Death of an Irish Diva (24 page)

Annie was sound asleep when sirens jarred her awake.

She reached for Mike, who was already halfway sitting up, struggling to untangle himself from the bed.

“What the—” he said.

And Annie's cell went off.

“Shit,” he growled.

“It's Bea,” Annie said. “Yes, Bea?”

“Annie.” She sounded strange. Was she crying? “Someone has taken our baby girl. Someone has Elizabeth. The police are here. They are searching . . . already.”

“Be right there,” Annie said.

“What the hell?”

“Mike,” Annie said, placing her hand on his shoulder. “It's not the paper. It's Elizabeth. She's been taken.”

“Good God,” he said after a moment. “What can we do?”

“I need to get over there . . . for Vera. For Bea. I'll call you later if there is anything you can do. Can you get the boys off to school?”

She leapt out of the bed and slipped on her jeans. Years of practice enabled her to dress quickly in the dark room. Mike turned the light on.

“Well, that makes things easier,” she said.

“Damn,” he sighed.

“What?” she said, slipping off her nightshirt and reaching for her bra.

His eyes lingered on her breasts. “Sometimes I forget how beautiful you are. How can that be? We live together. I see you every day.”

Annie smiled. “I am going to remember to pay you back for that compliment.”

She leaned over and hugged him.

“I need to go,” she said.

He held her there. “Annie, I love you so much.”

“Hey.” She sat down at the edge of the bed. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. I mean no. But we can talk later. It's fine,” he said.

“You need to go.”

She looked at her husband, who looked bleary-eyed and rumpled. Brown hair ruffled. Eyes deep brown and worried.

“You are my number one concern, Mike, always,” she said.

Eyes met eyes. Something was exchanged. Renewal. Commitment. Love. In one glance.

“I know,” he said and smiled. “We will talk later.”

“Good,” she said. And it was about time.

What was it about the middle of the night? Some of their best moments as a couple were during talks in the middle of the night. Was it a sense of vulnerability? Or just the opposite? A sense of safety? And how many times had she wakened in the middle of the night just to check on her boys with a sense of pending horror? Feeling like something was wrong? What a relief it was to see them sleeping snug in their beds.

Vera was living every mother's worst nightmare.

Beatrice's living room door was open, and Annie walked in. She had expected to see chaos, but instead was surprised to find a team of officers quietly moving about their home. Beatrice, Sheila, DeeAnn, and Paige were sitting at the kitchen table. The smell of strong coffee permeated the house.

“Where is Vera?” Annie asked.

Beatrice looked up at her. In her weary eyes, Annie saw the eighty-three-year-old woman that she was. That was rare with Beatrice.

“Vera is with Eric, upstairs in her room,” Beatrice answered. “We are trying to keep it calm and quiet. She passed out, then was hysterical. He has given her something to calm her.”

“A sleeping pill. But she can't sleep forever,” Sheila said.

Annie glanced around the table at the normally jovial bunch, and they almost looked like different people. The strain showed in the way they held their mouths, eyes, jaws. Every mother's worst nightmare.

“Where is Detective Bryant?”

“Out. He had a gut feeling or something,” DeeAnn muttered.

“Did he question you?” Annie asked Beatrice. “Have they sent out an AMBER Alert? Is it on the news?”

“Calm down, Annie,” Sheila said. “Yes, he questioned Beatrice.” She reached her hand out and held Beatrice's hand.

The next thing Annie knew, Jon was handing her a cup of steaming hot coffee and leading her to a chair at the table.

“Adam thinks it was Kelsey,” Jon said. “He and his team are looking for her. Roadblocks and so on. It is under control. Inasmuch as it can be,” he said.

“What makes him think that? I mean, we know she is disturbed, but to take a child?” Annie asked.

Nobody replied. Paige looked at her and shrugged. They were wilting.

“What can we do?” Annie said after downing a few sips of coffee. “Can we help search?”

DeeAnn looked up at her sheepishly. “I asked the same question and was given the smack down.” She pointed at Beatrice.

“You all need to stay out of it. Let the law do its job. Two counties and the state police are looking. The best we can do is be here for Vera when she wakes up.”

Sheila caught Annie's eye and nodded.

Annie's cell phone blared. It was her editor. “Yes,” she said into the phone.

“Annie, I hear there's been a kidnapping. I need you to get to two-eleven Ivy Lane.”

“I'm already there,” she said, looking at the circle of women around the table. Did she really want to be the reporter in the crowd?

“What? Good work.”

“I am not covering this one, Steve. I'm too close to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am very close to the family and am really upset.” Her voice cracked. Oh no. Was she going to cry sitting there in front of everyone and with her editor on the other end of the line? She choked it back.

“I'm sorry, Annie. I can find someone else,” he said.

“I wish you would,” she said and meant it. She couldn't write about this situation with any kind of objectivity. But she could not help it when her brain made leaps in logic and strange connections as she thought about Elizabeth and the fact that Bryant knew right away who to look for. She had known that he was holding something back from her. Kelsey must have more of a record or a problem than what Annie knew. In fact, maybe he knew something like this was bound to happen.

And where was Bill? Had anybody even called him? Or was he waiting on the other end of Kelsey's path to take his baby away from her mother?

Beatrice didn't want to mention the tightening in her chest. She was certain it was stress. Nothing to worry about. Of course she was stressed. Someone had taken Elizabeth out of her bed—in
her
home—in the middle of the night. Evidently, the intruder had used a ladder, one of the ladders that belonged to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Had just placed the ladder right under the window of Elizabeth's bedroom.

How did they know where to place it?

And on the same night that Vera woke Beatrice up out of a sound sleep with a pie slicer in her hand with blood all over herself.

So, hell yes, she was stressed. She took another deep breath. The tightening didn't get any worse.

It did not get any better, either.

DeeAnn had decided to bake some biscuits and was thrashing around in her kitchen.

Beatrice remembered the gravy in the refrigerator. With a houseful like this, she should be feeding them all. But she was afraid to move. If she moved, she was afraid what would happen. Something would change. They would get news. Bad news. No. She could not think about that.

She wouldn't move.

Every so often she glanced at the officers quietly moving through her home and remembered when she used to know every member of the three-person police squad in her town. She knew their families, as well. Oh, that was too many years ago to count.

And her baby was lying upstairs, half out of it from sleeping pills by this point.

And her granddaughter had been stolen.

Beatrice ran her hand along the surface of the table. It was hard, cold, real. She wasn't dreaming, as much as she wished it. This was real.

The scent of the biscuits. The people around her. Yes, it was all real. Too real for her. Elizabeth was gone.

Her telephone rang, sending her heart racing, and Annie picked it up. Annie seemed to be the appointed phone person in the crowd. If it wasn't her cell phone, it was another phone she was talking into.

Beatrice tried to read her expression and murmured something under her breath. “What was she saying?” Beatrice asked. “Who is she talking to?”

Sheila held up a finger.

“That was Detective Bryant,” Annie said. “They found Elizabeth.”

“And?” Beatrice said, unable to read Annie's expression. Was she relieved? Gathering strength to deliver bad news?

“Elizabeth is fine. They have taken her to the hospital to check her over. It's standard procedure.”

Squeals of relief and sighs all around.

Beatrice cleared her throat. “Who did this? Was it Kelsey?”

“The police have Kelsey at the station,” Annie said.

“Well, that is a miracle. The fastest police work I've ever seen. Especially around here,” DeeAnn said.

“There is something else,” Annie said.

They all looked at her.

“They have a warrant out for Bill.”

“Surely not,” Beatrice said.” Surely Bill didn't have anything to do with this.”

Paige spoke up. “It happens a lot. I was just reading about someone who grew up thinking their mother had died. Years later, they found out their father had just taken them to raise. Can you imagine?”

“Bill?” DeeAnn said.

Beatrice tried to process that, but it didn't sit right with her. Bill had done some surprising and odd things the past few years. But she wasn't sure she could see him actually trying to hurt Vera like that. Or Elizabeth. But then again, she could be wrong. It happened sometimes.

Jon's hand went to her shoulder. His hands. She loved them. She loved him. Thank the universe for this man who took care of everything when she sat there, barely able to breathe, as the intense emotions slammed into her. He made the coffee, answered the door, offered the chairs. Now he showed people out. And then her to her own bed, where she finally closed her eyes and rested.

Hours later, when she awoke, it was to the sound of a loud and happy three-year-old running through the house. The next thing she knew, Lizzie was in her bed.

“Get up, Granny!”

Beatrice pulled her down to her and wrapped her in her arms. A deep peace overcame her. It would be all right now. Now that Lizzie was home.

Vera sat on the quilt-covered bed with her mother and daughter. She was a little out of breath. “I can't keep up with you, Elizabeth. Are you okay, Mama?”

“Land sakes, can't an old woman take a nap?”

“Mama, you've been sleeping all day!”

“Look at you, Lizzie,” Beatrice said. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. Kelsey had candy.”

Beatrice looked up at Vera, who grimaced.

“Really? Well, I have cookies,” Beatrice said. “How about that?”

Elizabeth squealed. “Yea!”

“Supper first,” Vera said. “How about spaghetti?”

Elizabeth turned and fell into her mother's arms. “I love you, Mama.”

“I love you, too, girl.”

Vera blinked away a tear—but Beatrice saw it. And she was blinking back a few of her own.

Vera hated to leave Lizzie the next day. But the psychologists said that they needed to keep to Lizzie's routines. She would still have some fearful memories. But they were trying to let her believe that it was an outing, that Kelsey did not mean to take her away from her mother. Evidently, Bryant had caught her pretty quickly, and Elizabeth had seen him so often that she felt completely comfortable with him.

Still, Vera was shaken. So shaken that they had to cancel her hypnosis session, which was scheduled for today. They'd do it on Thursday now.

But she wanted to clean her studio, because in a few days she would start her summer schedule, which was jam-packed. And she needed to take care of the registrations and finances today. People hated it when they wrote checks that weren't cashed right away. She filled out all the paperwork and left the studio to walk toward the bank.

On the way, she passed the fountain her mother liked to sit at sometimes, but she wasn't there. A group of very pregnant women was hanging around, all dressed in the same style. Hadn't she seen them at the festival? She figured they were from out of town, but maybe not. Surely they wouldn't still be there if they had just been visiting a local family. There was something odd about them.

Vera walked into the cool air of the bank and took care of her business quickly, turned, and walked out. The group of women was heading into DeeAnn's Bakery. Should she? Oh, what could it hurt to follow them in there? She had plenty of time.

DeeAnn was nowhere to be found at first. Her intern helped the group of pregnant women, got them drinks and an assorted variety of baked goods. Soon enough DeeAnn came out to bring more scones to the display case.

“Hey, Vera,” DeeAnn said. “You want one?”

Vera nodded. “Blueberry.”

“Coffee?”

“Sure. Join me?”

“I can't now. I've got muffins in the oven,” she said.

“I can take care of that,” her intern said.

She and Vera sat close to the group of denim skirt–and jumper-wearing pregnant women.

“Do you know them?” DeeAnn asked.

Vera nodded in the affirmative.

“Who are they?”

Vera shrugged.

“Wonder what the professor would think of us eating sugary treats,” one young woman said.

They laughed.

“Don't want his babies having sugar,” another one of the young women said. “So stupid.”

DeeAnn's eyes widened.

Vera sat back in her chair and took a bite of her scone. Who were they talking about? What were they talking about? Was their father a professor? Were they sisters? Surely not. There were five of them, and they all looked to be between, say, eighteen and twenty-two. Very close in age. Though it was getting harder for Vera to tell young women's ages just by looking at them.

The door flung open and another young woman walked through and the others greeted her. When she turned to look in the display case, Vera saw her face. She looked vaguely familiar.

“Miss Vera?” the young woman said.

Vera smiled. She was used to this. Girls remembering her. She had to search her memories to figure it out. “Yes?” Vera looked up at her.

“It's me, Chelsea Miller,” she said. “I took dance classes with you.”

“Oh, Chelsea!” Vera said, standing up and hugging a very pregnant former student. “I thought you were at college?”

“I am,” she said. “I'm studying at the University of Virginia. I'll take some time off when the baby gets here.”

“Yes,” Vera said. “I imagine you will.”

“Oh, not to take care of it,” she said.

“No?”

DeeAnn was bursting. Vera didn't dare look further at her. Her face was beet red.

“I'm giving it up for adoption.”

“Oh,” Vera said, taken aback by the way she spoke of her baby as an it.

“Well, that's a smart choice,” DeeAnn said finally. “You're too young to be saddled with a baby.”

The table next to theirs quieted.

“And there's so many people who can provide a good home, who really want a baby,” DeeAnn said.

“Yes,” Chelsea said. “That's just what John said.”

“John? The baby's father?” Vera asked.

“Chelsea!” One of the young women was now at her side, pulling her away.

“I'm sorry,” she said, smiling. “It was nice seeing you.”

Chelsea sat down at the table next to them. Vera was perplexed. They appeared to be a group of pregnant women who were in some kind of club. Were they all giving their babies up for adoption? Were they a support group? Was that it?

Vera felt the hair on the back of her neck prick at her. The oddest sensation. A cloud of danger and suspicion fell over her. Why? They just appeared to be harmless pregnant women. She should mind her own business. Why did she care? Maybe it was all the recent discussion about Alicorn and designer babies poking at her.

“After I get that report done for Reilly, I'm done for the summer,” one of them said.

Reilly? How many University of Virginia professors were named Reilly?

DeeAnn looked at her in the eyes. “I know what you're thinking. Let's find out.”