Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

When he leaned out over the water to follow his light, I snaked across the sidewalk, staying low. I slipped between two houses barefoot, managed to scale a tall wooden gate without rousing the neighborhood, and dropped into the alley. I prised the car keys out of my pocket and held them in one hand, the dripping books in the other, and ran down the alley, leaving a wet trail behind me.

Old George was no dummy. I was just faster. He came out into the alley farther along, running hard, dragging that leg again. I had the key out and ready. I was still shivering, so my hand shook, but I got the key into the lock, me into the car, and the doors locked again before he could touch me.

His face contorted with purple rage, the sinews of his neck pulled taut with the force he used to hurl obscenities at me. I couldn’t understand a word, though the gist was clear enough.

I cranked the ignition and pushed my face up to my window. “Motherfucking child-killer,” I screamed, jamming the car into drive. As I accelerated away, the heavy Kel-Lite crashed through the window behind my head. Shards of glass sprayed around me, a thousand points of treacherous light. Ducking from flying glass, dodging trash cans and parked cars in the alley, I got away clean. All things considered.

I was looking for a phone booth to call the police when I heard the sirens pouring in off Second Street. Always a courteous driver – as Dad taught me – I pulled to the side and let them pass. The cavalry was riding in to handle things. I would handle the details later. The next item of business on my agenda was growing soggier by the second.

At red lights, I slowed enough to see oncoming cars, then blew through the intersections. George would need clean clothes, and I didn’t want to be hiding in his closet should he come home looking for some.

I parked around the corner from the Metranos’ house and jogged to their front door. My clothes were cold and heavy, the pavement hurt my feet. But I had my booty, and my agenda, intact.

I banged on the door, leaned on the bell until Leslie came and turned on the front light. She peered out at me through the living-room drapes. She wore a robe over pajamas, but she didn’t look as if she had been sleeping. Her makeup and hair were waiting for company. Probably George.

“Leslie, let me in,” I said, hoping she could read lips, because I didn’t want to wake up another neighborhood. When she hesitated, I opened the sodden photo album and held it up for her. Perplexed, but with curiosity sufficiently aroused, she opened the door.

“What happened to you?” she asked, clutching her terry bathrobe at the throat.

“Midnight swim,” I said. “Where are the police? I thought you had a guard.”

“They took me to the night deposit, that’s all.”

“Do you have a towel?”

“Of course.” She turned on the inside lights then and let me in. “Just wait here.”

She had left me in a raised, tiled entry that was a sort of launching pad for the step-down living and dining rooms. While I waited, I paced its chilly length.

It appeared that the house was nearly stripped bare. In the dining room, the only furniture was a card table and two folding chairs. But there were indentations in the carpet left by a large table and maybe eight or ten chairs. There had been other furniture, long dents that would conform perhaps to a china cabinet. The living room held only boxes, taped shut and lined up against one wall. I had seen all there was to see before Leslie came back carrying a beach towel.

“Are you moving?” I asked.

“Unless there’s a miracle,” she sighed. “Everything’s gone. We’ll never build back up again. Not this time.”

I handed her the photo album and the yearbook and used the towel on my face and hair, wiped down my feet. Then I took the towel into the dining room and spread it over the card table. Leslie came with me.

“I hope all of the pictures aren’t ruined,” I said, taking the album from her and opening it over the towel. “This is Hillary Ramsdale.”

She pulled up one of the folding chairs, took reading glasses out of her robe pocket, and started with the first page. The pictures were wet but still clear. I knew most of the deterioration would come when they started to dry and the emulsion separated from the paper.

Leslie studied the pictures on the first page. Pried open the second page and studied it, too.

“So?” I asked, impatient, miserably cold.

“The hair is different. Amy didn’t have that scar, or whatever it is, on her chin. But it’s her. You want proof? Go look at my little granddaughter. She could be Amy’s twin.”

“When the coroner’s office called you Saturday, who took the call?”

She frowned. “George did.”

“Where were you?”

“At work. I’m almost always there, trying to hold things together as best I can.”

“Are you going to lose the business as well?” I asked.

She shrugged. “George has been working on a deal. These things take time, though. So until it’s final, we’ve been just hanging on, selling off what we found buyers for, scraping together every nickel we could find.”

“He had gambling debts to pay?”

“Not this time.” There was fierce certainty in her voice. “He swore to me this time it was bad investments, some real estate we couldn’t dump in a bad market. Negative amortization and a high vacancy rate were eating us alive. He knows I would throw him out on the street if he ever placed another bet. I figured that’s why he went out on the boat, to get clean away. When he gets real upset, he tends to want to go place a bet.”

“He didn’t go anywhere,” I said. “I chased him down the street in Belmont Shore this afternoon, and he returned the favor tonight, not fifteen minutes ago.”

She rose, involuntarily like a marionette on a string. “Then where the hell is he?”

“I don’t know. And as long as he isn’t here, I don’t care.” I began pulling pages out of the album and lining them up on the towel so they wouldn’t start sticking together. “Maybe he’s holed up in one of your vacant rentals.”

“Could be.”

I glanced at her. “So, how long has he been working on this deal?”

“Couple of months.”

“Like, since February?”

She thought before she nodded. “About then. He went back East somewhere for a couple of weeks. Around Valentine’s. I remember, because he mailed me a card.”

“Where was he this past Thursday?”

“Thursday? We went down to San Diego for a Bingo Burgers sales meeting, stayed overnight.” She looked over at me. “Is that when the girl died, Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“And you thought George did it?”

I nodded. “Her throat was slashed, just like Randy Ramsdale’s was two months ago. I caught George today slashing my tires.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Sometimes. But not this time.” I sat down on the other folding chair, because my knees shook. I was exhausted. And running out of time.

Leslie was staring at me.

“You told me you didn’t know the Ramsdales,” I said. “But it seems George worked for them for a while. He was working for them up in Pasadena at the time Amy disappeared. Does that ring any bells?”

She shook her head. “George did jobs for a lot of people back then, anything he could pick up. He went around the harbor, the marinas, getting what he could. And he did some handyman work, too. Anything.”

“You don’t remember him working for the Ramsdales?”

“I was pretty busy. Five kids and a job, that kept me occupied, all right.”

“You didn’t see the name on a paycheck?”

“I’m ashamed to say it, but George took his pay in cash so we could get out of paying taxes on it. We just used up every bit of it for essentials. I do remember him working in Pasadena, though. He did some boat work for a man, and the man asked him to come work around his house. The job was supposed to last a couple of months, but our old car conked out and George couldn’t get up there. So they loaned him a real nice little pickup with a camper shell. When he finished the job, they gave him the truck as part of his pay.”