Two Little Girls in Blue (4 page)

“Of course.”

Barker looked at Lucas. “May I see your license, sir?”

Lucas smiled, his eager, anxious-to-please smile. “Of course, officer, of course.”

“I can vouch for Lucas,” Franklin Bailey said. “He's been my driver for years.”

“Strictly following orders, Mr. Bailey. I'm sure you understand.”

The sergeant examined the driver's license. His eyes flickered over Lucas. Without comment he returned it and wrote something in his notebook.

Franklin Bailey closed the window and leaned back. “All right, Lucas. Let's step on it. That was probably a wasted gesture, but somehow I felt I had to do it.”

“I think it was a wonderful gesture, sir. I never had kids, but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what those poor parents are feeling now.” I just hope they're feeling bad enough to come up with eight million dollars, he thought with an inner smile.

C
lint was pulled from a heavy Chivas Regal–assisted sleep by the persistent voices of two children calling “Mommy.” When there was no response, they had begun to try to climb over the high sides of the crib in which they had been sleeping.

Angie lay next to him, snoring, oblivious to the children's voices or the sound of the crib rattling. He wondered how much she had had to drink after he went to bed. Angie loved to sit up half the night and watch old movies, a bottle of wine by her side. Charlie Chaplin, Greer Garson, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable—she loved them all. “They were
actors,”
she would tell him, her voice slurred. “Today they all look alike. Blond. Gorgeous. Botox. Face-lifts. Liposuction. But can they act? No.”

It was only lately, after all these years of being around her that Clint had realized Angie was jealous. She wanted to be beautiful. He'd used it as another way to get her to agree to mind the kids. “We'll have so much money that if you want to go to a spa or change the color of your hair or have some great plastic surgeon make you more gorgeous, you can do it. All you have to do is take good care of them, maybe for a few days or a week.”

Now he dug an elbow into her side. “Get up.”

She burrowed deeper into the pillow.

He shook her shoulder. “I said, get up,” he snarled.

Reluctantly she lifted her head and looked over at the crib.

“Lie down! Get back to sleep, you two!” she snapped.

Kathy and Kelly saw the anger on her face and began to cry. “Mommy . . . Daddy.”

“Shut up, I said! Shut up!”

Whimpering, the twins lay down again, clinging to each other. The soft sound of their muted sobs escaped from the crib.

“I said shut up!”

The sobs became hiccups.

Angie poked Clint. “At nine o'clock, Mona will start to love them. Not one minute sooner.”

M
argaret and Steve sat up all night with Marty Martinson and Agent Carlson. After her fainting spell, Margaret had adamantly refused to go to the hospital. “You said yourself that you need my help,” she insisted.

Together she and Steve answered Carlson's questions. Once again they emphatically denied they had any access to any meaningful sum of money, let alone millions of dollars.

“My father died when I was fifteen,” Margaret told Carlson. “My mother lives in Florida with her sister. She's a secretary in a doctor's office. I have college and law school loans I'll be paying off for another ten years.”

“My father is a retired New York City fire captain,” Steve said. “He and my mother live in a condo in North Carolina. They bought it before prices went crazy.”

When they were questioned about other relatives, Steve admitted that he was on bad terms with his half brother, Richie. “He's thirty-six, five years older than I am. My mother was a young widow when she met my father. Richie always had a kind of wild streak in him. We were never close. Then, to cap it off, he met Margaret before I did.”

“We didn't date,” Margaret said quickly. “We happened
to be at the same wedding and danced a few times. He did leave a message for me, but I didn't return the call. It was a coincidence that I met Steve in law school about a month later.”

“Where is Richie now?” Carlson asked Steve.

“He's a baggage handler at Newark Airport. He's been divorced twice. He dropped out of school, and resents me for finishing college and getting a law degree.” He hesitated. “I might as well tell you. He had a juvenile record and spent five years in prison for his part in a money-laundering scam. But he'd never do anything like this.”

“Maybe not, but we'll check him out,” Carlson said. “Now let's go over anyone else who might have a grudge against you or who might have come in contact with the twins and decided to kidnap them. Have you had any workmen in the house since you moved in?”

“No. My dad could fix anything and he was a good teacher,” Steve explained, his tone hollow with fatigue. “I've been spending nights and weekends doing basic repairs. I'm probably Home Depot's best customer.”

“What about the moving company you used?” Carlson asked next.

“They're off-duty cops,” Steve answered, and for an instant almost smiled. “They've all got kids. They even showed me their pictures. A couple of them are about the age of our twins.”

“What about the people you work with?”

“I've been with my company only three months.
C.F.G.&Y. is an investment firm specializing in pension funds.”

Carlson seized on the fact that until the twins were born, Margaret had worked as a public defender in Manhattan. “Mrs. Frawley, is it possible that one of the people you defended might hold a grudge against you?”

“I don't think so.” Then she hesitated. “There was one guy who ended up with a life sentence. I begged him to accept a plea bargain but he refused, and when he was found guilty, the judge threw the book at him. His family was screaming obscenities at me when they took him away.”

It's odd, she thought as she watched Carlson write down the name of the convicted defendant. Right now, I just feel numb. Nothing else, just numb.

At seven o'clock, as light began to show through the drawn shades, Carlson stood up. “I urge you two to get some sleep. The clearer your heads are, the more helpful you'll be to us. I'll be right here. I promise we'll let you know the minute the kidnappers make contact with us, and we may be wanting you to make a statement to the media later in the day. You can go up to your own room, but do
not
go near the girls' bedroom. The forensic team is still going over it.”

Steve and Margaret nodded mutely. Their bodies sagged with fatigue as they got up and walked through the living room headed to the staircase.

“They're on the level,” Carlson said flatly to Martinson. “I'd stake my life on it. They don't have any money. Which makes me wonder if this ransom demand isn't a
hoax. Somebody who just wanted the kids may be trying to throw us off.”

“I've been thinking that,” Martinson agreed. “Isn't it a fact that most ransom notes would warn the parents not to call the police?”

“Exactly. I only pray to God that those kids aren't on a plane to South America right now.”

O
n Friday morning, the kidnapping of the Frawley twins was headline news all along the East Coast and by early afternoon had become a national media event. The birthday picture of the beautiful three-year-olds, with their angelic faces and long blond hair and dressed in their blue velvet birthday party dresses, was shown on television news channels and printed in newspapers all over the country.

A command center was set up in the dining room of 10 Old Woods Road. At five o'clock in the afternoon Steve and Margaret appeared on television in front of their home, begging the captors to take good care of the girls and return them unharmed. “We don't have money,” Margaret said imploringly. “But our friends have been calling all day. They're taking up a collection. It's up to nearly two hundred thousand dollars. Please, you must have mistaken us for people who could raise eight million dollars. We can't. But please don't hurt our girls. Give them back. I can promise you we will have two hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

Steve, his arm around Margaret, said, “Please get in touch with us. We need to know that our girls are alive.”

Captain Martinson followed them in the interview.
“We are posting the phone and fax number of Franklin Bailey, who at one time was mayor of this town. If you are afraid to contact the Frawleys directly, please contact him.”

But Friday evening, Saturday, and then Sunday all passed without word from the kidnappers.

On Monday morning, Katie Couric was interrupted on the
Today
show as she was interviewing a retired FBI agent about the kidnapping. She suddenly paused in the middle of asking a question, pressed her hand against her earphone, listened intently, then said, “This may be a hoax, but it also may be terribly important. Someone claiming to be the kidnapper of the Frawley twins is on the phone. At his request our engineers are putting the call on the air now.”

A husky, obviously disguised voice, its tone angry, said, “Tell the Frawleys time is running out. We said eight million and we mean eight million. Listen to the kids.”

Young voices said in unison, “Mommy, I love you. Daddy, I love you.” Then one of the girls cried, “We want to go home.”

*   *   *

The segment was replayed five minutes later with Steve and Margaret listening. Martinson and Carlson did not need to ask the Frawleys if the call was legitimate. The look on their faces was enough to convince them that at last contact had been made with the kidnappers.

A
n increasingly nervous Lucas had stopped in at the caretaker cottage on both Saturday and Sunday evenings. The last thing he wanted was to spend any time around the twins, so he timed his arrival for nine o'clock, when he thought they would be asleep.

On Saturday evening he tried to feel reassured by Clint's boast that Angie was great with the kids. “They ate real good. She played games with them. She put them down for naps all afternoon. She really loves them. She always wanted to have kids. But I tell you, it's almost spooky to watch them. It's like they're two parts of the same person.”