The Replacement Child (24 page)

The next morning, Maxine left the hospital without telling anyone and walked the four miles home, carrying Melissa. She knew why her mother had come to see her. And she knew why God in his mercy had been making her sick. He had wanted her to stay in the hospital to protect her and Melissa from Maxine’s mother.

Maxine knew that her mother was coming to take Melissa, just like Maxine’s grandmother had taken Maxine’s baby sister.

When Maxine was about five, she and her sisters had been home alone one day. Her mother had taken her brother with her while she got her hair done. Maxine’s older sister, who was seven, was left in charge of Maxine and the baby. Their mother had been gone for only a few minutes when the front door slammed open and their grandmother walked in, carrying a suitcase. Maxine and her sister ran into the kitchen, afraid of
Abuela
and her pinching fingers. They heard her throwing things into the suitcase in the baby’s room. Then
Abuela
was in the kitchen, carrying the baby and the suitcase in one arm. Maxine was hanging on to her sister and both were in the corner, crying.
Abuela
reached down and pinched Maxine hard under her arm and said, “If you weren’t so fat, you would go with me, too.” Then
Abuela
and the baby left.

Maxine knew that her mother would come for Melissa the
same way
Abuela
had for her sister. This was God’s test. God, in his wisdom, was making sure that Maxine would sacrifice anything for her daughter. With Daniel, she had been tempted and had given in to the sin of gluttony. With Melissa, God was tempting her with the sin of sloth.

Maxine never left Melissa alone. After Maxine walked home from the hospital, she locked the front door of her house and closed the curtains to make her mother think she wasn’t at home. Ernesto and Ron weren’t allowed to turn the lights on at night in the living room or their bedrooms. The only light that could be turned on was in the kitchen, because it faced the back of the house. Ron slept mostly at Manny Cordova’s house. Ernesto changed to the night patrol. Maxine didn’t answer the phone and stopped going to church, instead saying her own Mass at her shrine to Daniel, with Melissa sleeping on the floor next to her. She would pray for God to protect Melissa and ask Our Lady to keep her mother away. Maxine moved her bed back into the nursery, holding Melissa all night and singing her songs. Then, one day when Melissa was fifteen months old, the Lord took Maxine’s mother. The doctors said that it was a heart attack and Maxine said a novena to Our Lady in thanksgiving. No one had come to steal her baby. Maxine knew that she had passed God’s test. She hadn’t given in to the sin. God was going to allow her to keep Melissa.

The next day, Maxine opened the curtains and called Ron at Manny’s house to have him come home for dinner. She made posole and chile rellenos. But Ernesto didn’t come home for dinner. He stayed on the night shift until he was killed.

Maxine had seen her baby sister for the first time since they were children at Ernesto’s funeral seven years ago. Her sister had come dressed in a fancy black skirt and blouse. She’d said that she was the superintendent of a school in Albuquerque and had been a French and history teacher before that. She had married an engineer and had three children.
One was teaching at New Mexico State University. They lived in a house with a swimming pool. She’d told Maxine, “The day
Abuela
took me was the best day of my life.”

J
oyce Paine gave Gil the name of one of Sandra’s friends—Lacey Gould. Mrs. Paine didn’t know the address but gave him directions and a map drawn on a coffeehouse napkin. The Gould house was in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos. He rang the doorbell but didn’t hear any chimes inside, so he knocked. A man with a long beard answered the door in slippers. Mr. Gould asked him inside before Gil had a chance to say who he was. In the foyer were stacks of boxes.

Gil introduced himself and asked, “Are you moving?”

“Oh, no. We moved in here about a year ago. We’re just taking out time getting unpacked.” The boxes would have driven Susan crazy.

In the living room were more boxes. The bay windows looked out on a piñon forest. A big dog, maybe a Ridgeback, took up most of the couch. Oblivious, Mr. Gould sat down in the only other seat. Gil was left standing.

“You’re here about Miss Baca. Poor girl. My wife and I liked her very much. She was one of Lacey’s favorite teachers.” Mr. Gould had an accent that Gil couldn’t figure out.

“Is Lacey here? I have a few questions for her.”

“She may be.” He yelled, “Lacey,” several times without getting up. Someone ran down the stairs “Yeah, Dad?”

Lacey Gould looked at Gil curiously as she swatted the Ridgeback off the couch, saying, “Move, Beck.” She folded her bare feet under her, her gray, wrinkled T-shirt blending in with the sofa.

“What’s going on, Dad?” she asked, but before he could answer she said to Gil, “I know who you are. You’re the cop checking out Miss Baca’s murder.”

“I am. How’d you know?”

Lacey shrugged, twisting a necklace with a blue bead on it around her finger.

“How well did you know Miss Baca?” Gil asked.

“I didn’t really know her. But I liked her. She was nice.”

“How well do you know Sandra Paine?”

Lacey glanced at her father. “Let’s go up to my room.”

She ran up the steps, with Gil and the Ridgeback following. Gil had to do a zigzag to avoid the boxes in the hallway.

Lacey seemed to be the only member of the Gould family who had unpacked. Her bed was made with tie-dyed sheets. The walls and ceiling were covered with old movie posters. It made the room claustrophobic.

“Beck, get out,” she said, slamming the door on the dog. She plopped onto the bed and stared up at a poster of Cary Grant in
North by Northwest.

Gil wandered the room, looking at the posters. “So what’s your favorite old movie?” he asked.

“Give me a year.”

“Nineteen thirty-five.”

“Drama or musical?”

“Musical.”

“Too easy.
Top Hat.”

Gil picked up a postcard of a brooding Gary Cooper from 1930. “Does Sandra watch old movies with you?” he asked.

“Sometimes. She’s learning.”

“Are you and Sandra close?”

“I’m her best friend.” She said it matter-of-factly.

“Why do you think I’m here?” he asked. Gil was hoping that they could talk in generalities; he didn’t want to get into a conversation about the Polaroids.

“You want to know about the pictures Sandra and her boyfriend took.”

“How do you know that?”

She answered with another shrug.

“What do you know about it?” he asked, still trying to keep it vague.

“That she met him about a month ago and it’s been lovely.” Lacey sighed heavily.

“Do you know the boyfriend’s name?”

She rolled over on her bed and started picking at a thread on the tie-dyed sheet. “He made her promise not to tell. She could have told me, but we thought it would be cheating. I know all about what they did together,” Lacey offered. This was the topic that Gil wanted to avoid unless one of her parents was around.

“Would you be willing to talk with me about this in front of your father?”

“Yeah, right. Not in a million.”

He cracked open the bedroom door, but she took no notice. Now, anyone walking by could see into the room. “What did they do together?”

“Everything. There was this article in some magazine that Sandra reads about A Hundred Ways to Give Your Man Oral Sex or whatever and Sandra had done all of them.”

Gil winced and changed the line of his questioning.

“Do you know where they spent most of their time together?”

“At his place, mostly.”

“Do you know where that was?”

Another shrug.

“So it wasn’t her dad?”

“That’s disgusting. Have sex with your dad? Eww.” She made a face and shook her head. “It was totally not her dad. Blech. She would have told me.”

“How about a friend of her dad’s?”

Lacey looked thoughtful. “I think it was some guy she met recently.”

“Was it Mr. Hammond?”

“That teacher from school?” Lacey thought for a second. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen them together. And Sandra once said she thought having sex with him would be too much like studying. Like he would make you take a quiz after it.” Lacey giggled.

“Did she ever tell you what the man looked like?” Lacey didn’t answer. He said, “You must have played Twenty Questions or something. If I were you, I’d want to know all about him.”

Her father started yelling, “Lacey, we’ve gotta go,” from downstairs before she could answer Gil. She grabbed her gym bag and said, “Tae kwon do,” as she ran out of the room. She stopped short at the doorway. “Sandra’s right. You do look like Gregory Peck.” He heard her banging down the steps before he could ask her how Sandra could have known what he looked like.

L
ucy tapped her knee against the filing cabinet next to her desk as she edited a story about water rates. She was using the delete key a lot; the reporter was in the habit of using the word
that
as often as possible. She was having a hard time paying attention to the story. The newsroom, always as noisy as a shopping mall on the day after Thanksgiving, was distracting. The photo editor, who was leading an elementary-school tour, kept glaring at the copy desk, where three of the editors were involved in a conversation about group sex.

She answered her phone as if she were on autopilot.

“Hi, Lucy.” She recognized the voice but pretended that she didn’t. She started tapping her fingers on her desk.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Detective Montoya. You called me?”

She flipped open a folder on her desk and took out an official OMI report. “Yeah. I didn’t know if you had seen the toxicology report on Melissa Baca.” She was using it as an excuse.
She wanted to talk to him, to somehow figure out a way to tell him who the confidential sources were. But it was impossible. She couldn’t reveal the names. That would break a thousand journalistic rules. And she could end up in court.

“No, I hadn’t. What are the results?” Gil asked.

She read from the report, “‘Subject shows no questionable or illegal substances in the bloodstream.’”

“She had nothing in her system?”

“Nope. Not a drop of anything. I’ll fax you the report.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Lucy had thought carefully about what she was going to say next. “I also wanted to let you know about the sources who leaked it to the newspaper that Melissa Baca did drugs….”

Gil started to interrupt, but she stopped him. “I can’t tell you their names, of course, but I did want to let you know that those sources, who we believed were reliable at the time, are now suspect.”

“Is the information the sources gave you suspect or are they personally suspect?” God, he was smart, Lucy thought.

“I would say the sources are in a position to know, but their motives are suspect.”

Gil asked slowly, “Why are you telling me this?”

She knew how it must seem to him. To him, there was no reason for her to have brought it up. There was no code that said she had to admit it when the newspaper screwed up, or, more correctly, when she screwed up. But she had to do something. She couldn’t tell him the names, but maybe she could get him thinking. She had chosen her words carefully, memorizing them. She’d used the word
suspect
on purpose, knowing that Ron Baca might be considered a suspect. Maybe Gil would think about her word choice. Wonder about it.

“I just wanted you to think about it, Gil,” she said.

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” He hesitated for a minute before he said, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Why do you ask?”

“You’re not as upbeat as usual. You haven’t tried to make fun of me at all.”

She smiled and said in her Scarlett O’Hara voice, “Oh, Gil, you do care. You just make my heart go a pitter-pat.”

He laughed and said, “That’s better,” then hung up.

Lucy smiled to herself. She had gotten him to laugh. Again. She was getting good at this. And he was getting good at making her feel better. Her good mood ended as soon as she saw Tommy Martinez walk in the door, reminding her of her failure.

She still didn’t get why Officers Ron Baca and Manny Cordova had leaked the information to the newspaper. The only person who made sense was Lieutenant Pollack—he always leaked info. He was easy to figure out—it was all about glory.

G
il sat in his car in front of the elementary school, trying to catch a glimpse of his daughters. Susan had a dentist appointment, so Gil was picking up the girls. He thought he spotted Therese’s dark head in the crowd, but it went into a Honda in front of him.

There. He saw Joy. Talking to a boy. Therese was at her side, tugging on her sister’s coat. Gil tried to get a better look at the boy through the crowd of children. Gil got out of the car to try a different angle, but by then the boy was gone and Joy and Therese were on their way to the car. Gil waved at them and the girls smiled back. He watched them buckle up in the backseat before he started to move through the after-school traffic.

He wanted to ask who the boy was. “How was school?”

He got a, “Great, Daddy,” from Therese and a strange, “Wonderful,” from Joy that wasn’t sarcastic. What had happened to the preteen hostility?

“What did you guys do?”

Therese gave a list of things, starting with homeroom, while Joy stared out the window. When Therese was finished, he said, “What about you, Joy? Anything interesting happen?”

“Nothing really special.” Still that strange lilt to her voice.

“Who was that boy I saw you talking to?” Gil tried to say it casually.

“Oh, come on, Dad. Please,” she said, back in her usual annoyed tone.

“I was just wondering.”

He watched in the rearview mirror as Joy shook her head. But she was smiling slightly. Gil gave up and asked Therese about her classroom’s pet newt.

Susan was waiting for them when they got home. She kissed his cheek as he tried to brush the hair out of her eyes, but she beat him to it, pushing the dark strands behind her ear.