Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

“Maybe we can help each other here,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I think I know. If it gets to be too much, you say so. Okay?”

“One thing first. Did you hit George last night?”

“In self-defense.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“Okay,” I said. “It begins. Ten years ago, you were destitute. Five kids, no prospects. George was unhappy and desperate. Am I close?”

“Close enough.”

“After Amy disappeared, things began to look up. Friends helped. The community was generous. You and I know now what happened, but back then didn’t you wonder where all the money came from?”

“What if I didn’t want to question it too much? I just thought George was skimming the donations that came in. Is that so bad?”

“I’m not big on moral judgment calls,” I said. “Skip forward, now. After ten good years, you were looking destitution in the eye again. George felt that old desperation again. He went back to his earlier source, Randy Ramsdale. Maybe he asked for a loan.”

She shook her head. “George tried to blackmail him.”

“He told you that?”

“Round about daybreak this morning he did. He came home with blood pouring out of his nose, a big old black eye. Looked like a licked puppy. Tail between his legs, that’s for sure. He needed help and I made him talk to me to get it.”

“Are you going to tell me what he said?”

“Every word of it. From one mother to another.” She shifted to get comfortable, then she began.

“George told me he went to this Ramsdale guy and asked him to help out, maybe take a second mortgage on our restaurant. But Ramsdale said no, and he was real upset George had come by his house. He was arguing with George, telling him to leave, when she came home from school. When Amy came home, George said it broke his heart to see her, so pretty and grown up.

“Then he lied to me and told me he couldn’t stand for me to be apart from my little girl anymore. He was going to get her back. I know it was the money he wanted. But he said that he decided right then and there to tell Ramsdale to pay up, or he would go to the police and charge him with kidnapping, and he was taking Amy back. I’m not sure that last part wasn’t a lie, too. According to George, there was a big fight.”

“Amy was there? She heard them fight?”

“Part of it. Her daddy, Ramsdale that is, had sent her upstairs. He was trying to hush up George when Amy came back into the room where they were. She was crying this time, real upset. She went up to Ramsdale and asked him who George was, because she recognized him as the man she always saw in her nightmares. The man who chased her and called her Amy. She was real scared.”

“I bet she was,” I said, fighting back tears. Hillary had also told John Smith about her nightmares. How do you handle it when you’re a kid and your nightmare walks in and picks a fight with your father and you can’t wake up and make him go away? And then your daddy disappears?

I reached up to the towel dispenser for a dry towel and dabbed at my own face. “When did George kill Randy Ramsdale?”

“We never got to that,” she said. Then she started to laugh, self-consciously covering her face with her hands.

“What’s funny?”

“I have to apologize to you, Maggie.” She peered at me over her fingertips, tears running from her eyes again. “I let him blame you. George was sitting there on the kitchen chair telling me all about seeing my little girl, and I was holding this ice pack on his eye, wiping his bloody nose, taking care of him as usual. Well, I’d stayed up all night waiting for him, keeping busy fixing a few little things he never seemed to get around to. The toolbox was right there on the table beside me. I guess I was pretty mad before he even came home. When he said he made Amy cry, well, I just picked up that great big old hammer…”

I laughed. I could see what happened next. “It was you! You broke George’s nose.”

“Yes, ma’am, I did. Just picked up that great big old hammer and let him have it. Mashed his nose flat. He was so scared he didn’t even holler. Then I told him to get in the car, I’d take him to the hospital. But I drove him straight here, instead. His eyes were so swollen up he couldn’t see a thing.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “You going to tell on me?”

“I’m going to shake your hand.”

She gave me her hand, and we sat there with our backs against the wall, holding hands and laughing. That’s when Mike burst in.

“What the hell is going on?” he said, seeming alarmed.

I wiped my streaming eyes. “You can’t come in here, Detective Flint. Real women only.”

“Hello, Mrs. Metrano,” he said, sitting down beside me anyway. “We wondered where you had gone.”

“Where else could I go?” she said. “Except the little girls’ room. How’s George?”

“I think he’s felt better,” Mike said. “They’ve booked him and now they’re going to transport him over to St. Mary’s Hospital to get his injuries tended to.”

“What charge did you book him on?” I asked.

Mike smiled. “Avarice, with intent.”

“Did he talk?”

“Not a peep.”

I smiled at Leslie. “Well, lah dee dah. They should have beat it out of him.”

Leslie squeezed my hand. Her expression grew serious. “Maggie, I guess I’m ready now. I kept thinking how much it was going to hurt my kids, and my little grandbaby, to have George put in jail. But I know he never gave us one thought when he did all those things. A wife doesn’t have to testify against her husband. I know that. But I have a few things I want to say.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said.

“Me, too.” There was still some hesitation. But she took a deep breath and got to her feet, and gave me a hand up.

Leslie looked down at Mike, who was scrambling to his feet. “Get out your little notebook, Detective Flint. Time to tell all. Just one condition.”

“Name it,” he said.

“I want Maggie in there with me.”

I took her arm and turned to bat my eyes at Mike. “Hear that, detective? She wants me.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, lah dee dah.”

“The cockroaches in the Cabo jail were bigger than the rats?” I said, my third guess.

“Nope.” Mike fiddled with the handcuffs dangling from his turn signal. We had driven back to downtown L.A. and traded the Blazer for his city car. Now we were exiting the San Bernardino Freeway, stalled behind an endless line of red brake lights. “Three strikes, you’re out. No more guesses.”

“Good. Because I don’t like this game. Anyway, for delivering George to you, you owe me big-time. Tell me, why did Elizabeth agree to fly home?”

“Oldest story in the world.” He made the handcuffs spin. “The boyfriend, Ricco Zambotti, bribed his guards to turn their backs, then took off with the boat while Elizabeth was still in custody. Last seen, he was headed due west, straight for the two-hundred-mile limit.”

“So Elizabeth got mad and spilled her guts, right?”

“That’s it. According to her, Ricco did it all. When she found Randy’s body, she called Ricco for a little hand-holding. She said it was his idea to sink the corpse, give her a little time to loot the bank accounts. Who could blame her? she said. And it was Ricco who gave Hillary a bad time, telling her that Randy had abandoned her. That Randy wasn’t her real father anyway.

Elizabeth said she was just awfully upset, and hurt, when Hillary took off. She said she sent Ricco out to find the kid and bring her home. Instead he slit her throat and tried to make it look like the same killer who had sliced Randy, in case Randy ever bobbed up.”

“She was so upset with Ricco that she took him on a cruise?”