The Couple Next Door (29 page)

Marco stops pacing and looks at his wife, questioning her grip on reality. If it’s true that Derek Honig was a friend of her father’s, then it could well be true that her father manipulated Marco into financial desperation, into kidnapping their child. Her father might have orchestrated the deception at the exchange; he might have murdered a man in cold blood. He has caused his daughter intense pain. He doesn’t care if she’s happy. He just wants things his way.

He is utterly ruthless. For the first time, Marco realizes what an adversary he has in his father-in-law. The man is possibly a sociopath. How many times had Richard told him that
to succeed in business one had to be ruthless? Maybe that was it – maybe he was trying to teach Marco a lesson about ruthlessness.

Anne says suddenly, ‘Maybe my father is not part of this. Maybe Derek befriended you, and manipulated you, because he knew my father and knew he has money. But my father might not know anything about it. He might not know that Derek was the kidnapper – he might have gotten the phone and the note in the mail, like he said.’ She seems more lucid again.

Marco thinks about this. ‘It’s possible.’ But he believes that Richard is running things behind the scenes. He feels it in his gut.

‘We have to go over there,’ Anne says. ‘But you can’t just barge in and accuse him. We don’t know for sure what’s going on. I can tell him that I know you took Cora and that you gave her to Derek Honig. That we need his help getting her back. If my father
is
involved in this, we have to give him a way out. We have to pretend he had nothing to do with it, beg him to work with the kidnappers, to figure out how to get Cora back to us.’

Marco thinks about what she’s said and nods. Anne seems more like herself again, and he’s relieved. Besides, she’s right – Richard Dries isn’t the kind of man you back into a corner. The important thing is to get Cora home again.

‘And maybe my father isn’t behind it at all. Maybe he really is in touch with the kidnappers,’ Anne says. She so obviously wants to believe that her father wouldn’t do this to her.

‘I doubt it.’

They sit for a moment, exhausted by all that’s happened, steeling themselves for what’s ahead. Finally Marco says, ‘We’d better get going.’

Anne nods. She puts a hand on his arm as they’re leaving. ‘Promise me you won’t lose your cool with my father,’ she says.

What can Marco do but say yes? ‘I promise.’ He adds miserably, ‘I owe you that.’

They take a cab to Anne’s parents’ home, passing by increasingly stately houses until they arrive in the wealthiest suburb of the city. It’s late, but they have not called first. They want the element of surprise on their side. Anne and Marco sit in the back of the taxi, saying nothing. Marco can feel Anne trembling against him; her breathing sounds fast and shallow. He takes her hand in his, to calm her. He is sweating with nerves in the hot, sticky cab; the air-conditioning doesn’t seem to be working. Marco puts the window down a bit so that he can breathe.

The cab drives them up the circular gravel drive and stops at the front door. Marco pays the driver and tells him not to wait. Anne presses the bell. There are still lights on in the house. After a moment Anne’s mother opens the door.

‘Anne!’ she says, clearly surprised. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

Anne pushes past her mother, and Marco follows her into the front hall.

And at once all their plans fly out the window.

‘Where is she?’ Anne demands. She looks wildly at her mother. Her mother seems stunned and doesn’t answer. Anne starts walking rapidly through the large house, leaving Marco standing in the front hall, horrified by her behavior. Anne has lost it – he wonders how to play this now.

Anne’s mother follows after her on her frantic search through the house. Marco can hear Anne calling, ‘Cora! Cora!’

He senses movement above and looks up. Richard is coming down the grand staircase. Their eyes meet, steel on steel.
They can both hear Anne’s cries: ‘Where is she? Where is my baby?’ Her voice is becoming more and more frantic.

Suddenly Marco questions everything: Was Anne right about recognizing Derek Honig? Was Derek an associate of her father’s, or has her brain supplied a detail that is simply a delusion? He found her at home in the dark, holding a knife. How reliable is anything she says? Everything he believes hinges on Richard’s knowing Derek Honig. Now it’s up to Marco to find out the truth.

‘Let’s go sit down, shall we?’ Richard says, and passes him on his way to the living room.

Marco follows. His mouth is dry. He is afraid. He may not be dealing with a normal person here. Richard is quite possibly a sociopath; Marco knows he’s out of his depth. He doesn’t know how to handle this situation, and everything depends on how he handles it.

Marco hears Anne’s footsteps; she is running now, up the elaborate staircase to the second floor. He and Richard stare at each other, listening to Anne call Cora’s name as she flings back bedroom doors, running along the upstairs hall, searching.

‘She won’t find her,’ Richard says.

‘Where is she, you son of a bitch?’ Marco says. He has gone off script, too. None of this is going according to plan.

‘Well, she’s not
here
,
’ his father-in-law says coldly. ‘Why don’t we just wait for Anne to settle down, and we can all have a meeting.’

It takes everything Marco has not to get up and go for his father-in-law’s fat throat. He forces himself to sit down and to wait for what’s coming.

Finally Anne bursts into the living room, her overwrought mother right behind her. ‘Where is she?’ Anne cries at her father. Her face is mottled and streaked with tears. She is hysterical.

‘Sit down, Anne,’ her father says firmly.

Marco gestures for her to join him, and Anne goes and sits beside him on the large, overstuffed sofa.

‘You know why we’re here,’ Marco begins.

‘Anne seems to think that Cora is here. Why would she think that?’ Richard asks, feigning bewilderment. ‘Marco – did you tell her the kidnappers were in touch with me? I specifically asked you not to.’

Marco tries to speak, but he doesn’t know how to begin.

Richard cuts him off anyway. He is standing by the enormous fireplace. He turns to Anne. ‘I’m so sorry, Anne, but the kidnappers have let us all down – again. I’d hoped to have Cora back tonight, but they didn’t show up. I brought the additional money, as arranged, but they just didn’t show.’ He turns to Marco. ‘Of course,
I
didn’t let them have the money anyway, the way
you
did, Marco.’

Marco’s anger flares – Richard can’t resist the temptation to make Marco look like an incompetent fool.

‘I told you not to tell her, to avoid this kind of distress,’ Richard says. He turns to Anne again, his eyes sympathetic. ‘I’ve done everything I can to get her back for you, Anne. I’m so sorry. But I promise you, I won’t give up.’

Anne sags beside him. Marco watches Richard, the coldness he exhibited to Marco switched to warmth once he’s talking to his daughter. Marco sees the flicker of uncertainty in Anne’s eyes – she wants to believe her father would never hurt her.

Richard says, ‘I’m sorry your mother and I didn’t tell you earlier, Anne, but we were afraid this might happen. We didn’t want to get your hopes up again. The kidnappers got in touch with us and demanded more money. We’d pay anything to get Cora back, you know that. I went out to meet with them. But no one came.’ He shakes his head in evident frustration and sorrow.

‘It’s true,’ Alice says, sitting down at the other end of the sofa beside her daughter. ‘We’re just devastated.’ She begins to cry, holds her arms out, and Anne sinks into her mother’s embrace and begins to sob uncontrollably, her shoulders heaving.

Marco thinks,
This can’t be happening.

‘The only thing left to do, I’m afraid,’ Richard says, ‘is to go to the police. With everything.’ He turns and looks at Marco, giving him a cold stare.

Marco stares back. ‘Tell them, Anne, what you know,’ he says.

But she looks at him from her mother’s embrace as if she’s already forgotten.

Desperately, Marco says, ‘The man who was murdered, Derek Honig. The police know that he took Cora from our place, that he took her to his cabin in the Catskills. But I’m sure you know this already.’

Richard shrugs. ‘The police don’t tell me anything.’

‘Anne recognized him,’ Marco says flatly.

Has Richard just gone a little paler? Marco can’t be sure.

‘So? Who was he?’

‘She recognized him as a friend of
yours.
How is it, Richard, that a friend of yours had our baby?’

‘He wasn’t a friend of mine. I’ve never heard of him,’ Richard says smoothly. ‘Anne must be mistaken.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Marco says.

Anne says nothing. Marco looks at her, but her eyes are turned away. Is she betraying him? Is she going to side with her father and hang him out to dry? Because she believes her father over him? Or because she is willing to sacrifice him to get her baby back? He feels the ground shifting under his feet.

‘Anne,’ Richard says, ‘do you think this murdered man, the man who supposedly had Cora, was a friend of mine?’

She regards her father, sits up straighter, and says, ‘No.’

Marco looks at her in dismay.

‘That’s what I thought,’ Richard says, eyeing Marco. ‘Let’s review what we know,’ Richard continues. He turns to his daughter. ‘I’m sorry, Anne, but this is going to be painful for you to hear.’ He sits down in his chair by the fireplace and takes a deep breath before beginning, as if to indicate that this has all been very difficult for him as well. ‘The kidnappers got in touch with us. They had our names because the newspapers figured out that we had paid the original ransom of five million. The kidnappers sent us a package. In the package were a cell phone and a note. The note said that the cell phone was the one that the original kidnapper had been using to stay secretly in touch with the baby’s father, who was in on the plan. I tried calling the only number programmed into the phone. There was no answer. But I kept it on me, and finally it rang. It was Marco.’

‘I know all about that,’ Anne says woodenly. ‘I know Marco took Cora and handed her over to Derek in our garage that night.’

‘You do?’ her father says in surprise. ‘How do you know? Did Marco tell you?’

Marco stiffens, afraid that she’s going to mention the video.

‘Yes,’ Anne says, glancing at Marco.

‘Good for you, Marco, for being man enough to tell her,’ Richard says. He continues. ‘I don’t know exactly what happened, but my guess is that someone must have murdered the man in the cabin and taken Cora. And then duped Marco at the exchange. I thought all was lost, until whoever did it reached out to your mother and me.’ He shakes his head regretfully. ‘I don’t know if they’ll get in touch with us again. We can only hope.’

Pushed to the limit, Marco loses control. ‘This is bullshit!’ he cries. ‘You know what happened. You set this whole thing up! You knew my business wasn’t going well. You
sent
Derek to me. You got him to suggest the kidnapping – it wasn’t my idea. It was never my idea! You’ve been manipulating everything and everyone. Especially me. Derek pushed me to ask you for more money, and then you turned me down. You knew how desperate I was. And then right after you turned me down, there he was, in my darkest moment, with his kidnapping plan.
You
are the mastermind behind all this! Tell me, did
you
bash in Derek’s head?’

Anne’s mother gasps.

‘Because that’s what I think happened,’ Marco presses. ‘
You
killed him.
You
took Cora from the cabin, or you hired someone to do it. You know where she is. You’ve known all along. And you’re not out one goddamned penny. Because you were behind the swindle at the exchange. You had someone show up without the baby to take the money back. But you want
me
to go to jail.’ Marco stops to catch his breath. ‘Tell me, do you even care if Cora lives or dies?’

Richard looks from Marco to Anne and says, ‘I think your husband is out of his mind.’

‘SHOW US THE
note,’ Marco demands.

‘What?’ Richard is momentarily caught off guard.

‘The kidnappers’ note, you son of a bitch,’ Marco says. ‘Show it to us! Prove to us that you’re in communication with them.’

‘I have the phone. I didn’t keep the note,’ Richard says, unruffled.

‘Really. What did you do with the note?’ Marco asks.

‘I destroyed it.’

‘And why would you do that?’ Marco asks. It’s obvious to everyone in the room that he doesn’t believe there is a note, that there ever was a note.

‘Because it incriminated you,’ Richard says. ‘That’s how I knew it would be you on the other end of the phone.’

Marco laughs, but there’s no humor in it. It is a hard, disbelieving laugh, bordering on rage. ‘You want us to believe that you destroyed the note because it incriminated me? Is it not your intention to have me arrested for kidnapping and keep me away from your daughter for good?’ Marco asks.

‘No, Marco, that has never been my intention,’ Richard
says. ‘I don’t know why you would think that. I have never done anything but help you, you know that.’

‘You’re so full of shit, Richard. You threatened me on the phone – you know you did. You set up this whole thing to get rid of me. Why else would you do it? So – if there
was
a note, you would never have destroyed it.’ Marco leans forward toward Richard and says in a menacing voice, ‘There is no note, is there, Richard? The kidnappers aren’t in touch with you, because
you
are the kidnapper.
You
have Derek’s phone – you took it when you killed him, or you had your people do it. You knew where he had Cora because you arranged the whole thing. You turned on Derek – which you’d probably planned to do from the start. Tell me: What did you say you’d pay him to help you send me to jail for kidnapping?’

Marco sits back on the sofa; he sees Alice staring at him, horrified.

Richard calmly watches Marco as the younger man accuses him. Then he turns to his daughter and says, ‘Anne, he’s making all of this up to deflect your attention from his own guilt. I had nothing to do with any of this, other than trying my best to get Cora back. And trying to protect him from the police.’