Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

“Indeed. I would say he even boasted about it. But why ask me? Speak with Randy.”

Ah, I thought, tensing, time to pay the piper. Mike and I exchanged glances – whose turn this time? I turned back to the portrait, but Hanna told me nothing.

“Mrs. Sinclair,” Mike said, the professionally bereaved mortician this time, “I am sad to inform you that Randy Ramsdale has passed away.”

She was wordless for so long that I turned around to see if she was still upright. She was. Stiffly upright. So brittle I thought a quick jerk would snap her in half.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Her face was dangerously pale. “Was there an accident?”

“No,” Mike again. “It happened at the hand of another.”

She grasped her throat. “Murder?”

“Yes.”

“Both of them?”

“Hillary and Randy, yes.”

I stepped toward her. “Can I get you something? Some water?”

She shook me off and kept her eyes on Mike. “Is there a will?”

“I don’t know.” He was taken aback. People in shock do and say odd things. I thought it was a telling first reaction.

Mrs. Sinclair began to bend finally. She looked around her room with a longing that was ripe with goodbye.

“You see,” she said, “this all belongs to Randy. This was their house. I am here at his sufferance.”

“He supported you?” Mike asked.

She nodded.

“Are there friends you can call?” I asked. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

I saw her glance flick toward the portrait. Toward Hanna. “I am not alone,” she said.

I was spooked. She never got around to asking how and why either Randy or Hillary died. I guess to her those facts weren’t the essentials. Mike got up from the creaky bench and edged toward the door.

“When you feel up to it, you can call me,” he said. “I’ll try to answer any questions.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Will you be all right?” I tried again.

“Yes. Please excuse me. I need to lie down.” She rose majestically, the starch returned to her spine, and walked slowly toward the door. As we followed her, I noticed she did not lean on the cane.

She didn’t open the front door for us, but stood in the center of the round foyer, her narrow feet planted in the hub of the ornate circular pattern in the parquet floor. Rootless like an ornamental tree.

“Good night,” I said, reaching for Mike’s sleeve as he held the door.

Virginia Sinclair was staring off into the dark beyond the front steps. When we turned to walk out, I heard her gasp. I thought maybe she was waiting for us to leave before she wept. She cleared her throat.

“Just a moment,” she said. “What was that name again?”

“Metrano,” Mike said, going back.

She shook her head. “No, the first name.”

“George? Leslie? Amy Elizabeth?”

“George. I know that was his name. It was some time ago, but I remember him. He worked for Randy, refurbishing a boat. Temporary work. He was quite handy. Randy had him do some repairs around here as well. A nice fellow. A family man down on his luck.”

“When?” Mike asked.

“Years ago. I wouldn’t have thought of him except that we were speaking of Hillary and how she came into the family. When Hillary was so sick, the only soul who could comfort her was George.”

“Got it?” Mike asked.

“I think so.” I turned my face into the icy wind that whistled down through a pass in the mountains above Virginia Sinclair’s mansion. A slice of moon slipped out from under the heavy clouds, casting long, moving shadows like lumbering giants on the slope. Coyotes on a crag nearby saw the moon and set up a howl. Had the coyotes scared little Hillary? Or had they scared Amy Elizabeth?

Mike’s face was in shadow, too, but I knew the expression without seeing it, jaw set, eyes flashing. Controlled rage.

“The situation has changed,” he said. “My people have to get with the federales in Baja, get them to bring in Elizabeth Ramsdale for a rubber-hose job, have them loosen her up for us. I would like to fly down there to talk to her, but I think we’ll let Ma Bell reach out and touch her. Make that Mamacita Bell. I just hope she’s still there. Right now, I’m going to take you home.”

“What about George?”

“If he’s on his boat, the Coast Guard will find him. If he’s with Elizabeth, I will fly down. Him we’ll just shoot, save the state some grief.”

“You talk tough when you’re upset. But it’s still a good idea.”

I put my cheek against his chest and squeezed my eyes shut. The air was clear and sweet, but I couldn’t seem to get enough of it past the constriction in my chest. “He sold his daughter.”

“Looks that way,” Mike said.

“But did he kill her?” I asked. “Could a father be so depraved?”

“It happens all the time.”

We held on to each other as we walked back to the car. After we had left Mrs. Sinclair’s, I had only made it around the first curve in the road before I lost the double-cheese Bingo Burger we had picked up at a drive-through on the way to Pasadena. I had eaten it before I knew that a burger franchise was the going price for kindergarten-age blondes.

Times had been hard for the Metranos. I had seen where they lived, a lot of little girls packed into tight quarters. A lot of shoes to buy in that family, and food, and doctors, all on the earnings of a coffee-shop waitress. I’m sure there was a sense of desperation. A case could be made for a certain nobility in the gesture of handing over one of the children to a rich family to give her privileges and opportunities her parents could not provide. And giving more to the other four girls as part of the bargain. Grimm’s Fairy Tales stuff again.

The wicked witch in this story was George Metrano’s affair with a craps table. If it had been me, I would not have been able to swallow the bread a deal like that had put on the family table. Maybe that was why George had this compulsion to lose it all. I’m no Freud. I couldn’t explain what he had done. Even thinking about it had made me ill. If he had any human feeling at all, he must have suffered. I only hoped that every waking moment for the last ten years had given him the same torment his wife had suffered when she lost her child. Her torment times ten.

Mike’s city car rattled down the hill. The shocks were shot, the torsion bars worn. All the bouncing and swaying did my queasy stomach no good. I rolled down my window and gulped air, my hair blown back away from my face. I didn’t remember closing my eyes, so it was a surprise when I opened them and found myself in the garage of Mike’s condo. He was in my open car door, gently pulling me by the hand.

“Come on, baby,” he said. “Let’s put you to bed.”

I got out, shaky when I stood up, still half asleep. We went into the condo through the connecting door between the garage and the kitchen and I walked straight to the answering machine on the counter next to Mr. Espresso for messages.

Lyle had called. Everything was fine. My grant administrator still wanted a report. Guido had called to say that he had a picture for us and was driving over to deliver it. If we weren’t home, he would stick it in the front door. Before Guido’s message had clicked off, Mike was on his way to the front door.

I stayed to listen to the rest of the messages. Casey called, bubbling. She had an audition with the Joffrey Ballet. She needed money for new toe shoes.

When Casey hung up, I heard the deadbolt on the front door clunk a second time and Mike came back waving an envelope with “Love, Guido” scrawled across the front.

“You ready to see this?” He slit open the envelope with a steak knife and pulled out a single four-by-six color snapshot. He showed me the face of the man who had slashed Mike’s tires. It was almost cartoonish, this computer-manipulated composite, but the face was whole and recognizable. I had only seen George Metrano once, the afternoon in the morgue with Leslie, but I knew him.