Noah's Rainy Day (34 page)

“And what makes you say that?” Streeter asked.

“Well, I … I just don’t know,” she said, refusing to meet Streeter’s eyes. “I just can’t imagine why someone would do this to the child.”

Streeter let silence settle in the room, baiting her to fill it. But she didn’t.

“Before being a nanny for the Williams family, did you work the prior twenty years as a nanny in England?” Streeter asked.

“I’ve only been in the US since I’ve been with the Williams family.” Her English accent was remarkably unchanged, even after being in New York for nearly six years.

“Mr. Williams hired me out of Manchester. Took care of everything for me, my passport, transportation, work visa. Even my apartment. He discovered my name in a conversation with one of my former clients. Charming girl. All grown up and quite the young lady these days.”

“Tell us about Christmas Eve, Ms. Manning,” Streeter said.

Her mood visibly shifted. Tears instantly welled in her eyes and her hands instinctively went up to her hair, her fingers bunching and then smoothing the loose strands, quickly fastening the band to capture all the strands into a neat, tight bun. When she was done, she folded her hands back on top of the purse on her lap.

“It was a glorious morning. I didn’t want to see little Max go. And I certainly didn’t want to see him fly alone, clear across the country. I begged Mr. Williams to let me fly with him to Los Angeles. He said the Mrs. did not want me in California.”

Streeter and I exchanged a quick glance.

“Did you get along with Melissa Williams?”

“Oh, no. Never. She hated me from day one. But I didn’t take it personally. She hates everyone. Or almost everyone. She likes beautiful things and beautiful people, not ordinary people like myself.” Her delivery was monotone with no passion or anger behind the words. She was just matter-of-fact.

I thought her observation odd, especially after meeting Melissa, whom I had found to have an average emotional maturity. I had never sensed she was holding back a raging hatred or anger for the nanny. And I didn’t sense that Melissa had discounted me for not being one of the “beautiful people,” which I most certainly was not. She seemed to treat me as she did most everyone else in the room. The only one I sensed she had some anger or bitterness toward was Max, which seemed a normal emotional level for an ex-spouse.

“Did that pose problems for you as the child’s nanny?”

“I never found her disdain for me to be a major problem. She largely left me alone to do my work in caring for little Max.”

“And on Christmas Eve? Was it an issue?” Streeter asked.

“I told Mr. Williams I would fly with the child to Los Angeles and then turn around and fly back to New York the same day. I just didn’t want him flying alone.”

“And why didn’t he let you do that?” Streeter asked.

“Said it was an unnecessary expense,” Manning said, pursing her lips. “He told me the airline had an escort that would be much cheaper. I begged him to let me pay for it with my own money and that irritated him. He wouldn’t have it. I knew I’d gone too far.”

“What did he do?”

“He told me to do as he’d said—take the child to the airport and use the arranged escort. Then he told me to take the week off, go back to England, and not come back to Manhattan until little Max came home.”

“But you didn’t,” Streeter said. “You flew with little Max against your boss’s orders, didn’t you?”

“How did you know?” Her eyes flicked across the men’s faces and landed on mine. With no one willing to answer, she answered, “No, I didn’t do as Mr. Williams instructed. I was concerned. I wanted to make sure little Max was safe. Wouldn’t you?”

“What made you concerned?” Streeter asked.

“He’s five. Traveling alone.”

“So you bought a ticket to LA for yourself when you went to the airport?” Streeter asked.

Her face drained of color and her shoulders sagged.

“Ms. Manning? It would be in your best interest to tell the truth.”

She closed her eyes. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know Mr. Williams like I do.” She sighed and sat upright, folding her hands on the table, regaining her composure as quickly as she’d lost it.

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I would lose my job and never see little Max again.” Her glassy-eyed gaze met mine.

Judy Manning could have been my age or Streeter’s or even older; she had one of those ageless faces. Her skin was pale and smooth, not with youth but from living an uneventful life. She was far too weak, but not too thin. Her washed-out hair might have been black at one time—maybe dark brown—and had been pulled back into a harsh knot on the back of her head. She wore a tunic of dull blues and grays, which made her face appear even paler.

“Wasn’t that going to happen anyway?” Streeter asked.

Manning shot a look at Streeter. She said nothing, a quizzical look falling over her face.

“Once he started school next fall, it would be normal for parents to dismiss their nanny, wouldn’t it?” Streeter expertly explained, as if it must be so.

“Not always,” she said, the pitch of her voice becoming higher, belying her confidence.

Streeter asked in the calmest voice imaginable. “Had you planned to buy a ticket to Los Angeles all along or was it a spontaneous decision?”

Manning looked down at her hands; her fingers were knotted together so hard that the knuckles on her fingers bulged and whitened. I noticed that her hands also distorted her age; it was not just her eyes.

“Spontaneous,” she said eventually. “Little Max was crying. I practically
maxed out my credit card at the ATM on the way to the airport. The escort took him away through the security gates. I couldn’t bear to see him go. So I took most of my bonus money from Mr. Williams and paid the airline employee to get me to the top of the list, used cash to purchase a round-trip ticket to LA, to make sure he made it safely.”

She looked up at Streeter and took a deep breath, holding back her flood of emotion. She admitted, “But he didn’t.”

My cheeks were burning. I was trying to hold back my urge to grab this woman and shake her. If her story was true, why did she fly under Ida’s name?

Phil Kelleher came from behind Manning over to where I stood at my post by the door, whispering, “Join them. She’s fixated on you. You can help.”

I nodded, squeezed his hand, and moved quietly to the table. Gates and I were flanking Streeter. I could smell his cologne. Spicy and rich. I could feel the heat rising from his neck. My peripheral vision picked up the sheer bulk of him and nothing of the chief on the other side of him.

“Special Agent Streeter Pierce?” she asked.

“You can call me Agent Pierce, Ms. Manning.”

“Could you please show me your badge? And who are all these other people?”

I watched as Streeter hesitated, then pulled out his credentials and slid them across the table toward her. “Would you feel more comfortable if Special Agent Bergen and Denver Police Chief Gates showed you theirs, too?”

Manning’s eyes flicked over to mine. “Bergen?”

I raised an eyebrow.

The thin woman first reviewed Streeter’s and then Chief Gates’s credentials. I got goose bumps the way she looked at me, as if she were staring right through me. I showed her my credentials. As she pushed my credentials back to me, Manning said, “Ida’s sister. It figures. He owns everyone.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Mr. Williams. Does he own you, too?” she turned to Streeter, then Gates.

“I’ve never even met the man until today,” Streeter said. I realized he was telling the truth, since he’d met Max for the first time after midnight. “Neither has Chief Gates.”

“And you?” she asked, turning those haunting eyes of hers to mine.

“I knew Max a long time ago. As you know, he dated my sister, Ida—Ingrid Bergen. Give me back her ID, by the way, before I forget.”

She held my gaze for a long moment, likely measuring whether I was bluffing. A flicker in her eyes told me she had indeed used my sister’s identification to fly from NYC to Denver. I wondered what else she might be up to while posing as my sister. She lifted her purse from her lap to open the clasp, and as she looked down to fish out Ida’s ID, I craned to see inside.

“Thank you,” I said simply, as she handed me a passport.

Streeter cleared his throat. “Ms. Manning, why did you fly under an assumed name?”

“I told you. I had to. You don’t know Mr. Williams like I do. I was disobeying him. I had bribed an employee to let me on that plane. I couldn’t let him find out.”

“And you’d have us believe that you happened to have my sister’s ID in your purse for just such an emergency?” I asked.

“Actually, yes. I would. Because it would be true. Ever since I found it under the breakfront when the entryway was retiled, I’ve kept it with me. Just in case.”

“In case what?” Streeter asked.

“In case I …” Her words trailed off into silence as she looked between the two men and then at me.

I wondered what was going through her mind. Her expression changed so suddenly, I thought maybe I was looking at an entirely different person, as different as she had been yesterday in comparison to today.

“Tiny,” she said, her voice small.

“Excuse me?” Streeter said. “Tiny, did you say?”

“My apartment. It’s tiny.”

Just like her, I thought. Tiny. I had no clue where her thought process was leading, but I knew from the drastic change in her demeanor that I’d better listen carefully. She reminded me of those shrunken heads, only her entire body had been dipped in that magical concoction. No wonder she was pushing through everyone in the airport video. She couldn’t see over anyone to locate little Max. She was too short. She wasn’t just a little shorter than Ida, she was a lot shorter.

“Everything in my apartment is tiny. Little Max believes I’m the little old woman who lives in a shoe. Just like in the nursery rhyme.” Her smile sent chills down my spine for some reason. She held me with an eerie gaze. “What can you tell me about my boy?”

Her boy? Was she insane? For the first time, I wondered if I was experiencing my first example of split personality, something the behavioral psychologists mentioned as a rarity, difficult to diagnose. I’d argue I was staring it in the face.

“We know very little. We’re hoping you can help us find him, Ms. Manning. Is it Ms. or Mrs.?” Streeter asked.

I realized he didn’t want Manning to control the direction of this interview and his unspoken direction was for Chief Gates and me to stay silent, not to allow her to bait us into answering her questions.

“Ms. You’ve heard nothing from the kidnappers?” She was staring directly at me. I practiced my blank expression, which was harder than I’d ever imagined.

“No,” Streeter said. “Will we?”

She cocked her head, quizzically.

“Do you know them?” Streeter asked.

“Who?”

“The kidnappers.”

She shook her head and looked confused. “Why would you ask me that?”

Streeter shrugged. “Because you were on the plane with little Max. After you told Mr. Williams you were going to Manchester for the holidays. Yet here we are. And we don’t even know if little Max has been kidnapped or not. But you seem to think he has. So wouldn’t it make sense for us to ask you why you think he was?”

Her eyes widened slightly and she clutched at her hair again, pulling chunks of strands from the tight knot. She let her hands fall slowly back into her lap and said, “I just assumed. Why else would they want little Max?”

“Any ideas?”

She pondered, pulling more hair loose. It was an odd behavior at best, more like neurotic. I realized it was her eyes that made her look old. They
had seen too much in her lifetime, held too much pain. On closer study, Judy Manning may have actually been younger than me, perhaps late twenties, maybe early thirties. Maybe she’d lied about being a nanny for twenty-five years. It suddenly dawned on me that the straggles of loose hair—not by design to soften her looks, but pulled from her bun as she battled whatever demons danced around in that gray matter of hers—might actually indicate the state she was in, the near frantic panic she must have felt, as she hurried through the airport yesterday. And how utterly different her demeanor appeared now compared to the calm she had exuded on the train yesterday.

“I couldn’t imagine,” she said, her gaze far off.

“Then why did you ask about kidnappers?” Streeter asked.

“If my Max wasn’t taken because of money, then why?” Manning was staring at me again. Her stare was at once pleading and demanding.

Streeter answered, “We’ll be asking the questions, Ms. Manning.”

I blurted, “Maybe if you show us what’s on that DVD you’re carrying in your purse, we can help you find him.”

Judy Manning stared at me longer than was comfortable before reaching into her purse and sliding it across the table to me. “I hope so. It’s my favorite.”

When Streeter placed the DVD into the computer’s drive, a video of little Max popped up on the screen, his face close to the lens. With such cuteness, I could see why this was her favorite.

After all, little Max was singing a song over and over where the only lyrics were “I love Nanny Judy.”

Noah

I STRAINED TO SEE
beneath my lowered cap and could barely make out the large shape of my grouchy neighbor. The child whimpered. The man was breathing heavy, like he was nervous or scared or something. His hushed tone was gruff, like he was mad.

“Sammy, what did I tell you about never leaving the house?” He sounded more scared than angry. I fumbled against my winter jacket and thick mittens, hoping to activate the football pin through all my padding.

“I was just playing—”

“Did you forget the rules?” He was still whispering, but I could hear him. Then I heard him mumble. “What have you done, what have you done?”

“Nothing. I just … You … you were busy, Papa, and I didn’t want to bother you,” the kid said, sounding just as scared and nervous as my neighbor, who still hadn’t caught his breath.

“Who’s seen you out here? Tell me,” Mr. Creepy said. From the sound of him, I should have nicknamed him Mr. Scaredy Cat. I could smell him sweating, even in the ice-cold air.