Little Girl Gone (5 page)

“Yes.” Pink nodded.

“But Molly isn't listed here.” Max directed his statement to Afton.

“Is one of your checks from someone named Molly?” Afton asked.

They went through all of Mrs. Pink's checks, one by one, but couldn't find one that had been written by anyone named Molly.

“She could have used a fake name,” Max said.

“This might sound like a strange question,” Afton said. “But could an exhibitor have just walked in and sort of set up shop?”

Pink looked startled. “I never thought about that. It's very unlikely.”

“But it could have happened?” Max asked.

“I suppose so,” Pink said. “I never . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Were you present the entire day?” Afton asked.

“No,” Pink said slowly. “I was there at setup, collecting money, and showing exhibitors where to place their tables. And then I had a dentist appointment and did some shopping. I was back there at seven o'clock to pay the mall people. They charge a fee, you know. I have to give them a percentage.”

“Yes, I'm sure you do,” Max said. He hesitated. “These shows are big business. I mean, you arrange a lot of them?”

Pink smiled. “Almost every other month. Sometimes more in summer when people are more apt to travel.”

“And you don't have a computerized list of your exhibitors?” Afton asked.

Pink shook her head. “No computers, just my notebooks.”

“Is it possible to make copies of some of your pages?” Max asked. “I mean, we'd go to the nearest Kinko's or whatever and bring your notebooks right back.”

“Surely,” Pink said. “If you think that would help.”

“It might,” Afton said. “You never know.”

“This woman, Molly,” Muriel Pink said, looking more than a little nervous. “You think she's a suspect?”

Max pursed his lips. “Let's just say she's a person of interest.”

T
HE
farmhouse was quarantined on twenty acres of ninety-year-old cottonwoods perched on the edge of a cliff. And like the trees that feebly sheltered it, the house was nearing the end of its life. Once upon a time, long before the First World War, the enormous two-story house with its carved finials and finely turned balustrade had been built as a showcase to boom times. Wisconsin settlers, newlyweds, flush from a pre-income tax inheritance, had lived there and raised a large family.

In the nineteen thirties, Alvin Karpis and his bank robber gang, anxious to escape harassment from both the Chicago and the Saint Paul Police Departments, had leased the place and found it perfect. It was centrally located, but still off the beaten track, perfect for a little gangster R and R.

Dull and homely now, thanks to wind, rain, snow, termites, and old age, most of the home's exterior had been worn down to bare, gray wood. And not the silvered elegance of old barn wood, but the dowdy, gritty look of zinc.

The fields surrounding the house had been fallow for nearly twenty years, choked with an overgrowth of buckthorn and thistles. The skeletal remains of a large grain bin stood as the only testimony to this having once been a working farm.

Still, on this dark and frosty January night, people called it home.

Inside a large farm kitchen with outdated Kelvinator appliances, two women and a man sat at a battered wooden table under a heavy wrought iron light fixture. They sipped coffee, poked at pieces of meat that rested, gray and well done, on an oval platter, and ate Oreo cookies directly from the bag. Perched atop the refrigerator, overlooking this scene of tragic domesticity, was an enormous stuffed woodchuck, all flashing teeth and claws.

While Marjorie Sorenson crafted reborn dolls, Ronnie worked at his beloved taxidermy projects. And he was good at it, almost as skilled as Marjorie at breathing a startling reality into inanimate objects.

Ronnie's girlfriend, Sharice Williams, known as Shake to all her friends and anyone who'd ever stuffed a dollar bill down her G-string, sat at the table with them. She was eyeing the two of them carefully, trying to read the temperature in the room.

Finally, after a few minutes of noisy chewing, Ronnie said, to no one in particular, “Shake and me was gonna go hang out at Judge's.”

Flat, cobra eyes suddenly drilled into him. “This girl's not going anywhere,” Marjorie told her son. “Especially not to some dimey bar like Judge's. In case you hadn't noticed, she's due to have a baby any day now.”

“I'm bored,” Shake whined. “There's nothin' to do here.”

Shake was Ronnie's latest girlfriend. He didn't bed many women, but those he did seemed to share some common traits—they tended to be dirt poor, estranged from their families, and pretty enough, but in a worn-out, used-up way. Shake had been forced to give up pole dancing some five months ago when Buddy Yaruso, the manager at Club Paradise out on County Road A-2, had touched a hand to her distended belly, stuck a twenty-dollar bill in her panties, and fired her on the spot. He'd told her that a pregnant exotic dancer wasn't good for business. It just reminded his club patrons of what they were trying to forget about at home.

Shake had cried a river of tears, thinking how unfair it all was. Still, she wasn't about to score a job as Kim Kardashian's personal stylist, and that chief financial officer job at Coca-Cola just wasn't on the horizon. So hanging out with Ronnie and his old lady for a while seemed to be all right. Not good, just all right.

“Waaaaaah!”
came a loud, demanding wail from down the hall.

“I wish that thing would shut up,” Shake said. She looked at Marjorie, who pointedly ignored her as she lit another Kool cigarette. She turned her gaze toward Ronnie. “Where'd that kid come from anyway?”

“I told ya,” Marjorie said. “She's my cousin's kid. Picked her up when we was in The Cities yesterday.” She flicked a piece of hardened food gunk off her sweatshirt. “Gonna watch her for a while.”

“Yeah?” Shake said. Suspicious eyes flitted across the table. “You got cousins in The Cities?” she asked Ronnie.

Ronnie pushed limp green beans across his plate and into his watery gravy. “Sure.” He hadn't been much interested in Shake lately, now that she was all fat and swollen and crabby. Right now his brain was occupied with someone else. All day long he'd been replaying his encounter with the skinny blond babysitter. That bitch had been . . . unbelievably hot. He shifted in his chair, practically overwhelmed by feelings of lust and need.

Marjorie focused on Shake. “It wouldn't hurt you none to practice with that baby,” she said. She was busy sawing at a piece of overdone strip steak with a dull steak knife. The broiler in the damn stove was on the blink again and she'd had to pan fry the meat. Now it tasted more like liver than steak.

“Practice?” came Shake's derisive hoot. “What for?” One of her hands was drawn unconsciously to her swollen belly. “I'm gonna give this baby up for adoption anyhow.” She massaged the mass under her stretched-out Pantera T-shirt. “So what's the harm if we go over to Judge's and have a couple of drinks?” Shake was particularly fond of Crapple Bombs, a lethal concoction of Red Bull, Crown Royal, and Apple Pucker. “Who's gonna be the wiser?”

“Don't get smart with me, girlie,” Marjorie snapped. “You're a guest in my house. Your old man disowned you and threw you out on your scrawny ass, remember?”

Shake gave a mirthless laugh. “Only because your precious son knocked me up.” They'd played this blame game before. Always going round and round in an endless loop, never coming to any sort of resolution.

“If it's even mine,” Ronnie said.

Hurt showed in Shake's eyes. “It is. You
know
it is.”

“What the hell did you think was gonna happen?” Marjorie asked. “Prancing around onstage with shiny sequins pasted over your titties, wearing hooker heels and bending over to show your cooch?” She snorted. “Exotic dancer. Hah.”

Shake had been a crowd favorite at Club Paradise. Unhappy men from all over the North Country had come, flashlights in hand, to sit at the bar and shine their wavering beam at Shake's moneymaker.

“Go see if the baby's wet,” Marjorie ordered Shake. The kid had been in their house for less than twenty-four hours and already things were in an uproar.

“Babies are always wet,” Shake said, toying with what was left of her unappetizing dinner. “Besides, I gotta get changed if we're going out.” She threw a hopeful glance at Ronnie. Unfortunately, he could be a real limp dick when it came to standing up to his mother. In fact, if she'd known how much of a momma's boy he really was, she never would have moved in here in the first place. Shake regretted that she hadn't just run away. Take a bus to Chicago and figure
something
out. Now it was too late. Now she was due any day, fat and waddling, unattractive, a prisoner of her unborn child.

“Waaaaaah!”
A shrill cry echoed from down the hallway again. The kid was persistent.

“Baby's still crying,” Marjorie said. Her thin, penciled brows rose in a mild challenge as she worked on staring down Shake.

Ronnie's hands smacked down flat and hard on the table, jouncing the dishes and silverware, upending his cup of coffee. “Damn it,” he snarled. “I'll go.”

He stormed out of the kitchen and down the hallway, into the living room, where the baby was lying in an old plastic bassinette. He placed a hand on the side of the bassinette and shook it, jostling the baby and causing it to cry that much harder.

“Shut up,” Ronnie whispered.

The upturned pink face was turning almost purple now as the baby wailed away, her shrieks piercing the air.

Ronnie stared at it impassively. His mind was beginning to drift,
blocking out the squalling noise. He wondered idly what the baby would look like stuffed?

Probably, he decided . . . just like one of Mom's stupid dolls.

*   *   *

FIVE
minutes later, Ronnie was out the door and on his way. Shake had pleaded with him to take her along. His mother had yammered after him like some goddamned little ankle biter dog. But Ronnie was on a mission.

When he pulled his car up in front of Judge's, he was happy to see there were still a couple of newspapers left in the green metal box that sat out front. He dropped in four quarters, grabbed a paper, and went inside, his guts prickling in anticipation.

Ronnie shoved two dollars across the bar and ordered a Leinenkugel draft beer. Then, as all around him music thumped and beer bottles rattled, he pulled out the news section of the Sunday paper. He was starting to feel a little anxious now, hoping he'd be able to find what he was looking for.

The story was right there on page one, just below the fold. The headline said, I
NFANT
K
IDNAPPED
FROM
K
E
NWOOD
H
OME
. He read the story slowly, his lips moving along as he read. When he got to the fourth paragraph, he smiled to himself. Ashley. The hot little babysitter chick's name was Ashley. And the story said that she'd been taken to a hospital, some place called HCMC.

Setting down the paper, Ronnie took a long sip of beer. He liked that her name was Ashley. It sounded classy and reminded him of a character on one of those teen reality shows. He dug his hand into a bowl of popcorn that sat on the bar. Popped a handful into his mouth, chewed, and hawked the hulls out onto the floor. Hadn't he and Ashley shared a moment together last night? Hadn't she stared into his eyes and given him a glimmer of encouragement? Sure, she had. Like most girls, she'd wanted it pretty bad.
Needed
it. He could tell.

Ronnie took another sip of beer and the liquid slid down his throat, cool and malty. “Ashley,” he murmured. “Ashley baby.”

I
'M
sorry you had to cut your climbing trip short,” Lish said. Not ten seconds earlier, Afton had pushed open the back door of her home and tromped into the kitchen. Lish, Alisha Larkin, was stirring a pot of bubbling spaghetti sauce, steaming up their little kitchen in a nice, homey way. Afton had called her sister earlier in the day and told her about the change in plans. Told her she was back in town and would probably be home for supper.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Two eager voices blended into one as Poppy and Tess, Afton's two daughters, came careening around a corner to greet her. Poppy was six and serious, dressed in an oversized Sponge Bob sweatshirt. Tess was ten going on fifteen, already into lip gloss and celebrity gossip, lobbying for her very own cell phone.

“I'm glad you came home, Mommy,” Poppy said. She pattered across the kitchen floor and favored Afton with an enormous bear hug. “Even if it was because of that kidnapping.”

Afton's and Lish's eyes met and Lish gave a little shrug that said,
Who knows?

“How did you hear about the kidnapping, honey?” Afton asked. She made no secret of the fact that she was employed by the Minneapolis Police Department, but had always tried to spare the girls from any grisly details
of the cases she worked. It was better, she'd decided, to focus on the positive role she played.

“It was on the five o'clock news,” Poppy told her. “The lady was crying. A lot,” she added with emphasis.

“Is the baby dead?” Tess asked. She sounded blasé but looked a little scared.

“No, of course not,” Afton said. “The police and the FBI are working very hard to find her and bring her home.”

“That's good,” Tess said. She edged over to the counter, where Lish was busy grating a hunk of Parmesan cheese, and smiled at her impishly through masses of tangled blond hair. “Want me to set the table?”

“More than anything,” Lish said.

“Mommy,” Poppy said as Tess stood on tiptoe to gather plates and glasses from the cupboard. “How come you changed your name? How come you have a different name than Daddy?” It was sweet that she still referred to Mickey as her daddy, even though they'd only been together as a family for little more than a year.

“It's all about identity, honey,” Afton said. “When you're a little older, you'll understand.”

But Poppy wasn't about to drop the subject. “What if
I
want to change my name someday?”

“Honey,” Afton said, bending down. “
Do
you want to change your name?”

A grin split Poppy's mischievous face. “I want to be Rapunzel!” she declared.

“Poppy Rapunzel,” Afton said, gathering her daughter up in her arms. “It has a nice ring to it. Presidential even.”

*   *   *

BY
eight o'clock the kids' eyes were growing heavy as they sprawled on the sectional sofa eating popcorn and watching a DVD of
Finding Nemo.
Lish was upstairs, trying out Clairol's Ravenous Red hair color and singing along to an old Van Halen album. Afton was planted firmly in front of her computer.

She'd been curious about what Thacker had told them about Richard Darden, the missing baby's father. Wanted to see if there was anything in the business section of the newspaper that might shed some light on the
lawsuit against him. She didn't think it possible that a reputable company would get so outraged about pilfered business secrets and that they'd retaliate by kidnapping a man's child. Then again, you never knew. In more than a few countries, kidnapping was commonplace.

Afton found two archived articles on the
Tribune
website. One was a short sidebar detailing Richard's move to Synthotech. The second was a lengthier article in which the
Tribune
business reporter, B. L. Aiken, interviewed Bruce Cutler, the CEO of Novamed, Richard Darden's former company, as well as Richard Darden himself, and Gordon Conseco, the CEO of Synthotech, Richard's new place of employment.

Cutler had only harsh words about Richard's defection; Conseco had only praise for his new employee.

But Conseco can't be that happy
, Afton decided,
especially
if Richard Darden was bringing questions of impropriety down on their heads.

Afton found a few more articles, but they were just routine business press releases. A new product, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Bored now, she clicked over to her Facebook page and scanned a few posts from her friends. Ah, there were her neighbors, Deana and Bud, looking happy and sunburned on Waikiki Beach. It was difficult sometimes, to look at pictures of perfect couples. Even though it was a relief to be divorced, she sometimes felt like a screwup. Her first husband, the kids' father, had been a disaster. Then she'd met Mickey and struggled to make that marriage work. But it had quickly become obvious they weren't destined to be together. When collection agencies started calling, when the zone manager from GMAC came knocking on her door, she knew it was over. Slammed shut. There wasn't anything that Dr. Phil or Dear Abby could have done. Like Humpty Dumpty, their marriage had slipped off the wall, cracked wide open, and couldn't be put back together again.

Afton lifted her fingers from the keyboard, ready to shut it off. Then, on a whim, she Googled the word
reborn
. And watched in amazement as hit after hit spun out.

Curious now, feeling a tingle of apprehension, she perused the website for Marcy May's Reborns. Then Sarah Jane's Beautiful Babies. And then
Kimberly's Kuddle Kids. All these sites featured the extremely realistic-looking reborns that seemed to be growing in popularity with a cultlike following of doll lovers. All the dolls pictured either looked like newborns, or were a few months older. None went up to the age of a toddler.

Clicking on one of the reborn message boards, Afton read through a glut of messages. And found some of them strangely disturbing.

[email protected]

I just bought a beautiful reborn but have been unable to bond with her. Would love to trade for baby boy Berenguer.

[email protected]

Have an OOAK made by Emily K. Human hair, side-sleeping pose, simply breathtaking! Will e-mail photos.

[email protected]

Greetings all. I have 3 foreign fashion dolls for sale, but would seriously consider trading for reborn—preemie preferred.

The phone rang just as Afton was printing out a list of sites that were advertising reborns. She snatched the receiver up, fully expecting it to be Mickey, the ex, wanting to chat with the girls. Mickey was a real champ at waiting until it was too late in the evening to have more than a superficial, hey-kidlins-how-ya-doin' type of conversation.

But it wasn't Mickey at all. It was Max Montgomery.

“I hate to interrupt,” he said, sounding slightly out of breath, “but we just got a flash from Saint Paul Metro.”

“What?” Afton asked, her antennae suddenly up and buzzing like crazy.

“A couple of guys were jogging along West River Road, down by Hidden Falls,” Max said. “And they thought they heard a baby crying.”

“Dear Lord,” Afton said. “I'm on my way.”