A Blossom of Bright Light (6 page)

Chapter 8

T
he Reillys' house sat in the middle of a block of modest capes and split-levels all evenly laid out like a set of dominoes, all yellowing under the sodium glare of streetlights. Behind the pulled shades of picture windows, televisions flickered and dogs barked. People stumbled about taking out the trash, half hidden in the shadows of bushes hyper-pruned to the shape of cannonballs or Chinese takeout containers.

It was not the sort of neighborhood where Vega expected to find a live-in nanny. He'd expected something more, well,
upscale
. Still, Dominga Flores was the best lead he had so far as a potential mother of Baby Mercy. According to Dr. Feldman's records, she'd skipped her last three prenatal checkups and hadn't been in to see him in almost six weeks. Her cell phone number—likely one of those pay-as-you-go varieties—was out of service. Her employers offered his best hope of tracking her down.

Vega parked in the street and walked up to a front door with a plaque beside it. The family name was burnished into the plaque, the dot over the “i” replaced by a shamrock. The Gaelic words E
RIN GO BRAGH
were etched beneath. Vega smiled to himself. When he was a boy growing up in the South Bronx, every fire escape and bodega in his neighborhood sported a Puerto Rican flag, a symbol of pride that people outside his culture—particularly Anglos—tended to regard with suspicion. But really, how was this any different?

A woman answered the door with a baby on her hip. She was dressed in oversized gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt with an assortment of pale splatters and stains across it. Her blond hair was carelessly gathered into a loose bun. Strands hung down the sides like she was a piece of corn in the process of being shucked. Vega wasn't sure if she was the babysitter or the mom.

“Sorry to bother you, ma'am. My name is James Vega. I'm a detective with the county police.” Vega showed her his badge and ID. “I'm looking to talk to Mr. or Mrs. Reilly. Are either of them home?”

“I'm Mrs. Reilly.” The baby fussed on her hip. A boy, judging by the square heft of his body. He had blue eyes and a pale down of wispy hair that stood straight up on his head. He was making those low-level whines that promised to detonate at any moment. It was a long time ago now, but Vega could still remember how he and Wendy were always handling Joy like a grenade with a pulled pin.

“May I come in?”

“Um, sure.”

Vega stepped in the doorway. A toddler ran past his feet with a push toy in hand—some sort of fire truck with bells and whistles. From the kitchen, he could hear a man's voice trying to coax another child into eating one more bite of carrot. The child was screaming like the man was sticking needles into her flesh.

“Have I got you at a bad time?” asked Vega.

“Actually, this is about as good as it gets.”

She gestured to what Vega assumed was a living room on her left. It had no grown-up furniture, only a scattering of beanbags on the wall-to-wall beige carpet surrounded by piles of dolls, trucks, and blocks. On a single low table with padded corners sat a collection of sippy cups and spilled Cheerios. A flat-screen television blared cartoons.

“How many children do you have?” asked Vega.

“Three. It's looks like more, I know. But with my three, it always does.” She nodded to the baby on her hip. “C.J. is eight months. Brody, who just ran past, is two and a half, and my daughter, Kayla,” she gestured to the kitchen, “is five.”

A big bear of a man with receding reddish-blond hair walked into the living room. He had the shell-shocked demeanor of a soldier just off the battlefield.

“This is my husband, Bob.”

Vega identified himself again and shook the startled man's hand. Vega wasn't sure what was startling him, having a cop in his house or having all these kids. Vega realized he'd never gotten the woman's first name.

“And you are?”

She seemed stumped by the question for a moment, as if she couldn't recall any name except “Mom.”

“Oh, sorry. I'm Karen.”

The five-year-old must have realized her tantrum over carrots wasn't having the desired effect. Her parents were preoccupied. So she walked into the living room and began screaming at the top of her lungs. The two-year-old made another pass through the room pushing his fire truck. The baby's fussing seemed positively blissful by comparison.

“Is Dominga here?” asked Vega. At the mention of her name, the five-year-old stopped screaming.

“Do-ga? Do-ga? Where's Do-ga? I want Do-ga!” Her two-and-a-half-year-old brother took up the cry while he smacked his truck into a wall.

Karen smoothed her daughter's blond hair. “She's not here, sweetheart.” She turned to Vega. “I'm afraid Dominga doesn't work for us anymore, much to my children's disappointment.”

The little girl kept up her chant. Vega wasn't sure what was more annoying, her previous tantrum or her new fixation.

“Sounds like your children really miss her.”

“Oh my goodness, they do! We all do.”

“Do you know where I can find her?”

Karen gave Vega a wary look. “What is this about?”

Vega studied the living room. There was nowhere to sit but on the beanbags, no way to talk over those cartoons and the screech of kids.

“Is there someplace we can sit and talk? Perhaps the kitchen?” He knew he could never hope to catch the complete attention of both parents in this house, so he decided to settle on Karen. Women were more perceptive and often more accommodating in his presence. “Mr. Reilly?” he turned to the husband. “Could you keep an eye on your children, sir, while I chat with your wife?”

“Um. Okay.” Bob Reilly looked like he hadn't quite recovered from the last episode when Karen handed off the baby to him.

“You can start C.J. and Brody's bath,” she told her husband.

Vega felt sorry for the guy.

The kitchen was small and frilly, with flowery curtains across a window and school calendars and snapshots on the refrigerator. Tiny sneakers lay in a jumble by the back door. The table still had dinner plates across it. Kayla's carrots sat in a congealed lump on her plate.

Karen looked embarrassed by the mess and started clearing everything. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“No thank you, ma'am. I'm fine. And you don't need to clear anything on my account.”

“I don't really know how to sit still anymore,” she admitted. “Would you mind?”

“Do whatever you feel comfortable with.”

She grabbed a stack of plates and began scraping the remnants into the garbage. “You still haven't told me why you want to find Dominga. She's a wonderful young woman. I don't want to get her in trouble or anything.”

“This has nothing to do with her immigration status, if that's what you're concerned about. I just need to know whether or not she's had her baby. Do you know if she's given birth yet?”

“No. I don't. The hospital might know.”

“Her due date was two weeks ago, but there's no record she gave birth.”

Karen stacked the plates in the sink and ran water over them. Upstairs, Vega could hear Bob Reilly trying to maintain order with an army in revolt. The tears and tantrums seemed endless.

“I thought she'd stay in touch with the kids,” said Karen. “You saw Kayla. She
adored
Dominga. But Dominga just—left—and never looked back. I don't understand how she could just abandon them like that.”

“I was under the impression you
let
her go.”

“We did. But not because we didn't love her. We have a tiny au-pair suite downstairs. A room just big enough for one person. Look at this place,” Karen unfolded her hands, more prayer for divine guidance than any invitation to poke around. “We can't manage with three children underfoot. How could we add Dominga's baby to the mix? Where would we keep the child? How would we cope? I'm a third-grade teacher, Detective. My husband travels around the country selling data-processing equipment. We chose a live-in nanny because it was cheaper and afforded more flexibility than putting three kids in day care. We're not rich. We're at our breaking point already. As much as I love Dominga, we simply couldn't do it.”

“So you fired her.”

“
Fired
her? We gave her a month's severance and great recommendations. Plus
I
was the one who found her another job. At a beautiful estate in Wickford caring for an elderly woman who was absolutely delighted at the prospect that she'd have a little baby in her great big house.”

“Is that where she is now?”

Karen opened her dishwasher and began stacking plates inside. “I assume so. She left here about six weeks ago and promised she'd keep in touch. She promised
Kayla
. And then—nothing. She even disconnected her cell phone. I have a ton of stuff here that she was helping me sell on eBay. And she hasn't even called me about that.”

“Do you know if she's all right?”

“I called her employer's house after she disconnected her cell phone. She was very cold on the line. Just ‘yeses' and ‘nos.' I called back and got her employer's son, who was visiting. He told me Dominga didn't want to speak to us anymore and hung up. I cried after that call, Detective. Dominga was with us for five years. She was like family. She
raised
Kayla. I'm starting to wonder if it was all an act, you know? Like maybe she never cared about my kids at all.”

“So you never found out if she had the baby?”

“At that point, she hadn't. That much I know.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Maybe—four weeks ago?”

“You said you got her the job. Was this a family friend?”

“At an estate in Wickford?” Karen Reilly laughed. Lake Holly had a wide range of income levels. Neighboring Wickford had just two: rich and richer.

“I found the job for her through Craigslist,” said Karen.

“Do you still have the address and phone number?”

“I have everything.”

“Can you show me?”

Karen hesitated. “I'm sad that she didn't stay in touch, Detective. But that doesn't mean I want to cost her her job.”

“I have no intention of making trouble for her outside of confirming whether or not she had her baby.”

“Why do you need to know?”

Vega put on his best cop voice. “I'm afraid I can't divulge the specifics of an ongoing police investigation.”

Karen sighed. “Okay. Come with me.”

The Reilly house was a split-level with gates on both the upper and lower portions of the stairs. Karen unlatched the lower gate now and led Vega down a short flight of stairs into a room with boxes of clothes and children's toys, all neatly arranged next to a desk with a computer and a printer.

“My sideline business,” Karen explained. “I sell stuff for people on eBay. Clothes. Toys. Bric-a-brac. You'd be surprised how much money you can make on commission doing this.”

“You mentioned that Dominga helped you?”

“She was terrific. She couldn't open an eBay account herself because of her, uh, immigration status. But she was great at acquiring and selling things. I split everything with her, fifty-fifty.”

Vega's eye was drawn to a fuzzy zip-up jacket, the color of Pepto-Bismol, that lay neatly folded on top of a stack of clothes for sale. Joy owned a jacket just like that. It was impractical as all hell. Too short in the midsection, too long in the sleeves. When she reached for anything, it rode halfway up her chest. Maybe that was the point.

“Where do you get all this stuff?” asked Vega.

“From people I know, from people Dominga knew. Dominga knew all the nannies and housekeepers in town. They get a lot of stuff from their employers.”

“And do you sell everything?”

“What we don't sell, we give to charity, so it's all good.”

Karen led Vega through a short hallway to a small bedroom with an adjoining bathroom. It was indeed as tiny as Karen had said. But the walls were papered in pretty floral paper. The bed looked comfortable. There was a chest of drawers, a closet, and a flat-screen TV with a remote. Vega didn't know much about live-in nannies, but the situation looked decent.

“You haven't hired another nanny yet?”

“We'd like to find someone,” said Karen. “But it's so hard to find anyone we feel comfortable leaving our children with. Right now, we're getting by with part-time sitters and my mom filling in, but we can't go on much longer like this.”

“Do you mind my asking how much you paid her a week?”

Karen opened the top drawer on the dresser and began rummaging inside. “Dominga got room and board plus $400 a week in cash and two weeks paid vacation. She worked seven a.m. until seven p.m. weekdays, which is long, I know. But she only worked every other Saturday night for us and a very occasional weekend day. Plus, whenever she had the time, she did the eBay sales, and she made half the cash she brought in on that as well.”

“Still,” said Vega. “That's sixty-plus hours a week. Which comes out to”—Vega, the accounting major, did the math in his head—“well under seven dollars an hour. For three kids.”

“We're not rolling in money here, Detective. Why do you think I got into eBay sales? We're middle-class people doing the best we can. We treated Dominga like family. She was with us for five years, and she seemed happy here.”

Karen pulled a book out of the top dresser drawer and handed it to Vega. “Here. See for yourself.”