were all over the floor when I woke up. “Only a woman as batty as Tricia would ever wear boots like that, right?”
Adderly looks at me with sad concern, and I can see what he’s thinking: I must be crazy. Anyone could’ve come in wearing those boots, and a person’s dreams would never be considered evidence in any real criminal investigation. For all I know, a nurse might have peeked into my room and, noticing I was asleep, carried Zerena back to the nursery.
Adderly lowers his pen from his notepad.
And yet, I know in my heart and in every inch of my soul that Tricia’s responsible for my missing baby.
“Right after Tricia found out about Jimmy and me, she made all kinds of threats that she’s going to ruin our lives. Or ruin our baby’s life. She’s the Grinch who stole Christmas, that woman is, a woman with no generosity whatsoever in her heart. Jimmy tried to talk sense into her, actually brought her into this room to show her Zerena, hoping that if she saw Zerena, she’d be apt to be nice. But that didn’t work.”
Adderly walks around the room taking notes. At first, I think he’s merely humoring me, not openly saying that he thinks I’m crazy. He opens the closet, the bathroom door, the drawers in my nightstand. He’s not being nosy; he’s just looking for clues. He opens the Debauve et Gallais chocolate box. For a moment, he looks like he might help himself to one of the truffles, which would be okay with me because, frankly, chocolates aren’t my thing. He looks at the pink roses Tricia sent and asks, “Who sent these to you?”
“Tricia.”
He opens the card that’s next to the flowers, reads aloud Tricia’s note of confidence telling me I’ll be a great mother. “She send this to you too?”
I nod.
Adderly tucks the card back in its envelope. “You think someone who sends you a card like that is fixing to steal your baby?”
“But she did it. I know she did it.” Up until now, I’ve been at a slow boil since Zerena disappeared, but I can’t control myself anymore. I need to stand up for myself. Just because I’m a woman of low economic standing doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be taken seriously. I raise my voice and, trembling, go full-blown banshee. I’m scared. I want my baby back. I want to hold her tight to my chest, feel her warm breath against me. I need her like I’ve never needed anyone before. Inside, I’m all ache and crinkle, sad and lonely. I scream so loud that nurses stare at me from the hallway, afraid to step into this room. If the security officers were here, they’d tell me to stop shouting, but nothing can keep me from getting this off my chest. Zerena might be in danger. “How the hell do I know why she’d send that card? She’s gone psycho or something, playing mind games with me, trying to get me to trust her, but there’s no trusting that witch as far as I’m concerned. I know she’s guilty. Flip her burger! You’ve got to arrest her. She stole my baby.”
I lean back on my pillow. My voice is sore and scratchy, but my outburst makes an impression on the otherwise unflappable Adderly. If I hadn’t spoken up, he probably wouldn’t even try to interview Tricia, but now he pledges to see her tonight. “Do you know where this Tricia Wainsborough lives?”
“Sir. I don’t.”
Silence greets my response. Adderly closes his notepad.
Lois Belcher gets up from the recliner, where she’s been sitting throughout my interview. Catching my glance, she lowers her head. “I know where Tricia lives.”
“You do?” I gathered the two of them—Lois and Tricia—were friendly, but I didn’t realize they knew each other well.
“Yes. I logged her information in when I gave her a KISS bracelet. I was the one who gave her a KISS bracelet,” Lois Belcher says. Her voice is weak. She speaks reluctantly, as if weighing what to reveal. As she speaks, I burn up inside. I trusted her, regarded her as my protector. Her face is expressionless. She knows she’s done wrong. “I’m sorry. I thought she was your mother. Honestly, I did. I’m going to lose my job for this. That’s why I haven’t said anything until now. I’m sorry. I was the one who gave Tricia the security bracelet that might have enabled her to steal your baby.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
TRISH
James has his uses. He’s a whiz at lighting a crackling fire in the fireplace. He can strike a match and set fire to the dampest kindling, run a lighted cone of newsprint up the flue to warm up a damper and draw the smoke up the chimney once the main fire is lit. Over the years, he’s mastered the art of filling a silver tea ball with just the right amount of loose-leaf chamomile tea and letting it steep in a thermal-lined ceramic carafe for just the right length of time. I’m reminded of this when I sit in Savory Mew’s living room. He’s not home yet tonight. I’m cold, and I’d very much like there to be a fire in the fireplace and a spot of tea in my cup. How very much I’d like to feel the glow of the cordwood flames throughout the room, warming the Lalique lamps on the piecrust tables, the Grecian vases, ebony curio cabinets, sumptuous Simon Willard grandfather clock, and the curvilinear cream-colored Hepplewhite sofa upon which I sit. For centuries, a fire in the family hearth symbolized well-being, security, and an egalitarian happiness that even simple folk could enjoy, and yet lighting a fire is a skill I’ve not mastered. Whenever I try, the logs smolder for hours without bursting into flame, the smoke filling the room and sending its occupants elsewhere to catch a breath of fresh air.
Crown princes, sitting presidents, and titans of commerce have sat in this august room, placed their porcelain teacups on the mahogany drop leaf coffee table, and conversed about bond prices and the international financial agreements too complex for people not privy to their drafting to fully understand. For decades—up until the early 1990s, when it was quietly repatriated to the survivors’ family from which Nazis had looted it—an enormous Monet haystack hung on the wall above the sofa. The painting was the pride of the room, more impressive than even the mantelpiece oil portrait of my father. Depending on the light of the day, the golds and blues became effervescent as sunlight poured into the room through lead glass windows. My father showed the painting to guests with pride. “Try finding a needle in that haystack,” he’d tell them, slipping a glass of port into their hands. Once, in a moment of merriment, my twin sister, Julie, and I scotch-taped a darning needle swiped from our mother’s sewing kit onto the canvas. If we perpetrated this stunt in a museum, we’d have been arrested, but my father laughed and laughed, and for years thereafter, until my sister succumbed to her aneurysm, whenever my father came into a room and found us standing together, he’d announce with mock surprise, “Ahh, my little needle girls.” We were the apples of his eye, Julie and I.