I will never leave you, p.20
I Will Never Leave You, page 20
As I look at the cold andirons in the fireplace, blue and red flashing lights shine through the windows and interrupt my memories. Two squad cars are parked outside, and the amplified sound of someone speaking over a police radio jars me to attention. Valium softens the commotion and panic that would otherwise come over me in this situation. I think of James and his propensity to drive after drinking. I live in fear that one day I’ll answer the door and be told my husband is dead. Or seriously injured. Or in jail. I imagine his Volvo screeching into a tree, a parked cargo van, a grandmother crossing the street in a wheelchair. I imagine the sound of impact, James’s head smashing into his windshield, shattering it. I imagine him handcuffed and blowing into a roadside breathalyzer test. Despite his drinking, he’s never had even a speeding ticket, but no run of luck can last forever. Some nights, upon arriving home drunk, he can barely wobble upstairs.
The doorbell rings, and I collect myself before answering. No hurry to be the recipient of bad news or a police investigation, I let the bell ring a second time before getting up from the Hepplewhite and walking across the house to open the door. Though I’ve rehearsed in my mind what to say, a somber nervousness churns in my stomach. A medium-built man in khaki slacks and a polo shirt stands in the portico, one hand pressed up against the marble column that partially supports the porch roof. Behind him, two uniformed police officers stand at attention by their squad cars. The man holds out his silver Metropolitan police badge, and after I glance at it, he asks, “Are you Mrs. Patricia Wainsborough?”
“Is this about my husband?”
The man blinks. “Why would you ask that?”
“He’s late. I worry about him. He should be home by now.”
“Interesting,” the man says. Because he doesn’t say more than that—just “Interesting”—I wonder if I’ve already spoken too much. He looks over my shoulder into the darkened foyer and the grand staircase beyond it. He’s not here about James. His clothes are inadequate given that nighttime temperatures hover around the freezing point, and yet, because the case that calls him to my doorstep is urgent, he doesn’t shiver.
“A wife worries about her husband. Is he the reason you’re interrupting my evening?”
“No, ma’am. Are you Patricia Wainsborough?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Detective Lionel Adderly,” he says. Adderly shakes my hand and then motions to his colleagues standing by their squad cars. “Do you mind if we come inside?”
“If that’s what you’d prefer.”
Inside, I lead Detective Adderly into the living room, invite him to sit on the Hepplewhite, and apologize for being unable to offer him tea. The two uniformed officers stand in the corner by my father’s old Victrola. Though they introduce themselves, Adderly does most of the talking. He’s not a rocket scientist, just one of DC’s finest, I remind myself. His eyes wander the room, taking in my antiques and paintings, the museum-quality furniture, the antique writing desk upon which a portion of James’s 78s are stacked, and the seashells and millefiori glass paperweights in the curio cabinet. The brass andirons, with their vaguely Chinese-looking dragon motif, draw his attention. Peacock feathers bloom from a Ming vase set upon a lacquered pedestal. The detective takes this all in, seeing in each object a clue about my life; if he is like most people, he will assume that I, too, am as cloistered and fragile as the objects in this curated living room.
“I was thinking how nice it would be if my husband were home. He could light a fire, brew me a carafe of chamomile tea, and we could sit on the sofa and just . . .” Adjusting my legs, crossing and recrossing them, I don’t complete my sentence. “Why are you here?”
“Is there a reason he’s not home? Have you two—and I’m sorry if I’m blunt—not been getting along lately?”
Talking to the police is not the wisest thing, and yet suspicions would rise if I request my lawyer be present for this interview. My father insisted we be responsible for our own narratives, that we never cede control of our story lines. Adderly looks at me, eager for my reaction. At heart, everyone is an actor performing the story of his or her life.
“Do you feel uncomfortable talking about this, Mrs. Wainsborough?”
“Yes. My husband is, shall we say, drawn to women younger than I. His mistress had a baby the other day, so James has been coming home later than usual,” I say, speaking softly, my evasive eyes darting to the fireplace and my father’s portrait.
Adderly leans in closer so he can hear me. On his clean-shaven face, I smell his musky aftershave. He’s a young man, still in his early thirties, and his face is young enough that it doesn’t express concern as ably as an older man’s might, but as I let down my guard and reveal to him my plight as the aggrieved wife, his face softens. He sees in me a preconceived notion: the stereotypical middle-aged woman about to be tossed aside for a younger woman, and because he is fundamentally decent, sympathy lights his coffee-brown eyes.
“I suspect James stopped off again at the hospital where his mistress and her baby are convalescing after the delivery. This has become, as you might well imagine, a matter of no small discomfort for me. Right now, he’s probably rocking the baby in his arms, cooing at her. In another hour, he’ll come home and ask why I don’t have dinner waiting for him.”
“He’s not at the hospital. And he’s not with the baby,” Adderly says.
“He’s not?” My eyes gape, as if taking in this information. “But you said he’s okay. Is he okay? He’s not hurt, is he?”
“The baby’s missing.”
“The baby? Are you sure?”
Adderly tilts his head, assessing my reaction. Some men speak first and save their thinking for later, but Detective Adderly is not of that persuasion. There’s an intensity in his eyes I’ve rarely encountered. He’s judging me, making up his mind on whether I’m responsible for Anne Elise’s disappearance. Each moment under his gaze feels prolonged, uneasy. He raises his hand to his chin.
“Are you sure the baby’s missing?”
Adderly lowers his hand. Although his clothes are clean, his fingernails are dirty, and yet a small satisfied smile appears on his lips. He leans in close and, dropping his voice, says, “Between you and me, Sibley’s record on baby security leaves a lot to be desired.”
“This is horrible.” I let my mouth fall open, expressing shock. Inwardly, however, I’m elated, for a man who confides in me his professional opinion about another organization’s security record is a man who trusts me.
“Were you at the hospital, Mrs. Wainsborough? To see Laurel?”
“Yesterday and the day before, I was there. I might have been, like, the first person to actually hold the baby. James brought me there as soon as the baby was born.” I glance at Adderly and see the shock in his eyes. Clearly, he can’t conceive of a marriage where the husband so willingly invites his wife into his mistress’s maternity suite. I shake my head, bat my hand through the air, as if I, too, can’t fully comprehend this. “It’s a messed-up situation. It truly is. But it’s life, unfortunately. The baby, Anne Elise, is beautiful. Although I can’t stand the idea of my husband messing around with another woman, I’ve never seen so beautiful a baby.”
“I noticed the flowers you sent. That was a very nice note you wrote.”
I smile, glad that Adderly noticed my capacity to be generous. Already, he seems inclined to view me kindly. “Thank you. Laurel was telling me she was worried she couldn’t be a good mother. To be honest, I was prepared not to like her. But she’s a young mother now, and I imagine a young mother’s life must be fraught with horrible stresses, so I was simply trying to be supportive. For the baby’s sake.”
“Do you mind if my colleagues take a look around the house while we talk?” Adderly asks.
The two officers glance at me and then glance away in apparent disinterest to how I might respond. Consenting to a police search is unwise, and yet again I recognize that a refusal would increase suspicion. Adderly strikes me as competent. I’ve seen enough police procedurals on television. Should I decline a voluntary search, it wouldn’t be long before Adderly reappears at the door with a search warrant.
“Your officers will be careful, right?” I ask.
Adderly tilts his head, unsure what I mean.
“The house is full of antiques, fragile things that, in some cases, can’t be replaced if damaged.” As I give this explanation, Adderly’s expression softens. In his eyes, I’m an eccentric but harmless fuddy-duddy—the exact impression that I’d hoped to convey. I point to the three-foot-high blue ceramic vase stuffed with peacock feathers. Intricately carved red flowers are etched into its sides, making it a rare example of early Chinese porcelain. My parents acquired it as a wedding gift back during the Kennedy administration. “Believe it or not, that vase has been appraised at upward of a half million dollars.”
Adderly’s eyes flare open in shock.
“It’s absurd, isn’t it? It’s so valuable I dare not even dust it anymore for fear of damaging it.”
Adderly laughs. He assures me his officers will be “extremely gentle” with my belongings, and as they climb the stairs and open doors into closets and bedrooms, I tell him the approximate time of my visit with Laurel the previous two days.
“Do you know, I think that woman hasn’t changed a single diaper yet. Not a single one. She sits around in bed all day expecting the nurses and me—me!—to do everything for her baby.”
I expect Adderly to bring up the KISS bracelet, which is buried in my handbag, but he doesn’t so much as open his notebook. Perhaps he will use questions about the security bracelet as a pretext for subsequent interviews. True to their word, the other officers return downstairs and declare they haven’t so much as scratched a single antique, for which I thank them profusely.
“Laurel told everyone at the hospital that she looks at me as some kind of mother figure. Can you get over that? Apparently, she appreciates my companionship, which, let me tell you, is incomprehensible to me. Do you know what she said, though? She said she’d love it if I came again today but that I really shouldn’t because someone was coming today who she really had to talk with.”
Adderly’s eyes widen. He picks up his notebook and jots something in it. Obfuscation is my game. I need to cast suspicion in as many quarters as possible if I’m to have a long-term hope of deflecting suspicion from myself.
“Who was this other person?” Adderly asks.
I shrug my shoulder. “Beats me. All day, I’ve been wondering the same thing. I mean, please don’t think this presumptuous, but James told me Laurel doesn’t have a single good friend in the whole world.”
Adderly picks up his pencil again, starts scrawling more things in his notepad.
“Hey, you don’t think James is responsible for Anne Elise going missing, do you?”
Detective Adderly narrows his eyes. In my purposefully silly, ping-ponging way, I’m throwing a whole lot of different possibilities at him. Until this moment, he hadn’t considered that James might be behind Anne Elise’s disappearance. “Why would I think that?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” I say so hurriedly the words collide together.
“Has he been acting oddly?”
I gaze at the fireplace, stretch out my arms. “I love James. You understand that, don’t you? James still loves me. I know he does. He still comes home to me each night. We have dinner together, tell each other about our days. It’s almost like our lives were before he met that woman. I wish he would come home and light a fire in the fireplace for us. You understand that, don’t you?”
“A baby’s life is at stake. That is what I understand.”
“We’re all under a lot of stress. You can appreciate that. Sometimes, under stress, people do things you don’t expect of them. In James’s case, he’s been drinking heavily. I worry about him. Do you know what I thought when, opening the door, I saw you—an officer of the law—on my doorstep?”
“What?”
“I thought you were going to tell me there’d been an accident. That, driving home drunk, James crashed his car. I thought you’d tell me I’d never see James again.”
Adderly looks at me as if expecting me to say more, and in my reticence he sees a loyal wife, a wife who, however wronged, is constitutionally unable to cast aspersion upon her husband. I have said enough, however, to change Detective Adderly’s focus on the case away from me. He may investigate James. He may investigate Laurel. But he won’t be investigating me. There are many ways to a man’s heart. Should James or Laurel discover Adderly’s investigating one of them, they’d become distrustful of each other, grow apart, fall out of love.
Adderly points to the portrait hanging above the unlit fireplace. “Who’s that?”
“That’s a portrait of the finest man who ever walked the planet: my father, Jack Riggs. Of Riggs Bank fame.”
“Riggs Bank?” Detective Adderly scratches his head. “Sorry. I never heard of them.”
Ten years ago, in the aftermath of the regrettable scandals that consumed my father’s last years before retirement, the bank’s directors were forced to sell off its holdings. All branches were renamed during the PNC Financial takeover, so toxic had the name of Riggs become, and yet it hurts, learning how the name is now meaningless to a man like Adderly. Ten years should barely be a drop in the collective memory of this city. The name should still inspire awe and respect, not blank stares.
“Detective Adderly. I’m not in the habit of spouting off with unfounded allegations, but do you want to know my gut feelings about Anne Elise being missing?”
“Sure,” Adderly says, whether out of real curiosity or to humor me, I cannot tell. He cracks his knuckles. “Go ahead.”
“Look into Laurel. She’s postpartum depressed and is frightened that James is going to dump her. James met her parents yesterday, and they struck him as shady people, both of them with criminal backgrounds or something terrible like that in their pasts. Erratic, slimy people. That’s what they are. Drug abusers—that kind of people. James hardly has a bad word to say about anyone—‘ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive’ is his favorite expression—and yet he kept ranting to me about how horrible Laurel’s parents are. Her father kept saying how Laurel should give up the baby, get rid of it. Put her up for adoption. Or leave her in an orphanage. What kind of man tells his daughter to get rid of her baby?”
Five minutes after Detective Adderly and his two officers leave, I decide to have some fun. Simpkins had given me Laurel’s cell phone number, but so far, I haven’t had use for it. Now, though, I ring her up. By the time I’m through with her, I’ll rattle her so bad she’ll have no choice but to leave James. The phone rings and rings. Laurel must be one of those graceless slackers who deigns not to answer her phone. So I leave a message. A long message.
Later, I’m sitting again on the Hepplewhite sofa, looking at the empty fireplace, and thinking how nice it would be if James were to come home and light a fire for me. The squad cars have driven away. No longer is the room lit by the unnerving glow of their red and blue flashing lights. Before he left, Adderly clasped my hands and promised to do “everything I know how” in order to find Laurel’s baby. I thanked him for his efforts and invited him to phone me should he have additional questions.
Not having eaten all day, I think about gathering some leftovers from the refrigerator. Even cold, last night’s lamb will be delicious. I contemplate whether to give James a call. If I catch him in a good mood, I’ll invite him to come home and light a blazing fire for us and heat up a carafe of chamomile tea. There is so much I need to tell him. And I should probably call my father for advice. He’ll know the strings to pull, the people to pay off, should Adderly and his men come to investigate again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LAUREL
I’m a narcoleptic cat unable to stay awake for any decent stretch of time, and though I fall asleep wham-bam easy, I awake in fits of panic, the sweat pouring over my forehead soaking into my pillows and blankets. Doctors at either side of my bed ask, “Hey? Laurel? How do you feel?” Dry at my mouth and dry at my throat, I’m groggy beyond belief. My fingers feel crinkled, gnarled, dispossessed of their natural suppleness. They’re not the fingers of a young mother but of a corpse, a cadaver, a grim reaper clutching a rusting scythe. I long for someone to slip Zerena into my arms, long to feel the comfort of her little body, the murmur of her gurgle, the lap of her mouth against my breasts.
“You’re dehydrated, maybe even delirious,” a nurse, or maybe it’s a doctor, says.
Someone on the other side of me reaches over and touches my lips, and before I know it, she’s forcing something hard and bitingly cold into my mouth—an ice cube—and instructing me to let it melt on my tongue, and while this is happening, someone else switches out my IV bag. Another person flicks on the room’s overhead light. Perhaps it’s the dehydration affecting my eyesight, but I jerk my hand up to shield my eyes from the too-bright light, and when I do so, the IV tubing snags again on the bed railing. A full two units of saline solution have been pumped into me over the past hour, not that anyone spells out for me how much fluid—a cup? a pint?—this represents.
