The Couple Next Door (15 page)

Without thinking, she opens the package.

There’s a mint-green onesie inside.

ANNE SCREAMS
.

Marco hears her scream and bolts downstairs from the bedroom. He sees her standing by the front door, a pile of unopened mail at her feet, a package in her hand. He can see the green onesie peeking out of the package.

She turns to him, her face white. ‘This just came in the mail,’ she says, her voice strange and hollow.

Marco approaches her, and she holds the package out to him. They look down at it together, almost afraid to touch it. What if it’s a prank? What if someone thought it would be funny to send a mint-green onesie to the awful couple who left their baby home alone?

Marco takes the package from Anne and gently opens it further. He draws out the onesie. It looks right. He turns it over. There’s the embroidered bunny on the front.

‘Oh, God,’ Anne gasps, and bursts into tears, her hands up to her face.

‘It’s hers,’ Marco says, his voice harsh. ‘It’s Cora’s.’

Anne nods but can’t speak.

There’s a note pinned to the inside of the little outfit. It’s typewritten, in a small font.

There is a detailed map at the bottom of the note.

‘We’re going to get her back, Anne!’ Marco cries.

Anne feels as though she might faint. After all they’ve been through, it seems too good to be true. She takes the onesie from him and holds it to her face and breathes in. She can smell her baby.
She can smell her.
It is overwhelming. She breathes in again, and her knees weaken.

‘We’ll do exactly what it says,’ Marco says.

‘Shouldn’t we tell the police?’

‘No! It says
not
to tell them. We can’t risk screwing this up. Don’t you see? It’s too risky to involve the police. If he thinks he’s going to get caught, he might just kill Cora and get rid of her! We have to do it his way. No police.’

Anne nods. It scares her, doing this on their own. But Marco is right. What have the police done for them? Nothing. All the police have done is suspect them. The police are not their friends. They will have to get Cora back on their own.

‘Five million,’ Marco says, his voice tense. He looks up at her, suddenly worried. ‘Do you think your parents will be okay with five million?’

‘I don’t know.’ She bites her lip anxiously. ‘They have to be.’

‘We don’t have a lot of time. Two days,’ Marco says. ‘We have to ask your parents. They have to start getting the money together.’

‘I’ll call them.’ She moves toward the phone in the kitchen.

‘Use your cell phone. And, Anne, tell them right up front – no police. No one can know.’

She nods and reaches for her cell.

They sit on the sofa in the living room, Anne and Marco, side by side. Anne’s mother perches elegantly on the edge of the armchair while Anne’s father paces the floor of the living room between the front window and the sofa. They all watch him.

‘You’re sure that’s the right outfit?’ he says again, pausing in his pacing.

‘Yes,’ Anne says sharply. ‘Why don’t you believe me?’

‘We just need to be sure. Five million dollars is a lot of money.’ He sounds petulant. ‘We have to be sure we’re dealing with the person who actually has Cora. This has been all over the papers. Somebody could take advantage.’

‘It’s Cora’s sleeper,’ Marco says firmly. ‘We recognize it.’

‘Can you get us the money or not?’ Anne asks, her voice strident. She looks anxiously at her mother. Just when she was getting her hopes up again, this might all fall apart. How could her father be doing this to her?

‘Of course we can get the money,’ her mother says firmly.

‘I didn’t say we couldn’t get the money,’ her father answers. ‘I said it might be difficult. But if I have to move mountains, then I’ll move mountains.’

Marco watches his father-in-law, trying to keep his dislike from showing itself on his face. They all know it’s mostly Anne’s mother’s money, but he has to act like it’s all his. Like he earned it all himself. What a jerk.

‘Two days isn’t much time to raise that much money. We’ll have to cash in some investments,’ Richard says self-importantly.

‘That’s not a problem,’ Anne’s mother says. She looks at her daughter. ‘Don’t worry about the money, Anne.’

‘Can you do it quietly, without anyone knowing?’ Marco asks.

Richard Dries exhales loudly, thinking. ‘We’ll talk to our lawyer about how to handle it. We’ll figure it out.’

‘Thank God,’ Anne says in relief.

‘How exactly is this going to work?’ Richard asks.

Marco says, ‘Just like the note says. No police. I’ll go, with the money. I give them the money, and they give me Cora.’

‘Maybe I should come with you, so you don’t screw it up,’ Anne’s father says.

Marco regards him with open malice. ‘No.’ He adds, ‘If they see someone else, they might not go through with it.’

They stare at each other. ‘I’m the one with the big checkbook,’ Richard says.

‘Actually,
I’m
the one with the big checkbook,’ Alice says sharply.

‘Dad,
please
,’ Anne says, terrified that her father is going to ruin everything. Her glance darts anxiously from him to her mother.

‘We have no proof that Cora is even alive,’ Richard says. ‘It could be a trick.’

‘If Cora isn’t there, I won’t leave the money,’ Marco says, watching Richard continue to pace in front of the window.

‘I don’t like it,’ Richard says. ‘We should tell the police.’

‘No!’ Marco says. The two men glare at each another. Richard looks away first.

‘What choice do we have?’ Anne asks, her voice shrill.

‘I still don’t like it,’ Richard says.

‘We will do exactly what the note says,’ Anne’s mother says firmly, giving her husband a sharp glance.

Anne’s father looks at her and says, ‘I’m sorry, Anne. You’re right. We don’t have a choice. Your mother and I had better get started on the money.’

Marco watches his father- and mother-in-law get into their Mercedes and drive off. He’s barely eaten since this all started. His jeans hang loose on his body.

It was an awful moment when Richard was being difficult about raising the money. But he’d just been grandstanding. He had to make sure everybody knew what a great guy he was. Had to make sure everybody appreciated how important he was.

‘I knew they would come through for us,’ Anne says, suddenly beside Marco.

How did she always manage to say exactly the wrong thing? At least when it came to her parents. How could she not see her father for what he was? Couldn’t she see how manipulative he was? But Marco is silent.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Anne says, taking Marco’s hand in hers. ‘We’re going to get her back. And then everyone will see that we were the victims here.’ She squeezes his hand. ‘And then we should make the damn police apologize.’

‘Your father will never let us forget that they bailed us out.’

‘He won’t see it that way! He’ll see it as saving Cora, I’m sure of it! They won’t hold it over us.’

His wife can be so naïve. Marco gives her hand a squeeze back. ‘Why don’t you lie down and try to get some rest? I’m going to go out for a bit.’

‘I doubt I’ll be able to sleep, but I’ll try. Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to pop into the office and check on a few things. I haven’t been there since . . . since Cora was taken.’

‘Okay.’

Marco puts his arms around Anne and gives her a hug. ‘I can’t wait to see her again, Anne,’ he whispers.

She nods against his shoulder. He lets her go.

Marco watches her walk up the stairs. Then he grabs his car keys from the bowl on the table in the front hall and heads out.

Anne intends to lie down. She’s too keyed up, though – almost daring to hope she might get her baby back soon, yet still terrified that it might all go horribly wrong. As her father said, they have no proof that Cora is even still alive.

But she refuses to believe that Cora is dead.

She carries the green onesie with her, holding it to her face and breathing in the scent of her baby. She misses her so much it physically hurts. Her breasts ache. In the upstairs hall, she stops, leans against the wall, and slides down to the floor outside the baby’s room. If she closes her eyes and presses the onesie to her face, she can pretend that Cora is still here, in the house, just across the hall. For a few moments, she lets herself pretend. But then she opens her eyes.

Whoever sent them the onesie has demanded five million dollars. Whoever it is knows that their little girl is worth five million dollars to them and obviously has a pretty good idea that Anne and Marco can get the money.

Perhaps it is someone they know, if only slightly. She gets to her feet slowly, pauses on her way into their bedroom. Perhaps it is even someone they know fairly well, someone who
knows
they have access to money.

When this is all over, she thinks, after they get Cora back, she will devote her life to her child – and to finding the person who took her. Maybe she will never stop looking at people
they know, wondering if that person is the one who took their baby – or knows who did.

She suddenly realizes she probably shouldn’t be handling the onesie like this. If it all goes wrong and they don’t get Cora back, they will have to turn the onesie – and the note – over to the police, as evidence and to convince them of their innocence. Surely the police will no longer suspect them now. But any evidence that the outfit might have offered up has probably been ruined by the way she has been touching it and breathing on it and even wiping her tears with it. She puts it down on her dresser in the bedroom and lays it flat. She looks at it, forlorn, on the dresser. She leaves it there, with the note pinned to it containing their instructions. They cannot afford to make a mistake.

It’s the first time she’s been alone in the house, she realizes, since midnight on the night Cora was taken. If only she could go back in time. The last few days have been a blur, of fear and grief and horror and despair – and betrayal. She told the police that she trusted Marco, but she lied. She doesn’t trust him with Cynthia. She thinks that he might have other secrets from her. After all, she has secrets from him.

She wanders from her dresser over to Marco’s and pulls open the top drawer. Aimlessly, she rummages through his socks and underwear. When she has finished with the top drawer, she opens the second. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she’ll know when she finds it.

MARCO GETS INTO
the Audi and drives. But not to the office. Instead he takes the nearest exit and drives out of the city. He weaves in and around traffic; the Audi is responsive to his touch. After about twenty minutes, he turns off onto a smaller highway. Soon he reaches a familiar dirt road that leads to a fairly secluded lake.

He pulls in to a graveled parking area in front of the lake. There is a small, stony beach with some old, weathered picnic tables, which he has rarely seen anyone use. A long dock projects out into the lake, but no one launches boats from here anymore. Marco has been coming here for years. He comes here alone, whenever he needs to think.

He parks the car under the shade of a tree, facing the lake, and gets out. It’s hot and sunny, but there’s a breeze coming off the lake. He sits on the hood of the car and looks out at the water. There is no one else here; the place is deserted.

He tells himself that everything will be all right. Cora is fine; she has to be. Anne’s parents will get the money. His father-in-law would never pass up an opportunity to be a hero or a big shot, even if it cost him a small fortune. Especially if it looks
like he’s bailing Marco out. They
won’t even miss the money, Marco thinks.

He takes a deep breath of the lake air and expels it, trying to calm himself. He can smell dead fish, but no matter. He has to get air into his lungs. The last few days have been a living hell. Marco isn’t made for this. His nerves are shot.

He has regrets now, but it will all be worth it. When he gets Cora back and he has the money, everything will be okay. They’ll have their daughter. And he’ll have two and a half million dollars to get his business on track again. The thought of taking money from his father-in-law makes Marco smile. He hates the bastard.

With this money he’ll be able to sort out his cash-flow problems and take his business to the next level. It will have to be funneled into the business through a silent, anonymous investor, by way of Bermuda. No one will ever know. His accomplice, Bruce Neeland, will get his half share, go away, and keep his mouth shut.

Marco almost hadn’t gone through with it. When the babysitter canceled at the last minute, he’d panicked. He’d almost called the whole thing off. He knew Katerina always fell asleep with her earbuds in when she was babysitting. Twice they’d come home before midnight and surprised her dead to the world on the living-room sofa. She wasn’t that easy to wake up either. Anne didn’t like it. She thought Katerina wasn’t a very good babysitter, but it was hard to get a sitter at all, since there were so many young children in the neighborhood.

The plan had been for Marco to go out for a smoke at twelve thirty, let himself into the house quietly, grab the sleeping baby, and take her out through the back while Katerina slept. If she’d woken up and seen him come in, he would have
told her he’d come to check on the baby, since they were just next door. If she’d woken up and seen him carrying the baby out, he would have told her he was going to take Cora next door for a minute to show her off. In either case he would have aborted the whole thing.

If he’d pulled it off, the story would have been about a child abducted from her bedroom while the babysitter was downstairs.

But then she canceled. Marco was desperate, so he’d had to improvise. He persuaded Anne to leave Cora at home with the proviso that they’d check on her every half hour. It wouldn’t have been possible if the video on the baby monitor had still been working, but with just the audio, he thought it would be all right. He would take Cora out the back to the waiting car when he checked on her. He knew it would make him and Anne look bad, leaving the baby home alone, but he thought it could work.