Now You See Her

TWENTY-THREE


SHE DREAMED OF CAKE. Double-layer vanilla cake with rich vanilla icing and lots of gooey red flowers. The kind of cake that Devon always requested for her birthday. “She has such a sweet tooth,” Marcy explained to the smattering of guests around the long dining room table.

“Sweets for the sweet,” Shannon said, blushing the same color as the roses on the cake and adjusting the party hat on her head.

“Sugar and spice and everything nice,” Judith added. She was dressed all in black. Her well-toned arms were covered with tattoos.

“That’s what little girls are made of,” Jax said, entering the room, a crying baby in his arms.

“Oh, let me see,” Devon gushed, running toward them.

“Take her.” Jax transferred the baby to Devon’s eager arms. “She weighs a right ton.”

“She’s so cute.”

“If you like babies,” Jax said dismissively.

And suddenly Marcy and Liam were strolling down the cobbled roads of Youghal. “Where are we going?” she asked him.

“Haven’t you heard? Claire and Audrey have opened a bakery. They make the best cakes in all of Ireland.”

“What’s their secret?” Marcy asked.

“Cranbabies,” Liam said.

Somewhere in the distance, a baby started crying.

“Please, can’t somebody do something about that incessant racket?” Vic Sorvino asked, walking quickly past, clearly in a hurry.

“Vic?” Marcy called after him. “Wait. Where are you going?”

“Kinsale,” he answered. “I have a date with Devon.”

“But you’re too old for Devon.” Marcy glanced toward the ground, watching the cobblestones at her feet become autumn leaves as a cool wind pushed at her back. She entered a clearing, seeing Georgian Bay stretched out before her, an empty canoe drifting aimlessly in the middle of its rough waters. Devon was sitting on a blood-splattered, gray cashmere blanket at the water’s edge, Shannon beside her, a baby crying in her arms.

“Did you bring the cake?” Shannon asked.

Marcy held out a large wicker picnic basket.

Devon stood up, took the shrieking infant from Shannon, and walked toward Marcy, her mouth twisting into a cruel smile. “Here’s the girl you’ve always wanted,” she said. Then she opened her arms and let the baby fall.

Marcy bolted upright in her bed, frantically grabbing for the child before she hit the cold earth. “No!” she cried, the sound of her protest piercing her subconscious like a pin through a balloon. She woke up, gasping for air, her hands pulling helplessly at her sheets. “Damn it,” she said with a sigh, coming fully awake and flopping back down on her pillow. Pushing her hair away from her face with her still trembling fingers, she glanced at her bedside clock, amazed to see it was almost eight a.m. She was so exhausted from the events of last night, she probably would have slept ’til noon had her nightmare not jolted her awake. “Stupid dream,” she muttered as its details began to fade and break up, like a bad telephone connection. Cakes and babies, she thought, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of it all.

Babycakes.

“Operation Babycakes,” she remembered Jax saying jokingly. Marcy’s brain suddenly scrambled to retrieve the few fragments of her dream that remained in an effort to corral them and bring them into sharper focus. She saw Devon walking toward her, a demonic smile on her lips, a howling baby in her arms.

The O’Connor baby, Marcy realized, finding it difficult to breathe. “Caitlin,” she whispered, sitting up again, her whole body growing ice-cold.

What was she thinking? Was it possible?

“No,” she answered immediately. “You’re being silly and melodramatic.”

Was she? What was she thinking?

Everything’s movin’ accordin’ to plan, she heard Jax say.

What plan? What did it mean?

“Absolutely nothing,” Marcy told herself, repeating the words again in an effort to give them greater weight.

Except …

Except what if it did?

What if it meant something after all? Something of consequence. Something even sinister. Something almost too terrible to contemplate.

Yes, I gave her the earrings. Yes, she loved ’em. Just like you said she would.

Like who said?

Audrey? Marcy thought.

Had he been talking to her daughter?

Were Jax and Devon involved in some crazy scheme regarding the O’Connor baby? And did that crazy scheme include winning over the baby’s hapless and naive nanny?

Bleedin’ alien, Jax had called her. Stupid girl. Dumb twat.

Hardly the words of an infatuated suitor.

Yeah, I know it’s only three days, but I can already taste that money.

And if Jax had been talking to Devon, exactly what were they talking about?

Was it possible that there was a plan to kidnap Caitlin O’Connor and hold her for ransom? And was Shannon an active participant in the carrying out of that plan or was she simply an unwitting dupe?

Could Devon really be involved?

Marcy jumped out of bed, ran into the bathroom, threw some cold water at her face, and brushed her teeth with the toothbrush the hotel had provided. There was no time for a shower, she decided as she pulled on the same clothes she’d been wearing the day before. No time to go shopping. No time to eat breakfast. No time for anything except finding her daughter and stopping this insanity once and for all.

She might not have known where to find Devon, but Marcy knew exactly where the O’Connors lived. She’d go there now. Go there and warn them that their baby was in danger. Tell them everything she’d overheard at the club last night. It was still early. Hopefully they hadn’t left for Kinsale yet. After all, it took time to get organized when you traveled anywhere with a baby, especially one as colicky as Caitlin. With any luck, they’d still be home. There’d be time to catch them before they left, to warn them.

What would Shannon say? Would she support Marcy’s story, risk incurring Mrs. O’Connor’s wrath by admitting the truth of where she’d been and with whom? Or would she deny it, afraid of losing her job? Would she laugh derisively and dismiss Marcy’s ravings as those of a seriously deranged individual who’d been pestering her for days, an obviously deluded and unbalanced woman who was well-known to the local gardai?

Which was exactly why she couldn’t call officers Murphy, Donnelly, and Sweeny, Marcy understood. What could she tell them, after all? That she’d eavesdropped on a phone call outside a seedy after-hours club, a one-sided conversation at that, a vague and one-sided conversation, and from that brief, vague, and one-sided conversation, she’d magically deduced that the O’Connor baby was in danger and that her daughter, yes, the same daughter who was missing, the same daughter she was searching for, the same daughter everyone else was convinced had drowned almost two years earlier, might be involved. Yes, of course they’d believe her. Why wouldn’t they?

“It doesn’t matter,” Marcy told herself.

It didn’t matter if the O’Connors believed her or not. It didn’t matter if anybody believed her. What mattered was that by warning the O’Connors, by alerting them to a potential threat, they would be all the more vigilant regarding their daughter, and Marcy would have put an end to this harebrained scheme that was sure to bring disaster down on the heads of all those involved. She would have succeeded where she’d failed so often in the past: in protecting her daughter from herself.

Assuming Devon was involved.

Was she?

Marcy took a few seconds before running out the door to run a comb through her hair and apply a hint of lipstick. It would help if she didn’t look too crazy, she thought. What she was about to tell the O’Connors was crazy enough.

She decided to take a taxi, a mistake, she decided once she was firmly ensconced in the cab’s backseat. The traffic was especially awful and the cab driver particularly garrulous. “Is there any way we can get there faster?” she asked him, sitting forward in her seat and giving him the O’Connors’ address. “I’m in a huge hurry.”

“A huge hurry, are you?”

“It’s just that I’m running late.”

“Americans are always in a hurry.”

“Actually, I’m not American.” Marcy corrected him, an automatic reflex, then wished she hadn’t.

“What are you then?”

“Canadian.”

He scoffed. “What’s the difference?”

Marcy had no desire to go into the various cultural differences that distinguished the two countries. “What’s the difference between north and south Ireland?” she asked in return, then bit down on her lip. She really was crazy, she thought. What was the point in being so provocative?

“Are you kiddin’ me?” the cabbie sputtered. “The difference between the north and the south of Ireland?”

“Forget it,” Marcy said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Have you no knowledge of history?” he demanded.

“It was a silly thing to say.”

“I’ll give you a wee refresher course.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“In 8000 BC, the earliest known human settlers arrived in Ireland,” he said, clearing his throat with a flourish.

Dear God, thought Marcy.

“In 2000 BC, the first metalworkers arrived. In 700 BC, the Celtic settlement of Ireland began. The Gaels arrived in 100 AD. About three hundred years later, St. Patrick returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary.” The taxi drove over a large pothole, sending Marcy bouncing a good foot into the air.

“Do you think you can concentrate on the road?” she asked the driver.

“The years between 500 and 800 AD are often referred to as the golden age,” he said, ignoring her plea. “Ireland became one of the largest centers of Christianity in Europe.”

“Look. I’m really sorry if you took offense—”

“Then the Vikings invaded, then the Danes, then the English. In 1204, Dublin Castle was founded as the center of English power. By the 1500s, Henry VIII declared himself king of all Ireland and began the suppression of the Catholic Church. Queen Elizabeth I subsequently proclaimed Ireland an Anglican country.”

Marcy sank back in her seat, deciding it was pointless to argue further. What the hell? The history lesson would help to pass the time, keep her mind occupied and her blood pressure down. And she might even learn something.

The cabbie continued. “In 1641, an Irish Catholic revolt in Ulster ended in defeat. Eight years later, Oliver Cromwell invaded. In 1690, the armies of King James the second, a Catholic, were defeated, consolidating the Protestant order in England. In 1782, the Irish parliament was granted independence. In 1801, it dissolved, becoming part of the United Kingdom. Then, 1845,” he pronounced ominously. “Surely you know what happened then.”

Marcy returned to an upright position, her mind searching for an answer, like an errant student caught not paying attention in class. “I-I’m not sure,” she stammered.

“The start of the Great Famine,” he said with a disapproving shake of his suitably red hair. “Lasted over three years. Almost two million people either died or emigrated, mostly to America.”

“Yes, that was terrible.…”

“In 1886 and again in 1894, bills for home rule were defeated in parliament,” he said, dismissing her pity with a wave of his hand. “In 1905 came the founding of Sinn Fein. You know what that means?”

“Trouble?” Marcy asked, catching the driver’s glare in the rearview mirror.

“Sinn Fein means ‘We Ourselves,’ and in 1918 they won a landslide victory against the Irish Parliamentary Party. From 1919 through 1921 was the Irish War of Independence led by Michael Collins, which led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty whereby Ireland was partitioned into twenty-six counties forming the Free State and six that remained part of the UK.”

Marcy leaned forward again. Despite herself, she found herself growing increasingly interested in this impromptu history lesson. “Did you used to be a teacher?”

He shook his head. “Every Irishman could tell you as much. Couldn’t you? About Canada?”

“I was never very good in history,” Marcy replied. What had she been good at?

“In 1922 and ’23—the Irish civil war,” the cabbie declared, “between the government of the Free State and those who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Michael Collins was assassinated by the IRA, who considered the treaty a sellout. In 1937 the Free State adopted a new constitution and abandoned its membership in the British Commonwealth. The country changed its name to Eire. In 1948, the Republic of Ireland severed its last constitutional links to Britain.”

“You left out the Second World War,” Marcy said, admonishing him.

“Ireland was neutral.”

“You prefer to fight among yourselves,” Marcy remarked, and was grateful when he laughed.

“I guess we do.” He stopped the car. “Well, here we are, 117 Adelaide Road.”

Marcy looked out the side window at the large yellow-brick house with its flower-lined front walk and three-car garage. Hopefully Mr. O’Connor’s car was still inside it.

“That didn’t take too long, now, did it?” the cabbie asked.

“You did great,” Marcy told him, including a generous tip along with the fare. “Thank you. And for the history lesson, too. I learned a lot.”

“Next time I see you, there’ll be a quiz,” he said before pulling away from the curb.

Marcy watched the cab disappear around the bend in the road, then she turned on her heel and ran up the O’Connors’ front walk, ringing the bell and pounding on the black double doors. “Please be home,” she prayed. “Please don’t let me be too late.”

But after several seconds, it became obvious that no one was there.

“Damn it,” Marcy exclaimed, walking around to the side of the house, knowing there was little point in knocking on the side door but doing it anyway. She approached the garage and jumped up, trying to see inside the sliver of glass that ran along the top of all three garage doors. But the glass was too high and the inside of the garage too dark, and what difference did it make if their car was inside anyway? If the O’Connors had a three-car garage, there was a good chance they had more than one car. Besides, they could have taken the train or even a taxi to Kinsale, she thought, wishing she’d had the foresight to ask her driver to wait until she’d known whether anyone was home. Now what was she supposed to do?

“I could leave them a note,” she said out loud, returning to the front of the house and seeing curtains move in the window of the house across the road. She dug inside her purse for a piece of paper but found nothing but a few crumpled pieces of Kleenex. “Naturally.” What had she been planning to say anyway? Hi, you don’t know me, but I think someone is planning to kidnap your baby! “Yeah, right,” she said as her cell phone started ringing. She retrieved it from her purse, flipped it open.

“Where are you?” Liam asked before she had time to say hello.

Marcy told him.

“What?” he barked. “What are you doing over there?”

Marcy told him about her trip to Mulcahy’s, about seeing Jax with Shannon, about overhearing his phone conversation and her subsequent suspicions.

“Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “You’re saying you think there’s a plot to kidnap the O’Connors’ baby?”

“You think I’m crazy,” Marcy said. Of course he’d think she was crazy. What other option had she left him?

He surprised her by saying, “I think you should call the gardai.”

“What?”

“Call the police, Marcy,” he translated. “Now.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll think I’m crazy,” she said.

“They already think you’re crazy,” he said, reminding her.

She smiled.

“Look, Marcy. You’re in way over your head. You’ve done everything you can. Now let the police handle it.”

“I’m afraid Devon might be involved. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

“If your suspicions are correct, it’s too late for that.”

“But what if I’m wrong?”

“What if you’re right?” he asked in return. “What if you’re right and something happens to the O’Connor baby, and you could have stopped it? You’ll never forgive yourself.”

“I know,” Marcy said. “I just don’t know if I can.”

The sound of sirens in the distance, getting louder, drawing nearer.

“Call the gardai, Marcy,” Liam urged.

Marcy watched a police car tear up the street and pull to a stop in front of the O’Connors’ driveway, watched as the nosy neighbor emerged from her house across the street and conferred with one of the gardai, while another garda walked purposefully up the path of the O’Connors’ front lawn toward her.

“Call the police,” Liam said again.

“That won’t be necessary,” Marcy said.