Who was she talking about?
“I found ways to get him messages, but he never replied.” She turned to Diana abruptly. “He lied to me.”
“Who? Jonathan?” Was that why Gertrude killed him?
Gertrude gave her an odd look. “You never got it, did you?”
“Got what?” Diana said. How was she going to save Ethan from this madwoman?
Gertrude gave her a little smile. “I was pregnant. I’ll bet you didn’t know that, either. It was Jonathan’s.”
Diana felt a spasm of pain. Pregnant? By Jonathan?
“Janis was born in October 1970. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix had just died. I thought my daughter should begin her life with an important name.”
Jonathan had told Diana none of this. But he was dead now. There would be no explanations from him.
“Did he know about Janis?” Diana asked.
Gertrude shook her head. “At least you can take some small comfort in that.”
Poor Jonathan. Killed by this woman, and he’d never known about the deep grudge she’d carried against him all these years. Diana struggled to push her thoughts away from him. If she kept Gertrude talking, maybe that would satisfy her need for revenge. Maybe she’d realize she had already taken enough.
“How did you survive with a baby and no money?”
“I turned tricks for a while,” Gertrude said. “Then when I realized my knight wasn’t coming to rescue me, I reinvented myself into a sweet southern belle with a little surgery and cotillion lessons. I married an old crook who was happy to live out his final years in bliss. Of course, they ended sooner than he was expecting, and I came away with a few million and lots of free time to plan things.”
“You mean getting even with me and Jonathan.”
Gertrude smiled. “And Larry.”
Of course. Gertrude hated both her and Larry for going to the FBI.
Gertrude’s phone rang again. She glanced at the display, then over at the closed drapes. She ignored the call. “I kept up with you and Larry,” Gertrude continued. “First with PIs, then things became easier with the Internet. I wanted to be sure you were thinking of me, too, so I had a little fun with a delusional janitor who believed I was an actual Greek goddess. I convinced him he was Jeffrey Schwartz, and with the facts and figures I fed him about April Fool, I understand he really had the FBI and media going. In fact, my PI told me that Schwartz’s reemergence shook up your marriage quite a bit.”
So Gertrude had been behind the mysterious Jeffrey Schwartz.
“I decided I didn’t want to keep watching you two from the sidelines, but I was in no hurry to take Larry away from you. I knew the right moment would come along. And it did—just in time for a big wedding.”
Kevin’s wedding.
“I persuaded Larry to ask for a divorce when I knew you were most vulnerable.” Gertrude touched her cheek where the beauty mark had once been. “I had Larry so bewitched, it was easy to convince him you didn’t go to Kevin’s wedding because you faked your illness.”
Gertrude had even contrived the rift between Diana and her son.
“For six years, I enjoyed being on the inside and seeing you alienated from your family.” She twirled the ring around her index finger. It was shaped like a serpent. “I probably would have been satisfied maintaining the status quo, but you ruined that yourself.”
“I started dating Jonathan,” Diana said.
“There didn’t seem to be any justice in it, ya know what I mean? You get everything, and I get screwed.”
“I never intentionally hurt you.”
“No one ever does,” Gertrude said. “People fuck you and don’t know they’re fucking you. They kill your dreams. They kill the ones you love.” She was starting to speak more quickly, becoming agitated. “Where’s the justice in that? Would you tell me? Where’s the fucking justice?”
She was crazy, crazier than Diana had ever seen her in college. Talking her down only seemed to agitate her, which wasn’t helping Ethan. Would begging help?
“You’ve won, Gertrude. You took Larry from me. You’ve killed Jonathan. You’ve broken me.”
“You think so?” Gertrude said, staring at her ring. “And here I think I’m just getting started.”
CHAPTER 49
Gertrude wasn’t answering her phone. It was clear to Aubrey that everyone was becoming increasingly worried, especially McDonough, who paced back and forth in the small space in the van.
Aubrey watched McDonough hit Gertrude’s number again—his third attempt.
It had been fifteen minutes since they’d last spoken.
Aubrey understood the agent’s feeling of uselessness. She sat in the back of the van, picking up bits and pieces of information, mostly from Smolleck’s phone conversations. He had contacted someone to check into Gertrude Morgenstern’s brother but hadn’t heard back. Then Detective Gonzalez came by to report that Janis Hendrix had calmed down enough to talk about what had happened.
Aubrey wasn’t able to keep silent. “Where’s Ethan?” she asked the detective. “Is he okay?”
Gonzalez looked exhausted. “Janis doesn’t know where he is.”
“What does that mean?” Aubrey said. “She was with him, wasn’t she?”
“She said she left Ethan sleeping in a bedroom on the third floor and went downstairs to get instructions from her mother. When she got back to the bedroom, Ethan was gone.”
“Gone?”
“She searched the apartments on the third floor but couldn’t find him. She panicked and wrapped a pillow in a blanket, pretending it was Ethan.”
“Why would she do that?” Aubrey said.
Gonzalez’s thick eyebrows came together in a scowl. “She knew that without Ethan, the swap would never take place. And she had to get out of there. Apparently her mother told her that if she walked out on her own, the police would shoot her dead.”
“And she believed that?” Smolleck asked.