Broken Promise: A Thriller

Six

“What are you talking about, Mom?” I said. “What do you mean, ‘not again’? Marla’s grabbed a baby before?”

“While you were in Boston,” she said. “There was an incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

“At the hospital. She snuck into the maternity ward and tried to walk out with someone else’s baby.”

“Oh, my God. You’re not serious.”

“It was just awful. Marla almost made it to the parking lot before someone spotted her, stopped her. Probably someone recognized her, given that she’s in the hospital pretty often, not just to see your aunt, but I think she goes there to see a psychologist or psychiatrist or something. I think his name is... I just can’t remember it. It was right on the tip of my tongue. Oh, that’s so annoying.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just tell me what happened.”

“Well, the police got called, but Agnes and Gill explained what had happened, that Marla’d lost a child, that she was, you know, mentally unstable, that she shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions because of the state she was in, that she’d been getting help.”

“I never heard a word about this.”

“Agnes didn’t want anyone to know. You know what she’s like. And, of course, she was in a position to keep it quiet for the most part, but things do get out. People at the hospital talked. Even so, your father and I, we never told a soul, except for now I’m telling you. But something like that, you can’t stop the rumor mill. Agnes, of course, made sure the hospital didn’t take any action against her, and the parents were persuaded not to press charges. Agnes made sure the hospital picked up all the costs that their insurance didn’t cover. Thank God Marla didn’t hurt the baby. It was only two days old, David. We’ve been so worried about her, wondering whether she’s pulling herself together. I didn’t think she’d do anything like this again. This’ll just kill Agnes. She’ll go off the deep end for sure. You know how concerned she is about what people think.”

“I don’t think she took this baby from the hospital. It’s not a newborn. It’s probably nine, ten months old. You need to call Agnes, get her over here.”

“Some mother somewhere must be going out of her mind right now, wondering where her baby is. Hang on.” She raised her voice. “Don!”

“Huh?” Sounding like he was in another room.

“Was there anything on there about a missing baby?”

“What?”

“Didn’t you have the radio on? Did they say if the police were looking for a missing baby?”

“Jesus Christ, she hasn’t done it again, has she?”

“Was there or not?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

To me, Mom said, “Your father says he didn’t—”

“I heard. I think I may know where the baby came from. I’m going to go over there.”

“You know whose baby it is?”

“You know anyone named Rosemary Gaynor?”

“No, it doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It might to Agnes. She might know Marla’s friends.”

“I don’t think Marla has any friends. She just stays cooped up in her house most of the time except to go out and run errands.”

“Call Agnes. Tell her to get over here as fast as possible. I want to go over to the Gaynors’ house, but I feel a little uneasy about leaving Marla alone with the baby.” I paused. “Maybe I should just call the police.”

“Oh,” Mom said cautiously, “I wouldn’t do that. I know Agnes will want to try to sort this out quietly. And you don’t really know what’s going on. For all you know, Marla’s just babysitting for someone, with their permission.”

“I asked Marla that. She says no.”

“But it’s possible! Maybe she’s babysitting, and while she’s looking after this child, she’s imagining that he’s her own baby. When you think of what she’s been through—”

The shower stopped. “I gotta go, Mom. I’ll keep you posted. Get Agnes over here.”

I slipped the phone back into my jacket.

“David?” Marla called from behind the closed door. I moved to within a foot of it.

“Yeah?”

“Did you say something?”

“No.”

“Were you on the phone?”

“I had to take a call.”

“You weren’t talking to my mom, were you?”

“No,” I said honestly.

“Because I do not want her coming over. She’s just going to make a big deal about this.”

I didn’t want to lie, or even mislead her. “I called my mom, but I told her to call Agnes. You could use your mom’s help. She knows all about babies. She was a midwife before she went into nursing, right?”

The second I’d said it, I regretted it, thinking it might remind Marla of the day she lost her child. Agnes had been present not only because she was Marla’s mother, but because she had expertise in delivering a child.

Not that it did any good.

“You had no right!” Marla shouted. She threw open the door, wrapped in a towel. “I don’t want to be here when she shows up.” She stomped into her bedroom and slammed the door.

“Marla,” I said weakly. “You need to—”

“I’m getting dressed. And I have to get Matthew into something. We’ll go look for a crib.”

I had no safety seat for an infant. It had been several years since I’d needed any version of one for Ethan. But at this moment, that seemed a minor problem compared to everything else. If Marla was determined to leave the house, but still willing to be in my company, then I’d put her and the baby in the car, ostensibly to go looking for a crib, drive like I had a bowl of goldfish on the front seat, but head for the Gaynor home instead of a furniture store.

See how Marla reacted.

“Five minutes!” Marla said.

She was out in four, dressed in jeans and a ratty pullover sweater, her hair still wet. She had the baby in her arms. It was hard to see what he was wearing, she had him wrapped up in so many blankets.

“Grab the stroller,” she said. “I don’t want to have to carry him when we’re shopping. Oh, and let me get another bottle from the fridge.”

I didn’t feel I could call my mother back in front of Marla to tell her we were on the move. I figured the moment Agnes arrived and found no one here, my cell would start ringing. I folded the stroller, and as we stepped outside and Marla put her key in the door to lock it, I took another look at the bloody smudge on the door frame.

Maybe it wasn’t blood. It could be dirt. Someone who’d had their hand in the garden. Except Marla wasn’t much of a gardener.

“I think you should sit in the back,” I told her. “If the air bag went off in the front and crushed the baby into you, well, that wouldn’t be a good thing.”

“Just drive real careful,” Marla said.

“That’s what I’ll do.”

I got her settled into the backseat, behind the front passenger seat, with Matthew in her arms. I opened the back hatch, tossed in the stroller, then got behind the wheel.

“Where are we going to look?” she asked. “Walmart? Or maybe the Sears at Promise Falls Mall?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, heading west. Even though I’d grown up in this town, it wasn’t until I was a reporter for the Standard that I really got to know all corners of it. I could find Breckonwood without the help of a navigation system. “Walmart might be a good place to start.”

“Okay,” she said placidly.

It didn’t take long to reach the Gaynors’ neighborhood. Breckonwood was in one of the town’s tonier enclaves. Houses here cost much more than the average Promise Falls bungalow, but they weren’t fetching the same kind of money they might have ten years ago, when the town was prospering. Madeline Plimpton lived around here. She’d thrown a party for Standard staff at her home eight or nine years ago, back when there were things to celebrate in the newspaper business.

“I don’t see any stores around here,” Marla said.

“I have to make a stop,” I said.

I turned onto Breckonwood, worried that I might see half a dozen police cars and a news van from Albany. But the street was quiet, and I found some comfort in that. If someone had called in a report of a missing child, the street would have been abuzz. I found 375, then steered the car over to the curb.

“This look familiar to you?” I asked, twisting around to get a look at Marla and Matthew, who had a tiny smile on his face.

She shook her head.

“You know anyone named Rosemary Gaynor?”

Marla eyed me suspiciously. “Should I?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Never heard of her.”

I hesitated. “Marla, it has to have occurred to you that this baby — Matthew — came from somewhere.”

“I told you where he came from. The woman who came to my door.”

“But she had to get Matthew from someplace, right? Someone had to give him up for you to have him.”

She was nonplussed. “It must have been someone who couldn’t look after him. They asked around and realized I could provide a good home for him.” She offered up a smile that seemed as innocent as Matthew’s.

I didn’t see the point of pursuing this any further. At least not right now. I said, “You sit tight. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I got out of the car, pocketing the keys, and took in 375. The structure was newer than many on the street, suggesting an older house had been torn down and this built in its place. Well landscaped, two stories, double garage, easily five thousand square feet. If anyone was home, there was probably a high-end SUV sitting behind that garage door.

I went to the door and rang the bell. Waited.

I glanced back at the car. Marla’s head was bent down as she talked to the baby. About ten seconds had gone by without anyone answering, so I leaned on the doorbell a second time.

Another twenty seconds went by. Nothing. I got out my phone, reopened the app that had brought up the phone number for the Gaynors, tapped the number, and put the phone to my ear. Inside the house, I could hear an accompanying ring.

No answer.

Nobody home.

I heard a car approaching and turned around. A black four-door Audi sedan. It turned, quickly, into the driveway and stopped within an inch of the closed garage door, the brakes giving out a loud, sharp squeal.

A slim man in his late thirties, dressed in an expensive suit, jacket open, tie askew, threw open the door and stepped out.

“Who are you?” he snapped, striding toward me, his keys hanging from his index finger.

“I was looking for Rosemary Gaynor. Are you Mr. Gaynor?”

“Yeah, I’m Bill Gaynor, but who the hell are you?”

“David Harwood.”

“Did you ring the bell?”

“Yes, but no one—”

“Jesus,” Gaynor said, fiddling with his keys, looking for the one that would open the front door. “I’ve been calling all the way back from Boston. Why the hell hasn’t she been answering the goddamn phone?”

He had the key inserted, turned it, and was shouting, “Rose!” as he pushed the door open. “Rose!”

I hesitated a moment at the front door, then followed Gaynor inside. The foyer was two stories tall, a grand chandelier hanging down from above. To the left and right, a dining room and living room. Gaynor was heading straight for the back of the house.

“Rose! Rose!” he continued shouting.

I was four steps behind the man. “Mr. Gaynor, Mr. Gaynor, do you have a baby, about—”

“Rose!”

This time, when he called out her name, it was different. His voice was filled with anguish and horror.

The man dropped to his knees. Before him, stretched out on the floor, was a woman.

She lay on her back, one leg extended, the other bent awkwardly. Her blouse, which from the collar appeared to be white, was awash in red, and ripped roughly straight across near the bottom.

A few feet away, a kitchen knife with a ten-inch blade. Blade and handle covered in blood.

The blood, Jesus, it was everywhere. Smudged bloody footprints led toward a set of sliding glass doors at the back of the kitchen.

“God oh God Rose oh my God Rose oh God!”

Suddenly the man’s head jerked, as though something horrible had just occurred to him. Something even more horrible than the scene before him.

“The baby,” he whispered.

He sprang to his feet, his pant legs stained with blood that had gone thick and tacky, and ran from the kitchen, trailing bloody shoeprints in his wake. He nearly skidded on the marble flooring in the foyer as he turned to run up the stairs.

I shouted, “Wait! Mr. Gaynor!”

He wasn’t listening. He was screaming: “Matthew! Matthew!”

He tore up the stairs two steps at a time. I stayed by the bottom of the stairs. I had a feeling he’d be back in a matter of seconds.

Gaynor disappeared down a second-floor hallway. Another anguished cry: “Matthew!”

When he reappeared at the top of the stairs, his face was awash with panic. “Gone. Matthew’s gone. The baby’s gone.” He wasn’t looking at me. It was as if he were speaking more to himself, trying to take it in.

“The baby’s gone,” he said again, nearly breathless.

Trying to keep my voice calm, I said, “Matthew’s okay. We have Matthew. Matthew is fine.”

He glanced back over his shoulder, out the front door that remained wide-open, to my car parked at the curb.

Marla had remained in the backseat, Matthew still in her arms. She was looking at the house now instead of him.

No expression on her face whatsoever.

“What do you mean, we?” Gaynor said. “Why do you have Matthew? What have you done?” His head turned toward the kitchen. “You did that? You? Did you—”

“No!” I said quickly. “I can’t explain what happened here, but your son, he’s okay. I’ve been trying to find out—”

“Matthew’s in the car? Is that Sarita with him? He’s with the nanny?”

“Sarita?” I said. “Nanny?”

“That’s not Sarita,” he said. “Where’s Sarita? What’s happened to her?”

And then he started running toward my car.